Savage City (16 page)

Makaria could not answer that, because she agreed with him. Later, hugging herself tearlessly in a chair in her locked room, she reflected that she had not said or done anything particularly clever, but at least she had forborne from thanking him. Heaven help her, but to be allowed to go home, and to be spared any further part in events, was, for now at least, an incredible privilege, a stroke of undeserved grace.

But she could feel the folded edges of the letter she had helped Marcus write, hidden inside her clothes and prickling against her skin. Not a letter – it was his will, really. And if she could think of nothing else to do with it, she could at least plot how to keep it safe.

‘I want you to be able to contact me,’ said Varius. It was early evening, and they were on a small road through the fields outside Ardea, leading away into hot green hills. The lime-coloured lights of fireflies were pulsing on, off, on, through the grass: small optimistic signals. Una tried not to see them; they were part of the world’s dreadful avalanche of detail, which poured on, ignoring the gouged space in the world where Marcus had been.

They had persuaded Varius to accept a little of the money from the bathhouse locker, and they had each acquired a change of clothes. Varius and Sulien both had a few days’ growth of beard. Una had darkened and thickened her eyebrows with make-up, and the dye in her hair and Sulien’s had softened a little, looking less stark and artificial. For now, this was all they could do to disguise themselves, and it felt like very little to hide behind, a thin, shivering skin between themselves and the pictures of them glaring out of every forum, and the terrible things that by now they were said to have done.

Varius handed Una an advertising magazine he’d bought in the town. ‘I want to know that you’re safe. If you make it out of the Empire, you can put a notice in that.’ Una noticed with vague approval that he had not said
when
. Varius explained, ‘It’s got a message service. If you’re in trouble – if you need my help, you can use that and I’ll answer. I’ll look for the name L. Soterius. Make the cognomen Clarus if you’re all right, and Ater if something’s wrong.’

Una nodded, but it was difficult to concentrate on something she
was so sure was not going to happen. Beside her, Sulien sucked in an unhappy breath.

Varius read their faces and said, ‘You’ll know if something’s happened to me – it’ll be on longvision.’

‘We could say we’re selling a slave,’ suggested Una drearily, looking at the section of the magazine that carried such advertisements.

Sulien sighed and took it off her. ‘We’ll say a tropical fish-tank.’

‘All right,’ said Varius with a half-smile, and he paused. ‘I might look for Delir.’

‘I think they’ll have gone— No, they’re bound to have,’ said Sulien, trying to quiet a sick flutter at the thought of Delir’s devastated voice on the longdictor, while Lal’s lost touch flared suddenly over his skin.

‘They might not have left Rome,’ said Una. ‘They had more time. And Delir’s Persian, Zeya’s Sinoan, and she’s got the scars on her face . . . they wouldn’t stand out so much together if they stayed in the city.’

‘They’ll have made themselves hard to find. And you shouldn’t try; it’s too dangerous, for you and for them.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ promised Varius, unsatisfyingly.

Una wanted to say: Better get it over with quickly, Varius, make sure they have to shoot you on the spot, and do it soon, don’t let them drag it out. And as she subdued that impulse, for courtesy’s sake, another sprang up unexpectedly: an urge to plead, Don’t go, stay with us, because we need your help already. But instead she made herself mumble weakly, ‘Good luck.’

Varius hesitated, and placed a hand on her shoulder to draw her a little distance from Sulien. ‘Una, when we were in Bianjing, when Marcus left us there . . . do you remember what he said to you?’

Una stared carefully at a dried-out fencing post to one side of him, avoiding his face. She didn’t want to have to spend the last time she saw him tamping down irritation with him, and it was unfair of him to force her to do it. But it was a ridiculous question. She would hardly have forgotten – although she could only just stand to skim over the cutting edges of the memory. ‘If I never see you again,’ she had cried out, and Marcus had answered—

But she and Sulien had ground to cover; she couldn’t drop down into the dust and howl, which was all she would be able to do if she let herself remember in detail. She knew Varius only wanted to be kind. She said, tight-lipped, ‘Yes.’

‘I know it doesn’t help now,’ said Varius, ‘but later it might.’

Una nodded slightly, to please him. For another moment she had to struggle to stand firm, not to cry out under Varius’ soft look at
her. Then, to her relief, he went and patted Sulien’s arm with awkward warmth. ‘You got us out,’ he said.

Sulien pulled him back and embraced him briefly, with a rather obvious and final air of making sure he would not have anything to regret. They went through another round of ‘Good lucks’ and Varius shouldered his bag and walked away.

Later, reaching into the pack for a map as he crossed a field beside the Pontine Road, he discovered the heavy bundle of cash Una had left there, and the terse note wrapped around it.

Una and Sulien reached another coast that night, flying across Samnium in a cramped, dirty train. Una didn’t like being trapped like this, under electric light with so many people, but at least they had the protection of adult respectability now: she’d strapped a round pillow under the long, matronly dress; they pretended, queasily, to be a young married couple. The curve at her waist drew attention away from her face, at least, though the drawback was that it encouraged people to talk to them, even to try and touch her.

Turned loose into the dark at Aternum, they were drawn as if by gravity into the large crowd below the public longvision in the forum, by the sea. The footage playing had been taken from a volucer cockpit: pale missiles flowed through the evening sky over the Promethean Ocean, leaping like dolphins and diving down onto Yuuhigawa.

For a while, a grave, frightened silence held around Una and Sulien. Then, as a splash of fire blazed close to the camera, someone uttered a wild, barely celebratory cry, and from that an angry cheer began to spread.

Varius gripped the barrier set out along the Via Triumphalis. As the cortège bearing Marcus’ body approached, the weight of the crowd behind pushed gently, at once forcing him off balance and propping him up. He could see Marcus’ face, quite clearly – and he tried to keep his eyes on it as long as he could, until the soldiers had carried the bier past him and towards the Forum, out of sight. But he could not, quite; his vision warped and blurred and once he had ducked his head to wipe his eyes he couldn’t bring himself to look back.

There were Praetorians and vigiles everywhere – Drusus himself could have looked out of the window of his slow-moving armoured car and seen him – but Varius felt strangely safe, even though he hadn’t meant to get so recklessly close to the procession. They would not expect him here, and he was one of so many faces.

It was strange; when Leo and Clodia had died the glut of public mourning had irked and embarrassed him – what business had people to cry and make fools of themselves for someone they had never met? But now, dissolved into this crowd which stretched back from the route of the cortège for so many streets, he felt grateful to them for their company. He was so fond of this fat woman, crying beside him, who looked up at his face with blind fellow-feeling and clutched his hand. How sweet that she cared about people she didn’t know – Marcus and Faustus, and himself – even if only temporarily. He spoke to her, choking out, ‘This shouldn’t be happening,’ and she shook her head sorrowfully and answered, ‘I know.’

She didn’t know about the gun he carried under his jacket, just in case. But he hadn’t had much expectation of a chance to use it. After what had happened at the Colosseum, it was no surprise that Drusus was not walking behind the cortège this time, as he and Marcus had at the last Imperial funeral. And he would be safe, delivering his oration in the Julian Forum; it was closed to all but appointed guests, with a heavy Praetorian cordon blocking every entrance.

Still Varius tried to pay attention, noted the car that had been chosen, counted the number of guards who walked beside it, tried to memorise every detail that he could, in case it revealed some weak point later.

Helplessness caught him, and he told himself that for the moment he was only compiling information; he didn’t have to know what to do with it yet.

The centre of Rome was laminated with even more giant screens than usual, so that Drusus’ speech should reach all the thousands of mourners in the streets. Varius had only to lift his head to watch Drusus get out of the car and walk up to the Rostra. Already he moved with only a trace of a limp, although the bruises on his face were still vivid. Instead of the ceremonial black toga Varius had expected, he was dressed in military uniform with a black pallium draped across the breastplate, and the wreath bright on his head.

Varius, who had tried to prepare himself to bear the sight of Drusus victorious at Marcus’ funeral, was breathtaken with disgust.

Behind Drusus, Makaria, pale and dull-eyed, was flanked by ladies-in-waiting. Noriko was absent. Varius, who had seen a pack of furious Romans burning the Nionian Sun on the steps of the deserted Embassy only that morning, understood why. He still tried to observe and remember; he willed the camera to linger on the audience of aristocrats and generals so that he could see who had been placed closest to the front, who was not there.

But as soon as Drusus began to speak of the attack on Yuuhigawa, Varius knew he couldn’t stand to listen to him. Around him, people were gazing up at Drusus with a sort of longing, and Varius’ fusion with them was lost. He was a malign, disenfranchised presence here, not one of them. He pushed his way to the back, tolerance for the cramped density of the crowd fraying quickly now, dodged down the first turning, past the shuttered bookshops on the Vicus Sandaliarius, but with all the screens, and the speakers turned up so loud, he had to hurry a long way before he could leave Drusus’ voice behind. It waylaid him at every street corner: ‘Rome will find comfort in justice, and in the courage of her soldiers . . .’

At last, at the edge of the Subura, it was out of earshot, and the streets were empty; as everyone had drained in towards the centre, like blood to the body’s core. Varius lowered himself to the ground, sitting against a wall like a tramp. He had been there; that was all he really wanted. And there was a measure of solace in the thought that Drusus had no idea how close he’d been, how close he still was.

The wall was patched with torn posters and graffiti, a lot of new scribbled curses and hysterical slogans against Nionia. Varius got up and moved along the wall, looking for a space that was clear, but not too clear, where an extra word would neither stand out too much, nor be swallowed completely by the surrounding clutter of letters. He took a lump of chalk from his pocket, checked around, and wrote ATHABIA on the brick. As soon as he’d done it a self-conscious flush of sweat rose to his face and for a moment his impulse was to rub it out: it looked so stark and obvious, surely the vigiles would see it at once and recognise it for what it was.

It could have been a woman’s name. He hesitated, then drew a heart around it, framing it, disguising it.

He began to walk again, with no destination in mind, fingers still closed around the chalk in his pocket.

Drusilla flinched as she entered the ballroom and a herald cried, ‘The most august Lady Drusilla Terentia, the Emperor’s honoured mother!’

The music died for a moment and the couples on the dance floor broke into polite applause. Drusilla felt her face blaze. She made her way stiffly down the staircase, as if afraid of falling.

Drusus was coming to meet her, his face brilliant with eagerness and aggressive pride. ‘Well, Mother, here we are!’ he exclaimed almost wildly as he bent and kissed her cheek.

Drusilla embraced him a little clumsily, hissing to him as they
separated, ‘I didn’t want my name called out like that. It’s not right for a woman’s name to be shouted about in public.’

‘Mother,’ said Drusus, at once exasperated and faintly pleading, ‘you are the most honoured matron in the Empire. Isn’t that what you always wanted?’

Drusilla pursed her lips.

Drusus patted her hand coaxingly. ‘It’s perfectly right for you to be lauded as you deserve.’

Grudgingly, Drusilla smiled. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘congratulations.’

Drusus pressed her hand again, and an incredulous smile hovered at his lips. ‘It doesn’t feel real,’ he murmured.

‘You’ve been very lucky,’ she said.

Drusus scowled. ‘Luck— It’s not a matter of
luck
. That’s no way to speak about it. The Empire is in mourning. This is the gravest of all responsibilities.’ The musicians struck up again. He sighed and offered her his arm. ‘Would you like to dance this with me, Mother?’

‘You know I never dance,’ said Drusilla. ‘I don’t like fuss.’

‘Mother, now of all times—!’

Drusilla turned to survey the dancers with an air of suspicion. The ball’s splendour was carefully restrained, so as not to jar with the recent tragedy. There were military standards ranked around the walls, and wreaths of laurel branches hanging from the gallery, but no flowers, and the music had a martial urgency to it. Many of the men, like Drusus, were in ceremonial uniform; the women’s dresses shone darkly, deep indigo, pine green.