Pompeii Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Pompeii

  About the Author

  Also by Robert Harris

  Pompeii

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Map

  Mars

  Conticinium

  Hora Undecima

  Hora Duodecima

  Vespera

  Nocte Intempesta

  Mercury

  Diluculum

  Hora Quarta

  Hora Quinta

  Hora Sexta

  Hora Septa

  Hora Duodecima

  Vespera

  Nocte Concubia

  Jupiter

  Hora Prima

  Hora Quarta

  Hora Sexta

  Hora Nona

  Vespera

  Venus

  Inclinatio

  Diluculum

  Hora Altera

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for

  POMPEII

  ‘Blazingly exciting . . . Harris evokes the milieu soon to be engulfed by the volcano with confident expertise . . . What makes this novel all but unputdownable, though, is the bravura fictional flair that crackles throughout . . . Harris, as Vesuvius explodes, gives full vent to his genius for thrilling narrative. Fast-paced twists and turns alternate with nightmarish slow-motion scenes. Harris’s unleashing of the furnace ferocities of the eruption’s terminal phase turns his book’s closing sequences into pulse-rate-speeding masterpieces of suffocating suspense and searing action. It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly enjoyable thriller read’ Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

  ‘Apart from its thriller content – breakneck pace, constant jeopardy and subtle twists of plot – what distinguishes Pompeii is its vivid recreation of a former world . . . The depth of the research in the book is staggering . . . Pompeii is indeed a blazing blockbuster’ Simon Brett, Daily Mail

  ‘A stunning novel . . . The subtlety and power of its construction holds our attention to the end’ Beryl Bainbridge, ‘Books of the Year’, The Times

  ‘A whole community, buried in volcanic ash 2000 years ago, has been brought to life . . . Stirring and absorbing’ David Robson, Sunday Telegraph

  ‘My favourite read this year has been Robert Harris’s Pompeii – every bit as good as his earlier historical thrillers’ Ian Kershaw, ‘Books of the Year’, Mail on Sunday

  ‘Gripping, topical and dauntingly intelligent’ John Carey, Sunday Times

  ‘Harris weaves events into a story of intrigue, brutality and even love with mounting excitement’ Joan Bakewell, ‘Books of the Year’, The Times

  ‘[A] beautifully crafted thriller . . . Gripping and illuminating’ Nicholas Coleridge, ‘Books of the Year’, Evening Standard

  ‘Harris’s skill lies in disturbing the splendidly drawn luxury of Neapolitan life with premonitory intimations of catastrophe . . . Readers must hope that Robert Harris will want to return soon to the classical warm south’ Robert McCrum, Observer

  ‘Britain’s leading thriller writer . . . The key to the tension, which Harris expertly cranks up, is that while the characters in the novel have no idea that Vesuvius is about to blow, the reader does . . . The scenes of violence and doom that Harris portrays with such relish are given added piquancy by the fact that the tourist who has visited Pompeii or Herculaneum will recognise many of them. The long drawn-out death agony of the two cities is brilliantly done. Explosive stuff, indeed – and yes, it goes with a bang’ Tom Holland, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Harris has done a tremendous job of evoking life in ancient Italy . . . When Vesuvius finally blows its top, you can almost taste the pumice. You can feel the ash in your hair . . . Harris had me imaginatively surrounded. I am lost in admiration at his energy and skill’ Boris Johnson, Mail on Sunday

  ‘The ability to disguise the outcome is held to be a vital part of the thriller writer’s art. Robert Harris though, has built a major career in open defiance of this rule . . . Harris is equally successful in making us flinch and fear for characters who are going to a doom which we know before them . . . In the post-eruption sequences – chillingly, viscerally described – the novelist makes explicit this implied connection with September 11 . . . Readers will be reminded here not of their school history books but of newspaper front pages just two years old’ Mark Lawson, Guardian

  ‘[Harris] eschews lavish dramatic irony in favour of fast-paced narrative. He judges every element of his craft with perfect professionalism – the page-turning pace, the easy-to-read but informative background-painting . . . Harris’s Pompeii seems just around the corner – a Pompeii for our times’ Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Times

  ‘The inspired aqueduct angle on events, the lively interaction of characters real and fictional and the time bomb in the shape of Vesuvius places Harris’s novel in a distinguished tradition that successfully creates great fiction in an authentically imagined other world’ Peter Jones, Evening Standard

  ‘Harris has cleverly glossed and expanded on ancient sources, retelling the story very effectively . . . A master craftsman . . . Harris is a writer of integrity who does not seek refuge in postmodern nonsense. There are no temporal dislocations, ‘unearthed diaries’ or other hocus-pocus. He knows how to tell a story and achieves page-turning readability without effort’ Frank McLynn, Daily Express

  ‘Genuinely thrilling’ Literary Review

  ‘Harris triumphs . . . A skilled writer on top form . . . The pitfalls that come with this territory are skilfully avoided by Harris, who engages with material ancient and modern in a thoughtful way . . . A sophisticated thriller that takes in its stride the conventions of the historical novel, Pompeii deserves the place it will undoubtedly have at the top of the bestseller lists’ Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A supremely good piece of storytelling, most impressively researched’ Diana Athill, Guardian

  ‘As a writer, Mr Harris is as thought-provoking as he is entertaining. Thanks to his minute attention to detail, his handling of the eruption and his competence as a historian, the novel works both as an engaging thriller and as a believable portrayal of life in ancient Rome, with no small lesson for our own time’ Economist

  ‘A gripping novel that carries the reader smoothly along as in a litter borne by several muscular Nubian slaves . . . Harris proves, if proof were needed, that he is a writer who, unfashionably, never loses sight of his obligation towards the reader’s welfare and enjoyment’ Philip Kerr, New Statesman

  ‘Harris is a knowing, capable writer who understands better than anyone how to keep readers gripped. Never less than tremendous fun, Pompeii scores highly for quality of research and technical detail’ Time Out

  ‘Fast, fact filled, and quite fun. A blast, really’ Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

  ‘Harris colourfully evokes the sights and sounds of the ancient world’ Christopher Hart, Independent on Sunday

  ‘Quite simply a wonderful novel . . . Harris has excelled yet again. His characters leap off the pages . . . It is beautifully written, meticulously researched and comes across as solidly true to the era. But don’t take my word, read it and believe’ Paul Carson, Irish News

  ‘Harris has astounded millions with his ability to tell a captivating tale. Particularly adept at revealing the shocking ties between our past failures and their reverberating effects, this latest promises no less . . . We see the corruption and arrogance of a dying era amid the delicious intrigue and cool precision we expect from Harris’ The Good Book Guide

  ‘Deeply researched, faithful to the evidence, and gloriously successful in evoking a plausible picture of what the world of first-century Italy might have been like . . . A gripping taste of the contradictions of a real Roman world’ Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, The Art Newspaper

  ‘Harris is terrific in describing the grandeur of the aqueducts, inviting the reader inside’ People Magazine

  ‘Another winner . . . Packed with fascinating historical details, Harris’s yarn brings Pompeii to life even as it faces death’ Newsweek

  ‘Harris vividly brings to life the ancient world on the brink of disaster’ Booklist

  ‘Pompeii proves once again that a talented writer can make anything interesting . . . Vivid atmosphere, rich characterizations and awesome descriptions of nature’s fury that show Harris working at the top of his game’ Time Out New York

  About the author

  Robert Harris is the author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium and The Ghost, all of which were international bestsellers. His latest novel, Lustrum, has just been published. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. After graduating with a degree in English from Cambridge University, he worked as a reporter for the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight programmes, before becoming political editor of the Observer and subsequently a columnist on the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. The film of The Ghost – for which he co-wrote the screenplay – directed by Roman Polanski and starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, is due to be released at the beginning of 2010. He is married to Gill Hornby and they live with their four children in a village near Hungerford.

  Also by Robert Harris

  FICTION

  Fatherland Enigma Archangel

  Imperium The Ghost Lustrum

  NON-FICTION

  A Higher Form of Killing (with Jeremy Paxman)

  Gotcha! The Making of Neil Kinnock

  Selling Hitler Good and Faithful Servant

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409021650

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  Published by Arrow in 2009

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  Copyright © Robert Harris 2003

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  Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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  Map of Aqua Augusta by Reginald Piggott

  First published by Arrow Books in 2004

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  To Gill

  Author’s note

  The Romans divided the day into twelve hours. The first, hora prima, began at sunrise. The last, hora duodecima, ended at sunset.

  The night was divided into eight watches – Vespera, Prima fax, Concubia and Intempesta before midnight; Inclinatio, Gallicinium, Conticinium and Diluculum after it.

  The days of the week were Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and Sun.

  Pompeii takes place over four days.

  Sunrise on the Bay of Naples in the fourth week of August AD 79 was at approximately 06:20 hours.

  ‘American superiority in all matters of science, economics, industry, politics, business, medicine, engineering, social life, social justice, and of course, the military was total and indisputable. Even Europeans suffering the pangs of wounded chauvinism looked on with awe at the brilliant example the United States had set for the world as the third millennium began.’

  Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up

  ‘In the whole world, wherever the vault of heaven turns, there is no land so well adorned with all that wins Nature’s crown as Italy, the ruler and second mother of the world, with her men and women, her generals and soldiers, her slaves, her pre-eminence in arts and crafts, her wealth of brilliant talent . . .’

  Pliny, Natural History

  ‘How can we withhold our respect from a water system that, in the first century AD, supplied the city of Rome with substantially more water than was supplied in 1985 to New York City?’

  A. Trevor Hodge, author,

  Roman Aqueducts & Water Supply

  MARS

  22 August

  Two days before the eruption

  Conticinium

  [04:21 hours]

  ‘A strong correlation has been found between the magnitude of eruptions and the length of the preceding interval of repose. Almost all very large, historic eruptions have come from volcanoes that have been dormant for centuries.’

  Jacques-Marie Bardintzeff, Alexander R. McBirney,

  Volcanology (second edition)

  They left the aqueduct two hours before dawn, climbing by moonlight into the hills overlooking the port – six men in single file, the engineer leading. He had turfed them out of their beds himself – all stiff limbs and sullen, bleary faces – and now he could hear them complaining about him behind his back, their voices carrying louder than they realised in the warm, still air.

  ‘A fool’s errand,’ somebody muttered.

  ‘Boys should stick to their books,’ said another.

  He lengthened his stride.

  Let them prattle, he thought.

  Already he could feel the heat of the morning beginning to build, the promise of another day without rain. He was younger than most of his work gang, and shorter than any of them: a compact, muscled figure with cropped brown hair. The shafts of the tools he carried slung across his shoulder – a heavy, bronze-headed axe and a wooden shovel – chafed against his sunburnt neck. Still, he forced himself to stretch his bare legs as far as they would reach, mounting swiftly from foothold to foothold, and only when he was high above Misenum, at a place where the track forked, did he set down his burdens and wait for the others to catch up.

  He wiped the sweat from his eyes on the sleeve of his tunic. Such shimmering, feverish heavens they had here in the south! Even this close to daybreak, a great hemisphere of stars swept down to the horizon. He could see the horns of Taurus, and the belt and sword of the Hunter; there was Saturn, and also the Bear, and the constellation they called the Vintager, which always rose for Caesar on the twenty-second day of August, following the Festival of Vinalia, and signalled that it was time to harvest the wine. Tomorrow night the moon would be full. He raised his hand to the sky, his blunt-tipped fingers black and sharp against the glittering constellations – spread them, clenched them, spread them again – and for a moment it seemed to him that he was the shadow, the nothing; the light was the substance.

  From down in the harbour came the splash of oars as the night watch rowed between the moored triremes. The yello w lanterns of a couple of fishing boats winked across the bay. A dog barked and another answered. And then the voices of the labourers slowly climbing the path beneath him: the harsh local accent of Corax the overseer – ‘Look, our new aquarius is waving at the stars!’ – and the slaves and the free men, equals for once in their resentment if nothing else, panting for breath and sniggering.

  The engineer dropped his hand. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘with such a sky, we have no need of torches.’ Suddenly he was vigorous again, stooping to collect his tools, hoisting them back on to his shoulder. ‘We must keep moving.’ He frowned into the darkness. One path would take them westwards, skirting the edge of the naval base. The other led north, towards the seaside resort of Baiae. ‘I think this is where we turn.’

  ‘He thinks,’ sneered Corax.

  The engineer had decided the previous day that the best way to treat the overseer was to ignore him. Without a word he put his back to the sea and the stars, and began ascending the black mass of the hillside. What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretence that the decision was based on reason?

  The path here was steeper. He had to scramble up it sideways, sometimes using his free hand to pull himself along, his feet skidding, sending showers of loose stones rattling away in the darkness. People stared at these brown hills, scorched by summer brushfires, and thought they were as dry as deserts, but the engineer knew differently. Even so, he felt his earlier assurance beginning to weaken, and he tried to remember how the path had appeared in the glare of yesterday afternoon, when he had first reconnoitred it. The twisting track, barely wide enough for a mule. The swathes of scorched grass. And then, at a place where the ground levelled out, flecks of pale green in the blackness – signs of life that turned out to be shoots of ivy reaching towards a boulder.

  After going halfway up an incline and then coming down again, he stopped and turned slowly in a full circle. Either his eyes were getting used to it, or dawn was close now, in which case they were almost out of time. The others had halted behind him. He could hear their heavy breathing. Here was another story for them to take back to Misenum – how their new young aquarius had dragged them from their beds and marched them into the hills in the middle of the night, and all on a fool’s errand. There was a taste of ash in his mouth.