100ml

Pompeii

Heat and dust rise from the ancient Etruscan streets, there is musical bustle, metal instruments and tools echo and clatter off the smooth stone walls. The smoke of burnt cedar wood drifts through the cloistered cool, past marble pillars, over the silence and mingles with incense between the dark pews, where we hear the confessional box murmurings and whispered psalms. In the damp quiet of the sacristy, the air is still. Cool linen drapes the altar and an ancient calm inhabits the space, sepulchral until it is cut with sudden laughter from the window below. Silence falls again and in the vaulted shadows, laughter’s echo ethereal as a long-ago church bell.