A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii

by Stephanie Dray

  “I won’t get too tired.”

  Prima smashed her fist against his chest. “Why won’t you let me go?”

  His eyes still swam with unshed tears. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think you love me?”

  “Shut up,” he snapped.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? A grown man should know better, but you’re like those pathetic sentimental boys I steal from. I steal their purses. I steal their hearts. I steal their manhood. Do you harbor some hope that with you, it would be different?”

  “I don’t love you, Prima.”

  “Then you lust for me. Is that it, Gaius Cuspius Pansa? All this time, you’ve paid me to do everything but what you really wanted. Well, as long as you let me go, you can have me here, in a tomb, like one of the bustuariae, those filthy leprous necropolis whores who wail with grief during the day and with pleasure at night—”

  “I don’t want you,” he said, shaking her. “I don’t love you and I don’t lust for you. But I’m not leaving this city alone. I’m taking you.”

  He was taking her. He was taking her away from the one thing that meant more to her than life. He had torn her from her sister, and she screamed, “Why, why, why?”

  But he would only answer that he didn’t know.

  CAPELLA

  THE priest is dying. He is bleeding out his life on the floor of the ekklesiasterion, which can only be reached now by climbing over the layer of stones and sliding back down into the open doorway. I go to him covered in white ash with the tiny child toddling behind me, clinging to one hand, and, like the cult statue, an oenochoe jug in the other. The priest looks up at me and smiles. “Isis.”

  Then his life slips away.

  I think I am the only one to notice.

  When I kneel down to close his eyes, I find a sack of bread and coins. Prima’s, I realize, and I am overcome with emotion. Did she leave it for me as a final gift? No. Prima doesn’t leave food behind. She meant to come back for it—and for me. Knowing this eases the pain in my heart, but if she meant to come back, why hasn’t she? She must be dead, or she would have come back! I stifle a sob of love and longing for my sister.

  No. If Prima cannot survive this, no one can—she’ll come back for me when she’s able to. She always knows where to find me.

  The merchant says, “We’re going to be buried alive in here.”

  I look at him more closely. I’ve seen him in the streets before, peddling cabbages. He and his family all stare back at me, and the nameless girl’s hands grip tighter on me. These people are looking to me to tell them what to do. But all I know is what I saw in my vision. A flood. How does one survive a flood?

  “We’ll get to higher ground,” I decide. The beautiful temple, painted ornately in green and red, is raised on a dais over the rubble. Last I saw it, the roof was undamaged and the glorious carved doors were open. The temple houses the cult statue; we will profane the sacred place by using the cella for shelter. Nevertheless, I say, “We’ll go into the temple.”

  Pulling Sabinus’ little friend to my hip and carrying the sack and the water jug, I lead the ragtag band of panic-stricken people through the stone and ash, which is bursting through windows, through doors and rooftops—through every crevice and crack. We hear the crash of collapsing buildings around us and the debris is so high we must crawl through it. We must swim. Overhead, only flashes of fire and lightning break the darkness.

  It is the lightning that shows us the temple stairs, half-submerged.

  We climb up them, exhausted and scraped raw, and enter the temple to find the priests gone. The only trace of them is the lingering scent of perfume and sweet-smelling smoke. Did they lose their nerve? Perhaps they have braved the journey outside to preserve the treasures of Isis. Perhaps they are hiding in their rooms or some secret chamber. Wherever they are, they have taken nearly everything but some lamps and the beautiful statue of Isis.

  From her marble podium, the queen of heaven looks down on our mortal plight with a soft smile that seems to say: You are loved. And, in spite of everything, I feel loved. Differently than I have ever been loved before. Not like Prima’s possessive and protective love. Nor my mother’s sweet, undemanding affection.

  No, Isis loves me like an immortal mother who knows that all her mortal children must die. If not in this moment, then the next. For what is a year, a decade, a lifetime, but mere moments to a goddess older than time? She loves us for what we make of our moments. And Isis loves me for a strength I did not know was inside me before.

  So I set to work, tearing apart the linen sack Prima left behind, making bandages and masks for the people who followed me here. Sabinus hasn’t returned. I worry that he is not coming back. I worry that he is dead. That even if he is not dead, he won’t think to look for us here. He’ll find the body of the priest in an empty room and believe that I ran away. That I abandoned him like I abandoned my empress, my sister, and my daughter—

  But no. I was a different woman then; a different woman even an hour ago than I am now. Still, I am unutterably relieved when Sabinus staggers in, drenched in sweat. Before I can clasp him in relief, he throws down the ax, which is now bent and misshapen. “It’s no good. I couldn’t free them. Not even with the help of others there. Gladiators are trapped with stone piling up to their chests and the lady—she would not leave. One of the gladiators was her lover, but I couldn’t break his chains.”

  Sabinus lowers his head to his hands. “I wish—I wish I were a stronger man.”

  Searching for words to ease his anguish, I say, “You are stronger than any other man I’ve known.”

  He glances up at me with doubt. Sabinus is a man who spends more time inspecting aqueducts than exercising in the gymnasium. So perhaps he thinks it is flattery. The sort of thing a barmaid says to sweeten the disposition of the men who put hands on her. And I have employed flattery before: spoken honeyed words I did not mean. Even to him. But that was before I knew he was the sort of man to look after lost little girls.

  There is great strength in that. Greater than the strength of gladiators.

  The merchant calls to me. “Is there more water for my children?” I go to the little ones and give them the last sips of water, fitting little masks of cloth over their faces to ease their breathing. And Sabinus stares at me when the merchant’s wife says, “Thank you, priestess.”

  Sheepishly, I whisper to him, “They don’t know me. They don’t know what I am.”

  And he says, “I think they know exactly what you are.”

  PRIMA

  “I’M going to kill you,” Prima promised.

  Alas, the aedile seemed far less afraid of her than of the lightning that cracked over their heads, illuminating the road to Nuceria, which, far ahead, was filled with a steady stream of wagons and refugees. Apparently fewer refugees than Pansa had hoped.

  “Where are the rest?” he asked, with angry contempt. “The fools must have fled south to Stabiae. Did they think they could outrun the wind?”

  Prima and her sister would have fled south. Away from the mountain. Without the aedile to guide them, they wouldn’t have thought about the south-blowing wind. But the reminder of Capella, either dead in Pompeii or dying on a road to Stabiae, renewed Prima’s rage. “Do you hear me, Pansa? I said I’m going to kill you.”

  His voice was almost amused. “And how are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know yet. But you are getting tired,” she said, taking as evidence the fact that several miles back, he had set her on her feet and merely tugged her behind him like a recalcitrant mule. Though he gave her his own toga to breathe through, she herself was beyond exhaustion. Her back ached and her legs were heavy as iron. She couldn’t feel her own feet anymore. So though Pansa was supposedly the epitome of Roman manhood, she was sure he was weary, too. “You’re going to want to rest, Pansa. You’ll want to close your eyes. And when you do, I will make sure that you never open them again.”

  “Big talk for a skinny li
ttle slut. I suppose now that you’ve killed a senator, you have a taste for it?”

  That shut her up.

  She’d never killed a man before. Fish, fowl, and even a pig for the kitchen, yes. But never a man. She wouldn’t have expected it to be much different, though. Never suspected it might make her feel something like regret. She hadn’t meant to do it, truly. She could scarcely even explain to herself why she’d done it. One moment, Senator Norbanus had been asking questions about her sister and their enslavement.

  And the next, she had smashed him in an incoherent fury.

  What had he said that blotted all reason from her mind? He’d told her that because she and her sister had been sold with a caveat that they never be used for prostitution, that they might now, under the law, be free. She was sure he was trying to trick her, but he’d done something worse than trick her. He’d raised in her mind the possibility that her sister had been right all those times she’d said they were meant for freedom. That the Fates had decreed it, and Capella had been right to run away. All their lives, Prima had blamed their misfortune upon her little sister. But what if she were to blame?

  If Prima hadn’t dragged Capella back every time she’d run away …

  Whether he knew it or not, Senator Marcus Norbanus told Prima that she’d stolen from the only person she’d ever loved. That she’d stolen from Capella not just a few coins or a few hours, but a whole life. That was a truth that Prima couldn’t bear to hear.

  And so she killed that truth and the man who spoke it.

  All because Prima could not bear to be alone in this world.

  Perhaps the aedile was right to say they were the same. That made her hate him all the more.

  “Fuck,” Pansa said, stopping at the side of a body by the road.

  “What?” Prima asked. “Do you know him?”

  “It’s that gladiator. Pugnax. He was worth a small fortune.”

  Pugnax was also a slave, Prima knew. But the famed gladiator was worth far more than she. So she could make no sense of why Pansa was dragging her along with him instead of someone—anyone—else. Didn’t he have a family to worry about? “Where is your wife, I wonder?”

  “Long dead, along with the babe she died trying to bring into the world,” Pansa said.

  “What of your father?” she asked, remembering the grizzled old patriarch who restored the amphitheater and bought the election for his son. “Did he run for the hills at the first shake under his feet?”

  “He’s dead, too,” Pansa replied, and though his voice was flat, she felt a tremor in his hand. “Crushed beneath a fallen pillar.”

  Remembering his show of emotion at the necropolis, she continued to needle him. “You must be glad to be the paterfamilias, now. But a good son wouldn’t leave his father’s body behind for jackals. Isn’t it your duty to bury him?” At that, Pansa stopped. His jaw tightened. Good. She’d found a sore spot. Now she aimed to strike at it again. “Instead of dragging a worthless whore, wouldn’t a son with filial piety be carrying his father out of Pompeii like Aeneas carried Anchises out of Troy?”

  Pansa glared as if he wanted to grind her bones down to dust. But instead of answering taunts about his father, he shouted, “Pompeii is not Troy!”

  With malevolent pleasure at having found a way to hurt him, she said, “It is. Pompeii is done. The mountain is swallowing it up just like Troy was sacked and swallowed up by time. And you are just like pretty Prince Paris, having brought down the wrath of the gods upon your city with your scheming and corruption.”

  She didn’t know if the destruction of Pompeii was Pansa’s fault. She didn’t care. It only mattered that the accusation somehow made his big sweating hand loosen its grip enough for her to escape. She took the opportunity to yank her fingers from his grasp. Then she ran—or at least she tried to run. It was more of a mad scramble over the carpet of stones back toward Pompeii. Back to her sister.

  She’d always been fast and slippery, with a preternatural awareness in the dark—traits that helped her slide effortlessly through the narrow streets and alleys of the city. But Pansa was on her in an instant. The bulk of him came down on her back like a fallen beam. He knocked the wind out of her. She couldn’t catch her breath. Not even when he dragged her a bit and laid her shoulders back against something rough like bark. Oh, it was bark. A tree. An umbrella pine bent with the weight of ash on its branches.

  “Breathe,” Pansa said, as if he could command such a thing.

  Why did he care? She was just a slave and not even his slave. She wanted to keep from breathing just to spite him, but somehow sucked in an unwilling and ragged breath of stinking air.

  Scowling, he asked, “Do you know what my scheming and corruption bought for Pompeii?” Prima’s nostrils flared. She didn’t care, but saw that he was going to tell her anyway. “After Nero’s quake, other families of stature cut their losses and left behind anyone without the means to leave. But not my family. My family rebuilt Pompeii, brick by brick. We did it with scarce help from the emperor. We had to beg Nero just to make a visit. We had to stoop to allying with rich freedmen. We had to skirt the rules so things would get done. Pompeii would have died if it weren’t for the ‘scheming and corruption’ of the Cuspii Pansae.”

  “Do you want a plaque?” Prima asked. “Oh, that’s right. You had one with your statue in the amphitheater. It’s buried in the rubble, now. So whatever you did, you did for nothing. All of it for nothing.”

  Her other attacks had only nibbled at the edges of his resolve, but this time, Prima seemed to have torn a chunk away. He rocked back on his heels and for a moment, she feared he might forget his Roman gravitas, and start sobbing. But when he lifted his face, something had changed.

  He looked in command of himself again. “Seventeen years,” he said. Then he repeated himself, his voice growing louder. “Seventeen years. That’s what we did it for. My family bought Pompeii seventeen more years of life. She wanted those years and so do you. You want to know why I took you? It’s because I look at you and see Pompeii! She’s an obscene whore of a city, crooked as your teeth. But she’s my city. I’m the aedile. I’m responsible for the streets and the buildings and the sewers and the whores. Well, the streets and the buildings and the sewers are buried now, so you’re the only Pompeii left for me to save.”

  “I don’t want to be saved.”

  “Yes. You. Do.” He nearly spit the words in her face. “Whether it’s a few years more, or a few hours more, or a few moments more, you want them. You want whatever you can get. That’s who you are. I knew it the moment I offered you an opportunity to use your talents and you wrapped your greedy little fingers around my coins. You are starving for life. You suck the marrow out of it. In the end, you’ll do whatever you must to survive. I don’t have to drag you. I’m only doing it to spare you the pain of knowing that you can’t go back. That you won’t go back. Not even for your sister.”

  CAPELLA

  MY back is against the wall and the nameless little gap-toothed girl clings to me as we listen to the groans of the dying city. Sabinus stands close, his hand protectively atop her precious head. At first we all jump when a heavier stone or chunk of earth smashes against the temple roof. When one breaks through, coming down on us in a shower of tile and plaster, we do our best to scatter out of the way. But eventually we stop jumping. We stop scattering. We sink down to wait. Nearly numb to the fear, there is nothing for us to do now but surrender to the mercy of the goddess.

  There is a strange grace in this surrender. It makes each small pleasure immeasurably sweeter.

  There is a child in my lap. A little girl who lets me stroke her dark hair and rub her back, and dream that she is my daughter. But then, they are all my children now. Each person in this temple. The girl. The merchant who cannot stop bickering with his wife and children. Even Sabinus. They’re all going to die, if not in this moment, then in another. And so I resolve to love them now and help them know themselves before we die and are reborn and
must start the learning all over again.

  I ask the merchant about his cabbages and he tells us how to pile them up in the market, green and round with possibility, so that all the cooks will pay the best price. I ask his wife about the blend of spices in her recipe for stew. And I smile when the girl, now sitting between Sabinus and me, says the word esurio.

  She’s hungry. I know nothing about feeding a child. I have no milk in my breasts for her, nor do I know if she has been weaned. I think she must be two or three; so she should take Prima’s bread. I tear off a triangle of it and feed her little bits. I hope she takes as much pleasure in it as my sister did.

  Where is Prima now?

  She will never forgive me, I fear. Not in this life or the one after. But I think about how she might be away from this mountain and that makes me glad. Meanwhile, Sabinus must be thinking about the gladiators, because the hand that is not stroking the child keeps squeezing the handle of the ax at his other side. He wants to go again to the barracks and try to free the chained men. But none of the others will go with him. Worse, he has been coughing ever since he returned, his airway irritated by whatever malevolent air he inhaled in his efforts.

  To distract him, I ask, “How was your wedding?”

  “I was to marry Aemilia tonight.” He grimaces, but tries to make light of it. “I’m afraid the wedding has been canceled on account of bad weather.” He draws something from the purse at his side and fingers it reflexively. I cannot see the object clearly in the dim light, but I would swear it is a small doll. “I’m sure the guests were very disappointed.”

  “The bride most of all,” I say, with a gentle smile. “By chance, did you forget to invite the fiery god of the mountain to your nuptials?”

  “Aha,” he says, trying to laugh. “That’s what went wrong …”

  He gets up and goes to the door, coughing into his hand. “It’s slowing. The fall of stones is slowing.”

  I listen, and it is quieter, like a rain shower that is weakening. But it’s too dark to tell, and I say so.