Pompeii (15 page)
“I can’t remember.” The youth really was beginning to seem frightened now. He turned his head as though trying to look at Attilius’s hand on his shoulder. The engineer quickly released him and patted his arm reassuringly.
“Try to remember, Tiro. It could be important.”
“I don’t know.”
“After the Festival of
Neptune
or before?” Neptunalia was on the twenty-third day of July: the most sacred date in the calendar for the men of the aqueducts.
“After. Definitely. Perhaps two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks? Then you must have been one of the last to talk to him. And he was worried about the tremors?” Tiro nodded again. “And Ampliatus? He was a great friend of Ampliatus, was he not? Were they often together?”
The slave gestured to his eyes. “I cannot see—”
No,
thought Attilius,
but I bet you heard them: not much escapes those ears of yours.
He glanced across the street at the house of Popidius. “All right, Tiro. You can go back to the castellum. Do your day’s work. I’m grateful for your help.”
“Thank you, aquarius.” Tiro gave a little bow and took Attilius’s hand and kissed it. Then he turned and began climbing back up the hill toward the Vesuvius Gate, dancing from side to side through the holiday crowd.
HORA QUINTA
[
hours]
Injections of new magma can also trigger eruptions by upsetting
the thermal, chemical, or mechanical equilibrium of older magma
in a shallow reservoir. New magmas coming from deeper, hotter
sources can suddenly raise the temperature of the cooler
resident magma, causing it to convect and vesiculate.
—
VOLCANOLOGY
(SECOND EDITION)
The house had a double door—heavy-studded, bronze-hinged,
firmly
closed. Attilius hammered on it a couple of times with his fist. The noise he made seemed too feeble to be heard above the racket of the street. But almost at once it opened slightly and the porter appeared—a Nubian, immensely tall and broad in a sleeveless, crimson tunic. His thick black arms and neck, as solid as tree trunks, glistened with oil, like some polished African hardwood.
Attilius said lightly, “A keeper worthy of his gate, I see.”
The porter did not smile. “State your business.”
“Marcus Attilius, aquarius of the Aqua Augusta, wishes to present his compliments to Lucius Popidius Secundus.”
“It’s a public holiday. He’s not at home.”
Attilius put his foot against the door. “He is now.” He opened his bag and pulled out the admiral’s letter. “Do you see this seal? Give it to him. Tell him it’s from the commander in chief at Misenum. Tell him I need to see him on the emperor’s business.”
The porter looked down at Attilius’s foot. If he had slammed the door he would have snapped it like a twig. A man’s voice behind him cut in: “The emperor’s business, did he just say, Massavo? You had better let him in.” The Nubian hesitated—
Massavo: that was the right name for him,
thought Attilius—then stepped backward, and the engineer slipped quickly through the opening. The door was closed and locked behind him; the sounds of the city were extinguished.
The man who had spoken wore the same crimson uniform as the porter. He had a bunch of keys attached to his belt—the household steward, presumably. He took the letter and ran his thumb across the seal, checking to see if it was broken. Satisfied, he studied Attilius. “Lucius Popidius is entertaining guests for Vulcanalia. But I shall see that he receives it.”
“No,” said Attilius. “I shall give it to him myself. Immediately.”
He held out his hand. The steward tapped the cylinder of papyrus against his teeth, trying to decide what to do. “Very well.” He gave Attilius the letter. “Follow me.”
He led the way down the narrow corridor of the vestibule toward a sunlit atrium, and for the first time Attilius began to appreciate the immensity of the old house. The narrow facade was an illusion. He could see beyond the shoulder of the steward straight through into the interior, a hundred fifty feet or more, successive vistas of light and color—the shaded passageway with its black-and-white mosaic floor; the dazzling brilliance of the atrium with its marble fountain; a tablinum for receiving visitors, guarded by two bronze busts; and then a colonnaded swimming pool, its pillars wrapped with vines. He could hear finches chirruping in an aviary somewhere, and women’s voices, laughing.
They came into the atrium and the steward said, brusquely, “Wait here,” before disappearing to the left, behind a curtain that screened a narrow passageway. Attilius glanced around. Here was money, old money, used to buy absolute privacy in the middle of the busy town. The sun was almost directly overhead, shining through the square aperture in the atrium’s roof, and the air was warm and sweet with the scent of roses. From this position he could see most of the swimming pool. Elaborate bronze statues decorated the steps at the nearest end—a wild boar, a lion, a snake rising from its coils, and Apollo playing the cithara. At the far end, four women reclined on couches, fanning themselves, each with her own maid standing behind her. They noticed Attilius staring and there was a little flutter of laughter from behind their fans. He felt himself redden with embarrassment and he quickly turned his back on them, just as the curtain parted and the steward reappeared, beckoning.
Attilius knew at once, by the humidity and by the smell of
oil, that
he was being shown into the house’s private baths. And of course, he thought, it was bound to have its own suite, for with money such as this, why mix with the common herd? The steward took him into the changing room and told him to remove his shoes, then they went back out into the passageway and into the tepidarium, where an immensely fat old man lay facedown, naked, on a table, being worked on by a young masseur. His white buttocks vibrated as the masseur made chopping motions up and down his spine. He turned his head slightly as Attilius passed by, regarded him with a single, bloodshot gray eye, then closed it again.
The steward slid open a door, releasing a billow of fragrant vapor from the dim interior, then stood aside to let the engineer pass through.
It was hard at first to see very much in the caldarium. The only light came from a couple of torches mounted on the wall and from the glowing coals of a brazier, the source of the steam that filled the room. Gradually Attilius made out a large sunken bath with three dark heads of hair, seemingly disembodied, floating in the grayness. There was a ripple of water as one of the heads moved and a splash as a hand was raised and gently waved.
“Over here, aquarius,” said a languid voice. “You have a message for me, I believe, from the emperor? I don’t know these Flavians. Descended from a tax collector, I believe. But Nero was a great friend of mine.”
Another head was stirring. “Fetch us a torch!” it commanded. “Let us at least see who disturbs us on a feast day.”
A slave in the corner of the room, whom Attilius had not noticed, took down one of the torches from the wall and held it close to the engineer’s face so that he could be inspected. All three heads were now turned toward him. Attilius could feel the pores of his skin opening, the sweat running freely down his body. The mosaic floor was baking hot beneath his bare feet—a hypocaust, he realized. Luxury was certainly piled upon luxury in the house of the Popidii. He wondered if Ampliatus, in the days when he was a slave here, had ever been made to sweat over the furnace in midsummer.
The heat of the torch on his cheek was unbearable. “This is no place to conduct the emperor’s business,” he said and pushed the slave’s arm away. “To whom am I speaking?”
“He’s certainly a rude enough fellow,” declared the third head.
“I am Lucius Popidius,” said the languid voice, “and these gentlemen are Gaius Cuspius and Marcus Holconius. And our esteemed friend in the tepidarium is Quintus Brittius. Now do you know who we are?”
“You’re the four elected magistrates of
Pompeii
.”
“Correct,” said Popidius. “And this is our town, aquarius, so guard your tongue.”
Attilius knew how the system worked. As aediles, Popidius and Cuspius would hand out the licenses for all the businesses, from the brothels to the baths; they were responsible for keeping the streets clean, the water flowing, the temples open. Holconius and Brittius were the duoviri—the commission of two men—who presided over the court in the basilica and dispensed the emperor’s justice: a flogging here, a crucifixion there, and no doubt a fine to fill the city’s coffers whenever possible. He would not be able to accomplish much without them, so he forced himself to stand quietly, waiting for them to speak.
Time,
he thought:
I am losing so much time.
“Well,” said Popidius after a while. “I suppose I have cooked for long enough.” He sighed and stood, a ghostly figure in the steam, and held out his hand for a towel. The slave replaced the torch in its holder, knelt before his master, and wrapped a cloth around his waist. “All right. Where’s this letter?” He took it and padded into the adjoining room. Attilius followed.
Brittius was on his back and the young slave had obviously been giving him more than a massage for his penis was red and engorged and pointing hard against the fat slope of his belly. The old man batted away the slave’s hands and reached for a towel. His face was scarlet. He scowled at Attilius. “Who’s this then, Popi?”
“The new aquarius of the
Augusta
. Exomnius’s replacement. He’s come from Misenum.” Popidius broke open the seal and unrolled the letter. He was in his early forties, delicately handsome. The dark hair slicked back over his small ears emphasized his aquiline profile as he bent forward to read; the skin of his body was white, smooth, hairless.
He has had it plucked,
thought Attilius with disgust.
The others were now coming in from the caldarium, curious to find out what was happening, slopping water over the black-and-white floor. Around the walls ran a fresco of a garden, enclosed inside a wooden fence. In an alcove, on a pedestal carved to resemble a water nymph, stood a circular marble basin.
Brittius propped himself up on his elbow. “Read it out, Popi. What’s it say?”
A frown creased Popidius’s smooth skin. “It’s from Pliny. ‘In the name of the Emperor Titus Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, and in accordance with the power vested in me by the Senate and People of Rome—’ ”
“Skip the blather!” said Brittius. “Get to the meat of it.” He rubbed his thumb and middle finger together, counting money. “What’s he after?”
“It seems the aqueduct has failed somewhere near Vesuvius. All the towns from Nola westward are dry. He says he wants us—‘orders’ us, he says—to ‘provide immediately sufficient men and materials from the colony of Pompeii to effect repairs to the Aqua Augusta, under the command of Marcus Attilius Primus, engineer, of the Department of the Curator Aquarum, Rome.’ ”
“Does he indeed? And who foots the bill, might I ask?”
“He doesn’t say.”
Attilius cut in: “Money is not an issue. I can assure your honors that the Curator Aquarum will reimburse any costs.”
“Really? You have the authority to make that promise, do you?”
Attilius hesitated. “You have my word.”
“Your word? Your word won’t put gold back in our treasury once it’s gone.”
“And look at this,” said one of the other men. He was in his middle twenties, well-muscled but with a small head: Attilius guessed he must be the second junior magistrate, the aedile, Cuspius. He turned the tap above the circular basin and water gushed out. “There’s no drought here—d’you see? So I say this: What’s it to do with us? You want men and materials? Go to one of these towns that
has
no water. Go to Nola. We’re swimming in it! Look!” And to make his point he opened the tap wider and left it running.