Part 29 (1/2)

Cato clapped Seneca on the back. ”Bar the door behind me. There will be looters about.”

”You are leaving?”

”I must get to my own family.” He eyed the group. How many would he see again? Flora clung to Europa. Jeremiah stood near the two, leaning on his staff. He caught Cato's glance and nodded slowly.

A swell of emotion caught Cato off guard. He placed a hand over his own chest, bowed to the old man, and received the blessing of his smile in return.

In the street, he heard the bar slide into place behind him and breathed a prayer to Jeremiah's G.o.d to keep them safe.

It had grown darker since he entered the house. The gray ash cloud had spread, dimming the sky. In the streets, rich and poor alike streamed toward the edges of the city. Carts rumbled past, piled with furnis.h.i.+ngs and valuables, and their owners yelled at slaves to hasten.

And yet as crowded as the streets were, it was clear that the majority of the town had taken refuge in their homes.

He shoved his way through the panicked citizens, past taverns and brothels, bakeries and thermopolia, all gone silent, their inhabitants either hiding or fleeing. People knocked him against the stone walls and once down into the gutter. He pushed on, heart pounding.

He found his own door barred when he reached it. Octavia's doing, certainly. Good woman. He smacked his palm against it and heard the call of a slave in return. ”It is Portius Cato! Open the door!”

The bar slid upward, the door cracked open, and he shoved through the opening, turned and barred the door himself.

Isabella and Octavia rushed from the atrium. His sister called to him in her dramatic way. ”Is it the end of the world?”

He opened his embrace and caught them both, breathed a prayer of thanks over their heads. ”Only the end of the mountain, my good women.”

And perhaps the town.

Octavia's eyes were red-rimmed and she held a letter in her hands. ”Everything is coming to an end.” She waved the letter. ”I have just had word that my brother Servius is dead.”

Cato exhaled, unable to take in this news, with all else that had transpired.

”Where should we go?” Octavia was all practicality, though he could see the fright in her eyes.

”Nowhere at present. The buildings are unsafe because of the quake, and fires are raging. There are enough panicked people in the streets. You are safer here.”

Isabella was quick to note the you. ”Quintus, you are not going back out there!”

He faced his mother. ”I must see to Portia. It is madness to leave prisoners underground during a quake. She must be freed.”

Octavia's face blanched. Clearly, she had not thought of the danger to her eldest daughter.

”Courage, mother. I will be back soon and return Portia to your arms. Keep Isabella secure.” He spoke of courage, even as fear dampened his neck and forehead.

Octavia seemed torn between duty to each of her children, as though she wished both to stay with Isabella and to go with her son, to see Portia freed.

He kissed her cheeks, kissed Isabella also, and turned to go, calling over his shoulder. ”Stay away from the walls and the columns. Keep to the garden.”

He had no doubt his mother would secure the door behind him. He launched back into the street, joining the human current flowing toward the prison, the Forum, and the Marina Gate.

He would free Portia if at all possible, but in truth it was not his only errand. There was another woman whose safety concerned him, and he would see her protected before he returned home.

The mountain still poured forth its foul contents, a column so high he had to crane his neck backward to see the spreading summit. The edges of the black cloud reached the sun in its midday position, and crept across it, eclipsing the day and turning it to dusk in moments.

The darkness seemed to cast unreasonable fear into the people in the streets, and the chaos spiked. Horses and wagons plunged down the narrow roads. People fell beneath cart wheels to be trampled underfoot. Cato kept to the walls, turning his body sideways at times to avoid the press of madness. His breath came in gasps, as though the air had thickened.

Halfway to the prison the ongoing rush grew sluggish. It took only a moment to discern the cause. The people stood in the street, faces and palms raised to the sky.

Snow? In the heat of Augustus?

But it was not snow. It was ash.

Seneca's prediction. It had begun. The mountain was beginning to rain down on them.

In the lull caused by wonderment, Cato pushed forward and gained ground. By the time he reached the prison, the ash was falling heavy. The white marble paving stones of the Forum grew gray with a layer of it, and footprints could be seen where people trod.

He hurried across the Forum toward the magistrates' buildings and the prison beneath. The crowd thinned here, freed from the confines of the narrow streets.

He did not see it coming. One moment he was pus.h.i.+ng across the Forum, and the next a burning boulder larger than his head dropped from the sky as though hurled in spite. The black-and-orange projectile smashed the paving stone only a cubit in front of him. He jumped backward, safe by only a fraction from the superheated rock. The bitter taste of fear rose in his chest.

The scare gave new meaning to the danger. Falling ash could be brushed away. Burning rocks could not. He risked a glance upward, expecting an avalanche from the sky. He could see no other blackened rocks, but it began to rain light pebbles that stung the skin. He bent his face to the ground, held out his hand to catch a few in his palm.

The stone hail was dirty-white, light and porous-like bits of bleached sea sponge from Greece--but solid. The sound of it hitting the Forum stones brought memories of echoing theater applause.

Again, this new revelation from the sky gave the townspeople pause, and the s.p.a.cious court ceased its churning for a moment, then resumed in earnest.

Cato, too, pushed forward toward the prison, his mind keeping pace with his feet. First the thick ash, and now rocks, some light and some fatal. It was growing more dangerous above ground than below it. The quakes had stopped. Would Portia be safer in the prison than they were above ground?

He was not the first to consider it. The prison entrance thronged with people shouting to be allowed underground. Several guards fought them off, striking down men and women alike with their heavy rods. Cato kept his distance, measuring his chances, measuring the danger.

In the end, he followed his instinct. For now at least, Portia was safer underground. How ironic . . . when this nightmare ended, perhaps the prisoners would be the only survivors.

And what of those toward the north? Of Nigidius Maius and his estate outside the north wall of the city, and the one who was held there against her will? To run there was to run toward the mountain. Which meant she was even nearer the danger.

Cato raced through the Forum to the north end, where the Temple of Jupiter still stood unrepaired from the last quake that had wrought destruction. Would Pompeii survive this disaster?

The stones a.s.saulted his face and arms, raising welts. He ran through the Street of Tombs, empty and silent save the continued rush of the fire-breathing mountain and the clatter of pebbles. .h.i.tting the street.

The street wound upward slightly, to a rise outside of town where Maius's estate farmed the rich, black soil and the grapes grew in abundance.

He reached the villa breathless and beaten by the falling pebbles. The gravel acc.u.mulated under foot now, crunching beneath his sandals. No more flaming boulders had accosted him, but he ran half-expecting to be struck down. Above him, the black cloud had reached to every horizon. Daylight had been overtaken by a foul midday night, a darkness that traveled on an evil wind and wormed its way through mind and heart.

Cato ran the length of the empty peristyle along the southern end of the villa, under a doorway, and into Maius's first atrium. The pleasant plink of rocks falling into the impluvium basin's water deceived. The reds and yellows of the garden's flowers glowed with the strange light of a coming storm.

He'd formed no plan as he ran. Foolish. Where would Valerius keep Ariella? Where would Maius have housed his guests? The household had fled the safety that open s.p.a.ce provided during an earthquake, to hide from the falling sky.

Should he yell for someone? Would they hand over Ariella? He must at least be certain she was safe, that she had survived the quake.

He ran through the house, coming upon a girl in a shadowy colonnade, about Isabella's age. She paced the hallway alone. She turned on him as though he might save her. Maius's blue-eyed daughter, Nigidia. With a flash of recognition he realized that he had seen her several times-among the Christians. Flora's friend.