Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Varius said, a little more gently but still unwavering, ‘Would it be any different if it were six years?’

  Marcus made a trapped, impatient gesture, dragging a hand across his face. ‘I meant, if I do this now – before I’ve done anything else – I’ll do it again, won’t I? Won’t I keep doing it? There will always be someone who’s a threat – and we’ll discuss what to do, but the conversation will be shorter every time it happens because if I’ve done it before, why not again? There’s been enough of that. I can’t. And it isn’t an execution, you know that.’

  ‘Varius,’ said Una. ‘There’s nothing Drusus can do. He’s not going anywhere. It’s more than my word against his. There’s the room he shut me in. He broke the longdictor – I cut him with a piece of it, it’s still on the roof. And there’s Acchan – the boy who helped me. It was attempted murder. It can be proved, I know it can.’

  Varius sighed and sat down, suddenly tired. ‘Well,’ he conceded wearily. ‘I suppose given he’s already in custody it’s not … practical.’ But even before he spoke again it was obvious to the others that he had not changed his mind, not in principle. He said, ‘If he’s alive he won’t be harmless. And you mustn’t think otherwise. If he has any allies at all he’ll continue to be a threat. Even if he’s locked up. Although yes, if you put him on trial, you’ll get your way. A court will probably judge whatever they think you want anyway.’ Marcus frowned in protest at this but Varius continued, ‘It’s not a question of proving it to them. It’s the Emperor, and what happens if he ever doubts you.’

  ‘But he won’t. He won’t be able to,’ said Marcus.

  ‘But he has to believe all of it. He won’t understand his nephew suddenly standing trial for attacking someone. He’s got to be sure about Lady Tullia and everything else.’

  ‘He knew I was telling the truth before,’ said Una.

  ‘Yes. That’s something,’ admitted Varius. ‘But there’s always the chance.’

  ‘What will happen when the Emperor hears this?’ asked Una. She was looking at Sulien, who suddenly understood that it was not only for comfort that she’d called him there.

  ‘Do you mean, could it kill him?’ he asked. ‘Do you absolutely have to tell him? Because yes, it’s possible.’

  There was a pause, and then Varius said, ‘I don’t think that’s a real choice. He’s going to wonder where Drusus has gone, isn’t he? If you do it this way, it can’t be by halves, everyone has to know. So he’ll find out anyway, and that would be worse.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Marcus, reluctantly. He felt another spasm of hatred for Drusus, this time on his uncle’s behalf. He asked Sulien, ‘Can you be there with me when I tell him, in case?’

  ‘All right. Of course,’ said Sulien, uneasily.

  ‘Well, then, you know what you’re going to do,’ remarked Una.

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Marcus. He let out his breath shakily, deliberately uncurled the fist that wore the ring, feeling a slight, temporary relief. His body still felt strained with unacted violence. ‘But I don’t ever want to see Drusus again,’ he said. He found he was talking to Varius, Varius was the one he wanted to know this. ‘If I ever do. If I’m ever in a room with him, I’ll …’ He did not say the words, but once again he could feel what he would do.

  The rumour of Drusus’ arrest had begun thriving through the Palace from the moment it happened, despite Glycon’s attempts to quarantine it. As she walked to her father’s rooms, Makaria missed the first signals of it – a group of servants suddenly dispersing at the far end of a passage, the sound of doors opening and closing urgently somewhere below her. Still, though she had changed out of her formal clothes, she felt faintly uncomfortable, as if a mistake had been made. She assumed it was only another bout of anxiety about Faustus and homesickness for her island. On Siphnos, Hypatia, to whom she was closer than anyone else, who could have made her forget the rash of annoyances that always afflicted her in the Palace, would be managing the vineyard without her. Makaria was irritated with her father for insisting on staying in the Palace, she could not see how he could recover here, he would be better off in Greece, away from everything, but the argument was just not worth having, nor was she even sure how she could manage having him there in her real, out-of-Rome life. But as she walked down a flight of stairs she caught a pair of guards looking at her sharply, as one joined the other and muttered something inaudible, and it was suddenly obvious that something had happened, and was being kept from her.

  Makaria marched over to them and demanded abruptly, ‘What’s going on?’

  The men looked awkward. ‘Nothing, Madam. Some routine security issues. That is, nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I saw you look at me; you think it concerns me. Don’t lie to me about it.’

  ‘I’m under orders not to discuss it.’

  ‘Then you’re disobeying orders by discussing it with each other, as well as my order for you to tell me,’ said Makaria impatiently.

  ‘Please, my Lady,’ said the guard in a low voice, so that she was a little repentant. ‘I can’t. I’m sure Caesar will talk to you soon.’

  Makaria frowned, but did not persist. A tremor of anxiety rose into her throat, silencing her and growing worse as she walked away. And of all things, all possible forms of bad news, she found she thought instantly of Drusus. He had acted so strangely by the fountain. But then he’d said he was ill, which had seemed natural enough at the time, perhaps more natural than it might have been in someone else. For though she could not have said he was actually unusually sickly, still there was always something overstrained and wounded about Drusus. Nevertheless, suppose …? She began and then left a gap, she could not bear to think it, and yet she could not avoid the guilty logic: if what she’d done was tell him that something terrible about him was known, if he had a secret and had just learned it wasn’t safe, then how would you expect him to act? Exactly as he had.

  Why hadn’t he known about Una before anyway? He’d been so out of things for the last few years – well, so had she, but for him it was different – he’d spent most of his life barely venturing outside Rome, why had he suddenly abandoned it so totally?

  She thought she was reasonably level-headed, perhaps she became sullen or cantankerous easily, but that was not the same thing as panic; she didn’t think she was often guilty of summoning up dire consequences on the prompting of nothing. And so she was the more horrified by the sudden gush of possibilities that followed the question: if all that were so, what would he do next?

  Her fear was compromised all the time by the thought that she was being terribly unfair to Drusus.

  She found Marcus walking towards her along a passage with Sulien, both of them seeming to pass in and out of their real ages as they moved: older and younger, they looked worn and sombre, but also pale, scared, as if they were walking through stripes of shadow between bright windows.

  ‘I was coming to find you,’ said Marcus.

  Makaria had briefly forgotten that Sulien was Una’s brother; seeing Marcus with Faustus’ doctor she thought she must have been wrong, the news must be about her father. ‘What is it, is he worse?’ she asked. And then she remembered.

  ‘It’s not that,’ answered Marcus shortly, and told her where Drusus was.

  Makaria put a hand to her mouth. ‘Why? He did something to Una, didn’t he? Is she dead?’ she blurted out, to her own incredulity. The young men stared at her. She was ashamed of being so blunt, so clumsy.

  ‘No, she’s not dead,’ said Marcus.

  ‘It was you, then,’ said Sulien. They’d already decided that it seemed likely.

  ‘How could I know what would happen? Oh no, he can’t, he wouldn’t, I know he wouldn’t,’ moaned Makaria.

  ‘It’s not all he’s done,’ said Marcus.

  ‘I must go and see her,’ cried Makaria impulsively, sick with contrition.

  ‘She’s gone to the baths. You can’t. You don’t know all of it.’

  She could
anticipate, unwillingly, much of what she was going to be told, but she felt on fire with shame and stupidity, when she heard that Tulliola and Drusus had been lovers. Of course, of course it would be that. How could she not have seen when she had always despised Tulliola, had known, from the beginning really, how false she was? What Makaria had felt for Drusus would have been only a shared world-weariness that was to do with being a Novian, barely more than a casual liking if it could have been taken out of the fierce complexity of family. She racked her memory now for signs she must have missed, glances between Tulliola and Drusus, times they had been alone together, and she could think of nothing, or at least nothing in Tulliola, always so treacherously opaque. But Drusus – the tension and nervousness for which she had pitied him … ‘Oh, it’s vile,’ she said. ‘How could he? So there’s nothing my father has that he hasn’t tried to get his hands on. He’s not human, he can’t be. And what is this going to do to Daddy? Bringing it all up again will be bad enough.’

  ‘Yes. But we have to,’ said Marcus, firmly – but looking fragile to Makaria, so that she felt a rare twinge of almost maternal pity for him, as she’d felt on sporadic occasions when he’d been a sweet and anxious child.

  She had been, unconsciously, pacing about: swinging her shoulders, almost stamping – like a boy younger than Marcus was now, she thought, catching herself doing it. She made herself stop. ‘I’ll do it, if you want,’ she said tersely.

  But as they walked to Faustus’ apartments, she remained in such a state of enraged panic for her father, so frantic with the certainty that Drusus’ betrayal of him was as good as another murder, that she was almost irritated as well as relieved at how patiently Faustus seemed to take the news. Since the morning he had been feeling a little better, he had been sitting near the window eating figs when they entered. The colour left his face as he listened, but still, he was affectionately impatient with Makaria as she faltered through the facts. ‘Come on, come on, spit it out,’ he said.

  When everything was told, Faustus could feel his heart speeding, a thin, dry buzz. But he was aware of Sulien’s tactful presence; he could see, with mingled annoyance and pity, how they were all looking at him, anxiously, as if at a dropped glass in mid-air, and he dragged ineffectively at his numbed body, trying to lift it higher and straighter in the chair. ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve always known he wanted to be Emperor. It makes sense of things. I suppose … there was always a chance of this.’

  ‘We didn’t want to tell you this, when you’re ill,’ said Marcus.

  ‘But you had to. Of course you did. Of course you did,’ said Faustus, gently. He wanted to say something to Marcus about Leo, but couldn’t. ‘He … killed Tulliola himself?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marcus. ‘He must have got men of his on to her guard. Of course we’ll try and find out what happened.’

  ‘I spoke to him a few hours afterwards,’ said Faustus, wondering. ‘I remember it. He said how sorry he was.’

  ‘He’s scum. He’s not a real Novian. Drusilla Terentia has a lot to answer for; the gods know there’s nothing of us in him,’ spat Makaria, trembling.

  ‘I don’t know if that’s true,’ murmured Faustus, sadly. Or he tried to; he realised that yet again he had not made himself understood.

  Later, when they were walking away from the room, Marcus felt for a moment almost cheerful with relief. He said to Sulien, ‘That wasn’t as bad as I thought.’

  Sulien didn’t answer. His right hand had strayed to his left wrist.

  ‘She’s all right,’ murmured Marcus.

  ‘Of course she is,’ said Sulien quickly, with a faint, odd bristle of defensiveness in his voice. ‘I know. But if she hadn’t been, Marcus. And we wouldn’t even have known why, I never even thought of someone trying to … kill her.’

  ‘No one did. I certainly didn’t. I should have done, if you want to blame someone beside Drusus.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ murmured Sulien. His eyes were half-lowered, distant. But then he raised his face and looked at Marcus with sudden, jarring urgency. ‘There’s something wrong. All the time. This happening to Una just … proves that. I know it, all the time, I can’t talk myself out of it. The people from the tower block, and whoever killed all those slaves: we don’t even know if they’re the same people, but they’re still there, somewhere, and whatever they did it for, they still want. And I can’t get used to it.’

  ‘We’ll find all that out,’ said Marcus. Sulien shook his head a little, impatiently, as if Marcus had not quite got the point. ‘Look, it’ll be all right. Of course you’re on edge. This happens after Veii – anyone would be.’

  Sulien’s mouth pulled into a tight dubious grin. ‘I’m not like this, I never have been. I don’t know why I never have been, if I feel like this now.’

  ‘You still often think about the cross, though,’ said Marcus softly, and indicated Sulien’s fingers, still smoothing his wrist.

  Sulien looked down at his hands, which sprang hastily apart, as if of their own accord. ‘It thinks about me,’ he mumbled, and then, at Marcus’ startled look at him. ‘Oh, I don’t know what I mean by that. It’s different.’ He thought for a moment and went on, ‘It’s different, because even when it was happening, I knew what I was supposed to have done. I knew exactly why they were taking me to the cross. It was all in the open. Not like all this. And your cousin – that was just out of nowhere. Or that’s how it seemed.’

  Marcus grimaced and asked, ‘Did you want me to have him killed, too?’.

  Sulien was faintly surprised both at the question and, when he thought of it, at the fact that he hadn’t taken one side or another. Shouldn’t he be wanting to kill Drusus himself? But Drusus, already locked in the Palace cells, his actions revealed and explained, seemed removed from the need for anger. He might have been a dangerous machine that had been deactivated. ‘No, not really. You really wanted to hurt him, didn’t you? But he’s already done so much to you. And he’s part of your family. Of course you hate him.’

  *

  In the pale cell under the Golden House, Drusus felt like a wasp, battering out its life against a window pane: each separate second was so desperate, so horrifying, that sometimes his brain clenched upon itself and he thought he wanted to kill himself, when really he wanted anything but that, at all costs he wanted to live. Sometimes he clutched for comfort at the Sibyl’s promise about his death – but there was no comfort, there was nothing he could bear the thought of. He reeled from corner to corner of the room, in a continuing agony of disbelief, still loathing the fact of having been handled, of being thrown in through the door, of terrible wordless loneliness.

  He had no idea how long this had gone on, when he saw that a man – dark-skinned, about his own age – had appeared behind the pane of thick, latticed glass in the door, and was watching him impassively. The man stood neutrally, very still, his hands loose at his sides, with no expression on his face, or at least none that Drusus was capable of reading. Drusus froze, unconsciously ceasing to breathe, even though he was long past recognising Varius. For what seemed like a long time they both remained unmoving. Drusus was slightly crouched, drawn together like an animal, as on the other side the man watched and watched, intently, like a scientist, and the gaze became unendurable and finally, without warning, Drusus flung himself into a forward sprint, cannoning into the glass, his fists raised, screaming so that his throat felt ragged, ‘Get out of here! Get away from me!’ And without even knowing who the other man was, he would have burst through the glass and torn him apart, if he could.

  He could not have said what he expected; he had no sense of the future any more – but it was dreadful to him that Varius did not react at all. He remained exactly where he was. All that happened was the contempt showed more clearly in the cold stare, so that Drusus, shuddering, realised dimly that contempt was what it was.

  Varius understood, intellectually, why Marcus had wanted never to be near his cousin again. Perhaps that wasn’t so differen
t from the way he himself had felt about Gabinius – or would have, if Gabinius had lived much longer. But he had felt he must come here, to look at Drusus with his new knowledge, even though he did not know what he expected to see – nothing that would reveal any new facts about Drusus, or make any more sense of him than they already had. And yet in some way Varius did sense how intangible people almost always were to Drusus, how hard it was to believe they persisted when he even shut his eyes or turned his back, that it was all but impossible for him to connect a name that figured in his plans with a solid human, standing in front of him. Varius could see that Drusus didn’t recognise him, although he had seen him a handful of times, and moreover must have known of him, must have agreed with Tulliola as to what was done.

  The door that led up into the Palace was open behind Varius; nevertheless, the weight of the huge building pressed on him as it must on Drusus. It was impossible for Varius not to remember, to share the feeling of being shut in. Still, he stayed on and on – perhaps it was only a kind of endurance game, another minute, and another. He did not exactly indulge in any fantasy of what he would do if, say, he could bribe his way into that room. Not exactly that, although he probably could have done it – he could almost certainly ignore Marcus’ decision and take Drusus’ life – but only at the cost of wrecking his own, something that might once have seemed a reasonable trade, but did not now. And yet he continued to study Drusus, weighing him up, some part of himself quietly calculating what would happen, what it would take, if the barrier between them suddenly disappeared. And this went on until Drusus suddenly ducked away from the window, hiding, hating himself for it, and didn’t know how much longer Varius stood there, a few feet away from him. He stayed huddled on the ground against the door, grateful despite himself that the door was there, that the glass couldn’t be broken.