Death in the Ashes

by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  “Here’s the opening, my lord,” Bastet said.

  It was a relief to see that the shaft was on a slant. That was how Bastet had described it to us, but I had still feared that we would have to use ropes and lower one another into the ruins. That would mean leaving one person above ground to stand guard. It could also make it difficult to get Calpurnius out if he was seriously injured. I was glad to see we could work our way in—and back out—with little trouble, even if we had to carry Calpurnius.

  I crouched to look down into the shaft as far as the sunlight would let me. The size of the tunnel surprised me, but then I realized that Calpurnius had wanted to bring out pieces of furniture and statuary, like the satyr with the flutes. “We may have to stoop or crawl,” I told Tacitus, “but it looks manageable.”

  “It’s not hard to get around in, sir,” Philippos said. “You’ll see.”

  I turned to Bastet. “Wait here.”

  As I expected, she disagreed with me. “My lord, I think it would be better if my lord Calpurnius heard my voice. He knows he can trust me—”

  “Are you implying that he can’t trust me?”

  “Don’t be so damned sensitive, Gaius Pliny,” Tacitus said. “The woman has a point. Calpurnius wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see us when he was in jail.”

  I threw up my hands in surrender. “Fine. Let’s light some torches and get on with this.”

  From the supplies in the raeda we lit a torch for each of us. Tacitus carried a bag with several more torches and a flint. Bastet took a bag filled with skins of wine and water, a bit of food, and some medical supplies. I stationed Philippos at the entrance to the shaft and gave him a torch and a flint. He could show a light or call to us if we needed help finding our way out. I hoped the confidence I was showing in him would allay what I was sure was his hatred and suspicion of us—and well-deserved it was.

  The boy hugged me. “Be careful, sir.”

  I was more surprised than I would have been if he’d hit me. “All right then…let’s go.”

  Before I could set foot in the opening, though, Bastet stepped in front of me.

  “I should lead the way, my lord. Unlike you, I have been in here since the digging was done. I think I know where he might be. There will be some twists and turns.”

  There was no point in fighting her any more. Feeling like Aeneas entering the underworld with Bastet playing the part of the Sibyl, I crouched down and followed the Nubian into the opening. Tacitus, being larger than either of us, had to crawl behind us.

  “My knees will never recover from this,” he muttered.

  All I could think of was the Sibyl’s warning that the descent to the underworld was easy; it was the return that was so difficult.

  The shaft angled down for about twenty paces. The hard gray ash had a porous appearance and seemed to absorb the flickering light from our torches like a sponge, rather than reflect it. The walls of the tunnel gave off a strong sulfur smell. At one point the floor of the shaft felt and looked different.

  “I think we’re going over the wall of the house,” Tacitus said.

  The surface I felt under my hand was masonry, a different texture than the rest of the tunnel. “Which part of the house are we going into?” I asked Bastet.

  “The peristyle garden, my lord. Calpurnius reckoned that was the most open part. He wouldn’t have to worry about breaking through the roof.”

  “How many men did he use in this digging?” Tacitus asked.

  “Fifteen of his strongest, my lord. We had to wait almost a year after the eruption before the ash cooled down enough. As it cooled, it hardened. The men worked for nearly a month. The ash hardened even while they were working.” She ran her hand over the wall. “I think it’s more solid now than it was then. But some of the men began to get sick. They had trouble breathing. Three of them eventually died.”

  Like my uncle at Stabiae. I wondered if the volcano threw out something poisonous—a vapor of some kind—that could still be seeping out of the rocklike ash around us. Maybe that was why I was having trouble getting my breath. I felt like the wall of the shaft was getting closer to me, so I put out my hand to push it back.

  Behind me Tacitus asked, “Gaius Pliny, are you all right?”

  XIV

  I don’t know,” I said, breathing rapidly, with my mouth open. “It’s so…damnably dark in here.” The light from my torch flickered even more because the hand holding it was starting to shake. “How much farther?” I asked Bastet.

  “I think we’re almost down to ground level, my lord,” the Nubian said, looking over her shoulder at me with an expression that I couldn’t read. In the dim light, against the dark background of the tunnel her black skin seemed to disappear. All I was aware of was her multi-colored head-covering swirling in the torchlight, and her eyes. Those eyes seemed to grow and shine.

  Within a few more paces we did reach a point where the tunnel leveled out and we could stand a bit straighter. The sense of panic I was feeling ebbed a bit, but only a bit. My desire—an almost frantic need—to get out of this place was making my head throb and my stomach tie into a knot. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I’d been in a few caves when I was younger—Aurora and I explored some around Laurentum—and never felt anything like this. But those caves had been larger, and I had been smaller. I could turn around in them. These tunnels were so narrow I couldn’t even straighten my arms out to each side and my head almost scraped the top. And Aurora wasn’t beside me.

  “That’s the fish pond,” Bastet said, pointing to a mosaic edge worked in a meander pattern, blue and red against a white background—a welcome splash of color.

  From there the tunnel branched in three directions. I pointed to our left. “That would take us to the atrium, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, my lord. And I think that’s the way my lord Calpurnius would go.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Walking more quickly on level ground, it took only a couple of moments to reach the front of the house. To my great relief I saw that one side of the roof over the atrium had collapsed in a single large section. Because of the way the piece of the roof was sitting at an angle, supported by fallen columns and other debris, it had prevented the ash from filling in the rooms on that side of the atrium. We could stand up and move more freely. I took a deep breath and was able to stop my hands from shaking. Our torches had more effect here, easing the knot in my stomach.

  “You look like you’re feeling better,” Tacitus said, patting my shoulder.

  I nodded. “I just wish there were more light.”

  Tacitus reached into the bag of torches he was carrying and pulled out two. “The man wants more light. Well then, fiat lux.” He placed the torches in the wall brackets and lit them from the one he was carrying. “Is that better?”

  “Yes. I hope we don’t need them on the way back. That tunnel was unbearable with some light. I couldn’t do it in the dark.”

  “We’ve got a few more, so don’t worry about it. And if we have to, we can set your tunic on fire.”

  As my rational faculties took control, I glanced around me. The upheaval of the earth during the eruption had made the mosaic floor we were standing on wavy, like the water coming into the shore. Much of the plaster on the walls had been dislodged, taking the frescoes with it, but I thought I could make out a pyramid.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked Bastet.

  “Yes, my lord. Calpurnius Fabatus built this house after one of his trips to Egypt.”

  I looked at the brackets where Tacitus had placed the torches. His eyes followed mine. “Why did Fabatus leave this place?” I asked.

  “When he fell into disfavor with Nero, my lord, about twenty years ago, he gave this one to his son and built himself a smaller house in a less conspicuous place.”

  “That’s the one we saw, west of Naples?” Tacitus asked.

  “Yes, my lord. And now, forgive me, but I must find my lord Calpurnius.”
r />   She began calling in the language I’d heard her using in the raeda, a concoction of words almost overwhelmed by the rhythm. She could have been a bard singing.

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I’m calling him in my native Nubian, my lord. I taught him some of it. When he hears it, he will know for certain it’s me.”

  All I could do was trust her. For all I knew, she could have been warning him, telling him to get ready to kill us—I simply did not know. I put a hand on the sword under my tunic.

  We finally heard a noise, a groan, from up ahead and quickened our pace.

  “He’s here, my lord,” Bastet said as she entered one of the rooms off the atrium with Tacitus and me on her heels.

  Calpurnius had propped himself up on a bed against the wall opposite the door. He held a knife in his left hand but dropped it as soon as he saw us. “Thank the gods,” he muttered, letting himself collapse full-length on the bed.

  “It’s all right, my lord,” Bastet said in the soothing tone a nurse would use to calm a frightened child. “We’re here. Everything’s going to be all right.” She unstopped the skin of water and Calpurnius drank greedily.

  “Gaius Pliny,” he said, wiping his mouth, “I’m not even…unhappy to see you.”

  “That’s not the most gracious welcome I’ve ever had,” I said, “but it’s an improvement over the last time we met.”

  “I’m sorry, but you must understand—”

  “Where are you hurt, Calpurnius?” I had no patience for revisiting our conversation in the jail. The only thing that mattered to me now was to tend to this man and get him—and myself—out of here. We lit the lamps hanging from a lamp tree in a corner and the room felt almost bearable, if I could just stop thinking about the pile of ash on the roof above us and how deeply we could be buried beneath it.

  “It’s my arm.” Calpurnius held out his right arm, which had a long gash in it. He had tried to wrap it. “The bleeding has pretty well stopped, but it has left me weak. And I think I may have a broken rib.”

  Bastet took some oil and an ointment from her bag and began to clean the wound on his arm. “It may need to be sewn up, my lord, but I don’t have what I need to do that right now. At least we can clean it and bind it tightly.”

  Calpurnius nodded. “Tying a knot on one’s own arm is virtually impossible, I’ve discovered.”

  “Do the best you can with it,” I told Bastet. “Then we’ll get him out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Calpurnius said abruptly. “Let me die here. It would be better for everyone.”

  “He’s not making sense because of his injury, my lord,” Bastet said. “I’ll stay here with him. Give him a couple of days to recover. You can send food and water to us under cover of darkness.”

  I did not want a servant telling me what to do, not even a servant who had been a princess in some earlier part of her life and was making good sense now. Turning to Calpurnius, I said, “I will not agree to that arrangement unless you tell us exactly what’s going on. The friendship between your sister and my mother obligates me to try to help you. Tacitus and I have inconvenienced ourselves a great deal to come down here. Our presence has resulted in the death of an innocent man at the hands of this servant of yours.” Calpurnius did not seem surprised to hear that, nor did he ask for details. “If you won’t tell me what you’re afraid of, I’ll…I’ll—”

  “We’ll post notices all over Naples,” Tacitus said, “revealing where you are.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Oh, surely you wouldn’t,” Calpurnius moaned.

  “Yes, I would. That is the extent to which you have exhausted my patience.”

  Calpurnius bowed his head and lay back on the bed. “All right, but you must swear to me that this secret will remain buried here, as deeply as this house is buried.”

  And yet people can dig around in it, I thought. He might want to rethink his analogy because I was going to dig around in whatever he told us. “I will not reveal to anyone what you tell us in here.”

  “What about your friend? Can he be as silent as his name suggests?”

  Tacitus pinched his lips together and nodded once, drawing a chuckle from Calpurnius, followed by a grimace. Bastet held his hand.

  “The story goes back about fifteen years,” Calpurnius began, “and I’m afraid it’s somewhat complicated.”

  “Keep it as simple as you can,” I urged him, casting a nervous glance toward the ceiling, where the light failed to penetrate.

  “Yes, I’m not exactly Odysseus telling his tale to the Phaeacians over dinner. Well, have you heard of Aelius Lamia?” Calpurnius asked. “Ah, I can see from your faces that you have.”

  “I know the name,” I said, and Tacitus nodded. “Are you talking about the Aelius Lamia whom Domitian executed a few years ago?” I hated that I had to be the one to introduce the name of the princeps. If Domitian was involved in whatever was going on, it was more than somewhat complicated.

  Calpurnius nodded and sadness crept into his voice. “The very same. He and I were friends from the time we were boys.”

  “Wait,” Tacitus said, “didn’t Domitian seduce Aelius’ wife?”

  “Seduced her, my not-so-silent friend, and stole her away from him.”

  I wished I could sit down, but the room had been stripped of all other furniture. We hovered around the lamp tree, like soldiers gathered around a campfire to exchange tales. “Are you talking about Domitia Longina, his current wife?”

  “Yes. It all happened during the chaos after Galba’s death, that year when there were four emperors. No one knew who the next princeps was going to be.”

  “It was a frightening time,” Tacitus said. “Gaius Pliny was seven, too young to remember much of it, but I was twelve.”

  “I was twenty-one,” Calpurnius said. “Aelius, a year older. No one could believe it. Civil war in Rome, after a century of peace. Roman troops even burned part of the Capitoline Hill. Not barbarians, mind you, but Roman troops.”

  “My father said it felt like the end of the world,” Tacitus said quietly. “But how does Aelius’ wife figure into this?”

  “Longina, in case you’ve forgotten or didn’t know, is a direct descendant of the deified Augustus, in the fifth generation.”

  I shook my head slowly. “By the gods, the man’s seed has spread like weeds in a wheat field.”

  “Perhaps we should set fire to the field to cleanse it,” Tacitus said. It was a dangerous thing to say, even when we could be sure there were no spies to hear us.

  “The men have all been killed off, I think,” Calpurnius said, “but there could be dozens of women out there, ready to breed the next generation. They don’t brag about their descent because some man who craves power will come seeking them. And you can’t spot them easily because they have their fathers’ names, not the Julian family name. Longina’s father was Domitius Corbulo, the general whom Nero forced to commit suicide. Her connection to Augustus came through her mother.”

  “And any man who was married to her could have some chance to claim power,” I said. Even though Augustus’ last recognized descendant had been dead for fifteen years, his name and any connection to it, no matter how remote, gave a man a status that mere mortals such as myself could not hope to equal.

  Calpurnius nodded. “Exactly. In those chaotic times several of Aelius’ friends thought he might put himself forward. He had held high offices. His ancestors had held consulships and governorships. He was not unworthy, we thought, to become princeps. Better an educated, cultivated man like him than the brutish generals who were competing for power.”

  “But he had no troops under his command,” Tacitus pointed out.

  “That’s correct. What he had, though, was a descendant of the deified Augustus by his side, and their children would carry that same blood. They would not establish a new dynasty but would revive Rome’s first dynasty, the empire’s rightful rulers.”

  Even in the
dim light I could see Tacitus take a deep breath to steady himself. The idea of Rome having a ruler of any kind, let alone a “rightful” ruler, is repugnant to him. He longs, with all his being, for the restoration of the Republic.

  “So how did Domitian end up with Aelius’ wife?” I asked.

  “By the end of that summer it was clear Vespasian and his sons would win out,” Calpurnius said. “Vitellius had taken Rome, but nobody wanted that drunken lout as our ruler. Vespasian and Titus were still in the east, trying to squelch the revolt of the Jews. Domitian was in Rome, claiming to represent his family’s interests.”

  Tacitus snorted. “He still likes to say that he took the empire from Vitellius and gave it to his father when Vespasian got to Rome.”

  “What he did take,” Calpurnius said, “was Longina. He seduced her by promising her that she would play Livia to his Augustus.”

  “Why would a woman yield to that sort of blandishment?” I asked. From what I’d read, Livia had been a manipulative, conniving shrew who stopped at nothing—possibly even murder—to clear the way for her son Tiberius to succeed Augustus. In her old age she had supplied Augustus with virgins to deflower. What sort of woman would want to be compared to her?

  “Longina is very aware of her ancestry,” Calpurnius said. “She has always been deeply embarrassed by her father’s suicide and the eclipse of her family. She married Aelius and had resigned herself, I think, to remaining in obscurity, even though she chafed at it. But Domitian offered her the chance to claim what she saw as her rightful place.”

  “She gives him a modicum of legitimacy,” Tacitus said, “in an otherwise illegitimate system.” Calpurnius raised his head as if he would object, but said nothing as Tacitus went on. “Plus, their children would be descendants of Augustus.”

  Calpurnius nodded and again took Bastet’s hand in his. “That’s exactly what Domitian was thinking, I’m sure. He is obsessed with his inferiority to the Julian bloodline.”