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Sometimes one of them would say ‘65 and they’d all cackle knowingly before telling Nile she wouldn’t get it, you just had to be there. Other times someone would say Targovishte and the next thing she knew they were half-way through a battle plan involving canines, arson and impalement with extreme prejudice.
Other times…
“Hey, guys,” she asked as Joe and Nicky walked in on her curled up on the safehouse sofa, tapping the pause button and pulling out her ear buds. “When did Vesuvius erupt?”
They both frowned at her and Joe mouthed Vesuvius several times but it was Nicky who snapped his fingers with triumph.
“1944!” This time it was her and Joe’s turn to frown at Nicky in different sorts of confusion.
“1944?” Joe asked before Nile could clarify she meant during ancient times, like Roman empire times, but Nicky was already nodding enthusiastically.
“We were being chased by the military police and the car engine died because of the ash, remember? And we were on a hilltop with Guiseppe when the mudslides started.” Evidently this was not the qualifier Nicky thought it was because Joe smiled affectionate smile number seventy-two, which was the equivalent of a teasing shrug.
“There are many times we’ve been chased by the military police.”
“Not by the American and the British at the same time.” As frustrated with this turn of events as she was Nile made a mental note to ask Copley if he could dig out any records on that, just for her own amusement. Before she could get them back around to her question, this time with an era qualifier, Joe’s face suddenly lit up.
“Ciccio and the champagne!”
“1944.” Nicky said with a grin.
“1944.” Joe agreed and Nile considered herself a woman of the world, she’d been on the internet since she was a teenager and had lived in army barracks, but there were still things she did not need to see with regards to her housemates.
She grabbed her laptop and beat a hasty retreat before their warm smiles and reaching hands turned into anything else.
Sometime later she was in the kitchen when Booker slouched in. Once more she hit pause and pulled an earbud out as he opened the fridge.
“Booker, when did Vesuvius erupt?” There was a pause in rummaging sounds.
“Around the time the Titanic sank.” Not the answer she was expecting, though like everyone else she knew she’d been through a Titanic phase and no one had mentioned Vesuvius going up at the same time so she couldn’t help but get a little sidetracked.
“Really?”
“There were really big hats.” She could hear the shrug in his voice as the rummaging sounds recommenced. “With feathers.” By the clanks, he was after bottles. Not surprising even though she wished he wouldn’t. She couldn’t quite tell if he was hungover or still drunk when he emerged from the fridge, there was a bleary quality to the look he was giving her. A look she well remembered from members of her grandparents’ generation trying to impart hard earned wisdom from the painful dregs of experience and it was still so weird to see it on the face of someone who looked so comparatively young. “Don’t die by gas if you can avoid it. Stay on the high ground and away from places it might collect.” Oh dear Lord, had he – of course he had. She would not be surprised to hear that he’d been alone and managed to get himself caught in such a pocket and died by gas inhalation several times given how haunted his eyes were, and Booker had no luck at all. “Don’t try to outrun lava either. The far side of rock formations are your friends.”
“Thanks.” She said, her entire body a wince, then she clocked the bottle Booker was walking out the kitchen with. “Nicky’s going to cook with that!”
“No he’s not.” He called over his shoulder.
Nile considered going after him, then grabbed her laptop. She’d learned the hard way not to get between an Italian and a Frenchman when it came to culinary matters, especially not in the actual kitchen and she hadn’t known it was physically possible to do that with a potato masher until last week. She absolutely was not going to be in the kitchen when Nicky discovered Booker had drunk the wine he intended to cook dinner with.
She was sitting on the landing when Andy walked past and once again Nile hit pause and pulled her earbud out.
“Andy, when did Vesuvius erupt? During the Roman empire, I mean.”
Andy paused with one foot lifted to step over her, frowning the frown of someone trying to put events of yesteryear into order. No small feat for Nile’s living grandparents, never mind a millennia old immortal, so the answer came sooner than she might have expected.
“Definitely after the Varus disaster.” Was the verdict, though as Nile didn’t know exactly when that was either it wasn’t immediately helpful. She’d have thanked her and made a note to look it up the next time she had internet access but Andy put her foot down and leaned thoughtfully on the opposite wall. “Took months for my eyebrows to grow back properly.” She said, and it was the tone of an old, much grumbled about minor grievance that really caught Nile’s attention. That and her still being here. She was getting better at reading her new – colleagues? Family? Andy, anyway, and right now the usually anti-social, brusque Andy was indicating that she wanted to talk. Nile was happy to oblige.
“So, you were there? Like, in Pompeii when it all happened?”
“Yeah. Would have got out sooner but I’d left my axe with a blacksmith for repairs. Managed to get a few more people out with me though.” Andy shrugged, scuffed the toe of her boot, and there was the frown at annoyances of events past again. Andy not being the most reliable narrator of events Nile could well imagine that no matter what Andy said she’d left off leaving until the last minute and actively tried to get people out, even if she had grumbled the whole time. Or maybe not. “Why do you ask?” Andy asked before Nile could work up the courage to ask if she’d been alone in Pompeii when the walls came tumbling down or if Quynh had been there too. She shrugged, suddenly a little embarrassed, and gestured at her laptop screen.
“TV show. Spartacus and his army are running around Vesuvius and I just wanna know if it’s gonna blow up.” That got a wry smile.
“I’m sure I’d have noticed.” Nile blinked up at her knowing smirk in surprise for a second.
“You knew him too?” She asked as her mind scrabbled all sorts of questions together – some, like military tactics, she absolutely would ask because that was a dream of any military historian she was not going to pass up while others, like if Andy had known him biblically too, were never going to be voiced by her. Though if one of the others asked she’d have her ears open.
“Yeah.” There was a shout of outrage from the kitchen and Andy sighed, peeling herself off the wall to go see what was going on. And possibly award points for the most creative weaponisation of a kitchen utensil. “They got his love of casual nudity right.”