Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Her shoulders dropped. ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ echoed Dama again. And the luminous, sad authority that had possessed him faded away, and left him looking young and frail, innocent. ‘That’s why I would still have come and asked you to help, even if Sulien or Varius had died that day, and I had to tell you why. Even if you couldn’t forgive me, it doesn’t matter. The things you could do, the people that you could help – you couldn’t just leave them.’ He smiled, very tentatively, blinking away the urgent tears that remained in his eyes. ‘So, are you still with us?’

  He held out his worse, half-ruined hand – the right – and she exhaled, and took it. She said, ‘Yes.’

  But as Dama smiled again, more broadly, she broke away, saying, ‘But I want to talk to him – I have to talk to Sulien.’

  There was a pause before Dama answered, and he seemed to shift a little, warily. ‘All right,’ he said reasonably. ‘Of course. But I’d rather you didn’t mention exactly where we are.’

  Una gave a short laugh. ‘Except that we’re somewhere north of Rome, I don’t know where we are. I fell asleep.’

  ‘And just tell him you’re with me, for now. Don’t say yet what this place is. It’s not that I don’t trust him, but … you know. It’s not something to discuss over the longdictor.’

  ‘I understand.’

  He pushed the longdictor across to her and stood back, but did not leave the room.

  Sulien answered instantly. She had barely said a word to identify herself before he demanded, sounding half-hysterical, ‘Where are you? Where have you been? We’ve been calling your flat since last night.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, taken aback. ‘I’m all right. Listen – I’m with Dama.’ There was flat, breathless silence, which she might have expected, but it went on until, thinking he might not have taken it in, she repeated, ‘I’m with Dama, he’s alive.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sulien, his voice low, grim. ‘Come back. Come back now.’

  ‘What? How did you know—?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re getting mixed up in.’

  ‘He’s told me,’ said Una, baffled and unnerved that he could know anything of this.

  ‘Oh yes? Did he tell you what he wants? What it’s all for? What about Veii?’ Una had no time to respond. ‘And Kato? He wants a war, Una. He’s trying to bring down everything you and Marcus worked for. Unless you’ve decided you want that too, he’s dangerous. Get away from him.’

  Involuntarily Una turned her face towards Dama, who had opened the door but stopped there, watching her. Their eyes met for an instant, then she looked away sharply, and said into the longdictor, ‘No – it’s not like that. That can’t be true.’

  ‘Una,’ cried Sulien, desperately. ‘Who do you trust more, him or me?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ scoffed Una, uneasily. But the question hung, frantic in the longdictor wires, until she said impatiently, ‘You. Of course, you.’

  ‘Then listen to me and get out of there. I’ll tell you everything when I see you.’ And then his voice changed. ‘Is he there now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can he hear me?’

  ‘No.’

  Sulien was silent again, and Una felt she could hear him thinking, as she was thinking herself, what she had said, what Dama must have heard. Finally he asked carefully, ‘Can you tell me where you are?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘All right. Then just try and seem normal and get away. Please.’ He added, like an additional warning, ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you,’ she repeated, like a countersign.

  Slowly, she laid the circlet down. And then she had to turn round again and face Dama, who asked quietly, ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh,’ Una said. ‘Nothing. He’s just worried about me, after yesterday. He called the flat and I wasn’t there; he thought something might have happened. He wants to see me.’

  Dama blinked irritably, disregarding this. ‘You said “that can’t be true”. What did he tell you that couldn’t be true?’

  Come on, make something up, Una urged herself. She was good at this, good at keeping her face under control. But with him staring at her, she found she could think of nothing, and she heard herself uttering a feeble, wordless stutter that nearly panicked her. At last, she managed. ‘He said, he had a dream this would happen. Last night he dreamed you’d come back.’

  She knew the lie sounded as laboured as it was. Again, Dama’s face made a rejecting little twitch. He came closer to her, his voice still quiet. ‘And you said, “how did you know?” And you weren’t frightened before you spoke to him. What are you frightened of now?’

  Una made herself smile, which she knew she could do convincingly. ‘I’m just … sorry I worried my brother. That’s all.’

  Dama sighed. ‘Una,’ he said softly, reproaching her.

  They stared at each other, a silent conflict thickening the air between them, a clash of pleas not to be disappointed. She had no advantage over him; she felt they were, equally, trying to read each other’s thoughts, equally resisting. But at last, trapped, she whispered, ‘You can’t really be trying to start a war, can you, Dama?’

  In a strange way, Dama seemed to relax, drawing in a long, resigned breath and letting it out, as though, little as he had wanted this, it had happened now and he would face it. Almost lightly, he asked, ‘Why not?’

  Una almost laughed at him with incredulity and horror.

  ‘Why is it so unthinkable?’ he persisted.

  ‘Let me out,’ said Una, and started towards the door. She anticipated him moving to obstruct her before it happened, but still could not quite believe it would come to that, and Dama himself seemed to flinch at what he was doing. His face, as he stepped quickly between her and the door, was wide-eyed, tender with regret.

  It was he who said, ‘Oh, please don’t.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Una helplessly, not trying to push past him, not yet. ‘Why would you?’

  ‘Because there’s nowhere to go,’ Dama answered her. ‘Nowhere in the whole world, the way it is. We get free – we set other people free. But it’s not real, it’s not true. Even if we find some safe little hole to hide in and scrape a little life together, we’re still slaves. The Roman Empire’s still smeared over half the world, and we’re still trapped in it, breathing in its dirt. And there’s nowhere outside that’s any better; I know that now. I used to imagine this perfect place that must be out there, even if I couldn’t get to it. But it’s not there; not yet. You’ve been to Sina – so have I. And you must know something about Nionia. There’s just as much tyranny and corruption and evil in all of them. They’re diseases on the Earth. It all needs to be broken down and cleared away, and it’ll take a war to do it. The empires will wear themselves out against each other, until they’re weak enough to be pulled down. And then we can build something better.’

  Furious with him and with herself, Una retorted, ‘And you’ll be in charge, will you?’

  A quiver of offence went across Dama’s face. ‘I don’t matter,’ he replied coldly. ‘Not in myself.’

  Una implored, almost unable to believe he had really understood and accepted this: ‘But – so many people, Dama. Millions. You can’t even imagine how many. That’s what it would mean. You can’t know what would be left.’

  ‘You didn’t mind a few people dying a minute ago, if it was for the right reason,’ Dama said, his voice beginning to ripen with contempt. ‘So how many is it? What’s the upper limit?’

  It seemed desperately important to be able to answer, even though it would alter nothing. At last she said, ‘I don’t know. But I know there is one. What about you?’

  Dama grimaced, let down and angry. He did not reply.

  ‘And you knew what I’d think of it,’ she went on, with more force now. ‘Or you’d have told me it all when you came to my door. How proud can you be of this, that you’d hide it from me?’

>   ‘I thought it might take a while … for you to understand,’ said Dama.

  ‘What would you have done? What would I have done by the time you told me the truth? I’d have killed already. Wouldn’t I? Done too much to go back. I suppose that’s what you do with everyone. But Marcus and I – we’ve already given up so much to keep this from happening. I wouldn’t do this.’

  Dama looked away. ‘Always Marcus,’ he said wearily.

  Una meant to give up, then, but instead found herself crying out, wild with some hope not to lose him altogether, grabbing his hands, ‘In God’s name, Dama. It’s wrong. It’s evil. You don’t have the right. You must stop. You’re worth more than this, you must be. What’s happened to you that you’d do this?’

  Dama jerked back from her violently, wrenching his hands from hers, spreading them out into a stunted approximation of the cross. Here, among all these people who loved him, he did not wear the coverings on his wrists; the round scars glared like eyes. He shouted in a furious, agonised voice she had never heard from him before. ‘You know what happened to me.’

  There was a stillness afterwards. They both let their hands fall, as if one were the other’s reflection.

  ‘I’m going,’ she said.

  Dama smiled sadly at her. ‘You can’t. You know you can’t, now.’

  ‘I won’t stay here.’

  She pushed towards the door again, and he set his back against it and tried to hold her back. He was stronger now than he had been, though they were both, for a time, hampered by a reluctance to hurt one each other. But at last she began to drag and claw at him in earnest, and he shouldered her back into the room.

  ‘Una,’ he urged gently, holding her almost in an embrace. ‘There are two hundred people here who’ll do anything I tell them.’

  ‘Tell them, then,’ said Una. She was still more agile than he was; she twisted away quickly, out of the little room and ran into the yard outside the farmhouse, right into the midst of the slaves’ game.

  ‘All of you,’ she called out, as loudly as she could, swinging around, scanning their faces. ‘Did you come here to set people free or to murder them? Your leader wants to bring about a war, the most terrible there’s ever been. Do you really want any part of that?’

  She saw Dama following her slowly from the house. He looked so sick at heart and miserable that she could not understand why the crowd around her did not see it at once. As she finished speaking, he announced, ringingly audible though he seemed scarcely to raise his voice: ‘Rome’s corruption is more insidious even than I thought. Even in someone I trusted. She’ll betray us. We cannot let her leave.’

  And the slaves turned on her with such hatred that for an instant she expected them to tear her to pieces.

  [ XXIII ]

  WARFARE

  Dama had them take her back to the room she’d slept in. It wasn’t ideal, nothing about this was. There wasn’t even a lock on the door, one would have to be cannibalised from somewhere else; for the next few hours it would be a matter of keeping it barricaded shut and guarded. But he had to place her somewhere out of the way, somewhere no one would either hurt or listen to her. There was nothing in their daily routine to bring more than a few of the former slaves onto the upper floor, and he hoped the prohibition against going near her would be strengthened if she was close to his own quarters. There were things she’d need if they were to keep her reasonably comfortable in there, someone must be sent to find them. He had the shutters on the single window locked, they were heavy; he didn’t think she’d be able to force them, and he posted a couple of his recruits on the ground below the window to be sure. He didn’t expect her to give up trying.

  Dama left himself no time to think about what had happened and was happening. He went back to the long-dictor, quickly. ‘Mazatl,’ he said. ‘How soon can you get to Transtiberina?’

  Mazatl didn’t ask why. ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘I need you to go to a block of flats near the Janiculum …’

  ‘Sulien,’ supplied Mazatl, interested.

  Dama sighed, feeling his breath hitch, jaggedly. He was trembling; aches were beginning to harden like rusted wires along his arms, dragging in his feet. Of course Mazatl knew who Sulien was – he’d known for years. And he’d known where he lived, too, since shortly before Veii. ‘Yes. You need to bring him here. He won’t come willingly. There could be someone else with him – a girl. If she’s there, she needs to come too. You’ll need to take a big enough team to do it, but not so big that you make yourselves memorable. It needs to be clean, and simple.’

  A thunderous, chaotic pounding began overhead, surprisingly loud and jarring, even down here. How was she managing to produce so much noise? But she couldn’t get out; the din itself confessed as much. He tried not to be too concerned.

  There was a pause; he could hear Mazatl’s confusion in the tenor of it. ‘He’s not … joining us, then?’

  ‘No. He’s become a threat. But I don’t want him harmed. There’s no time to discuss it, this needs to happen now. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting into the building. Just go upstairs, and knock on his door. Get them under control in the flat, and take them down one at a time at gunpoint, as quietly as you can. If he doesn’t open the door straight away, tell him you’re the vigiles, and that you’ve found his sister.’

  There was a small garage, filled with junk since they took over the farm, which they’d never used. But it was sturdy; there was only one entrance, and no windows. There was a cellar, too, under the house, if he needed another impromptu cell. He had the garage emptied, he’d have to find some way of getting a light in there, for it was terrible to think of anyone trapped in such total dark. He watched it turning into a prison under his eyes, as the broken farm equipment and rotted furniture were carried out, and felt gouged and scraped through with fury against Marcus Novius, who was the cause of this, who had set Una against him, sabotaged what she should have been. She was out of earshot now, yet Dama still seemed to hear her.

  He joined in the work, gathering up what he could manage, fiercely, almost welcoming the tugs of pain in his shoulders. Half of him was expecting to be called to the longdictor to hear that Mazatl had failed; Sulien and Lal had known what was coming and fled, called the vigiles. And when minutes passed and it did not happen, he began to think Mazatl would not come, must have been arrested.

  But then he heard the van, coming down the long track. Some of his followers were beginning to gather near the gates, watching it come.

  ‘Go back to what you were doing,’ he said gently – no force was necessary. They were passionately grateful to him, and they were used to doing as they were told. It was a tendency he honestly believed he wished them to unlearn, he wished their loyalty to be freely given, but it was undeniably useful now.

  The van drew up beside him and stopped. And as Mazatl and the others began to get out, there was the bang of something striking the wall of the van from inside and Sulien’s voice, thickened with rage, crying, ‘Dama.’

  ‘Was he alone?’ he asked Mazatl.

  ‘No, we brought the girl, like you said.’

  Dama leant his forehead on the van’s side, close to where the impact had been. He didn’t have to see them. He could just order them to be shut away. Then he walked purposefully round to the doors. ‘Get them out.’

  Their hands were tied behind their backs. Sulien must have slammed his shoulder, rather than his fist, at the wall. It was a sensible precaution; Mazatl was right to have restrained them so, yet Dama had to still a little shiver of horror at it. They looked frighteningly vulnerable as the light hit them: crouched together, both their faces made strange and alike with indignation and fear: a pale, underground look, their eyes unnaturally large and black. Lal was crying. And Sulien, who’d given him back so much strength, undone so much pain – Dama was not sure he’d ever even seen him angry, there had always been a leniency and gentleness about him which was part of the reason Dama had never considered him a
s an active ally. But now, when he saw Dama, as he and Lal were pulled out of the van, he seemed splintering apart with anger, as if it were altering the very substance of his body. He shouted, ‘So what are you going to do? Are you going to kill us?’

  At this, standing behind Lal and Sulien, Mazatl levelled a hard look at Dama. But Dama refused to show he saw it.

  Lal wept, ‘You can’t, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘No, no,’ Dama said softly. ‘Of course I won’t kill you.’

  Lal pushed towards Dama, beseeching, ‘Dama, how can you be doing this?’

  She still seemed wholly incredulous. But Sulien, who had seen Dama kill, found that there was some part of his mind that kept refusing to be fully surprised, that said, yes, this is what he would do. ‘What do you mean “of course”? Do you think there’s anything we can trust you on now? What have you done with Una?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ answered Dama, shortly.

  ‘Where is she, then? Let us see her.’

  ‘I’m sorry. No. I’m not taking chances.’

  Sulien lunged forward as if, restrained and absurdly out-numbered though he was, there might still be some way of attacking Dama. He scarcely felt that he was being held back, he was only disgusted that Dama should stand there looking on, sad and motionless. ‘You bastard, you ungrateful, sick … How dare you? Look at your hands. Who did that? You could hardly lift them when I met you. I helped you. Lal’s father saved your life. How dare you do this to us?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, Sulien,’ said Dama in a low voice, looking away from him. ‘And I’m sorry I have to do this. But I can’t risk the safety of everyone here. And I can’t risk the cause we’re working for. I’d like you to understand that. I don’t know if you can.’

  ‘Understand?’ cried Sulien. ‘I don’t care why you’re doing it.’

  He was perversely glad to see Dama begin to look angry, it was better than the sorrowful patience he’d shown up until now.

  Dama said, ‘You don’t care? You must care. You have to care.’

  ‘A war. Murder.’