Savage City

by Sophia McDougall

  Varius turned at once, but only to give her a tense, curt look, a nod. He said, ‘Get yourselves ready.’

  Una was trying to sit up, her hands batting weakly at the floor of the van, clutching at Sulien, and crying out as she tried to prop herself on her left arm.

  He made equally clumsy efforts to lift her. She leant against him, baffled, gasping, and said at last in a whisper, ‘I don’t think anyone’s following us.’

  Sulien didn’t answer, tried to forget he’d heard. He started to prise Varius’ rough dressing away from the ragged punctures in her shoulder. He could keep his attention there, and later, on the slashes on his own legs and back; he could coax the worst of the bleeding to stop, smooth down some of the pain, and he got so lost in the difficulty of it that he forgot to think of time passing, only realised when they were at last struggling, exhausted, into the clothes, how long all this had taken. More than an hour must have passed since Varius first woke him.

  The clothes made no sense on their bodies; he thought, as Una, grimacing, wrenched on a dark wool coat. Baggy prison wear, bloody rags and scraps of plastic had been right for what was happening, for raw, pulpy skin and bruised bones, not costumes meant for human beings, with neat seams and soft linings. How strange he must look, as Una looked to him, with her blood-sticky hair, and her scored hands emerging from these stupidly well-made and well-chosen things. Lal, he thought – oh, he was sure it was her; she had been in charge of the clothes. Even the colours suited them; she’d have done that without even thinking about it. In spite of her efforts blood was oozing through his sleeve.

  ‘Sulien,’ began Una again, in a too-soft, too-hopeful voice.

  He shut his eyes and said, ‘Don’t.’

  But the van was slowing as it turned downhill, the road seemed rougher, quieter. And then they stopped. Varius leapt out, pulled open the doors.

  The light— Again the light was too strong, white and cold and stinging above the sea. They stumbled out onto the road, heavy and off-balance, almost blind, the wind sharp through their clothes and bandages. They were on a narrow road leading down to a jetty, where a few small yachts and fishing boats were moored. A pale, pretty village rose on the hillside over the little bay.

  Ziye was still inside the van. She leaned out of the window, looked at Una and Sulien, staggering and mute in the light. ‘I’ll see you,’ she said tersely, no more, and drove away. Neither of them even thought to thank her.

  But there was no one around on the road, only a woman walking a dog down on the beach, too far off to see the blood they hadn’t been able to rub away or cover up. But Sulien could still hear the noise the hounds had made, booming somewhere in his skull along with the beat of his heart. When he blinked, he could almost believe he was still sprawled there on the hot sand and this—

  But of course this wasn’t like a dream; they were really here, limping down the jetty, and they’d be lucky not to topple together into the sea, for they could hardly stand upright, let alone walk. And still he was waiting for something to happen, for volucers to descend, vigile boats to pile out of nowhere into the little bay. Varius marched them along, almost angrily, as if he expected it too, and now he was actually herding them onto the deck of the boat moored furthest from the shore. Everything around was so quiet and blue as Sulien crumpled down on the little strip of deck behind the cockpit and Varius wrenched fiercely and inexpertly at the controls. The boat went jolting out from the harbour, over the slow waves.

  Una was crouched on the bench seats by the windows, looking back at the shore. Varius forced the little yacht along as if the whole of the Roman fleet was behind them, but there was nothing, only the sound of the engine burring through the water and the air. Sulien dragged himself up to see the land already reduced to a pale line behind them, and then gone, leaving only the dark suppleness of the sea.

  Abruptly, Varius turned off the engine, let go of the controls. He said, quietly, almost a question, ‘It worked,’ and he dropped back in the seat and lay there, breathing hard, trembling. Then he began to laugh – low, hitching spasms at first, then louder angry, delighted. He shouted, ‘We did it. It worked, I got you.’ He rose from the seat as if looking for something to punch, and turned to them, scarcely recognisable with triumph. ‘That’ll show the bastard.’

  Sulien looked around at the impossible sea and tried to answer, but that seemed to dislodge something in him, and all that came were tears.

  Varius stopped laughing long enough to produce a bottle of methousia from beside the helm, take a deep swig from it before pushing it firmly into Sulien’s hands. He collapsed onto the bench opposite and covered his face, laughter coming more quietly now, but still unstoppable.

  Una sat staring from Varius to Sulien and back, open-mouthed, mechanically rubbing Sulien’s arm, still incapable of making a sound.

  *

  Drusus rose and paced about the Imperial Office, trying to allow a little time for the sense of dissatisfaction and suspicion to dissipate, but it continued to build, rising like acid to the back of his throat. ‘I want to see the bodies,’ he announced.

  Almost as soon as the Praetorians had swept him back into the Palace, word had come through that the executions had been completed despite the interruption. It had been repeated and confirmed more than once already, and at the first hearing he had felt reassured. But that had soured quickly; he felt held in a kind of sick suspense. He had not felt easy even before the dogs had been loosed from the gates.

  The four men before him looked at one another – just fleeting, expressionless glances, but Drusus suddenly wondered if he had made a mistake summoning them here together. It had seemed the most natural and efficient thing to do, and of course the duties of the vigiles and the Praetorians often intersected, but you did not want them to get too close, to start thinking of themselves as a single force.

  ‘They’ve already been incinerated, your Majesty,’ said Cilo.

  It had been Cilo who had led the raid on Salvius’ house. Drusus had appointed him Praetorian Prefect after that, hoisting him up over several ranks. The others too had all been appointed since his coronation: Arvina, the new Vigile Prefect, and Lucullus, the captain of his own personal guard. Only Thalna, the commander of public order operations, who’d been in charge of security at the Colosseum, had arrived at his job without any intervention from Drusus; his predecessor had resigned after the attack that had killed Marcus and Faustus.

  Drusus scrutinised them all. Cilo was the only one to hold his head up. They all looked respectful and abashed. They had unconsciously lined themselves up, close together, in almost identical postures with their hands clasped in front of them – it would have been rather comical if he’d been in the mood for laughing. ‘I wanted proof,’ he said thickly.

  Another slight pause while they silently negotiated which of them should speak. ‘I apologise, of course, your Majesty,’ said Arvina, ‘but they were confirmed dead, and cremation is the usual practice after an execution.’

  ‘Which is a matter for the Colosseum staff, in any case, your Majesty,’ added Thalna, meekly.

  Drusus only felt more aggrieved and distrustful, all the more so because he realised nothing they could do or say now would ease this feeling. ‘And Varius? What about him, what excuse are you going to come up with now? He got away! He was able to walk into the Colosseum— He announced himself! You allowed him to threaten my life, threaten the people, disrupt everything and get away!’

  ‘At this point we have no way of knowing if he was ever really there, Sir,’ said Arvina.

  ‘Someone certainly was!’ Drusus paced with greater energy. ‘Did we all hallucinate those explosions?’

  Thalna said, ‘We found the remains of firecrackers – they can be very loud, you know, Sir, and there’s a strong echo—’

  ‘Firecrackers,’ said Drusus, his voice rising, ‘all that over firecrackers? So – what? You’re telling me nothing really happened today, it was all – what? A misunderstanding? What w
as the man trying to do?’

  ‘Well, we know these people do have sympathisers – Dama had supporters. It might be that they were willing to settle for causing panic and disruption, not having the means to do any more.’

  ‘And you let them get away,’ Drusus repeated. But he couldn’t really make himself concentrate on these hypothetical sympathisers; he continued in the same gulping breath, ‘Sulien and Una – how do you know? Are you sure? Who saw them dead?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘The Colosseum staff had already transported them down to the morgue,’ said Thalna. ‘Two vigile officers checked the bodies.’

  ‘And I saw them myself, in the arena,’ said Lucullus.

  Drusus turned away, because there was nothing more to be said. But a hot sweat flushed over his skin, and he swung round, sweeping up some loose papers from the desk and hurling them forward. He shouted, ‘You’re lying, all of you! It was all a trick, I knew it, I said to you—! They’re alive, and you know it. You don’t dare to admit it! You cowards, go after them—Find them!’

  Cilo’s face remained steady, blank. ‘They were confirmed dead, your Majesty.’

  Drusus looked wildly around the beautiful garden painted on the walls of the Imperial Office as if for escape. He collapsed into a chair, gasping, ‘You’re protecting them! It’s come to this: you’re colluding with Rome’s enemies. Each one of you I thought I could trust. I was wrong. I was wrong. I’ll have you all shot for treason.’

  For a moment naked consternation and outrage flashed through them and the line broke as they flinched or started forwards – but almost at once, as they caught one another’s eyes, they collected themselves, and settled back into an orderly row. They stood more stiffly than before.

  Cilo bowed. ‘You are the Emperor.’

  Drusus hunched low over the desk, staring down at his drumming fingertips. Heat continued to wash across his face; now he didn’t want to see them looking at him, didn’t want to think about this any more. ‘Get out of my sight,’ he whispered.

  His head ached. His cubicularius had come in half an hour ago, harassing him with the latest in a series of increasingly irritating messages from General Turnus, who wanted to see him about some local trouble in Ethiopia, of all places. For a moment he found himself thinking, I never wanted this.

  The soldiers left together. They did not speak, or look at each other again; they were eager to be out of each other’s company. The Colosseum’s incinerator had been lit early that morning, ready for the executions, and it was still too hot, even now, to be inspected properly. But the sliding tray that was used to push the bodies into the fire was still on its strut outside the oven, clean, ready for use. No one seemed sure who the officer who had checked the bodies had been, nor the morgue attendant who had been so diligent in collecting them.

  That Una and Sulien were dead was a matter of recorded fact. Now there were certain questions to which it would not be wise to find the answers.

  ‘We shouldn’t be drinking this,’ said Sulien suddenly, ‘not after the drugs. It could— It could . . . You know.’ He waved his hand to indicate the behaviour of chemicals for which he had forgotten the vocabulary. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘I really don’t care,’ said Una.

  They were anchored within the fringe of islands along the Dalmatian coast, beside a blunt nub of rock, bare except for a patchy coating of grass and the droppings of seagulls. A song was playing on the radio. Sulien didn’t want to remind himself when he’d last heard music, but still it came: almost a month ago, on board another ship, the old woman singing as the Caspian ferry glided towards Persia. Tears prickled again in his eyes before he looked around at the bottle and the scattered food, at Una and Varius, who had been nodding along gently to the music, and he thought, and now we’re having a party on a yacht, and giggled under his breath at how preposterous it was.

  But he’d worried Varius, of course, who reached out to take the bottle away, demanding, ‘How dangerous? What will it do to you?’

  Sulien blinked, thinking about it. ‘Make us more drunk?’

  Una remarked, ‘I’m not drunk.’

  She was sitting on the floor with her hands neatly folded in her lap, her expression grave and careful, her eyelids heavy with subtle, lopsided effort.

  Sulien laughed weakly at her.

  ‘I’m not that drunk,’ she said.

  ‘You’d better stop,’ said Varius, searching for the stopper.

  ‘No, we need some more,’ protested Una, gesturing expansively. ‘And you need some more.’

  Varius obediently downed more of the spirit.

  ‘But careful,’ she added, struck suddenly by other considerations, ‘because we’ve got to make it last.’

  ‘No,’ said Varius, ‘there’s plenty.’ He pulled open a cabinet they hadn’t noticed under one of the seats to display an impressive stock of bottles. ‘I didn’t really think we’d get here,’ he admitted, ‘but if we did, I knew we’d need it.’

  Sulien and Una gazed at the bottles, and then began to laugh again as they caught the awe in each other’s faces. ‘Varius, you’re a lifesaver. And I didn’t even want you to save my life,’ said Sulien, taking the open bottle back.

  Una continued laughing, leaning against the seat with her cheek pillowed on her arm, but she looked quickly at Sulien and the amiable haze cleared for a moment, leaving anxious watchfulness behind.

  ‘You thought of everything,’ she said to Varius.

  ‘We still may crash on the rocks,’ said Varius. But he grinned, and rose to his feet to turn up the music; he reached, unexpectedly, for Una’s hand. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘can you stand?’

  He pulled her up. Una didn’t manage to stay on her feet for very long, but for a little while they lurched across the gently pitching floor and called it dancing.

  Hours later, Una woke in the little cabin below deck. She was lying beneath the level of the water, and she could feel it, folded round the hull, softly pushing and rocking. Rain was drumming lightly on the deck. For some time after opening her eyes – she could not have said how long it lasted – she had the impression Marcus was there. She did not see or hear anything, nor did she expect to. She had no sense of anything said; it didn’t occur to her to try and speak to him, or to feel anything except the ordinariness of it: his calm, matter-of-fact attention, as if he was watching her for no special reason, just having woken first, on any usual morning.

  It faded, but without any new smart of loss. She lay still for a long time, feeling herself inhabit her body, stretching out warily within it. The gashes and cuts throbbed quietly and at last she pushed back the sheets, wincing a little, and considered the streaks, dots, crosses that had been scrawled over her, as if reading a letter or a book.

  The hangover she must be due hadn’t descended yet; her head felt clear. She sat up. It must be dawn; for the cabin was dark, yet she could make out Varius, a motionless shadow on the bed in the stern, and she saw that Sulien was no longer in the bunk opposite hers.

  Shivering, she dragged one of the blankets around herself and crept up the little stairs to the upper level. She picked her way through the debris of the night before. It didn’t seem like real light in the air, just a deep grey dilution of the darkness, but once she was outside, she could see a seam of blue light splitting the sky off from the slate sea, and her own breath, vanishing and coming again.

  Sulien was sitting up near the bow with his legs dangling over the side, watching the curls of mist on the sea. He glanced at Una as she sat down next to him, but for some time neither of them spoke.

  ‘It’s cold,’ she murmured at last.

  ‘Not really. Not like in Sacaeum, or on the Rha.’

  So she pulled the blanket tighter and they were quiet again, a layer of warmth between them where their arms touched, like cement between bricks. She was trying to decide what she should say and whether to speak at all, for the longer they sat there the more possible and tempting it seemed that they could
carry on like this for ever, silent on everything that had happened during these last weeks.

  But in the end he spoke first. ‘We can’t go on the way we were.’

  She agreed quietly. ‘No.’

  ‘Except we have to, don’t we?’ he said, and smiled, but it was an ugly, joyless thing. He lapsed back into silence for a while. Then he asked in a low voice, ‘What did they do to you in prison?’

  She said, on instinct, ‘Nothing,’ and saw that was a mistake as his face tightened: he had started guessing what that word might cover, and it would be harder to make him believe her now. ‘Well, not nothing, but nothing so bad, I promise. Noriko protected me. It was nowhere near what it could have been.’ She made sure he was looking at her, stared at him. ‘I’m all right.’

  Sulien still looked dubious, but he met her gaze for a while and then looked away, letting it be, for now.

  ‘I used to think about where you were,’ she said, ‘all the ways you might have kept going. How it would be for you, in a few years . . .’

  Sulien made a low snorting sound.

  ‘You should have tried, at least, Sulien. I told you to run. That’s what I wanted – you knew that.’

  ‘You said it was better I was there’ said Sulien, remotely, ‘in the Colosseum.’

  Una closed her eyes, but she didn’t try to stifle the memory of how it had felt, pressing out the sight of the hounds against his chest, clinging to him as the hurtling feet swept over them both. ‘It was, of course it was better – for me, but not for you. You shouldn’t have done that.’

  He shifted away from her a little, still not looking at her. He stared out at a flock of seagulls, whirling and stabbing at the water. ‘I don’t know what you expect me to say. Are you really surprised? There’s nothing surprising about it. I should have seen there might still be a chance to get you out, but I couldn’t— I couldn’t. And if it happened again—’