Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  He strode closer to Faustus’ couch, standing over him, looking down. ‘If I were going to betray you. Get rid of you. Do you think I’d have to do it by stealth? I’m young. I’m strong. You’ve already given me your power. Would I need to dodge around in the shadows to keep it, just for fear of you? No. You’re ill and weak – like Tiberius, at the end. Caligula was already the heir. He took the Imperial ring and he smothered Tiberius with a pillow, while he was helpless. What could have stopped me doing that to you? Don’t you think that would have made my life easier? If I wanted, I could do it now.’ He shuddered with a sudden nausea as it struck him that not only was it true, but that he was actually tempted. A choice was necessary not to do it, he could not trust his nature to choose for him. He was so angry.

  ‘Give me back the ring,’ demanded Faustus.

  Marcus stared at him in silence for a second. Then he dragged the ring off his finger and into his fist. ‘Drusus had your brother killed. For this. If you give it to him, and then ask for it back, what do you think will happen? And how long do you think he will let you live?’ He held it out.

  Faustus took the ring, holding it between finger and thumb.

  Marcus drew back from him a few steps, silent. He did not think, did not even try to read his uncle’s face, or his heavy gaze at the ring. But the air in the room seemed to pour out through the space inside the gold circle, like a small puncture in the world, a zero.

  Faustus’ head fell back on the cushions, his eyes shut, his face helpless. The ring rolled loose onto his lap. Marcus remembered for the first time in months that the band had been changed to let him wear it. They could both see it was too small to fit past the top joint of Faustus’ finger, as it was now. Marcus felt a trace of compassion for him, for the first time.

  ‘This feud between you – both of you accuse each other of such terrible things. It can’t go on.’

  ‘It is not a feud,’ said Marcus. ‘There is no symmetry. He’s a manipulative criminal trying to take power by any means he can.’

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ moaned Faustus.

  ‘You must. At least, you can’t share it out between us. You have to believe either him or me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Marcus left Faustus’ room behind, walking an unerring, purposeful course through the hushed Palace galleries and lobbies, through doors opened for him by unnoticed servants, skirting the plinths of statues, down flights of shallow marble steps – though in fact, he had no destination in mind, and could not have described a single room through which he passed. The Palace remained so deeply imprinted into his brain that he scarcely needed to look where he was going, and yet it seemed as if on another layer of the mind, he had forgotten it. He was only obeying the instinct to get a good distance away from Faustus. It was still early to consider going to bed, and yet he was more tired than he felt he had a right to be, as though it were as late here as it was in Bianjing. Finally, he cast himself back into a chair without having consciously perceived that it existed, and he laughed, without knowing why. Like a madman, he thought idly, and fell silent at once.

  Someone entered the room, to his right. Marcus did not look up, but recognised the other man’s bearing and somehow, from that awareness and from some small movement on the edge of his vision, he knew Salvius’ eyes went straight to his right hand, before he spoke, or even looked Marcus in the face.

  ‘You still have the ring.’

  Marcus stared blankly down at it, turning his hand a little. A tawny crescent of thick light burned along the edge of the boss. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

  ‘As simple as that?’ demanded Salvius, alarm and indignation pushing through the surface of his voice.

  ‘It’s all you need to know for the moment, Salvius. You took my cousin out of prison on no authority but your own. The only reason I’m allowing you to stand there and speak to me is that I know the trouble you could cause me if I had you dismissed from your position, or if I ordered you arrested, or executed. And though you don’t know it, I’m in your debt. So you will come with me to Bianjing, and you will watch me, and I will watch you.’

  There was a long, uncertain silence, in which they both were simply still, Salvius standing tense, Marcus sprawled and unresponsive in the chair. Then Salvius asked, ‘What does this mean for Drusus Novius?’

  ‘My cousin … will not pose a problem,’ answered Marcus, distantly. ‘You wanted to keep him from standing trial for his crimes. You’ve done it. You’ve got away with doing it. That’s enough. No more discussion of this. There’s only one other thing I wish to speak with you about. You ordered the Veii Arms Factory to increase production, just before it was destroyed.’

  ‘You had given no orders to the contrary,’ protested Salvius gruffly.

  ‘Do you think I am too close to the Nionians, Salvius?’

  Again, Salvius hesitated, ‘Yes,’ he said at last.

  Marcus nodded, unemotionally. ‘I believe the Nionians are developing a new kind of weapon, or they were doing so under Lord Kato. They may have tested it on an island in the Promethean Sea. Nothing further is known than that, so don’t ask me to tell you more. You should speak to Falx about reinforcing our intelligence on these matters. You will not attempt to go behind my back again, but, with my permission this time, you will see that if this device exists, Rome can match it. Or surpass it.’

  Salvius nodded, speechless.

  ‘Don’t get too excited about it. I still don’t intend for you to get the chance to use it. Leave now and get ready.’ It didn’t occur to Marcus that Salvius might not do as he said. He shut his eyes for a moment and did not even watch the general leave.

  After a few minutes, he pulled himself up and went to Makaria’s apartments. As he approached he found the landings and corridors that led to her rooms pointedly filled with guards, and further in, with silent, dour, watchful servants, none of whom he recognised as having served Makaria in the past. He didn’t hesitate, or look at any of them, even when once or twice he ordered them aside, but he made sure the ring was visible on his hand.

  He heard Makaria before he saw her, her voice hoarse as if flagging after days of outrage. ‘Will you stop following me around like a bloody dog that wants feeding? I don’t have to be watched every second! Don’t you dare stand there and say you’ve got no choice!’

  Makaria looked exhausted with anxiety and fury, far more so than the servant on whom her rage was being spent. She visibly buckled with relief when she saw Marcus. She flung her arms around him, and, with his head on her shoulder, Marcus crumpled a little too, feeling fleetingly weak and lost and grateful for protection. He couldn’t allow it to last and it didn’t.

  ‘I tried to warn you,’ Makaria cried, swiping at her wet eyes. ‘Did the message get through? You never answered.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it didn’t. But thank you for trying.’

  ‘It got through to someone, I know it. It wasn’t this bad before, they at least pretended not to treat me like a bloody criminal. They haven’t let me go out, or use a longdictor, or even see Daddy. I’ve got no damn idea what’s been going on. I’m so sorry. ’

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry you had to go through all this. It will be better now.’

  ‘You’ve seen him then?’ She touched his hand. ‘And you have the ring. He just … believed you?’

  Marcus glanced around. ‘Not here.’

  They went downstairs and out into the courtyard where months before he had met with the senators, the day Una had tracked Drusus out across the gardens, the day he’d attacked her. The umbrella pines breathed and swayed in the turbulent dark air, Rome stirred below and around them, spraying noise and umber light against the blurred clouds. Makaria sighed, spreading her arms. ‘It’s so good just to get outside.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Marcus.

  Makaria looked at him anxiously. There was an impersonal, level bitterness even in the simplest things he said. ‘So what has happened?’ />
  Marcus looked out at the trees. ‘He can’t choose between us, so he hasn’t. I’m expected to share power with Drusus, and we are somehow to settle our differences.’

  ‘That’s absurd. That’s impossible.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Marcus smiled, or produced a grimace that involved the same muscles. ‘Not that.’ He turned back towards the Palace. ‘I have things to do.’

  ‘You have to tell me everything,’ pressed Makaria, following him. ‘What happened in Sina? I’ve been going mad.’

  They glanced at each other with the half-humorous Novian flinch at phrases such as that. ‘I don’t have time,’ said Marcus. ‘If you come with me back to Bianjing I’ll tell you on the journey. You should have been with me all along.’ He headed towards the first room he could find with a longdictor, beckoning a servant as he did so. He scrawled a name on a sheet of paper. ‘I need to speak to this man immediately. Have someone in the Outer Office find the longdictor code and get the line ready, I’ll be here.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Makaria asked.

  ‘Trying to find Sulien. They told me …’ his voice twisted unexpectedly in his throat. ‘They told me they’d arrested him.’

  Makaria looked stricken. ‘No, they can’t have done. I got him out. He was here when it happened, when Salvius brought Drusus here. But I got him out.’

  ‘He was here?’ Marcus blinked at her wearily. ‘I don’t know. I was told he dodged them for a few days … I hope it’s not true. Salvius didn’t know about it.’

  A few minutes passed. Then the bulb on the base of the longdictor lit up and he picked up the headset. ‘Cleomenes,’ he said. ‘It’s Marcus Novius Faustus.’

  ‘I know it’s you, Caesar.’

  Marcus could hear a baby’s cry in the background, rhythmic as if someone were bouncing it in their arms to soothe it. Yes – he had known Cleomenes had a child now, he felt a tinge of nostalgic regret at having forgotten it.

  ‘I need to ask you to do something for me. There’s a possibility Sulien is being held somewhere – unofficially, on my cousin’s orders. It may be in Rome, I don’t know. If I instruct the vigiles or the Praetorians to search for him in the normal way, I might alert the people who have him. Once it’s known I’m in Rome, and on what terms, that will happen anyway, so we only have a few hours. I know this is nothing to go on—’

  ‘Sir—’ Cleomenes interrupted.

  ‘—and I doubt anything can be done, but you must know who can be trusted to try, and I have to do whatever is possible.’

  ‘Sir,’ repeated Cleomenes, more firmly. ‘I know where Sulien is.’

  Marcus said mechanically, ‘What?’ in a hoarse voice he didn’t hear.

  ‘He’s in Ostia. There’s a house there we were using for some undercover work on contraband, underground slave-trading, that kind of thing. It finished a while back. Not many people know about it, even in the vigiles. He’s there with that kid Acchan. It was the best I could manage.’

  ‘You took him there?’

  ‘He came to me, yes. He’ll want to see you. There’re things he’s got to tell you, it appears. It was eating him up that he couldn’t think how to contact you.’

  Marcus couldn’t answer. He had to call the serrated feeling that dug through him relief – joy. And yet it left an empty, broken swathe behind it: if he could only have known before. If he could only have made his decision knowing that.

  ‘I’ll bring him to you. There’s no longdictor it was safe for him to use.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Marcus managed. ‘Don’t tell him – what I’ve told you. It had better come from me.’ After he’d turned the longdictor off, Makaria, watching him, thought for a moment that he was about to break down into tears, but his face smoothed in an instant and he only said, ‘Well, I need to eat, and to rest for a while.’

  They ordered and ate a short, almost silent meal in the nearest of the many dining rooms. Only as the servants cleared the dishes away, Makaria ventured, ‘Una and Varius aren’t here, are they?’

  ‘I’ll have to tell Sulien that and I don’t think I can go over it twice tonight. I’ll explain tomorrow.’ And she felt remorseful at having asked, not exactly because he looked upset but because he seemed to be sliding so precipitously into sleep, his limbs falling still on the low couch as inevitably as if he’d been drugged. ‘The time difference,’ he said. ‘It feels like it’s midnight, to me.’

  ‘Marcus …’ said Makaria. ‘I am sorry.’ It felt as though someone had to apologise.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, a little impatient.

  She hardly knew how to answer. ‘You’re so different,’ she explained at last, gently.

  His eyelids lifted once, revealing a detached curiosity in the cold-coloured eyes beneath. ‘Am I?’ he murmured, before he fell asleep.

  A tap on the door woke him. He looked up to find Makaria gone and the room empty. He hadn’t slept more than an hour and a half. ‘Come in,’ he said, getting to his feet. And as a servant showed Sulien into the room he took nothing in except that it was him, he was there.

  Sulien had just enough time to be taken aback by the elated, anguished smile on Marcus’ face, although not time to speak, before he found himself tackled into a crushing hug that almost knocked him back against the doorframe. Still, despite being startled, because this wasn’t like Marcus, he was in the first second simply very glad and thankful to see him. But then he heard Marcus let out a breath that sounded like a sob, and his grip on Sulien seemed somehow despairing, bereft.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Marcus gave a cracked laugh. It seemed bizarre and unbearable to have Sulien patting his back in concern and asking him that, after everything. He let him go. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  Marcus laughed again. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d know there was anything to worry about.’ He saw that Marcus’ eyes were indeed raw with tears. ‘You’re not all right. What’s happened?’

  Marcus knew the best, most honest thing would be to tell Sulien everything unprompted, not to make Sulien question it out of him. But he could not think how to start – his voice still caught in his throat when he tried to speak, both with emotion and, he knew, with simple cowardice.

  Sulien continued, innocently, ‘Where’s Una?’ And then saw Marcus’ odd, grieving smile cave in, and how he couldn’t meet his eyes any more. A horrible possible reason for his distress occurred to Sulien. ‘Marcus, where is she? ’

  ‘No, no,’ promised Marcus hastily. ‘It’s not that. She’s … she’s still in Bianjing.’ And he realised that he did not know if this was true.

  ‘What?’ Sulien’s apprehensive look flared into panic. ‘But Drusus is there – he’s been there all this time. If he’s anywhere near her, she’s dead.’

  ‘No. He’s not near her, he can’t hurt her. She’s with the Nionians.’ Sulien shook his head, his brows gathering into a slow, bewildered frown. Marcus made himself go on. ‘I asked them to take her. As a kind of … guest.’

  ‘A guest?’ repeated Sulien.

  ‘Yes – yes, look, we only had a few minutes. She was in worse danger if she stayed with me – much worse. I had to.’ But he’d tried too hard, and too quickly, to ward off what he’d dreaded seeing from the beginning: incredulous distrust building on his friend’s face.

  Sulien said slowly, ‘So you left her alone, on the enemy side, and in the same place as Drusus?’

  ‘She’s not alone. Varius is there.’

  ‘Varius too?’ said Sulien, dragged unwillingly along by another acceleration of suspicion and shock. ‘Did he agree to this? Did Una?’

  ‘No,’ said Marcus, steadier now, more resigned. ‘Not exactly.’

  He took an instinctive step back as Sulien advanced on him, not quite in deliberate aggression, hands not quite raised, but his greater height and reach suddenly menacing as they had never been
before, as if the disbelief and betrayal were struggling to earth itself through him somehow.

  Sulien was briefly, sickly aware of holding himself back, of reminding himself that this was Marcus. He cried, ‘And what happens to them now? How sure are you that Drusus can’t get to them? What if the war starts?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only knew what would happen if I didn’t do it.’

  ‘And the Nionians,’ went on Sulien sharply. ‘Why did they want them? What do they get out of it?’

  Marcus cast a hunted glance up at him, realising he had not expected this kind of acuity from Sulien, not now. Was it possible he had underestimated Sulien, just a little, all this time? He hesitated a second, provoking Sulien to shout his question at him again, and then admitted quietly, ‘A guarantee I wasn’t involved in Lord Kato’s murder.’

  Sulien slammed a hand down on the table. ‘And if they think you were? What will they do to them? You don’t know what’s happened to them since, do you?’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night there.’

  ‘Wake them up, then! Why in hell haven’t you done it already?’

  ‘Because of the situation with the Nionians,’ muttered Marcus. ‘It would look as if I don’t trust them. And – because—’

  ‘What does that matter?’ broke in Sulien. ‘How can you even think like that?’

  ‘I can’t help thinking like that,’ answered Marcus, imploring. ‘And anyway, I could only do one thing at a time, and I—’

  ‘You were more worried about me,’ completed Sulien softly, staring at Marcus, the hard, evaluating look strange on his open face. He looked, for now, unnervingly like Una.

  ‘I’m sorry – we’ll find out now, of course we will.’

  They went to the room from which Marcus had spoken to Cleomenes. Sulien stood with folded arms against the wall, avoiding looking at anything. He didn’t want to listen to Marcus’ voice, level and controlled as he issued instructions to unseen aides in the offices upstairs; he didn’t want to imagine the chain of conversations and decisions, of electric impulses travelling so far in the dark, servants rousing officials and noblemen from sleep, halfway across the world. He was aware of Marcus’ bleak, stranded misery as he remained in the chair with the longdictor circlet on his head, and because he couldn’t bring himself to meet his eyes with sympathy, Sulien couldn’t look at him at all. And an hour passed this way, in impassable, frozen silence, although it did not occur to either of them to wait alone.