Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Trembling, Drusus propelled himself forward, outstretched, to grab at her again, and again she fell. Stretched on the slabs, at arm’s length, he grasped at her legs, pulling himself towards her, but she kicked brutally at his head, panting, and stumbled up and ran on, and as he began wearily to pursue her he felt dazed, shattered. He should have beaten in her skull on the paving and then flung her down to the edge of the garden where she’d first set out to hunt him. He’d really thought this way would be easier, cleaner.

  But now he saw how close she was to the next flight of stairs and it knocked the will back into him. He almost collided with her as she dragged open the door, they skidded down the stairs together, tripping and clawing, Drusus hounding her like an exhausted animal across the room below, where, if he could just pin her to the ground … The calm, paternal voice spoke again and told him what to do, even how to act after it was done – it was bad because he’d have to involve someone else, but it was the only choice: kill her any possible way, with anything that came to hand, summon one of that faction of his guard whom he could probably trust, have the man shoot a slave and place the body over hers. The guard could say he’d found the slave attacking her.

  But they were out in the corridor now, and she’d begun breathlessly screaming again, whenever he managed to touch her. She was leading him, staggering, back the way they’d come, and as they neared the shut room from which she’d mounted the stairs to the roof, Drusus dimly saw a second figure, dithering awkwardly a little way beyond the locked door, moving in shock as he heard the noise. The boy from the longdictor exchange had disobeyed Drusus’ instructions; he’d lingered, or come back.

  Drusus thought wildly, Well, it must be him that we kill, that’s all, he’s the one whose body we must use.

  And Una called out, not in a panicked scream but a clear, authoritative shout, ‘You, bring the Praetorians here now.’

  Drusus could not believe what she was doing. He could not believe that the boy did not even hesitate, even though he must have seen by now who Drusus was. But instantly he turned to do as she said, running on ahead along the passage, disappearing down the stairs as Una and Drusus neared him. Chasing them both, Drusus’ head reeled with bewilderment, as well as exhaustion and fear. It was true he did not know what to do, how he could kill them both – but the Praetorians were there to protect the Imperial family, he knew whom they would believe over two slaves.

  Still he hurtled after them, downstairs, and on the landing he reached her, careering into her and flinging her against the wall, knocking her head back, locking his fingers around her neck and squeezing. He was desperate; he knew the boy was still charging onwards, already down the next flight, and there was nothing he could do to stop him. But he’d got her, he could not think of anything else, could not squander the chance.

  He heard shouts, heavy footsteps pulsating up the stairs. He stared silently into her black-brown, black-red eyes, half shut now, and could see her looking back, remote, still somehow inaccessible and unconcerned with him.

  He changed his grip on her, holding her by the shoulders, pushing her towards the Praetorians as they reached the landing with the boy. ‘Help me, she’s a traitor; she’s a spy for the Nionians. They both are.’

  If they put her away somewhere he could surely have someone get to her before Marcus could; it must be possible. She could have committed suicide while under arrest, like Tulliola.

  Una shocked him again, as he felt her straightening her body, raising her head, as if the man who’d nearly killed her was not still holding her, as if he was almost beneath her notice. She was out of breath, the streak of blood must still be on her mouth, her dress was torn. ‘Arrest him,’ she commanded quite calmly, as if it had always been her right to make such orders. ‘He is a murderer.’

  He did not understand the way the men wavered, why their eyes went from Una to himself, and then stayed on her. And before he could speak again, she stepped forward out of his grasp, thrust her hand into her pocket and raised it again, holding up something gold between finger and thumb. It was the Imperial ring.

  ‘On this authority,’ she said.

  It could not happen, it was unthinkable. He almost doubted his own flesh as it told him the men were actually taking hold of him, as he saw Una step neatly aside, watching impassively. He raged again that she was a traitor, a liar. He could not accept, as they forced him down the steps, the simple fact that there were more of them, that they were stronger than he was. Worn out as he was, he fought them every inch of the way.

  Una looked on, without moving. She wanted to sink to her knees on the carpet, lie down, but she would not within sight of any of them. Only when the Praetorians and Drusus were out of sight, did she even let her body drop sideways to lean against the wall. She looked at the young man who’d come back to wait for her, because of ordinary sympathy, and because they’d both been slaves. His face showed a confused mixture of fellow feeling and shyness, as if he’d been left alone with someone powerful; a senator, an Emperor. She took his hand.

  ENDURANCE

  Varius passed the very place, the exact paving stones, which had spun and gone dark beneath him as the poison that had stopped Gemella’s heart had dragged like a tide on his own. It had been the day after she died – just there, neither seeing nor wanting any other choice, he’d almost succeeded in safely removing himself from the world. And only once since then, immediately after he’d been taken out of prison, had he been to the Golden House, and he’d never intended to come back again. But now he had a reason, so before coming here, he’d done everything he could to disarm the Palace, to be able to look at the spot only with dispassionate recognition, only with a very slight chill. It was a long time ago. It had been someone else.

  And ahead there was the calm green room where Tulliola, the murderer, had stood, unrecognised. But it was still only a room. Varius listened to Marcus telling him about Drusus, how he’d goaded his cousin into storming out of the meeting that morning, and they had no warning of what had happened until they were on the private stairs to the heart of the Palace when Glycon appeared and bowed tautly at Marcus, saying cautiously, ‘Caesar. Varius. You’re going to the Imperial Office?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Marcus, tensing.

  Glycon hesitated and only said, ‘It’s not … I don’t think I should … It’s nothing political. Not Nionia.’

  Una was sitting on a chair near the desk, calmly waiting for them, massaging her wrist the way Sulien did, and it was only when she saw Marcus and Varius that it occurred to her how terrible she looked. Wearily she regretted that she’d done nothing to soften the brunt of it. It was foolish, because she’d made the Praetorians take pictures of her, turning her head from side to side to exhibit the marks, hoping impersonally that they were bad, damning enough. But once her appearance was dealt with as an item of forensic evidence, she’d forgotten about it. There hadn’t been much time since then, but she could have changed out of the dress with its half-ripped sleeve. Crooked strands stood out in wispy tangles from the surface of her hair; she could have brushed it. All she had done was wipe an unthinking hand across her mouth, rubbing off the blood without even remembering what it was. But of course there was little else she could have done about her face; there was a small mask of muffled pain fixed to one side of it, where the bruises were starting to emerge on her skin, the stained flesh around her left eye swelling and clamping, though it was only her wrist that truly hurt at the moment.

  For Marcus the room seemed to boil and ripple around her dangerously as if everything was on the point of bursting into flames, of vaporising. He did not know what to say or ask her first, nor even how he reached her; it was as though he was blown there on a hot gale. He’d never felt anything like it, such a violence of indignation and incensed love; he was dizzy with it, weightless.

  He took hold of her, his hands going lightly, helplessly, from her wrist to her upper arms to her face, afraid of hurting her. Her skin was cold to t
he touch. He stammered, ‘What happened? Who did this to you?’ but she interrupted him suddenly by pressing her face against his, a tired, urgent kiss.

  Oh, thank God, she thought, exhaustedly happy. She let her body drop against him, as if onto land against the will of the sea. Small, warming charges of relief simmered through her, as if he were the one who had nearly fallen all that way, who was after all alive. Still, she could not help her nerves registering a quick unpleasant twinge of familiarity: the likeness between Marcus’ body and Drusus’.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s – superficial,’ she said.

  Varius was retreating towards the door, already surprised that Glycon hadn’t prevented him from entering the room, from seeing this, but she looked across Marcus at him and said clearly, ‘You shouldn’t go. I should tell you—’ She was incongruously reasonable and deliberate, given the physical state she was in; she didn’t shake, despite how deserted her skin was of blood. Varius nodded at her without speaking, and stood uneasily where he was.

  Marcus had resumed stuttering questions that sounded useless to him as soon as they were spoken: ‘What happened? How bad is your wrist? You’re cold, has anyone—? Your eye – what—?’ He was just a little reassured by the kiss. He knew how and why she had once been averse to the touch of skin.

  ‘Listen,’ she said quietly. Her throat was slightly uncomfortable when she swallowed. She wished he could know without her having to tell him. She wished she could lie on some quiet floor, draped over him, all the length of his body safe against hers. Four hours, she thought, longingly, I want to lie like that for four hours. She said, laying out the words in small, economical blocks because she was so tired: ‘Marcus. Drusus and your uncle’s wife were lovers. He was behind all of it. Gabinius and the rest had their own reasons. But you know he wants to be Emperor. And he killed her, Lady Tullia. She never killed herself.’

  But it was hard for Marcus to listen to the details, even when they were put so simply, for a surge of breathless nausea caught him at the mention of Drusus’ name, a dreadful molten compound of recognition and guilt and instant loathing. It was horribly sudden, and yet it was not shock. He realised he felt no urge whatever to say, ‘But he can’t have – he wouldn’t do that.’ No, he was not even surprised. And that was appalling, that he must have tolerated the possibility for so long, that he’d given Drusus the lease to do this. ‘And when you found out, he …?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘What did he do?’

  She sighed, and began telling them, concisely, sparingly. She felt Marcus’ body going rigid with restrained pulses of violence, his hand closing, unconsciously too tight on hers, and wanted to tell him what she’d thought as the emptiness had sucked at her, but she couldn’t yet, she didn’t want to force him to imagine how close she had been, the embrace in which she’d tried to carry Drusus with her over the edge. Already Marcus was thinking, Who would have found her? Who would have told me?

  She’d called Sulien before Marcus and Varius arrived, and he reached the room while she was talking, his entrance interrupting and complicating the telling, frustrating the others as she was forced to repeat parts of it. Seeing her brother sitting beside her, wide-eyed with alarm but untouched by any of the terrible things she’d imagined, brought little weakening prickles of remembered misery. And – it was tiring to be the focus of so much shock – he was appalled in his turn by her appearance. She’d begun vaguely trying to smooth her hair and hide her torn dress, but with her bruised, pale face she looked almost exactly as she had when Sulien had first seen her, on the prison ferry on the Thames, after they’d been apart so long. She looked unnervingly like a slave again.

  Marcus breathed, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  Sulien agreed, ‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Marcus.’

  ‘Because I should have made sure – he shouldn’t have been able to do this.’

  Varius had said nothing all this time, nor even moved until Sulien arrived. He was the only one standing now, a slightly unnatural distance from the rest. The painted goddess still stood gently among the flat orange trees on the wall; Tulliola had been waiting for him in front of her, he could place exactly where. ‘And so she did it for him?’ he interjected softly, across the room, as if impartially desiring information.

  ‘Yes, I think she did it for him,’ said Una.

  Varius found himself half-wishing the bizarre thing he’d half-wished before – knowing it would have made nothing better or easier – that Tulliola had murdered Gemella on purpose, that it had not been a stupid mistake, a failure. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s still here. The guards have him locked up.’ There were a few cells, rarely used these days, under the Palace. Una hadn’t explained in detail how she’d had Drusus arrested. She did so now, and remembered the Imperial ring, taking Marcus’ hand to slide it onto his finger. ‘Here.’

  Marcus stared at it, finding suddenly that his fury at what had happened included her. ‘Why did you do this?’ he demanded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Una looked at him pallidly, taken aback. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t – I didn’t expect – whenever I saw him I thought I would just know in another minute. It didn’t seem like so much to tell.’

  ‘When did you start planning it? When you first met him?’

  ‘I – it wasn’t a plan, I just – I wanted to be sure you were safe near him, after everything. And anyway – why didn’t you ask me to do it, years ago?’

  ‘I told you back then,’ he answered, though he flushed. ‘My uncle. I thought …’

  ‘You thought your uncle couldn’t stand it. But you know it wasn’t only that. You didn’t want to think about it either; you just wanted it to be over, or you would have done something. I thought – if he was part of it, you had to know, but if he wasn’t, there’d be nothing to say. Like you wanted.’

  ‘Well, I was wrong; I should never have let this happen, I should have had you find out. But he’s my cousin; it’s my family, and you should have told me.’

  Una had begun shivering after all. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Sulien said sharply.

  Marcus had broken away from Una in frustration, now he rounded on Sulien. ‘Don’t you realise – she knew he could be dangerous, she might have thrown her life away and why? To prove a point?’

  ‘I don’t care. He almost killed her. Leave her alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ repeated Una.

  ‘Come here,’ Sulien turned to her, ignoring Marcus now. ‘Let me look at your wrist.’

  Silenced, Marcus watched them as Sulien carefully handled the wrist, put his fingers to the bruises on her neck and face, gently but pointedly. Marcus went back to crouch beside her, remorsefully. ‘I wouldn’t have stopped you. You’re right, you had to do it, we had to know. But I would have made sure he couldn’t hurt you.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Una quietly, recovering a little. ‘But it’s just as well he did.’

  Marcus stared at her, shaking his head in incomprehension. ‘I don’t know how you can say that,’ he remarked at last, helplessly.

  ‘Because it can be proved against him,’ she said evenly, in control again.

  Marcus shook his head again, feeling at once that he might have known she would say that and that she was unfathomably strange, exhaustingly strange and precious and reckless with herself. He closed his arms around her once more, and muttered fiercely, ‘I want to kill him.’

  ‘Good. Do it,’ said Varius suddenly, without raising his voice at all, but much more forcefully than when he’d spoken before.

  It was exactly what the incoherent flood of disgust and rage coursing through Marcus had been demanding, but hearing it repeated aloud, approved, was such a jolt that he turned to Varius and his voice sounded small and pathetic in his own ears. ‘What?’

  ‘He’s killed four people. Four that we know about. And now this. He isn’t stopping. You can’
t allow him any more chances.’

  ‘I know,’ whispered Marcus, flinching, holding Una more tightly, while at the same time sharp grief for his parents swept suddenly across him like a blade peeling off a curl of skin.

  Varius did not stop. ‘And Gabinius getting himself shot – did your cousin do that too? It must have been good news for him, anyway. We could have known all this sooner.’

  ‘We could have done – it’s my fault,’ said Marcus, scarcely audibly. He couldn’t meet Varius’ eyes. ‘But now I don’t think – unless we find something – we can’t prove he killed my parents … or Gemella.’

  ‘Then he falls down the stairs drunk, he goes out hunting and never comes back, it doesn’t matter!’ cried Varius, savagely, hearing his voice ring in the cavernous room, as if it were someone else’s. There was silence afterwards.

  ‘It does matter,’ answered Marcus finally, tentatively. ‘People would find out. The Praetorians know what happened today … and where he is. They’d know I did it. And anyway,’ he hesitated again and his voice sank even lower, ‘I won’t … I won’t murder him in secret. It’s almost what he would have done to us, Varius. I don’t want to be … like that.’

  ‘You aren’t like him,’ said Varius, almost scoffing, for it seemed such a useless, self-indulgent thing to say. ‘There’s no comparison. It’s an execution. Do you really think you’d have anything to be ashamed of, after what he’s done?’

  Marcus could feel, with alarming, unfamiliar intensity, what he wanted to do to Drusus: pound his fists into his stomach, smash something heavy against his face and head until the bones broke, stab him. He wanted to do it quickly yet not so fast that Drusus felt nothing, didn’t know he was dying. He couldn’t imagine feeling any shame afterwards. He managed to say, ‘I don’t know. Yes. Yes. I – Varius, if I start like this – I—’ He felt a sick shudder pass through him, unable to keep the words from forming in his mind: it’s too much, and I can’t stand it, I can’t do it. He said aloud, unsteadily, ‘I haven’t even been here six weeks.’