Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Noriko froze subtly. She was indeed profoundly shocked. It was as if with no warning she had been pitched through an invisible rotation in the air, as if the girl in front of her had monstrously changed herself, werewolf-like, into – exactly what she had been before. A pale young woman, with a stern intelligent face, fiercely graceful even though dishevelled with anxiety and sleeplessness. A caged, somehow compelling person. ‘Oh,’ she said, in an unaltered voice, leaning to replenish Una’s cup although Una had barely touched it. ‘I hope I didn’t offend you. So, please – you were saying?’

  Una’s lips twitched in a half-smile of grudging approval. She thought, fair enough.

  ‘But I’m afraid I know very little about politics,’ continued Noriko demurely.

  Una nodded a little grimly, sizing up the obstacle. ‘I don’t want to offend you either, but I don’t think I believe you there.’ She paused. More hesitantly, in a softer voice, she said. ‘I think … I must tell you something else. I know why you came here with the Prince.’

  Noriko started, shocked into staring frankly. And she was silent for a long time, her face slowly staining a clear, dawn red. Una observed again, without resentment now, how beautiful she was. Noriko murmured, ‘How?’

  ‘One of our officials worked it out,’ answered Una, deciding against naming Varius. She turned her head away. ‘I only heard a few minutes before Drusus Novius arrived. Before the attack. So, you must be anxious to know more about … Caesar. Or at least about life in Rome.’

  ‘I think that will not happen now,’ said Noriko in an undertone, wondering how anyone could make such an offer about her lover in such a detached, authoritative way. ‘I am sure you would not wish to see it, in any case.’

  Una clenched her fists against a sudden blast of desolation. He promised me he would not, she thought, feeling her skin remember: the texture of his clothes and his body beneath as she’d pressed her face against him. He would be hurt if he could see this. He would want her to trust his word entirely, to put any other possibility out of her head.

  ‘No, I don’t want to see it,’ she said, looking back at Noriko. ‘This is the information I’ve got to bargain with and I hope it will be completely useless. It doesn’t matter what I think, it only matters whether you want it.’

  Another silence. ‘It’s true,’ confessed Noriko finally. ‘I would like to know more. To be safe. But, to bargain with that, as you suggest …’

  ‘I’m not asking where Nionia’s missiles are! I only want to know what’s happening now. Drusus Novius must want us back. So what has he said? Has he threatened to attack Nionia if Varius and I are not handed over to him?’

  Noriko’s face hardened quietly. She asked, ‘Would he go that far?’

  ‘Not at first, perhaps,’ said Una. ‘So far as he believes anything, he believes peace with your country is pointless. But he’ll do what he thinks he must to become Emperor. He cares less about a war than that. He’s here in the Emperor’s name; he might feel bound to go through the motions for a few days. But if he thinks making himself a war leader will raise his chances, that’s what he’ll do. So yes, I think he will threaten you, and if you refuse, it will give him the excuse to start his war. And I don’t think it will take very long.’

  Noriko had to open her books again, and it took some time and several false starts before she was able to say what she wanted: ‘He has not yet. He says that Novius Caesar had no right to offer you as hostages. We have said – I believe we have said, that still we would expect Rome to honour her pledges, especially since Lord Kato has been murdered.’

  ‘So when he does, how do you think your country will react? Will you let the Romans have us?’

  None of the sweetly evasive court mannerisms were left in Noriko now. She said grimly, ‘We do not respond well to threats. No.’

  Una sighed. ‘Then I need to think,’ she murmured, largely to herself. ‘I need to talk to Varius.’

  ‘I thought …’ said Noriko hesitantly. ‘I thought perhaps … if Drusus Novius has taken Caesar’s place, I would be expected …’

  ‘To marry Drusus?’ Una had drooped a little, wearily, but she stiffened now, her face set with appalled conviction. ‘Listen. He might want to string things out longer than I think. I don’t know how strong he is back in Rome. He might not mind marrying you. Do anything rather than let that happen.’

  ‘There is nothing I can do,’ protested Noriko.

  ‘You can make sure your people know what he is. I promised I’d answer your questions about Marcus. I’ll tell you about Drusus, too. If anyone’s still considering it after that, think of something, do whatever you have to. Make yourself ill, stop eating. Anything. I’d rather be a slave again or dead than married to him,’ said Una.

  *

  Lal was tired and humiliated. For the last three nights, Mrs Su, the woman she’d met at the roadside, had let her lie rolled in a musty blanket on the earth floor of her one-roomed house, and given her bowls of cabbage and insubstantial white rice that only pushed hunger to arm’s length and kept it struggling and nagging, never more than temporarily weakened. Lal had spent each day cutting vegetables and carrying firewood. Mrs Su treated her with a kind of hospitable indifference, but still Lal felt more like an imposition than a help, and as each day her body ached more with yesterday’s work and with the deficiency of food, the work grew harder rather than easier. Finally, at dawn, Geng had driven with her by slow, rocking cart into Jingshan. The jumbled, dustily blackened town loosely straddled a broad road, dotted with high, flimsy facades of soiled bright pink or red, misrepresenting the drab, low shops behind them. The place had a weak, disorderly, flattened quality, like a grey woodlouse stranded on its back, waggling frail legs.

  Beneath one of these garish fronts, an eating house had four longdictors set around puffy couches in a dimly lit room on the ground floor. But there was no use in going inside yet. In Jiangning they had never felt far from poverty, but affording the use of a longdictor hadn’t been any great challenge. Here the price was a good percentage of a day’s work. Geng had promised he would pay her enough for a few hours’ help unloading and selling the produce from the farm. He didn’t speak to her much on the journey and Lal had felt gloomily certain he resented this arrangement. But then as they drove off the road into the market place, a rubbish-strewn plot of scuffed ground, he startled her by suddenly apologising. ‘You should have something for all the work you’ve done already. Unless we sell enough I just don’t have it. That’s the trouble.’

  Lal stared at him, touched, and almost wanted to hug him.

  As well as the vegetables, she managed to sell her red bag for a few extra wen, although she thought the young woman she’d talked into buying it had done so more out of curiosity about the foreigner than a particular desire for it. She was uneasy again about making herself so prominent, but no one seemed obviously primed to spot a Roman fugitive, and she knew she couldn’t hope to find the Roman agents by keeping hidden altogether. Nevertheless, when people asked, she said again that she was Mongolian. Geng did not contradict her.

  Finally she said goodbye to Geng and walked back along the road with a handful of pierced coins slung together on a string and the make-up and perfume in a crumpled paper bag. It seemed slightly stupid to continue carrying these things, but they were her last souvenir from safety. As long as she didn’t look at the contents of it, the sensation of a bag in her hand gave her the illusion of being equipped, it comforted the feeling of dreadful vulnerability. Besides, she might be able to sell the perfume if anything went wrong. It wasn’t at all valuable, but the bottle was pretty.

  She went into the eating house. She found she didn’t like leaving Geng behind. He would be in the market for another eight hours, and after that there would be no way of getting back to the tiny farmhouse; she would be alone once again.

  She had to wait a long time to use a longdictor. She drew strange glances not only for looking different, but for being alone. No one was talking qu
ietly into a circlet, as she wanted to, instead the sound on every longdictor was turned up so that the crowd around each table could all talk at once with sons or parents or friends, in distant rooms like this one. Families and gangs of laughing women were crammed rowdily onto the couches, eating dumplings and rice rolls, faces flushed with steam rising from pots of scalding tea. Lal thought wistfully that shared between so many people, the cost of the call would not even be that prohibitive. The clamour stuffed the room, bundled the different conversations into an impenetrable mass, insulating each group in a little niche of noisy privacy.

  At last two elderly sisters with their daughters and grandchildren trooped out, and Lal self-consciously sidled into their place. She settled a circlet on her head and began trying to reach Liuyin’s house.

  Liuyin’s mother answered. Lal hesitated and turned the longdictor off without speaking. She couldn’t speak to anyone except Liuyin – his family wasn’t keen on her at the best of times; they’d know she should have been rounded up with the rest, they’d call the police. Better leave it at least ten minutes before trying again.

  She sat hunched, the circlet still on her head, eyes fixed on the battered tabletop, but one of the waiters came up to her almost at once. ‘Are you finished? There are people waiting.’ Indeed, a sullen group were staring at her resentfully from the doorway.

  ‘Can I wait if I order something?’ she asked, calculating that she might be able to spare the price of a pot of tea.

  ‘I’m sorry; you must either use the yuan hua or let these people have the table.’

  Reluctantly Lal got up and went to skulk in the shadows of the doorway, and it took more than three hours and four attempts before Liuyin’s voice, sounding harassed and discontented, suddenly answered her.

  ‘You told the other Romans,’ he said, flatly.

  Lal opened her mouth but said nothing, helpless. This hadn’t crossed her mind since Ziye and Delir had been driven away. At last she protested, ‘We had to.’

  ‘My father could lose his job. My parents won’t even speak to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re not sorry or you wouldn’t have done it,’ said Liuyin petulantly, if accurately.

  ‘Liuyin. They’re our friends, what else could we do? It’s like how you had to tell me. I’m so sorry to ask you for more help when I’ve already got you in trouble, but I really need it, I can’t call anyone else.’

  Silence, and a noncommittal sigh. ‘Where are you? What happened?’ Liuyin asked, reluctantly.

  ‘They arrested Ziye and my father; I don’t know where they are. It’s taken me this long just to get to a yuan hua. I’m in an eating house in a little place called Jingshan. I haven’t changed my clothes in four days; it’s been horrible.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Liuyin gloomily. It was more a careworn moan of despondency than sympathy. He sighed again. ‘I can’t come and get you, you know. I can’t get you any money. I can’t travel that far without getting a permit for the checkpoints and I’d have to give a reason and have it approved, and why would I be going somewhere like that? And I might be followed. And my parents won’t let me go anywhere. Not after all this.’

  ‘Oh … all right.’ She shivered wearily. Although she was confident of Marcus’ help, she was afraid it would take a while to get her message through; until then she’d hoped Liuyin might be able to spare her finding food and a place to sleep.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Liuyin repeated dully.

  ‘Listen,’ said Lal, switching decisively from plaintiveness to cheery, jollying optimism, as if Liuyin were the one in need of reassurance. ‘It’s all right, it will be all right, there are Roman men in a car looking for me. I missed them. All I need to do is let Marcus and Una know where I am and then it will be fine, all right?’

  ‘Marcus Novius Caesar?’ said Liuyin in loud, sceptical Latin rather than using the Sinoan rendition of the name.

  ‘Yes, I know him, I’ve told you before.’

  ‘Yes, but you knew him for a few weeks three years ago.’

  ‘He would help – he is trying to help. I have to contact him, that’s all.’

  ‘You can’t contact a head of state,’ scoffed Liuyin. ‘And even if you could, you can’t contact a guest of the Empress when the police are after you.’

  ‘Just listen. Una is there as well, she’s my friend too. She used to sleep in my room back in the camp and there won’t be millions of people trying to get messages to her. Your father’s an official, you did the exam, you must have some contacts in Bianjing, haven’t you? You must be able to get in touch with someone there. They’ve just got to get a note to her saying the code of this place and “Holzarta”. No one will understand that except her or Marcus.’

  ‘Do you know she’s there?’

  An unpleasant, sweaty tremor crawled across Lal, as she considered the fact that she did not. Sending the letter there had made it seem almost like a known fact. Deliberately, she shrugged it off. ‘It can’t make things any worse and I know the Romans are looking for me. Just try it. Please.’

  Liuyin sighed again. ‘All right, I’ll try. But even if it did work out, what are you going to do until then?’

  Lal said, ‘Oh, I’ll be all right,’ and sat there, dazed, as the crowded room filled with yet more people.

  *

  Varius got to his feet as he heard footsteps approaching his room. Confinement here had grown less oppressive since the interview with Tadahito. It remained like a physical weight strapped to his body, which his strength to tolerate rose and fell in slow rhythm as the hours passed; it kept him awake, but at least he could think freely, most of the time.

  The key turned and a pair of Nionian guards escorted Una into the room. They had not been pushing or dragging her along in any way, and she must have known where they were leading her, yet still she looked breathless and shaken, more fragile to Varius than she had even after Drusus’ attack on her. Her eyes were wide and shadowed with the same exhaustion he could feel printed on his own face.

  The interpreter followed and said formally, ‘You may associate during daylight hours, as long as this situation continues.’

  After the men left them alone, a few seconds passed in which they stood unmoving. For the moment they could not say anything, all questions of what these last days had been like seemed useless: the answers were so bald and known. He could not even smile a greeting at her and yet he was intensely relieved and glad to see her there. Instead, although it was rare for either of them to volunteer touch, they both stepped speechlessly into a short, grim, one-armed embrace. As they moved apart it was she who whispered to him, ‘Good to see you,’ tapping an encouraging pat onto his shoulder that could almost have made him laugh.

  ‘He hasn’t reached Rome,’ Una told him crisply, almost as though they were picking up a conversation broken by only a few minutes. No need to use Marcus’ name. Her voice sounded bruised and raw.

  Varius nodded, quietly distressed. No one had told him this. He asked, ‘Did they tell you how they’re explaining that in the Empire?’

  ‘That there’s some problem with the magnetway,’ she said, going over to the window seat and drawing herself up into a tense twist on the cushions.

  Una was afraid he would try and pretend this might be true, but he said, ‘Of course they’re lying, something’s happening. But it doesn’t mean Marcus has been killed.’

  She flicked a strained, sceptical look at him, face distorted into a humourless smile.

  ‘Drusus wouldn’t stay here, he wouldn’t need to press Nionia to give us up if he were confident enough to do that.’

  Again her lips curled unhappily. ‘It doesn’t work – making up stuff to make me feel better.’

  ‘It might work on me,’ suggested Varius, managing to goad a more genuine smile out of her. ‘Look. I think I’ve got the Prince convinced none of us were involved in what happened to Kato, and that it’s worth not giving up. So we can’t. I’m going to work on the assumption Marcus
is alive until I get a definite reason to stop. We have to do that. For all kinds of reasons we have to.’

  ‘Varius,’ said Una, her voice reminding him all at once how young she was. ‘What will happen to us if we’re here and the war starts?’

  Varius looked at the floor for a second before sitting down a few feet from her along the window seat. ‘Well,’ he said quietly. ‘They would take us into the Empire, of course, probably Nionia itself. And they’d keep us somewhere pretty much like this for the duration of the war.’

  ‘Years,’ Una said.

  ‘It could be, yes. Although if Rome had any valuable Nionian prisoners we might be exchanged for them, perhaps. Of course that wouldn’t be such a good thing for us if it was Drusus on the other side.’

  ‘What about …’ She hesitated. ‘They’d go on asking us questions. Would they … hurt us?’

  Varius gave her a quick, searching look. He did not know, and was not sure he wanted to know, how far his thoughts were open to her. He assumed and hoped it did not go too deep, most of the time. But now he said as emphatically as he could in his mind: Una. They’re probably recording us. Be careful what you say. You’re safer if they don’t take you too seriously. Don’t make them think you’ve got information they need.

  Aloud he said firmly, ‘Of course they wouldn’t do anything like that to you. There wouldn’t be any reason.’

  She had certainly understood, but looked more taken aback at what he’d done than he’d expected. She cast an instinctive glance around the room. ‘You mean they would to you?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He felt his heart begin to beat a little faster again at the possibility. He said vaguely, ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.’

  ‘What do you mean, it wouldn’t be that bad?’ demanded Una, appalled, in a voice that came out as resoundingly withering.