Pompeii (21 page)

“Three years. Maybe four.”

“But he was not here all the time?”

“He came and went.”

Attilius realized he did not even know what Exomnius looked like. He was pursuing a phantom. “He had no slave?”

“No.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Exomnius?” Africanus spread his hands. How was he supposed to remember? So many customers. So many faces.

“When did he pay his rent?”

“In advance. On the calends of every month.”

“So he paid you at the beginning of August?” Africanus nodded. Then one thing was settled. Whatever else had happened to him, Exomnius had not planned to disappear. The man was obviously a miser. He would never have paid for a room he had no intention of using. “Leave me,” he said. “I’ll straighten it up.”

Africanus seemed about to argue, but when Attilius took a step toward him he held up his hands in surrender and retreated to the landing. The engineer closed the broken door on him and listened to his footsteps descending to the bar.

He went around the room, reassembling it so that he could get an impression of how it had looked, as if by doing so he might conjure some clue as to what else it had held. He laid the eviscerated mattress back on the bed and placed the pillow—also slashed—at the head. He folded the thin blanket. He lay down. When he turned his head he noticed a pattern of small black marks on the wall and he saw that they were made by squashed insects. He imagined Exomnius lying here in the heat, killing bedbugs, and wondered why, if he was taking bribes from Ampliatus, he had chosen to live like a pauper. Perhaps he had spent all his money on whores? But that did not seem possible. A tumble with one of Africanus’s girls could not have cost more than a couple of copper coins.

A floorboard creaked.

He sat up very slowly and turned to look at the door. The moving shadows of a pair of feet showed clearly beneath the cheap wood and for a moment he was sure it must be Exomnius, come to demand an explanation from this stranger who had taken his job and invaded his property and was now lying on his bed in his ransacked room. “Who’s there?” he called, and when the door opened slowly and he saw it was only Zmyrina, he felt oddly disappointed. “Yes?” he said. “What do you want? I told your master to leave me alone.”

She stood on the threshold. Her dress was split, to show her long legs. She had a fading purple bruise the size of a fist on her thigh. She gazed around the room and put her hands to her mouth in horror. “
Who done
this?”

“You tell me.”

“He said he take care for me.”

“What?”

She came farther into the room. “He said when come back he take care for me.”

“Who?”

“Aelianus. He said.”

It took him a beat to work out who she meant—Exomnius. Exomnius Aelianus. She was the first person he had met who had used the
aquarius’s
given, rather than his family, name. That just about summed him up. His only intimate—a whore. “Well, he isn’t coming back,” he said roughly, “to take care for you. Or for anyone else.”

She passed the back of her hand under her nose a couple of times and he realized that she was crying. “He dead?”

“You tell me.” Attilius softened his tone. “The truth is, no one knows.”

“Buy me from Africanus. He said. No whore everyone. Special him. Understand?” She touched her chest and gestured to Attilius, then touched herself again.

“Yes, I understand.”

He looked at Zmyrina with new interest. It was not uncommon, he knew, especially in this part of
Italy
. The foreign sailors, when they left the navy after their twenty-five years’ service and were granted Roman citizenship—the first thing most of them did with their demob money was head for the nearest slave market and buy themselves a wife. The prostitute was kneeling now, picking up the scattered clothes and folding them, putting them away in the chest. And perhaps it was a point in Exomnius’s favor, he thought, that he should have decided to choose her, rather than someone younger or prettier. Or, then again, perhaps he was just lying and never intended to come back for her. Either way, her future had more or less disappeared along with her principal client.

“He had the money, did he? Enough money to buy you? You wouldn’t think it, to look at this place.”

“Not
here
.” She sat back on her heels and looked up at him with scorn. “Not safe money
here
. Money hidden. Plenty money. Someplace clever. Nobody find. He said. Nobody.”

“Somebody has tried—”

“Money not here.”

She was emphatic, and he thought,
Yes, I bet you searched it yourself often enough when he wasn’t around.
“Did he ever tell you where this place was?”

She stared him, her vermilion mouth wide open, and suddenly she bent her head. Her shoulders were shaking. He thought at first she was crying again, but when she turned he saw that the glint in her eyes was from tears of laughter. “No!” She started rocking again. She looked almost girlish in her delight. She clapped her hands. It was the funniest thing she had ever heard, and he had to agree—the idea of Exomnius confiding in a whore of Africanus where he had hidden his money—it
was
funny. He began laughing himself, then swung his feet to the floor.

There was no point in wasting any more time here.

On the landing he glanced back at her, still kneeling on her haunches in her split dress, one of Exomnius’s tunics pressed to her face.

Attilius hurried back the way he had come, along the shadowy side street. This must have been Exomnius’s route from the brothel to the castellum aquae. This must have been what he saw whenever he came here—the whores and drunks, the puddles of piss and patches of vomit baked to crusts in the gutter, the graffiti on the walls, the little effigies of Priapus beside the doorways, with his enormous jutting cock dangling bells at its tip to ward off evil. So what was in his head as he walked this way for the final time? Zmyrina? Ampliatus? The safety of his hidden money?

He looked back over his shoulder but no one was paying him any attention. Still, he was glad to reach the wide central thoroughfare and the safety of its glaring light.

The town remained much quieter than it had been in the morning, the heat of the sun keeping most people off the road, and he made quick progress up the hill toward the Vesuvius Gate. As he approached the small square in front of the castellum aquae he could see the oxen and the carts, now fully laden with tools and materials. A small crowd of men sprawled in the dirt outside a bar, laughing at something. The horse he had hired was tethered to its post. And here was Polites—faithful Polites, the most trustworthy member of the work gang—advancing to meet him, holding out his bag and purse.

“You were gone a long while, aquarius.”

Attilius took his bag, ignoring the tone of reproach. “I’m here now. Where is Musa?”

“Still not here.”

“What?” He swore and cupped his hand to his eyes to check the position of the sun. It must be four hours—no, nearer five—since the others had ridden off. He had expected to receive some word by now. “How many men do we have?”

“Twelve.” Polites rubbed his hands together uneasily.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“They’re a rough-looking bunch, aquarius.”

“Are they? Their manners don’t concern me. As long as they can work.”

“They’ve been drinking for an hour.”

“Then they’d better stop.”

Attilius crossed the square to the bar. Ampliatus had promised a dozen of his strongest slaves and once again he had more than kept his word. It looked as if he had supplied a troop of gladiators. A flagon of wine was being handed around, from one pair of tattooed arms to another, and to pass the time they had fetched Tiro from the castellum and were playing a game with him. One of them had snatched off the water-slave’s felt cap and whenever he turned helplessly in the direction of whoever he thought was holding it, it would be tossed to someone else.

“Cut that out,” said the engineer. “Leave the lad alone.” They paid him no attention. He spoke up more loudly. “I am Marcus Attilius, aquarius of the Aqua Augusta, and you men are under my command now.” He snatched Tiro’s cap and pressed it into his hand. “Go back to the castellum, Tiro.” And then, to the slave gang: “That’s enough drinking. We’re moving out.”

The man whose turn it was with the wine regarded Attilius with indifference. He raised the clay jar to his mouth, threw back his head and drank. Wine dribbled down his chin and onto his chest. There was an appreciative cheer and Attilius felt the anger ignite inside himself. To train so hard, to build and work, to pour so much skill and ingenuity into the aqueducts—and all to carry water to such brutes as these, and Africanus. They would be better left to wallow beside some mosquito-infested swamp. “Who is the senior man among you?”

The drinker lowered the flagon. “The senior man,” he mocked. “What is this? The fucking army?”

“You are drunk,” said Attilius quietly. “But I am sober, and in a hurry. Now
move.
” He lashed out with his foot and caught the flagon, knocking it out of the drinker’s hand. It spun away and landed on its side, where it lay, unbroken, emptying itself across the stones. For a moment, in the silence, the
glug-glug
of the wine was the only sound, and then there was a rush of activity—the men rising, shouting, the drinker lunging forward, with the apparent intention of sinking his teeth into Attilius’s leg. Through all this commotion, one booming voice rang louder than the rest—“Stop!”—and an enormous man, well over six feet tall, came running across the square and planted himself between Attilius and the others. He spread out his arms to keep them back.

“I am Brebix,” he said. “A free man.” He had a coarse red beard, trimmed, shovel-shaped. “If anyone is senior, I am.”

“Brebix.” Attilius nodded. He would remember that name. This one, he saw, actually
was
a gladiator, or rather an ex-gladiator. He had the brand of his troop on his arm, a snake drawing back to strike. “If you are their foreman, you should have been here an hour ago. Tell them that if they have any complaints, they should take them to Ampliatus. Tell them that none has to come with me, but any who stay behind will have to answer for it to their master. Now get those wagons out through the gate. I’ll meet you on the other side of the city wall.”

He turned, and the crowd of drinkers from the other bars, who had come thronging into the square in the hope of seeing a fight, stood aside to let him pass. He was trembling and he had to clench his fist to stop it showing. “Polites!” he called.

“Yes?” The slave eased his way through the mob.

“Fetch me my horse. We’ve wasted long enough here.”

Polites looked anxiously toward Brebix, now leading the reluctant work gang over to the wagons. “These men, aquarius—I don’t trust them.”

“Neither do I. But what else can we do? Come on. Get my horse. We’ll meet up with Musa on the road.”

As Polites hurried away, Attilius glanced down the hill.
Pompeii
was less like a seaside resort, more like a frontier garrison: a boomtown. Ampliatus was rebuilding her in his own image. He would not be sorry if he never saw her again—apart from Corelia. He wondered what she was doing, but even as the image of her wading toward him through the glittering pool began to form in his mind he forced himself to banish it. Get out of here, get to the
Augusta
, get the water running, and then get back to Misenum and check the aqueduct’s records for evidence of what Exomnius had been up to. Those were his priorities. To think of anything else was foolish.

In the shadow of the castellum aquae Tiro crouched, and Attilius was on the point of raising his hand in farewell, until he saw those flickering, sightless eyes.

The public sundial showed it was well into the ninth hour when Attilius passed on horseback beneath the long vault of the Vesuvius Gate. The ring of hooves on stone echoed like a small detachment of cavalry. The customs official poked his head out of his booth to see what was happening, yawned, and turned away.

The engineer had never been a natural rider. For once, though, he was glad to be mounted. It gave him height, and he needed every advantage he could get. When he trotted over to Brebix and the men they were obliged to squint up at him, screwing their eyes against the glare of the sky.