Savage City (34 page)

Her advocate was addressing the chamber. She had not known, until they took her into the court, that there would be any kind of defence at all. Hirtius had gone on speaking without a break for more than an hour.

‘My client, as my colleague has said, denies none of this, and you will hear the truth from her own lips later. My task is only to remind the Prefect, the senators and the people here of her youth—’ There were some groans and jeers in the gallery, and he talked on, largely
unheard, without waiting for them to die down, ‘—and that in confessing freely she has at least not compounded her wickedness with lies. I would suggest also to the court that my noble colleague perhaps credits her with too much understanding of her actions. He spoke of sedition as an infection. I agree with him. But this girl was only one symptom, not the source of it. Perhaps we could never find any one person with whom it began, not among the fanatics led by Dama, nor even among the aggressors in Nionia. It is the contagion of our times, which we must fight and contain as best we can. How potent must it be, to infect not only slaves and outlaws but citizens too, for my colleague has already mentioned men such as Caius Varius and Delir of Aspadana. We must always be on our guard against it, citizens, in our families, in our slaves, even in ourselves. For even the love of justice and peace can be preyed upon and abused by those who love only chaos. Our Emperor’s late uncle and cousin – casualties of this struggle, and of course, clear of any stain upon their character – pursued ideals that, though pure and worthy in the abstract, are, in our imperfect world, not only impossible but dangerous, all too apt to be twisted. Can we be surprised then that an uneducated slave girl, lacking the power of moral discrimination, could be corrupted altogether? Having fled from civilisation in animal terror of recapture, chance led her to a gang of criminals who rejected all authority, who exposed her to a poisonous combination of subversive ideas, dissident religion and witchcraft. Since then she has acted in selfishness, greed and ignorance, as an animal acts, but without calculation – I cannot say without malice, but it was malice only of the moment. Of course there can be no argument but that a dangerous animal or a disease must be destroyed, but Rome may show mercy to the extent of sparing this benighted girl the Colosseum, or any more protracted means of execution. Let her be swiftly extinguished and as swiftly forgotten.’

‘If Rome is to show such mercy, it is right that the people should understand how great that forbearance is,’ began Hirtius, rising again.

Una knew she would need to be able to absent her attention, or the trial would be unbearable; she had practised doing so. It had not occurred to her that it would also be boring. On the second day, more restless than she’d ever been inside her cell, she began to want to move just for the sake of moving. She resisted visible fidgeting as far as she could, but flexed her toes inside her shoes.

Sometimes Hirtius startled her out of her reverie by shouting at her directly, rather than addressing the Prefect: ‘And then, surely, if you were not consumed with covetousness and audacity, you would have
been content!’ and for a few minutes afterwards she would feel her heart pounding as if she’d been about to run, and blood throbbing even in the fingertips of her chained hands.

Hirtius spent a long time questioning a vigile officer to prove that she had been at Dama’s farm, then moved on to the time she and Varius had spent in Nionian custody in Sina. A minor diplomat whom she did not recognise and who avoided looking at her confirmed the Nionian Imperial family had definitely visited her, and admitted she had been seen wearing clothes they had given her. But that’s in the confession, Una thought, with a pang of simple exasperation. Why do we have to bother with this? Why don’t you just end it?

In her cell under the Basilica she found it difficult to lie still and let the minutes course through her, as she had done before. She paced and shook. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she saw white dogs, pouring towards her like a froth on a torrent of water, almost felt the teeth meeting in her flesh – but why? She was safe from that now; there was nothing to fear. She waited for the agitation to exhaust itself, lying down and promising herself again that it was nearly over; she allowed herself to remember Marcus’ arms round her, in the bright sea at Siphnos, in bed in their apartment in Athens—

But even to picture him made her twist in anguish and start up again. Phrases from the day in court that she thought she’d been careful not to listen to in the first place stuck after all in her mind. Only as she caught herself snarling aloud, as she strode back and forth across the cell, ‘
Lying
,’ did she identify the feeling as rage.

She sat down again on the hard bed, baffled and almost amused at herself. It seemed to her that she should no longer be capable of anger. She had known the nature of what would be said, just as she knew what the outcome would be, and none of it could mean anything, not to her. Whatever happened in court, or in the world now, she could have no part in it. The last second of her life, in any sense that mattered, was already past: it had come as she lost hold of Sulien, as she fell to the gravel and the train roared on. These final days were like blank space at the bottom of a concluded letter; the trial was just a tedious matter of observing formalities to wind up what had already happened.

But electricity fizzed along her nerves, her heart bucked in her chest, the concrete floor was very cold on her bare feet. Her brain was full of noise and motion, not peace.

On the morning of the third day, the day she was due to read out the confession Hirtius had already savaged from beginning to end, she
realised that not everyone in the gallery was hungry to watch her die. Una had tried not to perceive any thoughts but her own, to exclude everything from her senses except the blue sky through the windows, but as Hirtius began to speak, an outraged shout seemed to erupt in the hall, as if she herself had lost control completely and screamed what she’d only whispered to herself in her cell.

Lying—! You lying bastard!

It was so loud that for a moment she was confused that no one reacted; Hirtius talked on, there was no disapproving rustle from the gallery, no word from the Prefect; the lictors stood motionless. There had been no shout.

Una lowered her gaze from the high windows and met the eyes of a young woman, seated several rows from the front, plainly dressed, pale, silent.

The girl wanted Hirtius to choke before he could get out another word, she wanted lightning to strike him where he stood. She thought it was incredible that Una always looked so calm, no matter what they said, gazing at the far windows as if she could see something no one else could in the sky. She wanted Una to feel her staring at her.

Una thought the girl was not a slave now, but had been.

And there were others, standing at the back of the hall, waiting with the coats and bags, some of them in chauffeurs’ or bodyguards’ livery, some indistinguishable from anyone else in that hall, except that they watched her steadily, without the hostile expectancy of the rest, but with stern, angry sympathy.

Something sharp whistled through her, more like terror than comfort; a match set to fuses laced along her bloodstream. She tried to draw her attention back into herself, or to spread it away into the air. She shivered, trying to catch her racing breath. She closed her eyes and saw red and gold sparks against black.

They would live with what they heard in this chamber. This was not, for them, a period of empty inevitability. No, nor for her either.

She grew aware of the flat glare of the cameras, like a dull pressure on her skin. She opened her eyes.

Once again they knew they had to watch, on this first session of the interrogations. This time they were gathered in Delir’s rooms in the Subura, and Varius had already had them recite their tasks for the day of the attempt, twice, as if it were some kind of play. Sulien had helplessly unreal moments when he felt it would never be more than that; not just that they would fail, that something would happen to prevent them even trying.

He thought Una looked worse as the camera closed in on her: tight-lipped, breathing fast and shallowly. Her eyes were shut. He hovered close to the screen until Varius said, ‘Please – we all need to see her.’

Sulien sat down and knitted his fingers into Lal’s.

‘There can be no doubt that Nionian agents had succeeded in recruiting a group of desperate and unprincipled outlaws and assassins to serve their purpose, namely, the overthrow of the Roman world,’ concluded Hirtius. ‘The only question remaining is this: should Rome choose to mitigate its just anger against her?’

Una lifted her head and looked fleetingly and searchingly at the camera.

‘The prisoner will answer the charges herself,’ announced the Prefect.

Una rose slowly to her feet and stared steadily into the crowd as a hissing swell of noise rose to greet her. Watching her face Varius leaned forward, frowning slightly, holding his breath.

‘I am grateful for the opportunity to confess to the crimes I am accused of,’ she murmured, though so quietly and indistinctly the Prefect interrupted, ‘Speak up,’ and the microphones flared briefly as someone adjusted the sound.

Una cleared her throat. ‘I am grateful for the opportunity to confess to the crimes I am accused of,’ she repeated. Her eyes were downcast now, fixed on the sheets of paper in front of her. ‘I understand that though it is impossible I should be allowed to live, this court may spare me a slow death if I take that opportunity.’

Then she looked up, straight into the camera, and Varius moved towards the screen as if to catch some teetering thing about to fall, and said, ‘
Una, no
—’

She spoke fast, to be sure of getting it all out before she could be stopped, or before her courage could fail, but clearly: ‘But all I will say is that the last act of Emperor Marcus Novius was the abolition of slavery.’

The Prefect and the two lawyers all rose at once, Hirtius shouting; the lictors crowded in around her before they even had orders what to do.

The sound from the crowd built more slowly, a confused, soft burr that swept across them like a wave, growing to a loud roar, and somewhere in the middle of it all there was a shrill cry of joy, and scattered across it, defiant sprays of applause.

‘The prisoner will not continue to abuse this court,’ shouted the Prefect above the noise, ‘she will be returned to her cell at once.’

Una struggled fiercely as the lictors seized her, crumpled the pages of
the confession and swept them into the air. ‘All I have ever done has been for that!’ she called out for the crowd in the gallery to hear, even if the microphones would not, and then she went still and let them take her away.

They knocked her to the floor in the cell, rougher with her than they’d been before. Una scrambled up, gasping for breath. Some terrible luminous thing was flooding through her, burning, slicing her to shreds, and soon it would resolve into terror at what she had done. Yet for a few moments more it felt like exhilaration, like wanting to leap or dance.

Varius turned his back on the longvision and her stern, radiant face, feeling a blow at his chest like the impact of a thrown rock, a booted foot. He could see it happening; however good the plan sounded every time they went over it, he did not have enough faith in it to soften or blur that vision of what the hounds would do to her. He had lost too many people to be able to stand this now; and none of their deaths had been as terrible as the one she had just chosen.

Sulien was staring at the screen, one hand over his mouth, incredulous.

The Prefect had vanished from the courtroom, leaving the clamour to rumble on until the lictors escorted him back to his seat on the platform.

‘Since the prisoner’s guilt is manifest and undisputed,’ announced the Prefect, ‘and since further interrogation is futile in the face of her recalcitrance and mendacity, this trial is at an end, and she is hereby condemned to the beasts. She will be returned to the prison in which she awaited trial—’

‘No,’ whispered Sulien, at last.

And the knowledge that Sulien would soon insist that this merely altered the conditions of the rescue, which would work because it had to, made Varius ache with envy and pity.

‘—and thence to the Colosseum, where her execution will be publicly presented during the New Year’s Games.’

Two startled-looking state newscasters appeared on the screen: ‘An early end to the trial, the Prefect having judged it pointless to continue!’ chattered one, in a bright, shrill tone.

‘For God’s sake, turn it off,’ said Delir, hollowly.

Ziye gave Varius a heavy-eyed look and said, ‘That stupid girl.’

Varius rubbed the space between his eyes, smiled without humour. ‘We should have known she’d do that.’

Just as Varius had expected, Sulien fired up, more at their tone than
what they’d said. ‘No,’ he started, ‘no, listen – this is how we thought things were a few days ago, we’ve already planned for this. All right, so we can’t get her coming out of the court. But the place on the Via Prenestina was better anyway, and now we’ve got until New Year’s Day – it means we’ve got more time to get it perfect.’ He stopped, a slow amazement brightening his face, and the resemblance to his sister sharpened, almost too close to the way she’d looked a moment before. ‘Everyone heard her,’ he said.

Varius meant not to answer, to keep nodding along to anything Sulien might say rather than quarrel with him, for as long as this awful time lasted. But he couldn’t stop himself: ‘What use is that? They’ll never let anyone hear it again. It won’t mean anything to most people. It isn’t worth what she’s paying.’