Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  *

  Faustus felt he could sense Drusus through the many floors and walls, as he’d been aware of Tulliola, the one night she’d spent in the same cells, three years before. At least there had been work for him to do back then, and he’d been capable of doing it. He was grateful when at last he got the attendants to leave him to himself. He let out his breath in a gasp, beginning to shake, as he covered his face, remembering Drusus’ sympathy as he sat by his bed, then thinking of his own father, and what was left of his three sons. Himself a derelict, blind idiot, stupid enough to let someone as dangerous as Tulliola into the Palace for the most trivial of reasons, gullible enough not to see what was in front of his face. Lucius a wreck for years, and his son a monster. And Leo dead.

  But when he woke in the morning, his head astonishing him with pain, in a spinning room, among unrecognisable people, he did not remember any of it.

  NORIKO

  Noriko watched the Romans coming through the high walls of this foreign city. Even through the moist and heavy air, the slow column of vehicles, blazing with bronze and semiprecious stones, was visible right from the heart of Bianjing. Two broad, straight roads quartered the city’s perfect square, crossing beneath the Palace, cutting across the lake that lay like a square-cut mirror below it, out through the four gates and away across the Yudong plain. Only occasional variations gently disrupted the symmetry: temples and gardens just inside the walls to the north-east, the old shrine-tower of glazed and moulded ceramic brick that they said looked as if it were made of iron, although to Noriko it looked more like green-tinged copper. Around the central cross the finer streets spread in an elegant, geomantic grid of lines and right angles. Every edge as if just sharpened, all ancient, all pristinely new.

  Only the guard she had bribed to let her pass knew that Noriko was here, on the upper parapet of the outer fortress of the Palace. Her hand lay on one of the hot, cylindrical tiles of thick, bubbled glass that roofed the lower fort, and of which no two were the same, each modelled with flowers, Buddhas, clouds; the petals and billows outlined with subtle brush strokes of coloured enamel, jewel bright. The detail was only visible this close: the roof swept down away from her and up again, like a wave turned to ice, faintly grey-green and luminous, though not transparent. Riding the cutting peaks at the eaves stood a file of blown-glass dragons, delicately scaled with yellow. All the city was like that, an extension of the Palace itself, the blood red of inner walls just visible behind green, flowered pillars, the steep curved roofs heavy with ridged and overlapping glass, strict in its uniform beauty. It glared like a diamond.

  At night the electric lanterns lit up and glowed through the watery roofs. Inside, the steamy summer air was chilled and fresh. But except for the shrine-towers and the ramparts themselves, none of the buildings rose very high – five or six storeys at the most. On her first day in Bianjing, the polished agelessness of the place, so meticulous and so conservative, had made Noriko feel faintly defensive, without quite realising that was what she felt. Comparing Bianjing with the cities of her home, she felt that it was stiflingly antique, unreal – no one lived here who did not serve the government in some way, there were scarcely any children. But still she was obscurely afraid of finding Cynoto, Nara, Naniwa wanting beside it.

  But today the city might have been nothing but a waste of grey brick; its beauty meant nothing to her, she scarcely saw it – only the approaching procession of ornate cars.

  She could deflect any questions by pretending her Sinoan was worse than it was. In the plain, dark cotton robe and trousers she was wearing, she could have been one of the maids attending the Nionian Imperial party. She might have lost her way on an errand; the long, tubular, painted letter-case that hung like a quiver of arrows on her back might have held a message between the pavilions, although she did not know what she would do if anyone demanded to open it. But it was difficult, she trusted, to quarrel with the polite incomprehension she would assume.

  From a narrow pocket inside her sleeve she took a little silver telescope, only as long as her hand and slender as a writing brush, and studied the convoy. Through the lenses, each vehicle became distinct, separate. Marcus Novius would be near the middle, but not actually in the central car – not quite so clear a target. She deliberated a little, sweeping the focus up and down the line, until she thought she could even guess which of the glittering roofs hid him.

  The dawdling pace tormented her. She swallowed drily, flexed palms grown damp with anticipation, and was wrung by a sudden longing to go home. Before she even saw Marcus Novius step out into the courtyard below, a wrench of nervous sickness made her bend forward, groaning quietly. She could not do this, it should not have been asked of her.

  She tried to master it, but the nausea and breathlessness continued; she could hardly bear to watch as the fleet of gilt-wreathed cars finally passed through the gate beneath her, into the courtyard, as the dark-gowned Sinoan court officials came forward to greet the Romans as they stepped out into the hazy sunlight in their sombre pale clothes, like a party of mourners or priests. Though she stepped behind a pillar to be sure of remaining hidden, she stood with her face turned in silent anguish to the painted wood, her eyes closed, and it was a second or two before she could steady the telescope and look out again.

  Europeans, Africans, Indians were all gathering in the courtyard below. Of course she had seen hundreds of Roman faces, but only on longvision screens; very few in the flesh. And the Nionian Empire too encompassed a good deal of diversity, but again Noriko had not seen much of it, there was only limited exchange between the provinces. So now she could not help seeing the assembled foreigners with what she knew was an irrational sense of their vague freakishness. It was even fascinating: for a moment – the Roman prince being concealed among the rest – Noriko relaxed a little, almost tempted to waste time turning the telescope frivolously from face to face, enjoying the garish variety, as if she were in a private museum of overstated features, odd-coloured skin and eyes.

  But that was not what she was there to do. For a second Marcus Novius came into view and she recognised him instantly. In bleak, funereal white like the rest, he was the only one to wear, over otherwise normal clothes, a simplified, ceremonial suggestion of a toga, a drape of white fabric with a purple stripe across his body. Without moving her eye from the telescope, Noriko unslung the long letter-case from her shoulder, feeling with one hand for the opening. But she had only a glimpse of his face. As she tried to focus he turned again to speak to someone and a Roman lady stepped into Noriko’s line of sight, so that all she could see of Marcus Novius was a fraction of the back of his head, his dark-gold hair.

  Screening him, the young woman stood looking from side to side, at the two bronze-cast lions sneering identically across the courtyard, up at the richly painted crossbeams beneath the glass roofs, her lips parted with wonder. She was beautifully dressed in thin, silvery clothes whose folds stirred loosely in the humid breeze, the narrow body that might otherwise have looked too pauperishly bony was graceful under the flow of silk. Noriko examined her face curiously, even though the lady was less bizarre-looking than the others in some ways, having too little colour rather than too much. Her fluttering hair was a light, faded-looking brown, her skin ghostly. Nevertheless, although the European bones of her face were as angular and protrusive as any other set of features there, her small mouth was delicate, elegant. She was very young, too – the youngest Roman there. What was she doing here?

  Marcus Novius Faustus moved again, but just as Noriko lifted the glass to find his face, quite suddenly the lady raised her head and seemed to look straight into her eye. And her expression hardened, changing from sweet, naive wonder to what looked like clear-sighted suspicion.

  Instantly Noriko jolted back behind the pillar, shocked and confused. The little telescope hung loosely between suddenly nerveless fingers. Surely, at this distance, in the shadows, she could not possibly have been seen. Nevertheless her heart battered so viol
ently within her that she could have thought that alone was causing the shaking of her body.

  There were too many people in the way now, the Romans were moving on, inside. Noriko swung the case back onto her shoulder, slid the telescope into its sheath. She ran along the cloistered walkway on the ramparts, down the steps within the wall, to follow them, comforted briefly by the coolness and the solitude. With both the Roman prince and the lady in silver out of sight, Noriko knew who the woman was. Too well dressed to be a servant, and standing too close to the prince to be a lady-in-waiting; Marcus Novius was certainly unmarried, and he had no sisters. So, of course the girl was a concubine, or a lover. It was only because she had been in such startlingly plain view, standing there with him so indiscreetly, that Noriko had not seen it at once.

  *

  Una felt no more weariness from the long journey by magnetway through the endless woods of Sarmatia and Scythia, through the bare grasslands in the north. The cryptic beauty of the city exhilarated her. She felt conscious of her origins with rare absence of resentment or shame: how had she got here, so many thousand miles from London, where she hadn’t even had much hope of living very long? Nevertheless, without it spoiling her pleasure in the city, she was also exercising a different part of the mind, from the moment the car passed through the outer gates, down the avenue across the lake that presented the Palace with a bright inverted image of itself. Who kept it so clean, who replaced the glass tiles even before they ever showed a flaw, who prevented weeds from growing and fed the fish in the almost sterile, stainless lake? They had travelled through Jondum in the north, she knew that not all Sinoan cities were like this, perfect from edge to edge, without even suburbs, let alone slums.

  Almost in the same moment as she looked up at the gates, Marcus did the same, with his own brief, intangible feeling there was someone hidden, watching from a distance. Perhaps it was only because he had caught Una’s movement, and understood it without even having to think. They glanced at each other, knowing they had felt the same thing. There was nothing to be said – there were so many pairs of eyes turned towards them, too many people to fathom, all talking, thinking in a language Una didn’t know. But despite the sudden sense of quiet vulnerability, Una felt a twinge of happiness at how easily, how mutually she and Marcus had read each other’s thoughts. She smiled at him.

  Ahead, between the inner palaces, a group of Nionian ladies went by. They were, it seemed, not meant to be seen, although equally it seemed that the precautions to keep them hidden were more symbolic than actual; four servants flanked the group, carrying portable screens, plain lattices of white paper and unpainted wood, simple against the women’s brightly coloured clothes, for there was little attempt at keeping the screens together and few of the ladies remained totally out of sight. They turned their heads, openly, to look at the gathering Romans. There was no great difference now between the Nionian and Roman clothes, except in the colours and fabrics used, and the length and squareness of the Nionians’ sleeves. But Marcus and Una were both fascinated by the women’s hair, which hung in straight, long falls – unbelievably long to the Romans’ eyes – hanging to the knees or heels, or kept from sweeping along the ground by a train extending from a butterfly-embroidered dress. Only a couple of the women had left their hair its natural black; the others – it was a fashion a decade or so old – wore it stained in deep, bright colours: crimson, lilac, dark indigo, kingfisher blue.

  ‘Some of them have got to be wearing wigs,’ Una remarked, to Marcus’ slight disappointment. It was the sharper, electric colours she meant, hair surely could not undergo such punishing dyeing and still grow that long and glossy. The women passed and Una heard a distant cry of laughter from behind the paper screens. Why had they come?

  They were led on into the complex of gardens and halls, and the feeling of being spied on returned to Una again, like a cool stirring of the air. And again when she turned to look back, and saw numberless guards, officials, eunuchs, all watching the Roman arrivals with blank polite faces and varying secret feelings of fascination, distrust, revulsion or indifference – it was lost.

  An hour or so passed as the Romans disappeared into guest quarters on the western side of the grounds, to change their clothes, rest a little after the long journey – and Noriko slipped quickly into the Crown Prince’s rooms to speak with him.

  Later, she recognised Marcus Novius’ new advisor, Varius, striding across a courtyard towards the northern gardens where Prince Tadahito and the Nionian dukes and lords would soon approach. She watched him pass before she followed to hide among the trees.

  Varius had barely looked at the lovely apartment he was shown into. He was tired, but he would not be able to relax yet, nor to appreciate any of the beauty around him. And as he walked he was aware of people trying not to be caught gawping at his height and bone structure, and the colour of his skin. He walked impassively, ignoring it, yet felt self-conscious heat slowly filling his skin, lapping from within at the foreign contours of his face: an unpleasantly primal sense that he was outnumbered.

  The gardens were full of faintly desperate activity, as in the last few moments before any performance. Among the yellow roses and chrysanthemums, beside a lake shaped in artful, curving imitation of nature in contrast to the mirrory square outside the Palace walls, priests and officials and interpreters hurried about nervously and untidily, setting out an enclosure of screens and banners – the Roman Eagle, the red Nionian Sun – while the daughters of the Nionian priest, wearing white tunics over scarlet skirts, tuned musical instruments. Varius commandeered one of the interpreters to help him talk with one of the Nionian ambassadors, and the three of them, an awkward trio, wandered back and forth across the enclosure, knowing they were probably more in the way than not, checking things Varius knew should not need to be checked. But neither he nor the ambassador could rest: Marcus was about to meet Prince Tadahito and the Sinoan Emperor for the first time.

  The courtiers and civil servants of all three nations had been strained almost to madness by attempting to plan this moment: it was like calculating some deadly sum involving three incompatible versions of infinity. How could the three leaders be brought together; how would they treat each other and what kind of treatment could they accept? All visitors to the Sinoan court were required to lower themselves to all fours, to knock their foreheads nine times on the floor before the Emperor’s throne. It was equally impossible that Marcus and the Nionian Crown Prince and barons should do this, and impossible that, as guests, they should not. And how were they to acknowledge each other? Would each one of them not demean himself and his people if he failed to exact the deference which was his due from every human being? All three were supposed to be somehow divine: the Son of Heaven; the heir of the goddess Amaterasu; a descendant of Olympians. Marcus’ grandfather was only one of a long line of Emperors to be made a god after his death; Varius might not believe in any of them, and he knew Marcus did not believe either, but that was not the point. The Romans might be cynical among themselves about their deified Emperors, but if only a few of them really believed that their rulers were potential gods, how much less could they believe in the claims to godhead of foreign leaders? How could they ever bear the shame if their Caesar knelt down and worshipped another man? And it was the same for the other two. To each of them, his whole nation’s pride seemed to dictate that he must insult the others, for to make any gesture of submission was intolerable.

  At first the Romans had hoped that a carefully judged performance of simultaneous nods – indicating respect, but not inferiority – might be sufficient. Rapidly, they realised it would not – neither the Sinoans nor Nionians could accept it; the meanings of different bows were so specific that a nod was too glaring a violation of Imperial rights. It could not happen. It was almost a breach of physical laws.

  Now, the enclosure cleared as the Romans and Nionians took their place on either side, the Imperial envoys still hidden from one another. Varius stood among the rest
and watched, anxious, as if even now everything might collapse into bitterness and failure. It was so insane – so childish, that a crisis over the relative positions of three men’s heads might have hurtled them all into war, before a serious word had been spoken, but it was true, they’d come that close. Varius had only become involved in the final days before the Romans were due to leave, when he realised how critical things had become.

  Dressed in red, her forehead bound with ribbons, the young priestess from the temple of Venus Genetrix in Rome walked out under the willows. She seemed slightly ill at ease, perhaps feeling the same discomfort here that Varius did. She cleared her throat and began to speak:

  ‘Before they meet in the hope of answering the grave challenge before them, it is right that the Imperial households honour their shared divine ancestress. In Rome her name is Venus the Founder, who led her son Aeneas from Troy to the shores of Italy, where the Empire sprang from her bloodline; in Nionia she is Amaterasu, and to the eastern islands too she sent her issue to found a nation. Her heavenly favour passed from the hero Ninigi, to the first Emperor Jimmu, as it passed from Aeneas to Romulus, who laid the walls of Rome. Through her, the Empires of Rome and Nionia are sisters, born of one mother; their citizens, though separated by barriers of land and sea, and of brick, are brothers. Today we pray that the Goddess will guide her children to lasting peace.’

  As she finished the Nionian priest rose, clad in voluminous white silk, a high black mitre on his head. Twice he clapped his hands together, loudly, and bowed before he began his own oration, saying, Varius hoped, something along the same lines. Varius let out an inaudible sigh, and smiled with private relief, as if until now he’d really feared someone watching might stand up and decry this as the nonsense it was. For it seemed a precarious pantomime to him, and he was the one that had written it.