A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii

by Stephanie Dray

  I want to die with your good opinion, you little horse-mad girl.

  The pregnant girl’s cry broke the long stare between them. “Sabinus! Sabinus, is that you—”

  Another vague shape in the whirl of falling rock; a man with red-rimmed brown eyes, and a wailing child clutched inexpertly on one hip. The woman’s husband, perhaps—she fell on him with another cry.

  “I will see you home safely.” The man’s reddened eyes were full of horror, and he spoke with the brusque efficiency of a centurion or an engineer, but his tone was kind. In a moment that was nothing but panic and despair, it was almost bizarre. “Can you take the torch so I can carry my little friend here? Found her in a gutter.” He squeezed the tiny girl as if to comfort her. “Don’t worry, now we’ve found you, we’ll keep you safe!” And then a mutter: “Dear gods, the world is mad.”

  “When will it stop?” the pregnant girl wanted to know as he passed her the torch, but he had only a weary shake of his head.

  “We could take the child,” Diana started to offer, but the little trio plunged back into Tartarus even as the man shifted the child to his shoulder. Diana looked after them for a moment, then shook her head. “I hope that girl gets under a roof. She’s probably giving birth soon.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve delivered more foals than I can count, and my cousins have birthed seven children between them. Believe me, I know the signs. The stomach drops and hardens; it—” A shrug even as Diana came up under his arm again. “Her baby will likely come tonight.”

  “You said—”

  “I lied,” Diana said, and they lurched forward into the chaos. Another street, another turn—the gate must be near; the press was suddenly frantic.

  “You should have a wife like that,” Diana said suddenly, half shouting to be heard over the cries around them.

  “What?”

  “Your wife was a nagging bitch with a voice like a chisel. You should have remarried. Someone like that girl in the green, pretty and pregnant. If you had more children after Paulinus—babies; children you couldn’t tell yourself were almost grown and didn’t need a father—you'd never leave them orphaned. And,” Diana added, “another wife would keep your house in better order. I’d feel like dying too, if I had to live in that welter of dust and rude slaves you call home.”

  “The world as we know it may be coming to an end,” Marcus shouted, not just to be heard over the noise, “and you’re debating my marital and domestic inadequacies?”

  “Not to mention that your son looks far too weedy for his age. Get a wife who will keep a good cook and kitchen slaves, and feed him up properly. You’ve been shoving him off on my cousins to mother for the past ten years.”

  Marcus heard his own voice drop to a pitch of pure icy cold. “How dare you.”

  “Because that girl back there and the baby in her belly and the little girl found in a gutter are probably going to die, Marcus.” Diana never stopped moving, never stopped shuffling through the stones, but her voice was savage, and her arm about his waist cut viciously tight. “They’ll probably all die, a child whose mother left her behind and another mother whose baby probably has not a chance in a thousand of seeing sunlight—” Diana kicked ferociously through the heaps of strange, pocked stone. “Because the rocks are falling faster, if you didn’t notice. It’s twice as deep underfoot as when we left the brothel, and if it keeps coming like this, everyone in the city behind us is going to die. They’ll die clawing to live, clawing for one last breath, because that’s what people do. Except you. You can’t be bothered to live. And in this surrounding?” Motioning at the frantic crowd around them, pressing mindlessly toward safety. “How dare you.”

  “I will not be judged,” Marcus said tiredly. “I have conducted my life honorably and I’ll conduct my death the same way. Perhaps helping someone like that girl, who I pray will see her child born safely. In sunlight.”

  “I pray it too,” said Diana. He looked down at her and saw she was gazing ahead with fierce eyes, lashes clogged with soot, face contorted. But not a tear fell.

  IT was chaos at the Herculaneum Gate. People shoving, scratching, dropping bundles they had hauled stubbornly through the disappearing streets only to abandon them at the last. Diana staggered, losing the lamp as a huge man with the musclebound arms of an oarsmen shoved her out of his way, nearly knocking her under the rush of feet. Desperate men, Marcus thought even as he yanked her up. He pulled her back to his chest, and they shuffled forward like a four-footed beast, his chin atop her head to protect her from the fall of stones. The constant hail seemed less bad here, but who could say with souls screaming around them like shades clawing to get out of the underworld?

  It was like being born, squeezing through that gate which had two narrow arches for travelers on foot, but which had suddenly become too small for the traffic. A desperate plunge into the darkness under the arch, the blackness overwhelming without the lamp. Sudden crushing tightness on all sides as the stone walls pressed everyone together; slave and senator, man and woman alike; all reduced to a frantic mass stinking of ash and terror. And then freedom on the other side, everyone springing loose from the gate’s confines and staggering for the road which split toward the coast, toward Herculaneum and Neapolis.

  But does either place mean safety? Marcus thought. Perhaps the blackness and the ash have extended there, as well.

  “Just a little further,” Diana shouted over the spreading din. Someone outside the gate had dropped a lit torch; she snatched it up before it could gutter out. “Less than half a mile, and we can stop—”

  “Stop for what?”

  “The reason I insisted on this gate and not your damned Marine Gate. Which, you were right, would have been the shorter route.”

  “I knew it,” Marcus muttered, and forced his knee into service again as they went stumbling on into the growing piles of rock.

  The light from the torch was feeble and guttering, but infinitely better than the blackness of the gate when they’d lost the lamp. They staggered on, coughing, peering ahead—it was only with difficulty that Marcus recognized the gradually-looming shape as a good-sized villa. It just looked like a lump of ash, stones heaped high on the long roofs. Every door was sealed behind heaps of accumulated debris. “If you’re hoping for aid, whatever family lived there is either long gone or locked in,” Marcus began, but Diana was charging grimly round the villa’s side to the outbuildings.

  “Help me,” she called, and Marcus aided her in dragging a gate open, then went to work on another set of doors. The sight of his own arms shocked him as he leaned down to paw the heaps of rock away. His flesh was red-gray, ash mixed with blood where falling rock had slashed and bruised his skin. He straightened as Diana dragged at the cleared door, and for the first time felt pain outside his knee. His neck, his shoulders, his back stung as though he had been pummeled; the muscles of his legs burned from the wading and clambering through all the sky-fallen rubble; he could feel another set of trickles on his neck that he suspected was blood from yet more cuts. How have I not been struck on the head and killed? he wondered, and felt a real irritation.

  Diana finally managed to drag the door open, still holding her torch, and an unmistakable smell hit Marcus’ nose. He sniffed again. “Manure?”

  “It’s what a stable usually smells like, Senator.” She ducked inside. “Hold the torch and keep well back from the stalls. Horses hate fire.”

  He followed her just inside, lifting the torch high, and the cessation of the pebble-barrage on his back nearly made him stagger. In the suddenly-splintered darkness inside he heard a full-throated whinny and the double-thump of hooves against wood; saw a pair of fire-reflected eyes. Diana went toward the eyes and the sound, voice lowered to a sudden croon. “There you are, my love, I was afraid someone would have stolen you. Did you think I was leaving without you?”

  Marcus collapsed against the wall, sinking down on a wooden trunk of some kind that probably held harness. “Please
tell me we did not come all this way for a horse.”

  “Of course we did.” From somewhere or other, Diana unearthed another lamp and brought it to Marcus to light the wick. “I bought him, so I am responsible for him. I wouldn’t leave him to die any more than I’d leave you.”

  Marcus started to laugh. He was not at all amused, but it was laugh or throttle her. “You risked your life for a horse?”

  She did not bother answering, just took the torch and slid it into the nearest bracket to shed more light. Marcus went on laughing, and Diana calmly unwound the filthy folds of his toga from her head and shoulders, shaking her pale hair loose. It felt like a thousand years since he’d wrapped her up at the whorehouse. She looked around the abandoned stable, and shook her head. “Just four days ago I was standing here talking to the daughter of the house. A little red-haired heiress seething resentment because she had to get married. She reminded me of me.” Diana went to the water trough, making a face to find it empty. “I wonder if she still lives.”

  “I wonder,” Marcus echoed, and his bleak laughter turned to coughing. He had the tang of ash in his mouth; his chest was so tight it might as well have been banded in iron shackles; and the fit of coughs finally turned to wheezing. He leaned his head back against the wall, wondering how much of the falling ash he had breathed in, and feeling suddenly exhausted. Now that he was sitting, he did not think he could ever get up again.

  “Drink.” Diana was standing in front of him, holding out the leather flask from her belt. “I can’t find any water here, as short as water’s been in Pompeii lately—but this is better.”

  Marcus lifted the skin to his lips and tasted. “Wine?”

  “I’ve been saving it. It’ll strengthen you, and we have to get moving again.”

  Marcus took a deep grateful swallow, feeling the iron bands about his chest ease a little. “Not a bad vintage. Wherever did you get it?”

  “Accident with a wine cart this morning, oh, a thousand years or so ago. A wine-sack sprang a leak, and everyone passing helped themselves to a free cup while the carters stood there cursing us. I was on my way to the amphitheater and it was hot, so I stopped to fill up. I’m glad I did.” She studied him as he drank again, her eyes flickering like blue-green sparks in an ash-smeared mask. “Good, you’ve got a bit more color. You don’t look so much like a slave out of a salt mine. The kind that gets left to die on some windswept crag when they get too old and used-up.”

  “And you—” Marcus looked up, feeling a welcome strength course through his veins from the wine “—look more fetching covered in filth than any woman has a right to look.”

  She grinned, turning away to rummage in the back of the stables. “Drink up. We can’t stop long.”

  “So our journey continues.” Marcus held the last swallow of wine in his mouth a moment, savoring it. “You, me, the horse as a chaperon?”

  “Who needs a chaperon?” Rustling and banging commenced, and Diana came back into view with a bridle tossed over one shoulder. “My reputation has long been well and truly buggered.”

  “What’s buggered is your good sense. You risked your life to rescue a horse.” He still wanted to throttle her for that.

  “You’re the one who needs the horse.” Diana entered the stallion’s stall, making little crooning noises and rubbing a hand down the long nose. The horse whickered nervously, but nibbled along the line of her shoulder as she rummaged for horse blankets and began folding them across its back and haunches for padding against the rock-fall outside. “You were very stoic about your leg, and really it’s a wonder you got as far as this, but stoicism isn’t going to get you all the way to Herculaneum on foot.” Strapping the blankets down across the horse’s back in a few deft movements, she came out of the stall and dropped down before him, pressing her fingers suddenly to the swelling in his knee. He drew a sharp breath of pain despite himself, and she raised her eyebrows. “You see? And this—” Her hand rose to his chest, which still sounded a faint wheeze as he breathed. “You haven’t been screening your mouth like me, so you’ve been breathing ash for hours—that cough is only going to get worse.” Her hand dropped. “You can’t walk any more, Marcus. You need a ride, and I happen to have one.”

  “I told you I was not leaving this city.”

  “And I told you I would not leave you.”

  “So, we’re back to that.”

  “We are.”

  They stared at each other; Marcus sitting stubbornly upright, no matter how much he hurt, Diana on her knees before him with no subservience at all in those narrowed eyes. The first time they had looked at each other like this, back in the whorehouse, he had thought all he had to do was wait until she lost her nerve and bolted.

  He knew better now than to assume Diana of the Cornelii would ever lose her nerve.

  Then find another way.

  “We’ve come to the end of this story.” Marcus felt his own heart thudding. “This is the part where you leave me behind.”

  Her chin jerked up. “And as I said before, I won’t leave you. I need your eyes to watch my back, I—”

  “Through Pompeii, perhaps. But now I will only slow you down.” Marcus found a rag hanging off the end of the trunk, began wiping off his hands. “That horse will carry two, but slowly. By yourself, you will be in Herculaneum within hours. Safe. And I want you safe, Diana. I owe you that much.”

  She shook her head stubbornly, hair flying. “No.”

  “Yes.” He began to wipe his face unhurriedly. “It’s time for you to save yourself. So kiss a dying man goodbye and gallop off like Diana the Huntress, and I will smile and open my wrists. Because there is one thing upon which you have persuaded me, and that is that a Roman should not simply wait for death to roll over him. I’ll move toward mine—” giving her a half-bow where he sat “—as I promised.”

  A tired, gray-haired man dying so a bright-burning young woman could live. It was at least a better reason to seek oblivion than simple despair.

  Diana sat back on her heels, her gaze burning fury. “You’ll open a vein, then.”

  “Yes,” Marcus stated.

  “You know how?”

  “Oh, yes.” All those nights in the darkness back in Rome, tracing a dagger up and down the raised lines in his wrist … It had been hypnotic; a lulling, comforting dream. He could find his own vein even if he were blind.

  “Takes a while, though, bleeding out. Who knows how long the mountain’s going to give you? Try something faster.” She was up and standing, dagger unsheathed in one hand. “Under the breastbone, straight and fast to the heart. That’s the way to do it, Marcus Norbanus.” She tossed it to the straw between his feet.

  He felt his brows quirk. “How would you know such a thing?”

  “Patrician women know how to die, too.” She gazed at him a moment longer, then turned back to the horse. “The Year of the Four Emperors,” she said, reaching for the bridle. “My cousins and I hid from a raging mob in the Temple of Vesta, with one knife between the four of us. We all knew how to commit suicide honorably, and we all knew it was a better end than being torn to pieces by rioting Praetorians.” She drew the bridle over the stallion’s ears, fastening straps and buckles. “It didn’t come to that. But we’d have done it.”

  Marcus gave a single nod. “Of course. I would expect no less.”

  “There’s another reason women take their lives, and that’s when they’re dishonored.” Diana turned back to him, reins looped over her arm and her eyes glittering. “I was dishonored that year, Marcus. I was fifteen, and I was dishonored against an alley wall. Should I have opened my veins after that?”

  It took Marcus a moment to speak. He suddenly had a tide of rage and nothing at all to spend it on—her gaze utterly rejected anger and pity both.

  “Well?” she challenged. “How many men in Rome would have said I should take my own life to end the shame?”

  “Not I,” he said quietly. “But—many.”

  “Well, piss on them.
The man in that alley wasn’t worth my shame. He didn’t last long enough inside me to boil an egg, and I’ve been sorer after long horseback rides. I spat on the ground and walked away, and I never thought once about taking a knife to my wrist. I have rarely even bothered thinking about that man these past ten years. Because my life is worth more than what’s between my legs.” She dropped the stallion’s reins over the rail and stalked toward him, two savage steps. “And your life is worth more than a habit of despair.”

  He rose. “Diana—”

  She reached out, grabbed him by his gray ash-clotted hair and hauled his head down. She kissed as ferociously as she did anything else. Pain bloomed suddenly in his lip as she sank her teeth deep, and he swore into her mouth. She yanked away, her mouth red as a rose with his blood, and she gave a swipe of her hand across her own lips, leaving her fingers scarlet. “There.” She slapped him on the chest, leaving a red mark just below the breastbone. “That’s where you drive the knife in.”

  She stood there all over ash and rage, and he thought her splendid. A splendid final kiss, he thought. Even if it hurt, it was still a kiss. It had been a long time since a woman kissed him.

  “You’re right,” he acknowledged, dabbing at his lip. “My life is worth more than a habit of despair. My life is worth yours.”

  “Marcus—”

  He stooped and picked up the dagger lying in the straw between their feet. “You are correct that a blade to the heart is fastest. However, it requires a certain degree of strength, and the same unfortunate Year of Four Emperors that took your virtue also took most of the strength from my arm. Consequences of imprisonment, and a beating that never healed. So—” he slashed deep and calmly down one wrist “—the opening of a vein will have to do.”

  The blood leapt out as though waiting to leave the vein, pattering on the straw. Marcus felt no pain at all. It was Diana who shouted, lunging for his wrist, but he had already plunged his hand into her hair and held her at arm’s length. That he was strong enough to do.