Empire of Time Read online

  “I thought you were waiting for someone?”

  Achillia turned back to the man, immediately reevaluating him. He was a little on the short side, if slightly more muscular than most. But the trunks of his arms didn’t indicate strength he’d earned through hard work. No, he probably spent each day down at the baths, lifting weights for whoever was watching.

  “I apologise,” said the man. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You didn’t.” She cocked her head towards Trigemina’s house. “So you heard what went on in there?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “And what are people saying?”

  “Suicide.”

  “Unfortunate.”

  “Quite.” The man cocked his head. “Odd thing though,” he said. “The mistress had marks on her back. Almost like she’d been whipped. A long time ago, but whipped nonetheless. So either she was the sort of wife her husband had need to punish, or else she was a slave stuffed into a rich woman’s dress.”

  Achillia snapped her attention to Trigemina’s house. The guards were heading her way, in response to some signal perhaps. One she hadn’t detected. Fuck.

  “According to my sources, the owner of that house arrived with a female gladiator. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  The man looked strong, but Achillia couldn’t see a weapon. The kitchen knife was at her hip. Hidden, yet ready. As she reached for it, one of the approaching men shouted:

  “Barbatus! Have you caught her?”

  34

  Ruins of Ancient Pompeii

  “Risk? What risk? Pompeii was a tourist town in the age of the Grand Tour, when life expectancy was half what it is today… or maybe a couple of years ago. It will still be bringing in visitors right up to the apocalypse.”

  Off-record comments, Campania Tourist Board Officer

  “HAS THERE BEEN much damage to the site?”

  Nick spun the optician’s card around between his fingers, still thinking about Professor Waldren. He barely listened as the assembled team of archaeologists talked about the earthquake. Minor damage only. A lucky escape. It’s been through worse. He was glad when Fabio shooed them away.

  “The fresco,” Nick said. “I’m ready to see where you found it.”

  “Yes. But first I need to check if they’ve uncovered anything else of interest. The director has a habit of keeping the best finds to himself for a few days.”

  Nick nodded and Fabio headed further onto the site. He surveyed the row of white tents and the outlines of the buildings that had once made up this quadrant of the town. In the distance, the yellow tape that marked out the boundary of the dig site fluttered in the breeze. A solitary, scraggy dog ambled about.

  About fifty or so yards away, clearing away a mix of soil and ash from the bottom of a stone-block wall, Amel knelt with her niece Sabine. It looked like the kid was undergoing training in some basic digging techniques. They were both working in the full glare of the afternoon sun.

  “You’ll get sunburn,” Nick shouted, heading towards them. “Even this late in the season.”

  The kid’s head spun like an owl’s. Amel didn’t lift her concentration from the ground. Even when he got within a few feet of her, she didn’t look up. “I’ve worked in hotter climates than this,” she replied, sweeping away more of the lapilli.

  “North Africa? The Middle East?” he guessed, thinking of her name.

  “Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, Spain. But my real interest is in South America.”

  “And now Campania?”

  “Yes. And now Campania.” Amel rose and dusted her hands against the sides of her shirt. She waved Sabine towards the shadow of the nearest tent, and the girl grinned in relief. “The geophys has started on the last few parcels of land.” Amel pointed into the distance at nothing in particular. “Soon it’ll all be uncovered.”

  “I like to think a few secrets will remain buried,” Nick replied.

  “If it helps, one of the houses we’ve found may be a match for the House of the Faun. Once it’s all cleaned up.”

  “But they’ve got you out here, digging out a tiny section of wall?”

  Amel brushed some sweat off her face with her forearm. It didn’t hide the fact she’d suddenly turned a little red. And it was nothing to do with the sun. “Well, I guess you could call it academic punishment.”

  Nick understood. He’d spent most of his fleeting visit the previous day with Fabio near the water castle, or with Amel after she’d been sent to collect him to watch the casting process. No doubt some noses had been put out of joint. So now she was buried under the same old horse shit he’d experienced himself as a post-grad.

  “So two visits in two days,” she said. “What gives?”

  “Fabio showed me some of the new exhibits in the museum in Naples.”

  Amel laughed. “You mean the sexy fresco they took away to the Gabinetto?”

  Nick shrugged. She clearly didn’t know about the writing. “Sure, amongst other things.”

  “Well, a lot of people here are a bit – how you say?” She looked at her niece, who was within earshot. “Miffed that the museum geeks got to examine the finds from Zone 23 before the rest of us. It would have been good to have had the opportunity to look at them in detail.”

  Nick smiled inwardly, thinking about the hidden room behind the Gabinetto. He glanced over to where Fabio was still in discussion with the dig team. He was making a series of pointing and jabbing gestures. “And you could show me this ‘Zone 23’?”

  “Sure.”

  Amel told Sabine to stay where she was, then led the way into a building, the walls of which barely looked capable of standing. Nick paused to consider whether they’d had opportunity to reinforce them since it had been uncovered – but then remembered it had already survived an earthquake.

  He followed Amel inside and found himself within the atrium of a modest townhouse. The echoes of the impluvium and tablinum were just about clear amidst the ruins, but it would take a lot of restoration before it was on the same level as the rest of the site.

  “We’re still digging out the cubicles surrounding the atrium,” said Amel. “You know? The little bedrooms and store cupboards.” Amel detected Nick’s sigh. “What?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “The small spaces around the atrium were used for any number of things.”

  “I was generalising.”

  “Sorry,” said Nick. “It just bugs me. Some of the interpretation that gets put out there.”

  “Well,” Amel said, more than a little irritation in her voice, “if you’d let some of us in…”

  Nick ignored her and walked around the impluvium. The archaeology had been rushed. Rectangular gashes in the wall were all that indicated the spots where frescos had been removed. Other, less well-preserved examples remained intact on the wall. All in all, there was nowhere near the same level of care shown as where Amel had been working to brush away lapilli with her niece. “Shit,” said Nick.

  “What did you expect? For them to leave the best stuff on the walls to rot away like they have in the rest of the town?”

  Nick didn’t answer. The removal of artefacts was a double-edged sword. Eighteenth-century paintings and drawings of Pompeii depicted frescos that had faded away after being exposed to the elements. But to simply cart them off to the galleries of Naples created other problems.

  He was wasting his time. After finding the Gabinetto fresco, the dig director would have likely examined every inch of this zone. They were unlikely to find anything new.

  “Come, I’ll show you something better,” Amel said, leading him out into the road and back in the direction of her dig site. Sabine ran from the tents to join them. When they stopped it was at another building, its original purpose clear from the circular grinding stones and ovens. The stray dog – a dirty, grey Labrador – wandered about, nosing for food two thousand years too late. From the looks of the swollen glands on its chest, the animal had mouths to feed
and would likely persist. But it looked harmless enough. So much for cave canem.

  Amel swept a theatrical arm towards a wall. “See what you’ve been missing?”

  Unlike the townhouse, at least one fresco inside the bakery remained intact: a beautiful image of Venus fishing, the detail dull under a fine layer of dust.

  “It looks better after you’ve thrown a bucket of water over it,” Amel said.

  Nick spun round in shock, then realised Amel was joking. “Yes,” he said, smiling. “Yes, they used to do that, didn’t they, for visiting dignitaries on their Grand Tours.”

  Amel rolled her eyes. “Thanks for explaining my joke.”

  “Sorry,” Nick mumbled. “It’s just all so different…”

  “…than the stuff you saw when you first came here as a tourist?”

  Nick nodded. The sad truth was that, almost as soon as it was discovered, Pompeii had become an illusion. A town destroyed by an earthquake and pyroclastic flow, its statues and relics put back as they were assumed to have been, not how they were. Even discounting the more recent destruction of a fascist government and the Second World War.

  “Hey! Watch your feet!”

  Nick jumped back and looked down. He didn’t see anything at first, just the layer of soil that hadn’t yet been excavated from the floor of the bakery. Then he spotted two parallel lines in the earth, a series of shorter lines crossed between them, the area marked out by orange flags a few centimetres high. “A ladder?” he asked, kneeling and tracing the lines with his hands, feeling the indentation.

  Amel grinned. “Yeah, pressed into the dirt. The wood’s long gone of course, but the impression remains. Maybe they had builders in at the time of the eruption, making repairs after the earlier earthquakes. Just like we are now.”

  Nick whistled appreciatively. He rose and continued to explore the bakery, careful of the orange flags. He found what he was looking for after about ten minutes. Kneeling low to the ground behind the ovens, he spotted a patch of graffiti. Simple, childlike drawings that were common in every bar and brothel in town. More than likely the work of a barely literate adult.

  The words were hard to read, but not impossible. He stared at them, as they came into and out of focus. He didn’t even notice Amel had joined him until her bare shoulder bumped into his arm. She swore.

  Nick wiped away the remaining surface layer of dust from the wall, revealing the graffiti sharp against the ancient limewash. Suddenly, there were two points on the graph, and they ruled out the possibility that this was something NovusPart had done prior to the creation of New Pompeii. This was a message from the future, transmitted deep into the past.

  The writing was eroded and mostly illegible, apart from two words: Nick Houghton.

  35

  Ancient Pompeii, AD 62

  ACHILLIA PULLED HARD, but the rope just cut deeper into her wrists. Her hands had been tied behind her back to the upright of the chair and her feet were bound tight to its front two legs. Another rope was fastened round her midriff. In short, she wasn’t going anywhere. And they were probably going to torture her.

  Despite not wanting to, she let out a small cry. It had taken four of them to tie her into the chair and her struggles seemed to have made them even more determined she wasn’t going to get free. “Fuck,” she whispered. Again, she tried to move her wrists, tried to find some slack that could let one of her hands slip free. Instead she started to lose the feeling in her right hand. “Fuck. Come on! Come on!”

  “You’d be better off waiting.”

  Achillia stopped. She knew the voice, of course. It was the man from the water fountain, Barbatus. But she thought she’d been left alone, having long since heard the shutter being closed and voices slowly disappearing deeper into the townhouse where she’d been taken. She’d been careful to wait many minutes before starting to try and wriggle free. Had he been standing there all that time, just watching her waiting? Watching to see what she’d do, and when she’d do it?

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Long enough.”

  The bastard was enjoying himself. “So, ask me then.”

  “Ask you what?”

  “Trigemina. You want to know where she is.”

  Barbatus came into view, but he stood off to one side. Achillia had to twist her neck to get a good look at him so she didn’t bother. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the wall, on which a fresco of Artemis and Actaeon was being replaced with something more modern.

  “You must know I can’t simply ask you,” Barbatus replied. “The law dictates a slave’s testimony will only be accepted under word of pain.”

  Achillia could no longer feel her right hand and the left had begun to tingle. She would need at least one if she was going to fight when they finally moved her from the chair. She forced herself to relax and let the blood again start to flow. “This is no courtroom.”

  “And I’m no torturer.”

  A small silver coin fell into her lap. It rested in the folds of her stola. The Emperor’s face smiled up at her. Gods, she’d love to give that bastard a slap.

  “I’ve seen your type before,” said Barbatus. “You spend your life stumbling from one fight to the next. Flipping a coin and betting it will always fall in your favour.”

  “It’s worked so far.”

  “And now you’re tied to a chair. My chair.”

  Achillia looked Barbatus up and down. “It’s in a shit house though, isn’t it?”

  Barbatus didn’t respond for a moment, and then burst out in laughter. “Tell me, how did Trigemina put up with you? I didn’t know her very well, but she always seemed so uptight?”

  Achillia turned back to the half-completed fresco. Cocksucker! He knew Trigemina! All that trouble – killing the slaves, dressing Trigemina up in the dead woman’s clothes – and he knew as soon as he looked at their decoy!

  “You know her husband is dead, yes? All his property has been seized by the Emperor?”

  Achillia remained silent. Fuck.

  “That’s right,” said Barbatus. “You belong to the Emperor. So your calculation was wrong. You should have waited. There was no need for you to toss the coin. No need, in short, for you to butcher them all.”

  Achillia turned back to the fresco. “Trigemina took me to see the Sibyl,” she said. “Before we came here.”

  “And?”

  “I heard a voice.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  “Inside my head,” Achillia replied quickly. “Right inside my head. Trigemina didn’t hear it. It told me I’d come to Pompeii and meet a man called Manius Calpurnius Barbatus.”

  Barbatus didn’t respond.

  “That’s your full name, isn’t it?”

  “Go on…”

  “The Sibyl told me you had a daughter, and that I would – must – rescue her husband.”

  “Daughter? Husband?” Barbatus again roared with laughter. “And you were doing so well…”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Well perhaps you could offer me another truth. One more interesting than something a little woman said to you in a dark, damp cave. Where’s your mistress? Where’s Trigemina?”

  Achillia tried the bindings again, but knew she was beaten. She was going to die. So she did what she’d been trained to do and exposed her throat for this bastard Barbatus to make the killing blow.

  “No, that’s too easy,” Barbatus said. “Why threaten you with something you’ve faced many times before?”

  For only the second or third time in her life, Achillia started to shake. They could do anything to her, beat her, blind her, take her hands, break her legs. Dump her onto the street, unable to fight. Unable to live.

  “You are the property of the Emperor,” continued Barbatus. His voice was quiet. “And I usually get him what he wants. One way or another.” He took a step closer. “She took you to see the Sibyl?” he asked. “People say that oracles mean our future is set. They talk about destiny as
if they have no control over their own lives. But there’s another way of thinking about the Sibyl’s stories. She wrote down her predictions in nine books, and offered them to the last king of Rome. But Tarquinius refused to pay, so she burned three and raised the price of those that remained.”

  Achillia pulled once more at her bindings. “So?”

  “The Sibyl isn’t the only one who can burn the future. Life is what we make of it. And if you think your future depends on keeping Trigemina alive, you are mistaken. Now, tell me where she is, before I take your eyeballs.”

  Achillia let out a frustrated roar. “If you blind me, by the fucking gods I will have my revenge.”

  Barbatus didn’t seem impressed. “Where is she?”

  Achillia wanted to scream, to dare him to do as he threatened. But to be blind was worse than losing a limb. And she had no doubt he’d do it. “She’s in the fucking tenements; north of the arena. In a place owned by Hermeros.”

  36

  Naples

  “Whether we like it or not, Nick Houghton has so far managed to keep the Romans from using the NovusPart device. The danger will come if he ever loses his influence over this Empress of Time.”

  Anonymous Government Official, COBRA

  “DOES IT EVEN work?”

  In front of him, the desktop machine continued to click and murmur. A leftover from Nick’s days at university, and at one time a machine that had been frighteningly over-specced. Not now though. Today, it was just another forgotten bit of hardware. Something Chloe had found amongst his father’s belongings. “Just about,” he said. “Or it will do, once it’s patched.”

  “I could get everything you need much quicker from the boards.”

  Nick didn’t doubt she was correct, but that wasn’t really the point. He wanted to poke around and find the answers himself, not wait for Chloe to filter them. And as he didn’t have direct access to the boards, an old computer was his only point of connection. Just like most of the rest of the population. “This is fine,” he said.