Drusus allowed the crowd to support him – indeed, by now, held in a huge, fierce embrace, he had little choice in the matter. Girls’ hands, daring and protective, stroked his injured cheek. He saw a thrill blaze in people’s faces as they reached to clasp his hands, touch his clothes. It was electrifying, but there was terror and distaste in it too; he had always been kept at a safe distance from this human welter, and now he was surrounded, engulfed, and he could smell their breath and sweat; he could be crushed, or torn to pieces.
He led them from the Colosseum towards the Palace, leaning without shame now on the Praetorians and vigiles who had joined him, until they wanted to hoist him up onto their shoulders, and he let them do that too.
Salvius sat hunched over the desk in the Imperial Office, alone, his fists pressed against his temples, his eyes shut. The roar outside was very close now, and he could hear occasional peals of gunfire, too: the duped, the faithless soldiers, anyone else who’d got hold of a gun, they were all firing at the sky. Only at the sky, for the moment. Come on, he urged himself, as his heart raced and blackness danced behind his eyelids, face it. Make a decision and act.
Moving swiftly as if making some necessary cut in his own flesh – to produce some blood for an oath, perhaps, or to cut out poisoned tissue – he lifted the longdictor circlet and called his wife. He had not spoken to her before, to say that he was to be Emperor; he was glad of that much now.
‘My dear,’ he said, and his heart sank at how calmly affectionate her greeting was. She could not have seen the longvision. That he should want his wife to hear his name ruined! But it was hard to have to bear the whole weight of this explanation alone. ‘Something’s happened,’ he said, inadequately.
‘What is it?’ she asked, of course. ‘Is something wrong?’
Salvius cleared his throat. ‘You have to be a good girl and not panic. Take Decimus and Salvilla out of the house, as far as you can, and stay out. Take what you can, but be quick. Don’t go to your sister’s or to any of our friends, at least not until things have settled down. And don’t use your real name to anyone. And you need to tell the girls and their husbands to do the same.’
There was no reply, and it went on so long he almost wondered if something had gone wrong with the line. He repeated, ‘My dear?’
‘Salvius? What—?’
‘There isn’t much time, and in any case you may find it hard to understand.’ Perhaps he would have done better to speak to Magnus, his eldest son-in-law, first – he would be head of the family, after all, until Decimus came of age, and it would be easier to tell a man. But it hadn’t occurred to him to do that, not after thirty years and barely a cross word between them.
And she had had little practice questioning him; she began it now, timidly, inexpertly: ‘But I— I have to— Salvius, you can’t say such terrible things and then not explain.’
Salvius exhaled heavily, then began to speak, pretending to himself there was no one listening to the facts as he set them out – it wasn’t so hard, that way: ‘I’m in the Palace. I’m surrounded. The people— The people have been deceived. I don’t have a great many options. I doubt I can get out. And in any case, you know I’m not one to turn my back on a fight. And I don’t mean to give in without one, but—’
This time he could hear a rough flutter of breath on the other end of the line which grew into a kind of hissing wail: ‘How am I supposed to tell the children a thing like that? How can I do any of it? You can’t leave me to do— You can’t leave me by myself! If things are that bad you have to come home and help me!’
‘I wish I could,’ said Salvius, awkwardly. ‘You should . . . You should have Philia pack a bag while you call the girls.’ Or was Philia still missing? Well, he couldn’t think about that now.
‘But everyone’s here – Albus and Magnus and all the girls. No, Salvius, this is—’
Salvius clenched his teeth, growing cold. Of course they would have been in no hurry to go their separate ways after the bomb. Such a large and easy target, then! ‘Then it’s even more important that you hurry. And I’m afraid you’ll have to separate for now – just for now. You can’t lie low if you’re all together.’
‘What have you done?’ she keened. ‘What have you got us into?’
‘It isn’t my fault,’ whispered Salvius, hearing his voice catch and despising himself for it. He added involuntarily, ‘You won’t believe anything hard you hear of me, will you?’
‘Oh, my darling, of course not,’ she retorted at once, and fell quiet.
Salvius closed his eyes again, and felt somehow sure she was doing the same, both of them pressing against the dark as if against different sides of the same wall.
She asked, in quite a different voice, ‘Do you want to say anything to the children?’
He wanted to, desperately, and couldn’t bear it. ‘I’d rather know you were safely on your way,’ he said, affecting nonchalance. ‘Tell them all to be brave.’
Afterwards, he had the commander bring him as many guns and as much ammunition as he could lay his hands on. Salvius had also said, ‘And as many men as are willing to fight,’ but the man came back alone, laid the weapons formally in Salvius’ arms and then stepped back. ‘I’m not dying with you. Sir.’
Salvius glowered, certain the commander had not even tried to rally the guard. Salvius could try it himself; he could shoot the commander on the spot for desertion, come to that.
But instead he said, ‘Fair enough,’ and walked away.
He made his way towards the main stairs of the Palace and the approaching noise. There was such a clash going on just below the surface of his mind, not over what to do, but how to think. These last minutes would be bearable if he did not think of his family, of how desperately ill-equipped for flight they were; if he did not curse himself for ever having trusted Drusus. He was good at narrowing the focus of his mind when he needed to, leaving what was personal outside.
He could do it even now. But wasn’t that useful, necessary single-mindedness a kind of lie, if carried right to the end? Was it enough to face what was rushing to meet him up the stairs? Should he be able to face worse, in imagination, at the same time?
Without resolving this, he broke into a charge, raising the gun.
They carried Drusus into the Palace. The front line had swept ahead of him and in through the doors, unchecked – Salvius was already dead, lying sprawled headlong on the staircase, and the place was in such bubbling uproar that Drusus did not see him immediately. The Praetorians set Drusus down, not sure where further to take him, and watched expectantly as he hobbled forward a few steps. He too was at a momentary loss for what to do next.
First he saw the corpses lying at the foot of the stairs, and felt the more violent mood in the air now. Then he glimpsed Salvius’ pale head on the marble.
‘Help me,’ he said, limping towards the staircase; He climbed painfully and stood above Salvius’ corpse, preparing to speak again.
Bliss at his success would come later. For now he must be sure that the fierce excitement that had brought so many people here did not crumble away. He would thank them. He would ask them to stay and celebrate a first blow struck against Rome’s enemies. He was aware that he had promised a lot to purchase this, and it would cost a lot to keep it: a party now, then the donatives to the army, and then the war.
‘Sulien,’ whispered Varius, in the back seat. His voice had no weight, no tone. It was the first time either of them had spoken in more than an hour. They were somewhere to the west of Ferentum, still only a handful of miles from the outskirts of Rome. Sulien had been avoiding the Via Laurentina, moving south along the quietest roads he could find. Several times they had heard sirens whining close by, but not for them yet.
Warily, Sulien looked back, and was startled at how carefully Varius was holding Una: her head was supported on his arm, safe from knocking against anything hard, her body cradled with an automatic tenderness that Sulien found strangely painful to witness. But th
e coat had slipped or been folded down and Varius was examining the bloodstains on her clothes by the flat blue glow from the streetlights, his face calm, studious. ‘All this blood,’ he continued, ‘it looks as if she was lying in it. There’s too much, it’s not right if it was just from the window.’
Sulien paid fierce attention to the rain-slicked road, watching for a left turn. His shoulders were stiffening. Outside the car there had been nothing but damp fields of corn for so long; everything looked the same in the dusk. Perhaps he had gone wrong.
‘Was she at the Colosseum?’ Varius persisted, hesitant but relentless. ‘Is this . . .? Is this someone else’s blood?’
Sulien glared into the dark spray, hunching over the car’s controls. He felt powerlessly resentful of Varius, for the flush of muddled guilt that heated his flesh, for extracting information from Sulien that would only hurt him. It seemed unreasonable that Sulien should have to be involved in any more of that. He didn’t want to hear Varius react, the way his breath would change, even if he didn’t say anything.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed shortly. ‘It’s his.’
Varius closed his eyes, and felt tears slide from beneath the lids, leaving the surfaces raw, although no more moisture came. Turning his head away from Una, he looked out at the quiet fields and the glow of Rome on the horizon, and though he didn’t know where they were heading, and scarcely remembered the journey so far, he knew more or less where they were. They couldn’t be much above two miles from Tusculum, Marcus’ home. Varius had met Gemella in that house, and Marcus, who must have been thirteen back then . . . Wasn’t there some way not to think of what had become of everyone he’d known there? Leo, Clodia, Gemella, Marcus . . .
Ordering – begging – himself not to do it, he closed his fingers around a darkened fold of cloth at Una’s shoulder – the blood was powdery against his fingertips, blue-black in the light – and curled his hand into a fist around it, as if he couldn’t let go of it.
Lavinium was a faded seaside town, half-absorbed into the bigger resort of Antium and surviving listlessly on the overflow of Antium’s tourist trade. There were a lot of Eagles, fitfully fluorescent in red or blue on shop fronts or guest-house roofs, and not much else to show for the fact that this was supposed to be where Aeneas had landed. Sulien nosed the car back and forth in frustration along a strip of small villas and shabby gambling halls before finding the gritty track that led north through the dark pines that edged the coast.
There was a small, disorderly row of holiday cabins on the beach, thirty or so, between the rough dunes and the sea. The fourth from the end, Delir had said. Sulien eyed the lights in the other huts anxiously as he drove past. It was still summer, and at least a third of them looked occupied, though no one was out in the soft rain to see them now.
He stepped out onto the damp sand. The sea and the wind in the pines sounded boomingly loud, and his skin tightened in subdued panic, as if inside the car he’d been safe.
‘I’ll find the key,’ he said to Varius, although Delir hadn’t been very clear about where it was supposed to be, and it was so dark, and maybe there wasn’t a key at all. Varius let him fumble around for a while, sitting passively in the back as if the journey wasn’t over yet, but then he climbed out of the car to join him, circling the cabin without speaking, patting along window ledges and on top of lintels. Sulien tried to ignore a pull of tension at leaving Una lying alone and out of his sight on the seat, even as close as she was.
‘Here,’ said Varius, finally. The key was under one of a stack of concrete bricks by the steps, left over from laying the foundations, perhaps.
The floor was coated with sand and the air smelled slightly stale, must tinged with salt. Sulien’s head skimmed against the ceiling and he could almost have touched the opposite walls with outstretched hands. There wasn’t any electric lighting, but Sulien found a gas lantern hanging by the door. There was a sink, and a tiny stove. Varius and Sulien carried Una in between them, clumsy now, and put her down on what seemed to be the only bed. Sulien dropped the heap of things from his flat in the middle of the floor, dragged a flimsy folding chair across to beside the bed and sat there, his head tipped back against the wall.
Varius didn’t sit down. ‘I’ll get rid of the car.’
Sulien just nodded, too tired to ask any questions. But as Varius pushed open the door he began, ‘I haven’t thanked you—’
‘For killing that man?’ asked Varius, his voice uneven. His shoulders moved in something between a shrug and flinch, and he said gently, ‘Don’t.’
Sulien sat there as the noise of the car faded. The rhythm of the sea’s hiss matched Una’s quiet breath on the bed, steady, continuing. For a while he couldn’t be bothered to do anything about how hungry he was, but eventually he tipped himself wearily onto his knees to rummage through the bundle on the floor. He ate some bread, still crouched there, then got up and drank some water straight from the tap because he didn’t feel like looking for anything else.
Belatedly he realised that he did not know if Varius intended to come back, let alone how he would do it.
There must be at least a roll-up mattress or something, perhaps under the bed, or in one of the cupboards, but he only thought of that when he was already lying beside Una, awkwardly curled so his feet wouldn’t hang off the end of the bed, and by then he couldn’t have moved.
He came close to waking early, as dawn was pushing in callously through the skimpy curtains, but Una was still motionless at his back and he thought at once, No, and rolled over onto his face, burying himself wilfully in sleep, hiding.
Decimus understood what was happening; at least, he understood enough. They were under attack, and there hadn’t been enough time to evacuate. His mother and the slaves were still running from room to room grabbing clothes and crying, though his eldest sister and her husband had kissed him and run out to their car. But there was a tide of noise breaking against the villa’s gates, and then the lights of military trucks flooded the windows.
Salvilla shrieked and grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the back of the house. But they’d have the house surrounded. He tried to tell her that, but she didn’t listen, and so he pulled free and ran back into the atrium, darting through as the soldiers kicked in the door and burst into his father’s study. The chest where the guns were kept was locked, but it had never been any secret where the key was, because his father trusted him. Decimus opened the chest, took out the pistol he’d used for target practice and loaded it. He’d never fired it at a person before, but that was what it was for, that was the point of learning how to use it. His father had made sure he understood that, even when he was firing toy guns at his friends. His hands shook a little, and they were damp around the wooden handgrip, which was strange, because he really wasn’t frightened. He hoped that would be completely clear. There was a strange ringing feeling instead, humming all through him as if his body were a metal bell. His senses were alive, leaving too little room to think, and no need.
He slipped back into the atrium, quietly, aimed at the head of the Praetorian who was wrestling his sister Secunda towards the door, and fired. The gun sounded louder than usual, fired indoors. His aim was perfect, and for a second he felt an eruption of triumph. But at the same time incomprehension hit him, more jarring than the noise of the shot, leaving him dizzy. It wasn’t so much the blood or the collapse – it was the man’s uniform; these were Roman soldiers he had to fight, who had come to kill them, not Nionians or separatists or even mutinying slaves, and if he was not on their side then there was no solid ground left on which to stand.
But all the same his hand had moved as if by itself, aiming the gun again, and he shot another of them, and before they could react, he’d dodged inside the doorway of the room through which Salvilla had fled, guarding the way. And he killed two more of them before they could get close enough to shoot him – the only one of the family to die in the house.
[ III ]
EXUVIAE
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nbsp; Climbing out of the car, Varius glanced up into the dark eye of a security camera and felt like staring straight at it, letting it take a good look at him. But of course that wasn’t how a man trying to hide would act, so he lowered his face and set off towards the port. There was no boat waiting for him, or any of them, but there could have been. The vigiles would find the car and the footage in a day or two, and if it wasn’t already over by then, they would waste some time thinking he, at least, and maybe all three of them, were somewhere across the water, anywhere.
The tideless sea lapped black beside Varius’ feet. All he had to do was work his way along its edge, no risk of getting lost, between the pale glow of the coastal road and the red and white lights of freighters and cruisers, pegged out along the horizon, sliding over.
Perhaps it was not guilt he felt over the Praetorian he’d killed; he might not have been thinking very clearly, but even so, his judgement of what would have happened to Sulien had been right. He supposed he would not have undone it. But he could feel, lodged within him, a splinter of the aching space into which the man had vanished, which had been too close and huge already.
He’d been walking for hours, and had left Ostia a long way behind now. The black sky was deeper, wider, without its tired, blank light. Sometimes Varius whispered as he walked, without realising he was doing it, half-formed, frantic apologies and pleas on the edge of his breath. And then he said, loud enough to hear himself this time, ‘Not you too.’ And hearing it he stopped, as if he’d caught himself doing something ridiculous, and it was not speaking into thin air, but walking along for however many miles in the middle of the night, as if there were somewhere he could get to that would be any better than here. So he sat down and let his eyes rest on the sea for a moment, but then even the dark water was too difficult to look at and he shut his eyes and lay back on the sand.
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