New Pompeii (18 page)

Nick smiled sympathetically. Whelan might be pleased with the smoke and mirrors at the House of McMahon, but he couldn’t have anything up his sleeve to compare with the real thing. The shaking of the ground and the first waves of heat. It must have been truly terrifying. It was probably the key trick that made New Pompeii work. “His reply may already be on its way.”

“Indeed, and we shall talk again later.” Barbatus issued a short, loud laugh. “Cato! Show our guest back to the street!”

* * *

Nick hadn’t gone far before a shout made him turn back. He was being followed by a woman, and she was running hard. It took a moment for Nick to recognise her but, as she got closer, he saw she was the slave waiting on Barbatus’ daughter.

“Look,” said the woman, gasping, “we don’t know who you are, but my mistress needs to speak with you. Meet her at the Temple of Fortuna Augusta at noon!”

Before Nick could respond, the slave was already dashing back to the house. He hadn’t even had time to ask her mistress’s name.

C
ALPURNIA
.

Nick had cursed himself more than once since he’d been given the message.
He hadn’t even asked her name
. But of course he hadn’t needed to. Because he’d met her father: Manius Calpurnius Barbatus.

His daughter would be called Calpurnia. It was that simple.

Nick hadn’t covered much ground since leaving Barbatus’ mansion. After retracing his steps back to the main
via
, he’d pushed on to the forum and spent most of the morning exploring the buildings and watching the people using them. Then, as the sun had reached its zenith, he’d slipped out of the forum’s southern access point, headed through the entertainment quarter, and circled back to the Temple of Fortuna Augusta.

It was not as imposing as the temples in the main forum dedicated to Jupiter and Apollo. Its position outside and to the north of the forum, opposite the Forum Baths, belied the fact that its patron had obviously spent a large amount of money on it. And yet the temple remained surprisingly quiet. Those walking past gave it a wide berth. Some eyed it – or perhaps him – with suspicion. But there it was. A good replica. And, he had to admit it, a credit to Astridge.

Nick eyed the stone arch over the main entrance to the forum. He couldn’t see Calpurnia. Nor could he see her approaching from the north – her most probable route from the House of Barbatus. He glanced at his wrist, again forgetting he wasn’t wearing a watch, and then looked back at the temple. Maybe she was already inside?

Nick headed up the steps and found the temple’s portico deserted. Statues of the goddess Fortuna and Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, guarded the shadows of the interior. Nick continued past the colonnade and through the ceremonial doorway. Again, no one. He shivered, suddenly cold.

“They’re gone.”

The voice was soft. Nick turned. Calpurnia stood inside the doorway. She was wearing her
palla
loosely as a hood.

“Calpurnia?”

“Yes, Not elder, nor younger, nor wiser, nor dumber. Just Calpurnia, daughter of Manius Calpurnius Barbatus. I’m pleased you came.”

Barbatus’ daughter looked about twenty. As she stepped forward, the light from between the columns swept over her mid-section and revealed a distended stomach. Was she pregnant?

“Our great emperor,” she said, tilting her head towards the statue of Augustus. “A great man followed by a tyrant, a madman and a stuttering fool. And yet every caesar has been made into a god by our grateful Senate.”

Nick swallowed. Hard. This Calpurnia was clearly no fool. “Perhaps best not to mock a god in his own temple,” he said.

“Why? Do you see anyone here?”

Nick looked about him, even though he knew the answer. The temple was deserted. The Temple of Fortuna Augusta. Associated with the man who was meant to have saved Pompeii. And yet no one was here.

No one.

Calpurnia smiled, perhaps detecting that she had managed to sow at least one seed of doubt. “Nor at Vespasian’s place in the forum,” she added. “And why do you suppose that is?”

Nick didn’t say anything. He already had his answer. Because there was a contradiction at the heart of Whelan’s script. The god-emperor Augustus was a political machination. Perhaps some people in the provinces believed in his divinity – at the edges of the Empire and far from Rome. But did anyone here actually think a man could be voted into heaven?

“Pompeii was busy on the day Vulcan turned against us,” continued Calpurnia. “A lot of people are now saying the old gods were reminding us of their importance.”

“And yet Pompeii still stands.”

“Yes, it does. But emperors come and emperors go. Not so long ago, we had four in a single year. We don’t really know if the imperial family are still alive. So who do you choose to worship when all around you are falling? Augustus? Or Jupiter?”

Nick thought about Whelan’s story. He needed to remind her of the proclamations. But he also sensed Calpurnia didn’t really want to talk about the imperial family, or even religion. No, there was something else troubling her. “This isn’t why you asked me here,” he said. It was a statement, not a question, yet Calpurnia nodded all the same.

“I bet my father told you about his estates,” she said, still seemingly distracted. “And his money, and his house. You see, his only concern is getting all of those things back under his control. He notices who owns things, and who controls things.”

“He is a
duumvir
,” said Nick. “Surely
he
controls things.”

Calpurnia laughed. “He’s a
duumvir
, certainly. But no, he doesn’t control things here. So he summons you to try to find out why. But that doesn’t interest me, because I have more important things to occupy my mind.”

“Such as?”

“Why are the chickens so large, and the carrots orange?”

For a couple of seconds, Nick didn’t take in what she was saying. But then it broke across him with a force that made him close his eyes. It was the detail that they could never hope to get right. Astridge could reconstruct the walls of the buildings, but not their contents. They could reproduce the costumes, but not wear them in the correct fashion. And they could provide pots and pans but the food they put in them just wouldn’t be the same. The chickens should have been small and scrawny, the carrots any number of colours – but probably such a dirty white they’d more closely resemble a parsnip than its modern cousin. And could any of that be explained by an erupting volcano?

Calpurnia seemed pleased she’d put him on the back foot. But he couldn’t leave her with the impression she was right.

“So you’re worried about the contents of your stomach?”

It was a good line. Better than he’d have come up with if he’d had time to think, and delivered with just the right amount of sarcasm. Which meant it was now Calpurnia’s turn to hesitate. She turned away and towards the statue of Augustus. For a second, she seemed frozen under the full glare of his imperial majesty. The image of a man who’d died old but remained young; his hand held out as if calling and commanding all at the same time.

“I’m not wrong,” she said, turning to leave. “I’m not wrong.”

T
AP
–
TAP
–
TAP.

“You’ve done it?”

Kirsten opened her eyes, but found herself standing in thick, white fog. Suspended in motion, unable to sense whether she was drifting in air, or floating in water. But she could at least recognise the voice. Strong, controlled, smooth.
Mark Whelan
. And he was so close he could have been talking straight into her ear.

“Yeah.”

McMahon
. Also close by, and somehow all around her.

“So there’s no longer any threat,” Whelan said. “Nothing that can be used against you?”

McMahon didn’t reply.

“We agreed this was the right thing to do,” Whelan persisted. “We agreed we couldn’t let this continue. This was your idea.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I really thought he’d become our Augustus.”

T
HE ENTRANCE TO
the House of McMahon was blocked, the wooden door closed and secured on the inside. Nick knocked. From within, he heard approaching footsteps. Finally, the door opened a fraction.

“Oh,” said the porter. “It’s you.”

Nick thanked him and started to squeeze past. However, the dog-at-the-door took tight hold of his bicep and thrust a squat finger towards the doorframe. “You see that?”

Nick pulled his arm free. The porter seemed to be indicating a bit of graffiti scratched into the doorframe. A roughly cut grid, like a tic-tac-toe table. “I didn’t do it,” he said, smiling in what he hoped was a disarming manner.

“Huh,” came the gruff response. “Look harder.”

Nick peered at the grid. It had been cut deeply into the wood. But the closer he got, the less it looked like the material had come from a tree; it looked synthetic. And that meant the grid wasn’t there by accident. It could almost be a number pad on an ATM machine.

“If I’m not here, then the code is 391391.”

Nick nodded. But there was one problem. “The keys aren’t numbered.”

“They’re always laid out the same,” said the porter.

Nick waited for the porter to re-secure the entrance and then followed him along the corridor to the atrium. The house appeared deserted. “Where is everyone?”

“Maggie and Noah are in the garden. McMahon’s about somewhere.”

“And Whelan?”

“No. He’s out with Patrick.”

Nick let out a frustrated sigh. His initial reaction after meeting with Calpurnia had been to hurry back and make a report. But with Whelan gone, he maybe had a little more time to get his thoughts in order, and to pick out the more important aspects of his two morning meetings.

He glanced briefly at the balcony encircling the upper floor of the house, and then pushed on towards the
peristylium
. He found Maggie and Noah sitting together in the garden. She was holding him in a tight hug.

“I thought you two were going out today?”

Noah looked up at him, his eyes red. Nick immediately regretted the comment. The boy had been crying. Maggie wasn’t holding him in a soft embrace. It was more like she was restraining him, her face screwed into tight anger. “The wanderer returns,” she said. “I take it you’re still enjoying this place my husband has created?”

Nick measured his response. “What happened?”

“We went out for a little walk this morning. Robert took us to the forum, back round to the theatre area and then on to what he called the gladiator barracks. It was full of whores. Rutting.” Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “So we went to one of the temples and found an angry mob outside. On the way home, we stopped at a street café – and again found ourselves surrounded by whores and pimps. This entire town is little more than a brothel.”

Nick nodded. The exact number of
tabernae
and brothels in old Pompeii was something that classicists liked to argue about. Estimates for the latter ranged from about forty down to just one. The only thing that was certain was that the Roman attitude to public sex and nudity was at odds with the modern world, just like they’d seen at the theatre. But what was it that Maggie had just said about a mob?

“Where was the trouble?” he asked. “Which temple?”

“That’s all you can say?
Which temple?
Not: ‘I hope you’re okay, Maggie’?”

Nick didn’t reply, immediately feeling guilty. Noah was just looking at him, his eyes swollen. Disneyland had obviously turned a bit sour.

“It was that one by the theatres,” Maggie said finally.

Nick blinked. The Temple of Isis. It tied up with what he’d heard at the
taberna
. He sat on the bench next to Maggie and Noah. He felt he needed to point something out, even if he was probably going to get another earful. “Have you ever been to Barcelona?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t see—”

“It’s a nice city isn’t it?”

“A little too commercial for Robert and me.”

“And the tourist guides tell you not to go to certain areas?”

Maggie snorted, suddenly understanding his argument. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Dr Houghton. But we’re not going out again. And the porter will keep the door shut while we’re here.”

Nick again looked at Noah. He looked frightened, his face damp with tears. All the excitement seemed to have been taken from him. And yet there was something else in his eyes: confusion. Nick opened his mouth to say something but before he could speak, footsteps echoed from the atrium.

McMahon stood at the threshold to the garden. The CEO was persisting in wearing a toga. Now that Nick had seen Barbatus wearing a tunic his appearance looked all the more odd, even if he was the representative of a god.

“I take it you’re the one who’s walked crap across my floor again?”

Nick nodded dumbly, realising he was still wearing his outdoor sandals rather than the clean flip-flops which were probably waiting for him by the door.

“Patrick and Whelan aren’t back yet,” McMahon said.

“No…”

“Good.” A NovusPart guard had appeared behind McMahon. He was dressed as a cavalryman. Did that mean McMahon was leaving? “Stay with these two. Astridge has gone out to inspect a few architectural problems.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I doubt that’s any of your business.”

Nick hesitated. “We still need to discuss my work here…”

McMahon considered this for a moment. “Talk to Whelan.”

* * *

Nick had to wait another couple of hours before Whelan returned with Astridge and Patrick. He spent the time mainly in the garden, doing his best to amuse Noah with a simple game of dice.

All the time, though, he was going over his meetings with Barbatus and Calpurnia. Trying to work out what he could say so he would at least have something useful to report – while at the same time not overplaying what had happened. After all, Astridge was convinced that he’d been brought here to find problems, and would certainly think it suspicious if Nick came up with any so soon after his arrival. And that was another paradox about why he’d actually been brought here:
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.