As she began to walk away towards the aviary door, an inexplicable dread and urgency took hold of him, and an abrupt, commanding voice spoke in his mind saying fiercely: Stop her. You can do it easily. Don’t let her get out.
But it made no sense, so he did nothing.
Una walked out of the aviary at a relaxed pace, barely able to wait to get out of sight so she could move faster. The relief at leaving Drusus behind was wonderful, the air felt clean again. But once she was out in the open, passing the fountains, the golden heat stretched the distance back to the Palace, weighed down her limbs and trapped pain in her head. She broke finally into a laboured run, across the grass of the sunken lawn, kept green and flawless even under this sun. Drusus was not following, why should he? She wasn’t sure how she could interrupt the meeting to tell Marcus, but she would do it at any cost; beyond all doubt Drusus was a threat to Marcus, and even after three years she felt it could not be delayed a second.
She ran up the steps to the pavilion, between the screens towards the table. She saw the couches were bare, the servants were clearing the dishes away, carrying the cushions inside. She stood and looked at this almost in outrage. Then – yes, she did understand what had happened. After the meeting Marcus had to go to the Forum to give a speech about the peace talks. She caught the eye of the boy who’d taken Drusus’ glass. She said, lamely, angrily, ‘I didn’t think I’d been so long.’
*
Drusus lay back on the bench, sunbathing, trying to let the pain seep from his mind now she was gone. But it would not; too much of the malevolent haze associated with her remained in the air. He got up and left the aviary, glad to realise that already Una was out of sight. He wandered across the grass, but he could not get away from it – he was drifting as if against his will towards the fountains, among rose bushes where he’d first kissed Tulliola. He gave in and went and looked at the same stones and flowers, dipped his hands in the water to cool them.
Still he had the sense that he’d let something go terribly wrong – worse, that he was allowing it now, that there might just still be time to save himself, but that he didn’t know how.
He saw a woman heading aimlessly across the garden and feared for a moment that it was Una coming back, and thought of hiding. But it was Makaria, so he raised a hand in greeting and she swerved towards him. She was dressed – unusually for her – in a floor-length dress, not the height of fashion; there was a veil hanging back from brooches in her short stiff hair. She looked uncomfortable and hot.
‘You weren’t at the meeting,’ said Drusus.
Makaria dropped wearily onto the seat at the edge of the fountain with a little groan. ‘I’ve been in Veii. Showing the Novians care.’
‘Oh, Jove. How was that?’
‘Looking at rubble and sitting at bedsides? Boring and upsetting in equal measure. Someone had to do it, though.’
Drusus nodded.
Makaria peered at him curiously and said, ‘Are you all right? You look pale.’
‘I feel it,’ he muttered.
‘Are you ill?’
‘No. Oh, it’s just – it’s just Marcus.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, her face tightening slightly in disapproval.
He sighed. He did not want to hear her defending Marcus’ plans, he’d had enough of that. ‘And that girl.’
‘Una?’
‘She followed me out and wouldn’t go away.’
Makaria made a vaguely sympathetic, tutting sound.
Drusus hesitated, and confessed suddenly, ‘You know, it’s stupid. But she – she made me feel … I can’t seem to shake it off. Do you know what I mean at all? Have you ever found her … unsettling?’
Makaria gave a short laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, very. Well, I owe her a lot. But, to be honest, yes. After all she is …’
‘What?’
Makaria seemed reluctant to answer. ‘A witch, I was going to say,’ she admitted at last.
A premonitory alarm inserted taut claws into Drusus’ flesh. ‘A witch?’
Makaria’s face had grown tense, her mouth contracted. There was a pause, during which Drusus felt a fury of impatience, before she went on. ‘You know, don’t you, that Tullia tried to blame everything on me?’
So many mentions of his love’s name in such a short space of time, it frightened him as well as hurting him. He made himself nod. ‘The sweets … ’
‘Yes. I got dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to find that out. That even Daddy thought …’ She broke off. Drusus, bawling at her in his mind to spit it out, placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. It worked, Makaria finished: ‘And she – Una was there. She was there with Marcus. She knew I was telling the truth. She knew Tullia was lying. And it seems she can do that – know what people are thinking. Someone should have found her and apprenticed her at Delphi or Cumae, or done something with her. Because I don’t know how Marcus can stand it, really.’
Drusus felt the ground tip sideways, his blood sliding with it, sheets of boiling ice hitting his skin. It did not occur to him to doubt what Makaria said, or ask himself if there could be any other explanation for what Una had known. Makaria had mentioned the Oracles, and Drusus thought of the Sibyl and thought of Una, and stark as the physical differences between them were, there seemed something about them that was the same; a remote secretive pride. He felt certain it was true. Reeling, he made himself skim through the innocuously worded conversation with Una, and saw that, yes, it was exactly as bad as he felt it to be. His lips felt numb, as if he were dying of cold, it took such an effort even to whisper, ‘I see. That explains it.’
‘What is it?’
Drusus just managed to lift his hand, clasping his head as if it ached. ‘The heat. I do feel ill.’
He was telling the truth. He could scarcely breathe, scarcely keep his balance. He stammered some further excuses about getting into the shade. He lurched across the alien ground towards the Palace, tripped as he reached the steps, bruising his hands as he had to put them down to save himself, groaning, ‘Oh please, oh no …’
Why was he going back towards the Golden House? There was no refuge, unless he could get out of his own body. Oh, somebody help me, his desperate self keened. Oh, gods above, please, someone help.
And even before the pavilion came into full sight, he remembered Marcus’ speech in the Forum. Una might not have reached him. Surely she could not have done. There was still some time before this disaster took full effect. And the same calm, decisive voice that had tried to help him in the aviary said to him, booming across the gardens so loudly that the earth seemed to shake: No half-measures. No one else to help you. Find her now. Do it.
Only once in his life had he killed with his own hands. The memory, which Una had already scraped raw, loosed tears from his eyes. And to do it again now – so unprepared, with so little warning – ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ he whimpered pitifully to himself, as his body shook. He didn’t know where she was, he had no weapon, the Palace was full of people. Even if he could do it, how could he keep it distant from himself – how could he be safe once it was done?
And it occurred to him then that it didn’t matter. If he couldn’t kill her, he was finished anyway, so to do it and fail to make it look like an accident or someone else’s fault could make things no worse. He would at least have a chance.
The voice continued. It was his own, he realised now, but sounding older and firmer, and it spoke to him like a good father, stern and dispassionate, but on his side. And now it told him the crucial, glaring fact: that it was because of Una that he could never see his lover again. That was what Makaria’s uneasy gratitude to the girl had meant. She had pointed the finger, she had killed Tulliola as surely as if she had been the one to hold the knife. To think of Una, sitting there so primly, and a murderer …! It was amazing that he could have gone this many seconds without seeing it.
Drusus gasped, shakily, at the blurred grass. ‘Oh,’ he said softly, no longer moaning. ‘Oh.’ He took a slow, thirst
y draught of the warm air, and exhaled, blowing his panic and misery away into the roses. If the situation had not been so appalling he knew he would even have felt a load lift. With unusual clarity, he remembered the morning before he’d seen Tulliola for the last time, in his hand, the small weight of the jewelled hairpin that he’d kept so long. He remembered scraping away little shavings of gold from its point, knowing he had to do it. And that was truer even than he’d known at the time. He could see his anguish as he sharpened the pin, and even the act that had followed, as if Una had been in each room, a poison in the air.
Drusus raised his head to look up at the stark height of the Palace wall – a great gold precipice. He walked steadily towards it, under the shade of the awning. The muscles of his stomach twisted in anxious nausea. How could he even get close to her – wouldn’t she know at once what he meant to do to her? But he strode rapidly on, as if he knew how he could overcome this. He knew that he would know, because he’d never felt this before – this quiet, resigned, chiselled fury. No, not even with Marcus, even though sometimes his cousin’s very existence seemed an unbearable check to his own. He had never hated anyone until now.
*
Una slunk quickly through the Palace, her shoulders raised as though she was trying to avoid detection, like a trespasser. Her alarm was more than she could reason away. Not just at the delay, but at how near Drusus still was. She wondered if, in default of Marcus, she should try to explain to Faustus what she knew. But from what she knew of him and his current state, she didn’t think it would be easy to reach him in the first place, or that persuading him would save any time. And she knew Drusus had tried repeatedly to visit the Emperor; what if he tried again? She could not stand another encounter with him – the thought made the revulsion itch and shiver across her skin again. And the fear, she thought severely to herself. Even if it wasn’t rational, she might as well call it by its name.
She went into Marcus’ rooms – she didn’t think of them as being in any way hers – and locked the door, thinking, there, now control yourself. She sat down stiffly on a chair, but at once found herself on her feet again, stalking restlessly back and forth. Passing the mirror she saw her face looking hard and agitated, flushed by the heat, and she distracted herself briefly by washing her face and repairing her make-up. And it was now that she found the Imperial ring, looking small and unimportant, lying by a basin of Sinoan porcelain. She looked at it blankly. Marcus must have taken it off to wash his hands.
She turned on the longvision to see his face, talking about Bianjing and Cynoto, to reassure herself that he was still alive. Drusus could have done nothing to hurt him in the past ten minutes. She was aware of servants passing from time to time a few rooms away; still, the room felt isolated. There was no reason to think she needed any defences at all, and yet the lock on the door did not seem enough. She didn’t like the fact that anyone looking for her would come here first. She wanted to be out of the Palace altogether.
She went into the next room and lifted the longdictor circlet to talk to the stewards’ office in one of the outer buildings of the Palace. ‘I need to go and meet Caesar when his speech is finished. Can you send a car to the Septizonium?’ she said uncomfortably, knowing that she would not be refused, but feeling ashamed of asking, compromised. She would have preferred to simply vanish out of the Palace and into the anonymity she’d felt in the Veii street, but it did not work like that. Arriving in a Palace car, she could be pretty sure of getting through to Marcus quickly.
Still, she felt easier for knowing what to do, and she sprang to her feet with a sudden burst of unnecessary energy. But she stood for a second more, as if she had forgotten something, and then, before unlocking the door and flinging it open, she seized the gold ring, and plunged it into the pocket of her dress, gripping it there. She would give it back to Marcus when she reached him. In the meantime, it could act as an amulet, a little shield.
*
On instinct, Drusus raced towards Marcus’ apartments, but that wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough – he needed something to use against her. But he had something already, she’d given it to him herself even as she was working to trap him, priding herself for it, the little bitch. He ran into a guest room where there was a longdictor hanging in a niche on the wall, snatched up the circlet and pressed it fiercely onto his head as if it were a helmet, as if he were arming himself. He entered the code for the palace’s longdictor exchange, tightened his throat, preparing to make his voice a little softer, to alter its rhythm, and said, ‘I’m calling from the Transtiberine Slave Clinic. It’s very important. I need to speak to Una the freedwoman, you know who I mean? It concerns her brother.’
The young slave – no, not a slave now, Drusus kept forgetting – answered, ‘Leave your details and I can see that your message reaches her in due course.’
A little spurt of inspiration rose through Drusus. He did know something about the clinic; he’d had his men watch Sulien for a good week, before Veii. ‘I understand you have procedures to go through, but she knows me, my name’s Aulus. I work with her brother, Sulien. I’m happy to wait while she confirms who I am. But this is very serious. I … I can’t believe I have to do this.’ He said the last words – which after all, were true – in a shaken mutter, as if to himself; and deliberately he let out an unsteady, audible breath. It was easy; he wanted to sound as if he’d had a shock, and he had.
‘Well, I’ll see what I can do, sir.’
There was silence while, in the exchange office, the young man tried the longdictor in Marcus’ rooms, and then, when that failed, someone called across the room to him to say that Caesar’s girl had asked for a car a few minutes before, and must be on her way to the front gates.
Drusus only knew that the voice came back and said, ‘She’s not in the Imperial suite. But I might be able to find her,’ which was exactly what he had hoped for.
‘Oh – good, thank you. Yes, please hurry,’ said Drusus, in continuing, earnest distress. ‘Wait. What are you going to do? Where is she going to take the longdictor? Does she have a private room?’ He was pretty certain she did not. Marcus wouldn’t have to hoard her away furtively, as he himself had to with Amaryllis.
‘No, not exactly,’ the voice said. ‘She’ll speak to you from Caesar’s apartments, or the gatehouse, I suppose, if it’s that urgent.’
‘Oh. No, no. You don’t understand. Look – don’t repeat any of this to her, because it’s better if I tell her everything – but it is very bad news.’ He made a snagging, agitated little sound, nearly a sob. ‘I don’t even know how I’m going to tell her, but I want to try and make this easier for her. That’s the least I can do. You have to help me. If people are going to be running in and out – even Caesar himself …’
‘He’s addressing the Forum.’
‘Even so.’ He paused, the next part was difficult to phrase – if he was unlucky, or if he was not careful, he’d get only a promise of compliance and no information. ‘She really shouldn’t hear this somewhere she has to worry about the slaves eavesdropping. I mean the servants. It should be somewhere private. Is there somewhere like that?’
‘Yes,’ the young man answered. His voice was beginning to catch some of the unhappiness in Drusus’. ‘That should be possible. Except …’
‘What?’
‘If it’s bad, shouldn’t someone be with her? At least, nearby?’
‘No,’ said Drusus positively. ‘I can tell you from personal experience.’ His voice shook with intensity, a little internal scoff at what nonsense this was vanishing out of his memory as he spoke, so that it almost seemed true.
‘All right, I’m sorry,’ said the operator dejectedly.
‘Then where?’ asked Drusus, softly, as if it were just a reasonable question, as if the answer could not fairly be kept from someone who was plainly distraught. There were two or three places he was hoping for above all, another few that would be riskier, but still possible.
The man sighed. ‘
Well, I was thinking, we have some older offices …’
‘An office?’ said Drusus doubtfully.
‘They’re not really used as offices any more. It’s more like a little function room. It’s quite … peaceful, anyway.’
Drusus let his eyes close, feeling a moment of rest. He knew the Golden House. Since Faustus had built the glazed oval towers that framed the Palace, the old rooms on the top floor, where the lesser Palace officials had once been packed, had ceased to have much use. They might have been given over to slave quarters, except that they had access to the Palace roof, where Faustus had meant to make a garden around the blue dome. But the garden had never appeared, and the old offices had been reduced to a number of almost untouched reception rooms, decorated with the excess of treasures and gifts from the rest of the Palace, where occasionally a visiting governor might still hold a meeting or take a guest up the stairs to look down on the city. Not many of them would still have working longdictors.
‘Fine,’ he said shakily. ‘Thank you. When she’s had some time, I’m sure she’ll be grateful for what you’ve done for her. I am, anyway. I’ll be waiting to talk to her as soon as she’s ready.’
‘How can she reach you?’
‘It’s all right. She knows the code. Thank you again,’ said Drusus. And he turned off the longdictor, dragged off the headset and ran. He had only a few minutes to find and prepare the room.
*
Una walked towards the high barricade of the Septizonium as fast as the swaddling heat would allow her. Already she felt the relief of leaving Drusus behind, that she was out of his reach.
But, like a memory of a mistake reluctantly surfacing, she began to realise someone was coming after her – not Drusus, nor anyone she knew – but someone who knew that, against his will, he was going to harm her.
She turned round and stood waiting stiffly, as a boy about her own age approached. He said, ‘Madam,’ and bobbed a bow which made Una recoil a little in embarrassed, apprehensive dismay.
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