Pompeii (16 page)

“Besides,” said Brittius craftily, “it’s good for business. Anybody on the bay who wants a bath, or a drink for that matter—he has to come to
Pompeii
. And on a public holiday, too. What do you say, Holconius?”

The oldest magistrate adjusted his towel around him like a toga. “It’s offensive to the priests to see men working on a holy day,” he announced judiciously. “People should do as we are doing—they should gather with their friends and families to observe the religious rites. I vote we tell this young fellow, with all due respect to Admiral Pliny, to fuck off out of here.”

Brittius roared with laughter, banging on the side of the table in approval. Popidius smiled and rolled up the papyrus. “I think you have our answer, aquarius. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do?”

He tried to hand the letter back but Attilius reached past him and firmly closed the tap. What a picture they looked, the three of them, dripping with water—
his
water—and Brittius, with his puny hard-on, now lost in the flabby folds of his lap. The sickly-scented heat was unbearable. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic.

“Now listen to me, your honors. From
midnight
tonight,
Pompeii
will also lose her water. The whole supply is being diverted to Beneventum, so we can get inside the tunnel of the aqueduct to repair it. I’ve already sent my men into the mountains to close the sluices.” There was a mutter of anger. He held up his hand. “Surely it’s in the interests of all citizens on the bay to cooperate?” He looked at Cuspius. “Yes, all right—I could go to Nola for assistance. But at the cost of at least a day. And that’s an extra day you’ll be without water, as well as they.”

“Yes, but with one difference,” said Cuspius. “We’ll have some notice. How about this for an idea, Popidius? We could issue a proclamation, telling our citizens to fill every container they possess and in that way ours will still be the only town on the bay with a reserve of water.”

“We could even sell it,” said Brittius. “And the longer the drought goes on, the better the price we could get for it.”

“It’s not yours to sell!” Attilius was finding it hard to keep his temper. “If you refuse to help me, I swear that the first thing I’ll do after the mainline is repaired is to see to it that the spur to
Pompeii
is closed.” He had no authority to issue such a threat, but he swept on anyway, jabbing his finger in Cuspius’s chest. “And I’ll send to
Rome
for a commissioner to come down and investigate the abuse of the imperial aqueduct. I’ll make you pay for every extra cupful you’ve taken beyond your proper share!”

“Such insolence!” shouted Brittius.

“He touched me!” said Cuspius, outraged. “You all saw that? This piece of scum actually laid his filthy hand on me!” He stuck out his chin and stepped up close to Attilius, ready for a fight, and the engineer might have retaliated, which would have been disastrous—for him, for his mission—if the curtain had not been swished aside to reveal another man, who had obviously been standing in the passageway listening to their conversation.

Attilius had only met him once, but he was not about to forget him in a hurry: Numerius Popidius Ampliatus.

What most astonished Attilius, once he had recovered from the shock of seeing him again, was how much they all deferred to him. Even Brittius swung his plump legs over the side of the table and straightened his back, as if it was somehow disrespectful to be caught lying down in the presence of this former slave. Ampliatus put a restraining hand on Cuspius’s shoulder, whispered a few words in his ear, winked, tousled his hair, and all the while he kept his eyes on Attilius.

The engineer remembered the bloody remains of the slave in the eel pool, the lacerated back of the slave woman.

“So what’s all this, gentlemen?” Ampliatus suddenly grinned and pointed at Attilius. “Arguing in the baths? On a religious festival? That’s unseemly. Where were you all brought up?”

Popidius said, “This is the new aquarius of the aqueduct.”

“I know Marcus Attilius. We’ve met, haven’t we, aquarius? May I see that?” He took Pliny’s letter from Popidius and scanned it quickly, then glanced at Attilius. He was wearing a tunic bordered in gold, his hair was glossy, and there was the same smell of expensive unguents that the engineer had noticed the previous day.

“What is your plan?”

“To follow the spur from
Pompeii
back to its junction with the
Augusta
, then to work my way along the mainline toward Nola until I find the break.”

“And what is it you need?”

“I don’t know yet exactly.” Attilius hesitated. The appearance of Ampliatus had disconcerted him. “Quicklime. Puteolanum. Bricks. Timber. Torches. Men.”

“How much of each?”

“Perhaps six amphorae of lime to start with. A dozen baskets of puteolanum. Fifty paces of timber and five hundred bricks. As many torches as you can spare. Ten strong pairs of hands. I may need less, I may need more. It depends how badly the aqueduct is damaged.”

“How soon will you know?”

“One of my men will report back this afternoon.”

Ampliatus nodded. “Well, if you want my opinion, your honors, I think we should do all in our power to help. Never let it be said that the ancient colony of
Pompeii
turned its back on an appeal from the emperor. Besides, I have a fishery in Misenum that drinks water like Brittius here drinks wine. I want that aqueduct running again as soon as possible. What do you say?”

The magistrates exchanged uneasy glances. Eventually Popidius said, “It may be that we were over-hasty.”

Only Cuspius risked a show of defiance. “I still think this ought to be Nola’s responsibility—”

Ampliatus cut him off. “That’s settled, then. I can let you have all you need, Marcus Attilius, if you’ll just be so good as to wait outside.” He shouted over his shoulder to the steward. “Scutarius! Give the aquarius his shoes!”

None of the others spoke to Attilius or looked at him. They were like naughty schoolboys discovered fighting by their master.

The engineer collected his shoes and walked out of the tepidarium into the gloomy passageway. The curtain was quickly drawn behind him. He leaned against the wall to pull on his shoes, trying to listen to what was being said, but he could make out nothing. From the direction of the atrium he heard a splash as someone dived into the swimming pool. This reminder that the house was busy for the holiday made up his mind for him. He dared not risk being caught eavesdropping. He opened the second curtain and stepped back out into the dazzling sunlight. Across the atrium, beyond the tablinum, the surface of the pool was rocking from the impact of the dive. The wives of the magistrates were still gossiping at the other end, where they had been joined by a dowdy middle-aged matron who sat demurely apart, her hands folded in her lap. A couple of slaves carrying trays laden with dishes passed behind them. There was a smell of cooking. A huge feast was clearly in preparation.

His eye was caught by a flash of darkness beneath the glittering water and an instant later the swimmer broke the surface.

“Corelia Ampliata!”

He said her name aloud, unintentionally. She did not hear him. She shook her head and stroked her black hair away from her closed eyes, gathering it behind her with both hands. Her elbows were spread wide, her pale face tilted toward the sun, oblivious to his watching her.

“Corelia!” He whispered it, not wanting to attract the attention of the other women, and this time she turned. It took a moment for her to search him out against the glare of the atrium, but when she found him she began wading toward him. She was wearing a shift of thin material that came down almost to her knees and as her body emerged from the water she placed one dripping arm across her breasts and the other between her thighs, like some modest Venus arising from the waves. He stepped into the tablinum and walked toward the pool, past the funeral masks of the Popidii clan. Red ribbons linked the images of the dead, showing who was related to whom, in a crisscross pattern of power stretching back for generations.

“Aquarius,” she hissed, “you must leave this place!” She was standing on the circular steps that led out of the pool. “Get out! Go! My father is here, and if he sees you—”

“Too late for that. We’ve met.” But he drew back slightly, so that he was hidden from the view of the women at the other end of the pool.
I ought to look away,
he thought. It would be the honorable thing to do. But he could not take his eyes off her. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” She regarded him as if he were an idiot and leaned toward him. “Where else should I be? My father owns this house.”

At first he did not fully take in what she was saying. “But I was told that Lucius Popidius lived here.”

“He does.”

He was still confused. “Then—?”

“We are to be married.” She said it flatly and shrugged, and there was something terrible in the gesture, an utter hopelessness, and suddenly all was clear to him—the reason for Ampliatus’s unannounced appearance, Popidius’s deference to him, the way the others had followed his lead. Somehow Ampliatus had contrived to buy the roof from over Popidius’s head and now he was going to extend his ownership completely, by marrying off his daughter to his former master. The thought of that aging playboy, with his plucked and hairless body, sharing a bed with Corelia, filled him with an unexpected anger, even though he told himself it was none of his business.

“But surely a man as old as Popidius is already married?”

“He was. He’s been forced to divorce.”

“And what does Popidius think of such an arrangement?”

“He thinks it is contemptible, of course, to make a match so far beneath him—as you do, clearly.”

“Not at all, Corelia,” he said quickly. He saw that she had tears in her eyes. “On the contrary. I should say you were worth a hundred Popidii. A thousand.”

“I hate him,” she said. But whether she meant Popidius or her father he could not tell.

From the passage came the sound of rapid footsteps and Ampliatus’s voice, yelling, “Aquarius!”

She shuddered. “Please leave, I beg you. You were a good man to have tried to help me yesterday. But don’t let him trap you, as he’s trapped the rest of us.”

Attilius said stiffly, “I am a freeborn Roman citizen, on the staff of the Curator Aquarum, in the service of the emperor, here on official business to repair the imperial aqueduct—not some slave to be fed to his eels. Or an elderly woman, for that matter, to be beaten half to death.”

It was her turn to be shocked. She put her hands to her mouth. “Atia?”

“Atia, yes—is that her name? Last night I found her lying in the street and took her back to my quarters. She had been whipped senseless and left out to die like an old dog.”

“Monster!” Corelia stepped backward, her hands still pressed to her face, and sank into the water.

“You take advantage of my good nature, aquarius!” said Ampliatus. He was advancing across the tablinium. “I told you to wait for
me, that
was all.” He glared at Corelia. “You should know better, after what I told you yesterday!” Then he shouted across the pool—“Celsia!”—and the mousy woman Attilius had noticed earlier jerked up in her chair. “Get our daughter out of the pool! It’s unseemly for her to show her tits in public!” He turned to Attilius. “Look at them over there, like a lot of fat hens on their nests!” He flapped his arms at them, emitting a series of squawks—
cluuuuck, cluck-cluck-cluck!
—and the women raised their fans in distaste. “They won’t fly, though. Oh, no. One thing I’ve learned about our Roman aristocrat—he’ll go anywhere for a free meal. And his women are even worse.” He called out: “I’ll be back in an hour! Don’t start without me!” And with a gesture to Attilius that he should fall in behind him, the new master of the House of the Popidii turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

As they passed through the atrium, Attilius glanced back at the pool where Corelia was still submerged, as if she thought that by completely immersing herself she could wash away what was happening.