Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘They are, sir.’

  Marcus felt more shock flutter across his face before he could control it. Half of him had thought there must have been a coup, and that his uncle was dead. ‘It will take time to explain to our hosts, and to the Nionians.’

  ‘That’s not possible, I’m afraid, sir.’

  ‘I can hardly just – leave without a word,’ said Marcus, forcing his voice to an almost unnatural slowness to disguise the desperation in it. ‘The Sinoans and Nionians have been working with us to prevent the most destructive war any Empire has yet seen. The Emperor must see that, however … disappointed he is in me.’

  ‘We’re neither of us in a position to tell the Emperor what he must or must not do,’ observed the centurion levelly, and the other men did not quite laugh, but a curt, amused rustle of breath flickered across them. Two short files of men strode tidily up the steps to where Marcus stood, flanking him.

  ‘You’re arresting me, then?’ Marcus heard himself say.

  ‘I hope not, sir,’ said the centurion philosophically. ‘Not you.’

  Marcus demanded finally, ‘Why? ’

  ‘You’ll be told more when you come with us, sir,’ the man answered.

  Marcus walked silently down the steps into the midst of them, feeling the straight-backed, defiant posture his body assumed of its own accord to be at once ridiculous and the only possibility.

  He wanted to keep his eyes on the others, to communicate at least by expression, but the men reorganised themselves so that somewhere behind them Una and Varius were hidden in their ranks. The soldiers marched them efficiently through the pavilions and gardens, and Marcus strained to see the reaction of the Sinoan guards, wondering sickly what they knew, what the Empress had agreed to. Plainly the Nionians at least knew nothing, for he saw Kato appear from one of the halls among his own bodyguards and retainers, and stand shading his eyes to watch, concerned and intrigued. Marcus looked at the other man blankly, unable to let his face explain anything.

  Kato frowned as the young Roman prince walked away in the centre of an excessive escort of guards, far more than Kato had seen gathered around him before. ‘What is this? Where is he going all of a sudden?’

  ‘I am not sure he’s leaving willingly, Lord,’ said Sohaku, who had fetched him to see this.

  ‘Isn’t he, now?’ cried Kato, with a start of curiosity, his face lighting up as if this were wonderful news, although he was, in fact keenly but neutrally excited. ‘Then who is forcing him to go, and for what reason, and why don’t you have the answers already?’

  ‘Lord, I have tried, but I will have to find one of the interpreters if you wish to press them to explain. Plainly I have forgotten all but the basics of Sinoan and my Latin was always pitiful. Forgive me. But I believe that in any case, both parties were trying to keep the truth from me; I think the most anyone was willing to say was that it is an internal Roman matter which we should disregard.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find out for ourselves, won’t we?’ Kato said with the odd fusion of command and collusive playfulness for which they loved him.

  He set off briskly after the detail of troops and his retainers followed. Entrenched in their orders as Kato had expected, the Roman soldiers ignored them.

  They came to the great courtyard at the front of the Palace compound. The red gates stood open and Bianjing glittered frostily beyond. Bronze standards rose within like a field of rigid sunflowers: the upright Roman hand in the circle of laurel, the Eagle. Surely there were at least a hundred Roman soldiers, ranked on the cobbles in two, hard-edged squares and between them, before the heavy, six-wheeled Roman cars, a wide silk carpet from Persia or India had been unrolled, and upon it stood Drusus, all in white. He turned his face towards his cousin, but looked at him almost as if without recognition, although he smiled.

  Marcus stopped as if he had struck a wall, too furious and shocked to notice that the troops around him stopped too, as if he had been leading them, rather than being transported among them. They had been instructed, in fact, to maintain some distance between the cousins. As the group halted, Drusus’ eyes swept across them, and Una, breathing hard, knowing he was looking for her, forced her face and body to obey her so that when he saw her he would see her looking as indifferent and contemptuous of him as when he had seen her last.

  A herald swaggered out across the no-man’s-land between them, carrying a stiff, red-edged sheet of paper, rather like the script Marcus had been given at his investiture. As it was placed into Marcus’ numb hands and he began to read, Varius was taken over by a temptation so vivid as to be almost an hallucination – of somehow seizing the weapon of the nearest soldier and trying to kill Drusus. He knew too well that it would be impossible even to fantasise success, and yet it seemed to flash instantly through all his nerves, sharpening his eyesight, readying his hands, and he had time to ask himself with alarmed, distant wonder, if he could really be going to do it …?

  And then, as if the impulse had escaped his flesh and travelled beyond him, cut free and devilish in the live air, he heard a triple crack of gunfire. And the next thing he saw was Marcus, felled to the ground under a heap of soldiers, before he too was dragged down.

  [ XIV ]

  MOON GATE

  There was another spluttering of gunshots, closer this time, from somewhere on the ground – the first round seemed to have come from above, then? And then more, and a sense of people running, both nearby, as a number of the soldiers chased forward, and further away, a more scattering flight. Varius scarcely paid attention to any of it. At once he dragged himself free and onto his feet, and began ploughing through the disordered mass of soldiers to where he’d seen Marcus fall, relentless, frantic. No, not Marcus, not after everything …

  But Marcus was rising from the ground, shoulders hunched over something, doggedly ignoring the soldiers’ attempts to shield him or herd him away. He did not even look round to see what was happening; he was methodically tearing the letter he had been given into fragments.

  Bruised with relief, Varius made nothing of that. His attention, which had been fixed totally upon Marcus, expanded slightly; ahead he saw Drusus, bundled back towards the cars in a scrum of soldiers. Then the developing turmoil around them came into sudden focus: the Roman soldiers and the Sinoan guards were shooting back at the ramparts, at whoever had been firing down into the courtyard. And two or three Nionians – where had they come from? – rushed past towards the gatehouse, enraged, although charging across the open court they seemed desperately vulnerable. Soldiers from all three Empires apparently fighting one enemy, then – but not united, not remotely. Varius heard an ugly uproar of uncomprehending fury and distrust as the different factions converged at the base of the steps, shouting at each other in their separate languages, weapons raised, each incensed by the shots the others had fired already. Varius looked on, teeth clenching in anticipatory horror, ready to see them break into three-sided battle right there inside the high Sinoan walls.

  Marcus scattered the flakes of paper and turned to Varius with a startling look of harsh decision. But then his gaze slid past to something behind and his face, which already looked dried out and bone-pale, blanched further. Varius turned his head to follow the look: a Roman officer who seemed to have been wounded in the shoulder was being dragged away from the corner of the broken formation. And beyond that, half screened by the Nionian retainers as if they could still protect him, someone lay, face down on the cobbles. Except that there was no face left; the corpse was truncated at the neck in a collapsed wet mess of powdery blood from which Varius’ eyes instinctively skitted away, before deliberately he looked again to recognise the body – from the clothes and the behaviour of the retainers – as Kato.

  ‘Come on,’ Marcus said to him, suddenly close, lunging past him towards Una and seizing her hand. She too was unhurt, although she had been staring numbly at Kato’s body and she moved stiffly when Marcus touched her. Varius wondered with an abrupt jab of pain what it was like
for her when someone died close by. Marcus put his hand briefly to her face, a rough caress, and she mechanically brushed his fingers with hers, but then retracted very slightly, looking at him with something almost like distrust.

  Marcus turned towards the remaining mass of soldiers, steering Una in front of him, and barked, ‘Well, are you going to stand and let us be shot? Get us away from this!’ And he began striding urgently back the way they’d come, towards the shelter of the red-pillared colonnade. Already, Varius had realised how Marcus was taking advantage of the confusion to group the three of them together, but he saw now, without understanding why, that he had also managed to position himself between them and the main body of the squadron. Except that he kept Una and Varius ahead of him, he was once again in the lead, almost outstripping the troops around them.

  More Nionian soldiers hurtled past into the courtyard. The retainers must have alerted them to what had happened.

  They reached the colonnade, but Marcus’ pace did not slow, and he said quietly, ‘Come on, keep going.’

  At first, Varius was too relieved at even attempting to separate themselves from the troops to resist, but Una hissed unhappily, ‘No. Marcus,’ and she had begun to hang back; Marcus was almost dragging her along now.

  Uneasily Varius said, ‘They’re not going to let us go any further.’ The closest soldiers continued to follow, not quite chasing yet, but trying to confine and head off their movement, like sheepdogs.

  ‘Oh, I think they’ve got him,’ remarked Marcus in an odd, light voice, ignoring them both, looking back over his shoulder at the ramparts, where he thought he’d seen something falling.

  Varius demanded, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Leaving you here,’ said Marcus, in an undertone.

  ‘No, you’re not doing this. I’m staying with you,’ cried Una through gritted teeth.

  Varius said, in indignation, ‘Do we have any choice in this?’

  ‘No,’ Marcus answered them both, shortly.

  Varius stopped walking, as much with angry shock as obstinacy. ‘I won’t let you take these decisions for us. If we choose to go with you we will. We’re not your slaves, Marcus.’

  ‘Varius! ’ For a moment Una thought Marcus was going to hit him. He did go as far as shoving Varius a little way, saying with restrained, rapid violence, ‘That letter. Drusus is taking my place here. I don’t know how he did it but he has. He had to make my uncle think the worst of me somehow and plainly it was easier to do it through you. So you are both criminals and traitors, and I’m – I don’t know, a pawn, I’m the puppet whose strings you’ve been pulling. We’re meant to go back to Rome, in his power, to answer for it. They’re taking me, I can’t stop it. But I’ll be safer there than you will. Whatever the Emperor’s been told I don’t think he’s going to let anyone torture me or kill me, but it can happen to you.’

  Varius had automatically taken a breath to speak, and found he could not.

  Marcus turned away from him and looked at Una, his voice cracking when he spoke to her. ‘And you’d never get there. I know you wouldn’t. You know he’ll find a way of killing you if he can.’

  ‘And you?’ she said, shivering, barely more than a croak. ‘He has no interest in killing you?’

  One of the soldiers called out in warning, before Marcus could find an answer, ‘Sir, you’re safe here. Don’t go any further.’ And they were closing in more purposefully now.

  ‘Come on, faster,’ urged Marcus, driving them forward up the white steps to an octagonal inner gate. The soldier in the lead reached to pull him back. Marcus shrugged off the hand as it touched him, turned seamlessly and punched the man in the face, so that the Imperial ring split his lip and he fell, overbalancing down the steps, back against the troops behind. Marcus stood snarling down at them, unrecognisable, the bloody fist that wore the ring still raised, shouting with unhesitating savagery, ‘I still wear this, I am still Caesar; touch me again and I will have you crucified! ’

  The man staggered, blood coursing from his nose and mouth, and the rest stalled and hesitated, uncertain. Marcus wiped his hand and added, curtly, ‘I will come with you as soon as I can.’ And he turned and muttered to Una and Varius, who were both gazing at him, blinking, stunned, ‘That’s not going to work for very long.’

  Without truly feeling that they had consented to what was happening, neither Una nor Varius protested any longer. They moved on with hurried wretchedness through the moon gate, along the path where Marcus had walked with Tadahito, just at the point of breaking into a run. Marcus was afraid to look too much as if they were in flight. Varius realised with an inward tremor of understanding that they were heading for the Nionians’ guest quarters, from which, at their approach, a floe of armed men erupted down the steps, weapons rearing and pointing at them like a host of accusatory fingers. Varius and Una could not help but flinch backwards at the sight, but Marcus came to a halt, letting out a sigh of strange relief. He raised his hands appeasingly, saying in loud, commanding Nionian which Varius hated not being able to understand, ‘I must speak with your Prince, now.’

  ‘Murderers!’ cried out one of the warriors, fiercely, and Varius and Una could both guess what that must mean: they saw doubt flicker for a moment across Marcus’ pale face, before he looked back towards the gate through which, soon, the Romans would appear, and it vanished.

  ‘There are only three of us, we’re unarmed. If we make a move you don’t like, shoot us. Search us if you have to, but be quick. I need to make him an offer and in another minute it will be too late.’

  There was an undecided movement within the group, and then the first row came forward towards them, weapons levelled, the tips inches from their chests and faces. But behind, one of them had vanished back inside the building.

  Seconds creaked by excruciatingly. Marcus could barely refrain from shouting in impatience and rage, and only the fear of provoking the men to shoot kept him still; all his muscles were in an agony of unusable energy.

  Then Tadahito appeared behind his soldiers, at the top of the steps, looking haggard and aghast. He said, ‘What have you done?’

  Marcus swallowed. He hadn’t been prepared for this apparent depth of conviction that he must be responsible for Kato’s death; and it meant that the danger to Varius and Una was worse. ‘Not this,’ he replied. ‘Not Lord Kato’s murder.’

  ‘The assassin was a Roman. A European, that is. What part of Europe is not under Roman rule?’

  Marcus gazed at him rigidly, clamping back the moan of despair that rose in his throat. It was too late to go back, and he was sure in any case that there was no other chance. He answered, ‘Whoever he was, I had no connection with him. If I had, I wouldn’t do what I’m about to now.’ Ahead of him, Una and Varius glanced at each other, tense and humiliated, trapped into an odd, shame-faced solidarity. Marcus said, ‘These are – these are the people I trust most. Take them into your custody, send them to Nionia if you want. But only on condition that I have your word no Roman has any access to them until I return.’

  Tadahito just stared back at him, bewildered and horrified and worn out. Finally he said with tired patience, trying to sort one strand of information from another, ‘You are leaving?’

  ‘I’ve got no choice,’ said Marcus, with as much straightforward confidence as he could. ‘I want them to stay in my place.’

  ‘Your place is not with us,’ observed Tadahito, dispassionately.

  ‘They will explain as much as I can, if you accept. But you don’t have much time to decide. After the explosions in Rome, you moved your troops back from the Wall to convince me that Nionia was not responsible. I took your word then. This is the same.’

  ‘So they remain as hostages against your sincerity?’

  Marcus shuddered and his eyes closed involuntarily before he could mutter, scarcely audibly, ‘Yes.’ He felt authority and certainty draining away from him like blood, leaving him cold. ‘But only … mine. I can’t … answer for Rome, at the
present moment. Just … don’t harm them. You have no need to.’

  Tadahito said nothing.

  ‘Marcus,’ appealed Varius desperately, unable to stand there any longer, passive as a token on a board while they bargained over him in a language he didn’t know. ‘If you must do this, ask for asylum too. Don’t put yourself in Drusus’ hands alone. You could speak to the Emperor from here, surely.’ He couldn’t bear not to say this, but he knew Marcus’ answer before he gave it.

  ‘I can’t. Drusus would look right; it would look like treason. If you’re here maybe you can keep it all from collapsing, I don’t know. But if I seem to change sides and if they refuse to hand me back, it triggers war now. And I would give up any chance of being Emperor, of stopping this.’

  ‘If your cousin kills you you’ll lose that too,’ said Una, turning her back on the guns to face him, and her face looked to him like one drawn in charcoal on white paper; the colour seemed to have gone even from her eyes, they were wells of appalled black against her skin.

  Marcus lowered his eyes to the ground. ‘I don’t think he can. It would prove he’d been guilty all along.’

  ‘Do you know he’s that rational? Or that the Emperor has enough control over him for it to matter?’

  Marcus looked at her again silently, his face twisted into a kind of anguished plea, as if for forgiveness for having no answer. And behind him, at the far end of the path she could see the Roman soldiers in their dark red uniforms heading grimly towards the moon gate.

  ‘What is all this?’ asked Tadahito impatiently. ‘Why should your life be in danger? This seems less like a gesture of good faith and more like a request for help. Or else you have staged it for some other reason.’

  ‘Whatever you believe, it must be an advantage to you, having them,’ Marcus pressed, forcefully again, hearing the footfalls of the Roman soldiers growing louder behind him, refusing to turn to look. ‘You can’t lose anything by it.’