Rome Burning (40 page)

Cleomenes felt remorseful. He had been exaggerating an air of put-upon martyrdom largely out of amused habit, acquired over days of Sulien’s persistence. Of the three young slaves into whose long anarchic night he’d found himself suddenly caught up, he’d always thought Sulien the most normal, the easiest to like. Una and the other one, with the horrifying round marks on his wrists that should have been impossible on living skin, had been so desperate, so relentless.

Sulien watched him feed a large card, punched with an intricate pattern of square holes, into a slot in the panel beside the alcove. The mechanism whirred and there was a dull noise of shifting weight in the darkness, as the belt began to move, slowly, finally bearing into view a dark crate and depositing it on the metal-topped table. Cleomenes flicked swiftly through its contents and handed Sulien a photograph trapped between rigid boards of transparent plastic.

The picture was old. The label below it told him it had been pinned straight to the wall, unframed. The sweetness of it surprised Sulien: the little boy who must have been Atronius stood between his parents, restrained by each hand as if he could not stand still and might have made a dash towards the camera, but he was smiling. The parents seemed to be laughing, there were pots of hibiscus at their feet.

‘Are they still in Maia, these two?’

‘Took a while to trace. Dead in the Maia–Mexica uprising,’ said Cleomenes.

Sulien felt another flash of excitement at this news, a bright mirage of understanding as he thought of the failed separatist mutiny that Marcus’ father had quelled more than twenty years ago. But then he sighed. If Atronius was still alive, he must have been prepared to leave this photograph behind. Could it, then mean so much? He slid the picture back into the crate and began unsystematically browsing through the other plastic-cased sheets.

‘Don’t get anything out of order,’ moaned Cleomenes.

‘I’m not.’ Papers to do with the factory that gave up nothing. Receipts and bills. A torn and crumpled sheet of card: a ticket, which he was about to replace – and then stopped, staring at it, feeling as cold and raw as though he were being shaken awake.

Cleomenes leant over. ‘That’s how we placed him in Byzantium, remember?’

Speechlessly, Sulien handed him the plate. Uncomprehending, Cleomenes looked at it, and at Sulien’s face. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘That’s the clinic’s code,’ answered Sulien in a soft, flat mutter. His mouth felt parched and rough.

Cleomenes studied the uneven, rather childlike sequence of symbols on the scrap of card. It was hard to read and not complete; it vanished over the torn edge of the card. There was room for doubt as far as he could see; if it was the clinic’s code, he couldn’t blame the team for focusing on the ticket’s provenance and missing it. ‘You’re sure?’ he said, gently dubious.

‘That’s my name.’

Above the code was an S, a U, and yes, Cleomenes saw what could have been the upright of an L. Cleomenes sucked his breath in anxiously, not quite certain.

‘I know that’s my name,’ insisted Sulien, sounding angry and betrayed now. ‘You can see it’s my name. Think what happened. They called me out of the clinic, by name. And
he
had this at the same time. It
was
the same people. They did want to kill me. Why in hell wasn’t this found before? This is a fucking joke.’ Unfocused, he turned back to the box and pulled another sheet, scanning it. ‘The handwriting isn’t the same, is it? One of the others must have written it down.’

‘He’d been there for two weeks already, though,’ suggested Cleomenes, uncomfortably. ‘He couldn’t have known you and Varius were going there. That was before you’d decided yourselves, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand. Veii must have been on their list anyway. Maybe they brought it forward when I got away the first time. I was being followed. They could have found out fast enough what I was doing. They tried
twice in one day, Cleomenes.’ He began an agitated attempt to retrieve the picture of the little boy. ‘He must have hated Leo, after what happened to his family. I guess that includes Marcus, don’t you?’ The hunt for the photograph was futile; he couldn’t remember where it had been; his fingers weren’t steady. He brandished the ticket. ‘How long had he
had
this?’

Cleomenes shook his head helplessly – it could have been from any time after the ticket was printed, there was no way of telling.

Sulien thought he’d been relieved earlier, when Cleomenes had scoffed at the profusion of bodyguards following him, and sent them away for the afternoon promising, ‘I can keep an eye on him.’ Now he wondered if all his complaints had been anything more than show, and whether after all the guards had made him feel safe. He remembered the scale of the fire at Veii. What could any number of armed men trailing about with him do against that? He let the ticket fall back loosely on top of the crate. ‘Well, whatever else it means, you were right about him. He did it.’

*

Entering the room with its division of bars, Salvius found himself feeling less awkward than he had expected. Of course Drusus’ look of physical deterioration was unmistakable, but the young man stood up composedly, as if greeting Salvius in his own home. He smiled, at once confident and self-deprecating, as though he found his own predicament faintly amusing, and extended his hand between the bars towards Salvius.

‘The orders are that no one is to touch him,’ interrupted the warden, as Drusus had known he would.

‘I am General of the Legions of the Roman Empire. You take orders from me,’ said Salvius instantly, automatic anger at being challenged overriding any misgivings he might have felt about grasping Drusus’ hand.

‘Bless you for coming,’ said Drusus.

*

Sulien was growing used to feeling always slightly sick; for hours or days he even forgot the reason for the bands of tension around his shoulders and stomach; he was confused to wake up with an ache in his hands from clenching his fists in his sleep. When he remembered he was exasperated: was there anything more he could reasonably do to protect himself? And had anything further happened to him, in the weeks since that one day? No, of course not. And so he should get it out of his mind – he
had
done so, really. And yet it remained in his body, and he kept the printed copies of the picture and the ticket with the fragment of his name, and a later, smudged, unremarkable image of Atronius in the army, the only adult picture the vigiles had been able to find. They were folded into tight squares in his wallet, so that they were always with him. Sometimes, without premeditation, sitting becalmed on a tram carrying him west to Transtiberina, he would mechanically take them out and straighten them, looking at the child’s face, at the parents. He knew the scratchy handwriting of the fragmented code so well now that he could see the missing symbols extending over the torn edge, glowing in space. It was not easy to account to himself why he still needed to have them. Perhaps at first he’d had some unlikely thought that someone at the clinic might recognise the handwriting or the face. But he kept them out of some feeling of balancing the scales, of redress. He was making up for the killer’s possession of his name.

At least the nausea eased itself slightly whenever he had to visit Faustus at the Palace; he felt, illogically, hidden, insulated among so many rooms and people, so much heaped-up beauty. That must be the real function of a Palace, for an Emperor.

In a large drawing room a trio of musicians were playing with dutiful jauntiness while Faustus listened dully, propped on a day-bed before the high windows. A sea-battle played out in fresco across the walls, its violence – which was ferocious – disguised and smoothed by the beauty of the painting. A pale missile streaked towards a stricken ship, as lovely as a dolphin. At the other end of the room, Makaria was hissing an urgent, exhausted rant at Sulien. By now she
could feel the last dregs of her patience burning away; she could barely fight off either her homesickness or the wish to be in Sina, as she should have been, for once near the heart of things.

‘Considering he’s suffered another stroke, I think he’s making good progress,’ Sulien told her.

‘But progress towards what?’ said Makaria. ‘What about his memory? It’s not right. If I remind him of something he says he knows it happened – maybe he’s telling the truth, I don’t know. But even if he does recognise the facts when he sees them, I don’t think he really remembers. He gets so angry with me. How much improvement can I expect?’

‘More than this,’ promised Sulien, wearily.

‘Then how soon?’

Doors burst open somewhere in the Palace, not far off, and a shout of surprise or protest was abruptly silenced. Feet, beating on stone, marching close.

Sulien and Makaria stood fixed, looking at each other, as though suddenly complicit in something. Makaria told him, ‘Wait,’ and ran towards the door.

Quiet, familiar antechambers opened before her, the nearest white, butter-yellow and silver, the next cool twilight blue, with a shy marble Diana rising above the mosaic floor. At first Makaria saw only Salvius, striding at the head of a small column of men across the further room, towards her. And then she saw that behind Salvius, hurrying awkwardly along as if it were hard to keep up, pale and fragile and sick-looking, but with a hard electric brightness in his face, was Drusus.

An attendant who’d already been making unheeded protests about the lawlessness of this march, dived loyally into Salvius’ path saying firmly, ‘Look sir, the Emperor’s ill, his doctor has instructed—’

Marching on, Salvius muttered grimly, ‘Has he?’ and one of his men, almost without breaking step, struck the attendant deliberately out of the way, knocking him hard into the wall.

Uncertain if she’d been seen, Makaria darted back into the drawing room, letting the door swing to. She looked at her father, who had heard the approaching noise and was
trying to raise himself with instinctive alarm and indignation, and she realised that whatever was coming there was nothing she could do to protect either him or herself.

She gave Sulien a little shove towards the only other door and murmured quickly, ‘You’d better get out. Go on.’

Sulien hovered, and then did as she said. He slipped through into a cluttered study, red-walled and cramped, and there was no time even to close the door fully before Drusus and Salvius entered the room behind him. He heard Faustus stutter pitifully in bewilderment, and then shout, with sudden clear rage, ‘How dare you do this? So you are a traitor, then, to me and to Rome!’

Sulien was in a corner, just outside the blade of light from the door that filled most of the room, slicing the space into triangles of bright danger and shadow. Yes, there was another way out, and he tried to sidle carefully towards it, but reached it in the open, revealed to anyone who’d been looking. Now he glimpsed Salvius, and a moment later he recognised Drusus’ voice. Hoping the sound would be disguised under Faustus’ fury Sulien tried the handle – but the door had been locked hours before, so that the Emperor would not be disturbed.

‘You coward! Traitor!’ How he loathed being able to do nothing but accuse and bawl! The indignity of having no other weapons left! Faustus turned, dragging his useless body from side to side, a crippled worm or caterpillar. ‘Give me a – give—’ His voice stalled to an angry buzz. He wanted to demand a gun but could not bear the inevitable, definitive proof of his vanished authority: the Praetorians, plainly, were already answering to Salvius. All Faustus’ worst fears were taking life at the same instant; the steady corrosion of these last years finishing in this violent fracture, and after a hundred and sixty years, he was the one to fail, to see the dynasty break. He would be judged for letting it happen, when he was too unfairly weakened to prevent it. He could not even look at Drusus, who seemed, in any case, merely like a dark accessory or familiar lurking at Salvius’ side. Impotently he cried again at Salvius, ‘You
will
be sorry for it!’

Only then did he remember his daughter, standing there exposed, a target, and felt terror bite.

‘Forgive him, Uncle,’ said Drusus tremulously, stepping forward like a dancer on cue. ‘He’s done this for Rome. Not for himself or me.’

Makaria’s instinct would have been to rage and bluster like her father until, she thought, with a cold throb of realisation that this was really happening, she was dragged away or shot alongside him. Instead she was trying carefully to position herself between Faustus and the open door to the little room into which she’d sent Sulien. She had seen the boy’s shadow in the thin gap between door and frame; she knew he was trapped there, watching, and after what
Salvius’ men had done to the servant outside the room, it was chiefly the sense that Sulien needed her protection that kept her quiet. She had seen, as Faustus, blind with rage and despair could not, the small, wounded flicker of guilt that stirred Salvius’ face at the word ‘traitor’. And she saw how Drusus laid a reassuring hand on his ally’s arm as he passed, as if to remind him that it wasn’t true. With earnest grace, Drusus lowered himself to kneel at Faustus’ feet.

‘We’re not the ones who want to take your power from you. I want to give it back.’

‘You murdering little viper, don’t speak to me,’ snarled Faustus.

With another strange shock, Makaria saw that the flinch that crossed Drusus’ face at this was an intensified, less subtle imitation of Salvius’ look of pain at being called a traitor. The same muscles contracted in an almost identical way Drusus must have registered and stored the useful expression as unconsciously and immediately as a camera.