He has heard the story a million times: Priscus used to tell it often, as a metaphor for their miserable lives.
Priscus, damn it. Even inside the nightmare, his friend comes back to haunt him. Why did he have to leave?
The black dream follows its twisted logic, sometimes crystal clear, other times completely irrational. But the heat is real, that much he knows. Verus struggles, kicking out right, left and center: the liquid gradually transforms, changes its consistency, clots into dark mud. A solid slime of the wrong color.
“Like that other damned frog,” says Verus to himself, thinking of the Gaul.
That was one of Cormac’s stories though, may he rest in peace and enjoy all the fucking beer in the Elysian Fields. If you can find beer there, that is.
Cormac always said that when you find yourself in a complicated situation, you have two choices: either accept it, or do everything you can to get out of it. A bit like those two frogs (why are there so many stories about frogs?) who fall into a pail of milk. The first frog, overwhelmed by his baleful fate, lets himself slip down into the white liquid to die. But the second decides to act and starts to swim with all his might. He swims and swims and swims until the milk, pounded like a fifteen-year-old bride on her wedding night, turns to butter beneath his feet. And the stubborn frog can finally escape, climbing up out of the bucket.
Verus feels exactly like the tenacious toad now that he is knee deep in the damned quagmire, now that he can walk on the congealed mud. But the fact is he can still feel a tremendous stench clinging to him, as well as a suffocating heat filling his damp clothing, his nose, his throat.
In other words, Verus is up to his neck in trouble.
So he runs, slips away, wriggles his way free. He squirms, flees, climbs the high ground looming before him like a flower suddenly spurting upwards, the magic bean plant that stretches to the sky.
He climbs and sweats, the young Briton, but the further he flees, the more he sweats and the more the scorching heat rasps at his throat. There is not enough air but the race goes on, the sky sliding into sunset. Blood red clouds leave no room for doubt: tongues of flame.
Verus snaps awake with a jolt. It takes only seconds to figure out what is happening.
Fire.
Rome is in flames.
The Briton leaps to his feet, snatches up his clothes and sandals, and runs out of the dormitory. Everyone is already in the courtyard: Decius Ircius, Aton, the untores, the warriors. The blaze is all around them and will soon reach the Ludus Argentum.
The city is burning.
“Where’s the fire, my lord?” asks Verus.
The lanista spreads his arms: “No idea where it broke out, but people are saying that it is spreading through the city like a swarm of ants. We have to create a firebreak before it reaches the barracks roof.”
They organize themselves into groups of five, all of them accustomed to working as a team. Strong arms at the pumps, buckets, sand piled up to placate the coming flames and sandbags to contain them. The gladiators work skillfully and without yielding to panic.
They throw open the gates of the ludus and, outside the school, convince people to leave their homes and belongings: the important thing is to stay alive.
Teams of vigiles are already charging through the quarter, wearing the wide-eyed expressions of people who know that things are not looking good. Verus cannot imagine it, but those who have lived in Rome for more than fifteen years remember. The Great Fire: thanks to that bloody event the memory of Emperor Nero, though damned, will live on forever.
It was a massacre, a frenzy, pure madness.
The flames began at the Circus Maximus and spread as they consumed the goods on show at the market. The wind pushed them east and the blaze grew, reaching the insulae: families burnt alive in their beds, the horrific screams heard only by the dead. The timber structures of Rome’s apartment buildings offered the perfect fuel: the good, dry beech wood of the verandas and buttresses and the poplar of the front doors fed the pyre like pitch.
The narrow streets prevented help from arriving and the flames grew. The caulk depot, near to the river, literally turned into a fireball, and the temples were next. The temperatures inside grew hot enough to melt the bronze capitals, crushing the bones and charred flesh of the poor, devoted worshippers trapped within.
The catastrophe lasted nine interminable days and nights. Of the eighteen quarters of the city, only four escaped the flames. Thousands of Romans found themselves homeless, and were taken into the huts hurriedly thrown up on the Field of Mars. After the pain of the burns and lost loved ones followed the madness of having to spend months under the stars, waiting for the authorities to work an impossible miracle. Rome was at risk of disappearing during those July days, sixteen years ago. And the memory of the red doom still flickers in the startled eyes of the vigiles on duty tonight.
Ircius is deeply concerned, but tries to put on a brave face, given that once again his men have not let him down. Thanks to the teamwork and the hoses of the water lords—the leather tubes, or siphones, that can be attached to hand pumps placed in strategic locations around the Eternal City—the neighborhood around the ludus is safe. But in the distance, the night sky is aflame.
Verus and Ircius exchange glances for an instant, but that is enough to convince the lanista that there is no point trying to hold the young Briton back. He has too much to seek forgiveness for.
Verus grabs a couple of companions and runs breathlessly through the moonlit streets. The air is thick with smoke. The well-to-do quarters were the first to awaken, torn from their beds by the screams of their terrified slaves. This time the wind is blowing from the west, and instead of the insulae being downwind as in Nero’s day, this time the rich bastards’ houses are under threat. Verus has an urge to leave them to their fate, but he knows there is no honor in killing a condemned man. So he gets to work: he orders his men to gather all the sheets they can find and to wet them in the tubs and muddy puddles left by the fire hoses. When they are soaked they spread them over the weaker flames, instantly smothering them. For the larger fire, centones are needed, the damp, fire-resistant blankets the vigiles always carry with them, heaped up in great towers on carts pulled by blind and patient mules.
All is competence tempered with fear: those familiar with fire weigh up the risks and do not challenge the fire-god Vulcan.
The foolhardy get carried away by the urge to save everybody, and find nasty surprises in store for them. It happens to Senator Giorgione, one of the wealthiest men in the capital; it happens right in front of Verus.
Giorgione is safely outside his villa, but behind his children’s bedroom door all hell is breaking loose: crackling bones and wood, fiery screams and groans. The senator breaks down the seemingly immovable door with a mallet and Vulcan attacks without mercy, the blaze licking at his clothes, fingers of red-hot embers tightening around him. The blast of heat sears his flesh and leaves his chest a mutilated mess. The deafening sound of the scarlet beast, as hungry for air as any living creature, breaks the son of the Empire in two. If he had not been so daring he would still be alive. In any case, there was nothing he could have done against the fury of the fire: his offspring were already long gone.
As Verus watches the scene a jolt runs down his spine. An electric shock, a wakeup call to his drowsy senses.
A tangle of images forces its way to the front of his mind, a medley of awful memories: the night of the massacre, the flames of Vesuvius, the fire burning inside him. Once again, the eternal curse has appeared before his very eyes. Verus changes a thousand times in an instant: first a block of stone, blind with terror, as though standing before Medusa. Then a statue, still unable to move, but bursting with emotions. Until finally he turns to dry sand and collapses under his own weight, unable to keep his feet before so much pain. When he snaps out of it, the time has come to run.
/> Stick some wings on your ass! Cormac would say.
Verus hurtles downstairs as the senator’s villa implodes in an orgy of sparks. He went in to try to save Giorgione, but after having gone through a hallway, a corridor and up a flight of stairs, he realized there was nothing he could do.
He flees.
He swallows up steps two at a time, three, rolling like a barrel kicked down a slope. He crosses the pompous atrium and his gaze falls on the water of the impluvium, boiling like a pan of cooking oil. Breathing is hard and the air is thick as hot tar. Fifteen more strides and he is outside.
Around him is nothing but ash and orange-red chaos.
Rome burns. And it hurts like hell.
Actually though, this fire is not as brutal as Nero’s inferno.
Even though today the plebeians accuse the Mad Emperor of having been the real culprit of that massacre—a guilt based on his desire for a new home and to sing as the world went up in flames—the truth is that the cursed monarch learned from his own mistakes and passed on that knowledge to the generations that have followed.
Under the reign of Titus the Great, the streets are broader and the houses are built of stone quarried from Alba or Gabio, more resistant to the fire than simple bricks. So for once the insulae are safe, and the poor will not be the ones who take the brunt of the inferno.
But much is ruined by the catastrophe; many of the gods’ statues burn inside their gleaming temples, as Vulcan’s fire spreads chaos throughout the city.
Verus charges through the streets at breakneck speed, like a deer spooked by a lightning strike. Once fear’s spindly fingers begin to close around his neck it is too late—common sense goes out the window. Panicked evacuees fill every alley, ragged and semi-naked, careening about in a search of shelter. The looters never sleep and waste no time getting to work. Elegant houses and sumptuous villas, miraculously spared by the whirling flames, are ravished like Greek freedmen. The thieves, intoxicated by Mercury’s favor, smash through locks and bolts, plundering storerooms, ignoring the screams of the masters’ servants, dealing out beatings and smashing gums with impunity. Rome’s upper crust bleeds, waiting for a rescue that is a long time coming. The Imperial troops are too busy helping the vigiles put out the fires. They have abandoned their swords and shields for axes, hooks, ladders, saws, poles, hoes, and ropes.
No one holds back; tonight there is need of elbow grease to contain the red fury. But when the massacre is over, the damage caused by the widespread looting will prove to be worse than that from the fire itself.
Verus is powerless to help, and in truth he is too frightened to be worried about the fate of the rich.
He seeks solace elsewhere.
He flees.
He has no idea how he ends up in front of the Pantheon, but the spectacle that greets him is worth a tale or two. Tonight the gods are melting, every one of them.
Silver tears drip from the colonnade of the Temple of Temples. The fire spirit has possessed it, splitting the travertine stone and baking the marble. The lead and bronze capitals have liquefied and fused together, the mixture gleaming in the light of Diana’s rays.
The moon is splendid, tonight, but she takes no pity on human suffering either.
The Pantheon weeps, crumbling one piece at a time before the Briton’s incredulous eyes. The celestial vault gives way, while the name of Agrippa, engraved on the stone as a way of satisfying his eagerness to tell the world of his friendship with the well-to-do, disintegrates. His statue in the portico has turned black, alongside that of Octavian, already mangled by the flames. Countless manikins of the divine are now nothing more than memories; all is recollection and destruction.
The red death consumes the Capitoline Hill as well, crowded with memories of Vespasian’s recent fires after the war with Vitellius. In those days Titus’s father was little more than an executioner, a partisan driven by honor. And he had won by melting the houses of the gods with the fire of the just.
The altar and sanctuary of Hercules disintegrate: the demigod meets his fate, extinguished in a bath of flames.
The Field of Mars, glory of Augustus who held it so dear, burns too. The shrine of vengeful Mars, built by Octavian to celebrate the rightful retaliation that befell Brutus and Cassius, crumples like burnt paper.
Verus, far from the collapsing Capitoline, is finally safe and sound. His eyes reflect the shattered embers that were once known as Rome.
The arrival of a thankless dawn, filled with death and violence, marks the end of the first night of the fires in Titus’s city.
Two more will follow. And two whole days.
The following morning begins with a sigh of relief: it is over, thanks be to the gods and lares. The She-wolf is injured, her ancient face soiled by smoke and wounds.
Verus is hard at work near the Forum. Along with several untores from the Ludus Argentumand a large number of shopkeepers, he is trying to co-ordinate the salvage effort. Titus has moved quickly to take care of his people. Titus is a good man, everyone knows that. But today discontent squirms through the wrinkles of his subjects’ skinny, ragged bodies, miraculously safe and sound as they are. Like shining white lead, unease settles on the Romans’ blackened souls, gradually poisoning them.
The rage of the wretched weighs like stone: the She-wolf has got her ass burnt and the usual phantoms are to blame, but Titus’s toy has been left standing.
“You wait and see, they’ll blame the Christians again,” predicts an old sawbones as he passes by, “…when maybe it was Him!” The implication is a terrible accusation, leveled at the master of the world.
The Amphitheater, a colossal farce of ancient stone, a marble giant now finished and ready for use, bears not a scratch. Verus looks at it again as he busies himself bandaging a girl’s foot—it has been singed, but she will be fine. The child will only have to be careful not to put weight on it for a few days.
The house of games has been saved while the evacuees are forced to live in huts or on the street, a situation that serves only to stoke the flames burning in the hearts of the populace. That is why Titus has been so quick to help: a man can push his luck only so far.
But the oval theater represents an enormous and indelible weight on the wounded city.
The dead are buried on the first peaceful dawn. The fire has done the job of the funeral pyres. Without waiting for any ritual, it has purified the unlucky victims’ bodies of any pestilence, leaving only bones and ashes to be cleared away. The Emperor has already arranged for the remains of ruined houses to be taken to Ostia without delay, using his fleet of wagons bearing the Eagle standard.
Cleared out. The term echoes dangerously through the evacuees, brimming with bile.
And who takes care of their fallen brothers?
Who will pray for the innocent devoured by the flames?
Willing hands like those of Verus and his companions who, as soon as they have finished stitching the stitchable and bandaging the carnage with all the rags and pity they could lay their hands on, are off through the city streets on clumsy carts, lame as the thin, thirsty, fearful donkeys that drag them. It is wretched work: they must gather the remains of those burnt alive from amid the rubble—bones and skin like parchment, a few faces left amazingly intact despite the bodies they belong to having been carbonized, light as charcoal—putting them back together as best they can and placing them with care inside jute sacks that once contained beans and dried fruit, highlight of any table and bought with good money earned by hard work on the streets. The sacks now wind up at the bottom of carefully dug holes on the edge of the city, soon to be covered with rubble and earth. Before the season is out the grass will have erased the memory of the departed, joy will have returned to do the dirty work it has always done, and no one will remember those who failed to survive. But for the moment this is what has to be done to honor the dead. And Verus toils like a silent mule, without
stopping to think about right or wrong.
Pyres appear in the city as well; ancient custom does not die, even beneath the fury of the tempest. But for those who escaped the flames by chance or by miracle, the bonfires of flesh and the coins on the eyes of the dead, ready to pay the ferryman for the journey to the underworld, have a very real impact. Today, Rome shuns fire like it would some awful disease. And who can blame it?
Verus happens to be nearby the Ludus Argentum when he spots some suspicious movement at the end of the road, next to the inn of the Proterus. The crowd of people, normally bent sadly over brooms or clutching rags in their hands in an attempt to clean up what little remains, is suddenly alert. They prick up their ears, listening out for the arrival of a new enemy. Verus cannot see properly through the bustle of bodies.
Perhaps the figure, approaching more slowly than an Indian elephant, does not have hostile intentions. But the air is thick with menace—gladiators’ senses are finely tuned to danger. Verus drops what he is doing and runs to see what is happening, prey to the damned curiosity that has been getting him into trouble ever since he was a little boy.
First of all, he hears the murmur of the plebeians.
“Look at those two pieces of…”
Then he elbows his way through the crowd until he can finally lay his eyes on the last thing he wanted to see: Julia. By Domitian’s side, hand in hand like a couple of lovers. They move haughtily through the streets of the fire-ravaged city, clean and lustrous as the eyes of a newborn babe, doused in more perfume than a harlot at the start of a night’s work.
Naturally they are not alone. A group of Praetorians forms a square around them, a thoughtful gesture from the monarch himself. They flaunt the colors of authority, the bright blue of state officialdom. But no matter how much Titus dotes on his daughter, he would never surrender his own personal honor guard so that his first-born could parade them about like a dog on a leash. In any case, the Praetorian Guard is so vast that there are soldiers on hand for every whim and every job. Guardians of public order and invisible spies, even the vigiles, those lords of fire and water; all operate under the aegis of the Scorpion. All are part of the Guard. But is the so-called “blacks” that make up the cream of the organization, the Emperor’s hounds with their wicked eyes and spotless cloaks.
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