Pompeii

gold in the gloom. It swooped across the garden and came to rest on the ridge-tiles opposite. Another bird fluttered to the door and took off, and then another. She would have liked to stay and watch them all escape but instead she closed the shutters.
    She had told her maid to go with the rest of the slaves to the forum. The passage outside her room was deserted, as were the stairs, as was the garden in which her father had held what he thought was his secret conversation. She crossed it quickly, keeping close to the pillars in case she encountered anyone. She passed through into the atrium of their old house and turned towards the tablinum. This was where her father still conducted his business affairs – rising to greet his clients at dawn, meeting them either singly or in groups until the law courts opened, whereupon he would sweep out into the street, followed by his usual anxious court of petitioners. It was a symbol of Ampliatus's power that the room contained not the usual one but three strong boxes, made of heavy wood bonded with brass, attached by iron rods to the stone floor.
    Corelia knew where the keys were kept because in happier days – or was it simply a device to convince his associates of what a charming fellow he was? – she had been allowed to creep in and sit at his feet while he was working. She opened the drawer of the small desk, and there they were.
    The document case was in the second strong box. She did not bother to unroll the small papyri, but simply stuffed them into the pockets of her cloak, then locked the safe and replaced the key. The riskiest part was over and she allowed herself to relax a little. She had a story ready in case she was stopped – that she was recovered now, and had decided to join the others in the forum after all – but nobody was about. She walked across the courtyard and down the staircase, past the swimming pool with its gently running fountain, and the dining room in which she had endured that terrible meal, moving swiftly around the colonnade towards the red-painted drawing room of the Popidii. Soon she would be the mistress of all this: a ghastly thought.
    A slave was lighting one of the brass candelabra but drew back respectfully against the wall to let her pass. Through a curtain. Another, narrower flight of stairs. And suddenly she was in a different world – low ceilings, roughly plastered walls, a smell of sweat: the slaves' quarters. She could hear a couple of men talking somewhere and a clang of iron pots and then, to her relief, the whinny of a horse.
    The stables were at the end of the corridor, and it was as she had thought – her father had decided to take his guests by litter to the forum, leaving all the horses behind. She stroked the nose of her favourite, a bay mare, and whispered to her. Saddling her was a job for the slaves but she had watched them often enough to know how to do it. As she fastened the leather harness beneath the belly the horse shifted slightly and knocked against the wooden stall. She held her breath but no one came.
    She whispered again: 'Easy, girl, it's only me, it's all right.'
    The stable door opened directly on to the side street. Every sound seemed absurdly loud to her – the bang of the iron bar as she lifted it, the creak of the hinges, the clatter of the mare's hooves as she led her out into the road. A man was hurrying along the pavement opposite and he turned to look at her but he didn't stop – he was late, presumably, and on his way to the sacrifice. From the direction of the forum came the noise of music and then a low roar, like the breaking of a wave.
    She swung herself up on to the horse. No decorous, feminine sideways mount for her tonight. She opened her legs and sat astride it like a man. The sense of limitless freedom almost overwhelmed her. This street – this utterly ordinary street, with its cobblers' shops and dressmakers, along which she had walked so many times – had become the edge of the world. She knew that if she hesitated any longer the panic would seize her completely. She pressed her knees into the flanks of the horse and pulled hard left on the reins, heading away from the forum. At the first crossroads she turned left again. She stuck carefully to the empty back streets and only when she judged that she was far enough away from the house to be unlikely to meet anyone she knew did she join the main road. Another wave of applause carried from the forum.
    Up the hill she went,