A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii

by Stephanie Dray

  When I don’t answer, nor squat, nor sneeze, Prima snaps, “Never mind. Let’s get back into the caupona before someone thinks you’ve run away again.”

  There it is. She thought I’d run away again. That old scar of our childhood throbbing anew. That’s why she’s so angry. It ought to shame me, but it doesn’t. Not now. Not when I see, in this destruction, the moment I have been waiting for all my life. Standing up from the bed, making myself tall, I say, “Prima, we should run. Everyone else is fleeing the city. No one will stop us. Not even the most fearsome fugitivarii can capture runaway slaves in this stampede. Let’s escape together and be free. Let’s go. Let’s run!”

  Her lower lip trembles.

  Then she slaps me so hard that I fall to the shaking ground.

  PRIMA

  SHE had never struck her sister before. Not in anger. Not for any other reason. Perhaps she should have done it sooner. With a round moon face and dreamy blue eyes, Capella had a childlike sense of hopefulness about her. But if ever there were a time for Prima’s sister to grow up, it was now. “Do you want them to press a hot brand into your pretty forehead this time?” Prima asked as tiny pebbles bounced from the street onto the stone floor alongside the shards of tiles that had fallen earlier in the quake. “That’s what they do to runaway slaves. Or are you just so eager to run out into a hailstorm with these other fools?”

  Capella held one hand to her reddening cheek as those dreamy blue eyes filled with defiant tears. “It’s a hailstorm of little rocks. We’ve never seen a storm such as this. There’s never been such a storm as this—”

  Prima’s hands went to her bony hips. “And there may be giants coming up from the earth to make war on the gods. Didn’t you hear their trumpets? I don’t want to hear about gods or your visions and madness! Dominus said to close the caupona against looters and take shelter under the stairs, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Prima grabbed hold of Capella’s plump wrist and dragged her up off the floor and out onto the street where they braved a shower of charred, feather-light stones. They ducked under the awning of the caupona, retreating inside amid overturned stools, scattered wooden bowls, and an abandoned loaf of bread still warm from the oven. At this time of day the caupona ought to have been filled with drunk, groping patrons waiting for hot food to be ladled out of the jars set into the colorfully tiled countertop. It ought to have been filled with the sound of laughter, the scattering of dice, and big hands slapping coins down on tables. Even when night fell and Prima slid the wooden panels in place at the front of the street to lock up, the caupona was noisy with the arguments of drunken men in adjacent alleys. And long after the drunks found their beds, while Prima counted the earnings, she could still hear the wheels of wagons in the street … and her sister’s murmured prayers to a goddess who supposedly cared about the plight of whores.

  But now the caupona was empty as it was never empty and, except for the roar of the mountain, quiet as it was never quiet. “Where is everyone?” Prima’s sister asked, with a gasp. “Dominus left us, didn’t he? Everyone has run off. Everyone but us!”

  “I’m sure the master and his wife have only gone next door to shelter with the rich neighbors,” Prima said without meeting Capella’s eyes, trying not to frighten her. There had been a water shortage in the city for some time, so when the jug of wine set into the counter shimmered in the glow of her lamp, it beckoned to Prima’s parched throat. Since she was already sure to be whipped for doing worse than stealing wine, Prima pulled the jug to her lips and gulped at it greedily. That reminded her of the gnawing hunger in her belly, and she tore off a fragrant triangle of bread from the abandoned loaf.

  “What in the name of all the gods are you doing?” Capella asked, hugging herself with those fleshy arms that were so seldom empty. “You call me a madwoman, but you’re drinking wine and eating bread when we should be running for our lives.”

  “It’s good bread,” Prima said, grateful for the burst of fennel, parsley, and coriander on her tongue. It was a special combination of those spices that made customers look for the stamp of their master’s baker on the loaf. Prima enjoyed it all the more because it helped mask the scent and taste of rotten eggs that now permeated the air. “And I’m hungry.”

  Prima had been born hungry. Hungrier than any other child ever born, with a hole in her center that could never be filled. So hungry that she had to be pried off the nipple for fear she would suck her mother dry of life. Or so her mother said. It was one of the few things Prima remembered about the Gallic slave woman who had given birth to her. Prima couldn’t remember how her mother looked, except that she was round and rosy and fair like Capella.

  Prima looked nothing like either of them.

  She’d come out all dark and bony, the get of a different father. Probably a Greek, the red-haired empress once said, holding Prima’s chin between thumb and forefinger. “Unfortunate. I can’t have your daughter as my cupbearer. Greeks are clever, but they’re also sneaky little liars …”

  Prima poured a cup of wine for her sister and tore off a chunk of bread for her, too. “Here. Eat.”

  “No.” Capella refused with a shake of her head. “We need to go, Prima. I know it. I know it in my soul.”

  Prima snorted. “Your soul?” She didn’t believe in things she couldn’t see, touch, or eat. Except maybe shades and lemures, those angry spirits of the dead. Because anger made more sense to her than all the spirit bodies and mysteries the Isiacs ranted about.

  “Yes, I know it in my soul,” Capella insisted, gripping the countertop. “I’ve foreseen it. We’re meant to be free.”

  Free. What use was freedom unless you were rich enough to buy it? And even then, what use unless you were a man? Prima was an infamis—a status not easily escaped once your name was on the roll of registered prostitutes, from which it could never be removed. Like slavery, infamia meant no voice, no legal status, and few protections of any kind. Better to be a disreputable but well-fed slave girl than a disreputable and starving freedwoman, Prima thought. Most of them ended up whoring themselves anyway, to survive. A master in Pompeii was good protection, and their master was no worse than any other. And yet, Capella had been prattling on about freedom her whole life.

  Prima supposed she had no one to blame but herself. She had always coddled her younger sister. A pinched sweet here, a few stolen coins there, the false piety of a bowed head. Keep Capella from grieving over her child being taken from her; keep her from being registered as a whore. Anything to keep her from running away again. Anything to make Capella smile. Because Prima lived for that smile. Her own gap-toothed smile was crooked and ugly. But her sister’s rosy-cheeked smile was the only truly beautiful thing in the whole crooked and ugly world.

  That’s why Prima had agreed to do the bidding of the aedile, Gaius Cuspius Pansa.

  Keep my sister’s name off the roll of prostitutes, Pansa, and I promise to do your bidding.

  She hadn’t known, when she made that promise, that it would be her doom. She was a dead woman now, even if the city didn’t swallow her up in its blackness. She had done something terrible because of the handsome but loathsome aedile. Something that would probably see her crucified.

  That is what they did to slaves who murdered senators, wasn’t it? They would torture her first, she was sure. She’d seen slaves whose lips, ears, and noses were cut off before their eyes were gouged out and then they were nailed to a cross. Prima pushed the horrifying memory away, and said, “You’ll like the bread better with some oil and olives. You’ve always liked that since you were a little girl. I’ll open the casks in the back. Maybe we’ll find half a spicy sausage left in the pan. We’ll make a meal of it.”

  Capella shook her head violently. “I said I don’t want to eat.”

  “Well, food is all I can give you!” Without warning, a lifetime’s worth of bile rose into Prima’s throat. She had been swallowing it down for her sister’s sake. Swallowing and swallowing, until her bell
y ought to have been filled with it. But she was never full and couldn’t swallow it anymore. “Eating is all there is. It’s all the freedom you’re ever going to have. Right here, right now, in this moment before we die.”

  Capella trembled. “What are you saying?”

  “Do I need to say it? Are you too blind to see the truth? Of course you are. You’ve always been too soft for the truth. Our mother’s soft and sweet baby. Empress Poppaea Sabina’s favorite pet. Such a special, mystical little girl.” Prima mimicked. “Everyone pampers you—even that lonely engineer who pretends to befriend you. What’s his name?”

  “You know his name,” Capella said, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s Sabinus. And he’s not an engineer, but he is my friend.”

  “No, he pays you to be his friend! He only gives you wine to wash the taste of him from your mouth so he can forget you’re a whore.” Why couldn’t Prima stop the cruel words from tumbling from her mouth? They came out in a rush, scalding her tongue. “Where is your adoring mother now? Dead. Where is your empress now? Dead. Where is your ‘friend’ Sabinus? Likely dead, too. So maybe now you’ll realize that your salvation cult is folly and the only thing special about you is that long ribbon of golden hair and the pillowy tits men pay to squeeze and suck. That is the truth. We eat, we shit, we fuck, and we die. That’s all there is. I tell you this all the time, but maybe now you’ll believe it. That’s all there is for anyone, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. This is who we are and all we’re ever going to be.”

  CAPELLA

  MY sister is afraid, I realize. Prima is terrified.

  It has always been a joke between us that, whatever the birth order, I am the big sister and she is the little one because she is tiny, much smaller than me. But I have always relied upon her sharp elbows to make way for us in a crowd, the lash of her vicious tongue to fend off abusive men, her unsavory schemes to keep us fed. I have marveled at the way she never, ever cries—not even when she’s being beaten.

  But now I see that my sister is a hissing alley cat that I somehow mistook for a gladiatrix.

  How have I never realized before that the source of all her anger is fear?

  “You think we’re going to die,” I whisper. “Say it, if that’s what you mean, Prima. We’re going to die.”

  She cannot look at me. She just sits there tearing bits of bread from the loaf. She crams them into her mouth and chews, but she has clearly lost her taste for it. And when she answers, her voice is quiet and far away. “The whole world is dying and we’re dying with it.”

  It is a horrible thing to say. But, day has become night and rocks have become rain, so maybe it’s true. Strangely, I take solace in this. In the togetherness of the world ending in its entirety, if that’s what is happening. I find strength in it, even. Strength enough to take my sister by her narrow shoulders and ask, “If we’re dying, what does it matter if we die here or out on the streets, at least struggling for a chance?”

  “Are you deaf, you stubborn cow? I’m telling you there’s no chance for us and I’m tired of struggling. We’ve been struggling our whole lives.” Prima’s arm steals around my waist in something akin to a hug. “I’d rather we die with full bellies, on a soft bed, with a roof over our heads than”—Prima waves in the direction of the street—“out there.”

  “I’m going,” I say, resolutely.

  “Of course you are,” she answers bitterly, letting her arm fall away. “You always run away. And look at the good it’s done us.”

  Prima blames me—and she is right to. We were not born to squalor and infamy. No, we were born in the fabulously luxurious insula belonging to the family of Poppaea Sabina, a girl who rose to be empress of Rome. Our mother was that girl’s slave. Long before Nero fell in love with Poppaea. Long before Poppaea convinced Nero to divorce his wife and make her his bride. Long before he killed her …

  And though I could have been no more than three years old when Poppaea Sabina became empress, I remember her well. The fiery-haired empress loved my golden ringlets and delighted in dressing me as a winged cupid to amuse her friends. The empress lived in unimaginable luxury, bathing every day in milk, but she considered herself to be a deeply religious woman.

  I was with her on the day she returned to Pompeii for the Navigium Isidis to celebrate the opening of the sailing season. And all of Pompeii was bedecked with colorful floral garlands, the harbor crushed with crowds of sailors, all straining to see the sacrificial ship be floated into the ocean to honor the goddess Isis, who guided them home. Enraptured by the rattling sound of the sistrums, I drew close to the frothing waves. As I did I saw the fate of Empress Poppaea. Though I would have other visions looking into water, this was the first. And I fell to my knees in the sand in reverence for the goddess who had touched me.

  My mistress, too, was moved. Seeing me on my knees in prayer, she pledged me to the temple to serve as a priestess when I was grown. It should have been enough for me. Isis had chosen me and I had a mistress who would surrender me to the goddess! Mine was to be a life of the spirit, of dignity, and respect.

  But I knew from my visions that the empress would never live to fulfill her pledge.

  So I ran.

  That first time, I sought refuge with the priests, determined to serve the goddess. Prima found me in the temple and dragged me back. She took the blame and the overseer laid a scourge across her back. She did not cry; she shed not one tear. But it was a beating from which she still has scars. Fortunately, because of our youth and the mercy of the empress, we were not branded, tattooed, or maimed, but merely forced to wear wooden signs round our necks and sent to work in her nearby pottery factory. There, working until our fingers pruned with water and caked with clay, we were meant to take a lesson in how lucky we were to serve a kind mistress in a sumptuous house where our duties were few.

  But I ran away again and again to the temple until our mistress sold us to the first bidder. The sale stipulated we were never to be put to work in prostitution, but Empress Poppaea washed her hands of us.

  And with it, her pledge to Isis.

  So it is my fault that we came of age in a tavern, selling wine and sex. I stole from my sister a life in which she might have been happy. A life in which she might never have been hungry. A life in which her name would not have been scrawled on walls with a price, her talents illustrated in obscene detail, her name not listed on the rolls as one of the registered meretrices.

  That’s why she blames me. It’s why I blame myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, making Prima look at me. “I’m sorry we landed here—”

  “You think that makes a difference?” she asks with a sudden snort of bitter laughter. “Feed them, fuck them, wash their clothes, clean up their piss and shit, draw their baths of milk … it doesn’t matter. It’s just work. And whoring is the easiest work there is. You just lay there if you’re lazy. Use your mouth if you want it over quick. You think I care whether some pathetic boy tries to find love by piddling his seed on my thighs, or whether, instead, some perfumed empress uses my back for a footstool? I don’t care. I don’t.”

  But I care. It matters to me. It always has. My sister has a different way of seeing the world, so maybe she is telling the truth. But I don’t think she is. “If you don’t care, then why won’t you forgive me?”

  At this question, Prima’s face screws up into a mask of anguish. Whatever words she is wrestling with are words she does not want to say, but she cannot seem to keep them caged and they hiss their way between the gap in her teeth. “Because you left me! I’ve always looked after you. Always. But you ran, never giving a moment’s thought about what might happen to me. You left me behind. And now, after everything, you want to leave me again.”

  Her words take a savage bite from my heart and I bleed with guilt, because they’re true. All except for the last. “No, Prima. I don’t want to leave you. This time we’re going together. There will be boats in the harbor. The navy will come to rescu
e—”

  “To rescue citizens, not us.”

  To convince her, I say, “Sailors will do anything for even a promise of a pretty girl’s body. So we’re going even if I have to drag your skinny bones behind me like a bundle of sticks.”

  She is indignant, jutting out her stubborn chin. “As if you could.”

  I try a new approach. “If you don’t come with me, everyone will laugh at you for a fool. You saw those people out in the street running away. What if the world isn’t ending? What if it is only Pompeii that is wrapped in darkness? Think how everyone who escapes will laugh that Prima was smart enough to know an easy mark in an alleyway, but not clever enough to run out the gates of the city to find a patch of sunshine.”

  She rears back, affronted, as I knew she would be, because my sister is fed by her contempt for others. I do not think she can bear the thought of anyone laughing at her, even in death. And she is silent so long that I am hopeful that she will give in. But then she gets up from her stool, and goes to the back room where we keep the casks of oil and olives.

  So I will have to drag her, I think. I ready myself to do it, every muscle tensed with anticipation. I’ll have to be quicker than I’ve ever been in my life, because she’s fast when she wants to be. She darts like a mouse. But she does not run from me. Instead, she snaps, “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to fill a sack with bread?”

  “What?”

  Her black eyes flash with impatience as she pops an olive into her mouth. “If there’s a patch of sunshine out there for us somewhere, I’m not going to look for it without taking something to eat.”