Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Then the small rustling of someone’s voice leaked out of the longdictor. He heard a shattered little intake of breath from Marcus – a cruelly ambivalent sound, as Marcus himself seemed to realise, and so assured him at once, ‘They’re still in the city. They’re safe. The Nionians promise they’re safe.’

  ‘I want to speak to her,’ commanded Sulien.

  Marcus just looked up at him and nodded obediently.

  They settled into another unspeaking wait, not quite as long as before. This time they were both poised rigidly around the longdictor, Marcus gazing at the desk top, feeling that to speak to Sulien until this was done was somehow not allowed, an intrusion.

  Then Marcus said eagerly, ‘Una—’

  ‘Give me that,’ Sulien ordered him fiercely, grabbing the circlet. ‘Una, it’s me.’

  Una’s voice laughed at him, wearily. ‘Your accent. All over the map.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Sulien.

  Marcus watched, trapped into patience. Sulien and Una talked a long time. He could see some of the tension draining out of Sulien as he listened; his shoulders went loose, he smiled, shakily. But he was no less stern and watchful when he glanced at Marcus, saying tersely, ‘No, he’s here, he’s fine. Nothing’s happened to him.’ Finally he pulled off the circlet and held it out, grim-faced. ‘She wants to talk to you.’

  Marcus seized it. ‘You are all right – both of you?’

  She sounded tired, a battered relief like his own in her voice, but she was alert, herself. ‘We’re fine. You can come back, can’t you?’

  He said unsteadily, ‘Yes. Yes, I’ve wanted to hear your voice so much. I’m so sorry.’

  She ignored the apology, whether considering it unnecessary, or rejecting it altogether, he couldn’t tell. She was saying urgently, ‘Marcus, you’ve got three days to get back. If you aren’t here by then I think Nionia will declare war. You need special permission from the Empress, the borders are closed to Rome.’

  He’d known nothing of that. And they began trying raggedly to summarise what had happened in the last two weeks, although they were both so tired, and aware that there were things that had to be said in person.

  ‘I love you,’ said Marcus. It was an awkward thing to say, under Sulien’s grave, disillusioned scrutiny, but she said the same and it felt like discovering money when destitute, enough to live on for a night.

  Sulien held out his hand for the circlet again. ‘Una,’ he said into it emphatically. ‘Come back soon.’

  Silence washed back into the room as Marcus laid the longdictor circlet back in place. He said tentatively, ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘They’re all right,’ agreed Sulien, unsmiling. He sat down opposite Marcus, the desk between them imparting an air of even-handed formality. His voice was calm now, reasonable. ‘And I’m all right. Why were you so worried about me?’

  Marcus released a long, exhausted breath, and Sulien felt irritably sorry for him. ‘They showed me faked pictures – of you. Being hurt. So that if Drusus couldn’t get the ring any other way, there was at least a chance I’d just give it up.’

  It was the first time he’d ever found Sulien’s expression unreadable; his subdued, complex gaze rested on Marcus’ face for what seemed a long time, before it shifted lightly down to his hand.

  ‘But Salvius assured me it wasn’t true, and I thought from the beginning the pictures weren’t real,’ said Marcus quickly, despising himself for offering the justification, and impressed by Sulien’s generosity in not saying, ‘You were not sure.’ For Sulien just remained silent, staring contemplatively at the ring, until Marcus added mechanically, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ retorted Sulien in sudden disgust. ‘You’re not sorry. You did it for a reason. You’d do it again.’ He slumped, muttering, ‘If it’s something you can be sorry for it’s worthless even saying it.’

  ‘You have to understand—’

  ‘I do understand, I’m not stupid,’ said Sulien, but with the rancour gone out of his voice. He remarked with sad wonder, ‘You were right. What else could you have done?’

  ‘Then I mean I wish it had never happened,’ Marcus said.

  ‘I do take that much for granted,’ replied Sulien, and he even smiled at Marcus, but with so much affectionate regret, as if over the memory of someone he never expected to see again, that Marcus felt again like crying with loss.

  Sulien, however, sighed, pulling himself up into a businesslike stance, reached into his jacket and brought out the crumpled copy of the picture of Atronius. ‘I wanted to tell you about this. This is the man that sabotaged the factory. He was in Byzantium at the same time as your cousin. And he had my name and the clinic’s longdictor code in his flat. I don’t think he’s dead. He’s the kind of man Drusus used in the past. He could have used him for this. Get the war under way and get rid of me. At a time I wasn’t so – useful.’

  Marcus couldn’t yet feel the murderous anger with Drusus he knew this would generate later. He just said, ‘Well. He’s more than capable of it. And it would follow he murdered Kato. It was clumsy, but it’s the Nionians’ chief strategist out of the way and it’s a lot of mess between me and him. I’ll deal with it. Thank you.’

  Sulien shrugged. ‘Well, then.’ He got to his feet.

  ‘Don’t go now,’ appealed Marcus. But Sulien’s flat look at him answered that. ‘The vigiles raided your place. You can’t go there tonight. Can’t I at least – help you?’

  ‘Is anyone going to round me up and kill me if I go to Tancorix?’ asked Sulien wearily. Marcus shook his head. ‘I’ll do that, then.’

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ asked Marcus, in a low voice.

  ‘How can I forgive you when you haven’t done anything wrong?’ asked Sulien, genuinely at a loss. ‘It isn’t that. I just would never have thought …’ His gaze seemed to slip beyond Marcus, towards the past. ‘When we were driving into Rome to find you – Una and Dama and me – I remember thinking, there were things that you wouldn’t be able to do. That you couldn’t ever … kill someone, even if you needed to. Things the rest of us could. Even me.’ He looked back at Marcus, with the benign leave-taking smile again. ‘You’re not the same.’

  Marcus considered that. ‘No,’ he acknowledged, in the end. ‘I’m not. It’s what happens.’

  Sulien nodded. ‘Of course it does,’ he said, with impersonal kindness, before he left.

  *

  ‘I only regret that I have been able to spend so little time in the Empire, among the Roman people. But in returning to the discussions with Nionia, I will act to achieve peace for Rome, peace without diminution of our strength. I will be home again soon.’

  Marcus was watching a recording of the broadcast he’d made that morning on a small screen, set in the wall of the volucer. It was satisfactory, he decided. Perhaps he looked a little more threatening than reassuring, but that might not be such a bad thing. He looked down at Rome, as it diminished. It was true that he’d hardly had time to feel that he was there. The Pantheon already cowered and vanished among the higher domes and towers; Vatican Field shone like a puddle of oil. It all shrank until he could no longer see anything moving on the ground, as if all the city and the earth beyond were sterile.

  ‘So we only have a day’s grace?’ Makaria was sitting nearby. They would arrive in Bianjing the following afternoon, one day before the expiry of the ten-day breathing space Una and Varius had engineered.

  ‘The whole thing’s always been fragile,’ said Marcus. ‘And they had fair reason to lay Kato’s death at our door.’

  ‘But plainly they realise now you were not involved.’

  ‘Drusus is still there,’ murmured Marcus.

  Makaria watched the end of the broadcast. ‘Tell me more about the Nionian princess.’

  ‘I’ve already told you everything,’ replied Marcus. ‘I only met her once.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me if you liked her.’

  Marcus said nothing. Makaria set her shoul
ders, steeling herself to say, plainly. ‘You’re going to have to do it.’

  Marcus looked out of the window. ‘No,’ he said tersely, after a pause.

  ‘You’ve said yourself how precarious things are now. You just promised in that broadcast that you’d do everything possible for peace. You have to do this, to save what you’ve worked for. It’s simply a political arrangement, everyone involved realises that.’

  ‘How many political arrangements did you refuse to be part of?’ asked Marcus, his voice edged with a distant, warning sarcasm.

  Makaria sighed. ‘There was never so much at stake.’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘It’s unnecessary. And unacceptable. No.’

  ‘Because of Una?’ exclaimed Makaria. ‘Marcus, if you can’t give her up, then fine – don’t! Carry on with her as you always have! I’m sure the princess isn’t naive. She’ll understand so long as you behave with tact. You know this is the way things work. Do you think you’re the first man of our class to fall for a slave girl?’

  ‘It’s different.’

  ‘How? Why? Just because it’s you?’

  ‘I didn’t buy her,’ cried Marcus suddenly. ‘I never owned her. I didn’t take a fancy to the girl who brought my meals. If I’d had any power to force anything from her, whether I’d used it or not, she’d always have hated me. And even if I’d believed I was in love with her I would never really have known her. But when I met her, I had nothing more than she did – or than Sulien …’ His face and voice both tightened, as though the name were a slap, or a shallow cut. He said, ‘It is different. When we were alone in the woods, she was Una, she wasn’t a slave. I was myself. That was all. There wasn’t any difference between us.’

  Makaria sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly, placing her hand over his. ‘But there is now.’

  Marcus didn’t reply for a while. ‘No,’ he repeated, withdrawing his hand. ‘I’ll think of something else.’

  *

  Lal lay curled up into a scrawled and icy letter G, cold, cold under the blanket, her body juddering stubbornly like a road drill. There was an ache, like a rancid stock in which her muscles stewed, growing rubbery and fibrous. She’d walked so far, for so long, she’d had to sleep in the open, knowing that when she woke she’d feel worse. And was there any point? However far she walked it would soon be up to other people what happened to her. But she mustn’t – wasn’t allowed to let that happen in Jingshan, not now she knew who was looking for her. Although as she paced on, the precise nature of Una’s warning kept slipping out of her mind. She knew it was a stupid, fever-thought, but she stopped worrying about being obviously foreign, out of place. She felt she had reached a stage where nationality didn’t count or show any more, her clothes and body were dissolving and fading into the international uniform of vagrant. She wouldn’t be remarkable anywhere. She’d begged for food a couple of times, without shame. For huge, month-long days, she’d lurched on and on, the ground throbbing and protesting under her feet …

  No, no – all that was days ago, it must be over: she must be lying still if she could feel the cold mats under her side, the crumpled blanket drawn round her all the time. The uncertainty frightened her suddenly, and she flung herself over, starting up with a gasp, and looked up at the serene red-robed warriors painted on flaking whitewashed walls on either side of the doorway. She even felt proud that she’d achieved what she’d meant to – she’d reached the next village, asked for the temple, and here she was. There was nothing more she could have done. She wasn’t sure what had happened since then – she had some memory of being made to drink something – but it didn’t seem to matter. She sank back, relieved. But within minutes she felt herself leadenly trudging again, even if in some way she knew she was still in the improvised bed under the temple portico. The only pleasant sensation, oddly, was her teeth chattering: the rhythm inexplicably comforting, like the sound of rain against a window.

  Then she was shocked again, because someone was sitting by her – had he just appeared or had he been there for hours? – a thin, apprehensive monk – she couldn’t understand what he was saying and she wished he wouldn’t talk to her, it distracted her from her walking.

  He had been there before, she thought, talking to someone. They must have been trying to decide what to do about her. There were government-run hospitals in the towns, they might take her there, and then the police would find her. This thought no longer concerned her very much. It seemed to her it would be impossibly difficult for anyone to move her; maybe she would be well again before they could manage it.

  Then there was a cup of pungent, watery liquid, splashing at her mouth again, and the monk was speaking to her, reassuring her, sounding less anxious now. Lal choked, and perversely struggled a little, so that the bitter stuff trickled into her hair and pooled in her ears. And when she could not burrow away from him she made a resentful effort to understand what he was saying: ‘… looking for you. Here they are.’

  Her head full of sullen weight, Lal looked up again, hoping it would be Delir and Ziye, half-remembering there was some reason why that was impossible. Two men, giant top-heavy pillars, stood there and swayed over her like masts at sea. One of them smiled down at her pityingly. They were Romans, with a black car waiting in the dusty yard behind them.

  ‘No, no, not with them!’ she cried. She was speaking Latin, only the men would understand what she was saying. ‘No,’ she managed, in Sinoan, and the monk only smiled and tried to soothe her. Panicked, Lal flung the blanket back, and scrambled to her feet. But at once the walls and ground crumpled weightlessly around her, as though everything were made of hot paper tossed into the air. When it all came to rest she was lying, bewildered, in someone’s arms, and then laid on a seat in the back of a car. She shivered and shut her eyes, which were too sore to keep open. The car had begun to move, she could feel every stone under the wheels. And she was still walking.

  [ XVIII ]

  INEVITABILITY

  ‘Hey, hey you. Can you tell me your name? Do you know where you are? See? She’s out of it.’

  ‘She’s quiet, anyway. Just leave her.’

  ‘Yeah, but what if she doesn’t even make it back to Jondum? Give her more of the stuff, she’s not going to be any use like this.’

  ‘And it’s going to be better if you make her overdose on that? We don’t know what’s in that bottle. She’s not due any more until tomorrow. Leave her.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Lal groaned quietly in protest at all the talking, turning her head, hunting for a new place to lay her cheek on the seat. For a second the leather would be wonderfully cool on her skin, but then the growing heat in her flesh would melt into it and simmer up again, through the surface.

  The car swerved as something tore past. There was a disapproving mutter in Sinoan, from the driver’s cab. But someone nearer moved sharply towards the windows, shoving past the rest.

  ‘Where’d that car come from? Ask him if he saw it before. Did anyone else see it before – around the temple?’

  Murmurs of denial. ‘Do you think it’s following us, sir?’

  ‘I think I don’t want to see it again,’ said the one who seemed to be in charge.

  An uneasy silence fell. Lal was grateful for it. It was unimaginable now that she’d ever been cold: a current was pushing through her, shaking the reluctant atoms of her body into glowing, crimson heat, flow upon flow of it. She rolled over vainly, panting, concentrating on something crucial that kept proving too difficult for her.

  Then they were slowing down, it made everything drag like seasickness. ‘There’s a car across the road. I think it’s the same one.’

  ‘Tell him to reverse,’ the leader, the centurion, shouted urgently. ‘Don’t stop, don’t get any closer. Back, now.’

  Then something punched at the car from underneath, with a great bubbling crack of sound. We’re going over a storm, thought Lal distractedly, before shaking the foamy nonsense in her brain away and gathering hers
elf to think, exhaustingly: No. It was some kind of bomb.

  The car choked and tripped to a stop. The Romans banged open the doors, dodged out into the sunlight, crouching against the vehicle’s flanks. Lal was dragged out and dropped abruptly onto the cracked tar surface of the empty road. Gunfire broke the air. Behind the back wheels, Lal lay on her side, at once curious and indifferent, busy with the molten pulses of heat. Her eyes stayed shut until suddenly, somewhere to her right and ahead, on the far side of the car, an explosion burst like an orange marigold, rocking the car and casting heavy lumps of stuff around on the road. The blast beneath the car had been nothing – the tap of a cat’s paw. Even far away and blazing as she was, she had to shrink back and cover her head. Someone shrieked and whimpered horribly. Lal moaned and turned heavily over again, away from it.

  ‘Lal, Lal.’ Someone gabbling on at her from the edges. She felt like crying. It was too much to spring these things on her and expect her to decipher them, with everything melting and burning. The gabbling at least changed to Latin, but remained more than she could cope with. ‘Are you hurt? Get up! Come here!’

  Lal gave in and looked painfully across the road at Liuyin, who was lurking impossibly by the edge of the road, beckoning her. ‘Lal! Hurry!’

  Lal shut her eyes and hours seemed to pass with him still apparently there and begging her to move. Finally she floundered a little way towards him, all her muscles wrenching and melting as she did so, and Liuyin grimaced and scrambled forward, awkwardly lifted and bundled her across the road, tugged her down into a ditch beside it. ‘Don’t look. Don’t look at anything, Lal,’ he whispered, as another, smaller explosion opened itself ahead of the car. She could feel him trembling. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come before. I should have tried harder. I shouldn’t have been angry with you. I didn’t know you’d be ill. But you’ll be all right.’