Rome Burning (15 page)

Varius frowned down at the floor for a while, but when he looked up a detached, alert calm had evened out his face again. He asked reasonably, ‘Why?’

‘
Because—
’ began Marcus incredulously, after a moment’s speechlessness.

Varius interrupted, ‘All right. I know why you can trust
me
. You can trust me to mean well. But that isn’t enough.’

‘No, I trust your judgement,’ protested Marcus.

‘I can see you do,’ said Varius. ‘But that’s why I won’t do it. I’m sorry.’

Afterwards, Varius went on with his work, but he felt vaguely shaken for some hours, as if he’d been in a fight.

Sitting in the gilt cavern of the car again Marcus tried not to let himself wish that the vehicle would turn off its course and, mysteriously, take Una and himself somewhere hours and hours away. It was much worse than the day before, in the volucer, daunted though he’d been then. Of course the Golden House looked bigger from the city below it than it had from the air.

‘I can help you,’ Una said. ‘I don’t want to spend all day waiting to see you. I want to be with you. No one will lie to you without me knowing. Glycon doesn’t mind me and I think I could do some things for him, boring things like taking messages, and then that would be an excuse for me to be there—’

‘I want you there,’ Marcus interrupted. His face had lifted with a kind of reckless relief, but Una continued defending the proposal almost as if he hadn’t spoken.

‘And I would have to make myself very quiet and dull and hard to notice; you know I can do that. That way I could listen. And – and I want to see it, I
want to be there
. But I know people will think I shouldn’t be there, and they’ll think badly of you for letting me.’

‘No, it’s worth it,’ he insisted.

Una hoped that this was right. He might have been warier if Varius had said yes, she thought. She smiled back at Marcus, knowing she could be sure now of the time she needed to watch Drusus.

*

Drusus lingered in the Palace for a while, sitting paralysed in the glazed tower, again wishing that there was someone he dared talk to. He felt another twinge of unfocused alarm and resentment when he established, by sending one of the guards that had come with him from Byzantium across to talk to the Praetorians, where Marcus had gone. Drusus could probably have found this out quite openly, but this way comforted him a little. Varius: another of the obstacles that had tripped his hopes! Without him, Marcus would be safely dead.

When Marcus returned to the Golden House, Drusus tried to think of some plan, something to go and say to him, but could not. He went through the motions of carrying out his cousin’s request, and for short spasms he managed to interest himself in the mechanics of fire, but he began to feel as if the Palace was on the point of shattering into glass splinters around him. And so he fled it, back to the quiet Caelian hill, and his father’s villa – or rather his own, for of
course he had taken charge of it as soon as he was of age. His father was known to be mad.

It was a dark nest of barriers: the high, blind outer wall, the thick hedge within that, a buffer zone of land, and then the fort of the house itself – all like several pairs of hands parsimoniously clasped around the coin of the central garden.

Inside the house was full of marsh-like colours: deep green, a dark, muggy purple; reeds and shadowy willows were painted on the wall. Drusus strode through into the dining room, where, lying opposite each other on the couches, he found Lucius eating an early supper with Ulpia, a pleasant-looking, snub-nosed brunette who was supposed to be Lucius’ nurse, and instead, Drusus thought disgustedly, lived with him as a kind of wife, or concubine, or a
nanny
.

‘Get out,’ he said to her. ‘I want to talk to my father.’

Ulpia started up, distressed and hesitant, and then darted out. Lucius looked, as so often, scared and saddened, but, as Drusus expected, said nothing to rebuke him. Oh, how every act, every word to him was loaded with a feeble, far-too-late apology! But instead of his usual irritation at this, Drusus felt only deep, lonely weariness. He sat down on the couch where Ulpia had lain, stared broodingly at his father with his chin propped on his fists, then sank his face into his hands.

After what seemed a long time, Lucius padded silently round the table and laid an awkward hand on Drusus’ shoulder. Drusus let out a sigh that had the ghost of laughter in it and, without raising his head, lifted the hand at the wrist and plucked it away. ‘Don’t be so absurd,’ he murmured, without aggression.

Meekly, Lucius receded. He sat humbly on the edge of his couch, poked a dish or two aside on the table and appealed timidly, ‘Drusus. Drusus. It’s very nice that you’re in Rome. What’s the matter?’

‘Everything,’ pronounced Drusus, simply. ‘Everything is the matter.’

‘Is Titus very ill?’

‘You don’t care anything about him,’ Drusus remarked.

‘I do,’ ventured Lucius.

‘How can that statement be reconciled with your actions?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Lucius in a whisper, shifting in his seat like a scolded schoolboy. He raised both his hands to his face and peeked over them, wide-eyed and afraid. It was quite natural and instinctive to him now, and yet the sort of gesture a shy child would cultivate on purpose, to try and seem endearing, so as not to be hit. Drusus hated the sight of it. Above his hands, under the tumbled white hair, Lucius’ weak green eyes begged: Please. Enough.

And Drusus gave way to it, as somehow he always did; there was sour kindness that suddenly and inexplicably overcame him when dealing with his father, and would not let him go beyond a certain point, to list the consequences of his cowardice and lies. Or tell his secret.

He summoned a slave to get him a fresh glass, poured himself wine and stretched out resignedly on his side, pillowing his head on the crook of his arm, his fingertips on the back of his head vaguely stroking his own hair. ‘He’s not as ill as I expected,’ he said. ‘His voice sounds odd when he talks. He can’t walk, though.’

‘Poor Titus.’

‘Yes, poor Titus. Although I’m sure he would recover better if he hadn’t put himself in this position with Marcus. Because Marcus is certainly throwing his weight about; the gods know what’ll be left when he’s finished. It’s a travesty.’

‘Do you really want to be Emperor so very badly, then?’ asked Lucius, with audible pity in his voice.

‘What else is there?’ answered Drusus, dully.

Lucius looked almost as if he would cry. ‘But there must be plenty – oh you could just – Drusus. Why do you want to do that? Terrible. And so dangerous! Why would you put yourself in harm’s way? Oh dear – I would hate it if anything happened to you.’

Drusus shot an indignant look at him and wanted to cry out, ‘Do you think nothing has happened to me
so far?
’ Always, always his father had been a weight on his life. Through his childhood, he and his mother had lived in a
mute community of shame; but the humiliation she felt – understandably, given what she thought she’d signed up for, marrying a Novian – extended to Drusus too. It always had, as far as he could tell. Certainly things had gone badly wrong by the time he was two years old.

Drusus had thought it would be a wonderful blessing if Lucius was not mad. But it was like the gifts of the gods in the myths – to Cassandra or Tithonus – a literal yet malicious granting of what was asked for: to get his wish, not in the form of a metamorphosis, or miraculous cure, but in the discovery that his father had only used the family blight of insanity as a cover to retreat from his name, from his marriage, from his small son. And he had kept this up nearly the whole of Drusus’ life. Drusus had discovered the truth – walking in on Lucius and Ulpia repulsively half-undressed – only when he was nineteen, the age Marcus was now.

But the shock and betrayal – although they continued, even nine years later – had somehow made an intimacy between the two of them that had never existed before, incomplete and defective though it was. For years Drusus told no one the truth about Lucius, and then only Tulliola – silent partly from mortification, but partly from a bitter, unexpected feeling of duty and pity.

He contented himself now with saying, ‘Not everyone feels so compelled to dodge responsibility, Dad.’ Lucius hung his head. ‘In any case. The oracle told me I was to be Emperor,’ went on Drusus quietly. ‘You will not tell anyone that.’

Strange thing – in this Drusus did trust his father, who nodded earnestly and offered, ‘Then you don’t have to worry.’

‘I have never believed that. Everything is stacked against me, everything is designed to keep it from happening. Who is going to change that if not myself? I can’t even make my case to Uncle Titus, you realise. It’s a disgrace, the things going on behind his back. Ah …’ Another tide of despair rushed over Drusus and he let himself slip lower on the couch and wrapped his arm around his face. ‘There’s this kid of a doctor. He listened to everything I said. And now
he’ll tell Marcus, so I can’t even … You see, they know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve put him there as a spy. They’re making sure I can’t let the Emperor know what’s really happening. Perhaps he’s even keeping him ill …’

And he stopped, turned quickly onto his back, and looked up at the murky ceiling, staring as the thoughts came. Softly he muttered, ‘
Sulien
.’ For he had only been thinking resentfully aloud, but as he heard the words he had spoken, he knew they must be true. For it was only now, suddenly, that the name meant anything to him. Sulien.

Drusus tried to remember what he had heard three years before, and it was difficult, for he had been too sick at heart to take in anything to do with the disaster. But now he thought: Yes, the people who broke into the Galenian and got Marcus out. Sulien was one of those. He was another slave. But wasn’t he supposed to have been a kind of magician from London? Drusus ran over the conversation in Faustus’ rooms, and thought it was possible he’d heard the faintest shadow of an accent. It must be the same person, and it was no coincidence that he was as young as Marcus; they were friends.

Of course, if you were in Marcus’ position, that was what you would need – a means of controlling Faustus for as long as the regency lasted. And once you had that, you had more: a means of
making
it last, or bringing it to a succession, as you saw fit. Of course you would do that. Drusus would have done the same himself.

There was no hope, then, that the boy would not think it his place to tell Marcus what he’d heard.

Drusus gave a short laugh and, sardonically, because there was no reason not to, he explained the substance of these thoughts to his father. It was odd, but although he had just realised that things were even worse than he had supposed, he felt less wretched than before, not so powerless. If nothing else, he knew what he was up against.

For the first time, Sulien began to wish the weight of heat held in the taut blue sky would erupt into rain. He was usually oddly impervious to unremitting sun, and could walk about in the full glare of it as if he’d grown up in desert heat and not the dampness of London. If it were not for the drought he would hardly have understood why anyone should want it to stop. But there had been more fires; a power plant had gone up and ignited a knot of streets. The number of dead would have been universally horrifying if they had not mostly been slaves. And each fire was clean of any certain sign of sabotage, every single one had immaculate credentials as an accident. But there had been so many now that the idea of arson was spreading. Separatists, or Nionian agents, or a revolutionary sect that wanted to tear down Rome for the sake of it … Sulien began to fancy that the hot air carried a faint taste of burning, a delicate smog of siege and mistrust.

It must have been affecting him more than he had thought. It must be only that. One night he had walked Tancorix home and she had stepped a little closer to him and taken his arm, with a movement of the eyebrows to make obvious that this was partly ironic, and had said, ‘Oh, look. You’ll fight for my honour, won’t you?’

‘Isn’t it too late to fight for that?’ answered Sulien. They skirted dexterously around a little heap of fresh dog shit deposited precisely in the middle of the narrow Transtiberine street.

‘And whose fault would that be?’ said Tancorix. Automatically she darted a look at him that began as expertly flirtatious and then, as she remembered, grew more
doubtful. They crossed a little forum around a temple of Ceres, bright and crowded as noon although it was halfway towards dawn, full of people conducting various kinds of business. A group of African musicians were playing electric harps and zithers with an air of slightly frantic single-mindedness, trying to outdo a serene Arabian flautist in the opposite corner. A woman tried to sell Tancorix one of five tamed sparrows, perched in a dutiful huddle on the outstretched stem of a rose. Moving past, shaking their heads, Sulien and Tancorix moved out of the square of man-made light, into darkness again.

She said, ‘Anyway, someone’s following us.’

Naturally they both assumed she was the one being followed – for, shadowy in the haphazard streetlights, there did seem to be a man walking behind at a distance of fifty yards or so. It surprised neither of them, nor were they particularly concerned. Tancorix was living in a small plot of social land hacked out by disgrace. Singing in inns and cauponas, she boosted the money her former husband gave her for the daughter he said might very well not be his. Tancorix did not really have a very good voice, although it had got better with persistence and bravado, but she was so proficient at handling and directing her beauty, like a team of horses, that she got on well enough. Sulien liked watching her perform. Their friendship, his pleasure at the sight of her, were more lightly touched with memory and strange guilt, when she was on a little stage and he was slightly drunk.