Before Ever After (36 page)

W
ithin a few months of their wedding, all of Maximus’s fears and expectations had evaporated more quickly than the foam left on the shore by the crashing waves. If someone had told him nine months earlier that this is how he would feel about starting a family, he would have said that too much cheap wine had addled the person’s mind. But perhaps it was he who was drunk and it was Livia who filled his cup.

His wife’s youth was deceiving, he thought. Livia had lost her mother early in life. She had been too young to be scarred but was old enough to remember the fleeting joy of her mother’s embrace. He was convinced that her mother’s death had taught Livia how to live—and love—as breathlessly and boldly as any goddess. He knew this as surely as he knew that he was the mortal she had stolen from the meadow.

Maximus struggled to imagine a happiness greater than what he felt at this very moment. This was impossible, he decided, since every crevice of his life was already filled to overflowing with joy. And yet he knew, as he stood on his terrace and watched the fishing boats return from the coast, that he would be a happier man before the sun set on this day. This was the day he would become a father.

His thoughts drifted to how he had made love to his wife that morning. He remembered opening his eyes and being drawn immediately to the roundness of Livia’s breasts and pregnant belly. She had never looked more beautiful and he had never wanted her more. He would have lived in those seconds forever, but his longing for the child told him to be patient. Until his child was born and his family was complete, forever would have to wait.

Livia stirred in her sleep as he drew circles on her belly. She peeked at him through half-open eyelids and smiled. “You’ll wake the baby,” she said. He grinned and told her that he was sure his son wouldn’t mind a visit. He kissed her deeply.

The sea wind blew through his hair and brought Maximus back to the present. He glanced at the beach and saw that the fishing boats had been stowed away in the arched vaults by the shore. Their leathery crews were now climbing up the wide stone ramp built into the wall of the town. The men were tired but smiling. They were on their way home to their children. Soon, he thought, there would be children running to greet him at the door, too.

Footsteps shuffled behind him. It was the midwife. He smiled so broadly, it hurt. He did not yet see that she was tugging at her ear, begging him to be strong.

M
aximus dried his eyes with his tunic. They appeared less amber through his tears. He looked at the courtyard, expecting to see Veneria soon. She would bring him her news just as she had done three times before. He practiced standing tall, willing himself to be the pillar his wife soon would need. But his legs crumpled beneath him. The
bulla
slipped from his grip and clattered to the ground.

Maximus struggled to get up, surprised by how much his grief had weakened his knees, but he could not. A vase shattered on the floor next to him, and its clay pieces continued to rattle on the tiles, jostling against one another in a race to his fingertips. He realized that he was not the one who was trembling. It was the ground.

The quake stopped as suddenly as it started. It had been the strongest of the tremors plaguing Herculaneum in recent days. Maximus snatched the amulet from the floor and secured it in the folds of his toga. He sprinted to the birthing room, skidding over broken clay.

“Livia!” A wave of relief washed over him when he saw his wife lying on the bed. She looked terrified, but she was safe. And so was the child inside her round naked belly. He ran to her side. He pressed his face
against her stomach and wondered why children had to be born. He had felt no greater joy than when his unborn sons had moved under his cheek. He was a father to them then, much more than he was when he held their lifeless bodies in his arms.

Veneria tugged at her earlobe and rolled it between her fingers. The tremor had shaken her courage but not her focus. She checked between Livia’s thighs and saw that she was ready to be transferred to the birthing chair. “It’s time,” she told her assistants.

The three sturdy tan-skinned women stared at her blankly, frozen by the shock of the quake.

“Now.” Veneria did not raise her voice, but its gravity brought the room to attention.

Maximus stepped aside as two of the assistants hurried to Livia. They hooked their arms around hers and helped her off the bed. The third readied the wooden birthing chair.

Livia clung to the women. They lowered her onto the crescent-shaped hole in the chair’s seat. This was where her baby would be pulled through, she thought. She leaned against the chair’s thick back and gripped its curved armrests.

Maximus turned to leave the room, as all men were expected to. His heart screamed for him to stay. And so did his wife. She reached out to him and Maximus took her hand. Another tremor, stronger than the first, pulled him from her and threw him to the ground.

Veneria’s assistants screamed. They grabbed hold of the birthing chair and one another.

“Silence!” Veneria ordered.

The assistants looked at her, unsure if her command was meant for them or the ground.

“The baby is coming now. I can see the head.” Veneria wiped her face with her apron. She pressed down on Livia’s belly. “Push.”

The tremor subsided as Livia’s pain grew. She strained against the arms of Veneria’s assistants. She felt her body ripping apart with every push.

“Be strong, love.” Maximus gripped Livia’s hand. His palm was as icy as hers. He closed his eyes and prayed to Nona, the goddess of pregnancy,
the spinner of life’s thread. But it was her sister’s wrinkled face that Maximus saw in his head. Morta sneered at him, holding up the shears that she used to cut what Nona spun. She ran her crooked finger over its dull blade, a cruel promise of how the pain would be slow.

Veneria positioned her hands around the baby’s crowning head. “Just one more push,” she said.

An animal-like cry rose out of Livia’s throat.

No one heard her.

A thunderous roar drowned out her scream. It echoed in the arcaded streets of Herculaneum and rumbled through the ground, bringing the town to its knees.

Maximus was not sure if the ground had stopped shaking. His body had not. He unclasped his trembling hands from his ears. The terrible roar had stopped. And so had Livia’s screams. There was only a hollow ringing in his head. It was like being underwater, he thought. He watched a mute scene unfold before him.

Veneria led the pantomime. She held an infant in her arms, its body staining her tunic with blood. Maximus could not see its face or hear its cry, but his deafness gave him hope. As long as he could not hear Veneria’s condolences, he could pretend that his child was alive.

Veneria approached Maximus and Livia, but her eyes were not on them or the child she carried. Her gaze was fixed on the sky outside the window. Wordlessly—because she was no longer capable of speaking—she laid the baby, as was the custom, at its father’s feet.

The ringing in Maximus’s ears faded. He could now hear the lusty cries of the child. The sound was new to him. He had never heard anything so puzzling. It made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. And so he did. The baby had been laid at his feet to be judged if it was worthy of life. He took the bundle from the floor and looked into her bright brown eyes. He knew then that the real question was whether he was worthy of her. He turned to his wife. “Livia, we have a daughter—”

That’s when he saw it—the abomination that already gripped Veneria
and her assistants by their throats. His daughter slipped from his arms. Livia caught her. Maximus knelt beside his family.

The mountain outside his window had spawned a demon. It writhed upward toward the sky, taking the shape of a black and gnarled tree, more enormous than any myth’s imagining. Its sprawling canopy scorched the daylight from the sky, gorging itself on the sun and a town’s shattered peace. It was this demon’s birth cry that had roared through Herculaneum, Maximus thought, and it was its mother’s labor that had shaken the ground.

He held his family close. He kissed his daughter’s head and asked for her forgiveness for the choice he was making for her. He would let her live in a world that was about to end.

The tremors were growing stronger. Blue lightning ripped across the dark clouds spewing from the mountain. It was clear to Maximus that the nightmare was not about to fade away. Things were only getting worse.

He walked over to his daughter on the bed. She slept soundly. Livia lay beside her, too weak to move. Maximus kissed both of them lightly on their foreheads before leaving the room.

From his terrace he could see the sea churning. Its convulsions almost matched the chaos on the shore. The town of five thousand was spilling onto the beach, neighbors and friends trampling one another for the remaining boats. Fishermen held their ground for the highest bid.

The panic below was no place for his family, but as the sky grew darker and the thunder louder, Maximus accepted that he had no other choice. Livia was in no condition to flee the countryside by foot as many already had. Their only possible escape was by sea. If they didn’t leave now, they never would.

One fisherman was now tenfold wealthier for the trade he had just made. The sea-weathered man waited for his passengers at the end of the shallows. His fishing boat rocked against the jetty, pummeled by the rising
waves. Two grim-faced slaves drew their swords and kept the crowd gathering on the dock away from the boat for their master.

Maximus carried Livia from their villa to the teeming beach. Veneria followed him closely, clutching their newborn daughter under her cloak. They pushed through the swarm of people. Their clothes and skin became stained with the sweat and tears of the frantic throng. They made their way to the jetty.

Maximus set a barely conscious Livia down on the fishing boat. Veneria squeezed next to her and propped her upright with her shoulder. The baby wriggled against her chest, searching for a breast to suckle. The women servants and their children boarded the boat next. The crowd on the dock pressed closer. Maximus’s men waved them away with their swords.

Maximus stroked his daughter’s pink cheek and climbed back to the jetty. He took his place beside his men and drew his sword. He ordered the crowd to move back. He knew that if he dropped his sword even slightly, the crowd would swarm the boat—and all that was important to him in this world would be lost to the sea.

The fisherman called to Maximus and urged that they cast off. The waves were swelling and soon even escape by boat would no longer be possible.

But Maximus was not yet ready to leave. There was enough room for four more people. He searched the faces of the crowd around him and struggled to make the impossible choice.

A woman raised her small child above the horde and begged him to take her son. He reached through the wall of bodies between them and pulled the woman and her child from the frenzy. The pleas and screams of the crowd grew louder. They edged closer.

Two more, Maximus thought. An old woman stumbled, struggling to get up. He lowered his sword and bent down to take her hand. A large man burst from the crowd and rushed toward him, his sword pointed at Maximus’s chest. Maximus parried his thrust and knocked the sword out of the man’s hand. It fell into the water. The man spat and tackled him to the dock. Maximus’s men jumped on the attacker and tried to pull him off. The crowd surged toward the boat.

Maximus felt the man’s grip tighten around his neck. He gasped for air. One of his slaves pressed his sword against the man’s throat and sliced it from ear to ear. Blood gushed into Maximus’s nose and mouth. He choked and shoved the man off him. The corpse fell into the water next to the old woman Maximus had tried to help. She was floating facedown, her tunic swirling in the roiling sea.

His attacker’s blood splattered from Maximus’s lips as he begged the crowd to stop pressing forward. He pointed his sword at them to keep them at bay and ordered his men onto the boat. The crowd edged closer, inches from his sword. He thrust his sword forward. The mob stumbled back against one another. A man fell into the water. Maximus swung his sword again. He was all that stood between the mob and his family. Reason had left their eyes. They were going to rush the boat.

A large wave crashed into the fishing boat. Maximus heard his daughter cry. There was no more time. He looked at his family and tried to remember their faces. Livia opened her eyes and he gazed into them for the last time. The fisherman screamed for him to cast off over the roar of the surging mob. Maximus raised his sword and cut the rope that tethered the boat to the dock. Then he spun around, his blade meeting the wall of flesh.

The mob lost their taste for blood when the boat carrying Maximus’s family sailed away. They were too broken to hate or hope. Maximus crawled to the shore. He had fallen into the water when the crowd pounced on him. He clung to the timbers of the jetty and waited for them to disperse.