Before Ever After (35 page)

S
helley held Max’s hand as they walked through the quiet seaside town. It would have been a charming moonlit stroll, she thought, except for the fact that Herculaneum was no longer a town, nor was it by the sea, and she and Max weren’t so much strolling as they were darting through the shadows like thieves. It was as quiet as the grave.

Shelley heard the volcanic ash scrape against the soles of her sneakers. This was the ash that had buried the Roman town and pushed away the Bay of Naples, Max had told her. It had been spewed by the same eruption that had obliterated Pompeii on the other side of Vesuvius. Until Vesuvius erupted, the people living by the bay did not have any idea that it was anything other than a mountain whose surrounding fields were extremely well suited for farming. That’s why they lived next to it. They did not even have a word for volcano. She wondered if this had made the catastrophe more horrible; it was like being betrayed.

“Are we supposed to be here, Max?” Shelley whispered.

“What makes you think we shouldn’t be, luv?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “maybe because the sign at the gate said the excavation site closes at four
P.M
.?”

“We’re in Italy, luv. Signs like those are like traffic lights. They’re just suggestions.” Max scanned the dusty street with a small flashlight, illuminating the irony that surrounded them.

The eruption that had entombed Herculaneum in
A.D.
79 had also preserved it. In the darkness, Shelley could easily imagine that the town was sleeping rather than dead. The shells of the ancient Roman houses stood in rows along the small paved road. A number of homes, two stories high and still covered by tiled roofs, were virtually intact. Their wooden doors, though scorched black, remained bolted, just as they had been left almost two thousand years ago. She could not help but wonder if she was the intruder they were trying to keep out. “Seriously, Max, are you sure this is okay?”

“Absolutely. We’re free to roam where we please,” he said, “as long as the guards don’t see us.” He turned a corner.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“If I say yes, will that help you keep your voice down?”

She tugged on his arm. “Are we or are we not trespassing?”

“No, of course not,” Max said. “Not really.”

“Max Gallus, if we get thrown into a miserable Italian jail, don’t hold your breath for any conjugal visits,” she said. “Why couldn’t we have just come in the morning?”

“I told you,” he said. “I wanted to show you where the story of Isabelle’s family began.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“There are things in Herculaneum that you can’t see when the sun is up, luv.”

“Like what? The inside of a police car?” Shelley said. “I’m pretty sure that there are perfectly legal tours of these ruins during the day.”

“But that’s just it,” he said. “In the daytime, you will only see ruins.”

“What else is there?”

“Life,” Max said, “as it was.”

“Here?”

“No.” He trained his flashlight to the left side of the road. A crumbling
portico emerged from the shadows. He took her hand and walked over to the entrance of what had once been a seaside villa. “Here.”

Shelley crossed over the threshold and tripped on a loose paving stone. “Ouch. I can’t see a thing, Max.”

“Good. That’s the idea.”

V
eneria was summoned as soon as Livia’s birthing pains started. She was a wall of a woman with thick wrists and even thicker ankles. She was the most competent midwife in the whole of Herculaneum and commanded the birthing room with military precision.

She never smiled. Or cried. Or frowned. She simply twisted the lobe of her right ear. No one knew what that meant exactly, and they were not supposed to. Veneria thought it best to keep her feelings to herself. Mid-wives like her brought only two types of news: good and bad. She did not have the luxury to be touched by either. Both required tears and she was too old and tired to shed them for other people. And so she twisted her earlobe and didn’t smile. Or cry. Or frown.

Veneria twisted her ear a lot today. This was not the first time she had been called to Livia’s side. She had been to the birthing room of the seaside villa three times in the past twelve years. Each time had been more difficult than the last, and each time she was the bearer of news. It was never good.

Livia reclined, naked, on a low wooden bed, a small pillow under
her hips. It was her fourth hour of labor. Her knees were bent and her pale thighs were parted for Veneria’s inspection. In truth, she no longer needed Veneria to tell her what to do. She was all too familiar with the steps of birth. And burial. Three small clay amphorae containing the bones of her sons had already been laid to rest under the eaves of her house.

Livia surrendered every decision to the midwife. She did not trust herself with even the smallest action. She was able to endure the pain only because she clung to the hope that this time—if she was stronger, if she could be braver, if she followed the midwife’s every instruction perfectly—her baby would live.

Veneria massaged Livia’s swollen belly with a soft cloth soaked in warm olive oil pressed from her husband’s vast groves. She looked at the young woman’s face. Livia was no longer the rosy sixteen-year-old Veneria had first attended to. She had lost three sons since then and her body had paid the price. But though her body had grown brittle and thin, her hope had not. It was this hope that made Veneria twist her earlobe purple, more than all the dead children she had laid in Livia’s arms. She did not enjoy seeing it crushed.

Veneria wished Livia was more like her husband. Maximus no longer seemed to hope, and this made it easier for her to bring him the news. She would find him waiting for her on the terrace overlooking the bay, watching the waves wash onto the narrow beach. He never said a word, but his eyes told her that he already knew what she was going to say.

Veneria continued to rub Livia’s belly. “Breathe,” she said.

Livia hastened to obey. She opened her mouth. Her chest tightened. She drew a breath and sucked in dread. It was happening again.

Veneria wiped the cold sweat from Livia’s forehead. She signaled her assistants to refill the sheep bladders with warm oil and lay them at Livia’s sides.

Livia could not feel their heat. She could not feel anything other than fear.

Veneria held her firmly by the shoulders. “Look at me,” she said. “Do you want your baby to live?”

Livia nodded through her tears.

“Then breathe.”

Maximus watched the waves roll to the shore. He thought about his wife in the birthing room. Her fears on their wedding night thirteen years ago had been unfounded. He had grown to love her more deeply than he thought was possible.

Possible
. Maximus sighed. The word seemed foreign now. The borders of the possible had shrunk with every dead son. When he was younger, it had stretched before him, vaster than his olive groves. Now he could hold it in his palm. He inhaled deeply. He needed this time to mourn. He already knew what was going to happen next. He tightened his fist around the
bulla
intended for his child. Protective charms clinked inside the golden amulet. Maximus knew the token was premature, that it was to be given to a child only upon
dies lustricus
, the day of naming. But he could not wait. Eight days was too long to wait to give his son a name, nine days an eternity to name his daughter. His children never lived that long. He needed to give his child all the protection he could. Perhaps then the baby would live long enough for him to hold it in his arms. He rested his hands on the low wall overlooking the beach. He had never felt so old or tired.

It seemed a lifetime ago that he had stood at the altar, a haughty eighteen-year-old boy, scowling at the veiled young girl who stood before him.

“Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia,”
his bride vowed before the priest.

When and where you are Gaius, I then and there am Gaia
. Maximus wondered what that was even supposed to mean. Whatever it meant, it sounded suffocating. He adjusted the wreath of flowers that was slipping off his head. He had not wanted this marriage, and from the pained look on his bride’s face, neither had she.

But their lives and choices were not their own. Maximus was his father’s only child and Livia her father’s only daughter. They were their families’ most valuable commodities, and their union made for excellent commerce. And so Maximus and Livia stood under bands of wool and
flowery boughs, sealing the most unbreakable of business contracts in the atrium of Livia’s father’s house.

Maximus sighed. This wedding was just the beginning of his doom, he thought. Hordes of noisy children were demanded of him and his wife in great haste. He did not like children and thought they were the utterly inconvenient by-product of an otherwise enjoyable act. He was very aware that as a Roman father it would be his ultimate duty to be the guardian of his family and secure his children’s future. In return, they would secure his. Through them, his name and legacy would live forever. Immortality, he was convinced, was not a fair trade for having to fill his home with clumsy short people with runny noses.

Maximus’s only consolation was that he and his new bride would be making his family’s holiday villa in Herculaneum their permanent residence. His father had acquired more farmlands near Vesuvius, and he was to oversee the estate. He could not decide what he loved most about Herculaneum: the fact that its distance from Rome would deter his in-laws from visiting or that it overlooked the sea. He drifted off into a daydream of fishing boats, water, and escape. He would find an island, he imagined, where he could hide forever from the thinly veiled misery standing in front of him. When and where this Gaius went, he sneered, would be none of Gaia’s business.

The lavish dinner reception at Livia’s family home was over. The wedding procession that followed ended at the door of Maximus’s house. Hymns had been sung, sesame cakes eaten, and nuts showered on the couple. All that was left was for Maximus and Livia to enter their home as husband and wife.

Maximus carried Livia over the threshold. It was forbidden for a bride to walk into her new home. If she did, she risked tripping, a very bad omen for the marriage.

He, however, did not need any omens to make him feel worse. Though his bride was far from heavy, his knees nearly buckled under the weight of the world he felt he now carried.

Maximus watched as Livia kindled the atrium hearth with the wedding torch. The hearth blazed and she tossed the torch to the gathered guests. They scrambled for the lucky souvenir. An ember flew onto Maximus’s cheek. He flinched as his future burned into his skin.

Maximus studied Livia as she stood at the foot of their bed. The light from the oil lamps bathed her in a golden glow, revealing her silhouette beneath the white wedding tunic. His eyes lingered on the embroidered woolen band around her waist. It was the knot of Hercules. Livia’s stepmother had tied it around her when she helped Livia dress that morning. He alone would have the privilege of unknotting it. If only love came as easily as lust, he thought. “Come here,” he said.

Livia walked toward him. Maximus thought that she looked like a deer he had once killed: beautiful and terrified. “Unbraid your hair.”

Her lips trembled as she pulled the ribbons that held the six thick plaits of her dark hair in place. Her long hair fell over her shoulders.

“You’re a goddess.” Maximus said this softly, not to seduce her but because it was true. He reached out to untie the knot at her waist. This part of his duty was not so terrible.

“But you do not love me,” Livia said.

He pulled his hand back. In that moment he envied the gods. They snatched mortals from meadows and loved them wantonly. Perhaps, he thought, immortality gave them no other choice; their mortal lovers withered in a blink of their eternal eyes. But people loved differently. They loved slowly and cautiously because their hearts broke more easily than clay. Maximus sighed and looked away. “No,” he said, “I do not.”

She took her husband’s hands and pressed his fingers around the knot that kept her clothed.

“I thought you were scared.”

“I am.”

“Then why …”

“I am scared that you will not love me, husband,” Livia said, “as I already love you.”