Pompeii

with his back to the manhole. Attilius shouted to him impatiently.
    'Well?'
    Corvinus turned and by way of explanation stepped aside, revealing behind him a figure in a hooded cloak. Attilius set off towards them. It was only as he came closer and the stranger pulled back the hood that he recognised her. He could not have been more startled if Egeria herself, the goddess of the water-spring, had suddenly materialised in the moonlight. His first instinct was that she must have come with her father and he looked around for other riders, other horses. But there was only one horse, chewing placidly on the thin grass. She was alone and as he reached her he raised his hands in astonishment.
    'Corelia – what is this?'
    'She wouldn't tell me what she wants,' interrupted Corvinus. 'She says she'll only talk to you.'
    'Corelia?'
    She nodded suspiciously towards Corvinus, put her finger to her lips and shook her head.
    'See what I mean? The moment she turned up yesterday I knew she was trouble –'
    'All right, Corvinus. That's enough. Get back to work.'
    'But –'
    ' Work! '
    As the slave slouched away he examined her more closely. Cheeks smudged, hair dishevelled, cloak and dress spattered with mud. But it was her eyes, unnaturally wide and bright, that were most disturbing. He took her hand. 'This is no place for you,' he said gently. 'What are you doing here?'
    'I wanted to bring you these,' she whispered and from the folds of her cloak she began producing small cylinders of papyrus.

    The documents were of different ages and conditions. Six in total, small enough to fit into the cradle of one arm. Attilius took a torch and with Corelia beside him moved away from the activity around the aqueduct to a private spot behind one of the wagons, looking out over the flooded ground. Across what remained of the lake ran a wavering path of moonlight, as wide and straight as a Roman road. From the far side came the rustle of wings and the cries of the waterfowl.
    He took her cloak from her shoulders and spread it out for her to sit on. Then he jammed the handle of the torch into the earth, squatted and unrolled the oldest of the documents. It was a plan of one section of the Augusta – this very section: Pompeii, Nola and Vesuvius were all marked in ink that had faded from black to pale grey. It was stamped with the imperial seal of the Divine Augustus as if it had been inspected and officially approved. A surveyor's drawing. Original. Drafted more than a century ago. Perhaps the great Marcus Agrippa himself had once held it in his hands? He turned it over. Such a document could only have come from one of two places, either the archive of the Curator Aquarum in Rome, or the Piscina Mirabilis in Misenum. He rolled it carefully.
    The next three papyri consisted mostly of columns of numerals and it took him a while to make much sense of them. One was headed Colonia Veneria Pompeianorum and was divided into years – DCCCXIV, DCCCXV and so on – going back nearly two decades, with further subdivisions of notations, figures and totals. The quantities increased annually until, by the year that had ended last December – Rome's eight hundred and thirty-third – they had doubled. The second document seemed at first glance to be identical until he studied it more closely and then he saw that the figures throughout were roughly half as large as in the first. For example, for the last year, the grand total of three hundred and fifty-two thousand recorded in the first papyrus had been reduced in the second to one hundred and seventy-eight thousand.
    The third document was less formal. It looked like the monthly record of a man's income. Again there were almost two decades' worth of figures and again the sums gradually mounted until they had almost doubled. And a good income it was – perhaps fifty thousand sesterces in the last year alone, maybe a third of a million overall.
    Corelia was sitting with her knees drawn up, watching him. 'Well? What do they mean?'
    He took his time answering. He felt tainted: the shame of one man, the shame of them all. And who could tell how high the rot had spread? But then he thought, No, it would not have gone right the way up to Rome, because if Rome had been a part of it, Aviola would never have sent him south to Misenum. 'These look like the actual figures for the amount of water consumed in Pompeii.' He showed her the first papyrus. 'Three hundred and fifty thousand quinariae last year – that would