Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘It wasn’t a question at all, I wanted to make you answer for last time,’ snapped Drusus, and then, thinking uneasily of what she’d said about the glass, ‘Oh, I suppose I told the man outside, “I want to know what’s going to happen.”’

  The Sibyl nodded vaguely, but didn’t seem to have listened. She scratched her thigh and watched her moving foot.

  ‘It was, “Will I be Emperor? Still?”’ he admitted at last, softly.

  She sat up, jerking her foot still against the tripod, and looked at him again. ‘And what have I said?’ she demanded.

  He couldn’t tell whether or not she knew the answer, whether she was only trying to prompt him. ‘“Yes,”’ whispered Drusus.

  She shrugged, as if to say, there you are, then.

  Drusus hesitated, opened his lips to speak, but did not. She had said that, hadn’t she? He tried to think if she could have mistaken him for Marcus, if there was any other way he could have misunderstood her. Certainly it remained possible that she’d only ever been playing some kind of unfathomable game or joke. But it was only now that he really understood that Faustus was still alive, that his cousin was not Emperor but Regent, that there was a difference. Perhaps Faustus would still change his mind – perhaps something more than that would have to happen –

  She climbed down onto the ground, and yawned again. Drusus felt at a loss, seasick both with elation and with the suspicion that he was being practised upon. He did not want to leave yet, he wanted her to reassure him, clearly, lovingly. And he still felt a little like hurting her. But he’d had one question answered, and that was all he was allowed. But as he moved up the steps, something else occurred to him, and he turned back.

  ‘How am I going to die?’ he asked her, abruptly.

  She blinked again and the emptiness cleared in her pale, dirty-coloured eyes; she raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, a faintly disapproving look, as if he should know it was wrong to ask her that. But she answered him anyway, quite normally and conversationally now: ‘In your sleep. Of old age.’

  *

  The train sliced through the heart of the Empire, like a flexing bullet, piercing the olive-clothed mountains, or lashing around their flanks like a whip. Drusus sat, eyes unfocused, lips slightly parted, and did not see Greece and Illyricum vanish behind him. In Delphi he had commandeered three of the best-appointed carriages; his guards and the few slaves he had brought with him were divided between the front and rear, but in the centre Drusus was alone, and he barely even noticed the windows turn black when the train slid beneath the Adriatic Sea. No part of him moved except the hand that lay on the oak table, which kept drumming and tapping insistently. Several times, and almost without his knowledge, his forefinger drew out the word ‘Yes’ on the table top, as if in a dry and intangible ink.

  Unmistakably she had said ‘Yes’.

  But I am not stupid, he thought grimly, as if giving an opponent fair warning. He remembered the stories: Nero, still young, being told, ‘Beware the seventy-third year’ and duly expecting a long successful life, when in fact … What else could Nero possibly have thought? It was Galba’s seventy-third year that was meant, but there had been nothing in what was said to let Nero deduce that. So perhaps the warning the Sibyl had given Drusus was equally pointless. But if there is any way I will find it, he promised himself. And at least Nero had been Emperor first. Please, let me, he thought passionately. I don’t care what happens in the end, I don’t care if I die, just please.

  But she had said he would not die.

  So he meditated on the words of the warning for a while, but at last, with a little frustrated sigh, he decided that it was impossible that he should solve it now; the main thing was only to remember it. She had said, unmistakably, ‘Emperor of Rome’. For the moment it was enough to try to think whether it could be true.

  There was Faustus’ will. But if Marcus were to die in a way that was beyond suspicion – that could not possibly be blamed on himself or any Roman – surely that would be different. But – it was so unjust – even an unassisted accident would be no good to him now. And anyway, he had never been able to think of any such unimpeachable way, not after what had happened before, not now so much was known about Leo’s and Clodia’s deaths.

  He blinked with another start of shocked inspiration – Nionia! When the war came, as it was bound to, and if Marcus died that way, surely no one would blame him for a thing like that! He saw himself standing haunted and noble amid the cracked pillars in the Forum, mourning his young cousin, promising to shoulder the burden, urging the people not to be afraid.

  Drusus chuckled a little, guiltily. It was funny because it was shocking, treacherous – to be summoning a rain of Nionian bombs over his home, even in his imagination. Rome in flames, the Golden House shattered! Really it was so terrible that he giggled at himself for wishing it. Oh, no, really I would do anything to keep Rome safe, he thought, although it occurred to him in the same moment – with a bright, indistinct vision of huge unprecedented domes and arches – what I could build, afterwards!

  He kept indulging himself furtively in the daydream and with each repetition, a warm swell of confidence burgeoned through him a little higher, as if he were becoming drunk. Involuntarily he added extra touches; in snatches he could hear the words he would say, the tone of voice he would say them in: ‘We will always remember, but we will also …’ And less clearly – or equally clearly, perhaps, but very quietly – he allowed little swift, creeping notions of encouraging this to happen. If someone were to speak, just once, to the Nionians – if a body, dead already, were placed in a bombed building? It did not seem to him that he was contemplating having Marcus killed, or ever had – it seemed that it would still all be the actions of others or of chance; he would have done nothing but place a slight pressure upon events, correcting them. At the moment he was merely trying to judge his own chances of becoming Emperor, counting the ways it could come. All this desolate, heartbroken time, when he could barely stagger from a day’s beginning to its end – suppose it had all been needless, suppose he’d been only too early.

  He blinked as the light reappeared outside the glass. He was in Italy, and nearly home. For the moment his head was completely empty of Tulliola and bliss flowed freely into the space. It grew so strong that even the secret ideas about Marcus were silenced. It was as if he had removed restrictive clothes that he’d been wearing for years, had stepped into clean water.

  And of course, Marcus need not die. Perhaps the fact that he was Regent now was a good thing, the best thing that could have happened. Faustus was still alive to see that he had made the wrong choice, and change his mind.

  That morning, before he went to the temple, Drusus had called the Palace and learned that his uncle wanted him to ‘help’ Marcus, somehow or other. At the time it had seemed insulting, a shabby consolation prize that made him want to shout his disgust into the longdictor. But now he thought, work! That’s what I’ve been needing all this time! For of course there was so much to do, the whole Empire to keep steady – the war – and Marcus was so young. He could not really be more than a figurehead anyway; everything of substance would have to be done for him. He would, perhaps, even be grateful.

  Drusus actually began to feel rather affectionate toward Marcus; the indulgent patience appropriate to a younger relative, a harmless person.

  He stepped out of the metal tube onto the platform at Vatican Field, whose mane of slim columns looked too slight and graceful to support the distant ceiling. The vast clarity of the largest magnetway station in the world was enough, already, to bring tears into his eyes. The Tiber was only yards ahead; in a moment he would see it.

  A car from his father’s house – his own house, really – picked him up, but Drusus did not feel like seeing his father yet; he wanted to get on with things. He told the driver to take him straight to the Golden House. A pleasant blast of cool air brushed his face as he got in, but he wouldn’t have minded the natural heat, not here.
He could stay in the Palace, but unless – until – it was his, he would rather have space of his own. He would have to order the place in Byzantium to be packed up. Suddenly he thought of the girl travelling to Rome with everything else, installed in his lodgings, and the image of her, the nearness of the thought of Tulliola swayed his happiness. The risk of someone interpreting the coded confession of Amaryllis’ face would be so much worse in Rome. It would be safest to get rid of her altogether – sell her, free her even. But though the craving for her was not there now, he couldn’t fool himself that it wouldn’t come back. No, he couldn’t give her up. She must never leave the house or the garden, he decided. She must never wear her hair up when he was not there.

  But as they drove over the Neronian Bridge, even though it was only an unattractive bundle of roads over the river, boiling with cars from the station, the feeling of joyous expectation settled over him again. He leant forward in his seat.

  And the Golden House raised its glass towers above the Circus Maximus. The Praetorians let him through the carved façade and he bounded up the steps into the blue space behind the high windows. He went to the outer office.

  ‘Tell my cousin I’m here – no, don’t,’ he said to the aides in the same breath. ‘Take me to where he is.’

  He found to his surprise that he was being led downstairs again. And once they were past the hectic administrative stir on the first floor, there was a strangeness in the passages that he couldn’t identify; a stillness. He walked into the banqueting hall, but the tables and couches had been pushed back against the walls, and the room was full of people. For a second Drusus did not recognise them – but they were the Palace slaves, all of them. There must be four hundred at least. That was what he had missed in the corridors; not so much the presence of the slaves, but the subconscious sense that they had just darted out of sight. Drusus drew back a little. He felt suddenly vulnerable, outnumbered. Of course there had to be hundreds of slaves in the Palace, but not all gathered in one place like this.

  Marcus stood at the far end of the room, still – as Drusus thought of it – dressed up as Emperor, with Makaria and Glycon and a few other people who did not interest him. Marcus noticed Drusus come in and managed a quick, minimal nod, without disrupting what he was saying.

  ‘You don’t have to decide now. The Palace works very well because of you, so I hope you’ll choose to stay. But if you don’t want to work as paid servants – if you’ve never wanted that, then from this minute you are free to leave, whether to look for other work, or for any family from whom you’ve been separated. We will give as much help as possible, whatever you decide.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Drusus ringingly from the back of the hall. ‘What are you doing?’

  Marcus frowned slightly, but did not look at Drusus again. He said straight into the crowd, ‘And I apologise to each of you. I’m sorry you’ve had no choice but to stay here so long.’

  In another mood, Drusus might have been outraged, but for now, although he was incredulous, he was amused too. It was so fantastic, so brazen as to be quite entertaining. At the same time he felt a little apprehensive, because what might the slaves do now that Marcus had said that, now they were all gathered in one place? They might riot. But even the danger seemed thrilling. He shook his head and beamed.

  The slaves did not erupt into joy, as Drusus expected; they stared, nonplussed and sceptical, as if they suspected it was a joke. Then painful exhilaration did break from a few, who began to clap and hug each other and weep, and the rest picked up the applause, but more dutifully and doubtfully, and they were interrupted by Drusus striding through them to the head of the room, forcing them to fall aside and leave a path, instinctively.

  ‘Drusus—’ began Marcus, prepared to defend what he had done, but Drusus was already speaking loudly.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ he said, laughing. ‘They’re not exactly yours to give away, are they? It’s a bit – it’s a bit sly! What do you think about this, Makaria?’

  Makaria shrugged uncomfortably and said, ‘I don’t know.’ She was looking at the slaves; not the hesitant or guarded ones, who were beginning to file out, but the others, the few ecstatic ones, who stood in small, breathless, oblivious circles. There was a woman in her thirties who no longer looked happy at all, but had buried her face in one palm, sobbing, and wrapped the other arm around her stomach, as if she were in pain there. A dark teenage girl soothed her uncertainly. Makaria muttered, ‘It’s going to be expensive, I know that. We’d better hope at least a tenth of them do leave.’

  ‘Never mind!’ exclaimed Drusus, and he enclosed Marcus in his arms.

  Una was sitting on one of the dining chairs, watching. For three years she had been waiting with a predator’s patience to see Drusus in person. Though he must have appeared in countless pictures, he was rarely the focus of the cameras which always sought out Faustus, or Leo and Clodia, or Marcus himself, so she had no strong sense of his face. But now she saw it, it was familiar. She was not prepared for how much he would look like Marcus.

  Yet he was taller than Marcus, and the straight outline of his face seemed a little clearer or firmer for being framed with dark hair and eyelashes. The smile pulled higher on one side, as it seemed to do for all the Novians – on the right, in Drusus’ case – and the lips were just as full, but Drusus’ mouth was a long, firmly moulded double ripple, moving to a kind of deep peak at its centre. The large, heavily lidded eyes were not grey-blue like Marcus’ but green, like Faustus’ and Makaria’s, and for the moment he was the more handsome, because his whole face was lit with ebullient well-being. He was slightly, becomingly flushed.

  ‘Everyone says you were very good on the longvision,’ continued Drusus. ‘I wish I’d seen it, I was travelling. But I’m here now. It’s so good to see you! It’s been too long, we shouldn’t have let that happen. But I wish it were in happier circumstances – such terrible news!’ But he said all this so fast that his expression had no time to shift into appropriate sorrow.

  Marcus patted his cousin’s back and said, ‘It’s good to see you too,’ but he was unpleasantly startled by the embrace. He could not remember seeing Drusus either so happy or so friendly towards him, and whether or not it was an act, he was taken aback by the cheerful force of it.

  Una was startled too, because Drusus seemed not in the least uncomfortable, and the weird good humour was not only unforced but seemingly bottomless. Drusus was brimming with it: she could see nothing else in him, not guilt, not even jealousy.

  Drusus noticed now that one of Marcus’ hangers-on was incongruously young and female, and looking at him. He asked merrily, ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is Una,’ said Marcus, stepping back from him a little.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Drusus lightly, looking at her once and briefly wondering why he had wasted curiosity on such a mousey, unattractive person. He felt mild scorn and pity for Marcus. If he had not known she had been a slave he would have looked at her quite differently, and yet this was not in the least because he considered slave-girls untouchable, of course not (there was Amaryllis) – quite the opposite. Because he knew the young woman had been a slave, he expected a higher standard of beauty from her. If Marcus was going to amuse himself with a girl like that, why choose such a pallid one when he could have got something so much better – anything he wanted?

  Involuntarily he drew the comparison: he saw Amaryllis’ fresh face, and winced.

  ‘Yes,’ echoed Una, smiling prettily. She looked away from him politely but went on concentrating, trying to probe after the flash of a face that had shot through the contentment, but it dived and vanished with bewildering speed before she could touch it, like a fish dodging the claws of an osprey.

  She had expected that it would be easier to tell if he was a murderer.

  POSSIBLE DEATHS

  Marcus walked away from the hall, feeling a slight, unexpected depression, as if he’d wanted something more from the occasion. Most of the slaves’
lives would probably not be much different now, he reflected. Really it was because of that he’d been able to do it. Still, Una murmured to him, ‘Thank you.’ They were already perfecting a way of talking to each other in short, whispered bursts that were not detectable even from quite nearby, because the movements of their faces were minimal, and they kept walking without turning to look at each other.

  ‘I wanted to do it. I couldn’t work here otherwise,’ he said. This was true, but what he had done was also a kind of present and apology to her and to Sulien nonetheless.

  ‘But when you are Emperor, then you will do it then?’ she’d insisted the night before, when he’d told them what Faustus had said.

  ‘Yes, I promise,’ he’d answered. ‘It was because of this my parents were killed, and Gemella – and us nearly – and I was stuck in that place in Tivoli. Of course I won’t give it up.’ He’d felt ashamed of mentioning the time in the Sanctuary alongside three deaths – he’d been there less than two days, but he still remembered it as far longer. The drug in his blood had stretched the time unrecognisably, and the horror had been total.

  He glanced at Una now, because he was aware of a small abstracted frown on her face, and though she’d said only two words, her voice sounded odd, too, faintly laboured, as if it required a deliberate allocation of effort. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  Her frown deepened thoughtfully and she took a breath to answer, but she let it out silently as Drusus pushed forward to walk beside him.

  ‘Was the journey horrible, Drusus?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Oh, hellish, but it doesn’t matter,’ said Drusus airily. ‘But you look awful, Marcus. It must be overwhelming. You didn’t sleep last night, did you?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Marcus admitted. He and Una had lain all night in each other’s arms, tense, eyes open.