Free Pompeii by Robert Harris Page A

voices and a peal of laughter.
    He doesn't want me to go to Pompeii, thought Attilius, suddenly. This whole performance tonight – it's been to keep me away from Pompeii.
    A woman's elaborately coiffeured head appeared at the doorway. She must have been about sixty. The pearls at her throat were the largest Attilius had ever seen. She crooked her finger at the senator. 'Cascus, darling, how much longer are you planning to keep us waiting?'
    'Forgive us, Rectina,' said Pliny. 'We've almost finished. Does anyone have anything else to add?' He glanced at each of them in turn. 'No? In that case, I for one propose to finish my dinner.'
    He pushed back his chair and everyone stood. The ballast of his belly made it hard for him to rise. Gaius offered his arm, but the admiral waved him away. He had to rock forwards several times and the strain of finally pushing himself up on to his feet left him breathless. With one hand he clutched at the table, with the other he reached for his glass, then stopped, his outstretched fingers hovering in mid-air.
    The wine had resumed its barely perceptible trembling.
    He blew out his cheeks. 'I think perhaps I shall sacrifice that white bull after all, Pomponianus. And you,' he said to Attilius, 'will give me back my water within two days.' He picked up the glass and took a sip. 'Or – believe me – we shall all have need of Jupiter's protection.'

Nocte intempesta

    [23:22 hours]

'Magma movement may also disturb the local water table, and changes in flow and temperature of ground-water may be detected.'
Encyclopaedia of Volcanoes

    Two hours later – sleepless, naked, stretched out on his narrow wooden bed – the engineer lay waiting for the dawn. The familiar, hammering lullaby of the aqueduct had gone and in its place crowded all the tiny noises of the night – the creak of the sentries' boots in the street outside, the rustle of mice in the rafters, the hacking cough of one of the slaves downstairs in the barracks. He closed his eyes, only to open them again almost immediately. In the panic of the crisis he had managed to forget the sight of the corpse, dragged from the pool of eels, but in the darkness he found himself replaying the whole scene – the concentrated silence at the water's edge; the body hooked and dragged ashore; the blood; the screams of the woman; the anxious face and the pale white limbs of the girl.
    Too exhausted to rest, he swung his bare feet on to the warm floor. A small oil lamp flickered on the nightstand. His uncompleted letter home lay beside it. There was no point now, he thought, in finishing it. Either he would repair the Augusta, in which case his mother and sister would hear from him on his return. Or they would hear of him, when he was shipped back to Rome, in disgrace, to face a court of inquiry – a dishonour to the family name.
    He picked up the lamp and took it to the shelf at the foot of the bed, setting it down among the little shrine of figures that represented the spirits of his ancestors. Kneeling, he reached across and plucked out the effigy of his great-grandfather. Could the old man have been one of the original engineers on the Augusta? It was not impossible. The records of the Curator Aquarum showed that Agrippa had shipped in a workforce of forty thousand, slaves and legionaries, and had built her in eighteen months. That was six years after he built the Aqua Julia in Rome and seven years before he built the Virgo, and his great-grandfather had certainly worked on both of those. It pleased him to imagine that an earlier Attilius might have come south to this sweltering land – might even have sat on this very spot as the slaves dug out the Piscina Mirabilis. He felt his courage strengthening. Men had built the Augusta; men would fix her. He would fix her.
    And then his father.
    He replaced one figure and took up another, running his thumb tenderly over the smooth head.
    Your father was a brave man; make sure you are, too.
    He had been a