Curses and Smoke (24 page)

T
ag lifted the
scutum
, Castor reclaimed their discarded pillows and blankets, and the three of them huddled under the rectangular shield for protection as they set off. They moved as a unit, Lucia holding the torch in front of them, but it only gave them inches of light in the inky, hot blackness. The constant pinging of rocks on the shield, combined with the mountain’s endless roaring, created an unearthly cacophony straight out of Pluto’s realm.

Like a slow-moving beetle with six legs, they shuffled out of the compound toward the Nucerian Gate, past the eerily quiet palaestra and amphitheater in the center of the city. By now, the streets were mostly empty, though they spied the occasional bobbing light from a torch or lamp.

“Where are we going?” Castor asked several times.

“To safety,” Tag always answered.

“Is the world ending?” he asked.

“No,” Lucia said. But did she know, really? It certainly seemed possible.

The little boy began to cry. “It is ending, I can tell.”

Lucia took his hand and squeezed. “As long as we are together, the world will not end. I promise. We are going to stick together and make it out.”

As they neared the gate, she stepped up on an unusually high crossing stone. To her surprise, it gave beneath her foot, as if she’d trod on an overly filled wineskin. She yelped in shock and fell backward. Tag caught her just in time, though he had to release the torch, and Castor snatched it up from the ground before the fire was snuffed out.

“Did you hurt your ankle again?” he asked.

She shook her head, staring. The thing she had thought a stone was slowly turning into a monster. The ash-coated creature rose on four spindly legs and squealed in outrage.

“It’s a pig,” Lucia said in wonderment.

The animal grunted and squealed again and worked its trotters in the ash and rock, scattering small stones in its wake as it set off in a panic.

“Why was the pig there?” the boy asked.

“It must have fallen asleep,” Tag said to Lucia. “You saved it.”

But she didn’t see how she helped it at all. When the poor beast tired out and lay down again, it would be covered up just as quickly as before. If she hadn’t stepped on it when she did, it probably would have died sooner, more mercifully. She wondered about the other odd shapes she’d seen covered in the layers of tiny rocks. Were they also animals, slowly asphyxiating?

“Oh, gods,” she cried out. “Minos! We have to go back for Minos — he’s still tied up!”

“No, Lucia, it’s all right,” Tag soothed her. “I freed him hours ago. He took off. I’m sure he is well away and safe by now.”

“He ran off? You freed him?”

“Yes, and we must keep moving, so that we will be free too.”

Still, Lucia hesitated. What about Cornelia? Was she all right? Could she really run without ever seeing her again? Without ever saying good-bye?

“What is the matter?” Tag asked.

“What if — what if Cornelia is hurt? What if she needs my help?” Guilt edged her concern as she realized this was the first time since the mountain exploded that she had even thought about her friend.

Tag tugged at her arm. “Cornelia has Antyllus and an army of slaves to take care of her,” he reminded Lucia. “She will be fine. Unlike us, if we are caught. We must keep going.”

With a pit of worry tightening in her stomach, Lucia knew Tag was right. “Good-bye, my friend,” she whispered through a tight throat, and they resumed their slow but persistent plodding.
I will find some way to see you again soon
.

T
ag’s muscles trembled with relief, fear, and exhilaration all at once. The world around them had turned into a nightmare, yet it was also giving him the chance to make his greatest dream come true: To escape and live as a free man with Lucia by his side.

He wanted to move faster, to run, but knew it was better to keep their measured pace. Still, he worried about Lucia and the boy. Castor wasn’t going to be able to keep walking for long. One of them would have to hold him soon, which would slow them down even more. He wondered if he could create a kind of sling for the child so he could carry him on his back without using his arms.

He was still thinking about how to tie the sling as they neared the Nucerian Gate. He spotted a fresh torch that had been discarded on the rocks, and grabbed it. They would need the additional light once their current torch began to sputter.

“Carry this,” he told Castor. “We must all do our part.”

The boy nodded solemnly and held the unlit torch with both hands.

At the gate, they were surprised to find a small crowd huddled under the tall concrete arches. Some had lamps, and their faces flickered gray with a coating of ash.

“Have you seen my son?” an old man asked them, eyes wide and confused. “His name is Gaius Sabinus.”

“No, grandfather. Are you injured?” Tag asked.

“No, no. I … I …” He looked around as if trying to place where he was. “I am waiting for my son. My son told me to wait for him here. He is fetching a cart for me to ride in. He told me to wait here.”

Lucia squeezed Tag’s hand. Something wasn’t right. He squeezed back as if he sensed it too.

“Perhaps you would be better off on the road. He will find you,” she said.

“No. No. No,” the man repeated. “He told me to wait at the gate.”

“We can’t just leave him,” she whispered to Tag.

“But we can’t take him with us either!” He wanted to help the man, who reminded him of his own dead
apa
, but how could they? And how awful would it be for the son if he actually arrived and his father had disappeared? “We can’t help him, Lucia,” Tag said. “We must focus on getting out.”

She nodded, though he could see it pained her to leave the old man. For a moment, Tag felt a surge of exasperation and frustration. They couldn’t save
everybody
! As much as his instincts as a healer told him to do something, he knew that he could not. “His son will come for him,” he said aloud, as much for himself as for her. “We must keep moving.”

Once through the gate, he breathed deeply. The air still swirled with ash and stank of sulfur, but they were out. Out of Pompeii!

Many of the tombs of the necropolis outside the gate were almost completely covered with mounds of ash and rock. Only the tops of small obelisk-like monuments poked through. The road cutting through the necropolis was only identifiable by the depression in the rocks made by countless Pompeians on the run.

Once past all the graves, Lucia insisted they move off the road.

“Nobody will recognize us in this darkness,” Tag said. “We will be fine on the road.”

“But we don’t know how far this dark cloud extends,” Lucia said. “What if someone recognizes me when it clears? They will want to know where my father is, and insist on escorting me to the ‘safety’ of his friends in Nuceria. And if they don’t recognize us,” she added more quietly, “Castor is bound to accidentally give us away.”

This was true. The boy wouldn’t mean to, but he would say something that would let any listeners know who they were — and if Lucius Titurius should decide to follow them, they couldn’t take any risks. Tag led them off the main path to the edge of the woods.

“Where are we going?” Castor asked.

“A secret way,” Tag answered. This was their original plan — to stay parallel with the main road, but not on it. Only, they had never imagined traveling in such strange and dark circumstances. He looked up at the thin but steady stream of traffic on the road to Nuceria. As long as they kept the flickering torchlights to their left, they would not run into any difficulty.

“It’s scary out here!” the boy cried.

“We’ll be fine,” Tag assured him. “I promise.”

I
t didn’t take long after they moved away from the road before Castor began whining. “I’m tired. I’m thirsty.”

“We all are,
mellite
,” she said. “We just have to bear it until we get to Nuceria.”

Tag shook his head. “I should have thought to grab some food and water as we left.”

“How could you?” she said. “And from
where
? We had to leave when we did, Tag. Do not blame yourself.”

He slowed. “All the same, maybe we should go back on the main road. People are bound to have something to drink with them. We can trade for some —”

She stubbornly shook her head.

“Lucia, we are covered in ash. None of us is recognizable. Maybe staying on the main road is safe enough under the circumstances.”

She pointedly looked at Castor and then back at Tag. They simply couldn’t risk it, not when they were so close to freedom. Tag sighed, and something about his expression reminded her of Damocles.

“Tag,” she said, pausing and looking up at him. “I’m sorry about your
apa
. I saw him….”

He swallowed hard and nodded. After a moment, he said, “Come, we must push on.”

Fatigue filled her bones, and she wished she’d slept some the night before. Time seemed to shrink and expand. They could have been walking in the nightmarish world of thick black air for moments or hours. Was it possible to sleep while walking and holding a torch? How else could she explain not noticing that Tag now carried the boy on his back, even as he held up the shield? When had Castor climbed up?

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Get Castor on your back?”

Tag furrowed his brow at her. “We stopped and shifted because he was fussing so much….”

She remembered none of this. They trudged on. Slowly, she became aware that Tag was breathing heavily.

“We need to stop and rest,” she said. He was clearly exhausted.

He shook his head.

“Let’s just go to the edge of the woods and let the shield down for a few minutes,” she said. “The trees will give us some protection from the falling pumice.”

“But I don’t like it in the woods,” Castor whined. “I’m scared.”

“It’s all right,” Tag said as he led them to the trees. He put Castor and the shield down and shook his arms out, then jammed the end of the torch into the ever-deepening carpet of rocks, ash, and stone.

Castor plopped down on the carpet of small stones. “Ouch,” he mumbled.

Lucia winced when she leaned back against a tree. She’d forgotten the shawl she’d bound to her back. She lifted it over her head and placed it in front of Tag.

“What is in here?”

“The money I had put away for us,” she said. “You know, the hoard. I went back for it before I started looking for you.”

“Smart girl,” he murmured.

She smiled up at him. “It should be enough to pay our way to Thurii, I think.”

Tag sat next to her, suddenly looking stricken. She leaned toward him. “What is the matter?”

“I … I didn’t grab any medical things. I started to, but then the mountain exploded, and I was only thinking of getting Castor to safety. But I can’t start treating people without supplies.”

She touched the scowl lines breaking through the caked ash on his forehead, then caressed his cheek. “We will just buy some with my savings. It will be all right. There is enough here to get us through.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Do not be sorry. We are together, and we’re going to be free.”

He leaned forward and kissed her. He tasted of ash, salt, and sweat. She closed her eyes.

“Ugh,” Castor said. “You look like statues kissing.”

They grinned at each other, and a sense of giddy exultation hit them both at the same time.

“I love you, Lucia, my heart,” Tag whispered, kissing her again.

“And I love you, Tages the Etruscan Prophet.”

“Can I play with the treasure while you kiss?” Castor asked, untying the shawl and digging his hands into the pile of coins and jewels.

Lucia smiled. “Just for a moment,” she said.

“Oooh, what is this?” he asked, holding out her brother’s ring.

“It was once my brother’s, but now it belongs to Tag,” she said. “It means he’s free.”

Castor tipped his head slightly and frowned. “Is it a magic ring?”

She looked at Tag, whose expression of surprise made her grin. “Put it on. Put it on and never take it off. Nobody will ever treat you as a slave again while you wear this.”

“But how does the magic ring make him free?” Castor said.

“It’s not magic. It marks him as a citizen,” Lucia explained.

The boy continued frowning. “But … but who freed him?”

“No one —” she began.

“She did,” Tag said.

Castor looked more confused than ever. Lucia took Tag’s wrist and slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of his right hand. “Never take it off, do you hear me?” she whispered.

He nodded and gripped her hand tight.

“Well, can you free me too?” the boy cried.

“All right,” she said. “I now declare you free. You are no longer a slave.”

“Where is my cizimen ring that says I’m free?”

She chuckled.

“You will get your citizen’s ring when you are a man,” Tag explained.

“Oh.” The boy looked at Tag with a skeptical scowl. “I thought only the master could free us.”

“The master is my father, remember,” Lucia said. “And that is enough.” She didn’t want to have to explain that they weren’t free according to Roman law, that Castor was right: Only her father could legally manumit them. But they were starting anew, and they would start
free
. All of them. It was the only way.

Castor seemed to accept her answer and went back to digging through the treasure. After a few more minutes’ rest, Tag began gathering their things. “Help me pack up,” he ordered the boy.

“NO!” Castor shouted with unusual force.

Tag’s and Lucia’s heads snapped up, and they looked at Castor with wide, astonished eyes.

The little boy crossed his arms. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me now that I’m
free
!”

Lucia suppressed a smile.

“You have to do what I tell you,” Tag said as he tied up the shawl. “Because I am like your father, your
apa
now. And all boys must obey their
apa
s.”

Lucia saw the expression on the boy’s face and signaled to Tag, who paused in his packing.

“This is true?” Castor asked shyly. “That you are like my
apa
?”

“Yes.”

“
Like
my
apa
or now my
actual apa
?”

“Both. No. Your actual
apa
. From here on out.”

She waited for the boy to ask her if she would be his
mater
— but he didn’t, which, she had to admit, gave her a pang of disappointment. Perhaps that would come later. Still, she liked the idea of the three of them together, like a family. It felt comforting somehow. More hopeful. And it would provide an excellent cover: Her father would set slave catchers on the lookout for his daughter and a male slave, not for a young family.

“Can I
call
you
apa
?” Castor asked Tag in a quiet voice.

Lucia watched Tag carefully. It was hard to tell with the caked-on ash, but it seemed as if a pang of grief shot through him at the question. He must have been thinking about poor Damocles. She squeezed his hand.

Tag smiled at Castor, though, and ruffled his ashy hair. “Yes, you can call me
apa
.”

The beaming smile the boy gave him in return made Lucia’s entire being swell with love for Tag.