by Russel Hemmell
in Issue 84, January 2019
Livia kicked away fish bones and chicken rests from the cooking area’s dirty floor, tossing water and salt to wash away dried blood and cover the inevitable stench.
That laggard of Attis had again forgotten to clean up. She’d have to give him a few lashes as the master kept recommending, once for all. Every week was the same story, and in summertime the almost-unbearable heat made a dire situation even worse. Without her watching the premises, the place would’ve turned into an ungodly mess, with no reputable customers, or customers at all. But it saddened Livia to hit slaves. She had never done it when she had them and now-
“You!”
Somebody was calling for attention, and she turned towards the tables. The popina was already busy, even though it was still early in the night.
The voice belonged to a young man, sitting not far from the entrance and in the company of a strikingly beautiful girl. The light-blue veil that covered her head couldn’t hide her chiselled features and a pearl-like skin.
Exotic, to say the least. Compared to the habitual patrons, those two were sticking out like two sacred augurs in a Suburra’s brothel. The popina of Clelius was not a sophisticated establishment, otherwise it would have not been squeezed among many others in the crossroad between Via di Nola and Via Stabiana and reeking rotten fish like the rest of them. Everybody knew Pompeii’s best taverns were in a different part of the bustling town, enjoying the marine breeze even in August.
Also, she noticed, the two were oddly pale in a part of the Roman Empire where virtually everybody sported a tan, at least the people who worked for a living like Livia. They had to be patricians, then, which made their presence in her popina even more puzzling. No rich person in his or her sane mind would come after dark to this part of the city, Livia thought. Pompeii was not Rome, true, but any big town was dangerous without an escort at night. You didn’t need to grow up in Trastevere to know it.
“Ave,” Livia said, putting her hands on to table. “What can I bring you, sir?”
“Bring us fresh crustaceans, young lady. And a honey-roasted piglet.”
Livia laughed out loud. “Where do you think you are, on the goddamn Aventine?”
“You don’t have it.” The woman stared at Livia with her wide-spaced, hazel eyes.
Now that Livia had the occasion of giving her a close look, she had to admit the woman was even weirder-looking than her companion. And, veil apart, her tunica was outlandish, no… otherworldly: that was the right definition. Nobody dressed like that, not even in the patrician palaces on the Palatine Hill in Rome.
“I’m afraid not, domina. I don’t think you can find them anywhere in Pompeii either, apart from the patrician villas.” She thought about it. “No, I’m sure not even the thermopolia of Via del Foro, the best in town, prepare pigs that way. There you can find dates, roasted sausages and exquisite Falernian wine.” She tapped her fingers on the wooden surface. “What are you doing here, anyway? Are you lost, or you’re just ill-advised travellers from a far-away province?”
The young man smiled. “Forget the piglet, and the sausages, too. What you can offer us?”
“Here you can have two things, no, three, all as straight and simple as they can be: warm bread, fresh fish, and lucky dice rolling day and night even outside Saturnalia,” Livia threw them a conspiratorial glance. “I can also probably find you a wine that’s acceptable to you.”
He laughed, showing magnificent teeth, and tilted his head. “We’ll take all of three, no, four items. Starting with the wine.”
Livia rushed to the kitchen, yelled at the slaves slouching on the fireplace, and fetched the two strange but charming patrons what they’d asked. She also took care of putting on their table the tavern’s best wine, the one reserved for Clelius’s special guests.
These are special guests, she snickered. More special than that, and you can invite naiads to your dinner place. She expertly laid down plates and cups. This is why you can always tell Romans from people from the provinces, Livia thought with pride, taking care of decorating the table with lilies and green olives. We know how to serve honourable guests, even when we don’t have a marble surface to accommodate our dishes.
“This wine smells good,” the young man said, his nose twitching when he raised the cup. He remained with his nostrils near the brim, inhaling the scent with his eyes closed. Then he sipped it and a smile made his delicate features even more handsome.
“You can say that. It’s the one he”, Livia pointed at the ceiling, hinting at the rooms upstairs, “uses for his private parties. And you know what they say here: you eat bread in Pompeii but you go to Nuceria to drink, because the wine is better.” Her forefinger touched the carafe. “This is Nucerian wine, young dominus.”
“This wine must be expensive. What if we don’t have enough money to pay you?” The man said, with a strange glint in his eyes. “Appearances may be misleading.”
“Oh.” Livia shrugged. “I’ll tell Clelius somebody stole the jar. It happens from time to time.”
“Are you always so nice to people?” The young man said.
“Romans are never nice. But you’re obviously foreigners from a far-away land, and we know the value of hospitality. If you can’t pay me, you’re going to be my guests. He’s away, and I am in charge.”
The two stopped eating and exchanged a prolonged look. What now?
“She could be one of your protégées, couldn’t she?” The girl’s voice had a dubious tone.
“Damn right.” He smiled, turning to Livia. “Here, young lady. Have a cup with us.”
“I’m not supposed to drink.” Livia hesitated.
“The drinking of too much wine is an ill; but if one drinks it with knowledge, it is not an ill but all good,” the man recited in his melodious voice, switching to Greek.
“I rejoice to drink deep and sing to the pipes, I rejoice to have in hand the tuneful lyre-” Livia also said in Greek and burst into laughter immediately after. “After Teognides of Keo, you can quote the whole Pindarus, dominus. I’m not easily impressed by Greek poetry.”
“You got it wrong, both of you.” The girl stood up and lowered the veil over her face. “There’s something more appropriate for tonight.” With both hands over her head, she started chanting in a lugubrious tone:
“Watch a man in times of adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off.”
Livia felt a shiver running down her spine. “Please stop.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like Lucretius. It’s bad luck.” It seems to suit my strange guest more than well, however, Livia thought. She’s so sombre, like an angry vestal or a Dis follower. She gives me the creeps.
The girl sat back, resuming her meal, while the man pointed with authority at the seat nearby and gestured her to take a place. Livia obeyed.
“Nunc est bibendum,” he said, pouring her a generous portion.
The three cups rose in a silent toast.
*
“Let’s go for a walk.” The man stood up after they had finished eating.
Livia’s head was spinning for the amount of wine she had drunk. While she was used to, she was careful to drink in moderation, and not just because, at 14, it was not a proper thing to do for an unmarried female. She instinctively feared the haze and giddiness too much wine caused, and the way people behaved when drunk was even more upsetting. She didn’t want to be like them.
But that night, somehow, she had let her guard down.
“I can’t, young dominus. I need to watch the place.”
“This won’t be a problem,” the girl said. Again that enigmatic stare, Livia thought. “Nobody needs you here, see?”
Livia looked around and she was presented with a surreal scene.
All people in the tavern were lying down in a deep slumber. A few were spread-eagled on the ground, others asleep with their face plunged into their plates still full. A couple of them were giving their shoulders to the wall, cups in their hands, in an immobile stupor that left Livia speechless. If anybody had given them the Gods’ lotus, it wouldn’t have been any different.
“What kind of magic is this?” she stammered.
“Come,” the man said, taking her hand and lifting her up from her seat.
They went out in the deserted street, walking toward the city centre.
It was not that late at night, but there was nobody around. Not the usual chants of drunkards stumbling onto the taverns’ backyard, not the noise of dice rolling over the brick stones, not the jarring callings of the meretrices from the brothels of the Eastern part of the town. Not a sound, only the wind whistled along the alleys.
Livia followed her two strange guests over the main road, the one leading to the forum.
She saw a few people lying on the thresholds of the establishments, in odd postures, as if a sudden magic had struck them still.
“What a cultivated girl like you does in Pompeii working as a servant?” the young man said, helping her on the uneven ground. “You don’t belong here.”
“She didn’t want to stay in Rome,” the girl said before Livia could reply.
Livia blinked. She hadn’t imagined it was that obvious. But she had mentioned the Aventine and the two had to be familiar with the Urbe, so they’d assumed-
“-that’s what happens when your parents choose to stand on the wrong side of the fence,” Livia said, biting her tongue immediately after. She had promised herself never to think about it again. If her father in young age had backed Drusus and the divine Tiberius had instead become Emperor, well, there was nothing she could do, apart from cursing her misfortune.
She’d never talked about that either, to anybody. She had just fled Rome to avoid ending up in the Suburra’s brothels. But on that occasion, words came out of her mouth before she could do anything to stop herself.
The girl conceded a rare smile and the young man winked at her.
“You’re foreigners. From where?” Livia said, trying to ignore the eerie landscape around her.
“Was it our accent to give us away?”
“It’s the lack of one. Your Latin is flawless, but I can’t tell your origins. I usually can.”
“And you’re wondering now what’s going on here.” He smiled. “Don’t be nervous. We’re here on a mission.”
“Which mission?”
The girl pointed to the Vesuvius, and her serious face turned into a grim expression. “Mortals try hard to peer into the future, and yet, they don’t take hints and signals, no matter how many early warnings they receive.”
“What do you mean?”
“The earthquake of two decades ago was only the beginning.” She glared at Livia, pointing her white, tapered finger at the smoke erupting from the crater. Livia turned her head, too, and shivered. The mountain looked like an angry deity of the underworld ready to get back to life and claiming the living. Maybe it was.
“I-I’m not-”
“Shh. You’ve just begun to realise. Now-” the young man took Livia in his arms and deposed a delicate kiss on her forehead. “Each one of us will give you a gift, to thank you for your hospitality.”
Livia stared at his clear-blue eyes and felt, again, a shiver shaking her down to her bones. Before she could say anything, the man let her go and took the hand of the veiled girl, who had remained silent looking at the mountain in front of them. “She’ll spare your life tonight, when so many others will die.”
“Dying? Why?” Livia said. “Are the Gods angry with us?”
They looked at each other and sneered. “Gods are not angry with mortals, only disappointed, at times. We are, too.”
Livia stepped a few metres back, to rest her shoulders against a temple’s marble wall.
“Yes, you could well be one of my protégées. That’s my gift for you, Livia. You’ll have the fore-vision, for letting mortals know what their future is going to be. What you’ll do with the gifts you receive tonight, it’s up to you.”
The two started walking toward the Northern part of the town, where the patrician villas had their secluded domain.
“Wait. How do you know my name?” She yelled, running behind them. “Who are you?”
“Those whose name are better not heard.”
The man’s voice resonated in the empty road. A cold breeze swept by, while a thin, white mist rose from the stone-paved ground gleaming in the darkness. In a growing sense of incredulity, Livia saw the two lithe figures sauntering away. But their attires were different now. The young man wore a long cloak and winged sandals. In his hand, a wand entwined by two serpents.
Oh for all the Gods of Hades -Livia thought- and her stare sought the woman.
The veil was gone. She had a chaplet of thorns around her head, and, from her fluent hair going down well below her waist, Livia caught the unlikely, impossible glimpse of a serpent and a dog’s muzzle peering out from her locks and quickly vanishing back into the blond curtain.
Everything became dark in front of her and she fell on the terrain.
*
There was a twilight light looming over, when Livia got back to her sense.
She heard a violent noise and stood up, trying to understand what had caused that. Her head was aching as if a stone or a wooden club had hit her.
She looked around, without recognising the place.
From what she could see, she was on the sheltered part of a roof, in what looked like the upper level of a villa. She rubbed her eyes, trying to remember how she had ended up there.
Slowly, the memories of the night before came back to her mind. The two foreigners, the wine, their weird words when bidding her farewell. What she had believed she had seen.
She shook her head, fighting the pain and the disorientation.
What did I think I was looking at -Hermes, the trickster god, and three-headed Hecate of the Underworld? Seriously, Livia? You had too much to drink. This is how you ended up in an unknown villa, and with no idea how. You’re lucky nobody abused you, girl.
She wobbled toward the edge of the roof and she peered down.
What presented itself at Livia’s eyes was more surreal than anything she had ever witnessed in her life, to the point that she asked herself if she had gone crazy.
From the vantage point of the villa’s roof at the outskirt of the city, she witnessed scenes of doom. Vesuvius was in full eruption, blurting out tongues of a liquid, red flow from its slopes and spewing up a high-altitude column of smoke from which stones and pumice began to fall, blanketing the hills around and advancing toward the city in a fast motion.
Was she still asleep, and that was a dream?
Ashes were falling on the mountain slopes in a dry, thick, grey rain. From the mountain peak, a dense, black cloud spread over the sky, covering the whole city like a dark carpet.
It must be morning, Livia realised when a gleam of light broke in. But that temporary respite lasted only for a moment. The darkness engulfed the world again, and ashes began raining over the city, covering the streets. She watched sheets of flame trickling down from the mountain, more threatening and fast moving than she had initially thought.
Even from her observation point, she could hear the shrieks of the terrified people, the crying of children, the wailing of infants. People won’t have the time to escape the incandescent flood, not if all of them rush toward the Stabian Port together, she thought with a pang in her stomach.
Another noise came from the mountain’s peak and a violent tremor shook the villa, causing the pillars of a nearby building to collapse.
“May the Gods help us,” a man’s voice cried in the distance.
Livia had the impression to witness Hades itself opening its infernal gates to engulf the known universe. She screamed out loud, covering her ears with her hands and trying to isolate herself from that terrifying reality.
There was nowhere she could run to escape from the river of fire coming down from the mountain. She knelt, burying her head between her arms, and closed her eyes.
*
Livia had no idea how long she remained crouched on the unknown villa’s rooftop, apart from the fact it was for many, many hours. She dozed on and off over the long summer day, the whole night after, and it was only when she saw, toward the end of the second day, a couple of stars twinkling in a heavy clouded night sky, that she knew the worst was over.
She could still see ashes and stones ejected from the mountain’s top, but the pace and the speed were slower and less threatening. The stench of sulphur, however, was overwhelming, and she had to force herself not to gag. She waited until she felt strong enough to walk. Then, cautiously, she rose to her feet and found her way down from the villa’s roof.
The place itself looked empty, but there were still cups and plates on the triclinium’s tables, as if villa’s patrician owners had abandoned the banquet in a great hurry. Livia realised she was famished and helped herself with olives and bread, drinking an entire carafe of water. But she kept away from wine; she had more than enough with her two strange visitors.
She searched the triclinium for a bronze lantern, finding one under a toppled-down table; the clouds had made the city dark even in the day, let alone at night. She would’ve needed all the illumination she could get.
Before going out into the open, she also grabbed a linen and tied it into a sort of fabric-made helmet, to protect her head from the rocks and cinders still pouring from the sky.
Under the lurid light of a cloud-obscured sun, Livia observed a different Pompeii, one she didn’t recognise. Temples had collapsed, the forum was in shambles, and even walking along the streets was hazardous for the stones and the debris obstructing the alleys. A deep blanket of ashes, compact and uniform like snow, had covered what had not been destroyed by the eruption, giving the whole city a ghastly look.
Many people had indeed managed to leave, she thought glancing at the gutted, empty buildings where footprints were stamped on the ash-covered ground, but not everybody. Some had to remain trapped inside their houses when the roofs and pillars had collapsed, blocking doorways and sealing them inside as in a grim line-up of Etruscan tombs along the city’s streets.
Nor again is there any shortage of unfathomable space into which the ramparts of the world could be dispersed; or else they may be destroyed by the impact of some other force, Livia chanted in a low voice walking along the ruins. That girl was right, whoever she was: Lucretius is the one to be recited in this fateful day.
Therefore the door of death, far from being closed against the sky or the sun or the earth or the deep waters of the ocean, stands wide open and confronts them with vast gaping jaws.
Livia was tired and broken-hearted when she finally reached her tavern on the other side of the city. She had to remove bricks and scattered debris before being able to walk inside. The river of liquid fire had not reached it, but there were a few corpses on the ground, their skins looking as grey as the cinders over their bodies. Maybe it was the foul air that killed them, she thought, covering their face with their tunics.
Tears repressed for too long welled up in her eyes and she began crying.
Pompeii was an open-air graveyard. She had to leave, but where for? The only place she knew apart from Pompeii was Rome, and it would have taken her at least six days of travel to reach it, without mentioning dangers.
Or, if I am lucky, I can find a place on one of the raeda’s wooden benches, Livia murmured in a low voice. After what happened, there must be carriages that take the surviving people far away from here. And while she had no desire to spend days on those noisy iron-shod wheels drawn by mules, everything was better than remaining in a dead city.
With difficulties, she removed the collapsed stones from the stairs taking up to the second floor and reached the terracotta jars storage room where she used to sleep at night, to collect her stuff and leave.
After she’d packed her few possessions and lifted the neatly arranged basket on her shoulder, something she had never seen until that moment caught her eyes. Under the still warm ashes, there was a tiny mural, depicting three figures, two of them sitting at a table. The third one was a young girl, fetching a carafe of wine to the customers. The man, winged boots at his feet, drank from a goblet, while the woman had three heads, and the dog-looking one was barking at a dark mountain looming over them.
Livia hurried outside.
*
The sun was shining fiercely over the paved road that from Ostia led to the capital, and there were many that, accessing the city from Porta Marina, walked along Decumanus Maximus stopping here and there at the many establishments to drink.
Livia’s popina was located by the sea on the narrow alley that, on the opposite end, intersected with Cardus Maximus, the other main artery of the city. It was far away from the bustling centre but seemed to receive an endless stream of clients. She was busy preparing dates and anchovies for the day when one of her girls came in from the street.
“Somebody’s searching for you, domina.”
“Who’s that?”
“He must be a patrician. He has an escort, too.”
“Does he want to eat?” Livia said.
“I am not sure-“
Before she could continue, the man came in. She’s right, Livia thought. He was luxuriously clad in a long, draped toga with wide purple edging at the end, worn over a tunic with two vertical purple stripes. He must be a magistrate of some kind. A praetor? Four men dressed in a simple, short-sleeved tunic were behind him, and remained on the doorway’s sides while he walked over to her. They were wearing a dagger at their waist. Soldiers. He’s a consul, then.
“Are you the domina?” he asked, with a weird tone in his voice. “The famous Livia? I thought you were older than that.”
“I take it as a compliment.” She bowed her head. “But I’m nowhere famous. Mine is just one of the many popinae in Ostia, and a small one.”
The man sneered and moved closer. “Yet people talk about this place.”
“Here in Ostia’s forum?”
“Everywhere, even in Rome. I know you receive visits from the capital, now even more than in the past.” He waved for a servant to bring him water.
“And what do they say?”
“They say the domina has great power, so great she has in fact survived Pompeii’s destruction that killed so many souls. They say she can peer into the future as if it were a transparent pond of pure, still water. She tells men if they’re going to hold honours and won battles. But often she foresees misfortune, and many of them have died in the way she had predicted.”
Livia smiled. “Like Cassandra.”
“Yes.” The man drank and remained with the cup in the air, pensive. “But I’ve also heard you gave the name of the gladiators that were going to win in the arenas to poor people.”
“So this is what you’re here for -gambling?” Livia said. “You’re already rich, for what I can see.”
“I want to know what are my chances to become Emperor one day. I want names, details, places. I want your help,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table surface. “This is why I came all the way to Ostia. I can make you the most powerful woman of the Empire. But-”
“But?”
“I still don’t know whether I trust you or not. If you’re a priestess I have to worship or a charlatan I have to crush.”
Livia observed the man in his early thirties, a muscled body and an iron stare. She rose and brought to the table a pitcher of wine. “Sit down and drink my wine, legatus. It’s from Falerno.” She said, pouring the red liquid. “You can’t find anything in kind in your Hispania Tarraconensis.”
“Do you know who I am?” He blinked.
“What good would I be otherwise, Marcus Ulpius?” She said, sitting in front of him. “I’ll answer all your questions, have no fear, and not because you threatened me. It’s because you’re here visiting my humble popina from a far-away land, and I’ve always been kind with strangers. I hope you’ll extend the same courtesy to all the foreigners you’re going to meet during your campaigns.”
He looked around with a wary attitude, as if he suddenly feared the dimly lit tavern and its quiet surroundings. He wouldn’t be so careful around Circe’s mansion in the woods, Livia thought. “Let’s start with the name of this place,” he ordered.
“This place has no name.”
“Exactly.” He sat down, eating, after a moment of hesitation, the exquisite olives the servant had brought over, and observing Livia with an inquisitive stare. “People call it with a number, the men I’ve interrogated said, but everybody refused to tell me which one. They said it’s bad luck. You’ll tell me now.”
“You’re a smart man, legatus; that’s why you’ll become Emperor, one day, of the most extended territory Rome has ever conquered. You can give it a guess.”
He remained silent for a long moment, regarding her with his pale, piercing eyes. “831. As the year of the eruption ab urbe condita.”
“You’re half right. It is that same number, as it will be counted thousands of years from today, in a world you can’t even imagine. Where the best legacy a sovereign can leave behind is not might and power but justice and restraint.”
Livia dipped her forefinger in the wine cup and marked a LXXIX on the white nape of the table. Marcus Ulpius raised his cup with two hands in sign of respect and smiled for the first time.
©January 2019, Russell Hemmell
Russell Hemmell is a statistician and social scientist from the U.K, passionate about astrophysics and speculative fiction. Recent stories in Aurealis, New Myths, Third Flatiron, and others.This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.