Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘You still believe it can be deployed effectively?’ asked the hidden Emperor.

  ‘I will send you the pictures, Your Majesty. We tested it on one of the Kazanshotou islands in the East Sea. It levelled a forest in less than a second – too fast even for our eyes to make sense of it.’

  ‘But only on one occasion out of ten, I think?’

  ‘It is true,’ admitted Kato.

  ‘And I believe the attempts to avoid war are … proceeding well?’

  ‘It is all very well to find a form of words everyone can interpret to their own tastes and then persuade themselves they are agreeing.’

  There was a pause, and then the Emperor said, sounding faintly amused, ‘So, we are finding such forms of words?’

  Kato detached himself carefully; not being able to see his interlocutor, it was hard to keep in mind how important it was to control his own face. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  ‘You may be right to be cautious, but still, you and the other lords have achieved more than many expected or hoped for. You should congratulate yourselves.’

  Kato bowed, expressionless. He was aware that there was a tentative jubilance growing among both the Romans and the Nionians. Sometimes after long sessions Kato saw dishevelled gangs of them, senators and daimyo, out in the courtyards, without their interpreters, trying frivolously to learn each other’s languages, and laughing shrilly together like overtired children. Kato’s regard for the Roman prince had increased somewhat, having seen how despite his youth and softness he had managed to jolt several meetings past what might have been hopeless sticking points. And Kato had an eye on their Lord Varius too, quieter and more meticulous, who seemed to thrive on the sleeplessness and tension, walking from one fraught hall to another, vanishing into the haggling over marriage laws or integration of the police, or slavery, before emerging to lay out a possible solution, as clever and fragile as a folded paper bird. Kato had begun to think some sort of treaty might be inevitable. But some differences lay too deep to be reconciled. The agreement would do no more than render the opening of the war more complicated, for which Kato was prepared. But increasingly he saw that while everyone wallowed in this illusory fellow-feeling, he would lose Tokogane. They would establish some bastard hybrid council, and it would not include him. And moribund though it would be, he might never get his land back after it. For Tokogane was his. He could admit as much in the privacy of his mind.

  And he pitied the Princess, abandoned in the chaos, as she would be.

  ‘What is it you would like from me, Lord Kato?’ enquired the Emperor, indulgently.

  Kato looked at the solid ground below his feet, not at the screen. ‘We cannot correct the weapon’s faults without further resources,’ he said quietly.

  There was again a short silence. ‘You are talking of course of many billion ryo.’

  ‘Yes, inevitably. But the work must be completed, Your Majesty; to spend less would be a false economy.’

  ‘We agreed to make no further preparations for war during the talks,’ remarked the Emperor.

  ‘We agreed only that there would be no movements of troops,’ said Kato. ‘We don’t know that they are not doing the same thing.’

  Kato heard the Emperor’s breath expelled grimly. ‘I wish you to do nothing to risk the success of these talks,’ he said, emphatically. ‘I wish you to continue whole-heartedly. And I think it is time to proceed as concerns my daughter, as well.’

  ‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ said Kato heavily.

  ‘And in the meantime, in Tokogane,’ went on the Emperor, calmly, ‘your philosophers will have the funds they need.’

  Kato lowered his face again, this time to keep it from showing an excess of delight.

  ‘I imagine they can resume, without you?’

  ‘Thanks to Your Majesty, they can now,’ said Kato.

  *

  ‘Don’t you find the city beautiful?’ asked Princess Noriko, stiltedly, in Latin. An opera, largely ignored by the audience, was yowling onstage in the Palace theatre and she had just met Marcus for the first time.

  Marcus agreed, of course. He was slightly bemused. Tadahito had entered the room a few minutes after him and headed for Marcus at once, saying cheerfully, ‘You must meet my sister.’ He led Marcus through the crowd and Varius, who, antisocially, was sitting alone and actually watching the opera while the other guests milled around him, looked up sharply as they passed him, approaching a group of Nionian women, whom Marcus had not seen since that glimpse of long coloured hair and wigs between the screens on the first day, and whose presence in the theatre he hadn’t noticed until now.

  All of them but one melted away as Tadahito, who had up until this moment seemed informal and relaxed, announced, in an oddly stately way, ‘The Princess Imperial, Noriko.’ And almost at once he too receded, leaving them together in a little lake of space, the shores of people just too distant to be reached, so they could not extricate themselves.

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘What have you been doing all this time?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know any of the princesses were here.’

  A blank, stricken look crossed her face and he realised that although her opening words in Latin had sounded close to perfect, it had been because she’d had time to construct something she knew how to say. He’d spoken too fast. He saw her processing what he’d said, before she mumbled something too hesitant and blurred to be understood, and then repeated more clearly, ‘There is only me.’

  Unlike the other women’s, her dress was very Roman, dark turquoise with a gold sash wound round the torso, the skirt calf-length where the others all flowed to the ground, the sleeves narrow. The differences were not so great, nor his eye for women’s clothes so sharp that he pinned this down at the time, although he had a vague feeling that there was something incongruous about her appearance. He knew he wanted to stare at the floor-skimming, green-tipped hair, even – guiltily – to touch it.

  ‘My brother wanted me to come,’ she explained in a murmur. And she blushed. He didn’t know why.

  ‘I always wished I had brothers or sisters,’ said Marcus, rather helplessly. It occurred to him to wonder how old she was – he’d been thinking of her as his own age, or Una’s, but no, she must be four or five years older, and yet still so shy. Perhaps it was only the language.

  There was another pause as she prepared the answer. ‘If you had, you may wish you are – you might wish you were an only child,’ she said laboriously, for the tenses were complicated, but she seemed pleased with her success once she had spoken, and relaxed slightly.

  ‘Your poor brother,’ said Marcus, teasing her.

  ‘Oh – no! I was thinking of childhood.’ There was a pause, and his eyes must after all have slid incredulously down the length of her hair, or flicked to that of one of the ladies-in-waiting beyond her, for her eyebrows lifted and suddenly she leant forward a little. ‘It is all real,’ she confided. ‘But, standing behind me, Lady Mizuki is wearing a wig.’

  She smiled naturally, even a little flirtatiously, for the first time, and Marcus felt another furtive sizzle of enjoyment at her beauty. ‘Then – what’s her hair like underneath?’

  ‘Well, not as she would wish it to be, of course,’ said Noriko. She laughed, but then, ashamed of being catty, lowered her eyes. ‘Would I look very bizarre in Rome?’ she asked, in a quieter voice.

  ‘No. Striking. Beautiful, as of course you would anywhere,’ said Marcus, with formulaic gallantry, although he meant it too.

  But she did not look up again, and once more the conversation stalled: she subsided into mystifying nervousness that fatally encumbered Marcus’ capacity to think of anything to say to her. And yet they remained stranded together, Marcus trying to support an increasingly dull and feeble conversation almost single-handedly. Then suddenly, Varius was at his side, saying urgently, ‘Caesar, there’s someone you need to speak to now. Forgive me, Princess.’

  Thankfully, his entry seemed to cause the empty
circle around Marcus and the Princess to collapse; the waiting women flowed in to receive Noriko, who gave Marcus a diffidently polite smile of farewell before turning back to them.

  ‘There isn’t anyone, is there?’ asked Marcus, following Varius to a safe distance.

  ‘I thought you needed an excuse,’ Varius muttered, glancing back over his shoulder.

  ‘Thanks. I didn’t make it too obvious, did I?’

  ‘No more than she did.’ Varius’ manner was odd: at once conspiratorial and evasive, distracted.

  ‘I did like her,’ said Marcus, feeling mildly defeated.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Varius, disappearing.

  *

  Noriko let out a sigh as her ladies surrounded her, safe for a while among her own people and language, but frustrated too. She wished she could have at least expressed herself more gracefully, that she could have been less pathetically timid with someone who was, after all, her junior. Still, the charge between them, brief and tenuous as it had been, would have pleased and reassured her, if she had not known about the Roman lady he was in love with.

  She was surrounded by curious chatter. ‘He was lost as soon as he began talking to you, Madam!’ cried Lady Sakura, exaggerating enthusiasm either to disguise actual distaste for Marcus Novius, or in a real attempt to buck Noriko’s spirits. ‘I could see it in his face. Poor creature, how could he help it?’

  ‘Without effort,’ replied Noriko, tersely. ‘I don’t think he is in need of your compassion.’

  ‘No, not if you will love him in return, Lady,’ said Mizuki, smiling, but with a trace too much mockery in her tone.

  ‘But he was very respectful,’ said Tomoe.

  ‘No, more than that, he could not take his eyes off you. If …’ Sakura lowered her voice, ‘he were to be your husband, you could be sure of his devotion.’

  ‘I would say he looked at me with no more attention than was friendly or polite in a first meeting.’

  ‘But what did you talk about with him?’ persisted Sakura.

  ‘We had a very pleasant conversation and I have nothing whatever to say about it,’ Noriko answered crossly.

  Dismayed they talked obediently of other things for a while. Later, when they had withdrawn a little from the party and were out on a verandah, Lord Kato approached her, his face full of sympathy. ‘You must be very anxious,’ he said gently.

  ‘Yes,’ she found she had said, despite herself.

  ‘I understand. If the marriage does go ahead, it will be a great ordeal for you of course, but I hope I can comfort you a little. I will not allow you be stranded among them in the event of war. I will make sure you are rescued: a secret escort can be ready to remove you from the country at all times. And I hope your time away from us will not be long.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Noriko, wanting to let out a wordless bark or roar of fury into his face.

  *

  Marcus did not see Varius again that night; he seemed to have left the party abruptly, without speaking to anyone. But the next morning, as Marcus left a meeting with Tadahito in one of the pavilions, Varius was there at the foot of the steps, waiting for him.

  Marcus looked down at him. ‘What happened to you last night?’

  ‘I had things to do,’ said Varius mildly.

  Marcus laughed, and headed down. ‘Parties are the best time to get serious work done.’

  Varius smiled, but didn’t speak, and he let out a short sigh as if something were difficult, and turned away, motioning for Marcus to follow.

  In Varius’ rooms, two uneven heaps of paper lay on a table, looking isolated and out of place. Otherwise, although the apartment was as luxurious as any, Varius seemed to have had no impact whatever on it in the weeks he’d been living there. It looked still uninhabited, blank for a guest that had not yet arrived.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Marcus.

  ‘Marcus, do you know why Princess Noriko is here?’

  Already Marcus was growing uneasy, and the wary gentleness with which Varius asked this made the feeling worse. He sat down, saying nothing.

  Varius seemed to subject his answer to some final check before he let it pass. ‘If Go-natoku could see his grandchildren as Roman Emperors it would be some compensation for whatever power he’s losing in Tokogane,’ he said. ‘And even now they’re not certain all of this isn’t some kind of trick to weaken them before a war. A marriage would be a declaration of good faith from us – from you.’

  Marcus sat immobile and speechless for a moment, and then slumped back in his seat feeling only, at first, so very stupid. ‘How do you know?’ he asked at last, dully. Much as he would have liked to, he didn’t doubt that Varius was right.

  ‘I convinced one of the Sinoan interpreters to stay close to the Princess’ group last night. He passed himself off as a waiter.’

  Marcus gave a snort of mingled incredulity and despair.

  ‘He was pretty happy to help. The Sinoans generally sympathise with us more than Nionia. He heard Lord Kato telling the princess he’d get her out of Rome if and when the war starts. The interpreter doesn’t speak much Latin, though, only Nionian, so it had to go through someone else before I could tell you. I thought you’d rather have certainty.’

  ‘Why – why did you …?’

  ‘I could have used some kind of listening device, but they’d have found it. I could probably even have asked, but the longer they can’t be sure we know, the more freedom we have. Besides, it was faster this way.’

  ‘No,’ murmured Marcus. ‘You already knew. You were just … proving it. You knew as soon as you saw her; it was the way they introduced us, wasn’t it? I should have worked that out – stupid—’

  Varius gave a dry, self-conscious laugh. ‘No. Wait until this happens to you another couple of times, you’ll get to know the signs too.’

  Marcus looked at him, startled by the implication, and laughed bleakly, as it occurred to him how little Varius usually told about his personal life, how little, perhaps, there was to tell.

  ‘There are only so many ways of dropping that particular hint,’ continued Varius, glancing away.

  Marcus pressed his face into his hands.

  ‘Look,’ said Varius, leaning forward. ‘They can’t offer her openly, it would degrade her and the whole Empire if they even appeared to run the risk of your turning her down. They want you to ask for her. So hinting is all they can do. It has to be like this – everything indirect and nothing acknowledged, so no one looks bad if it falls through. So they are well aware it might not happen.’

  ‘Of course it’s not going to happen!’ answered Marcus, almost shouting, launching onto his feet. Varius watched him in silence. Marcus paced around for a second or two in an aggressive, desperate ring. More quietly he said, pleading, ‘Surely, they wouldn’t stake everything else on this?’

  ‘No. If the treaty is too perfect to be thrown away, if they’re sure enough we really mean to hold by it.’

  Marcus asked, feeling that never since he’d taken the Imperial ring had he been so in need of help, ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Or nothing except work even harder. They can’t expect a response to something they haven’t said.’

  ‘They’ll … drop more hints.’

  ‘We’ll be very obtuse,’ said Varius.

  ‘But they won’t let us ignore it for ever. They can’t offer her, you said, but they can make sure someone lets it slip by accident.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Varius. ‘And they will. But it’s a test. By the time it comes to that, we’ll have to be sure you’ve already passed it.’

  Marcus sighed. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered. ‘Thank you for finding out.’

  He hated the idea of telling Una, and he knew he must do it immediately. There would be no chance of keeping it from her.

  *

  Una was not in the quarters she shared with Marcus. She had begun, as she had in the Golden House, to insert herself subtly into the meetings, listening. And yet it was ha
rder. Now she was watching Nionian and Roman delegates argue about slavery through their interpreter, and the urge to speak pressed her; the modest shroud of decorum she used to hide herself was growing stifling, heavier.

  In their long robes, the eunuchs glided about, as unobtrusively as herself, tall, with smooth deceptive faces, unctuous and fawning, and all so consumed with familiar rage that it startled her when other people did not flinch at their approach or look, that anyone could think they were not conscious of how they were irreparably mutilated as well as enslaved. Una remembered the refugees in Holzarta. With Delir’s money, with Lal’s forged travel papers, Sina had meant freedom for some of them. But really what she’d most feared when she’d first climbed out of a London window, bruised and raging and hating Romans, was true: there was no place outside that offered more than a private escape, nowhere that was simply free and safe and good.

  The forceful, handsome Nionian lord from Tokogane moved swiftly through the room without seeing her. He placed a hand on the arm of an agitated official and spoke to him briefly before leaving again, but to Una he seemed like a walking firework, scattering generous sparks of satisfaction and excitement as he passed. And when she looked at him, she saw – almost with her actual eyes, like the floating auras of a migraine, a moment dwelled on with eager, meditative gladness, and repeated over and over again:

  There was the lower slope of a cone-shaped mountain, a green volcano, rising above a blue bay. And no sound of an explosion, no change in the glittering light; but the long creaking screech of the shattering trees, and the leaves puffing into the air like dust at a breath, as something like a dry, pulsing flood pounded over the ground and up the mountainside, stripping it bare. Sitting there in the Sinoan hall, Una seemed almost to feel a faint impact in her own flesh, such as a ghost might feel.