Rome Burning

by Sophia McDougall

  Varius smiled. ‘I celebrate by avoiding them. They’ve found someone they want me to meet. Again.’

  ‘You could,’ suggested Marcus. Varius’ face went still, closed. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Marcus hastily. ‘Stupid. You don’t want to. Don’t do it, of course.’

  Varius looked down and Marcus thought he would change the subject. But at last he muttered hesitantly, ‘Maybe it’s not as bad an idea as it was.’ He hadn’t looked up. ‘But it’s still not good.’

  ‘Then of course you’re right,’ said Marcus. More darkly he added, ‘No one can force you.’

  Varius glanced at Noriko, who was behaving faultlessly. ‘Things are bad?’ he murmured.

  Marcus also turned to watch her. ‘My parents’ marriage was perfect whenever there were people watching them.’ He looked back at Varius. ‘It’s not her,’ he said. And he went back to join his wife.

  The weather was bad for Faustus’ celebrations. They had hoped for a blue summer day; instead the city was wrapped in rain. Varius drove out of the city on the Via Ostiensis, into the countryside between Rome and Acilia. He knew the way by heart, although this was only the fourth time he’d ever travelled it. He had had no say in Gemella’s place of burial, of course. He hadn’t been there, her funeral was long over by the time he was out of prison. Not that there was anything wrong with the quiet necropolis along a minor road that her parents had chosen.

  He sat in the car for a little while, prevaricating, and hoping the weather would clear. The rain only thickened, and finally he emerged into it, shoulders raised, irritable that the day should be so dismal. But he poured half a cup of wine onto the earth of her grave, and drank the rest standing over it, and stayed there long enough to miss what happened that day at the Colosseum.

  *

  Lal suddenly pulled away, pushing back the covers and sitting up. She said, ‘I can’t.’

  Sulien sprawled back on the pillows. ‘What is it?’ he asked quietly, trying to sound patient, harmless.

  Lal was hunched forward on the edge of the bed, her face in her hands. When at last she answered her voice was a blurred, shamed mumble. ‘We’re not married,’ she whispered. ‘It’s wrong.’

  Sulien lay silent for a while. ‘Lal,’ he said at last. ‘It’s hardly murder, is it? When you think of all that’s happened, all the killing, how wrong can it be?’ He sat up and stroked the tumbled hair away from her neck, pressed his mouth to the warm skin, dragging the kiss across the pulse, whispering, ‘How wrong can this be?’

  In his arms Lal seemed to stiffen and relax at once, helplessly, tension and languor rolling through her in waves. ‘I don’t know.’

  Sulien gathered her closer. ‘This isn’t hurting anyone,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘This is the opposite …’ He slid his hand inside her dishevelled dress, stroking down from her throat, drawing splayed fingers across the nipple. He could feel her breast strain against his hand with her breath. For a second she softened so totally that he worked to pull her down again onto the bed. But she dragged herself free, panting.

  ‘No, I don’t know. I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  She pulled her clothes together and fled home.

  Ziye and Delir were both there. Delir was working silently on an invoice for some silk he’d sold. Ziye was still barely speaking to Delir, and all her movements around him were sharp and violent, though whenever she looked at him her eyes were hollow with unforgiving and involuntary concern.

  Delir noticed nothing strange about Lal, as she hurried past into her room. He looked up, but scarcely saw her. She was relieved, on this occasion, but it saddened her too. He noticed little now. He was too absorbed in guilt, and in suspense.

  When the fishermen had returned at last to the island, he’d been too desperate to care about their surprise at seeing the recluse at all, let alone signalling and beckoning frantically on the beach. Had anyone crawled out of the sea, on the other island, or been pulled from the water, three weeks before?

  The fishermen had seen something splash feebly in the lights of their boat. When they looked, they saw it was the body of a man, no longer stirring in the water; indeed the movement they thought they’d seen could have been no more than the rocking of the waves. No one had wanted to enter that cold sea for a corpse, but for decency’s sake they had hauled it up the side of the boat in a net, before it went under. To their astonishment, once on the deck, the frozen body choked, shuddered, and turned its drowned and ice-pale face to them, blue-eyed, blue-lipped.

  They heaped their coats over him and took him home to the large island they’d embarked from. One of the fishers’ wives had tried to undress him, to put fresh clothes on him, but he’d cried out in protest, twisting away with his arms gathered tight against his chest, and begged so distraughtly not to be touched, that they’d left him alone, huddled on a mattress near the fire. Even after they’d got him warmed up and let him sleep, he’d spoken very little. He’d said his ship had sunk, everyone else was drowned, and even if they hadn’t found him in the sea, from the empty, horrified look on his face they could have well believed it.

  The following day he’d talked urgently of getting to the mainland. They tried to calm him; he was still scarcely strong enough to stand. And they had banded together to pay for a doctor, but when they brought him to the house, the young survivor was not there. They expected to find him collapsed within fifty yards of the house, but they did not. Alarmed and rather hurt, the fisherman’s family had checked to see if anything had been stolen. Nothing had been. They decided the shock of the wreck and the cold had turned the poor youth’s mind.

  Delir had also made his way as fast as possible to the mainland, and alerted the vigiles. He had not been able to bear to break what he wished bitterly he could have shared: the fishers’ ignorance of whom they had saved.

  *

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Marcus. Noriko had become very quiet and still as they entered the car for the tiny journey down to the Colosseum.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, with convincing mildness in her voice. But she did not quite look at him, and they were both speaking Nionian, so that the driver and the guards could not understand them. They had something to hide.

  Presently she asked, ‘So, I am to be entertained by a massacre now?’

  ‘There’ll be acrobatics and so on first. And there aren’t any prisoners involved today. These are the best gladiators, they don’t throw their lives away. Unless something goes wrong it shouldn’t be a bloodbath. Just a display of skill and courage. Some bears may die, that should be all.’

  ‘I think it’s barbaric to make a spectacle of such things,’ remarked Noriko.

  ‘It’s traditional,’ said Marcus, not sure why he was apparently defending the Games, which Clodia had taught him to dislike and avoid, when possible.

  They left the car. Escorted by the Praetorians they walked with the rest of the Imperial family through the private passage that led below the ranked seats of the Colosseum into the Imperial box. As they emerged, Noriko and Marcus first, then Drusus and Makaria, and finally Faustus, there was a flourish of drums and trumpets, and a halo of golden fireworks burst from the arena perimeter. Sixty thousand people rose to their feet, cheering. Noriko applauded Faustus graciously and smiled to the crowd. She was inured to such exposure now.

  ‘Will you be at home tonight?’ she asked, still in Nionian, as they settled into their seats. The pillars that supported the bullet-proof screens around them were wreathed with red and white roses, golden rugs were spread under their feet. A camera swept past them on an internal track around the arena below. They remained smiling.

  ‘No,’ answered Marcus. He hesitated and said, ‘I will be in the Palace. With Una.’

  Noriko sighed, softly and lengthily. ‘It isn’t necessary to tell me everything,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t want to hide anything from you.’

  ‘Marcus,’ said Noriko. ‘I know when she can’t stand to stay away from you any longer, and when you
’re afraid you’ll never see her again. If you think you are able to hide that, you are deceived. Not from someone who lives with you, and has very little to do except observe you. I know you think about her, all the time. I know quite enough. I don’t need the exact details.’

  Marcus stared at the Colosseum sand. He said, ‘You don’t love me, Noriko.’

  Noriko gave a graceful, hard little laugh. ‘I suppose not, no. But sometimes perhaps I forget that I don’t. You’re the only person here that I know. It’s not as if I have recourse to anyone else.’

  ‘I’m not stopping you,’ muttered Marcus. It was at once an attempt at an honest offer of freedom and a muted retaliation.

  ‘Would you like there to be any doubt who fathered your children? Whether it was a true Novian who inherited the throne?’

  Marcus knew he had no answer to that.

  ‘So, she is coming to see you again. Have you reached some arrangement that might last, now?’

  Marcus still did not reply, partly reluctant to provoke her by talking about it further, but also because he did not know the answer. Noriko was right, Una consumed his thoughts. Something must happen; this couldn’t go on. Yet neither one of them saw any escape from it. If Una could not find some way of enduring his marriage to Noriko, the possibility of children, then they should stay away from each other, for good. But after those months apart, after the clutching, frail relief of that night in the Palace, how could they bear it, how could they force that on themselves a second time?

  ‘I wish you would,’ said Noriko.

  ‘It’s starting,’ said Marcus, as there were more bursts of light and noise, and a flood of dancers and tumblers poured out through the gates into the arena. Above them, the panels of the glass roof had contracted shut against the rain, and the Colosseum was sealed in the semblance of a bright, sunny day. Marcus looked at the show in attentive silence and relaxed into seeing nothing but the fact that later Una would be with him.

  *

  They were watching in a dirty room in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Rome. They saw the Colosseum crowd erupt into applause, the Imperial family take their seats, the show begin on the old longvision, and several minutes passed in appalled suspense as they tried to convince themselves that the chaos they expected might still be about to happen, any second now. They could not look at each other.

  At last one of them whispered, ‘What happened?’

  ‘It didn’t work,’ said Dama calmly. He felt flat and unsurprised.

  ‘All that work,’ breathed Ananias.

  Dama got up and went into the back room. He’d reached Rome at last to learn that Mazatl was dead. It seemed he’d taken with him at least one of the vigiles who’d cornered him. Better for him than to be taken alive, Dama thought, further grief somehow muffled. There were others dead, or imprisoned, or vanished, or extradited to Nionia. But not everyone.

  Erastus and Ananias followed him into the store room, slow, baffled. Dama, already kneeling over the equipment, looked up at them. ‘I can do it,’ he said quietly.

  Erastus shook his head, confused and guilty. ‘It’s my fault,’ he said.

  Distant and composed, Dama replied, ‘It’s not your fault. It is an accident.’

  ‘But there’s no time now, Dama,’ cried Ananias.

  Dama shook his head gently. ‘The Games go on for hours.’

  And Erastus muttered, ‘Even if it was possible, it shouldn’t be you.’

  Dama’s expression had not changed. He said, ‘Yes, it should.’

  *

  Una walked through Trajan’s Forum. The streets were full, even in the rain, people making the most of the holiday, hurrying between shops, stooped under hoods. Like the rest, she had the day off in celebration of Faustus’ return to power. But she bought nothing, and she moved slowly, wet hair uncovered. The rain was not cold, it tingled on her skin, marking out the boundaries of her body, wearing the worst edge of impatience away. Her thoughts felt like Marcus’ thoughts. You can’t spend your whole life like this, she said to herself, and the voice in her mind sounded like his. Although he would not have said that, not aloud, not to her.

  She had tried. A week together until Noriko’s return from Nionia, chaste until the last night. After that perhaps they would write to each other sometimes, but not see each other. They had convinced themselves, painfully, that they had agreed to this. She had begun working at the clinic once she had recovered enough strength to work at all. She was glad to be near Sulien now. Her work, filing papers and taking down letters, was dull, but it was a more gentle dullness than the relentlessness of the Vatican bar. Sometimes she still wondered if that was a mistake. She envied Marcus the work she could no longer have any share in. It was worth giving yourself entire to work like that.

  But Marcus’ letters filled up with requests, pleas to see her, and forced her back into wondering what on earth she thought she was protecting by torturing them both. Had she thought staying with him now would make her unhappy? How much worse could it be than being without him?

  But even now, as restlessness drew her closer to the Colosseum, wishing the time away, feeling the free hours were useless for anything but to lead to Marcus, there was part of her that kept imagining him some time in the future with Noriko’s children, whom he would love.

  She could have waited for Marcus in the Palace but these days, once again, she felt like an intruder with no rights there. She looked up at the Colosseum’s belt of screens, which displayed the scene within, so that it was as if a round band of wall had vanished and turned bright and transparent. She looked up, blind to whatever was happening on the sand, searching helplessly for the Imperial box, for Marcus. And of course, at last, the camera revealed him at Noriko’s side, and made her turn away, flinching. She must have inflicted that sight upon herself deliberately. It was a kind of warning, or pre-emptive self-punishment.

  Finally, the rain was too much, it drove her to look for somewhere dry to kill the time. She hurried now, past the Colosseum, onto the Via Labicana. She was about to turn down a sidestreet towards a little taverna, when something seemed to change in the air, as if a switch had turned and halted the rain as it fell. Her gaze was pulled a certain way, as if dragged by an unknown kind of gravity. She looked at a man a little way ahead, coming down the road towards the Colosseum, his face half-shaded by the dark hood of his jacket, a heavy bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes met hers, round and hard as window panes, and terrified. The recognition stopped them both and locked them together, staring, as if they were each caught in a hard shell of glass. And for an instant she felt the barrier there had always been between them was glass too – transparent. And she knew what he was going to do.

  Still Dama’s stare, the invisible casing of shock, held her motionless. Then she heard her own breath pulled in, and she broke out of it and pushed through the first door she could find. ‘The longdictor, I need to use the longdictor now.’

  It was a fashionable jewellers’, pearls glowing on pristine pale surfaces, and the man behind the counter looked at her dripping hair and rigid, desperate face with confused disapproval.

  ‘Oh, God, please,’ she cried. ‘I need to call the vigiles, you must help.’

  She hardly knew what she said to the vigiles, or how long it took. She rushed out into the street again, lurching on the wet stone. Where was he? She forced her way back along the busy pavement towards the Colosseum. Her legs had turned numb, trembling. She struggled for enough air to move fast.

  And she saw him, glancing back nervously over his shoulder, straight at her. To her surprise he darted off the main road, into a smaller street. Una tried to call out for someone to stop him, but could not force this drowning fight for breath into sound. And she felt she could make no one listen anyway. They’d think she’d only been robbed, or that she was mad, in some trouble they would want no part of. She shoved past them, and ran down the street where Dama had vanished.

  The smaller shops here were mostly shut, the
pavement almost empty. Dama was hurrying along in front, head lowered in its hood, an anonymous dark figure. I’m faster than him, she told herself, forcing strength into her cowering body, dashing forward, teeth clenched. She went on as she saw Dama stop. Unbelievably, he turned and came running back to meet her. He caught hold of her as she collided with him, gripping his arms, his clothes, silent.

  ‘Get away from me,’ he said urgently, but his voice was not violent but pleading with her. ‘Don’t follow me. Don’t you understand? You must get away from here.’

  Una could not answer. There was nothing to be said, no language for him left. She clung onto him with all her strength, trying to force him still, drag him back, as once long ago she’d tried to do to Marcus. She stared, speechlessly, into his eyes.

  ‘Oh, God!’ he moaned, struggling with her. His face was twisted in anguish; he was scarcely recognisable. ‘Let go. You must let go.’

  Una gripped and gripped.

  A groan or sob pushed through Dama’s teeth. He turned his face away from what he was doing, shuddering, and suddenly drove his weight against her, slamming her against the wall beside them so that her head was knocked against the brick, and she fell.

  He knew he should move at once but for an instant he could not, he stood paralysed, looking down at her. Her eyes flickered weakly, but then her head drooped forward, and he saw streaks of blood on her hair. He prayed she was only half-stunned. He wanted to crouch beside her, to stroke her face or her wet hair in apology, but it seemed false, forbidden, one tiny thing he knew he had no right to do.

  Whatever happened now, she would be safe.

  There was a narrow alley ahead that led into the open space around the Colosseum. He straightened, and ran towards it.

  There was a short lull in the Games. An orchestra struck up as the attendants came to drag away the corpses of a couple of Arctic bears. A gladiator, raked by the claws of one before his comrade had speared it, had been borne away on a stretcher. Noriko rose to her feet. ‘I’m going home,’ she said to Marcus.