Savage City

by Sophia McDougall

  But in any case, even failing that, he could help, he knew he could.

  He was glad it had never been worth having a car in Rome, with its trams and dense traffic and work only a short walk away. But he had a fast electric trirota, good for the narrow streets of Transtiberina and for slicing through Roman gridlocks, and it was heavily chained up by his apartment block. Sulien’s hands trembled a little as he dragged the chain free and let it fall; he noticed that, promised it to himself as a memory for later, when this was all safely over. I was so worried, he thought, practising the past tense. Maybe he’d even tell Marcus that: You had me scared, you bastard. He hauled the machine upright, headed it east.

  The deluge of people had begun to thin out a little. Una pushed off like a swimmer, heading towards the walls. She could see vigiles and medics now, cutting through the crowd, and she tried to shove her way through towards them, to get into their wake. For a moment she was held almost motionless and trapped, a few feet from the nearest archway, then at last the pressure broke and she was able to duck inside.

  The passage was crammed and heaving. Una reached the wall and flattened herself against it, her arms spread against the posters covering the stone, her stomach pulled taut, her breath held rigid in her chest. She inched along sideways: the air tasted soiled. Crushed between bodies too close to see, she could hardly breathe. She swallowed, feeling sweat on her face and that faintness gathering dangerously in her head again. For a while the physical discomfort and effort of remaining conscious and moving required so much of her attention that it was almost a relief: there was no space to think of Marcus.

  Then she scraped out of the bottleneck into the inner causeway. The Colosseum was full of voices, warped in the curved space: weeping, and calls for help, and cries to different gods. The crowd was still dense, but fluctuating, and Una ran, shoving her way blindly and ruthlessly into the stands.

  At first the amphitheatre looked almost empty of people. The bare slopes of seating were startlingly decked with colour: red and yellow cartons, and wrappers everywhere, like petals on a hillside. But in reality there were still hundreds of people – thousands even, limping down the staircases, clinging together, stretched out on the seats and in the walkways. And there were bodies lying where they had been trampled or heaped in the aisles nearest to the arena, faces red, mouths dragged open.

  And the black wound gouged into the roof gaped over the remains of the Imperial box, hardly recognisable in the wreckage that spread around it down into the arena. Sheets and flakes of glass, long spars of metal and slabs of broken stone scattered everywhere. And the vigiles were coursing in now, carrying ladders and stretchers.

  Already running, climbing, Una called, ‘Marcus.’ The space swallowed up her cry. And it was such an ordinary name, anyone here might have called it to any of the injured or dead men and boys.

  *

  Cautiously, Makaria let go of the wad of cloth she’d been pressing against Marcus’ side. The warm trickle of blood under her fingers seemed to have stopped, but his breath was coming in sharp, quiet gasps now, and his lips were turning a deep bruise-blue under dried-out skin. His eyes were fixed somewhere on the grey distance. Makaria touched his cold forehead, began stroking the dust and crumbs of glass out of his hair.

  Marcus looked quickly at her, at her moving hand as it slid over his temple into his hair, and the muscles of his face tensed strangely, eyes suddenly alive and keen, as if somehow catching her out. Then they drifted out of focus again and he whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ Makaria crooned, still smoothing the fair hair, mindlessly gentle, hearing her voice soft and high and scarcely like her own at all.

  ‘Your father.’

  Self-conscious now, she fumbled for something to say. ‘I’m glad that . . . that you’re Emperor now, and—’

  Marcus’ eyes squeezed suddenly shut and Makaria leaned forward apprehensively, knowing she must not let him fall asleep – but before she could say anything, his face twitched sharply, a humourless, sardonic jerk, and he repeated indistinctly, ‘Emperor.’

  Makaria stared down at him letting her fingers trail over his hair for another moment, then lifted her hand, rising onto her knees. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, ‘I’m coming back.’

  Marcus gasped thinly at the wet sky.

  ‘I’m coming back, I’m coming back,’ she promised. It was a relief to turn away from him for a second, not to look at that face. The wound she’d staunched was only one of several, and the Praetorian had said he was probably bleeding inside. A coil of effort, knotted from throat to gut, spiralled loose through her and Makaria stumbled back through the detritus towards her father’s body, shaking as she absently wiped the tears and grimy rain from her face.

  Faustus was still sitting slumped heavily on the high seat, his head hanging forward, the hunk of masonry that had killed him lying harmlessly at his feet. The gold wreath had dragged his hair askew when it had been struck off onto the cushions beside him. Makaria released a quiet breath as she stood and looked at him. He looked at once pitifully frail and solid, hard to shift. She was glad he hadn’t been knocked to the ground.

  She picked up the wreath and muttered, ‘Sorry, Daddy.’

  His dust-covered hand, when she lifted it and slid off the Imperial ring, was warmer than Marcus’ had been.

  *

  Marcus had no sense of how long she was gone; he almost forgot that she had been beside him. The men went on dutifully talking to him, keeping him from letting his eyes close, but the patch of stone he was lying on was speeding through space, and the pain mattered less now; it had been a while since he’d thought of trying to stave it off. And he was aware of his heart, a knot in a rope cold hands were pulling, running taut into the distance, every beat a long tug.

  Before, under the intact roof, he had been waiting to see Una, willing the hours to pass, the day to end. It was not Una’s name, or her image, or any one memory of her that possessed him now, but a terrible intensification of waiting for her.

  No, no, he thought, trying to find some different way of trying. He should be doing something, not just lying here.

  Then Makaria was there again, taking his hand and talking urgently, not to him but to the Praetorian. ‘You’re a witness, you’re representing the Roman Army, all right? I need you to say what I tell you.’

  He knew it was important to pay attention, not to wish for quiet and rest, but it was so hard to bother himself with whatever she was doing. He tried, and moaned, more with exhaustion than with pain.

  ‘Marcus! Listen to me, Marcus. Do you promise to govern Rome and her Empire, on behalf of the People and the Senate?’

  The thing she was trying to prop against his head – that must be the Imperial wreath. He panted a laugh, or as near to it as was bearable. ‘Doesn’t count,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ she insisted quietly. ‘It does.’

  Marcus was silent. The cold deepened. Now he did remember and wished for the warmth of Una’s body against his, her breath against his cheek, her weight, held briefly off the ground in his arms, so close to tangible it might have been the beginning of a dream, or really happening. ‘All right,’ he answered, finally. ‘All right, yes, I promise.’

  ‘Do you promise to – to defend the rights of the Roman people established in custom and law?’

  He’d heard these words once before, a year ago, flying back over the sea towards Rome. Makaria might not be word-perfect, and sometimes he couldn’t keep his mind from sliding away from what she was saying, but her tone and the pressure on his hand prompted him to murmur, each time, ‘Yes.’ If this was anything more than a macabre game they were playing, it was near enough, probably; it was clear what was meant. And if it wasn’t, then it didn’t matter.

  ‘Now, you must say, “The Roman Army—”’

  ‘The Roman Army acclaims you as Caesar and Emperor, and implores the gods to grant you health and victory,’ finished the Praetorian, soberly. Makaria pushed
the ring onto Marcus’ finger, then clasped his hand again, holding it there.

  ‘I will . . .’ What was it he was supposed to say? He sighed, searching for it, slowly mumbling out the words, ‘I will perform what I have promised . . . in the name of the gods.’

  ‘There,’ breathed Makaria, bowing her head.

  The ring of office was loose, as it had been the first time he’d worn it as Regent, not like the months afterwards when it had fitted his index finger so closely he scarcely felt its weight as separate from his body, grafting authority onto him, and still there had been so much he couldn’t do. And now?

  ‘Then I say that . . . Then I . . .’ How had he imagined this happening when the time finally came? What words had he been going to use? For of course he had thought about it, over the years, weighing different phrases that had sounded good, enough to string something simple together, at least . . . ‘Slavery is to be abolished,’ he said, ‘everywhere in the Empire.’

  Makaria nodded. ‘All right.’

  He didn’t quite like the way that sounded, too mild and soft, as if she were only humouring him and it didn’t matter what he said. He urged, ‘Write it, write it down.’

  Makaria looked anxiously round at the ruins, letting out a small grunt of powerlessness, but the Praetorian felt in the ragged remains of the jacket he’d laid over Marcus and handed her a little pad and a pen.

  ‘From now,’ Marcus rasped out as she wrote. ‘From right now.’

  She folded his fingers around the pen and guided it through the shapes of his long name.

  Marcus felt a thin flow of relief, and with it, some slight remaining strength suddenly spilling out of him. What little force of his own had been in the hand that held the pen lapsed away.

  Makaria bent closer, pale stripes of tears on her face. ‘Look, Marcus— Don’t just— I can hear them coming, I can see them. Just keep listening to me, just wait a little longer, you’ll be fine . . .’

  Marcus said, ‘You wouldn’t have done this if you thought that,’ and then realised dimly that he hadn’t said it, hadn’t spoken at all. It didn’t seem worth the effort of trying again, only to say that.

  He turned slow eyes up to the punctured roof again. The Colosseum had been built for people to die in. That thought should have been chilling, but somehow it was not, it almost comforted him in the solitude that crept through him inch by inch, for all that Makaria hadn’t let go of his hand.

  Then the medics did climb in, on ladders propped against the walls of the box, over the wreckage of the screens. The colours of their uniforms flashed around Marcus indistinctly, like wings. Then there were fingers on his throat again, and pain and cold hollowing him out. So many people, so much noise and movement filling the place, piling over him, that Marcus felt himself recede, helplessly, to make room for them.

  Something he should have made sure of, something forgotten and terrible scratched like a rat in a wall at the edge of his mind, requiring him to try, reluctantly, to remember.

  Makaria, further away from him now, repeated his name: ‘Marcus. Marcus.’

  From this approach, the Colosseum looked unscathed, but he’d seen ambulances and vigile vehicles swerving through cross-currents of a loose, complex mass of people spreading down the broad street, under the mirrory surfaces of the courts and temples of the Sacred Way, limping and pushing along in the rain.

  They were turning back cars on the Sublician Bridge, but Sulien, half-guiltily, slid the trirota out of the choked traffic and between the tight-faced officers before they could decide it was worth stopping him. He swung straight from the saddle into a run, leaving the trirota by a Praetorian car at the end of the Sacred Way.

  There was already a short, tidy line of corpses under plastic sheeting outside the Colosseum, and a rough cordon of vigile officers around it. Sulien ran up, feeling hastily in his pockets for identity papers, wishing he’d brought his pass from the clinic.

  ‘Move back, move back.’

  ‘My name’s Novianus Sulien; I—’

  ‘Move back,’ repeated the nearest officer, in a kind of blank, droned-out bark, not hearing anything.

  ‘No, I can help, my name’s Novianus Sulien. I’m a friend of Marcus Novius a—’

  Under the helmet, the man’s face flinched into alertness, becoming individual and, briefly, naked with feeling. ‘Novianus Sulien?’ He let out his breath in a tense sigh that made Sulien’s stomach clench in apprehension. ‘Come with me.’ He seized Sulien’s arm and pulled him past the line, hurrying him towards the Colosseum as if he’d proposed running away rather than entering.

  An aching quiver throbbed up through his bones, shaking the pain awake. Marcus couldn’t understand it for a while, then, distantly, he connected the vibration to the sound of metal grinding and realised they had begun cutting through the beam pinning down his deadened legs. They’d fixed a tube in his arm and there was something cold pouring in. It was strange how intrusively close yet separate from him all this activity seemed, like hammering or laughter in an adjoining room.

  And they were moving through the rubble behind him, lifting someone on a stretcher, carrying him away—

  Horror raked into Marcus, almost indistinguishable from the physical pain. He stiffened and tried instinctively to brace a hand against the ground and lift himself, but everything was failing, his mouth was opening and failing to make a sound . . .

  ‘Give him something, he’s in pain,’ ordered Makaria wretchedly.

  That was true enough, but it was worse, terrifying, that he couldn’t make himself understood. He rolled his head, trying to swallow, to get his throat to work, and managed to choke out some mangled approximation of the syllables he wanted, then, clearer, ‘Drusus. Drusus – is he alive?’

  Makaria looked over her shoulder. Drusus had been lying under a crumpled panel of bullet-proof glass, but he had been irrelevant to her. She could not see him now, hidden between the men who were passing the stretcher down into the excavated passage, out of sight, but they were not moving as if they were handling a corpse.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘yes, I think maybe—’

  Marcus tried to twist again, fighting uselessly against his unresponsive body. ‘Not him— Don’t let— Not Drusus.’

  Makaria leant in between the medics, trying to hear. ‘What? What is it, Marcus?’

  ‘Succession.’

  ‘Oh, Marcus—’

  He struggled to find a clear place in the pain and murkiness to think clearly, just for a few seconds. Varius, he wanted to say, and the thought of how shocked Varius would be, hearing that, made his lips twitch with bleak amusement. He thought, but you’d make a good Emperor, Varius. Except that he wouldn’t have the chance. Anyone Marcus named outside the remnants of the dynasty would need an existing stock of power and prominence to have any chance of holding the throne. Drusus had his name, and the nominal status as joint regent Faustus had given him. Salvius had the army. Varius had neither of these things, and Marcus would guarantee his murder just by saying his name.

  He had scarcely any choice. It would be Drusus or Salvius.

  ‘Salvius,’ he croaked roughly. ‘Has to be.’

  He wasn’t sure if Makaria answered that. His breathing sounded startlingly loud now, and he had no control over it any more; the pain from his broken ribs pulled through him with every breath, still violent and yet dissolving, splintering apart. So recognisable, this tug, like a word whose meaning he’d only briefly forgotten.

  The dull juddering ground on. He wanted to curl up on his side, hiding from it, and he didn’t want Una to think he hadn’t resisted, that he wouldn’t have given anything or borne anything to see her again, if there had been any way, any strength left in him. He made another long effort to speak, and heard his voice stutter unexpectedly into motion, though he didn’t seem to have chosen the words: ‘I can’t— I’m sorry—’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’

  Makaria’s voice, falling in from somewh
ere as remote as snow-flakes, but it wasn’t her he was talking to. He said, surprised at hearing himself again, ‘I tried.’ He could feel the hectic motion of the people crowding over him, their hands on him, and yet it was as if they were beating against an impenetrable surface to reach him, as if he’d slipped through the marble floor and they hadn’t realised it.

  The pale oval of sky darkened, pulsed white, spread. An intense sweetness of relief overwhelmed him as even the pain finally shivered into nothing. He couldn’t breathe, and he was aware of his body straining desperately for the unreachable air, but oh, mercifully, the struggle barely touched him, did not hold him, although he was glad when it stopped. He couldn’t feel anyone near him any longer; no one else was there.

  The world held, transparent as ice for another instant, before it thawed and broke – so easily, with such simplicity, that if any words had remained he would have called it beautiful.

  No one noticed Una on the medics’ ladder until she had almost reached the top, scaling it in one breathless rush. Then the vigiles closed ranks at the parapet of the box, shouting, ‘Get down, get down!’ Two of them below rushed for her, one aiming a gun – and Una couldn’t take that in, it was just a little thing in the man’s hand. She clung onto the ladder, unable to explain herself, only stammering, ‘Please, please—’

  Then Makaria appeared, filthy and exhausted, at the wall of the box. She raised a hand and ordered, ‘Let her through.’

  Una didn’t know how she came to be on her hands and knees, bending over Marcus as if she’d been dropped there. Between the ladder and here had been nothing except a kind of dazzled afterimage of Marcus on the far side of the ruined box, dead on the ground – but she hadn’t seen that, she didn’t remember it.