Pompeii

whores? But that did not seem possible. A tumble with one of Africanus's girls could not have cost more than a couple of copper coins.
    A floorboard creaked.
    He sat up very slowly and turned to look at the door. The moving shadows of a pair of feet showed clearly beneath the cheap wood and for a moment he was sure it must be Exomnius, come to demand an explanation from this stranger who had taken his job and invaded his property and was now lying on his bed in his ransacked room. 'Who's there?' he called, and when the door opened slowly and he saw it was only Zmyrina, he felt oddly disappointed. 'Yes?' he said. 'What do you want? I told your master to leave me alone.'
    She stood on the threshold. Her dress was split, to show her long legs. She had a fading purple bruise the size of a fist on her thigh. She gazed around the room and put her hands to her mouth in horror. 'Who done this?'
    'You tell me.'
    'He said he take care for me.'
    'What?'
    She came further into the room. 'He said when come back he take care for me.'
    'Who?'
    'Aelianus. He said.'
    It took him a beat to work out who she meant – Exomnius. Exomnius Aelianus. She was the first person he had met who had used the aquarius's given, rather than his family, name. That just about summed him up. His only intimate – a whore. 'Well he isn't coming back,' he said roughly, 'to take care for you. Or for anyone else.'
    She passed the back of her hand under her nose a couple of times and he realised that she was crying. 'He dead?'
    'You tell me.' Attilius softened his tone. 'The truth is, no one knows.'
    'Buy me from Africanus. He said. No whore everyone. Special him. Understand?' She touched her chest and gestured to Attilius, then touched herself again.
    'Yes, I understand.'
    He looked at Zmyrina with new interest. It was not uncommon, he knew, especially in this part of Italy. The foreign sailors, when they left the Navy after their twenty-five years' service and were granted Roman citizenship – the first thing most of them did with their demob money was head for the nearest slave-market and buy themselves a wife. The prostitute was kneeling now, picking up the scattered clothes and folding them, putting them away in the chest. And perhaps it was a point in Exomnius's favour, he thought, that he should have decided to choose her, rather than someone younger or prettier. Or, then again, perhaps he was just lying and never intended to come back for her. Either way, her future had more or less disappeared along with her principal client.
    'He had the money, did he? Enough money to buy you? Only you wouldn't think it, to look at this place.'
    'Not here.' She sat back on her heels and looked up at him with scorn. 'Not safe money here. Money hidden. Plenty money. Some place clever. Nobody find. He said. Nobody.'
    'Somebody has tried –'
    'Money not here.'
    She was emphatic. No doubt she had searched it often enough when he wasn't around. 'Did he ever tell you where this place was?'
    She stared at him, her vermillion mouth wide open, and suddenly she bent her head. Her shoulders were shaking. He thought at first she was crying again but when she turned he saw that the glint in her eyes was from tears of laughter. 'No!' She started rocking again. She looked almost girlish in her delight. She clapped her hands. It was the funniest thing she had ever heard, and he had to agree – the idea of Exomnius confiding in a whore of Africanus where he had hidden his money – it was funny. He began laughing himself, then swung his feet to the floor.
    There was no point in wasting any more time here.
    On the landing he glanced back at her, still kneeling on her haunches in her split dress, one of Exomnius's tunics pressed to her face.

    Attilius hurried back the way he had come, along the shadowy side street. He thought, This must have been Exomnius's route from the brothel to the castellum aquae. This must have been what he saw whenever he came here – the whores and drunks, the puddles of piss and patches of vomit baked to crusts in the gutter, the graffiti on the walls, the little effigies of Priapus beside the doorways, with his enormous jutting cock dangling bells at its tip to ward off evil. So what was in his head as he walked this way for the final time? Zmyrina? Ampliatus? The safety of his hidden money?
    He looked back over his shoulder but no one was paying him any attention. Still, he was glad to reach the wide central thoroughfare and the safety of its glaring