A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii

by Stephanie Dray

  PRIMA

  UPSTAIRS, in the room where they slept at night, Prima rummaged through their belongings, glancing longingly at the simple palette bed they shared. She wanted to curl up on it. To curl round her sister under a blanket and drift off to sleep and let whatever would come, come. But she couldn’t bear to die in that bed alone.

  So when Capella called up to her again, she threw down to her a fringed but threadbare cloak to help keep the sting of the hail from her sister’s bare arms. She tossed down, too, an old, torn cushion.

  Capella caught the pillow with one hand and feathers puffed out and swirled round her. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s for your head, you dolt. You’ve already got so little sense you can’t afford a falling rock knocking the rest of it out of you.” As for Prima, she knew she’d already taken leave of her own senses. If they ran, they would have to keep on running, because if ever they did find a patch of sunlight, there was sure to be an executioner waiting for her there.

  She hadn’t been thinking clearly when she bashed Senator Marcus Norbanus over the head. If she’d been thinking, she would’ve realized there were probably witnesses. There were always witnesses near a brothel. And even the handsome aedile, for whom she’d performed so many unsavory acts, couldn’t protect her; Gaius Cuspius Pansa would turn her over in a heartbeat. The authorities would want to make an example of her. They might even cart her to Rome to do it …

  Rome. She’d never been to Rome. Not even when Poppaea Sabina became empress. Now, with Prima’s luck, the only part of the eternal city she was ever likely to see was the inside of an arena just before being fed to lions.

  Dying in her bed was looking better and better.

  “Stop stalling!” Capella called up. “The stones are falling faster.”

  Prima sighed. There was nothing worth taking but a few coins she’d been hiding under the eaves. Shiny coins with the new emperor’s face on them. The aedile had given them to her as wages for information about one of her customers: a love-struck, pimply-faced boy with an important uncle.

  If he’s foolish enough to trust a whore, then he deserves what he gets.

  That’s what Pansa had said. She’d believed him because she knew love itself was foolishness. An infection. A disease. Love was a delusion that made you give away your money and your body and your safety for nothing. That’s why Prima didn’t love anything or anyone.

  Except Capella.

  So she grabbed another pillow and started back down the stairs.

  She lit a torch. Then she took her sister’s hand and stepped out into the storm.

  There was no wind, but the rumbling mountain and clatter of stones and the howling animals and screaming women made for a cacophony. “Which gate?” Prima shouted over the bark of a dog left chained at the front of a house. CAVE CANEM. Beware of the dog, Prima thought. Everyone had a sign like that even if they had no dog. Because dogs were stupidly loyal. They would protect that which didn’t belong to them. That’s what Dominus had wanted Prima and Capella to do. Stay behind and guard the caupona while they ran to safety. But their master hadn’t chained them, so maybe he deserved to lose them.

  Prima was the older sister, the wiser one, and the stronger one. She should know what to do and which way to go. But she could not think, so she demanded again, “Which gate?”

  Capella’s blue eyes were round with fright and she pulled her fringed cloak tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  Squinting into the blackness, Prima snapped, “Why are your visions always so vague on important details? Didn’t Isis tell you where it was safe to go?”

  Capella only groaned. “I don’t know. I don’t. But Sabinus once told me that when the earth quakes here, it does not quake in Rome. And Sabinus predicted—”

  “To Hades with Sabinus!” Prima shouted.

  She hated that mopey clod even more than the other men who shoved their pricks into her sister. He was a talker; one of the men who took more from Capella than just her body. One of those men who needed an illusion of love or friendship. A real man would admit to himself that paying a girl to drain his balls was no different than paying a girl to empty his piss pot. Fuck Sabinus and his predictions; Prima hoped he was dead. Dead and trampled and eaten by wild dogs. “I’m not entrusting our fate to some rich fool with deluded visions of his own.”

  “He doesn’t have visions, he—” Capella suddenly broke off.

  “What is it?”

  “The Stabian Gate,” Capella said, her hand tightening on Prima’s as she started off in that direction, her anklet of little charms jingling as she hurried. “I am sure of it.”

  CAPELLA

  I am sure of nothing but that I know the way to the Stabian Gate. I can find it even if our torch should go out. I can find it by hugging the walls of shops on the street in the dark, as I did once before when I was a runaway girl. The Temple of Isis is near the Stabian Gate, and I believe I can find my way there with my eyes closed and with nothing but my love for the goddess to guide me because I’ve done it before. As I drag my sister along, block after block, the leather soles of our sandals skating unsteadily over a layer of tiny charred stones, I trip over what appears to be an abandoned hand-cart of cabbages.

  I come down hard, pillow and all, half my body off the high curb, splayed on the paving of the street, my toes digging into the ruts that wheels have made over many years. The other half of my body lands upon something soft and wet and warm.

  Flesh. A whore knows human flesh.

  “A dead man.” I gasp, understanding in horror that the wetness now coating my hands is blood. Feeling my way up his stiffening body, I say, “His head is smashed. Someone or something smashed his skull.”

  My sister does not feel sorrow. Especially not for dead strangers. I expect she will haul me up and tell me to take his purse. Then she’ll kick the corpse and keep going. Instead, she backs away with the torch as if to avoid bad luck in looking upon the dead. “Does he have a purple-bordered toga?”

  “I don’t know.” I will not take it from him if he does.

  My sister’s fear must be driving her half-mad, because she makes a keening sound. “If he has a toga, cover him with it! Gods forgive me. Gods forgive me … but no, it can’t be him. He fell near the lupanar, not here.”

  I can make no sense of Prima’s rambling. I can make no sense of anything in this moment but the promise my goddess has made to me. I am meant to be free. I am meant to be more than my body, blood, and bones. There is a part of me that will never die. I am meant to endure a thousand years and a thousand more. That is the promise of Isis Sotera, Isis the Savior. And in spite of my fear and doubt, her promise still burns brightly enough in my heart that I’m able get to my feet. Prima has watched out for me and protected me all my life. Now I must do the same for her.

  I grab her dry and ashy hand in my blood-slick one. “We have to keep running, Prima. Follow me to the Stabian Gate.”

  We are not the only ones in the streets. We see dots of torchlight bobbing up and down and hear the shackles of a gang of slaves being driven out of the city by an overseer. We hear the furious neigh of a horse as it gallops by, showering us with stones as it passes. There is a pig, too, that goes snuffling and snorting by our legs. As we turn onto to the Stabian road, we’re swept up with a panicked, jostling crowd. Fire glows at the end of the street.

  “Torches at the gate,” I tell Prima. “We’re almost there.”

  But the gate seems farther away than can be possible. It does not help that we must stumble over those who have collapsed, groaning in pain and fear. “Stop,” Prima says, slowing with every step and not only because her legs are shorter than mine. Her tiny frame is wracked with coughs, and she wheezes into the toga she’d lifted to cover her face. “I can’t breathe. I can’t—”

  My own throat is also choked with ash. My tongue, dry and swollen. In spite of my cloak, my skin stings from the pelting debris. We need to drink. We need a
respite from the stones, but where can we shelter? I feel suddenly a fool for running. Perhaps Prima was right and we should have stayed in the caupona. Then she wouldn’t have had to suffer as she’s suffering now. At least she could breathe there.

  But every easy breath we’ve ever taken were breaths of lowly slaves and tavern whores.

  Those breaths belonged to our master, not to us.

  These breaths, no matter how labored, are ours.

  And so I press on, pulling my sister with me, even though our torch is nearly useless against the growing dark. In daylight, we would be able to see plaques with symbols advertising the wares at each shop. Hammers for the builders. Amphorae for wine. A fish for pungent garum sauce. But now I make my way by feel—my hands scraped raw against brick, stones, and wood. Then I hear a sound sweeter to my ears than any I’ve heard before. Singing. The shaking of the sacred sistrum rattle. It’s the music of mercy. And when my fingers find a glorious glowing opening in the wall, I know where I am.

  We’ve come to the Temple of Isis, a respite in the storm. And like shipwrecked sailors, weary and drowning, we stumble up the little stairs leading to the temple courtyard. It is aglow with lamps and torches of every sort. A miraculous sight. The earthquake did not touch the temple and the doors are open!

  A few of the shaven priests in their white kilts have not fled. They have not abandoned the temple or their duties. They’ve stayed to propitiate the goddess with song. To invoke her compassion. To burn sacrifices upon her altar. And beneath the shelter of the red-painted portico, still more priests tend bleeding refugees. Some of the wounded wade through the pool for relief though it’s now filled with a slurry of stone and ash. Others stoop beneath friezes of dragons and sphinxes; they are desperate for the jugs of sacred Nile water the linen-clad priests hold to their lips.

  I am struck dumb at the kindness and composure of these holy men.

  So moved by it that a sob wrenches its way from my dry, sore throat.

  No. I am more than moved. I am shamed. Shamed deeper than body, blood, and bones. Because I am a fraud. I say I am meant to be a priestess of a goddess who offers mercy, but not once since the mountain began spewing its life force out into the sky, did I offer help to anyone but my sister. I did not hold onto the boy who cried, terrified, in my arms. I let him run off alone and nameless, like the nameless infant daughter I let them pry from my arms. I did not stop to help the people who sank down onto the street, choking and coughing.

  I did not even cover the face of the dead man in the road.

  I am still burning with shame when we find shelter in the ekklesiasterion, an assembly hall for the faithful. Just inside the entryway, collapsing onto the black mosaic floor, Prima pleads for a drink, and it is given to her. I am thirsty, too, but I cannot drink the water. I am not worthy of it. Not because I have been a slave and an unclean whore, but because in my fear, I doubted the compassion of Isis.

  I’ve been measured and found wanting.

  I do not mean to say any of this aloud. I don’t even realize that I have said it until the kindly priest holds the jug to my lips and whispers, “Drink. Nile water purifies and washes away our crimes.”

  And so I drink. I gulp it down.

  INSIDE the ekklesiasterion, a merchant bickers with his wife. She thinks they should have left the city days ago, when she pleaded with him to do so. He thinks she had better shut up and that they will leave as soon as their children have rested. She chides him for his impiety in the sacred precinct but he puts no stock in Isis, to whom his wife has been praying. Their bickering is so distracting that we don’t see the missile that strikes the priest.

  I only hear it whistle through the sky and crash on the tiled roof just moments before he stumbles, dropping to his knees with a bloodied face. When I rush to help him, he holds up the jug of sacred Nile water and says, “Take it.”

  I do, only to keep the precious water from spilling to the ground. But as I stand there with the jug, a crowd of thirsty refugees reaches for me. Trembling fingers fan out before me, and some people grab at my tunica. I want to escape them just as I wanted to escape the groping hands of men in the tavern. But I do not recoil from the desperate hands that grasp my ankles, my legs, and my arms. Because in this moment, touched by these strangers, something happens. Something happens inside me.

  Something cracks open. As if I am a seabird newly hatched from an egg, discovering its wings.

  And I hold the jug to thirsty lips, helping the suffering to drink.

  “What are you doing?” Prima asks.

  “The work of Isis,” I whisper, not knowing where the words come from. Knowing only that they are true.

  The answer is there upon the murals in this place. They depict Io, a priestess who was debased by seduction, turned into a white cow, and tormented to madness, but sought mercy in Isis and lived in redemption. There, upon the wall in the flickering lamplight, I see the naked woman with bovine horns reaching out to white-robed Isis. Io found grace.

  In the wake of my own debasement and torment, is grace not offered to me also?

  “We need more water from the cistern,” the injured priest says. But he cannot rise to fetch it and his companions have melted away to the temple.

  I am the only one he looks to for help, and I whisper softly, “I’ll get the water.”

  Unfortunately, I do not whisper it softly enough. “We have to go,” Prima snaps.

  “We will,” I tell her. “But first—”

  She digs her nails, sharp as talons, into my arm. “You said we should run. You said you foresaw it. You convinced me to leave Pompeii. I’m convinced. Let’s go!”

  I ignore her in favor of the priest, who is losing so much blood that it cannot be soaked up with the end of his linen garment. Doing what I can to hold the cloth against his wound, I say, “Give me the keys to the purgatorium and I’ll get more water.”

  He shakes his head, clearly dizzied and torn. The Nile water is not meant to slake the thirst of the uninitiated, but the priests have given it freely. Having already made this exception, will it enrage the goddess if he grants to me access to the cistern? When he sees my anklet of ankh charms, it seems to decide him. He hands over the keys on an iron loop, saying, “Pray to Isis for mercy … and before you go down the stairs, tie your shawl between your breasts in her sacred knot.”

  “Capella, don’t be stupid,” my sister hisses, trying to dash the keys from my hand. “We must go.”

  “Help me,” I say, already unfastening my once brightly colored shawl, the fringes of which are now grayed and stained with soot. It isn’t linen, a thing I hope Isis will forgive. But my fingers know the knot of the tiet in which all the mysteries of the goddess are held secure. And so I tie it between my breasts while my sister brims with fear and fury. “You’re not a priestess,” she says with a snarl. “And I’m not braving falling bricks and tiles and rocks for some strangers. If we dash from under the shelter of this roof, we do it to escape. We’re almost to the gate. You said there’d be boats in the harbor. That the navy will come to our rescue. And sailors will do anything for even a promise of a pretty girl’s body.”

  It pains me to hear her repeat these words in the holy place that has given us sanctuary. Prima is only repeating my words, but it seems as if I spoke them a lifetime ago. As if someone else said them.

  “I’ll get more water from the cistern,” I promise the priest.

  My sister glares at me, her black eyes burning. “If you do, you’ll do it alone.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I vow to her, pulling my sister into an embrace.

  At first she surrenders to it, grasping me tightly. But then her fear and fury get the best of her and she wrestles away. “I won’t be here when you return,” Prima warns. “I’ll leave you this time. How will you like that? I’ll leave you behind and be better off for it.”

  I touch her cheek and make her look at me. “The purgatorium isn’t far. Just a few steps and I’ll be back for you before yo
u know it.”

  She shudders. “Come with me now or don’t come at all. I don’t care one way or the other. You’ll only be a pretty burden like you’ve always been—”

  “Prima—”

  “You’re wrong about the sailors,” she raves. “Pretty means nothing out there in this darkness. You’re going to get lost and get your skull smashed in by some falling rock. But why should I care? I hate you—”

  “Prima,” I say, with an authority in my voice I’ve never heard before. It silences her. She stares at me, her chest heaving, her shoulders trembling. “Prima, you’re braver and more beautiful than you know. And I love you. I have loved you from my first breath; I will love you to my last. I’m not going to get lost, because you always know where to find me.”

  PRIMA

  ONE, two, three …

  Prima told herself that her sister would follow. She need only frighten Capella a little. If she pretended to abandon her, surely her sister would come to her senses. And so Prima counted her steps. Twelve steps away from the temple before she would turn around and go back for Capella.

  Four, five, six …

  It was more like wading, really, than walking, because the stones were now much more than ankle deep. When she looked in the direction of the mountain to see flames leaping up like lizards, she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to take six more steps without Capella.

  She strained to hear if her sister was calling her. Surely, she would call out!

  Seven, eight, nine …

  Stubborn cow. Prima would have to go back. She’d have to give in. She’d have to go back and say that she was sorry, sorry about more than Capella could ever know. She’d have to plead with her. She’d have to beg her forgiveness. She’d have to promise anything, anything at all …

  Ten, eleven—

  Prima stopped abruptly at the sight of a tall figure standing like an imposing statue of Hercules in the middle of the Stabian road. There was only one man in the city so good-looking that the ashes of Vesuvius would render him a beautiful unpainted Greek sculpture, pretty eyelashes and all. Even so, it took Prima a moment to recognize the aedile because she’d never seen him without his perfectly pressed toga, chalked so white it gleamed.