The Far Time Incident (33 page)

That nicely deflated the pride I had felt about solving the case and helping out a fellow human being.

“Justice is a complicated thing,” the chief said, noticing my crestfallen expression. “Sometimes all you get is knowledge, understanding—the who, the why, the how—and that has to be enough.”

“And you? Would you be satisfied if we knew for sure it was Dr. Little”—for we all suspected him, though we kept bickering about his possible motives—“who marooned us here, even if we fail to hook up with Dr. May’s team in Rome? If all we were able to do is write down his name and bury another note and hope it’s found centuries from now?”

He grunted an affirmative.

I wasn’t sure I believed him. Knowing who did it was all well and good; getting a message to St. Sunniva to bring our attacker to justice—the prison kind—even better; but the best scenario of all was to get home, look our would-be killer in the eye, and
then
send him or her to prison.

I wondered how many people Nate had sent to prison in his time. Watching as the thin trickle of water slowly filled the first of the two jugs, I asked, “What did you do at your previous job?” The future Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which was near the border with Canada, probably didn’t look hugely different in this century than it did when I had visited during my college days. Lakes and forests, except with Sioux and Ojibwe settlements here and there instead of park visitor campsites.

He stuck the first of the filled jugs in my good hand and set the other jug under the fountain faucet. “What did I do at the BWCAW? There’s an old saying that the park ranger’s job is to protect the park from visitors, the visitors from the park, and the visitors from each other.”

A burly man with a hoe over one shoulder and his head down bumped my shoulder as Nate bent down to shift the jug so it captured more of the trickling water. A short line of Pompeians had formed behind us, the disappearing water clearly the main topic of conversation. As we left the fountain behind us, I felt myself getting a bit misty-eyed at the thought that these sturdy-stoned streets would be choked with debris in perhaps a soon as a month, the houses with their awnings and back gardens crushed under falling rocks. The life of this town was nearing its end, and its citizens would have to flee.

I didn’t have much of a chance to stay misty-eyed as we turned the corner. The burly man with the hoe was blocking our path, standing with his sandals shoulder-distance apart in the middle of the narrow lane, which, I was suddenly aware, was otherwise deserted. High, windowless walls and a shuttered door or two stood to either side of us. The figure blocking our way swung the hoe over one bare, beefy shoulder. He said something in a low growl.

“This guy seems to know us,” I said to Nate.

“That’s Scaurus’s overseer, Thraex. We must have given the wrong impression this morning.”

Thraex growled again at the mention of his master’s name.

“The wrong impression? That we were suspicious that his master might have ordered the trashing of Secundus’s shop? That’s exactly what we were thinking. He’s bigger than I expected,” I added.

“Julia, turn around and walk away. Find a different route to Secundus’s shop.”

“I don’t think so. Besides, two is better than one when facing muscular Romans armed with large garden implements.”

“I can handle him.”

“I’m sure you can, but I’m not leaving. Should I scream for help?”

“Julia—”

“Or we can both make a run for it. Or—”

“Or what?”

“Or we can explain to Thraex here that our interest in his master was purely an investigative one and that his innocence has been proven beyond doubt.”

“And you know how to translate that into Latin?”

Thraex had been following our exchange like a tennis fan at a close match. He swung the hoe off his shoulder and wielded it up menacingly.

“I think we could outrun him,” I said and winced. A sharp pain shot through my head as I tensed my muscles. My body was sore and aching, like I was coming down with the flu. “You try and pass him on the left, I’ll take the right—”

The burly overseer took a step forward and thrust his face near mine. He had bad teeth and bad breath.

I edged back.

Nate tapped him on the shoulder, and Thraex turned and swung the hoe. The chief jumped out of the way, the water splashing from the jug he was holding onto the sun-warmed cobblestones.

The overseer now stood between us, his muscular legs planted firmly on the ground.

A loud pop, like a car backfiring, distracted Thraex for a moment. He looked around for its source.

“That’s strange,” I said. “It sounded like a car backfiring, which is of course impossible, but I don’t know what else would—”

Thraex glanced at me, making the rest of the sentence die in my throat. He smirked, then turned back toward the chief, who was holding the earthenware jug in front of him like a shield.

I opened my mouth to scream and summon help.

Not a sound came out.

I tried again.

Nothing.

I threw my jug at the overseer’s back. It bounced off him and shattered into pieces on the cobblestones—not loudly enough to summon help—and made him growl but not turn.

The overseer raised his hoe and took a step toward Nate, who was trapped with his back against the wall—

“Julia! Chief Kirkland!”

Xavier was hurrying toward us, his hair streaming behind him. He ground to a halt, trying to catch his breath. “It has begun.”

“No,” I said, “quite the opposite. As you know, we’ve wrapped up the investigation quite nicely—we just need to explain that to Thraex here—” I tapped the big man on the shoulder and he turned toward me, looming over my head. “Your master has been cleared of the crime,” I said loudly, as if raising my voice would help him understand me, then went into some version of pidgin English. “
Cleared
. Yes, you understand?”

Thraex simply stared at me, like I was as much of a threat as a buzzing mosquito.

“The mountain, Julia—didn’t you hear—”

“The popping noise?” Nate interrupted. “We heard it.”

I looked over Thraex’s shoulder at the mountain. Everything was quiet. The wind had changed direction, I noticed, and was now coming from Vesuvius rather than the sea. It gently blew my hair back from my forehead—a pleasant feeling in the heat of the day. Maybe I wasn’t coming down with the flu. Maybe it was just the heat.

“
Cleared
,” I repeated for good measure for Thraex, then said, “Are you sure, Xavier? I’m as ready to panic as the next person, but that wasn’t anything I’d call an explosion—”

“According to geologists,” he said, punctuating the words with sharp intakes of breath, “a minor explosion of steam and ash on the eastern flank of the mountain preceded the eruption.

“It has begun,” he repeated.

“How much time do we have?” I asked, giving in to the panic. Xavier had explained to Scaurus’s overseer that we were more than happy to leave his master alone and Thraex had ambled off (apparently he had only been trying to scare us out of town, and was mollified by Xavier’s pronouncement that we had every intention of leaving). At the end of their conversation, the professor had pointed to the mountain and said something insistently, but judging by the leisurely pace Thraex set for himself as he continued down to the harbor, it was clear that he had not understood.

“How much time do we have?” I repeated.

“Not much. Leave the jugs, let’s go.”

“Are the others back yet?” Nate asked as we willed ourselves to walk at a normal pace. Town life was still going on around us as usual. The harbor was where Abigail and Kamal had taken Sabina to say good-bye and to help her gather seashells for one of Faustilla’s mixtures.

“They’re not back yet. And Helen has gone to the Nigidii tomb to gather what’s left of your twenty-first-century belongings—she didn’t want to leave anything behind. I tried to reason with her, but you know Helen.” Xavier tugged at his hair. “We need to split up. You two go find Abigail and Kamal, I’ll see if I can catch up with Helen, then we’ll meet up at the Secundus’s shop.”

Nate took charge. “No, that’ll take too much time. Julia—can you make it to the harbor?”

“Certainly. My hand may hurt but I can still walk.” It suddenly struck me how convenient cell phones were. I desperately wished that we all had them—and a cell tower, too. I felt the breeze on my face again, gentle and warm, from the direction of Vesuvius.

“You bring back Abigail and Kamal, and I’ll see if I can find Dr. Presnik. Dr. Mooney, you get the cart and the donkeys ready and whatever else we need,” Nate commanded. “We’ll all meet up by the Nola Gate. Is everyone clear on the plan?”

Xavier went off without a word. Despite all he had read about the eruption and all of his preparations, it seemed like he couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

“What should I do with Sabina?” I asked quickly, impatient to get moving.

“Drop her off at her father’s house. It’ll be on your way to the gate.”

Kamal, Abigail, and Sabina looked young and carefree as they bounded up the steep road from the harbor, their sandals in their hands, their feet still wet from sea dipping. Celer followed a few steps behind, an air of indignation hanging about him, as if he disapproved of all the physical activity he had been subjected to.

They had not heard the small pop.

We all heard what came next.

Thunder, the loudest I’d heard in my life, reverberated through the town, shaking house and garden walls and the very stones under our feet. All around us, the residents of houses and shops and temples, slaves and masters alike, spilled out into
the street to see what was causing the blue-sky storm, probably expecting to see an angry Jupiter hovering above the town flinging thunderbolts. In the commotion, a merchant bumped into me—his large nose, toga, and heavy figure perfectly matched Xavier’s description of Scaurus—and I watched apprehension replace bafflement on his face as fingers started pointing in the direction of Vesuvius. A gray, billowing column was rising from the top of the mountain—a terrible, deadly cloud.

The town doesn’t matter one bit, the people do, I thought. But they stood frozen in place, not knowing how to react, and there was no warning we could give.

“Let’s go,” I croaked as Sabina and the grad students hurriedly put their sandals back on.

We ran then. Or tried to. The path would not open for us, only for Sabina and her dog. She looked back at the three of us as we stood frozen in place. She wasn’t scared yet, only puzzled by our strange behavior and the even stranger behavior of the mountain that had lain dormant for her entire life. She skipped a few steps back to where we were and tugged on Abigail’s hand. Abigail looked stricken.

Kamal shook his head. “We might have to let Sabina and Celer go back to the shop alone while we head for the Nola Gate.”

“Kamal is right, unfortunately. We have to let them go,” I said in what I hoped was a firm voice. “There is nothing we can do.”

But my words didn’t matter. Sabina had picked up on our anxiety and would not leave without her new friends.

More slowly than we wanted, one foot in front of the other, together we wound our way back to Secundus’s shop, Sabina not quite sure what to make of our antics as we crossed streets for no apparent reason and made unexplained detours to go where History would allow. Kamal had picked up Celer, grasping the
squat, brown animal firmly in his arms. All the while, the dirty gray cloud billowed up from the mountain—rising slowly, cruelly, like an accidental toxic release from a factory smokestack. Higher and higher.

We made it back to Secundus’s shop as ash and the pumice Xavier had mentioned—white, hard, and dangerous—started descending from a suddenly overcast sky. The smokestack cloud had flattened into a wide disc that blocked out the sun—the umbrella pine described by the young Pliny, who was watching from across the bay, I thought in a detached way. Pumice began to rattle down onto roof tiles like an especially loud hailstorm. We ran inside through the garden gate and into the back room where Faustilla’s mixtures and salves lay unattended—she was not there—and into the shop. At the counter, Secundus was wrestling the shutters closed as debris rained down on the cobblestones of the street fronting his shop. The graduate students and I turned to leave so that we could meet up with the others, but Secundus called out something and pointed upstairs.

Xavier looked up, lit lamp in hand, as the three of us stumbled into his room. He seemed calmer, like he had accepted what was happening. “Good, you’re here,” he said in a businesslike tone.

But I suddenly realized that something else wasn’t. The cart and the donkeys had not been in their place in the hay-strewn stable downstairs.

Abigail and Kamal stared at the professor as if this entire experience was a project he had assigned and they needed a little help to finish it. The professor, for his part, looked like he needed some help himself, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had hoped that Nate and Helen had already taken the cart to the Nola Gate, but Xavier just shook his head when I asked him. We would have to make our way out of town on foot. We were helping Xavier light the rest of the lamps in preparation for facing the dark volcanic night when Nate burst into the room, covered with a fine layer of ash and breathing heavily. “Helen—” He paused. “Why are you all still here? Why haven’t you headed for the gate?”