How quickly the water was draining! It was already below his knees. He imagined the current swirling past him, on its way to Nola and the other towns. Eventually it would work its way all around the bay, across the arcades north of Neapolis and over the great arch at Cumae, down the spine of the peninsula to Misenum. Soon this section would be drained entirely. There would be nothing more than puddles on the floor. Whatever happened, he had fulfilled his promise to the admiral. He had cleared the matrix.
The point where the tunnel had been blocked was still a mess but the force of the flood had done most of their work for them. Now it was a matter of clearing out the rest of the earth and rubble, smoothing the floor and walls, putting down a bed of concrete and a fresh lining of bricks, then a render of cement—nothing fancy: just temporary repairs until they could get back to do a proper job in the autumn. It was still a lot of work to get through in a night, before the first tongues of fresh water reached them from Abellinum, after Becco had reopened the sluices. He told them what he wanted and Musa started adding his own suggestions. If they brought down the bricks now, he said, they could stack them along the wall and have them ready to use when the water cleared. They could make a start on mixing the cement aboveground immediately. It was the first time he had shown any desire to cooperate since Attilius had taken charge of the aqueduct. He appeared awed by the engineer’s survival.I should come back from the dead more often, Attilius thought.
Brebix said, “At least that stink has gone.”
Attilius had not noticed it before. He sniffed the air. It was true. The pervasive stench of sulfur seemed to have been washed away. He wondered what that had all been about—where it had come from in the first place, why it should have evaporated—but he did not have time to consider it. He heard his name being called and he kicked his way back through the water to the inspection shaft. It was Corvinus’s voice: “Aquarius!”
“Yes?” The face of the slave was silhouetted by a red glow. “What is it?”
“I think you ought to come see.” His head disappeared abruptly.
Now what?Attilius took the rope and tested it carefully, then started climbing. In his bruised and exhausted state it was harder work than before. He ascended slowly—right hand, left hand, right hand, hauling himself into the narrow access shaft, working himself up, thrusting his arms over the lip of the manhole and levering himself out into the warm night.
In the time he had been underground the moon had risen—huge, full, and red. It was like the stars in this part of the world—like everything, in fact—unnatural and overblown. There was quite an operation in progress on the surface by now: the heaps of spoil excavated from the tunnel, a couple of big bonfires spitting sparks at the harvest moon, torches planted in the ground to provide additional light, the wagons drawn up and mostly unloaded. He could see a thick rim of mud in the moonlight around the shallow lake, where it had already mostly drained. The slaves of Ampliatus’s work gang were leaning against the carts, waiting for orders. They watched him with curiosity as he hauled himself to his feet. He must look a sight, he realized, drenched and dirty. He shouted down into the tunnel for Musa to come up and set them back to work, then looked around for Corvinus. He was about thirty paces away, close to the oxen, 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 toward them. It was only as he came closer and the stranger pulled back the hood that he recognized her. He could not have been more startled if Egeria herself, the goddess of the water-spring, had suddenly materialized 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 toward 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 Attilius examined her more closely. Cheeks smudged, hair disheveled, 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 gray. 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 up 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 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 352,000 recorded in the first papyrus had been reduced in the second to 178,000.
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 me 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 fifty thousand quinariae last year—that would be about right for a town of Pompeii’s size. And this second set of records I presume is the one that my predecessor, Exomnius, officially submitted to Rome. They wouldn’t know the difference, especially after the earthquake, unless they sent an inspector down to check. And this”—he did not try to hide his contempt as he flourished the third document—“is what your father paid him to keep his mouth shut.” She looked at him, bewildered. “Water is expensive,” he explained, “especially if you’re rebuilding half a town. ‘At least as valuable as money’—that’s what your father said to me.” No doubt it would have made the difference between profit and loss.Salve lucrum!