Pompeii

'You had been freed by the Popidii by then?'
    Ampliatus shot him a look. However hard he tries to be affable, thought Attilius, those eyes will always betray him.
    'If that was meant as an insult, aquarius, forget it. Everyone knows Numerius Popidius Ampliatus was born a slave and he's not ashamed of it. Yes, I was free. I was manumitted in my master's will when I was twenty. Lucius, his son – the one you just met – made me his household steward. Then I did some debt-collecting for an old money-lender called Jucundus, and he taught me a lot. But I never would have been rich if it hadn't been for the earthquake.' He looked fondly towards Vesuvius. His voice softened. 'It came down from the mountain one morning in February like a wind beneath the earth. I watched it coming, the trees bowing as it passed, and by the time it had finished this town was rubble. It didn't matter then who had been born a free man and who had been born a slave. The place was empty. You could walk the streets for an hour and meet no one except for the dead.'
    'Who was in charge of rebuilding the town?'
    'Nobody! That was the disgrace of it. All the richest families ran away to their country estates. They were all convinced there was going to be another earthquake.'
    'Including Popidius?'
    'Especially Popidius!' He wrung his hands, and whined, '"Oh, Ampliatus, the gods have forsaken us! Oh, Ampliatus, the gods are punishing us!" The gods! I ask you! As if the gods could care less who or what we fuck or how we live. As if earthquakes aren't as much a part of living in Campania as hot springs and summer droughts! They came creeping back, of course, once they saw it was safe, but by then things had started to change. Salve lucrum! "Hail profit!" That's the motto of the new Pompeii. You'll see it all over the town. Lucrum gaudium! "Profit is joy!" Not money, mark you – any fool can inherit money. Profit. That takes skill.' He spat over the low wall into the street below. 'Lucius Popidius! What skill does he have? He can drink in cold water and piss out hot, and that's about the limit of it. Whereas you –' and again Attilius felt himself being sized up '– you, I think, are a man of some ability. I see myself in you, when I was your age. I could use a fellow like you.'
    'Use me?'
    'Here, for a start. These baths could do with a man who understands water. In return for your advice, I could cut you in. A share of the profits.'
    Attilius shook his head, smiling. 'I don't think so.'
    Ampliatus smiled back. 'Ah, you drive a hard bargain! I admire that in a man. Very well – a share of the ownership, too.'
    'No. Thank you. I'm flattered. But my family has worked the imperial aqueducts for a century. I was born to be an engineer on the matrices, and I shall die doing it.'
    'Why not do both?'
    'What?'
    'Run the aqueduct, and advise me as well. No one need ever know.'
    Attilius looked at him closely, at his crafty, eager face. Beneath the money, the violence and the lust for power, he was really nothing bigger than a small-town crook. 'No,' he said coldly, 'that would be impossible.'
    The contempt must have shown in his face because Ampliatus retreated at once. 'You're right,' he said, nodding. 'Forget I even mentioned it. I'm a rough fellow sometimes. I have these ideas without always thinking them through.'
    'Like executing a slave before finding out if he's telling the truth?'
    Ampliatus grinned and pointed at Attilius. 'Very good! That's right. But how can you expect a man like me to know how to behave? You can have all the money in the Empire but it doesn't make you a gentleman, right? You may think you're copying the aristocracy, showing a bit of class, but then it turns out you're a monster. Isn't that what Corelia called me? A monster?'
    'And Exomnius?' Attilius blurted out the question. 'Did you have an arrangement with him that nobody ever knew about?'
    Ampliatus's smile did not waver. From down in the street came a rumble of heavy wooden wheels on stone. 'Listen – I think I can hear your wagons coming. We'd better go down and let them in.'

    The conversation might never have happened. Humming to himself again, Ampliatus dodged across the rubble-strewn yard. He swung open the heavy gates and as Polites led the first team of oxen into the site he made a formal bow. A man Attilius did not recognise was leading the second team; a couple more sat on the back of the empty cart, their legs dangling over the side. They jumped down immediately