Rome Burning (46 page)

Marcus scattered the flakes of paper and turned to Varius with a startling look of harsh decision. But then his gaze slid past to something behind and his face, which already looked dried out and bone-pale, blanched further. Varius turned his head to follow the look: a Roman officer who seemed to have been wounded in the shoulder was being dragged away from the corner of the broken formation. And beyond that, half screened by the Nionian retainers as if they could still protect him, someone lay, face down on the cobbles. Except that there was no face left; the corpse was truncated at the neck in a collapsed wet mess of powdery blood from which Varius’ eyes instinctively skitted away, before deliberately he looked again to recognise the body – from the clothes and the behaviour of the retainers – as Kato.

‘Come on,’ Marcus said to him, suddenly close, lunging past him towards Una and seizing her hand. She too was unhurt, although she had been staring numbly at Kato’s body and she moved stiffly when Marcus touched her. Varius wondered with an abrupt jab of pain what it was like for her when someone died close by. Marcus put his hand briefly to her face, a rough caress, and she mechanically brushed his fingers with hers, but then retracted very slightly, looking at him with something almost like distrust.

Marcus turned towards the remaining mass of soldiers, steering Una in front of him, and barked, ‘Well, are you going to stand and let us be shot? Get us away from this!’ And he began striding urgently back the way they’d come, towards the shelter of the red-pillared colonnade. Already, Varius had realised how Marcus was taking advantage of the confusion to group the three of them together, but he saw now, without understanding why, that he had also managed to position himself between them and the main body of the squadron. Except that he kept Una and Varius ahead of him, he was once again in the lead, almost outstripping the troops around them.

More Nionian soldiers hurtled past into the courtyard. The retainers must have alerted them to what had happened.

They reached the colonnade, but Marcus’ pace did not slow, and he said quietly, ‘Come on, keep going.’

At first, Varius was too relieved at even attempting to separate themselves from the troops to resist, but Una hissed unhappily, ‘No. Marcus,’ and she had begun to hang back; Marcus was almost dragging her along now.

Uneasily Varius said, ‘They’re not going to let us go any further.’ The closest soldiers continued to follow, not quite chasing yet, but trying to confine and head off their movement, like sheepdogs.

‘Oh, I think they’ve got him,’ remarked Marcus in an odd, light voice, ignoring them both, looking back over his shoulder at the ramparts, where he thought he’d seen something falling.

Varius demanded, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Leaving you here,’ said Marcus, in an undertone.

‘
No
, you’re not doing this. I’m staying with you,’ cried Una through gritted teeth.

Varius said, in indignation, ‘Do we have any choice in this?’

‘No,’ Marcus answered them both, shortly.

Varius stopped walking, as much with angry shock as obstinacy. ‘I won’t let you take these decisions for us. If we choose to go with you we will. We’re not your slaves, Marcus.’

‘
Varius!
’ For a moment Una thought Marcus was going to hit him. He did go as far as shoving Varius a little way, saying with restrained, rapid violence, ‘That letter. Drusus is taking my place here. I don’t know how he did it but he has. He had to make my uncle think the worst of me somehow and plainly it was easier to do it through you. So you are both criminals and traitors, and I’m – I don’t know, a pawn, I’m the puppet whose strings you’ve been pulling. We’re meant to go back to Rome, in
his
power, to answer for it. They’re taking me, I can’t stop it. But I’ll be safer there than you will. Whatever the Emperor’s been told
I don’t think he’s going to let anyone torture me or kill me, but it can happen to you.’

Varius had automatically taken a breath to speak, and found he could not.

Marcus turned away from him and looked at Una, his voice cracking when he spoke to her. ‘And you’d never get there. I know you wouldn’t. You know he’ll find a way of killing you if he can.’

‘And you?’ she said, shivering, barely more than a croak. ‘He has no interest in killing you?’

One of the soldiers called out in warning, before Marcus could find an answer, ‘Sir, you’re safe here. Don’t go any further.’ And they were closing in more purposefully now.

‘Come on, faster,’ urged Marcus, driving them forward up the white steps to an octagonal inner gate. The soldier in the lead reached to pull him back. Marcus shrugged off the hand as it touched him, turned seamlessly and punched the man in the face, so that the Imperial ring split his lip and he fell, overbalancing down the steps, back against the troops behind. Marcus stood snarling down at them, unrecognisable, the bloody fist that wore the ring still raised, shouting with unhesitating savagery, ‘
I still wear this, I am still Caesar; touch me again and I will have you crucified!
’

The man staggered, blood coursing from his nose and mouth, and the rest stalled and hesitated, uncertain. Marcus wiped his hand and added, curtly, ‘I will come with you as soon as I can.’ And he turned and muttered to Una and Varius, who were both gazing at him, blinking, stunned, ‘That’s not going to work for very long.’

Without truly feeling that they had consented to what was happening, neither Una nor Varius protested any longer. They moved on with hurried wretchedness through the moon gate, along the path where Marcus had walked with Tadahito, just at the point of breaking into a run. Marcus was afraid to look too much as if they were in flight. Varius realised with an inward tremor of understanding that they were heading for the Nionians’ guest quarters, from which, at their approach, a floe of armed men erupted down the steps, weapons rearing and pointing at them like a host of accusatory fingers. Varius and Una could not help but flinch
backwards at the sight, but Marcus came to a halt, letting out a sigh of strange relief. He raised his hands appeasingly, saying in loud, commanding Nionian which Varius hated not being able to understand, ‘I must speak with your Prince, now.’

‘Murderers!’ cried out one of the warriors, fiercely, and Varius and Una could both guess what that must mean: they saw doubt flicker for a moment across Marcus’ pale face, before he looked back towards the gate through which, soon, the Romans would appear, and it vanished.

‘There are only three of us, we’re unarmed. If we make a move you don’t like, shoot us. Search us if you have to, but be quick. I need to make him an offer and in another minute it will be too late.’

There was an undecided movement within the group, and then the first row came forward towards them, weapons levelled, the tips inches from their chests and faces. But behind, one of them had vanished back inside the building.

Seconds creaked by excruciatingly. Marcus could barely refrain from shouting in impatience and rage, and only the fear of provoking the men to shoot kept him still; all his muscles were in an agony of unusable energy.

Then Tadahito appeared behind his soldiers, at the top of the steps, looking haggard and aghast. He said, ‘What have you done?’

Marcus swallowed. He hadn’t been prepared for this apparent depth of conviction that he must be responsible for Kato’s death; and it meant that the danger to Varius and Una was worse. ‘Not this,’ he replied. ‘Not Lord Kato’s murder.’

‘The assassin was a Roman. A European, that is. What part of Europe is not under Roman rule?’

Marcus gazed at him rigidly, clamping back the moan of despair that rose in his throat. It was too late to go back, and he was sure in any case that there was no other chance. He answered, ‘Whoever he was, I had no connection with him. If I had, I wouldn’t do what I’m about to now.’ Ahead of him, Una and Varius glanced at each other, tense and humiliated, trapped into an odd, shame-faced solidarity. Marcus said,
‘These are – these are the people I trust most. Take them into your custody, send them to Nionia if you want. But only on condition that I have your word no Roman has any access to them until I return.’

Tadahito just stared back at him, bewildered and horrified and worn out. Finally he said with tired patience, trying to sort one strand of information from another, ‘You are leaving?’

‘I’ve got no choice,’ said Marcus, with as much straightforward confidence as he could. ‘I want them to stay in my place.’

‘Your place is not with us,’ observed Tadahito, dispassionately.

‘
They
will explain as much as I can, if you accept. But you don’t have much time to decide. After the explosions in Rome, you moved your troops back from the Wall to convince me that Nionia was not responsible. I took your word then. This is the same.’

‘So they remain as hostages against your sincerity?’

Marcus shuddered and his eyes closed involuntarily before he could mutter, scarcely audibly, ‘Yes.’ He felt authority and certainty draining away from him like blood, leaving him cold. ‘But only … mine. I can’t … answer for Rome, at the present moment. Just … don’t harm them. You have no need to.’

Tadahito said nothing.

‘Marcus,’ appealed Varius desperately, unable to stand there any longer, passive as a token on a board while they bargained over him in a language he didn’t know. ‘If you must do this, ask for asylum too. Don’t put yourself in Drusus’ hands alone. You could speak to the Emperor from here, surely.’ He couldn’t bear not to say this, but he knew Marcus’ answer before he gave it.

‘I
can’t
. Drusus would look right; it would look like treason. If you’re here maybe you can keep it all from collapsing, I don’t know. But if I seem to change sides and if they refuse to hand me back, it triggers war
now
. And I would give up any chance of being Emperor, of stopping this.’

‘If your cousin kills you you’ll lose that too,’ said Una,
turning her back on the guns to face him, and her face looked to him like one drawn in charcoal on white paper; the colour seemed to have gone even from her eyes, they were wells of appalled black against her skin.

Marcus lowered his eyes to the ground. ‘I don’t think he can. It would prove he’d been guilty all along.’

‘Do you know he’s that rational? Or that the Emperor has enough control over him for it to matter?’

Marcus looked at her again silently, his face twisted into a kind of anguished plea, as if for forgiveness for having no answer. And behind him, at the far end of the path she could see the Roman soldiers in their dark red uniforms heading grimly towards the moon gate.

‘What is all this?’ asked Tadahito impatiently. ‘Why should your life be in danger? This seems less like a gesture of good faith and more like a request for help. Or else you have staged it for some other reason.’

‘Whatever you believe, it must be an advantage to you, having them,’ Marcus pressed, forcefully again, hearing the footfalls of the Roman soldiers growing louder behind him, refusing to turn to look. ‘You can’t lose anything by it.’

Tadahito sighed, looking at the sky. Then, instead of answering Marcus he gestured to his men and said mildly, ‘Well, then, take them.’

And the men stepped forward and pulled Una and Varius into their midst, gripping their arms and hauling them back, closing in front of them so that Marcus could no longer have reached them. As if they had had no warning at all, all three of them gasped with the shock of it. Varius felt his body jolt with reflex protest at being held still, his blood suddenly seeming to scrape against the inside of his veins, as if full of crystals of ice.

Standing on the pavement below, Marcus sagged as if winded. He raised his voice to plead, ‘I have your
promise
you won’t let the Romans have them?’ The request sounded thin and helpless to him. He realised that somehow, despite being so conscious of the urgency, he had not expected it would be so abrupt. He had not even kissed Una, or held her, and now she was straining against the guards to keep
her face turned towards him, and tears had finally been jarred from her eyes when the men touched her.

‘Yes,’ said Tadahito, flatly, turning away and entering the building once more.

Una called to Marcus, ‘If you can’t come back – if I never see you again—’

Marcus opened his mouth to assure her blindly, I
will
come back. But as he looked at her the words seemed to crumple, and he knew he would be cheating her if he spoke them, that it was cowardly to try and palm off a hope as a certainty. He met her eyes and told her instead, although he hardly knew what he was going to say until he heard it, ‘Then – I don’t know what you’ll do. But I know you won’t waste your life. You mustn’t. You matter too much, you
are
too much. And not only to me.’

Una felt her lips move, but she seemed to have no air to get out a sound. ‘I …’ she breathed painfully, as they drew her back like a tide, too quietly for him to hear her, even if she’d managed, in time, to say ‘I love you’.

At the top of the steps Varius braced himself for a second against the propelling mass, resisting long enough to look back and say, with willed calmness, ‘Goodbye, Marcus.’

Marcus gazed up at him speechlessly and, in Varius’ last sight of him as the Roman soldiers advanced, before he himself was jostled inside, he looked utterly horrified.

Marcus stared at the empty doorway and, dully hoping that from behind it would not be obvious what the gesture meant, drew the back of his hand across his eyes. He turned to the Roman officers and told them bluntly, ‘I’m all you’re getting. Let’s go.’