Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘It wasn’t murder when I killed that man in the Sanctuary, to save you. That’s what I’m doing now. That’s what it takes.’

  ‘But innocent people,’ insisted Sulien.

  ‘Innocent people!’ exclaimed Dama. ‘People who think they can own a human being if they can only afford it, people who live next to a disgrace like that factory, and do nothing! How are they innocent? And even if they are, what about the innocent people being bought and sold and worked to death? Or do you only care about free Romans, now you’re one of them?’

  Sulien blinked, for a moment so taken aback as to forget how angry he was. ‘I never said that,’ he protested, ‘Dama – for the gods’ sake – how can you ask me that?’

  Dama said, ‘There’s only one God.’

  All of them were silent.

  Flatly Dama resumed, to his people, ‘Him, there in the garage, her in the cellar.’

  ‘What?’ Lal said, automatically straining closer to Sulien. ‘Dama! At least keep us together.’

  ‘You have to,’ agreed Sulien, quickly. ‘She’s been ill.’

  Dama, whose eyes were focused now on some undefined point beyond them, eyelids slack and listless, said wearily, ‘Sulien, I know she was ill. And I know when she reached you. She’s been well these two months.’

  ‘She’s relapsed twice,’ said Sulien, without knowing he was going to say it.

  ‘Well. One thing at a time,’ muttered Dama and turned away.

  And Sulien and Lal were dragged apart, but a rapid, urgent look went between them, like the flash of a lamp, a signal across a dark valley.

  Sulien hardly noticed where he was being taken. He stared at the man who was marching him along, oddly fascinated. ‘You’re Atronius, aren’t you?’

  Atronius smiled thinly. ‘That’s a Roman name. Forced on my family, one way or another, once upon a time. I’m Maian. I go by Mazatl, now.’

  ‘What have you got to do with Drusus, then?’ Sulien asked, recklessly curious. ‘Why were you in Byzantium?’

  Mazatl stopped, and dragged Sulien closer by the shoulder. ‘What do you know about me?’

  Sulien smiled harshly. ‘You know who I am. You know where I live. You brought me here. It’s hardly fair to ask me that.’

  Mazatl glowered, suspicious and uneasy. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with Drusus Novius. He had a lot of slaves, he wasn’t known for treating them well. And an Imperial target was one option, at that time.’

  Sulien nearly laughed. ‘You might have killed him? Instead of what you did at Veii?’ Mazatl didn’t answer. Sulien persisted, wondering, ‘But you were never a slave.’

  Mazatl pushed him forward, as one of the others threw open the heavy garage doors. ‘My whole country’s a slave.’

  The air felt powdery and stagnant, and smelt of soot. Dama had plainly prepared the cellar as thoroughly and humanely as possible in such time as he’d had: there was a mattress on the floor, tidily supplied with blankets, a bucket, a large jug of water, an old, faded dress to change into, even a little pile of books. Lal paced the floor, sometimes hearing herself crying as if it were somebody else. The idea that had leapt between Sulien and herself as she was pulled away seemed far less potent now. Would it not be obvious what she was trying to do? Certainly it would be if she made any move immediately. So how long should she wait? To get free was as much a responsibility as an instinctive, tormenting need: they would have to tell what Dama was doing, where he was. And she wept again at this new loss of Dama, whom she had known since she was ten years old. Oh, no, she could not stand to be here for any time at all, thinking these things – not by herself. Being trapped might be bearable if there were somebody with her, but not alone. And even if she could reach Sulien or have him brought to her, what would it achieve? They had no plan, and no way of communicating one.

  At first she scarcely noticed the irregular hollow ringing noise, down here it was so faint, and she was so agitated, that she dismissed it unconsciously as part of the workings of the heating system or water supply. But finally it occurred to her that the sound resounding in the pipes that ran along the wall and up into the ceiling was being deliberately caused, and that Una must be causing it. Lal darted to the pipes; they were painfully hot on her knuckles when she knocked on them. She drew back and tapped harder with her foot. There was silence for a second, and then a reply: an imitation of the sound she’d made. Lal laughed foolishly and tapped again. Una replied again. There was still no way of saying anything useful that Lal could think of, but nevertheless, any contact with either Una or Sulien seemed a small triumph.

  She sat down on the mattress, still weeping and shuddering a little. There was a book of scripture among the rest, which she had expected as soon as she saw the little stack. But below that, of all things, were a couple of fashion magazines, both more than a year out of date. Lal stared at them in disbelief. What on earth were they doing in this place? It seemed absurd, even insulting, that Dama should draw from his memories of her, to try to be kind. He should treat her as a stranger now.

  But she read a few verses, and looked at the magazines, and felt very slightly comforted.

  Dama went to the kitchen for some water, and gulped it down with a painkiller, furtively. Una was still at work overhead, drumming something against the pipes. It was quite plainly not the sound of an attempt at escape, nor an expression of hysteria; it was a message to him. She meant to keep him aware of her, she meant not to allow him a moment’s comfort with what he had done. Dama started up the stairs on furious impulse and shouted, ‘Stop it. Shut up.’

  Of course, there could be no clearer means of telling her that she was succeeding in unnerving him, and of course the sound did not stop.

  Mazatl appeared in the main doorway. ‘So, what is this?’ he asked.

  Dama took him into the little shelf-lined room he used as a kind of study or retreat, and explained, shortly, the gist of what had happened. Una had learned their plans from Sulien, too soon, too unprepared.

  Mazatl glanced drily up at the ceiling. ‘So, she’s up there making her feelings known.’ And he watched Dama, troubled, admonishing. At last he said, ‘What are you doing, Dama? You know what has to be done.’

  Two and a half years ago – or getting on for three now

  – Mazatl had been a bored and resentful night-watchman, working at a mansion on the Caelian hill, who had caught Dama in an early, inexpert attempt to release a handful of slaves. Dama, who should have been appalled that he had been stopped before he had even begun, had instead been elated by the almost instant certainty that he had, providentially, met exactly the right person. And so he had begun to speak, in total confidence.

  The handover of authority that had happened then had lasted ever since: although Mazatl was older than Dama, and though his experience had given him skills that Dama had had to learn, he had accepted Dama’s leadership from the moment there had been a movement to lead. And part of his value to Dama was that he could, occasionally and without lasting ambition, take the upper hand, in order to question Dama or tell him what do, like an older brother, while continuing to trust him. This was the first time Dama had seen such obvious doubt displayed on Mazatl’s face.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt them,’ Dama said.

  ‘I’m not talking about hurting them,’ said Mazatl grimly. He took his gun from under his jacket and laid it on the table between them, his hand resting beside it, ready. ‘Look. It’s not as if you’ve got to be the one to do it. You can leave it to me. I’ll get them out in the woods, one by one. It’ll be quick, you can trust me for that.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing,’ Dama retorted.

  ‘What, then? Do you think we can keep them here for the rest of their lives?’

  ‘Of course not. Until the war begins. Then it won’t matter.’

  Mazatl made an impatient, clicking sound. ‘If they’re a threat they’re a threat. And even if we can hold them here, there’s a good chance they’ll disrupt what we’re doing. It sou
nds like that girl’s doing her best to do that now. What if our people here get curious about them? It’s taken us years to reach this point. It’s not right to let them get in the way, just because you know them. It’s selfish to put our own feelings first. That’s what you’ve always said.’

  Irritably, Dama slid the gun away from him, but as his fingers rested on the metal, he knew that Mazatl was right. Of course he was right. Dama tried not to hear the thought, tried to forget it. He said, ‘I’ve made my decision.’

  Mazatl grunted and got up. Dama added, ‘You can go back, now. There’s no need for you to stay here,’ as lightly as he could. With a sudden pang of sickness he had remembered that he should not have let Mazatl get so close to Una.

  Una seemed not to sleep; certainly she intended that no one else should. If the pounding and stamping from the top floor stopped at all, that first night, it must have coincided with whatever fragments of sleep Dama caught without noticing. Sometimes it seemed merely stupid, ridiculous, like a child’s tantrum, except so much more relentless. And yet it was insidiously frightening, too. He thought of a mad beggar he’d seen once, banging his head methodically against a wall, over and over again. Some time before dawn Dama flung himself out of bed, and raced upstairs to do – what? He stood outside her door, a few yards away from her, incensed, powerless. No, he must not give in, he would not speak to her.

  There were twenty people sleeping in the farmhouse, beside himself, Lal and Una. Some of them were too accustomed to sleeping in the clamour of factory machinery for Una’s efforts to trouble them much, but others were hollow-eyed and irritable in the morning. One of them, a large, tough man in his thirties called Baro, suggested, ‘It’s like she’s laughing at us. Shouldn’t we tie her up, or something, if we have to keep her here?’

  Yes, he could have her tied up, except that the knowledge of having done that to her would be harder to bear than the noise.

  The continual temptation to go to her, to try again to make her see, overcame him. After all he had to find some way of controlling her.

  Una was flushed, breathless, lit with the perverse energy on the other side of exhaustion.

  Dama said, ‘Listen, I’m leaving. There are things I need to see to; I never stay here that long. So you may as well stop. I’m not going to be around to hear you.’

  Una smiled oddly. Her eyes were hard and feverish, and looked very black. ‘How will you know what I’m doing, if you’re not here?’

  At the time he didn’t know what she meant, and went away without saying more. But it was true, much as he resented it, she’d made him dread leaving the farm.

  He behaved as if Una were far more dangerous than the others, as if she could turn herself into smoke and pour away through a crack in the door, as if she were a muscular giant who could fight her way out. Repeatedly, he checked the patrol under the window; his fingers kept straying nervously to the key from the newly installed lock. He kept it on him, in his pocket, and handed it over only when someone took up her food, which he had directed to be done in silence, with at least three men ranked outside the door. Yet Dama avoided talking about her with any of them, and so two days had passed before he learned of the next phase of Una’s campaign.

  Already the atmosphere at the farm had changed. Mazatl was gone, but Dama thought he saw the same doubt in everyone. They did not distrust him yet to the extent of disbelieving what he had told them, on the contrary. Every precaution he insisted upon strengthened them in their belief that the prisoners were to be hated and feared. But they could not understand why, then, Dama did not do more to thwart and punish them. And so Dama did not seem quite so strong as he had, and the farm did not seem so safe with the three traitors contained within it. The upper floor of the farmhouse, the cellar, the garage all radiated malevolence. The freed slaves were all under threat, Dama along with the rest.

  On the second day, Dama found two of them, Cosmas and Anna, who had taken the midday meal up to Una, standing on the stairs and chatting, both of them picking idly at a plate of bread and cheese.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Dama asked sharply. ‘Isn’t this … hers?’ He hadn’t spoken Una’s name since she’d been shut in the room upstairs.

  They looked guilty. ‘Seems like she wasn’t hungry,’ said Anna, with some shy, loyal hostility towards Una in her voice. ‘We didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘I don’t care what you eat,’ he said impatiently. ‘Did she eat anything?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cosmas, lamely. ‘Nothing much.’

  Dama felt a bright blast of instant, surmising anger crackle through him like as if he’d touched a live wire. He strode out of the house, leaving Cosmas and Anna confused and dismayed.

  He found Paccia in the chicken-shed. She was a poor, beaten-looking thing, she’d never be good for more than packing grenades one day, never a real fighter. ‘You took her food up this morning,’ he said aggressively, accusing her. He had made sure that no one person had carried food twice to Una or the others – less chance of them striking up any kind of rapport. ‘Did she eat it? Did she eat at all?’

  Paccia shrank back, bewildered. ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ demanded Dama, so fiercely that Paccia flinched as if under a whip.

  Once more, he wanted to rush to Una immediately, though he hardly knew what he wanted to do or say when he reached her. He looked towards the farmhouse and thought ferociously, commanding her, give this up. He seemed to feel the force of his own will, something coiled python-like around the building, around her room, invisible muscles and tendons pressing, gripping. And he thought he could feel her, out of sight, but pushing implacably back.

  Well, it still might possibly be that she was simply too tense and wretched to eat, as she had been the day of Marcus’ wedding, in which case it would pass. Dama had no confidence whatever in this comforting idea, but he forced himself to wait until evening before surrendering it. The hours dragged. He stayed out of the house, instructing some of the slaves who’d been there longest in engineering and controlling a fire. But he could not keep his thoughts away from her, clutching at the idea of her with something that felt like hatred. And sometimes his eyes were pulled to the little concrete box of the garage, where Sulien was. He was increasingly nervous that the prohibition that kept the former slaves from talking with the captive spies among them would at some point be broken. It would be terrible if Sulien heard of this.

  Finally evening came. Improvidently, they’d killed some chickens, as if they were celebrating something. Dama opened the door of the kitchen while they were being cooked, so that the smell would carry up the stairs. He checked the food tray before it went up to Una’s room, and felt scarcely able to hold a conversation until it was time for the little team he appointed to go and bring it down. There was no need to inspect the food carefully; it was immediately obvious that nothing had been touched. The whole tray had simply lain on the floor for an hour.

  Dama did nothing. She wanted him to come to her. This was an attack, with such weapons as she had, and though he had so many people on his side, so much more power here than she, he had little defence against it except trying to pretend it did not frighten him. But he longed even more than before to be able to see what she was doing, what state she was in. He found himself picturing, in angrily wistful detail, the kind of observation hatch in the door that would be in a real prison. It did occur to him that he could have a spyhole drilled in the wood, but even to do that seemed a defeat, a concession of territory to her. Before this he’d thought of moving her, perhaps placing Sulien in the upstairs room and Una in the garage, getting rid of the noise. Now, though, he needed it, he depended on it. Every knock and thud that came from above fell separately on his nerves, but he was always listening out, wincingly anticipating the next one, afraid of not hearing it.

  And over the following days, hideously, he could hear her getting weaker. The dogged blows against the floor or the pipes grew slower, duller. He could
feel the aching effort it took, as if in his own joints, he felt the fluttering heartbeat and breathlessness which sometimes forced her to pause, summoning strength. At night, the onslaught was punctuated by abrupt long silences, which kept him awake more effectively than the noise itself; he lay helplessly straining his ears for it to begin again.

  Then one day he came into the house and there was nothing, she was silent. She had been silent when he woke that morning. And there was a flatness about this quiet that chilled him; he felt somehow certain it had lasted all day, as if a more recent cessation would have left palpable janglings in the air.

  He did tell himself that she could hardly have died, that would surely take weeks. But this thought seemed to fly away, weightlessly; it was not enough to hold against the wrench of panic that dragged him upstairs.

  And in the first second she did look dead. She was on the ground, her legs lying skewed, her back propped against the wall like a bit of broken furniture. Her hair and skin looked dimmed, altered in texture, as if she’d lain there long enough to be covered in a film of dust. Her head drooped to one side; her eyes were shut; her mouth was a little open as if in a gasp of exertion or pain.

  For a paranoid instant Dama imagined that it was a trick: she would spring up and charge impossibly past him, tear out of the farm in broad daylight. But despite this he was already running to her, trying to lift her, horrified. Almost by accident he felt her pulse working, slow and muffled under his fingers. ‘Una – please, for God’s sake …’

  Una seemed to come awake with a little shudder. Her skin was very cold, and there was a strange smell about her, a stale chemical scent on her breath, like solvent fumes. She looked at him through her limp hair and said, in a surprisingly normal voice, ‘Let me go. Let us all go.’

  Dama gave a little sob of relieved laughter. He realised she was not really as wasted as he might have feared – thin enough to look ill, certainly, but not yet grotesquely so, not skeletal.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I will when I can, I promise. But not now. So why do this?’