Pompeii

in the way of vegetation except for straggly bushes and plants with small yellow flowers. And it was exactly as the Greek writer had described: a black cap, long ago scorched by fire. In places, the rock bulged outwards, almost as if it were being pushed up from beneath, sending small flurries of stones rattling down the slope. Further along the ridge, larger landslips had occurred. Huge boulders, the size of a man, had been sent crashing into the trees – and recently, by the look of them. Attilius remembered the reluctance of the men to leave Pompeii. 'Giants have journeyed through the air, their voices like claps of thunder... ' The sound must have carried for miles.
    It was too steep a climb for his horse. He dismounted and found a shady spot where he could tie its reins to a tree. He scouted around for a stick and selected one about half as thick as his wrist – smooth, grey, long-dead – and with that to support his weight he set out to begin his final ascent.
    The sun up here was merciless, the sky so bright it was almost white. He moved from rock to cindery rock in the suffocating heat and the air itself seemed to burn his lungs, a dry heat, like a blade withdrawn from a fire. No lizards underfoot here, no birds overhead – it was a climb directly into the sun. He could feel the heat through the soles of his shoes. He forced himself to press on, without looking back, until the ground ceased to rise and what was ahead of him was no longer black rock but blue sky. He clambered over the ridge and peered across the roof of the world.
    The summit of Vesuvius was not the sharp peak that it had appeared from the base but a rough and circular plain, perhaps two hundred paces in diameter, a wilderness of black rock, with a few brownish patches of sickly vegetation that merely emphasised its deadness. Not only did it look to have been on fire in the past, as the Greek papyri had said, but to be burning now. In at least three places thin columns of grey vapour were rising, fluttering and hissing in the silence. There was the same sour stench of sulphur that there had been in the pipes of the Villa Hortensia. This is the place, thought Attilius. This is the heart of the evil. He could sense something huge and malevolent. One could call it Vulcan or give it whatever name one liked. One could worship it as a god. But it was a tangible presence. He shuddered.
    He kept close to the edge of the summit and began working his way around it, mesmerised to begin with by the sulphurous clouds that were whispering from the ground and then by the astonishing panoramas beyond the rim. Away to his right the bare rock ran down to the edge of the forest, and then there was nothing but an undulating green blanket. Torquatus had said that you could see for fifty miles, but to Attilius it seemed that the whole of Italy was spread beneath him. As he moved from north to west the Bay of Neapolis came into his vision. He could easily make out the promontory of Misenum and the islands off its point, and the imperial retreat of Capri, and beyond them, as sharp as a razor-cut, the fine line where the deep blue of the sea met the paler blue of the sky. The water was still flecked by the waves he had noticed the night before – scudding waves on a windless sea – although now he thought about it perhaps there was a breeze beginning to get up. He could feel it on his cheek: the one they called Caurus, blowing from the north-west, towards Pompeii, which appeared at his feet as no more than a sandy smudge set back from the coast. He imagined Corelia arriving there, utterly unreachable now, a dot within a dot, lost to him forever.
    It made him feel light-headed simply to look at it, as if he were himself nothing but a speck of pollen that might be lifted at any moment by the hot air and blown into the blueness. He felt an overwhelming impulse to surrender to it – a yearning for that perfect blue oblivion so strong that he had to force himself to turn away. Shaken, he began to pick his way directly across the summit towards the other side, back to where he had started, keeping clear of the plumes of sulphur which seemed to be multiplying all around him. The ground was shaking, bulging. He wanted to get away now, as fast as he could. But the terrain was rough, with deep depressions on either side of his path – 'cave-like pits of blackened rock', as the Greek writer had said – and he had to watch where he put his feet. And it was because of