Pompeii: City on Fire (41 page)

And so they climbed. Trailed by patricians and plebeians, slaves and freedmen, all who left the city empty-handed, with nothing but the breath of life.

They moved quickly, fearing another surge from the mountain, unsure how far they must travel to escape.

The sun rose above the lip of the east, burning through the ashy air with a filtered pinkish hue.

Ariella grabbed his arm and stopped. Pointed.

He followed her gesture to the rise ahead. To four figures moving toward them. Two men. Two women.

"Micah!" Ariella's scream punctured the early morning air. She scrambled forward, falling in the rocks, running in a crouch with her hands to catch her.

Cato's chest rose and fell with the sight of it. With the sight of the others.

He moved toward them, and they met at last, the two groups.

Octavia held her chin high as ever, though her clothes were as dirty and torn as any serving girl. Isabella fell on his neck, weeping, and he wrapped one arm around her and the other around his mother. Watched the reunion of Lucius and Portia, so long in coming, through tear-blurred eyes.

Micah picked up his sister and swung her as though she were a child. Cato's breath caught to hear Ariella laugh. To hear her laugh and see her smile.

Their reunion was brief. They were not yet safe.

But within another hour of travel, the rock and ash began to shallow, until at last they gained a hill and could see grass poking up from the rubble. A mighty crowd had gathered on the hill. Thousands upon thousands that had streamed from the city all the day before and through the long night. They had reached this knoll and had no strength to go farther, it seemed.

Cato wondered about those citizens he had not seen since the disaster began. His vineyard caretaker, Remus. The healed madman, Albus. Cyrus and the others of the believers. Were they among this crowd?

They had outrun the cloud, but was it enough?

As if in answer, the mountain roared once more, a sound to rock the heavens, a sound like the end of the world.

Cato turned to face Vesuvius to see what remained, of her and of them.

A massive surge of fiery mud, far greater than any previous, flowed down her sides, across the devastated valley, up to the northern wall. This time, the wall did not hold. The flow breached the barrier, swelled over it, and swept the city of Pompeii.

The fire pulsed on, filling the Forum, swelling the city streets, burning across his vineyards. It reached the south wall, overflowed the banks of the city, and poured across the plain beneath them, until at last it exhausted itself and settled.

The city of Pompeii was no more.

Cato pulled Ariella to stand in front of him, her back pressed against his chest, and wrapped his arms around her. "We are saved."

She leaned her head against his chest and he felt the tension flow out of her, released into quiet tears for their friends left behind.

Around them, a cheer went up from the crowd, proof that the resilience of the human spirit knew no bounds.

Their city was submerged, but they had come out from destruction, into a wide place.

And they would live.

CHAPTER 53

Moments earlier, near the southern edge of town, Tullius Taurus the Jeweler had his family in tow—two adolescent boys, his wife, and their young daughter—when he realized that he had waited too long.

He had such hopes for Pompeii once. How had it come to this?

Years of suffering under the corruption of Nigidius Maius, and now, just when it seemed they might have found a savior in Portius Cato, all his hopes had tumbled down the slopes of Vesuvius, so much ash and debris.

He had not wanted to face it, this invalidation of his own belief in the future. Even his own mortality, if he were honest. And so they had waited. Hiding their valuables from potential thievery, huddling together in a back room of their estate, hoping the roofs would hold.

All through the long night they had waited. Until it became clear that the house would become their tomb if they did not flee. But now, near the south wall of Pompeii, so close to freedom, he knew it had not been soon enough.

A blast from the mountain rocked them off their feet, all five of them. Nearby, two farmers and their families also fell.

Taurus clung to hope, fragile and worthless as it was.

He was still pushing himself up, straining to rise in the gas-filled air, when the next surge took his final breath.

IN THE ENTRY HALL of the house of Emeritus the fuller, the guard dog he kept chained there to protect his riches was dead.

Emeritus stepped over the twisted corpse, its jaw open in the agony of poisoned lungs.

Indeed, the air had grown impossible to breathe. Emeritus fought to take shallow breaths. How could one suffocate in the open?

In the dark street, he stumbled forward, senseless as to where he might go to escape the air itself.

Within minutes, he felt his lungs collapsing.

In a final effort to defeat the atmosphere, he lowered himself with his back to a wall, knees bent in front of him, and used his toga to cover his nose, pressing the fabric against his face.

Still in this position, he was unconscious before the fiery flow swept the city.

DRUSUS PACED THE ROOFED passageway that surrounded the gladiator barracks, his thoughts vacillating with his footsteps. All that he had worked for, all that he had, was chained within these cells. Nearly a hundred highly trained men that brought him wealth, fame and freedom. His prize fighters, Celadus, Paris, Floronius. To release them, it was to give up everything.

And yet, could they survive the rising ash and rock?

If he had seen the surge that had come to the north wall, perhaps he would not have taken the chance. But he had been busy securing his future.

Or so he thought.

For in the end, they all perished together.

IN THEIR WEALTHY HOME in the eastern district, Seneca pulled his wife Europa into an embrace where they reclined on the triclinium's couches, and whispered final words of love and reassurance. They would meet on the other side, he had no doubt.

Jeremiah sat nearby. He wore a contented look, his eyes focused far off, as if he saw the dawn of eternity breaking on the horizon.

Across from them, Flora smiled bravely at her parents.

They could have left her there, all those years ago, beside the river. Perhaps things would be different today if they had. But there were no regrets. None. They had answered the call of God on their lives, and though He should slay them, yet they would trust Him. Always.

Let the fires come.

They would only purge away what was left of this fallen life, this fallen world that twisted feet and twisted hearts and left all men longing for their true home, whether they knew it or not.

As they would have wished, Jeremiah's whispered words were the last that they heard.

Thanks be to God, who rescues us from this body of death.

She had taught them a lesson, to be sure. Put many of them to sleep, tucked into graves that would become solid rock around them.

Some of them had survived, true. These were the ones who would not forget, who would tell their children, and their children's children, the story of Vesuvius and her mighty power. Of the gifts she bestowed, but also the judgment.

The landscape was changed entirely, for she had remade it. In time, grass would grow again on the spiny rock ridges. Trees would sprout and become tall, birds would make their nests, and the wildlife would return.

Even the humans would wander back to her foothills, she knew, to take advantage of her fertility, to reap her treasures.

Deep within her, the plates were ever shifting. Waiting.

As she would wait and watch. For they had best not forget what their mother could do.

And yet . . .

Behind the wrath, behind the satisfaction at what she had accomplished, there was something else she was loathe to admit. For in the end, she had seen those who died and seen those who were saved and had known that these were not her choices, not in her control.

Perhaps . . .

Perhaps it had not been, had never been,
her
story at all.

CHAPTER 54

The mountain surged twice more before it burned itself out and lay silent.

The population of Pompeii who had escaped to the south moved as a great herd toward the nearest coastal town. With no belongings, no shelter, they did what any refugee people would do. They relied on the charity of others.

Stabiae welcomed them. From its position on the bay, it had stood witness to the destruction that befell Pompeii and had news of other towns as well.

To the north of Pompeii, Vesuvius had obliterated Herculaneum. Through the previous day the wind had blown ash and rock away from the town, and most residents there had believed they were safe. When the mountain had overflowed near midnight, there was no time to escape. The searing mud flowed over the city and reduced every living thing to ash.

Here in Stabiae, only a smattering of the porous rocks that had first buried Pompeii lay on the ground. They had smelled the gases and seen the cloud, but they had survived.

It was rumored that the famed naturalist and writer, Plinius Secundus, sometimes called Pliny the Elder, had sailed from Misenum, further up the coast, to Stabiae. He apparently had plans to sail to Pompeii to rescue friends, but the prevailing winds confined him to the coastal town, and his weak lungs succumbed to the odors while watching the flames shoot above Vesuvius from the beach. They had found his body at morning's light.

All this Cato learned in the short time they had spent in Stabiae. The little family group of eight he had led from Pompeii bedded down in a brothel, opened to the refugees by its prosperous owner. His mother and two sisters, along with Nigidia and Ariella, took one small room, and he shared another with Micah and Lucius. There they slept for what felt like days, then took food and wine brought by sympathetic women of the brothel. He smiled to watch Octavia whisper to them when their owner looked the other way.

Sitting on the floor beside Ariella, he worried about Nigidia, the only one of their group with no family. She had lost everything, though they would not abandon her. Ariella's brother Micah hovered over her, assuming the role of protector. Cato caught Ariella's eye and motioned his head toward the couple. She smiled. Despite their disparate background, these two had both known mistreatment, exploitation. Perhaps . . . they could find support in each other.

Later in the morning, Cato led Ariella to the beach, to look out over the sea and breathe the air where the wind had scrubbed it clean. He held her hand, their fingers intertwined, a tranquil silence between them.

She had not asked him any questions, but he had answers. "We will go to Rome."

Ariella did not speak, and he could feel her tremble beside him. He turned her to face him and held both her hands. "We will go to Rome and you will be my wife. We will tend my uncle's vineyards and make wine. We will raise a family and fight against evil, together."

"How can we—"

Cato shook his head. "Do not speak of obstacles. We have defeated a mountain, Ariella. There is nothing left we cannot face."

Her torn tunic revealed the healing scar on her upper arm. He traced the cross with his fingertip, and she followed the motion with her eyes. She whispered, as though to herself. "He was wounded for our transgressions."

Cato brought her face to his own and kissed her lips with all the promise of the future.

Across the bay, the first wave of rescue ships from Rome crested the horizon, their white sails billowing.

Ariella buried her face in his chest, and he bent to hear her words.

"And by His stripes we are healed."

Author’s Note

In some ways, we owe a debt of gratitude to the mountain called Vesuvius, and to those who perished under its flow. So much of what we know of life at the height of the Roman Empire has come to us through the frozen-in-time city unearthed in the region of Campania, near modern Naples.