In spite of the cool weather, excavators were digging enthusiastically here and there around the walls. Unlike in Herculaneum, where we’d been the only visitors in that silent land, Pompeii was a hive of activity.
Men crouched on hands and knees, stretching out sticks for measuring, gesturing to assistants who’d make a note in a book. Workers dug with spades, watched over by gentlemen in dusty suits, boots to their knees. Other men worked smaller patches with hand trowels and garden forks.
I was reminded of the bustle of activity on the Nile, where gentlemen—and ladies—excavated zealously, albeit on a larger scale.
“Not much treasure left in Pompeii,” Baldini said when I commented on the differences. “Many of the statues and bronzes earlier excavators found have been taken away, as in Herculaneum. But there is so much to learn—wall paintings, mosaics, and even notes scribbled on the walls tell us so much about how the Romans lived. Come, I will show you.”
He led us onward, taking a narrow road that went straight between walls that rose into the blue sky.
Roman men and women had walked on this stone street, I marveled as we went. The houses were brick, or rubble where the brick facing had fallen away. Once upon a time these walls would have been lined with marble or travertine, or perhaps only plastered over and painted. From my readings, Romans had used cheap materials to make the bulk of the walls—crushed rock and volcanic dust mixed into concrete—and then faced them with the more expensive bricks, stucco, or marble.
As I gawped at the perfect arches, the columns that rose startlingly from the ground, the capitals on those columns preserved in fine detail, Baldini and Grenville, chatting together, left me far behind.
Brewster made certain to wait for me. “Makes you think,” he said as we emerged into an open area that my guidebook had labeled as the forum. “All those centuries ago, but they were as good at putting up artful buildings as any who came after. Our Adams brothers and Mr. Nash can learn from them.”
“They did, as a matter of fact,” I remarked. “No coincidence that all the buildings in London resemble Greek and Roman temples.”
“I know that.” Brewster’s glance was disparaging. “I mean if our coves made their buildings more like the real thing and not justlooklike them, they’d be sturdier. This place lasted thousands of years.”
“Because it was buried in ash. Some of what these men are unearthing are skeletons.”
Brewster cast a suspicious glance at the mountain rising over the ruins, as though it might blow apart any moment. “Poor blokes.”
“Indeed. It is difficult to walk in the place of tragedy.”
“We do it every day, guv. London’s full of ghosts.”
“Which you do not believe in, Brewster, so do not grow morbid on me.”
“Aye, well. Any old city will have sad tales. And plenty of things worth purloining. Not here, though. It’s all gone.”
“Perhaps.” I gazed along the street and to the corner around which Baldini and Grenville had disappeared. “But there is so much more to uncover. Secrets of the past. It is tantalizing.”
“I nearly lost you—and me—in a tomb in Egypt, scrabbling after secrets of the past. No more of that.”
Brewster spoke firmly. He hadn’t liked Herculaneum and its underground passageways, but at least here, most of what we walked on had already been uncovered. Pompeii hadn’t been buried as deeply, and excavators had been scraping away the ash for many years.
Baldini and Grenville waited patiently for us to catch up before Baldini excitedly gestured to the small space we now stood in.
“This was a bathhouse, we believe.” Baldini pointed to the square depressions in the ground, which did indeed resemble the pools of a Roman bath. “And a brothel.” He chuckled. “The paintings revealed would shock your lady wives. It was meant for sailors putting into shore for a night or two.”
“Bit far to come for that, wasn’t it?” Brewster asked doubtfully.
“You can thank Vesuvius for your confusion,” Baldini said, as though delighted one of us had voiced the question. “Its eruptions have changed the shoreline, moving it a few miles from Pompeii. Used to be this town, like Herculaneum, was very near the coast. Another seaside retreat.”
“I can understand its attraction,” I said. Even though it was a bit cool today the green and black mountain rose against a very blue sky as a backdrop. The town must have been a pleasant refuge from the stink and crowd of Rome.
“Yes, indeed, until that fateful day.” Baldini grew somber. “The skeletons found are curled into the most pitiful positions.”
I felt a qualm of sympathy. The inhabitants had been going about their business—shopping, visiting, arguing, cooking, strolling—when their world had ended so abruptly.
“Before that, though, they lived happily,” Baldini said. A fanciful statement, but I nodded. “The walls were vibrantly colored, floors done in beautiful mosaics, and they left us plenty of messages.”
He led us into a narrow passageway, using his walking stick to point out scratches high on the walls. They were Latin letters, old and crooked, made by knives or whatever the writer had to hand.
“This fellow proclaims that Julia is the most beautiful girl on earth.” The walking stick moved. “This one claims that the first fellow has no eyes. It is Lucia who is the most beautiful. Andthisone tells us that a man came to find a lovely woman and only ended up leaving his turds in the latrine by his lonely self.”
I had to laugh. I’d read much Roman literature, from Cicero to Tacitus to Julius Caesar himself, and most were lofty tomes… the military ones often bloody. This annoyed young man who was disappointed in his shore leave was so human and real, he might have departed moments before we’d walked up.
