Savage City

by Sophia McDougall

  His body hurt, as if in a kind of protest against itself, blood and breath resisting their own healthy, unreasonable flow – a not entirely unfamiliar feeling. He asked, ‘What can I do now?’ – aloud or not, he didn’t know, but a whimper either way.

  Something, answered a whisper in his mind. Varius let the word repeat, a little stronger this time, and the voice was Gemella’s. And that was just imagination, he knew, not a reunion, nor really a message. And ‘something’ was not much of a resolution, and not a comfort at all. Still, he lay there, quiet and listening, almost as if there were something to hear.

  Of course he heard only the sea scuffing at the sand, and himself, getting his breath back. He was more tired than he’d realised. He didn’t want to stand up. But after a while, and almost without knowing why, he did so, feeling sand scattering inside his clothes. And soon, as he walked through the morning, he grew too thirsty and too worn out to think at all, which made the long walk easier.

  Una lurched through dreams and couldn’t wake from them, encased in warm, unyielding layers of sleep. She dreamed, not of Marcus, but of a hairless old man cowering in the dark beneath the dome of a cave, clutching her hand to his cracked brown scalp, pleading, ‘Comfort me, comfort me.’ Una struggled impotently to free herself, panting with terror, for she could not bear to hear him and her hand was trapped in his as if they were nailed together. But as she finally managed the horrified sound that awakened her, she forgot the dream instantly, and she knew the cry scraping out of her wasn’t for a nightmare but for Marcus, Marcus lying there with nothing moving behind his smashed ribs and his dried blood still all over her.

  Almost before her eyes were open she had backed up against the headboard of the strange bed, clinging to it and screaming again in panic because she knew that she had been drugged, taken somewhere—

  ‘Shh, please, Una. Una! There are people here, they’ll hear you – quiet – quiet!’

  Una let out another cry anyway, and then stopped, gasping, staring wildly at the terrible pale curtains, the sunlight on the wooden floor, at Sulien. He was kneeling beside her on the bed, hissing at her desperately, and his face was still crumpled with sleep and his hair was sticking up in ridiculous dandelion-like tufts. Una relaxed without realising it while her face settled into a disgusted scowl.

  Sulien shuffled back from her and sat hunched on the far corner of the bed. Una swung her legs over the edge of the bed, facing away from him, and began trying to deduce as much of what had happened with as little recourse to him as possible.

  ‘Had to get away,’ she concluded, in a low, grudging voice, trying to flatten any questioning note out of it.

  Sulien confirmed quietly. ‘Yes.’

  After a second’s silence, Una shrugged lopsidedly and muttered, ‘Oh well.’ It was not as though she had ever thought safety in Rome was guaranteed to last forever. But she heard Sulien make a little grunt – an incredulous, slightly pained sound – and she ignored it. She eyed the blue sky showing between the curtains, listened distrustfully to the sea and added, ‘West coast.’

  Sulien sighed. ‘Lavinium.’

  Una frowned, beginning to work out how he would have found this place, considering Delir, and then flicked that line of thought away, irritably – they were here now, it didn’t matter. She said heavily, ‘Salvius doesn’t have any reason to go after us. Drusus is Emperor.’

  ‘I don’t know how . . .’ began Sulien, almost apologetically.

  Una’s shoulders rolled in a defeated slump. She looked down at her clothes and then contracted, as if shrinking from within them. She sank quietly back down onto the bed and curled on her side, pressing her face against the musty blanket. She whispered, ‘Everything we did . . .’

  Sulien, very hesitantly, laid his hand over hers and Una’s one visible eye looked up at him blankly, as if bemused as to what he was doing. .

  ‘I have to get this off,’ she said in the same little voice, without moving.

  Sulien nodded and stood up, looking for something to do. He started to talk, busily: ‘I’ve got some of your clothes; I think they’ll do for now. The water’s cold, but there’s a stove, I’ll—’

  ‘I can see there’s a stove,’ snapped Una, suddenly sitting up, then drooping again at once. ‘Just go outside.’

  Sulien trailed a pale, doleful look back at her, and Una twitched in exasperation. Left alone, she sat for a moment longer, motionless on the edge of the bed, tensing like an athlete before a race. Yes, she could heat some water; there would be some kind of bowl or tub somewhere. But when she stood up she began yanking off her clothes at once, violently pulling open buttons and clasps, teeth clenched. A set of keys and the plastic wallet containing her identity papers skidded across the floor. The blood had soaked through to her underwear, to her skin: dark, mottled patches were flaking away. She couldn’t touch it; she couldn’t watch it turn liquid again on her skin, fall in drops on the floor to be wiped away. Una sobbed tearlessly, elbowing out of the last loop of fabric and dropping into a crouch beside the heap of clothes, fists pressed against her face.

  The morning was perversely beautiful, after the wet dinginess of the day before. There were still only a few people out on the beach. Sulien sat on the sand, unsettled by the warmth and the sparks of light on the sea, as wrong as the flush and glitter of fever. The sky was a brash, swaggering blue, and his flesh felt heavy and constrictive underneath it, like badly chosen clothes. He wondered where Varius was, and regretted that he had not come back; he wished someone older were there. The door of the hut banged open behind him and Una strode out, wearing one of his tunics which barely covered the rusty stains on her bare throat and legs. She marched past him without a look, down the beach, into the sea. Sulien started up nervously, dithering on the waterline as Una kept going – stamping forwards as if to settle an argument with someone waiting for her there in the water, a long way out.

  She wanted a cold shock, to be suddenly out of her depth, but the water was warm and shallow, nothing like the Thames. While it was still barely up to her waist, Una threw herself forward impatiently and began to swim. She carved fiercely through the water, as fast as she could, trying to outpace what was floating off her skin. But her feet still trailed on the bottom when she put them down; she would have to go a long way further to reach deep water, out along the white trail of flaking light towards the horizon. She could feel the energy, coiled ready in her muscles. She ducked below the bright surface, arms wrapped round herself. Oh, where are you? she whispered into the water, and waited there, letting the pressure build in her head and chest towards a choice that she didn’t really have.

  So she came up and saw that Sulien was standing exactly where she’d left him, featureless in the light, but the tension obvious from here.

  She swam back.

  Sulien came back into the hut later and found her dressed in the clothes he’d brought for her, sitting on the floor by a bowl of water, staring at the heap of bloody cloth.

  ‘I can’t remember how you did it,’ she remarked.

  Sulien leaned over and poked the place on her arm where he’d jabbed in the needle, finding that this time he felt neither like apologising nor justifying it. Una flinched and glowered. She said very clearly, ‘You can’t ever do that to me again.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to.’

  Una raised her head, deliberately meeting his eyes. ‘I mean it.’

  Sulien looked back without giving any further guarantee of compliance. And what if I do, he felt tempted to ask, despite what had happened, what if you’re in that state again? But he held back, or did not quite dare, and if there was a specific threat, she didn’t say what it was.

  They stared at each other, neither promising anything.

  ‘All right,’ Una said finally, shrugging again. But she studied the web of pink lines on her arms, which might have been a month old, might never have been deep. ‘I can’t remember doing this.’

  ‘Would you want to?’ asked Sulien, w
ondering.

  ‘Yes,’ said Una instantly, with such unqualified stubbornness that Sulien let out a little puff of laughter, startling himself.

  But Una’s gaze had already slipped back to Marcus’ blood, her face softening into helplessness.

  Sulien bent down and began to pick up and fold the clothes. ‘I think we should burn these,’ he said quietly. Una nodded, a pale flicker of gratitude crossing her face.

  He was searching for something unremarkable in which to bundle the clothes so the stains were hidden, when Una stiffened, lifting her head sharply to stare at the door, a look of incredulous attention on her face. She whispered, ‘Varius . . .?’

  She got to her feet. Sulien froze for an instant, and then hurled open the door.

  Varius was stumbling heavily up the steps, eyes barely open, scarcely able to lift his feet from one step to the next. Sulien started forward on a strange little thrill of relief and dismay, reaching to help him. Varius speechlessly accepted Sulien as a convenient upright surface from which to push his way forward, staggered to the sink and began gulping water, gasping between swallows.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming back!’ cried Sulien.

  ‘I shouldn’t have, really,’ said Varius, collapsing onto the edge of the bed and leaning his forehead against his wet hands.

  ‘Where did you—?’

  ‘Ostia.’

  ‘That’s twenty miles!’

  Varius made a sort of laugh deep in his throat, as if to say yes, it certainly was.

  ‘Varius,’ said Una again. Sulien heard the shake in her voice and saw that the shock of Varius’ appearance had been enough to jolt her back almost to the point of tears. She took a step towards Varius, who looked up at her, raising an almost identical look of desolation to meet hers, compassion the only shade of difference.

  He reached and took hold of her hand and Una gripped back with brief, surprising force, then drew away and walked out of the cabin.

  Sulien located the remaining bread, lying amidst a pile of other things from the night before. ‘Here,’ he said.

  Varius took it slowly, but he’d noticed the bundle of clothes Sulien had put down.

  Sulien was already too familiar with that arrested look, the failure to turn the eyes to anything else.

  ‘Need to get rid of that,’ Varius said, neutrally.

  ‘We’re going to burn it. Look, I thought we could do it . . . properly. Do you want to come with us? We were going to do it now, but we could wait for you—’

  Varius understood what Sulien was offering: not just the disposal of evidence but a kind of funeral. But it seemed so pitiful, to be reduced to that, a camp fire on a beach, like children with a dead pet. ‘No,’ he said, rather coldly, moving away a little.

  Sulien left him alone and went after Una.

  They made the fire in the stretch of pine wood between the beach and the road, away from the holidaymakers beginning to emerge onto the sand. Una felt, in a marginal way, pleased at how straightforwardly and smoothly they worked on this together, choosing the space, sweeping it clear and level, setting out a circular hearth of stones, collecting a heap of sticks. They handed things from one to the other quietly, speaking only to issue and accept small instructions – ‘break that one, put it there’ – as if this were a practised, daily routine. Well, it almost had been once; Una laid the last piece of kindling, watched Sulien light it and drove her fingers into the dust at the memory of the three of them, crouched by fires lit for warmth in other woods.

  They sat on the sandy ground and watched: the wood caught easily enough, but the clothes burned slowly, drenching black, flaking red. Una, otherwise unmoving, worried a fistful of sand until the fire rose higher and the clothes began to fall into unrecognisability. A few dark scraps floated away into the warm air. She’d unthinkingly stuffed her freedwoman’s identity papers into the pocket of the clothes she was wearing now; she pulled them out and unfolded them. She studied the summary of her rights around her own mistrustful face, read out the name ‘Noviana Una’ aloud, in a rough, experimental voice, and flicked the papers quickly into the fire. She looked over at Sulien, who reached for his own papers and laid them beside hers, as carefully as the heat would allow.

  They tried to hide it, afterwards, swept the sand back into place, scattered the stones. There were more people on the beach now, children galloping in and out of the surf, and adults standing in dazed clusters outside the cabins, unsure what to do. The news was still spreading. Una shrank from the sight of them and fled towards the hut. Varius had left the door slightly open; Sulien peered in and saw him lying with his arm over his face against the light, and crept back, carefully.

  ‘We’re going to eat something now,’ he told Una firmly, forestalling resistance, but she only nodded dully. She had retreated into the corner of space between the pile of bricks and the wall of the hut, leaning her head against the warming concrete. Sulien, fighting off a pang of unease, left her there, found a stall at the base of the road leading up to the town and bought a bag of greasy little fried cakes.

  ‘We should use what we have first. Don’t go and buy things we don’t need,’ complained Una when he came back.

  ‘Well, Varius is asleep in there,’ said Sulien, as if that made entry into the hut and the preparation of food physically impossible, ‘and we’re not going to live or die on ten denarii.’

  ‘It adds up. And it isn’t only the money, it’s people seeing you. We’ll have to . . . we’ll have to—’ And the multitude of things they would have to do swelled in her mind without form or order, turning her dizzy, and she couldn’t speak.

  ‘Eat,’ supplied Sulien.

  Doggedly Una obeyed, and to avoid being coaxed through every mouthful she forced down everything he handed her, though what little hunger she’d been aware of disappeared almost once.

  ‘You’d better tell me everything that happened,’ she said at last, screwing up the empty bag.

  She listened to the first part of it without any comment, only grimaced a little to think how helpless she had been, put down and passed about and collected like a suitcase. But when he came to the arrest and Varius’ intervention she lifted her head to stare at him in quiet shock, then cast a distressed glance towards the cabin and Varius. ‘Those bastards,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t . . .’

  Sulien could only remind her softly, ‘We got away.’

  ‘We don’t even know what he wants!’ exclaimed Una with abrupt force.

  ‘I thought it was pretty clear what he wants,’ said Sulien grimly.

  ‘But it’s not. Is it just us three? And is it the same for all of us? Is it anyone who’s close to Marcus, or . . .’ Her voice sank, grew tentative: ‘He used to . . . He hates me, because I was the one who found out about him, I told Marcus what he’d done . . .’

  Sulien tightened his mouth uneasily, feeling the conversation tilt towards something he didn’t want spoken, even considered. ‘Why does it matter? He’s after us; we get out of the way. That much isn’t complicated.’

  ‘It does matter,’ argued Una. ‘We might be able to guess how far he’ll chase us, and for how long. And if we knew whether he was targeting one of us more than the others, we might have some kind of options.’

  Sulien scowled. ‘Well, we don’t know. And it doesn’t matter.’

  Una looked away. ‘How do you get to the town?’ she asked, after a pause. ‘We need a longvision. See how bad it is.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Sulien. ‘Let’s go.’

  Una shook her head dubiously. ‘I don’t know. If they’re showing pictures of us together in the forum . . . then we shouldn’t be there at the same time.’ Sulien’s mouth pulled sideways, and Una sighed. ‘Or you can go and I’ll stay! Either way, I’ll be back here. I’m not going to just . . . You seem to think I’m going to vanish. I won’t.’

  ‘You still don’t remember what happened yesterday?’ muttered Sulien, with a quick, faintly barbed look down at her arms.

  Una sc
owled and moved in an angry jerk, as if she were about to spring up, but she didn’t complete it, and her face gradually slipped back into such bleakness that Sulien regretted saying anything. She folded her arms. ‘No more of that,’ she said. ‘Had my fun. Anyway, you can’t spend every second with me and there are things that need doing. I might as well make a start.’

  Later, when he was striding down the strip of gambling halls looking for her, Sulien found that there were indeed pictures of the three of them showing regularly on Lavinium’s public longvisions. He couldn’t ask anyone if they’d seen her. Varius, who had rolled off the bed groaning just when Sulien was on the point of waking him, was searching the north side of the town, though with an air of humouring him. He hadn’t appeared very concerned, which might have been just because he was too tired and numb to worry much about anything.

  And when, after an hour and a half of this, Sulien went back to check the hut and found her there, he felt for a second of almost joyous fury that he wished she hadn’t come back, that he wanted nothing more to do with her. He might have shouted it at her, except for the distracting shock of her appearance. Her hair was wet again, and a different colour – a much darker brown than its natural pale dun. Much of the mess had been cleared away and a couple of plastic bags were spread over the small table, on which stood a pot of dye beside a pan of water, spreading a chemical reek into the air. She’d plainly tried to be careful but there was a faint purplish stain banded around her hairline, and dark smears on the plastic and on her fingertips. A bag she hadn’t had before hung from a chair.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, as Sulien entered and drew in a loud, indignant breath and tried to decide what to do with it.

  Varius was back too, sitting with his legs stretched out on the bed and his back against the wall, eyes half closed. He and Una had a silent air of sad companionship that incensed Sulien even more.

  ‘For fuck’s sake—’ Sulien knocked a hand, half by accident, into the too-close wall.