The crowd roared in delight. Cy looked at the people next to him who were cheering and applauding. They thought the little man was showing great spirit! They thought the Dream Master was choosing unarmed combat!
A rattling noise echoed around the Amphitheatre. The crowd fell silent. In the far wall a gridded iron gate scraped open. From the darkness beyond, a full-grown African lion leaped slashing and snarling out into the sand.
Cy hurriedly reached under his sweatshirt for the bundle he had hidden there. ‘Run!’ he shouted at the Dream Master. ‘Over here! Run!’
The little man didn’t need to be told twice. He scuttled as fast as he could towards Cy’s side of the arena. ‘I hope you have a plan!’ he yelled.
Cy’s heart was going so fast that he thought he was going to fall over. ‘It’s all I could think of!’ he yelled back and threw down the items that he had taken from the garden hut at home.
‘Three Roman candles, a crackerjack and two sparklers? This is supposed to save my life?’ wailed the Dream Master.
‘The matches! Don’t forgot to pick up the matches!’ Cy shouted. ‘And try to act brave. Linus says the people favour a brave fighter, and it is they who can decide your fate.’
It was fortunate indeed that the people had taken the new little gladiator known as Dominus Somniorum to their hearts. Not only did they view his relinquishing his sword as an act of immense courage; they had also placed a large amount of money on him to win. As the lion approached the Dream Master, sensing an easy if not very nourishing meal, the crowd began to pelt it with any object they could lay their hands on. While the little man fumbled about trying to strike a match to set off the fireworks, an assortment of jars, coins, bottles, sandals and stones bounced off the animal’s body. The lion stopped in confusion and shook its head from side to side.
Then Cy had a terrific idea. He grabbed a tray from one of the vendors, raced round inside the arena and dropped the food at the opening to the animal’s cage. There was a muttering from the crowd. Cy swallowed, his throat dry. Would they think this was cheating?
Suddenly a small figure stood up and shouted, ‘Hurrah! Victory to Dominus Somniorum!’
Cy looked across the Amphitheatre. At the opposite side, beyond the parapet brightly painted with hunting scenes and pictures of former contests, he saw Linus climb onto his seat and hurl his own food at the open door of the bestiarii.
The spectators screamed their approval and rushed to follow his example. There was a near riot as bread, fruit, cheese and kebabs of all kinds rained down into the arena. By this time the Dream Master had managed to light some of the fireworks. He stood in a circle of effervescing Roman candles, holding a sparkler in each hand. The lion backed away from the fire and loped to where it could smell a dinner that did not fight back.
‘That was the most unusual fight I’ve ever seen,’ said Linus as the three of them left the Amphitheatre. ‘Although, in Pompeii we are famed for disorder at our games. In former days crowd behaviour was so bad that the Roman Senate banned us from holding any spectacles at all in the Amphitheatre.’ He looked at the Dream Master in admiration. ‘You were very brave, facing the lion without using your sword. It is not surprising that you were granted your freedom.’
‘I have wide experience in all kinds of situations,’ said the Dream Master. ‘It didn’t take me long to work out a way to outwit that beast.’
Cy was too busy thinking of how he could persuade Rhea Silvia and Linus to leave the town to challenge the truth of the Dream Master’s words. If their mother had gone to join their father in Rome, perhaps he could pretend that she had sent for their children to join them? But then there was the problem of how they would travel to Rome. They could not be expected to walk, and he had no money to hire a chariot. Perhaps their father owned a wagon and they could use that? Cy’s mind was still searching through possibilities when, deep below the cobbles of the street, he heard a faint low rumble like an underground train.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘Thunder,’ said Linus.
‘It seemed to come from below us,’ said Cy. ‘And anyway there are no rain clouds.’
‘The bay is wide and summer storms come in very fast from the sea.’ Linus glanced up at the sky. ‘See,’ he said, ‘the clouds are coming our way now.’
Cy looked upwards. Faint plumes of feathery grey were drifting across the sky. He frowned. ‘Those clouds are not blowing in from the sea,’ he said to Linus, ‘they are coming from the mountains.’
Linus halted in the street and faced the hills. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘How strange.’
As they spoke the ground shuddered again beneath their feet.
Linus’s eyes opened wide in fear. ‘It is a god within the earth turning in his sleep.’
‘It is more likely to be an earthquake,’ said the Dream Master.
‘Then that is not such a worry,’ said Linus. He started to walk along the road again, with Cy and the Dream Master following. ‘We often have tremors in the hot summer months.’
Cy had not spoken for several moments. He had been studying the odd greyish clouds which were trailing steadily over their heads. They did not look at all like clouds, not even bad-weather clouds. They looked more like . . . Cy suddenly recalled his next-door neighbour’s bonfire. He turned his head away from Linus and whispered quietly to the Dream Master. ‘The date,’ he said. ‘Do you know today’s date?’
‘Well, really!’ the Dream Master tutted. ‘I have just escaped being eaten by a lion and might now be threatened with an earthquake, and you want to know the date?’
‘The date,’ said Cy, still quietly but more insistently. ‘It is very important. What is today’s date?’
‘How could I forget it?’ The little man was huffing and puffing to keep up with Cy, who had begun to walk faster. ‘I will remember it for ever as the date I fought a savage beast,’ he said. ‘It is the twenty-fourth of August.’
Cy stopped so suddenly that the Dream Master, who was walking close behind, cannoned into him.
‘Seneca and Caesar!’ shouted the little man, holding his nose. ‘What’s the matter now?’
Cy grabbed the Dream Master by both shoulders and spoke in a low urgent voice. ‘That is not cloud in the sky. It is smoke! This year is AD seventy-nine and August the twenty-fourth is the very day that the volcano in Vesuvius erupted, burying the town of Pompeii and everyone in it.’
CHAPTER XVII
CY TURNED TO speak to Linus, but the Dream Master pulled him back.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said. ‘If Vesuvius is about to erupt, why don’t we all just leave?’
‘My dreamsilk is quite faded,’ said Cy. ‘It took a great deal of effort for me to get back to this precise TimeSpace so that I could rescue you. I was wandering about all over for Ages. I’m not very good at focusing, you know that.’
‘But your piece of dreamsilk is not completely faded,’ the Dream Master persisted.
Cy nodded in agreement. ‘Not totally, no.’
‘So therefore . . .’ The Dream Master’s eyes seemed to see into Cy’s very soul. ‘You could leave. There is enough energy in your scrap of dreamsilk to get you out of here.’
‘What would happen to Rhea Silvia and Linus?’ asked Cy. He felt his mind swivel as he considered the alternative ways that he could act. It seemed such a reasonable thing to do, to look after himself. After all, it wasn’t his problem and he could end up in danger if he went to help someone else. And anyway, in life everybody should learn to cope on their own.
Then Cy remembered how Linus had risen to help him in the Amphitheatre. He remembered Vojek in the library. People weren’t just on their own. Sometimes things that you did had a direct effect on other people, their lives, their happiness. Although there were some things that you had to do by yourself . . . like making this decision. And now he, Cy, was in that position. He didn’t have anyone like Grampa to discuss it with.
Cy met the Dream Master’s eyes and shook
his head. ‘I am staying to help them,’ he said.
‘So, get on with it,’ the Dream Master said grumpily.
Cy took Linus by the hand. ‘We must move fast.’ The air was tense and another tremor vibrated through the city. People had begun to hurry indoors. The smoky clouds above them thickened and a steady stream of hot hail began to fall from the sky.
‘Is it an earthquake, like the one seventeen years ago?’ asked Linus as he ran with Cy towards his home.
‘This has never happened before,’ said Cy. ‘It is not an earthquake.’
Rhea Silvia came hurrying from the house to meet them. ‘There are people coming into the city from the countryside. They say that the vineyards are on fire!’
‘We must leave,’ said Cy. ‘We must leave now. Find something to cover our heads.’
Linus brought togas for himself and the Dream Master and Cy to wrap themselves in. Rhea Silvia took a cushion and, using Lauren’s school tie, she tied it around her head.
As they stood in the street, unsure which way to turn, Cy bent and picked up one of the stones which had fallen from the sky. It was so hot that he could hardly hold it in his hand. The force of the eruption had blasted this rock across many miles. It was greyish white and not very heavy at all. He examined it carefully. The stone was pitted with cavities, almost as though it was full of air bubbles.
That was what made it so lightweight, thought Cy as he studied the rock in his hand. A word shot into his brain. ‘Pumice,’ he said. He remembered his father’s volcanic demonstration in the garden. At this very moment, deep in the magma chamber of Vesuvius, it wasn’t just air that was building up pressure, it was noxious gases heating to a frighteningly high temperature.
Rhea Silvia looked at the grey ash which was now pouring from the sky. ‘I have changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I think we should stay indoors.’
‘I don’t think that is a good idea,’ said Cy.
Rhea and Linus exchanged glances. ‘How would a slave know what is or what is not a good idea?’ demanded Rhea Silvia.
‘It is not a minor eruption,’ said Cy. “These falling rocks and ash are not so dangerous. It is what will come after.’
‘We have friends in Herculaneum,’ said Linus. ‘We could go there.’
‘No,’ said Cy. ‘Not Herculaneum.’
‘Why not?’ asked Rhea Silvia.
‘The lava flow,’ said Cy desperately. ‘The red-hot lava flow will come down the mountainside. It will make a river of boiling mud and Herculaneum is directly in its path.’
‘I don’t understand how is it that you know so much about volcanoes,’ said Linus. ‘My father told me that Britain has no earthquakes or volcanoes. He said that the weather is very mild.’
Rhea Silvia and Linus both stared at Cy with a questioning look.
‘I just know—’ Cy began, and then he stopped. He was doing to Rhea Silvia and Linus the very thing that he hated adults doing to him – not explaining. Cy knew how frustrating it was to be told something with no explanation. Adults frequently did this by saying, ‘I just know.’ It was how they avoided difficult situations. But Cy always felt better when he knew why he was doing something. Linus and Rhea Silvia, although separated from his twenty-first-century TimeSpace by two thousand years, probably felt exactly the same. Cy looked at their faces and realized that they were both terrified.
‘Listen,’ he said gently. ‘I am going to take a few seconds to explain this to you. My father is very learned, and has studied the movements of the earth and has told me all about it. Below the earth is a great fire.’
Linus nodded. ‘Yes, it is the forge of the great god Vulcan.’
‘Helped by the one-eyed Cyclops,’ added Rhea Silvia.
‘My father,’ Cy went on, ‘is a famous man of science. In Britain he is well known for his knowledge in these matters.’
‘And what would he say in these circumstances?’ asked Rhea Silvia.
‘He would say that the noise you hear, and the smoke and ash you see, are from the great fire burning underground. He would also say that the mountain cannot hold back the fire for very much longer, and very soon Vesuvius will explode. He would tell us to go far away from here as quickly as we can.’
Rhea Silvia and Linus nodded. ‘Yes,’ said Rhea Silvia, ‘we understand.’
‘The volcano will not wait,’ said Cy. ‘Not until help comes, nor until you have reached safety. It will throw out flames and molten rock which will reach high above us. After a time this great pillar of smoke will collapse and then the searing hot air will rush down on top of us. Anyone who breathes it cannot live.’ Cy tried to remember the name he had written down from his Internet search: Pie . . . pie-something.
‘Pyroclastic surge,’ murmured a voice in his ear.
‘Could we outrun it?’ asked Linus.
‘No,’ said Cy. ‘We must be many miles from here when it happens. When it comes, it will travel faster than your best horseman on his fastest horse.’
CHAPTER XVIII
‘MY FATHER’S CHARIOT!’ cried Linus. ‘It is kept with the innkeeper in the next street.’
‘I will collect a few things for the journey,’ said Rhea Silvia. She made to re-enter the house.
Cy tugged at her sleeve. ‘There is not enough time and we must carry nothing. Soak some cloths in water from the fountain in the courtyard while Linus and I get the chariot ready.’
When they returned, Rhea Silvia, who had spoken to some women passing in the street, said, ‘There is word that the admiral of the fleet himself is coming to rescue us.’
Cy recalled his Internet search and the print-out of Pliny the Younger’s letter. ‘They will not be able to land,’ said Cy. ‘The wind is too strong and it is blowing offshore.’
‘Where can we go?’ asked Rhea Silvia in despair.
‘Towards the sea,’ said Cy, hoping that he sounded as though he knew what he was doing. ‘That’s our best chance.’
Standing in the chariot with Linus by his side, Cy shortened the reins on the two horses. He tried to recall the map of Pompeii. In which direction lay the sea?
Beside him Linus was trembling in fear. Behind him Rhea Silvia, protected by the Dream Master, was crouched low in the chariot, trying to avoid the masonry and roof tiles which were cascading from the buildings.
As Cy hesitated, the horses made the decision for him. Spooked by the noise and the atmosphere, they began to trot nervously down the road. Cy could see the map of Pompeii in his mind’s eye – the long straight lines of the roads laid out in the typical manner of a Roman town. And around it was the city wall with gates . . . of course! The ports! He remembered his dictionary search. The Porta Marina was the way to the sea!
‘We will go to the gate that leads to the sea,’ Cy told Linus. He gave the younger boy an encouraging smile. ‘You hold the whip,’ he said. He hoped that giving Linus something to do might take his mind away from the situation a little.
‘This way, then,’ said Linus, pointing with the whip to the road Cy should take.
Hot cinders and fine ash were collecting in drifts against the doors of the shops and houses. Some of the rocks which the volcano had thrown out were so large and heavy that several buildings had collapsed. Ahead of them the road was blocked.
‘We could try the road to the Forum Baths,’ said Linus. ‘We can follow it west and then cut through past the Forum and that way reach the gate to the sea.’
With great difficulty Cy turned the chariot round. The wheels churned in the thick layer of ash. The ground shook under them and with a great heave Vesuvius again belched flame and molten rock.
Linus covered his eyes with his hand. ‘May the gods protect us,’ he whispered.
Looting had begun. Smashed amphorae littered the road. A group of rough men stood outside a wine shop and eyed the approaching chariot. As Cy drew even, one of the thieves who had been injured on the side of his face and was bleeding from the mouth tried to grab the horses’ reins. The horses reared a
nd plunged, hooves flailing the air.
Linus raised his whip and hit the man across the head. ‘We should travel faster,’ he told Cy. He leaned across and brought the lash down on the backs of the horses.
With terrified whinnies the horses leaped forwards and began to gallop at a furious pace. Cy clung on, trying to control the chariot as the wheels bounced off the cobbles and struck sparks from the road below.
Through the streets of Pompeii Cy raced for his life. Past the Temple of Jupiter and the north side of the Forum, horses and chariot clattered. Cy wrenched on the reins to swing them to the left. He could see the roof of the Temple of Apollo. Another twist in the road brought him close by the Basilica and now the Porta Marina was in sight!
The Porta Marina was one of the narrowest exits of the city. The two vaulted passageways, one for pedestrians and one for vehicles, were both clogged with traffic. Some people were trying to leave, others trying to gain entrance to the city.
Cy tried to warn them. ‘Go to the sea!’ he cried. ‘Leave the city!’
‘To the temples!’ they shouted. ‘Isis and Apollo will save us!’
In the crush of wagons and carts the horses shook their heads and began to stamp and kick wildly. Linus jumped out and soothed them as Cy guided them through. Then they were off down the slope and onto the main Roman highway.
The animals’ fear drove them on. Linus gripped the sides of the chariot with both hands and Cy held grimly onto the reins. ‘Do you know any way to reach the sea where there might be a boat?’ he called to Rhea Silvia.
‘Yes!’ Rhea Silvia called back. ‘When Linus and I were small the house slave took us to a little cove where the fishermen beached their boats. It is reached by a cliff top . . . South! Take the road south, and I will watch out for the turn-off.’
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