Savage City

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘I am Noviana Una,’ she said, when told to give her name, laying slight but perceptible stress on the first part of it.

  There was a stir in the court and a lean compact man in his fifties sprang up from his seat and cried out, ‘Sir, that name was a privilege extended to her on emancipation. Her rights as a freedwoman have been revoked; she is no longer entitled to bear it. She has no right to a trial at all; only the monstrous scale of her treachery, the fact that the entire Roman people are her victims, dictate that her crimes be examined in public, rather than that she be sent straight to the beasts as she deserves.’

  Sulien tried to swallow away the dryness in his throat. Varius looked sick too, and said, ‘That’s Hirtius.’

  The name sounded dimly familiar to Sulien, he was famous for prosecuting . . . someone. He shook his head. It made no difference who he was. Convulsively he pulled the map closer, to get back to work again, for the reassurance of being active. But he couldn’t look away from the longvision, or turn it off.

  ‘We have not yet begun,’ said the prefect. He asked Una, ‘Do you acknowledge this confession?’ An attendant had passed him a document several pages long; others were handing out copies to the panel of senators seated around him on the platform.

  ‘Yes,’ said Una, and did not speak again for the rest of the sessions that day.

  Hirtius stepped forward with a rolling flex of the shoulders, a swivel of the neck, an athlete’s final warm-up. In a loud, confident voice, he began to speak again: ‘Prefect, senators, you will find in those pages a catalogue of crimes you might expect it would take a Spartacus a lifetime to achieve. Instead, what do you see before you? A young girl, who at first sight you might think incapable of conceiving such vicious thoughts and harbouring such depraved feelings. Perhaps your first instinct is to pity her. Yet that soft-heartedness, though most fitting to her age and sex, is alien to her nature and wasted upon her. She herself admits that in her earliest years she was infected by, and gave herself utterly to, an unnatural will to undermine, betray and destroy the security of Rome. She was a slave, and yet escape from her legal owners was not enough for her. The privilege of lawful freedom was not enough for her. So great was her desire for power, and so strong her malicious influence upon others, that she insinuated herself into the highest reaches of legitimate authority. She was a friend and supporter of Dama, the leader of that infamous group of anarchist slaves and arsonists, the tools Nionia used to cause such destruction – I will not say untold destruction, judges, for indeed it must be told: every loss of property and life must here be named and remembered.

  ‘And no one here can have forgotten what came of it. The Colosseum stands barely a stone’s throw from where we sit; the walls that witnessed the assassination of the late Emperor Titus and his nephew, Marcus Novius, are not yet whole. Finally, she was arrested in the act of attempting to defect to Nionia, in a time of war.’

  Sulien and Varius, horridly transfixed through all this, both started as the longdictor emitted a long chirrup. After eyeing it distrustfully for another second Varius lifted the circlet as if it might carry disease and said in that same wary voice Sulien had heard in the longdictor chamber in Issedoneum, ‘Yes?’

  Sulien rose anxiously to his feet as he recognised Cleomenes’ voice, muffled as it was on the other end of the line. ‘Are you watching it?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Varius.

  Cleomenes said something Sulien couldn’t make out. Varius closed his eyes and sat down heavily on the bed, bowing his head and exhaling with what Sulien recognised, after a moment’s nervous confusion, as relief. He could see his shoulders sink as tension dropped away from them.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Varius into the longdictor, before turning it off. He reached to slam off the longvision and looked up at Sulien. ‘They’re not sending her to the Colosseum, whatever Hirtius says. Cleomenes says the confession’s part of a deal.’

  Sulien couldn’t feel any great relief in this himself, and found it excessive in Varius. ‘Well then, what—?’

  Varius sighed again, and straightened, became still. ‘It would be a firing squad,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care how they want to do it,’ Sulien said violently, ‘it doesn’t matter.’

  Varius paused, then released the breath he’d taken without saying anything. He nodded.

  ‘But this means we’ve got less time We would have had until the Games for the Saturnalia, if they— If it’s not at the Colosseum then they won’t have to wait for anything, they could finish the trial by the end of the week and then . . . and there’ll only be one journey we can intercept.’

  ‘We’ll have only one chance anyway,’ said Varius. ‘And in another two days we’ll be as ready as we’re going to get.’

  Sulien nodded and sat down on the bed. Sweaty, feverish weariness poured through him as the spurt of panic ebbed away. His own feelings seemed hard to follow now; Varius was right, it could hardly be bad news that the Colosseum was no longer waiting for her; he should be at least a little glad, shouldn’t he? She was not sitting there in the chamber in the Basilica Noviana right at this moment, anticipating that death, waiting for the hounds to tear her to pieces.

  At least he wouldn’t have to worry about Varius buying poison any more; that was something.

  It was a bright winter day. As they had hurried her first into the van, and then down the steps into the cell beneath the Basilica, she had felt the open air on her skin, warm compared with the grinding cold of those weeks in Venedia and Sarmatia. At first it had been terrible to face the people in the gallery, feeling the first brunt of their excitement and anticipating their disappointment when they realised her death would not be played out in front of them at the Colosseum. But she could see past them now. In the high windows at the back of the court the sky shone blue. Una sat in her chair and kept her eyes on it.

  Her advocate was addressing the chamber. She had not known, until they took her into the court, that there would be any kind of defence at all. Hirtius had gone on speaking without a break for more than an hour.

  ‘My client, as my colleague has said, denies none of this, and you will hear the truth from her own lips later. My task is only to remind the Prefect, the senators and the people here of her youth—’ There were some groans and jeers in the gallery, and he talked on, largely unheard, without waiting for them to die down, ‘—and that in confessing freely she has at least not compounded her wickedness with lies. I would suggest also to the court that my noble colleague perhaps credits her with too much understanding of her actions. He spoke of sedition as an infection. I agree with him. But this girl was only one symptom, not the source of it. Perhaps we could never find any one person with whom it began, not among the fanatics led by Dama, nor even among the aggressors in Nionia. It is the contagion of our times, which we must fight and contain as best we can. How potent must it be, to infect not only slaves and outlaws but citizens too, for my colleague has already mentioned men such as Caius Varius and Delir of Aspadana. We must always be on our guard against it, citizens, in our families, in our slaves, even in ourselves. For even the love of justice and peace can be preyed upon and abused by those who love only chaos. Our Emperor’s late uncle and cousin – casualties of this struggle, and of course, clear of any stain upon their character – pursued ideals that, though pure and worthy in the abstract, are, in our imperfect world, not only impossible but dangerous, all too apt to be twisted. Can we be surprised then that an uneducated slave girl, lacking the power of moral discrimination, could be corrupted altogether? Having fled from civilisation in animal terror of recapture, chance led her to a gang of criminals who rejected all authority, who exposed her to a poisonous combination of subversive ideas, dissident religion and witchcraft. Since then she has acted in selfishness, greed and ignorance, as an animal acts, but without calculation – I cannot say without malice, but it was malice only of the moment. Of course there can be no argument but that a
dangerous animal or a disease must be destroyed, but Rome may show mercy to the extent of sparing this benighted girl the Colosseum, or any more protracted means of execution. Let her be swiftly extinguished and as swiftly forgotten.’

  ‘If Rome is to show such mercy, it is right that the people should understand how great that forbearance is,’ began Hirtius, rising again.

  Una knew she would need to be able to absent her attention, or the trial would be unbearable; she had practised doing so. It had not occurred to her that it would also be boring. On the second day, more restless than she’d ever been inside her cell, she began to want to move just for the sake of moving. She resisted visible fidgeting as far as she could, but flexed her toes inside her shoes.

  Sometimes Hirtius startled her out of her reverie by shouting at her directly, rather than addressing the Prefect: ‘And then, surely, if you were not consumed with covetousness and audacity, you would have been content!’ and for a few minutes afterwards she would feel her heart pounding as if she’d been about to run, and blood throbbing even in the fingertips of her chained hands.

  Hirtius spent a long time questioning a vigile officer to prove that she had been at Dama’s farm, then moved on to the time she and Varius had spent in Nionian custody in Sina. A minor diplomat whom she did not recognise and who avoided looking at her confirmed the Nionian Imperial family had definitely visited her, and admitted she had been seen wearing clothes they had given her. But that’s in the confession, Una thought, with a pang of simple exasperation. Why do we have to bother with this? Why don’t you just end it?

  In her cell under the Basilica she found it difficult to lie still and let the minutes course through her, as she had done before. She paced and shook. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she saw white dogs, pouring towards her like a froth on a torrent of water, almost felt the teeth meeting in her flesh – but why? She was safe from that now; there was nothing to fear. She waited for the agitation to exhaust itself, lying down and promising herself again that it was nearly over; she allowed herself to remember Marcus’ arms round her, in the bright sea at Siphnos, in bed in their apartment in Athens—

  But even to picture him made her twist in anguish and start up again. Phrases from the day in court that she thought she’d been careful not to listen to in the first place stuck after all in her mind. Only as she caught herself snarling aloud, as she strode back and forth across the cell, ‘Lying,’ did she identify the feeling as rage.

  She sat down again on the hard bed, baffled and almost amused at herself. It seemed to her that she should no longer be capable of anger. She had known the nature of what would be said, just as she knew what the outcome would be, and none of it could mean anything, not to her. Whatever happened in court, or in the world now, she could have no part in it. The last second of her life, in any sense that mattered, was already past: it had come as she lost hold of Sulien, as she fell to the gravel and the train roared on. These final days were like blank space at the bottom of a concluded letter; the trial was just a tedious matter of observing formalities to wind up what had already happened.

  But electricity fizzed along her nerves, her heart bucked in her chest, the concrete floor was very cold on her bare feet. Her brain was full of noise and motion, not peace.

  On the morning of the third day, the day she was due to read out the confession Hirtius had already savaged from beginning to end, she realised that not everyone in the gallery was hungry to watch her die. Una had tried not to perceive any thoughts but her own, to exclude everything from her senses except the blue sky through the windows, but as Hirtius began to speak, an outraged shout seemed to erupt in the hall, as if she herself had lost control completely and screamed what she’d only whispered to herself in her cell.

  Lying—! You lying bastard!

  It was so loud that for a moment she was confused that no one reacted; Hirtius talked on, there was no disapproving rustle from the gallery, no word from the Prefect; the lictors stood motionless. There had been no shout.

  Una lowered her gaze from the high windows and met the eyes of a young woman, seated several rows from the front, plainly dressed, pale, silent.

  The girl wanted Hirtius to choke before he could get out another word, she wanted lightning to strike him where he stood. She thought it was incredible that Una always looked so calm, no matter what they said, gazing at the far windows as if she could see something no one else could in the sky. She wanted Una to feel her staring at her.

  Una thought the girl was not a slave now, but had been.

  And there were others, standing at the back of the hall, waiting with the coats and bags, some of them in chauffeurs’ or bodyguards’ livery, some indistinguishable from anyone else in that hall, except that they watched her steadily, without the hostile expectancy of the rest, but with stern, angry sympathy.

  Something sharp whistled through her, more like terror than comfort; a match set to fuses laced along her bloodstream. She tried to draw her attention back into herself, or to spread it away into the air. She shivered, trying to catch her racing breath. She closed her eyes and saw red and gold sparks against black.

  They would live with what they heard in this chamber. This was not, for them, a period of empty inevitability. No, nor for her either.

  She grew aware of the flat glare of the cameras, like a dull pressure on her skin. She opened her eyes.

  Once again they knew they had to watch, on this first session of the interrogations. This time they were gathered in Delir’s rooms in the Subura, and Varius had already had them recite their tasks for the day of the attempt, twice, as if it were some kind of play. Sulien had helplessly unreal moments when he felt it would never be more than that; not just that they would fail, that something would happen to prevent them even trying.

  He thought Una looked worse as the camera closed in on her: tight-lipped, breathing fast and shallowly. Her eyes were shut. He hovered close to the screen until Varius said, ‘Please – we all need to see her.’

  Sulien sat down and knitted his fingers into Lal’s.

  ‘There can be no doubt that Nionian agents had succeeded in recruiting a group of desperate and unprincipled outlaws and assassins to serve their purpose, namely, the overthrow of the Roman world,’ concluded Hirtius. ‘The only question remaining is this: should Rome choose to mitigate its just anger against her?’

  Una lifted her head and looked fleetingly and searchingly at the camera.

  ‘The prisoner will answer the charges herself,’ announced the Prefect.

  Una rose slowly to her feet and stared steadily into the crowd as a hissing swell of noise rose to greet her. Watching her face Varius leaned forward, frowning slightly, holding his breath.

  ‘I am grateful for the opportunity to confess to the crimes I am accused of,’ she murmured, though so quietly and indistinctly the Prefect interrupted, ‘Speak up,’ and the microphones flared briefly as someone adjusted the sound.

  Una cleared her throat. ‘I am grateful for the opportunity to confess to the crimes I am accused of,’ she repeated. Her eyes were downcast now, fixed on the sheets of paper in front of her. ‘I understand that though it is impossible I should be allowed to live, this court may spare me a slow death if I take that opportunity.’

  Then she looked up, straight into the camera, and Varius moved towards the screen as if to catch some teetering thing about to fall, and said, ‘Una, no—’

  She spoke fast, to be sure of getting it all out before she could be stopped, or before her courage could fail, but clearly: ‘But all I will say is that the last act of Emperor Marcus Novius was the abolition of slavery.’

  The Prefect and the two lawyers all rose at once, Hirtius shouting; the lictors crowded in around her before they even had orders what to do.

  The sound from the crowd built more slowly, a confused, soft burr that swept across them like a wave, growing to a loud roar, and somewhere in the middle of it all there was a shrill cry of joy, and scattered across it,
defiant sprays of applause.

  ‘The prisoner will not continue to abuse this court,’ shouted the Prefect above the noise, ‘she will be returned to her cell at once.’

  Una struggled fiercely as the lictors seized her, crumpled the pages of the confession and swept them into the air. ‘All I have ever done has been for that!’ she called out for the crowd in the gallery to hear, even if the microphones would not, and then she went still and let them take her away.

  They knocked her to the floor in the cell, rougher with her than they’d been before. Una scrambled up, gasping for breath. Some terrible luminous thing was flooding through her, burning, slicing her to shreds, and soon it would resolve into terror at what she had done. Yet for a few moments more it felt like exhilaration, like wanting to leap or dance.

  Varius turned his back on the longvision and her stern, radiant face, feeling a blow at his chest like the impact of a thrown rock, a booted foot. He could see it happening; however good the plan sounded every time they went over it, he did not have enough faith in it to soften or blur that vision of what the hounds would do to her. He had lost too many people to be able to stand this now; and none of their deaths had been as terrible as the one she had just chosen.

  Sulien was staring at the screen, one hand over his mouth, incredulous.