The Songs of Slaves (66 page)

“Sanctuary!”
Connor cried.
“Sanctuary!”

There was no answer. Connor called out again.

“We have no room!” a thin voice called out.

“Have the courage
to come to the window and speak to me,” Connor demanded. A weathered old face appeared
above,
the hair below the tonsure line was white, the eyes black and full of fear.

“I am Connor, pupil of the priest Titus Vestius
Laterensis
! I charge you in the name of Christ to let these three women in!”

“T
he sanctuary is full, my son,” t
he priest called out. “There are hundreds in here already.”

“Make room for three more,” Connor called. “If you do not take them in you know what will happen to them.”

The priest was clutching the window sill with white-knuckled hands. Then he disappeared. Connor shook with fury as he prepared to launch into a litany of threats and curses, but even as he opened his mouth the oak door opened a crack. The priest stood in the doorway, ready to shove it closed. He was older and more bent then Connor had initially perceived.

“Come in, children,” he said. The woman ushered her daughters forward. The oldest turned back and took one more look at Connor, her black eyes seeming to shine. The woman followed them in, fighting back the breakdown that was boiling below the surface. She tried to say something to Conner but her voice caught.

“How can I protect them?” the priest said.

“God will protect them,” Connor said. “Let no one leave until the Goths are out of the city.”

“God go with you, my son,” the priest said, then shut and barred the door.

A deep exhaustion overwhelmed Connor as he almost stumbled down the steps. Around him the chaos was intensifying, and from the clamor in the air he knew that it was spreading deeper into Rome as fast as men could run. In the distance, the Palace of Sallust burned, lighting the dark morning with a hellish glow. It seemed
very far away
. They had entered the city
what seemed like
hours ago, but Connor could not guess when the sun would dawn. It was hopeless to even try to find Valia now. Connor realized that he had no desire to. That path had ended. He was alone, adrift in a world of cruelty – just as he had been when his journey began.

He stood on the white-paved street, outside of the church packed with refugees now huddled together praying for deliverance. Men were running past him, noticing him just enough to steer clear of him – frightened away by the marks of Cain he bore. Rome was falling. The Goths were having their revenge. He should be happy – for what had civilization done but enslave him? What had it done but yoke him to a system he did not want in order to benefit others who bore no love for him? Yet as the fabric of interwoven screams broke up in his mind until each cry became an arrow into his soul he could not remember any
reasoning or idealism behind this. This city was falling – and the whole
Imperium
would likely be close behind it. The weight from the outside would crush the decaying bones within, until there was nothing but rubble. The Goths and the other dispossessed would raise something out of it. They all spoke of something better, but would it not turn out to be something worse? On such a foundation as the atrocity of this night, how could it be other?

Connor stumbled forward, like a man heavily drunk.

Then suddenly he raised his head.

Connor sheathed his blades. With renewed strength he ran, back-tracking his way through the streets. The tide of people was so great that he could not run more than ten steps in a straight line. He passed the townhouse where the old slave had stood guard, but saw the man lying dead by the broken door. Many of the
bucellarii
now
seemed to be t
aking to their own interests
. Connor left the main thoroughfare for the smaller streets.

Wide-eyed with the treasure troves of the principle
via
, the Gothic force had not yet penetrated the tighter, darker streets in great number. The press of chaos was still strong, though, as citizens and slaves ran, searching for family members or seeking out places to hide. Some carried their valuables on their backs, abandoning their homes to the marauders. It had not yet occurred to many of them that – except for the rapidly filling churches – there would be no place of safety.

Connor almost ran into a man as he crashed out the front door of a townhouse. The man turned on him, his dark eyes wide. He was dressed in a simple tunic, and Connor easily surmised that he was a slave. But the tunic was blood-stained, and the man carried a knife in his hands. The slave recovered himself, and fled into the guilty night. There were more cries from upstairs windows as Connor sped down the alleys. Slaves were rising against their masters, and evil men on all sides were taking advantage of the havoc to steal, murder, and rape. Law had collapsed, and the gods of fire and death reigned.

Two middle-aged men ran with the others. Though they had thrown on their tunics and fled their
houses in the depth of the night, Connor could see that they were wealthy – equestrian or senatorial class. The man in the back cried out as Connor grabbed him. His friend shot one look over his shoulder, but kept running. Connor turned the man around and grabbed his tunic, pulling him up on his toes.

“Let me go!” the man pleaded. “I’ll give you anything.”

The man was slightly better fed than many of the others Connor had seen, but still seemed weak and frail from the famine. His face was a mask of sheer terror. Sweat beaded on his balding head.

“I will let you go,” Connor said. “But you must first take me to the libraries.”

The man stared at him, at first not seeming to comprehend. Connor shook him.

“You can find books anywhere,” the man said.

“Where are the old books?” C
onnor demanded.
“The philosophies?
The masterworks
?”
 

“The greatest collection is in the Palace of Sallust,” the man sputtered.

Connor released him and ran back towards the gates where the attack had begun.

He sped
through the back streets, but it was easy to navigate by the glow of the flames. He was likely far too late – the fires in the gardens had been started hours ago, but the palace was massive and not all connected in its enclave, and made of material that Connor did not expect to burn readily. Still, his pounding heart urged him on, up the slopes hills, towards the
Porta Salaria
where the atrocity began.

Connor could feel the heat on his face. The blaze of the miles of gardens was past the peak of its fury, but still burned like a furnace. He stepped out onto open ground. The Palace of Sallust was ahead of him, rising atop the many steps and surrounded by perfectly
masoned
walls. Flames engulfed more than half of it, and thick smoke blew from most of the windows and eaves. Still a few of the Goths were there, running in to brave the smoke and flames, certain that they would find great wealth within. As Connor moved towards the steps, he saw a looter rush out of the doors – his hair and clothes alight with flame. Another luckless man came right behind him. Connor turned to his right,
running along the walls past the part of the palace that burned so fiercely. Around the side of the great edifice, he scaled the low wall and dropped inside the open yard.

Smoke was easing out of the windows; but the smoke was gray and slow, not black and angry as it had been on the other side. An old man sat against the wall of the palace, his head to his knees. He did not move as Connor approached. His short hair was g
ray and his garment was a
tunic, smeared in soot.

“Where are the libraries?” Connor demanded.

The old slave said nothing, but only rocked back and forth.

“Where are the libraries?” Connor shouted, grabbing the frail man.

“
Count no man lucky who is not dead
. It burns. It all burns. It falls. It will all fall.”

Connor released the man. He bounded up the steps to the open door and stepped inside.

The smoke burned his lungs, but it was not heavy here and it was possible to see. There were lamps
still lit in the hallways.  He was in a service entrance of some kind – near slave quarters or kitchens. Connor grabbed a lamp and moved forward. He did not have much time.

He moved through the hallways. He pulled up a table cloth and held it over his mouth, but soon he was still coughing as he went. The air was getting hotter with every door that he went through. His small flame had trouble cutting through the darkening smoke. He heard someone screaming from what sounded like far away, and did not know whether it was a trapped slave or a looter. All the rooms he moved through were deserted. He stepped into a corridor, one end leading to a flight of marble stairs, another leading to more rooms. Connor did not notice the grandeur of the place – the ornaments, decorations, pillars, silk curtains, or high ceilings. The marble or bronze statues leered out at him like daemons on the darkness. This palace was a labyrinth. Connor was running out of time. He stopped, forcing himself to think. He coughed violently and tried to take a deep breath of air – but the air that filled his lungs somehow did not seem like air at all, just a heavy, suffocating weight. He looked back to the stairs, knowing that if the fire burned there that the heat and
smoke would only be worse as he went up. But where else would a reading room be in a palace? This was the rear of the building, and so a tower of any considerable height would look over the wall to the mountains.

Connor rushed towards the steps and began to ascend. The fire was still on the other side of the palace, moving slowly through the heavy timbers and stone, but the staircase was acting as a chimney, funneling the smoke and heat up. Soon Connor could barely see. The cloth at his mouth and nose was doing little good. He missed a step as he reached the top. In the dim he could just make out several doors. Connor made for one and opened it.

He stepped into the room, picking out instantly the outline of book shelves. He slammed the door, stuffing the cloth against the base of it to further seal off the smoke. He crossed the room towards the far wall and felt around until he felt fabric. Pulling the curtains aside, he swung the shutters opened and stuck his head out into the dark morning. He sucked air as a man coming out of the water. He could see the fire burning off to the side, seeming much bigger and closer than it had been before. Outside, past the breeched walls, he
could see the Visigoth camp of the outer town, now almost empty. He turned to his far right and could see the buildings and the streets of Rome alive with havoc, flames breaking out amidst the houses.

He turned his attention back to the room. There were dozens of shelves, with hundreds of books. He could barely see. How was he to begin? Despite the cloth insulating the door, blackening smoke was seeping through, drawn by the open windows. The fire was coming. Connor steeled himself. He ripped down a curtain and spread it out on the reading desk. Moving over to the book shelves he read the titles on the bronze plates of the scroll, forcing calm into his mind. He took several of the scrolls of Plato and cast them onto the cloth. He followed that with some by Cicero
, then Aristotle, then Hippocrates
. The smoke was intensify
ing. Connor started grabbing
books and casting them as quickly as he could. Rome was lost, and the thought that made it may be lost with it. It would burn up in this very place, and he would burn up with it. It may already be too late. Titus had taught him when he was a child that the thought, the enlightenment was what mattered most. Taking his last selections, Connor bundled them in the cloth. He cast one sorrowful glance
at the others, took a last breath of clean air, and then left the library into the billowing smoke.

Epilogue

Epilogue

             
Mannus leaned heavily on his staff, looking out over the waves. The pain in his right shoulder and hip told him that the rains would soon come back. He smiled, despite the melancholy days like these always seemed to bring to him – he felt like an old man, though he was only just past twenty. But his self-criticizing smile faded as he went back to remembering another day like this one, a day long ago.

             
One thought led to another, and soon Mannus was remembering his pain again – not the pains that plagued him now, but the oceans of pain he crossed in those dark days. Languishing in
Conwyn’s
cave, unaware of the passage of time or able to see any events clearly he fell asleep in a wash of drugs and opened his eyes to a half-awake state of agony. He could see his bones. He could feel the maggots and worms crawling inside of him. All the while
the D
ruid chanted, all the while the strange music continued. It was as if pieces of
himself
were taken out and he was sewn back together with hollow places inside. The only way he survived were the visions of Grania, leaning over him,
ministering to him like an angel, guiding him through the world of the
dead.