Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘Because I don’t consent,’ she answered, emphatically. ‘I will not stay here. I told you that.’

  ‘So you’d rather die? You’re going to kill yourself just to get out?’ asked Dama desperately.

  She sighed, with a kind of weary patience. ‘You’d be willing to die, I should think, trying to make something happen? For this new clean world you think you can make? Or maybe you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a low voice, suffering a sting of hurt at the idea that he might be willing only to sacrifice the lives of others.

  Una shrugged. ‘So, then. Would you rather I died than let me go?’

  ‘Of course I don’t want you to die,’ he whispered.

  ‘I know you don’t want it,’ she said contemptuously. ‘But if it’s all fine and right to start this war, it shouldn’t be such a problem, should it? Not one person. How can you justify that?’

  Dama grimaced. It was chiefly for her sake he’d been trying not to hear or think such things, it was horribly bizarre to hear them coming out of her mouth. ‘I still … I wish … I want you to understand.’

  ‘Well,’ she said laconically, ‘then we want the same thing from each other.’ She shut her eyes again and let her head fall back against the wall, conserving energy. It made her look worse, that numb stillness. A sunkenness around her mouth and eye-sockets became more prominent.

  He looked away in exhaustion and urged, ‘Please eat something.’

  Una nodded mildly. ‘When I’m out of here, I will.’

  ‘I’ll let you see Sulien,’ offered Dama, rashly.

  There was a pause, and she looked up. But she said, ‘No. I’m not bargaining. I won’t stay here. You can let me go, or you can kill me. That’s it. That’s all you’ve got.’

  Dama said, ‘No.’

  Una got up, a slow painful-looking movement that seemed to turn her dizzy and made him grit his teeth to watch, and walked away from him. She climbed stiffly onto the bed and curled up, with her back to him, shivering again.

  ‘If you won’t eat,’ Dama warned her, ‘I’ll force you.’

  Una lay huddled among the blankets as if she’d gone to sleep, and didn’t answer. Finally Dama left quietly, as if trying not to wake her.

  Lal was crouched over the pipes, listening. Between the silent entrances of the people who brought her food, the only way of measuring time in the cellar was against the activity in the house above. She was trying to gauge how long the pipes stayed hot, and how much time she needed.

  She pulled her sleeve down over her hand for some protection, and laid her wrist against the hot metal until she had to pull it away with a hiss of pain. She felt the heated flesh anxiously. Did that feel like a feverish warmth, or was it clear what she had done? It wouldn’t be enough just to lie on the ground and moan. It needed something more. Perhaps if she could wrap herself in hot cloth. She pulled off her dress and draped it over the pipes. She had wedged a cup of water as firmly against the heat as she could, and left it there for hours, but clearly it was not going to heat up enough to raise her own temperature if she swallowed it. Experimentally, she flicked the lukewarm water onto her face and into her hair, instead. While her dress warmed she dropped back naked onto the mattress, letting herself go limp, trying to remember the helpless, stewed lassitude of her illness.

  It was at least worth trying.

  She scrambled up to reach for her dress, and knocked questioningly on the pipes. It was a long time before any reply came: a single, weary beat. Una had been so quiet lately. Lal drummed a rapid little tattoo to her, thinking, don’t give up. We’re going to get out.

  No more water was taken to Una’s room, unless it was mixed with sugar. If she was thirsty, she’d have to drink that – or milk, or fruit juice. Dama couldn’t think of a way of physically force-feeding her, at least none that he could bring himself to attempt, but he could do that. Yet he was afraid he might provoke her into refusing to drink, too. But to his surprise and brief exultation, Una seemed to accept that she’d lost a round. She didn’t take much, but those mouthfuls of sweet liquid surely must do some good, must slow the deterioration a little.

  But they wouldn’t stop it. Each day of this would go on diminishing her. Worrying about her frustrated him to the point of self-disgust, now. But he could not help dwelling anxiously on the fact that she was clearly trying to drink as little as she could bear. He became rawly conscious of every drop of liquid he swallowed himself; he thought of blood thickening, drying up. What if he was making her worse, rather than better?

  Often, now, he would go and open the door a crack and stand there, unspeaking. He was no longer shy about it. Una was always lying curled on the corner of the bed, where he’d left her, as if she’d never moved. She didn’t look at him, and there was no more noise. From hour to hour she hung over him, like an unpaid debt, but she was silent now. In some ways, he told himself, things had settled down. He didn’t think about what she had said to him. He only had to keep himself safe from her, and her from him, for a little longer, before the turning point came, and history changed.

  Then three nights later, after midnight, he heard her again, knocking on the floor, like a returning ghost.

  Four dull, sluggish blows. Then a long silence. Then four again, a little louder now, but still so muted, so much enfeebled, that if he’d been asleep the noise might not have woken him. And he was awake already, even after three quiet nights’ sleep had remained so unreliable that he hadn’t yet bothered going to bed. But this was like an awakening, a drench of cold, lucid anger, not the panic she’d brought him to before. Why had he allowed this to continue? Mazatl – his own conscience – even Una herself had told him what was right. He’d said that she had been corrupted and it was true, what he’d seen in her once was either long gone or had never been there. She was his enemy. He owed her nothing at all.

  Mazatl’s gun was still locked in the little room downstairs, lying beside the longdictor on the shelf. Dama let himself in and seized it, jamming it into his belt and closing his jacket over it; he ran lightly up the stairs. Baro was outside the room, on guard duty.

  ‘You can go to bed,’ murmured Dama. Baro got up, in silence, but he cast Dama a quick look that might have been one of approval and relief.

  Dama stood there with the key in one hand, the gun in the other. He had to use his left hand to fire. He wasn’t a good shot, of course, but he wouldn’t need to be. He was breathing hard, but he didn’t feel it.

  Inside the room the pounding broke off, and he heard her shuffle closer to the door. She said, ‘Dama?’ Her voice sounded hesitant, frightened. She was not certain that he was there.

  Dama launched himself at the door, gasping in frustration as his weaker hand struggled briefly with the lock. He dragged the door open, levelled the gun. He thought: there is nothing between us.

  Una was on her knees, her eyes wide and fixed on the opening door, her shoulders raised. At the sight of the gun she recoiled, convulsively, and for a second the structure of her gaunt face seemed to break down in hopelessness, like a lump of spent coal, falling to ash. Then she scrambled up, closing the distance between the muzzle and her forehead, her body clenching combatively, and she said in a shrill, ragged voice, ‘Do it, then! You’re killing people who’ve got as much right to live as me!’

  Dama was almost bewildered at not hearing the shot, not seeing her fall. It seemed to him that he had, absolutely, made the choice, and that signal had gone from his brain to his hand. And yet nothing happened, as if the scars on the nerves had grown and thickened, obstructing it. He braced his arm, taking a small step towards her, and the gun skidded down over her face. He felt the contours of brow and cheekbone, transferred through the tube of metal to his hand, as again he ordered his fingers to move, and somehow they did not. It made her shake, and her mouth contracted, but she kept her eyes open, staring fiercely at him. The gun quivered between them. And then he had jolted back, slamming the door, dragging with his whole body’s weig
ht on the handle to hold it shut while he wrestled again with the lock. He heard her fold onto the ground, fighting for breath, as his own legs weakened too and he sat down, helplessly, with the door at his back

  Just a little longer, he thought. Only a little while that he had to go on bearing it.

  [ XXIV ]

  BEACONS

  There was scarcely a flower in the garden that Noriko recognised. These greyish trees were olives, of course. Sparkling heaps of unnameable yellow flowers spread below them. The garden was pleasingly overgrown, unlike the controlled, symmetrical grounds of the Palace, but still the geometric structure was there under the spilling leaves. Over a long, rectangular pond stood a watchful row of white statues – maidens with drapery clinging and flying around bare breasts and arms, curls piled high above square, upright foreheads. Noriko turned back and thought how strange Sakura and Tomoe looked below them, with their finned dresses supporting the falls of their tinted hair. But there were ruby koi in the dark water, and there would be roses everywhere, in the summer. There was an orchard of apples and cherry trees ahead, where pale petals were beginning to open on the dark branches. Noriko went towards it.

  This was the first time since their wedding that Marcus and Noriko had been separated by more than the length of the garden, for they had left the following day for his family home near Tusculum. Eudoxius was to handle things at the Golden House, to give the young couple time together. Noriko hardly questioned what could have happened for Marcus to have been called away so abruptly now – she was, guiltily, too much relieved at his absence for that. Not that she had anything to blame him for or liked him any less; as he had promised, he was trying not to make her unhappy. They spoke in a fluctuating pidgin that no one else could understand, and he was scrupulously interested in everything she had to say. Of course, she had intensified her efforts with Latin, but sometimes she felt that being with him was making her mysteriously less fluent, more tongue-tied. She stammered over simple words she’d known for years. Marcus thought of things that might make her feel more at home. A rock garden, to be built somewhere in the grounds, wherever she wanted it. A teahouse. Most of all, he tried not to seem miserable, as Sakura and Tomoe tried to disguise their homesickness. Justice required the same effort from her. They were considerate to each other; they were sometimes almost friends, and they were afraid of each other. The nights, which were part of the fear for both of them, were in some ways the simplest, most innocent part of it.

  In another week, they had agreed, they would begin a tour of public appearances, introducing Noriko to some of the sights of Rome. After that they would not be expected to spend quite so much time together, perhaps it would be easier.

  She hid herself among the flowering trees until nothing she could see was unfamiliar. But the butler was coming after her from the house. He bowed and said, ‘Madam, if you would come to the longdictor, his Highness Prince Tadasius wishes to speak to you.’

  Noriko began to be apprehensive now, because it would be late at home, nearly midnight. She hurried into the villa. ‘Is something wrong?’ she began into the longdictor.

  Tadahito said fast, but very clearly, ‘I will speak to you at the Embassy. There is a car outside the gates. It will take you there. Go and get into it now.’

  ‘Why—?’ But he had gone.

  Noriko felt almost as much irritated as alarmed, but dutifully she went out of the house and down the gravel drive.

  The guards on the gates were mildly surprised to see her strolling off alone. ‘Do you wish to go somewhere, my Lady?’ one of them said. ‘Wait a moment while I call your escort.’

  She waved him away. ‘The Embassy has sent a car for me. They will protect me.’

  The car was unusually plain and discreetly marked to carry someone of her status, though it was sleek and shining. There was an unsmiling young Nionian man dressed in crisp black, already holding the door open for her.

  Noriko slipped inside and said to the driver, ‘Why must I go to the Embassy?’ The driver was slow enough in answering to unnerve her. ‘Explain at once,’ she commanded crossly.

  The young man who had opened the door for her settled briskly in the seat opposite her. He looked past her to check that the Novian villa was out of sight.

  He said, ‘We are at war.’

  Noriko parted her lips in soundless confusion and outrage.

  ‘The Crown Prince told you you were to come to the Embassy in order that you should be able to say so naturally, and in case your conversation was being monitored.’

  ‘But …’ Noriko craned back in the seat to look back towards the vanished house. The car was moving swiftly and purposefully. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Our troops in Tokogane were withdrawing from the Wall, in accordance with the treaty.’ His voice dipped, bitterly. ‘The Romans have attacked three military trains in Enkono and Iwatougen, and destroyed them.’

  ‘No,’ Noriko protested, almost mildly, as if he might admit he could be wrong.

  ‘Three military trains,’ repeated the agent. ‘And a passenger train was derailed too; it was following one of the others. They may have killed fourteen hundred of our soldiers, perhaps three hundred civilians.’

  ‘When?’ breathed Noriko.

  ‘Now, ’ the agent said, almost angrily. ‘Moments ago. They have betrayed us once again, and we have very little time to remove you from their hands. We will be taking you to a safe house where your appearance can be altered. Clearly you cannot travel safely undisguised. I regret that your hair is too distinctive, and will have to be cut. You will be driven to a launch at Napolis; there is a secret airbase in northern Mauretania from which you may return to Nionia. Let me promise you, Your Highness, that we will not fail you. You will soon be home.’

  Noriko fell back against the seat, dazed. ‘What about my waiting women?’ she asked weakly, after a while.

  ‘There is nothing we can do for them, Your Highness, but they are in far less danger than you would be.’

  Noriko sat mechanically fingering a strand of her condemned hair and gazing blankly at the cypress-covered hills as they sped past. Her mind was numb; she could not make it contemplate either this journey or those terrible numbers. But of course, it did not matter what she thought. In the first stunned minutes, this was almost comforting to her. Nothing was being asked of her, everything had been decided already. All she had to do was be carried onward; it would not matter if she were asleep, or unconscious. Her body was being reclaimed like unpaid-for furniture, a little used, but still essentially the same.

  ‘This cannot be right,’ she ventured.

  ‘Your Highness?’

  ‘What was I married for, if we only go to war after all?’

  ‘Rome has betrayed you, also, madam.’

  ‘But this is not what Caesar would do,’ said Noriko, with rising urgency. ‘I know it is not. There has been a mistake.’

  ‘Unfortunately, there is no mistake,’ said the agent, sorrowfully, though she was sure she heard the note of exasperation he was trying to suppress.

  What would it be like to go back? She could only imagine it as a matter of creeping home to hide, disgraced and shorn. Or perhaps her marriage would be treated like a short, serious illness, which had altered her, but from which she was convalescing. Or perhaps it really would be simply as if she had never been married at all. Was that not more or less what she wanted – she and Marcus both? She had been gone so short a time.

  The road veered around the flank of the hill and fled on, down through the trees. Noriko had very little sense of where they would be going, except that she knew Rome was a little way north and Napolis a long way south.

  ‘Turn back,’ she announced peremptorily. ‘I want to go to Rome and speak to my husband.’

  Nothing happened. The young agent lowered his eyes and gazed at her shoes, his expression sad and deferential. Noriko jumped a little in the seat with indignation and strain. ‘I order you to take me to Rome.’

&nb
sp; ‘I know, Your Highness,’ the man said, softly. ‘And we are your servants in all other things. We will die for you and consider our lives well given. But our orders are from the Emperor: to bring his daughter safely home.’

  Noriko opened her mouth to speak again, and then closed it. She dropped back once more and glared out of the window. She felt the sullen expression on her face and, grudgingly, smoothed it away. Finally she said stiffly, ‘I apologise. Your duty is very clear.’

  He bowed his head. ‘You are most generous, my Lady.’

  They had descended into Tusculum itself. The traffic was heavy, and the car slowed and stopped. Noriko sprang for the door and hurled herself out into the road.

  Everything seemed to reel and swing. She had come close to plunging under the wheels of an oncoming car, but that was almost the least of her terror. This was unthinkable; it was as if she had dashed onto a battlefield. Noriko charged headlong up the ordinary little street, hair flying, her knees weak, her breath already coming in deep, jagged gasps. The traffic strained to avoid her; somewhere a hostile shout died away in confusion. Noriko turned back and saw the Nionian agent following her, wading through the traffic, but his face was pale with shock; his eyes indecisive as he scanned the street. He could hardly kill everyone who’d seen it happen. She’d been recognised. It was already too late.

  Noriko staggered, half-deliberately, into the path of another car, putting up her hands as it skidded to a halt in front of her. She banged on the window, drew herself up as the man inside stared at her.

  ‘I am your Empress,’ she said grandly and inaccurately, in Latin, to the astonished driver. ‘You must take me to the Palace as fast as you can.’

  By the time she reached the Golden House, her faith in Marcus’ innocence had weakened, and with the aftershock of her escape still ricocheting through her, the possibility that she had made a catastrophic mistake filled her with heady, invigorating aggression. She stormed through the Palace looking for Marcus and almost wanted somebody to try to stop her, so that she could rage and bully her way over them. But it seemed they had already discovered she was unaccounted for, and the servants and aides she encountered were frustratingly willing to guide her on to a huge noisy room she had not seen before, windowless and inwardly fortified with ceiling-high maps: Europe; Africa; Terranova and Tokogane; Asia; the world. There were more maps and papers spread over the long table, and on Tokogane, three red points showed what must be the sites of the attacks, and at the far end of the room, a crowd of men were watching aerial footage of blackened, broken-backed train carriages scattered under a fallen bridge at the bottom of a ravine. And something else froze Noriko as she strode towards Marcus. Other maps were ominously pocked with little dark spots, and there was another busy huddle of people, pointing and muttering around the map that showed Nionia, which was heavily flecked with black. The marks were clustered over Edo and Cynoto, the ports. Targets.