Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  She shivered, and looked at the ground, a little more willing to be silent and unnoticed. She was uncertain when or where what she had seen had happened, or what had made Kato think of it with such keen attention; sharp as it had been, so much else remained hidden in the unknown language. And as she watched Kato leave, a eunuch came up and handed her a crumpled letter. Una was surprised at receiving a letter from anyone, but when she took it it fell unrolled in her hand.

  ‘It’s been opened,’ she said indignantly, holding it up and jabbing her finger at the broken seal.

  The eunuch’s face performed a perfunctory expression of smiling apology. Una looked at him with a chill, and could not protest any further. She smoothed out the letter and read, feeling a dart of disbelief, ‘Lal to her Una …’

  But the eunuch tapped gently at her shoulder again before she could read on. ‘Please you come. Your Caesar,’ he urged.

  Confused, Una glimpsed another line: ‘… I’ve never known for certain where you are, and it hasn’t been easy …’ before, with a conflicted sigh, she rolled the paper up again to follow.

  Marcus was waiting in a small, empty meeting chamber nearby, tense and agitated.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why didn’t you just come in and get me?’

  He moved to her quickly, his hands on her shoulders, spilling the words out in a hurried mess, racing the truth across the little distance between them. He could see her face changing and hardening, the reaction just perceptibly ahead of what he said to her.

  When he had finished, she did not move or speak, and though her eyes had not left his face she no longer seemed to be looking at him. She was not aware of the grim, sour smile that had appeared on her face. She said nothing because it was not his fault that she felt like doing something brutal, hooligan-like, the kind of thing a thuggish lowlife off the streets should be relied on to do. She wanted to steal something without understanding its value, she wanted to vandalise something. Within the long expensive dress she felt rough-edged and snide and grimy.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, what have you got to be sorry about?’ Una snarled irritably, so that Marcus realised with a jolt just how deceptively innocent and delicate money and freedom had made her look, how a jagged surface in her voice must after all have been softened and worn smooth, for both the word and the sudden abrasive rasp with which it was spoken sounded unreasonably shocking coming from her lips. Una felt the incongruity herself, saw it in him, reflected back at her, and it gave her a small tingle of bitter comfort. She withdrew again into hard, staring silence.

  Marcus urged, ‘Say something.’

  Una gave a harassed sigh, gathered herself competently and said, ‘I think Lord Kato is building some kind of new weapon. I think he used it on a forest on some island somewhere – I don’t know. I can’t understand, but, well, I’ve told you now.’

  ‘Una,’ said Marcus, though storing the information away for later.

  She looked at him properly at last and said flatly, sadly, ‘We knew something like this would happen in the end.’

  Marcus gave a little cry of exasperated misery. ‘No. No. Why do you have to say that? I won’t do it. Under any circumstances. You know I won’t.’

  ‘That’s very sweet,’ said Una, the involuntary jeering note returning to her voice. ‘Shame it doesn’t sound like it’s up to you.’

  ‘It is up to me, I can do anything I want,’ retorted Marcus dangerously. Somehow this silenced Una more effectively than he had meant or expected; she looked down with a kind of flinch that irritated him and he added unnecessarily, ‘I wish I didn’t have to tell you every little thing, because this isn’t even going to matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so much to put up with,’ taunted Una, wanly. She sank into one of the chairs against the table, stiffly, and laid her cheek on its surface.

  ‘Oh, you are! I just love you, I don’t know why.’

  But the hard, scathing expression had gone and she looked simply beaten and wretched. She muttered, ‘No, nor do I.’

  Marcus breathed out, and went and enfolded her silently, hanging over her shoulders like a heavy garment. ‘You must,’ he told her softly at last. ‘You must know better than to believe that.’

  She whispered desolately, ‘I’m just not very nice. I love you. I’m – horrible to you, half the time.’ She’d put up her hands to hold his arms in place where they crossed around her.

  ‘No. When?’ He didn’t move. ‘Listen now. It doesn’t matter what they want from me. They can’t have it. No one will make me marry anyone else.’

  ‘No, please don’t. You’re not to,’ Una said, hiding her face against him.

  Later, when they were both a little calmer, she remembered the letter, which was crushed to a shred in her fist. She did her best to uncrease it and showed it to him. ‘Look at this, can you believe it?’

  Lal to her Una,

  I always start by writing the same thing – by counting the letters I’ve sent to you since we came here, and telling you that I wanted you to know that we are safe. Well, this is the sixth letter, and it’s very likely you’ll never get this one either. I’ve never known for certain where you are, and it hasn’t been easy to send anything safely. Even if the Sinoan authorities aren’t interested in our presence here, there has always been the possibility that the Romans would have demanded our extradition if they knew where to find us. But now Marcus is in Sina. Perhaps there’s a chance this one will reach you.

  I don’t know that you’re with him. It’s been three years. You said you were interested only in what he could do, as Emperor. But I remember how horrified you were when he left Holzarta. And we know that you must have found him, for of course we heard the news that Marcus had been named as Caesar. And later we heard rumours about something that happened in a sanctuary for lunatics, and about two slaves.

  Only two, though.

  But Marcus must at least know where you’re living now. He would make sure you get this. I can’t believe that he is practically Emperor, so young, and I used to know him! Of course that was good news for us. We’ve begun talking about coming back to the Empire. My father thinks he should start up another refuge, somewhere like Holzarta. But it would take a few years to build a network of people we could trust, and Marcus must be so close to shutting down the slave trade anyway – I almost think it’s not worth it. We could settle in Rome, maybe.

  You probably know we had to evacuate the camp. There were meeting points in the mountains, mostly on the Spanish side, but we couldn’t risk gathering into a single group again, so there are many people from that time that I’ve never seen since. Of those we travelled with, some decided that with the identity papers I’d made, they’d be safe enough staying in the Empire. Helena and Marinus and their children didn’t go any further than Spain – to Caesaraugusta, I think. The last I heard, Tiro was in Lepcis Magna. But some of us continued to Jiangning, where we’ve been ever since.

  We came because we knew that over the years, many of the slaves we’d sent from the camps had made homes here. Some of them still teach Latin – there’s always a demand for that – others have set up shops selling Roman clothes and food – that kind of thing. They import some of their goods illegally from Rome, which is how we get most of our news of the Empire. So, the people here were already used to Romans, or whatever we should rightly call ourselves, having no real citizenship and belonging nowhere. They even call these streets around Black Clothes Lane ‘Rome’ now. So, there, I live in Rome, I have my wish, in an annoying way. I do like Jiangning. When we came through the north we couldn’t move without being stared at. Here it’s easier.

  But my father isn’t happy here. Part of it is the language. He can get by, but he can’t really have a conversation with anyone from outside these few lanes. He works in the shop of one of our friends, and he hates it. He and Ziye call themselves husband and wife now, although they have never actually married, and even if in general the Sinoans
in Jiangning aren’t surprised to see us around, they still stare at the two of them. Of course Ziye would draw attention anywhere, and she doesn’t look like other Sinoan women. She hasn’t grown her hair; she doesn’t hide the scars from the arena on her face, any more now than back in the Pyrenees when you knew her. People find her shocking. And the fact that she lives with a Persian man only makes it worse. She seems indifferent to all this, most of the time, but my father certainly isn’t. And even Ziye says sometimes, ‘I always knew I’d never really be able to go home.’

  I told you how I was giving a few Latin lessons in the last letter. I’m not a good teacher, to be honest, I don’t think Liuyin learned very much from me. He failed his Imperial Examination, but that was always kind of a foregone conclusion. He didn’t want to be an official anyway. I told you about Liuyin – the official’s son, the artist, he said he was in love with me. Why am I reminding you as if you already know? I wish you did already know, that’s all. Well, it was fine for a while, but his parents found out and of course I am the wrong class and the wrong … everything. Liuyin made a great tragedy out of obeying them and giving me up. But we still meet sometimes, near the Lady Without Sorrows lake, and he expects us both to be as starcrossed and heartbroken as lovers in an opera, and I find that I can’t be bothered. And you would think, from the way he’s growing to resent this, that I was the one to have finished with him.

  If you do live in Rome now, I wonder what you think of it? You used to feel, I think, rather as Dama did, that it was wicked. Yet you wouldn’t want to go back to London. That’s part of the reason I’m writing to you now, why I wish so much I could talk to you; I think you must feel as I have in every place I can remember, only as if I’m staying here, not as if I live here, not that this is my home. I should miss Aspadana, and Persia, but it’s been eight years now, and my mother died there. So instead I still fix Rome as the place I want to be, even though I’ve never seen it, because, at least as I imagine it, it contains … everything. Nothing about me could possibly be strange or out of place if I were there.

  As for Dama. Of course I’ve been asking you the same question for three years and each time we had to give up hoping for an answer. Do you know where he is? Nothing we heard about what happened in Rome sounded as if it included him. We don’t talk about him any more. My father and I used to pray that he was safe. After about a year we stopped, at least, I did. Lately one of our friends out here died, a woman called Servilia – you never met her. The evening after the funeral, I heard my father saying a prayer – for her, and then he added Dama’s name, as if Dama were dead too.

  And Ziye told me afterwards that it wasn’t the first time. I would never have thought of doing that – how can the dead need our help? But I realised that I had come to think the same thing. I remember Dama when he left – so fierce, as if this was the last thing he’d ever do. But then, he never did anything without giving himself over to it, like that, so maybe that memory doesn’t mean as much as it seems to me now. I hope I’m wrong. I wish my father knew, because Dama was almost like his son. At least, he always felt, and always will feel, responsible for him. I’m sorry if this is painful to read.

  I nearly went with you. If I had, my father would never have left the camp, no matter how bad the danger. So I can’t regret that I stayed behind. But I wish I really knew what had happened to all of you, and that so much time hadn’t passed without my seeing you.

  I think of you often.

  Affectionate, and at times disarmingly astute as this letter was, both Marcus and Una were subtly wounded by it, reading it just then.

  ‘You said that, did you?’ Marcus accused Una lightly, indicating the lines about her years-old claim of indifference to him.

  ‘Oh … something like that. I suppose that’s what I thought, though I don’t remember actually saying it. You know how it was.’

  ‘Poor Sulien. He might have hoped he’d at least get a mention.’

  ‘Oh, that’s on purpose,’ scoffed Una. ‘Look how she brings up this other person. Sulien should be pleased. If she wasn’t thinking about him, she’d say “I hope your brother is well”, or something. She can’t even write his name without feeling like it looks obvious.’

  And for that reason Una was a little sceptical of her own apparent precedence in the other girl’s thoughts, but still she was startled and touched by how fondly Lal appeared to remember her. It made her ashamed that she had not been more faithful, over the years, in missing Lal as sharply as she had been prompted to now.

  ‘So, if she wrote pages about him it would show she’d forgotten he existed?’ said Marcus. They were both aware of exaggerating to ease the tension, pretending not to understand each other when really they did, constructing a rather laborious joke about male rationality and female intuition. They succumbed to strained, shuddering laughter, and pressed closer to one another.

  ‘What can I tell her about Dama?’ asked Una bleakly.

  Marcus hesitated, feeling, to his shame, slightly threatened by Dama, and Una’s complicated grief or guilt for him. ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ he told her quietly.

  Una saw Dama’s face, propped in a brittle electric ray of torchlight, against a thundery aura of black and red; on the rock walls behind him were the shadows in ancient paint of punished, fingerless hands. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘There was.’

  Dama stared back at her in the memory, so that she felt loaded with a nearly unbearable weight of ardent, blue-eyed focus; he was so painfully bright with – yes, with love, and also authority, a coiled density of will she had not encountered since. Una looked at Marcus to assure him that her sorrow now, like Lal’s stateless homesickness, did not include regret. At least, she loved Marcus, and there was no getting out of that now. But still, a rude, sneering element in her heckled dismally: ‘Dama was right; you should’ve stuck to your own kind.’ Because Dama had been of her kind, had he not? She had known, back then, that whatever the raw matter of her was, and whatever her life as a slave had made of it, it had been the same with him. And God knew no one could have been pushed between them, like this Nionian princess. And after all she did wish she could see him again, that they could have even just an hour together, talking.

  Marcus said nothing and she picked up the letter again. ‘Will they be all right?’ she asked, as if Dama hadn’t been mentioned. ‘She tells all this stuff about who they are and where they’re living, and someone opened this before they gave it to me.’

  ‘We’ll find them,’ he said. ‘I’ll get them to Rome, or wherever Delir wants to go. I owe them so much, and all I’ve done is cause them this. I even took that money to get back to Rome – I’ll make it up to them, I’ll give them a fortune.’

  But then, still in his arms, Una caught her breath without speaking, and lifted her head as if trying to distinguish the sound of thunder from the noise of a distant train. He felt her body growing rigid against his.

  ‘What?’ he asked her.

  She hardly knew how to answer; she was unwilling to understand. This was the dread that had lingered for so long, demanding so many obsessive little private rituals in order to manage it, while all the time she’d tried to persuade herself that it was silly and unnecessary, and what she was afraid of could not return to rational, concrete life. It was the knowledge of being tracked down, by a great mass of people, disciplined and intent, and marching closer.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she pleaded, not just an exclamation but, perhaps inspired by Lal’s letter, a real, miniature prayer. She started to her feet, saying, ‘Marcus, I think the army …’

  Her voice died in bewildered horror, and Marcus insisted, ‘What? ’

  As her sense of the approach grew worse she stammered, ‘I think they’ve come for you.’ Una gazed at him and thought that whatever was happening, escape would be impossible for him, not only physically but ritually, politically. So many shreds of chances that placing that ring on his finger had tidied away. There remained only the hope that she h
ad somehow misunderstood, or else the satisfaction of knowing the facts as fast as possible. She looked at him a second longer before she shot away from him, out of the dark hall into the light beyond.

  Marcus, following her already, heard her call out his name almost at once, a shocked cry of warning.

  Outside, it was her his eyes found first, almost before he understood that he was looking down into what seemed, the next second, an expanse of red-uniformed men. In reality, there were perhaps thirty or forty. And Una stood, boxed in among them. They did not touch her – not now, or not yet – but contained her nonetheless, and made her body look acutely frail between theirs. She did not look afraid for her own sake, but she was gazing at him with desperate hard intensity, as if she could transmit herself back to him across the soldiers between them.

  The only person whose eyes were not instantly fixed on him as he emerged through the door was Varius, whose face was, for the first few seconds, turned away, glaring at nothing, as if there were nothing here he could bear to see. He glanced up at Marcus at last and, oddly, smiled – a terse little greeting. Both he and Una looked as if they considered themselves somehow responsible.

  Mechanically, absurdly, returning Varius’ flinch of a smile, Marcus took a short step backwards, not so much backing away as keeping his balance, wishing he could at least think of something to say. He looked around at the glassy roofs of the Palace, anticipating the Nionians and Sinoans seeing this, and felt scorched with humiliation at being exposed as the charlatan or child he’d been all along.

  As if that mattered compared to the risk to the peace. And then – Una, Varius? He couldn’t construct an appropriate hierarchy of fear.

  The centurion at the head of the squadron announced calmly, ‘You are to return to Rome, sir.’

  ‘These are my uncle’s orders?’ asked Marcus, evenly enough, although he found he could not get much strength into his voice.