Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Sulien lashed out at him loosely again, in uncomplicated affection this time.

  Una said, ‘Sulien, it’s only until we know what happened.’

  Sulien sighed again and asked Marcus, ‘Do you know anything now?’

  ‘Nothing clear. Though you’re right about Veii. It could have been an accident.’

  Sulien blinked, slightly alarmed to realise that he had, indeed, said that. Watching him, Una saw the dull look cross his face again. ‘I don’t think it was an accident,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t know why I said that. Don’t tell me you think that.’

  ‘I don’t,’ answered Marcus carefully. ‘But I don’t know if that’s because it really is unlikely, or just because what happened was so bad. Of course a lot of people are telling me it must have been the Nionians. But I do believe Tadahito, unless it could have happened without his knowledge – but I think not. I …’ He broke off, holding his breath against a new pang of anxious self-doubt. At least it did not come so often now, this feeling. He went on. ‘It could have been one of the African border countries. They’re not exactly comfortable with how close we are. They’d probably like to see us weaker, and concentrating on Nionia. But I think it’s more likely it wasn’t from outside the Empire at all. It could have been Terranova, or Ethiopia. India, even.’

  ‘Separatists. But wouldn’t they claim responsibility?’

  Marcus looked almost shifty, and to Sulien’s surprise answered, ‘They have. We’re getting claims and threats a hundred Veiis are on the way all the time, from all across the Empire. But that … happens. It happened when I was missing, for example. These things are opportunities. There is one thing, though. There was a man called Atronius, he started work at Veii about a fortnight before it happened. He was a slave manager.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was from Maia,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Is that all? Where he came from? This is Rome.’

  ‘He was supposed to be connected to some faction there. Though whether he really was … it doesn’t seem to add up to much. It could be just that he went to school with someone or was friends with someone’s cousin or something. That’s about as clear as it’s got, so far.’

  ‘Isn’t he dead, anyway?’

  ‘He hasn’t been seen. Perhaps he is. Or he could have set it up and gone underground. If there was someone on the inside, he looks the most likely. That’s all there is, really, I’m sorry.’

  ‘But why would you need to be on the inside for a fortnight? You’d just get in and do it, wouldn’t you, if you knew how? And why,’ the words became stiff and reluctant, ‘when I was there. I mean – why just after those people in the Subura …?’

  ‘Perhaps they thought they could achieve something, either by holding you hostage or – killing you,’ said Marcus. ‘They might have thought it would mean more, on the same day.’ He was leaning against the couch where Una sat, and her hand hung down and rested on his chest. He took hold of it, looking up at her urgently. ‘You must be careful too. You must.’

  ‘I am,’ she said, with unsatisfying calm.

  Sulien retrieved the case he’d thrown at Marcus, felt for a pen inside it and began searching the room for a fresh sheet of paper on which to write Atronius’ name.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Marcus, as Sulien found what he was looking for.

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing.’ It was true that when he re-read the firmly printed name, he didn’t know what he intended to do with it. He exhaled wearily and looked at Una and Marcus. Marcus had let go of her hand and Una was combing her fingers meditatively through his hair, while looking straight ahead of her and thinking about something, her expression absorbed and stern.

  ‘Una, why don’t you go back with him?’ Sulien demanded suddenly.

  She looked up. ‘Because I don’t think I should.’

  ‘You want to. And you want to go to Sina. And you need all the help you can get, don’t you, Marcus?’

  Marcus gave a small embarrassed laugh and did not actually deny it.

  ‘I need to know you’re safe,’ said Una.

  ‘How can I not be? I’ve got my own militia. Unless you think there’s anything dodgy about any of them?’

  ‘No,’ Una conceded, wavering slightly.

  Sulien made himself relax as they looked at each other. He gestured at the next room where the Praetorian kept watch. ‘Well I’m stuck with them. I can tell you to go. I don’t want you here for this reason. Really.’

  Una made an uncertain sound, and went on fingering Marcus’ hair. Marcus and she hadn’t been apart very long, but the time seemed to count for much more when things were moving so fast, and Sulien was right to hint that Marcus felt more exposed without her. But there was more; she didn’t want to be absent any time Drusus was near Marcus. Since the explosion at the factory she had been even more impatient for a chance to study Marcus’ cousin. It was not that it had struck her that he might be responsible – in a way, it was the opposite. She did not see how she could find whomever had threatened Sulien, but if there were dangers nearer at hand, within her reach, it seemed more urgent to know them. And if Drusus had had nothing to do with Tulliola or Gabinius or the rest of them, if Marcus was safe with him, it was important to stop wasting her time thinking about it.

  *

  Drusus mixed water with a little wine, a safe amount for this time of day – but then he noted sourly that Marcus was not touching the wine at all, not even diluted. Fine, thought Drusus, setting down his own glass untasted. If you’re taking no risks then neither will I. He gestured for a slave to take it away, to be sure that he would not pick it up again absent-mindedly, and as a boy came to do it, he found himself unaccountably uneasy. The boy was fractionally late in responding, his fingers faintly careless as he grabbed the glass, his footsteps too noisy when he withdrew. And instead of a brief, gliding, impersonal presence, Drusus had an obtrusively strong sense of the boy’s face: his expression was jaunty, and just possibly mocking. And there were a few other things wrong that Drusus, surprisingly slowly and laboriously, eventually connected to the fact that the attendants were no longer slaves. There was a puddle of water at the corner of the table, dripping onto the ground. A few acacia leaves, scorched early by the long summer, had fluttered in among the plates and onto the couch where Drusus lay. It was a while before Drusus even noticed these flaws, or thought of them as failures of the servants, but nothing felt quite right. He had never felt so unpleasantly conscious of how many extra people were in the room, watching him eat. He disliked the fact that he could not keep his eyes on all of them. He kept suspecting them of laughing amongst themselves, although they were not, quite, at least not aloud.

  The meeting was being held around a low table, shaded by Sinoan screens and an ivory fringed awning, in a kind of open court or garden room, open to the sky and the Palace grounds ahead of it. A pair of sparrows bounced across the paved ground. The table was spread with a light meal; dishes of pastries and fruit, decanters of chilled wine. The food somehow mitigated Una’s presence. Drusus would have felt intense scorn if he’d found her among senators anywhere else. She did not, at least, appear self-satisfied at being there, or to take it for granted. She seemed unable to relax enough to stretch out loosely on the couch, resting instead in a tense, crouched curl beside Marcus, as if trying to occupy minimal space. Drusus’ eyes had met hers by chance as he settled himself at the table, and unexpectedly she gave him a wide, shy, apologetic smile, then dipped her eyes modestly and barely raised them again. Drusus approved of the shyness; it seemed such a graceful admission of humility that it was only fair to admit to himself in turn that her precise, hard-boned little face was not quite as boring to look at as he’d thought, not when she smiled, anyway. Of course it was natural that the poor thing would be intimidated.

  Salvius was less won over by her presence. Curled up like that, with glossy, dust-coloured hair falling around her face in timid curtains, letting the discussion proceed around her lowered head w
ithout even seeming to listen, she did indeed look as smooth and fragile and incapable of understanding what was being said as a pet greyhound. But Salvius thought she must have been attempting a similar effect on the journey from Siphnos, when she’d been less able to disguise an expression of underhanded watchfulness. But even with this warning in his mind, even though, she was in such a position of status, it was almost hard to remember she was there.

  Una did not need to look at Drusus again. She felt equipped, prepared to work, there was even a pinch of preemptive triumph that now she had him, and he would not escape. She looked down at the food with unfocused eyes, and as the couches filled around her, she began to filter away everyone in the room except the two of them, Drusus and herself.

  Drusus was watching Marcus and the way the assembling people looked at him and smiled. It’s started, he told himself. He noticed that the Imperial ring was not, this morning, on his cousin’s hand – presumably he’d left it off by accident. But Marcus seemed to need it so much less now. He had given a reasonable impression of confidence at the beginning, but it was plainly real now, and the power he held was beginning to draw a helpless tide of approval and admiration. More or less everyone seemed to like him – or to believe they did, Drusus thought bitterly. And Marcus was smiling, the hollow-eyed look Drusus had seen in him when he first arrived had gone. What you like is being able to order about men three times your age, Drusus accused him silently.

  And it was true. It was impossible for Marcus not to enjoy it. They began to discuss how long the talks might last – at least a fortnight, they agreed, but probably a lot longer, and Marcus gave his cousin a friendly wave across the table. He was surprised and slightly ashamed at feeling like this, so soon after all those deaths in Veii and when the whole world seemed so brittle and close around him that any clumsy move of his must damage it. But now that the talks were really set to happen, even though Marcus knew they might come to nothing, and feared that Salvius was right to think they were a dangerous folly to begin with, hope seemed to flicker from everything he touched. And he was no longer so isolated: Varius had found someone to manage the clinic, he was coming to the Palace that same day. Already he’d been the one to suggest Eudoxius as a substitute. Marcus remembered watching Drusus across another Palace table just after his parents’ funeral, conducting the slaves with easy poise as if they were puppets attached to his person by hair-fine threads. And now all the harmony had gone, and there was Drusus left skulking and bewildered in the wreckage of it. Marcus could not help the pleasure he felt. He was aware of Una at his side, settling into her most guardedly impassive manner, could even guess from the decorous set of her body, at the defensive simper that would be on her lowered face, but he hoped she noticed this. He was so happy that she was there to see it.

  ‘There are things that should be done before we go,’ he said, quite naturally now, after all, he’d been preparing for this all his life, apprehensive as he might have been about it. ‘Most of it will be quite routine, but not everything. I’m sure everyone knows about the illness that recurs in my family. My father always told me it began after one of our ancestors crucified a child. And you also know that three years ago I had to leave Rome very suddenly and for a while I had to live a kind of life I would never normally even have witnessed. I don’t think I’d be alive now, if it were not for the people I met.’

  He looked at Una here, and felt a light responsive touch on the back of his hand, but the fact that the contrived sweet, vacant look stayed on her face told him that she didn’t want attention drawn to her, and he thought with regret that she was right.

  ‘One of them had been convicted of a crime that had never taken place, and condemned to crucifixion. It was not the courts or any system of ours that saved his life, or by extension, mine. He might have been rearrested at any moment and subjected to what we all know was always intended to be a terrible form of death, as terrible as centuries of efficient use of technology could make it. And …’ For a second he hesitated, considering telling more, but deciding against it. ‘And I was sure then that this is not, or it should not be, Roman. It’s barbaric. Perhaps it is why our family has suffered so long. I think we should end it.’

  This was a simplified essence of the truth. The hesitation had come when he’d wanted to talk about Dama, and the horror of what had been done to his body when he was only a few years older than the boy in the curse story; his stretched, half-dead arms and stiffened feet; four years of illegal life and continuing pain. But better not. Dama wasn’t as easy or as innocent an example as Sulien. He had committed the crime for which he’d been so exhaustively punished. He could never have settled as naturally into Roman life as Sulien had, who had grown up thinking of himself as essentially a Roman citizen anyway. And Dama had certainly hated Marcus at first; if he’d softened at all it was only ever to the extent of ignoring him. Still, Dama had helped to save his life, even if not for Marcus’ sake. And he’d died for it. For, unlike Una and Sulien, Marcus felt fairly certain that Dama was dead. And because of that, he tried to bring Dama’s ghost close for a minute, to tell it, ‘Please see this, please accept this from me. I’m sorry it was too late for you.’ And somehow uneasy, he added doubtfully, ‘Will you rest, now?’

  There was a low swell of surprise around the table, but with a quickness that Drusus found depressingly predictable but that plainly shocked Marcus, most of the men’s faces arranged themselves into a look of agreement and approval. Marcus felt dazed, and struggled to contain a little fizz of euphoria. It can’t really be as easy as that, he thought.

  Oh, what do you expect, Drusus wanted to say. They’re all sheep. But he found he couldn’t eat any more; a confused current of feeling had gone through him at the mention of the curse, a welling up of nineteen years of cringing misery about his father, and the different shame since he’d learned the truth. He was virtually indifferent about crucifixion as far as politics went; on the whole it seemed foolish to give up a useful tool, he could have argued that passionately, without really feeling much. But he wondered painfully – even without cynicism – could this work? The fear he’d grown up with – would this make it stop?

  Falx, a thin, tanned, dry-skinned man, at least had the courage to say, ‘Caesar, surely this will endanger Roman citizens? We need the deterrent.’

  ‘No,’ answered Memmius Quentin calmly before Marcus could speak. ‘Our slaves and any barbarian residents will have more reason to comply with an authority that treats them fairly. It will make the Empire safer.’ He smiled, his face aglow with totally impartial satisfaction at this piece of ingenuity, as if he had solved a puzzle. Salvius was certain that Quentin had no real opinion and could not prevent a grimace of contempt.

  ‘What do you propose instead?’ asked Eudoxius without rancour.

  Marcus’ exhilaration faded. He’d tried to summon Dama’s ghost a minute before, now he imagined an anonymous legion of phantoms, filling the room, and the Palace and its ground, rushing the Palatine hill; he could not evade a slow, incredulous feeling that, in a sense, he was about to kill an unknown number of unknown people. ‘I don’t see that we need inventive methods,’ he said more quietly. ‘When citizens are executed we use … firing squads.’

  ‘The Nionians do it – crucifixion,’ remarked Salvius suddenly, and there was a pause as it was not clear, even to Salvius himself as he spoke, whether he meant this in support or in opposition. He looked down, discomfited. Perhaps, he thought, the boy was even right on this, perhaps abandoning a form of torture Nionia still practised would prove which Empire was truly civilised. In any case, it wasn’t worth squandering whatever power he had, better to save himself for more important things.

  Something obvious suddenly occurred to Drusus. Why was Marcus really doing this? Why would anyone? Well, he’d as good as admitted it openly: ‘Perhaps it is why our family has suffered so long.’ Marcus was afraid of going mad. Well, they all were, but perhaps Marcus even felt it germinating in himself. Drusus look
ed up in excitement to study his face but could see no obvious sign of disorder in Marcus’ expression; still, that was surely the answer and it gave him a boost of hope.

  Una stared at the reflection in a dish of olive oil, mechanically swirling a piece of bread around in it, concentrating on her quarry, intent but baffled. Something incredible, something she’d fiercely wanted, was happening around her, and she was missing it, but she could not stop although the pursuit grew maddening. She had thought these minutes would be all the time she needed to be sure about Drusus – why was she not? This time, she could see the tendrils of resentment in Drusus that flexed when Marcus mentioned how close, three years ago, he’d been to death, but they led her nowhere, to nothing, the memories she expected to find at their roots did not appear. She began to think, with irrational disappointment, that she had been too suspicious. Drusus was innocent – jealous of Marcus, still half-hopeful that he might somehow find himself on the throne, but nothing more. It must be as simple as that. If he’d planned Marcus’ death, surely he could not sit opposite him now and feel no flutter of guilt, nor even a sullen reflection on plans that must have failed.

  Was it only arrogant displeasure at being wrong that made her feel so unconvinced, so unsatisfied by this? She thought, uncertainly, that he was somehow not solid, simulated. That he must be as elusive to himself as he seemed to her. That it was as if there were nothing to him but this mood, these thoughts. For a second she thought of Sulien, plunging down from the trap at the top of the Subura tenement, flinging open doors; it was as if she wanted to find her way down through a block of flats, but there were no doors or stairs between the rooms: a structure that couldn’t exist, didn’t make sense.

  After what Drusus had said, Salvius was surprised to see how little part he took in the discussion. As he’d expected, Marcus asked Eudoxius to run affairs in Rome, and Eudoxius, who was fluffy-haired, round-bodied and lolling tranquilly on his couch, went through a genial show of reluctance that Salvius found irritating. Drusus raised no objection to any of it. But one glance at Drusus’ face was enough to tell him why – he’d given up on voicing any disagreement with Marcus because he no longer saw any point.