cart, and freed the tether. The donkey Pietas bolted for the watergate, little hoofs ringing on the cobbles. Piso struggled briefly until Crassus sat on him. Piso prayed aloud.
‘Our father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven...’
Crassus, terrified, heard the huge indrawn breath of the mountain, then Vesuvius exhaled in fire. The donkey flung herself out of the city gate and onto the plain and ran even faster. Beside her ran masterless horses and a grey flood of rats, dogs with broken leashes, goats in ragged flocks, bleating to keep the flock together. Crassus recited Epicurus to himself as Piso prayed and the sky turned black and the earth shook. Underneath the unnatural darkness he heard huge explosions, heard a smothered shriek as Herculaneum died in lethal vapours such as issue from Tartarus. His philosophy had taken away his ability to pray, and philosophy was no comfort to him as he cowered in Piso’s arms in the bottom of the cart, appalled by the violence overhead, as mindless as the running beasts, who only knew their highest imperative was to be away from the city.
‘Death is of no concern to us, for he that is dead is in no way different from he who has never been born,’ whimpered Crassus.
‘God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble,’ said Piso, who was sitting up, had reclaimed the reins, and was allowing Pietas her head. She was slowing. The tide of creatures had also slowed, as they came to the turn of the headland. There an offshoot of the river flowed into the sea. Pietas turned the cart and trotted inland, hoof deep in water, until she found a place where she could plunge her nose into clean water without being butted by an unnerved goat.
The air came in fresh from the land and Piso and Crassus fell out of the cart and lay in the shallows. They coughed and retched, drank more water, embraced each other and Piso kissed the blood away from Crassus’ lip, very gently.
‘I should not have struck you,’ he said quietly. The bellowing of the mountain was somewhat damped by the ridge of stone they were sheltering behind.
‘I deserved it,’ said Crassus. ‘I’ll forgive you if you kiss me again.’
‘To forgive is a duty,’ agreed Piso, and kissed him sweetly.
Presently they sat up, dripping and cool for the first time in weeks, and saw that the animals had crossed the river and were still heading west.
‘Shall we continue?’ asked Piso.
‘How is poor little Pietas?’ asked Crassus, dragging himself to his feet. The donkey was restless. The cart was intact, but they need not burden her again, if she was content to walk. Piso and Crassus paced either side of her head, hands meeting over her patient neck, until they reached and crossed the next stream. There the flood of animals dropped to a slow amble.
‘They feel safer here,’ commented Piso.
A small village was inundated with people seeking refuge from the fury of the mountain. There was a cacophony of voices shrieking, wives seeking husbands, grabbing elbows to ask if anyone had seen a sister or a child. Dogs barked. Men shouted. Babies wailed. Piso and Crassus attracted immediate attention. They were clearly young men of the patrician class, though somewhat singed and damp. They were swamped, mobbed by petitioners. And all they could say was that Herculaneum had gone. They said it over and over again.
Deafened and weeping and jostled, they allowed Pietas to lead them through the crowd and through the hamlet, until they were out on the road again, and even the goats had decided to stop and graze.
‘What shall we do, where shall we go?’ asked Crassus dreamily.
‘The Lord will provide,’ answered Piso.
Crassus woke up abruptly.
‘Well, yes, Pisculus, because in that donkey cart which Pietas is still faithfully hauling is most of the Dominus’s gold and the Domina’s jewellery, and they aren’t going to reclaim it,’ said Crassus acidly. ‘Let’s walk along a little way, the villa of Surbita the Hetera is just over there, and we can sleep there. She’s an old friend of my father’s. She won’t be here, but maybe some of her household might remember me. Anyway she has a very spacious stable and this donkey needs a feed of apples and oats, and I’m suddenly so hungry that I could eat a side of venison.’
‘And I could eat the other side,’ said Piso.
Domina Surbita’s housemaster did indeed remember the young Crassus, and they stabled Pietas and rubbed her down. Her coat was flecked with little burns, and when Crassus ran a hand over his own hair, he found the same small clumps of singed hair. They fed Pietas, then were given access to the baths while a small repast was prepared.
So, to the booming of Vesuvius vomiting death and destruction onto the cities, Crassus and Piso were scrubbed, bathed, massaged and oiled. They sat in the triclinium – the great dining room was still draped in dust sheets – and wolfed down grapes and boiled eggs and bread and three sorts of cheese, chunks of roast pork in pomegranate sauce, and marzipan apples with their many cups of watered red wine. Both of them experienced an increasing sense of unreality. They had been terrified, filthy and hungry. Now they were safe, clean and replete. Crassus was fairly sure that he was dreaming again.
It wasn’t until they had been escorted to a clean bed in a room painted with Dionysian orgies that they dared touch.
Piso lay down and took Crassus in his arms. They no longer stank of sulphurous fumes, fear and sweat. Crassus’ scent, of green apples, had returned and Piso snuffled his neck to smell it. He was shaking with reaction, and had not realised how much he loved the unbeliever Crassus, until he had nearly lost him. Crassus cupped his friend’s cheek in one clean hand and stared into his eyes. Hazel eyes, still full of fear.
‘I almost fear to touch you,’ said Crassus. ‘We nearly didn’t survive that, my Piscus, and the cities we have always lived in are wiped off the face of the earth as though they had never been.’
‘We left the books,’ mourned Piso.
‘If we’d waited to load the books, we would all have died, including Pietas. Epicurus is a great philosopher. His books are not uncommon and much copied. They will survive,’ said Crassus, kissing his friend on the chest, marking each little burn with his comforting lips. Piso’s skin always tasted, for some reason, of seaweed and wet leaves and amber.
‘Infidelus,’ murmured Piso, ‘will you stay with me?’
‘There is no place I would rather be,’ said Crassus. ‘The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship.’
‘We can work on the wisdom,’ said Piso, ‘and on belief.’
‘I do not believe,’ said Crassus, tightening his embrace.
‘That’s all right,’ said Piso comfortably. ‘I can believe enough for two.’
Outside, ash began to fall. The mountain screamed. The red light bathed the room. Piso and Crassus made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
When they woke, later, in the midst of nightmare, they clung close and comforted each other, and were never apart again in this world. Crassus became a gentleman farmer in the Sabine HIlls, famous for his table, and Piso built a small chapel next to the villa for his own devotions.
And they never managed to convert each other. Crassus buried Piso, many years later, by Christian rites in a white marble coffin carved all over with little fish. And Crassus lies beside him in a sarcophagus of pure white, carved with grapevines and bees.
NO ONE HAS EVER EXPLAINED THE VILLA RUSTICA OF CRASSUS which has a small Christian shrine. One of the men is buried as a Christian, arms crossed, feet towards the east, and the other is still a pagan. Neither of them are slaves, they are both Roman gentlemen. It is a mystery.
THE PAINTER AND THE POTTER
221 BC
‘He’s going to kill all of us, you know,’ murmured Gao P’in Te to his best friend,