Pompeii. Part 29

Cato clapped Seneca on the back. "Bar the door behind me. There will be looters about."

"You are leaving?"

"I must get to my own family." He eyed the group. How many would he see again? Flora clung to Europa. Jeremiah stood near the two, leaning on his staff. He caught Cato's glance and nodded slowly.

A swell of emotion caught Cato off guard. He placed a hand over his own chest, bowed to the old man, and received the blessing of his smile in return.

In the street, he heard the bar slide into place behind him and breathed a prayer to Jeremiah's G.o.d to keep them safe.

It had grown darker since he entered the house. The gray ash cloud had spread, dimming the sky. In the streets, rich and poor alike streamed toward the edges of the city. Carts rumbled past, piled with furnishings and valuables, and their owners yelled at slaves to hasten.

And yet as crowded as the streets were, it was clear that the majority of the town had taken refuge in their homes.

He shoved his way through the panicked citizens, past taverns and brothels, bakeries and thermopolia, all gone silent, their inhabitants either hiding or fleeing. People knocked him against the stone walls and once down into the gutter. He pushed on, heart pounding.

He found his own door barred when he reached it. Octavia's doing, certainly. Good woman. He smacked his palm against it and heard the call of a slave in return. "It is Portius Cato! Open the door!"

The bar slid upward, the door cracked open, and he shoved through the opening, turned and barred the door himself.

Isabella and Octavia rushed from the atrium. His sister called to him in her dramatic way. "Is it the end of the world?"

He opened his embrace and caught them both, breathed a prayer of thanks over their heads. "Only the end of the mountain, my good women."

And perhaps the town.

Octavia's eyes were red-rimmed and she held a letter in her hands. "Everything is coming to an end." She waved the letter. "I have just had word that my brother Servius is dead."

Cato exhaled, unable to take in this news, with all else that had transpired.

"Where should we go?" Octavia was all practicality, though he could see the fright in her eyes.

"Nowhere at present. The buildings are unsafe because of the quake, and fires are raging. There are enough panicked people in the streets. You are safer here."

Isabella was quick to note the you. "Quintus, you are not going back out there!"

He faced his mother. "I must see to Portia. It is madness to leave prisoners underground during a quake. She must be freed."

Octavia's face blanched. Clearly, she had not thought of the danger to her eldest daughter.

"Courage, mother. I will be back soon and return Portia to your arms. Keep Isabella secure." He spoke of courage, even as fear dampened his neck and forehead.

Octavia seemed torn between duty to each of her children, as though she wished both to stay with Isabella and to go with her son, to see Portia freed.

He kissed her cheeks, kissed Isabella also, and turned to go, calling over his shoulder. "Stay away from the walls and the columns. Keep to the garden."

He had no doubt his mother would secure the door behind him. He launched back into the street, joining the human current flowing toward the prison, the Forum, and the Marina Gate.

He would free Portia if at all possible, but in truth it was not his only errand. There was another woman whose safety concerned him, and he would see her protected before he returned home.

The mountain still poured forth its foul contents, a column so high he had to crane his neck backward to see the spreading summit. The edges of the black cloud reached the sun in its midday position, and crept across it, eclipsing the day and turning it to dusk in moments.

The darkness seemed to cast unreasonable fear into the people in the streets, and the chaos spiked. Horses and wagons plunged down the narrow roads. People fell beneath cart wheels to be trampled underfoot. Cato kept to the walls, turning his body sideways at times to avoid the press of madness. His breath came in gasps, as though the air had thickened.

Halfway to the prison the ongoing rush grew sluggish. It took only a moment to discern the cause. The people stood in the street, faces and palms raised to the sky.

Snow? In the heat of Augustus?

But it was not snow. It was ash.

Seneca's prediction. It had begun. The mountain was beginning to rain down on them.

In the lull caused by wonderment, Cato pushed forward and gained ground. By the time he reached the prison, the ash was falling heavy. The white marble paving stones of the Forum grew gray with a layer of it, and footprints could be seen where people trod.

He hurried across the Forum toward the magistrates' buildings and the prison beneath. The crowd thinned here, freed from the confines of the narrow streets.

He did not see it coming. One moment he was pushing across the Forum, and the next a burning boulder larger than his head dropped from the sky as though hurled in spite. The black-and-orange projectile smashed the paving stone only a cubit in front of him. He jumped backward, safe by only a fraction from the superheated rock. The bitter taste of fear rose in his chest.

The scare gave new meaning to the danger. Falling ash could be brushed away. Burning rocks could not. He risked a glance upward, expecting an avalanche from the sky. He could see no other blackened rocks, but it began to rain light pebbles that stung the skin. He bent his face to the ground, held out his hand to catch a few in his palm.

The stone hail was dirty-white, light and porous-like bits of bleached sea sponge from Greece--but solid. The sound of it hitting the Forum stones brought memories of echoing theater applause.

Again, this new revelation from the sky gave the townspeople pause, and the s.p.a.cious court ceased its churning for a moment, then resumed in earnest.

Cato, too, pushed forward toward the prison, his mind keeping pace with his feet. First the thick ash, and now rocks, some light and some fatal. It was growing more dangerous above ground than below it. The quakes had stopped. Would Portia be safer in the prison than they were above ground?

He was not the first to consider it. The prison entrance thronged with people shouting to be allowed underground. Several guards fought them off, striking down men and women alike with their heavy rods. Cato kept his distance, measuring his chances, measuring the danger.

In the end, he followed his instinct. For now at least, Portia was safer underground. How ironic . . . when this nightmare ended, perhaps the prisoners would be the only survivors.

And what of those toward the north? Of Nigidius Maius and his estate outside the north wall of the city, and the one who was held there against her will? To run there was to run toward the mountain. Which meant she was even nearer the danger.

Cato raced through the Forum to the north end, where the Temple of Jupiter still stood unrepaired from the last quake that had wrought destruction. Would Pompeii survive this disaster?

The stones a.s.saulted his face and arms, raising welts. He ran through the Street of Tombs, empty and silent save the continued rush of the fire-breathing mountain and the clatter of pebbles. .h.i.tting the street.

The street wound upward slightly, to a rise outside of town where Maius's estate farmed the rich, black soil and the grapes grew in abundance.

He reached the villa breathless and beaten by the falling pebbles. The gravel acc.u.mulated under foot now, crunching beneath his sandals. No more flaming boulders had accosted him, but he ran half-expecting to be struck down. Above him, the black cloud had reached to every horizon. Daylight had been overtaken by a foul midday night, a darkness that traveled on an evil wind and wormed its way through mind and heart.

Cato ran the length of the empty peristyle along the southern end of the villa, under a doorway, and into Maius's first atrium. The pleasant plink of rocks falling into the impluvium basin's water deceived. The reds and yellows of the garden's flowers glowed with the strange light of a coming storm.

He'd formed no plan as he ran. Foolish. Where would Valerius keep Ariella? Where would Maius have housed his guests? The household had fled the safety that open s.p.a.ce provided during an earthquake, to hide from the falling sky.

Should he yell for someone? Would they hand over Ariella? He must at least be certain she was safe, that she had survived the quake.

He ran through the house, coming upon a girl in a shadowy colonnade, about Isabella's age. She paced the hallway alone. She turned on him as though he might save her. Maius's blue-eyed daughter, Nigidia. With a flash of recognition he realized that he had seen her several times-among the Christians. Flora's friend.

"Have you seen my father?" In the murky light her face seemed luminescent.

He shook his head. "I am looking for the slave girl, Ariella. She belongs to Valerius."

Nigidia blinked several times, her lips parted.

He shook her. "Have you seen Ariella?"

"They have gone."

"Gone? Where?"

"Valerius. All of them. He left for Rome."

Cato released his grip on her. It had only been last night that Valerius arrived. "Because of the mountain? Is he a fool?"

Nigidia shook her head slowly. "No. They left before the quake. He wanted to sail today."

Cato turned from her, left her in the hall, guilt nipping at him. But she was not his responsibility. He already had four women to look after.

"Will you tell my father I am waiting for him?" Her voice was plaintive, childlike.

"Keep out of the open," he yelled in response, already across the atrium and heading back through the house. His tunic was damp with sweat now.

The ash seemed to have thickened while he had been indoors. He stopped under the peristyle roof to rip a swath of fabric from the bottom of his tunic and tie it around his face, to cover his nose and mouth. Chest heaving, he ran back toward the town, through the dirty ashfall that lay ankle-deep, mixed with the pebbles and rising fast. When would it stop?

More important, could Valerius have put out to sea before the disaster? And if he had . . .

What had become of his ship-and the slaves it carried?

CHAPTER 44.

Ariella and Micah pushed against the foot traffic on the inside of the gate and threaded through the crowd in the street. Ahead, though she could not see it past the people, lay the Forum. But between the gate and the Forum, people flooded into the entrances of the basilica on the right and the Temple of Apollo on the left, seeking refuge together. Stones began to fall on them, stinging bare skin. How could such a thing be? She understood the ash-it settled out of the sky from unseen fires. But stones from the heavens? It was beyond understanding.

Where should they go? There was something illogical about fighting against the flow of people. Did it not mean she and Micah were headed the wrong direction? And yet, any direction away from Valerius seemed right.

She longed for rea.s.surance that Isabella and Octavia were safe. And Europa and her household. Jeremiah. The faces flitted across her mind. She fought the desire to weep and kept pressing onward.

They reached the basilica and joined the flow into its central courtyard. The structure built for handling legal matters of the town had not yet been repaired since the quake that damaged the city years ago, as broken columns and a partial roof attested. Citizens clogged the nave, huddled in tight family groups. Children wailed and mothers tried in vain to comfort them, all the while looking at the treacherous black cloud spreading across the sky and the ash and pebbles it rained down on their heads.

Ariella slowed to watch the sky. It was unreal, like something from one of Maius's dark frescoes, with its billowing darkness blocking out the sun. How could they find safety from such a widespread, fearsome thing? She had been trained to defeat any foe. But this was an enemy far beyond her reach, and the helplessness both angered and terrified her.

Micah pulled her to the front of the building, to the raised apse that had retained its stone roof. They pressed against the wall, watching the turmoil as though they were ruling magistrates, looking down from positions of authority. Throughout the crowd, prayers to the various G.o.ds, chief among them Vulcan, were shouted from frightened lips.

Beside her, Micah spoke over the people. "This is what the Holy One says: 'In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land.'"

Ariella looked up at him, into the man's face of the boy she had known. Yes, a man now, of twenty years. A man who quoted the prophets as though their words were part of him. Since their meeting yesterday they'd had so little time to speak. Who had he become in the nine years since their separation? Had he carried anger as she had, refusing to bow the knee to a G.o.d who would rip him from his family and give away his inheritance?

He met her eyes, looked deep into her heart.

Regardless of what would become of them, for this moment they were together and they were free. She gave way to her emotions at last, and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. Tears flowed unchecked, so unlike her and yet a welcome release.

Micah held her head against his chest and patted her back as she sobbed out her fear and her joy. She had been a fool to think him still a boy, and the relief of being in his protective arms brought more tears.

"I have missed you, sister." He pulled her away and held her arms. "I never gave up hoping that I would find you."

She dried her face with the back of her hand. "Nor I, you."

Memories of that last day in Jerusalem, of the terrified chaos, the raging fires, the screams of people fleeing the streets, burned through her mind. Memories so like this very day that it was as though they had reunited only moments after they had been lost to each other, as though the years did not exist.

"Have you been in slavery these nine years?"

He shrugged. "Among other things." It would be a story for another time. "But when I eventually learned that you served under Valerius, I arranged to be sold there myself, hoping to find you." He touched her cheek and smiled.

She grasped his hand and held it there. "I am beginning to believe Hashem does watch over His children, even in the midst of suffering."

"You must believe it, sister." Micah's eyes grew serious. "I have much to tell you, things I have learned. The Messiah has come, Ariella, and we missed it. He walked Jerusalem with our grandparents . . ." He frowned. "What is it, Ariella? Why do you look at me that way?"

But she could not speak. Micah, too? Did everyone she loved believe in this new Messiah?

The ground trembled under their feet, and Micah pulled her farther into their shelter, but Ariella's heart was too raw to notice. The words spoken to her on the beach resonated: I gave My life to redeem yours.

Could it be true? Though her body remained in slavery, had her soul been purchased with holy blood? Could she be set free?

She had been fighting for so many years, fighting the G.o.d of her fathers for all the evil He had allowed. And yet, if it were also true that He had provided a way for her to be accepted, this way of shattering grace that defied all understanding, then was He not good? And what was there to do but surrender? To continue to fight was to throw herself in the path of death.

Her heart hovered there, on the edge of a precipice, looking into the unfathomable. She still did not understand His ways, how He could allow such horror and still love. Yet if the Messiah had come and died to save her, then what more proof did she require of the love of Hashem? She hovered- And then she leaped.

It took only a moment. While death rained down around their heads, Ariella pa.s.sed over to life. She felt it in her body, knew it in her mind, embraced it in her heart.

Micah waited, his eyes locked on hers.

"I know," she breathed. "He is also my Messiah."

Micah once more pulled her to his chest, and the ground heaved again.

He turned to the open nave, to the ash and pebbles that littered the floor. "I do not know that we are safe here."

As though in response, a huge chunk of blackness flared into the courtyard, angling out of the sky as though thrown down from heaven. A moment later a woman's scream cut across the wide s.p.a.ce, silencing the crowd. A circle widened from where she screamed, hugging two small children to her side. At her feet, under the flaming rock, lay the crushed body of a man. She screamed again and then again, the sound bouncing from the stone walls of the basilica, enveloping them all in a wave of panic.

And then there were more. A shower of flaming rocks like falling stars. With them came a strange smell, rotten like the smell of death. The people scrambled over each other in their race to escape the basilica, as though there were safety to be found in the streets.

Ariella's mouth went dry and she, too, pulled toward the crowd. Micah held her back.