Pompeii

out a jug of water and a basin, some fruit, a loaf, a pitcher of wine and a slice of hard white cheese. He washed himself carefully, ate all the food, mixed some wine into the water and drank. Then, too exhausted even to remove his shoes and tunic, he lay down on the bed, closed his eyes and slipped at once into that hinterland between sleeping and waking which his dead wife endlessly roamed, her voice calling out to him – pleading, urgent: 'Aquarius! Aquarius!'

    His wife had been just twenty-two when he watched her body consigned to the flames of her funeral pyre. This woman was younger – eighteen, perhaps. Still, there was enough of the dream that lingered in his mind, and enough of Sabina about the girl in the yard for his heart to jump. The same darkness of hair. The same whiteness of skin. The same voluptuousness of figure. She was standing beneath his window and shouting up.
    'Aquarius!'
    The sound of raised voices had drawn some of the men from the shadows and by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs they had formed a gawping half-circle around her. She was wearing a loose white tunica, open wide at the neck and sleeves – a dress to be worn in private, which showed a little more of the milky plumpness of her bare white arms and breasts than a respectable lady would have risked in public. He saw now that she was not alone. A slave attended her – a skinny, trembling, elderly woman, whose thin grey hair was half pinned up, half tumbling down her back.
    She was breathless, gabbling – something about a pool of red mullet that had died that afternoon in her father's fish ponds, and poison in the water, and a man who was being fed to the eels, and how he must come at once. It was hard to catch all her words.
    He held up his hand to interrupt her and asked her name.
    'I am Corelia Ampliata, daughter of Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, of the Villa Hortensia.' She announced herself impatiently and, at the mention of her father, Attilius noticed Corax and some of the men exchange looks. 'Are you the aquarius?'
    Corax said, 'The aquarius isn't here.'
    The engineer waved him away. 'I am in charge of the aqueduct, yes.'
    'Then come with me.'
    She began walking towards the gate and seemed surprised when Attilius did not immediately follow. The men were starting to laugh at her now. Musa did an impersonation of her swaying hips, tossing his head grandly: '"Oh aquarius, come with me...!"'
    She turned, with tears of frustration glinting in her eyes.
    'Corelia Ampliata,' said Attilius patiently and not unkindly, 'I may not be able to afford to eat red mullet, but I believe them to be sea-water fish. And I have no responsibility for the sea.'
    Corax grinned and pointed. 'Do you hear that? She thinks you're Neptune!'
    There was more laughter. Attilius told them sharply to be quiet.
    'My father is putting a man to death. The slave was screaming for the aquarius. That is all I know. You are his only hope. Will you come or not?'
    'Wait,' said Attilius. He nodded towards the older woman, who had her hands pressed to her face and was crying, her head bowed. 'Who is this?'
    'She's his mother.'
    The men were quiet now.
    'Do you see?' Corelia reached out and touched his arm. 'Come,' she said quietly. 'Please.'
    'Does your father know where you are?'
    'No.'
    'Don't interfere,' said Corax. 'That's my advice.'
    And wise advice, thought Attilius, for if a man were to take a hand every time he heard of a slave being cruelly treated, he would have no time to eat or sleep. A sea-water pool full of dead mullet? That was nothing to do with him. He looked at Corelia. But then again, if the poor wretch was actually asking for him.
    Omens, portents, auspices –
    Vapour that jerked like a fishing line. Springs that ran backward into the earth. An aquarius who vanished into the hot air. On the pastured lower slopes of Mount Vesuvius, shepherds had reported seeing giants. In Herculaneum, according to the men, a woman had given birth to a baby with fins instead of feet. And now an entire pool of red mullet had died in Misenum, in the space of a single afternoon, of no apparent cause.
    A man must make such sense of it as he could.
    He scratched his ear. 'How far away is this villa?'
    'Please. A few hundred paces. No distance at all.' She tugged at his arm, and he allowed himself to be pulled along. She was not an easy woman to resist, this Corelia Ampliata. Perhaps he ought at least to walk her back to her family? It was hardly safe for a