Fabia wasn’t sure why her entrails grew suddenly cold, just where the baby had begun to stir. She wasn’t superstitious, she’d laughed at the crazy predictions of Aurelia the retired Vestal Virgin like everyone else in the city. When Aurelia ran to the Agora in her smelly rags, shrieking, “Vulcan has a bellyache and roars in torment! His fiery flux will pour down on us, all will be burned!”, few listened. The mountain had been quiet lately, but for a little low grumbling. He was a friend, warm and sleepy in afternoon light, his flanks silvered with olive trees.
All the same, Fabia went home and said to Metellus, who was having a massage from the new slave girl, “We need to go”.
Metellus fingered his downy chin and yawned. He asked, “Go where? Why?”
Fabia explained about Aurelia’s foretelling, how she’d read fire and death in the viscera of a black cockerel. Metellus asked why the old bat couldn’t have picked another day to perform. Why now, with the games for the Emperor’s birthday about to begin? Why now, when a rhinoceros from Ethiopia was due to arrive at the theatre, and the latest batch of prostitutes from Germania in the brothel? When the tavern in the next street was launching a new recipe for fricassee of larks’ tongues?
He’d started out biddable, her boy Metellus. He’d known his place as a freedman, been grateful for his new status as husband of a wealthy Pompeiian widow. But recently he’d started answering back. Sliding his lovely eyes around. Also neglecting his duties in the bedchamber.
He belched pleasurably, whether imagining larks’ tongue fricassee or Germanian whores Fabia couldn’t tell.
“Suit yourself,” Fabia said. “The children and I are leaving.”
Metellus shrugged. The kids weren’t his, though he claimed to love them as his own. She could see him planning what he’d do, when he had the house to himself.
She called Porcia and Quintus, told them they were going to their holiday home in Capua, two days’ journey. The stable-slave hitched up the donkey and cart, loaded jars with olives and bread, cheese and wine, fish-sauce. A tent and a change of clothes. The household gods in a rush basket, a purse of coins, Fabia’s make-up chest and jewels.
Porcia, aged six, said, “I don’t want to go to Capua. I want to go to the beach”.
“You like it in Capua. There are baby goats.”
“I WANT TO GO TO THE BEACH!”
Quintus, aged three, joined in. “Beach! BEACH!”
This would have been the moment for Metellus to back her up, play the firm stepfather. Fabia heard his dreamy humming on the massage couch, before Porcia began shrieking and banging her head on the mosaic floor depicting the Rape of the Sabine Women. Quintus yelled in sympathy.
The beach house at Herculaneum was nearer than Capua anyway, only ten miles. They could be there by nightfall. She’d deal with Metellus later.
Aurelia the ex-Vestal was loitering by the courtyard gate, hoping for a ride out of town. She heard the question Fabia didn’t ask aloud, and said, “Yes, better make for the sea. Father Neptune will protect us from Vulcan and his burning shit”.
Fabia made room for her on the donkey cart, wishing she didn’t smell so bad. The stable-slave twitched his whip, they moved off over the cobbles. Through the city gates and out onto the Herculaneum road.
Behind them, Vesuvius belched gently.
Patience Mackarness lives and writes in Brittany, France. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Citron Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Roi Faineant, JMWW, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere.
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