Jason - Pliny the Elder

Pliny

Pliny the Younger had no idea he would be lying about the death of his much loved Uncle in just a few hours. He drew a cool and lazy bath to escape the heat of the day, just as he had done the day before. Water was one of the nice things about being at his Uncle’s villa in the town of Misenum. It seemed when you wanted it the water was always cool, or warm, or precisely what you needed at the time. He tired from studying all morning and this would be a short reprieve before he was back at it. His Uncle, also called Pliny, would not let his education falter. He had to get his work done. It was for that reason when the cloud of unusual size and appearance vaulted into the sky the elder nearly insisted the younger go with him. “This is important enough for closer inspection and a good topic for an essay,” he insisted.

The cloud looked white in places, but blotched and dirty in others. It was as an enormous umbrella pine, rising in great height on a twisting trunk and the branches of clouds coming off from it. The younger stared into it. There was something heaving and unnatural. Something lurked. So, he told his uncle he would remain to complete his studies and that seemed enough to pacify the older man. Had he said he was afraid he certainly would be boarding a boat.

Just as the two concluded their conversation a messenger, fleet of foot, came running up. It was a short note from Rectina, the wife of Tascus to Pliny the Elder. Her home, Pliny knew, was at the foot of the great mountain. This was the very same mountain, which the truck of cloud was now ascending from. She wrote that her husband was away and she felt she was in great danger and the only escape was by boat. When she had realized she was in trouble and the only way out was by sea, he was the only person she could imagine being able to help her. For as long as anyone could remember the water bent to his will. With just his presence it seemed no oar or breeze was needed to move him across great bodies of water. They whispered of him behind his back, but they knew he was a good man.

It had been too long, the old man thought. Too much time behind a desk getting fat and weak. Today, though, he again could be the hero. It would be many more than Rectina he would save, he thought. He ordered all of the warboats under his command be launched. The coast, now darkening in the shade of this strange cloud, was normally beautiful and heavily populated. With Nero gone he need not fear drawing attention to himself, so off he went.

As a personal friend of the Emperor and respected Naval commander, the boats were prepared very quickly. By now it was clear that something was very wrong. Perhaps the gods were at war or great cataclysm was upon them. No matter, he would not be deterred. He was headed to a place more dangerous than any he had ever been. Pliny, though, was with fear. The odd bluish marks on his neck and right arm seemed to dance with the movement of the water beneath the boats. He held to the wood rail and the vessels rushed toward the homes along the coast, to the communities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae.

As they got close the first ashes started falling, light at first then thicker and then hotter. It was as if they were thrusting themselves into the chimney of an active oven. This was followed by light hail of pumice and blackened stones. And all at once it was like the water fell away and debris from the mountain blocked the path. The helmsman of the boat begged for his life, begged to return. Pliny the Elder would not hear of it. Just as he was chosen as a child, there would almost certainly be one here to choose as well.

“The lady fortune stands with those of courage. Make for the landing between Pompeii and Stabiae.” With the that he raised his hands and almost as if by his command the water again rose around the hull of the ship. This was not his first time piloting a ship under Pliny’s command and he knew there was no point in debating. Even before taking this position there had been conversations of the one who had been touched by Neptune. You could argue, but the sea would take you where he wished. It was as a servant to him. While this looked looked like the great mountain itself was trying to rain down on them, the sea had always protected them.

The helmsman turned the rudder and the ship sped to the coast through thickening ash. It was raining down, like black hot snow. The waters of the coast had become a muddy froth. The blast of heat was hardly bearable. This was not at all what the old man had expected. He was hoping to be a hero here. He was hoping to save a good number of his friends and countrymen, but Vesuvius was not under his sway and he doubted he could get them to the sea. Even before the worst, he felt most of them would be lost. At this point he would just be looking to make a few Foundlings.

A Foundling was the truth of what he was. He had not been kissed by Neptune, nor was he the child of Poseidon, nor was he any of the other rumors he had heard about his strange luck at sea. It was true it bent to his whim, as all water did, but it was a gift. Gaius, a man of wealth, had been known to him as he owned significant land around Lake Como, where Pliny had grown up. He remembered asking his mother about his unusual markings as he watched him dart through the water. Her silencing him was one of Pliny’s last memories of her. His birth family had boarded, with several other families, a fairly large boat to cross to the opposite side of the lake. It was meant to be some kind of special social occasion. The wood creaked and the warm air felt good, but when the main beam broke and the timbers splintered, the water seemed cold and dangerous. It was not like one of their big baths. It swallowed them. Devouring, pulling the people apart and under. There was screams and gurgles. Then, as if produced by the lake, Gaius was there. He whispered some strange phrase in young Pliny’s ear while grasping him at the nape of the neck. “With this mark you hold the keys to the flood gates of heaven.” Then, without struggle or stroke, he was on top of the water, able to move where he wished. He had little control, being so young, but he was safe. A Foundling, Gaius had explained in later years, as he tried to guide him in the way as best he could. A sort of protector. Not all of them had the ability to share the gift, as Gaius did, but that wasn’t the point. The most common protection was just being there to stop a shipwreck, hold off a flood, or simply prevent a drowning. It was why the Aristocrat had spent so much time in the lake. He was just protecting. He cared for the people. He had cared to for Pliny.

But that was many years ago and now was not the time for nostalgia. Pliny jumped the rail at the side of the boat and a swell of water carried him to the shore. It carried him into Hades. He turned and he could barely see the ship he had just jumped from, it was in the black fog of the mountain. “Go” he shouted and pushed the ships away on a wave of water. He hoped that they would be able to get away, but this was like nothing he ever experienced. Perhaps like nothing anyone had ever experienced.

Initially he took cover under a seaside tree by the port, but as he watched the piles of stones grow he know he had to move. This would be devastating. With the flurry of his hand, a flat disk of water started swirling above the head of Pliny. It made it so when a stone, which would have hit him rained down, it was deflected by the quickly moving water and dropped off to one side of him. If the stones got much larger, this would not work, but this would be enough for him, for now. So, doing the best he could to bring a piece of the sea with him, he waded through the mounds of pumice stone. They were hot, nearly burning him through his sandals, so he moved quickly to the more endangered city of Pompeii.

He had felt the rumbling over the last few days, but that was much different than the shocks of the shifting earth here. When the first one came just as he was entering the border of the city and it nearly knocked him prone onto the hot stones which had piled up beneath him. What worried him was, even though he couldn’t see, he could hear the tiles of the roofs giving way. They weren’t sliding into the street, they were collapsing into the buildings. He was in a nightmare, plunged into darkness, seeing only when a flash of lightning would show him the streets filling with burning pumice. His ears were assaulted by the constant pounding of the stone hail broken only by the wails and groans of the dying. It was the voice of Gaius that kept him moving. He was here to protect, even if that meant just one person.

The first person he found was a girl, probably in her late teens. She had managed to stay in the crook of a building, which had shielded her just enough. Pliny, grabbed her by the nape of the neck, just as Gaius had done him, pulled her to him and whispered just as Gaius has done to him. Nothing happened. He looked at the marks which had formed on his arm at the death of his trainer. The girl’s name had not been added. There was no charge of sharing the gift. She was too old to become a Foundling. She was not a child, but a young woman. His hope very nearly collapsed, if he stayed with her, others would die, if he left her it seemed she would. How to protect her. It was too far to get her to the water. “Stay here,” He told her, “I’ll be back.” Numbly, she obeyed. He couldn’t be certain, but he would try and there was no reason for her to have more fear.

He moved on, ducking his head into the doorway of the next home. The inside had been shattered. The roof had collapsed, crushing the contents, killing a man and a woman on the floor. At first, Pliny looked at the shattered tiles over the crushed bodies and thought it was a total loss. Then he noticed that beneath them something stirred. He lifted a beam and he could see a small boy moving. They must have been shielding him, protecting as parents do, and it worked. He did not know this couple, but they made him think of his own parents. Their love and his loss.

The boy became the sixth foundling Pliny created, but he was not like the rest. The mark looked like the mountain which loomed like a threatening giant above them and his gift seemed to deal more with the earth or stones. Pliny thought is might be an effect of differing humours. As soon as he was created, the stones seemed to cling to him, making a hardened shell. He could freely move, but he seemed nearly impervious to being hurt. He was also, unfortunately, quite heavy. “You need to walk, my child.” Pliny said to him, having to shout over the sound of the disaster. The stone boy, tried to stay with his parents, but Pliny tugged him insistently. There may be others, he thought and that girl will not last on her own. The boy sat down. “Please,” the man begged, “They are gone. We have to go.” He wouldn’t move. His young brain wouldn’t let him understand what happened. With his small, rock covered fingers, he held his mother’s broken hand. Pliny was defeated.

When the scalding mudflows came, filling the crevices between the rock, filling the homes, burning and suffocating those that had survived the rain of rocks and fog of ash, one home was spared. Somehow the mud curved away from the windows and doors. Historians would note that the bones of two adults were found inside, and write theories about why they were different. They would also remark that on that day Pliny the Elder, in an effort to be a hero, was killed as were all the crew of his warships in the eruption of the mountain. They were wrong. At the dawn of first light, before the the third pyroclastic surge, Pliny the Elder holding a small boy and accompanied by a young woman climbed from the ruins of that very building. They moved as quickly as they could from the buried city and to the edge of water. There waiting for them, just as Pliny knew it would be, was a small boat.