Rome Burning (31 page)

‘I – it wasn’t a
plan
, I just – I wanted to be sure you were safe near him, after everything. And anyway – why didn’t you
ask
me to do it, years ago?’

‘I told you back then,’ he answered, though he flushed. ‘My uncle. I thought …’

‘You thought your uncle couldn’t stand it. But you know it wasn’t only that.
You
didn’t want to think about it either; you just wanted it to be over, or you would have done something. I thought – if he was part of it, you had to know, but if he wasn’t, there’d be nothing to say. Like you wanted.’

‘Well, I was wrong; I should never have let this happen, I should have had you find out. But he’s my cousin; it’s my family, and you should have told me.’

Una had begun shivering after all. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’

‘That’s enough,’ Sulien said sharply.

Marcus had broken away from Una in frustration, now he rounded on Sulien. ‘Don’t you realise – she knew he could be dangerous, she might have thrown her life away and why? To prove a point?’

‘I don’t care. He almost killed her. Leave her alone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ repeated Una.

‘Come here,’ Sulien turned to her, ignoring Marcus now. ‘Let me look at your wrist.’

Silenced, Marcus watched them as Sulien carefully handled the wrist, put his fingers to the bruises on her neck and face, gently but pointedly. Marcus went back to crouch beside her, remorsefully. ‘I wouldn’t have stopped you.
You’re right, you had to do it, we had to know. But I would have made sure he couldn’t hurt you.’

‘I know,’ replied Una quietly, recovering a little. ‘But it’s just as well he did.’

Marcus stared at her, shaking his head in incomprehension. ‘I don’t know how you can say that,’ he remarked at last, helplessly.

‘Because it can be proved against him,’ she said evenly, in control again.

Marcus shook his head again, feeling at once that he might have known she would say that and that she was unfathomably strange, exhaustingly strange and precious and reckless with herself. He closed his arms around her once more, and muttered fiercely, ‘I want to kill him.’

‘Good. Do it,’ said Varius suddenly, without raising his voice at all, but much more forcefully than when he’d spoken before.

It was exactly what the incoherent flood of disgust and rage coursing through Marcus had been demanding, but hearing it repeated aloud, approved, was such a jolt that he turned to Varius and his voice sounded small and pathetic in his own ears. ‘What?’

‘He’s killed four people. Four that we know about. And now this. He isn’t stopping. You can’t allow him any more chances.’

‘I know,’ whispered Marcus, flinching, holding Una more tightly, while at the same time sharp grief for his parents swept suddenly across him like a blade peeling off a curl of skin.

Varius did not stop. ‘And Gabinius getting himself shot – did your cousin do that too? It must have been good news for him, anyway. We could have known all this sooner.’

‘We could have done – it’s my fault,’ said Marcus, scarcely audibly. He couldn’t meet Varius’ eyes. ‘But now I don’t think – unless we find something – we can’t prove he killed my parents … or Gemella.’

‘Then he falls down the stairs drunk, he goes out hunting and never comes back, it doesn’t matter!’ cried Varius, savagely, hearing his voice ring in the cavernous room, as if it were someone else’s. There was silence afterwards.

‘It does matter,’ answered Marcus finally, tentatively. ‘People would find out. The Praetorians know what happened today … and where he is. They’d know I did it. And anyway,’ he hesitated again and his voice sank even lower, ‘I won’t … I won’t murder him in secret. It’s almost what he would have done to
us
, Varius. I don’t want to be … like that.’

‘You aren’t like him,’ said Varius, almost scoffing, for it seemed such a useless, self-indulgent thing to say. ‘There’s no comparison. It’s an execution. Do you really think you’d have anything to be ashamed of, after what he’s done?’

Marcus could feel, with alarming, unfamiliar intensity, what he wanted to do to Drusus: pound his fists into his stomach, smash something heavy against his face and head until the bones broke, stab him. He wanted to do it quickly yet not so fast that Drusus felt nothing, didn’t know he was dying. He couldn’t imagine feeling any shame afterwards. He managed to say, ‘I don’t know. Yes.
Yes
. I – Varius, if I start like this – I—’ He felt a sick shudder pass through him, unable to keep the words from forming in his mind: it’s too much, and I can’t stand it, I can’t do it. He said aloud, unsteadily, ‘I haven’t even been here six weeks.’

Varius said, a little more gently but still unwavering, ‘Would it be any different if it were six years?’

Marcus made a trapped, impatient gesture, dragging a hand across his face. ‘I meant, if I do this now – before I’ve done anything else – I’ll do it again, won’t I? Won’t I keep doing it? There will always be someone who’s a threat – and we’ll discuss what to do, but the conversation will be shorter every time it happens because if I’ve done it before, why not again? There’s been enough of that. I
can’t
. And it isn’t an execution, you know that.’

‘Varius,’ said Una. ‘There’s nothing Drusus can do. He’s not going anywhere. It’s more than my word against his. There’s the room he shut me in. He broke the longdictor – I cut him with a piece of it, it’s still on the roof. And there’s Acchan – the boy who helped me. It was attempted murder. It can be proved, I know it can.’

Varius sighed and sat down, suddenly tired. ‘Well,’ he conceded wearily. ‘I suppose given he’s already in custody
it’s not … practical.’ But even before he spoke again it was obvious to the others that he had not changed his mind, not in principle. He said, ‘If he’s alive he won’t be harmless. And you mustn’t think otherwise. If he has any allies at all he’ll continue to be a threat. Even if he’s locked up. Although yes, if you put him on trial, you’ll get your way. A court will probably judge whatever they think you want anyway.’ Marcus frowned in protest at this but Varius continued, ‘It’s not a question of proving it to them. It’s the Emperor, and what happens if he ever doubts you.’

‘But he won’t. He won’t be able to,’ said Marcus.

‘But he has to believe all of it. He won’t understand his nephew suddenly standing trial for attacking someone. He’s got to be sure about Lady Tullia and everything else.’

‘He knew I was telling the truth before,’ said Una.

‘Yes. That’s something,’ admitted Varius. ‘But there’s always the chance.’

‘What will happen when the Emperor hears this?’ asked Una. She was looking at Sulien, who suddenly understood that it was not only for comfort that she’d called him there.

‘Do you mean, could it kill him?’ he asked. ‘Do you absolutely have to tell him? Because yes, it’s possible.’

There was a pause, and then Varius said, ‘I don’t think that’s a real choice. He’s going to wonder where Drusus has gone, isn’t he? If you do it this way, it can’t be by halves, everyone has to know. So he’ll find out anyway, and that would be worse.’

‘You’re right,’ said Marcus, reluctantly. He felt another spasm of hatred for Drusus, this time on his uncle’s behalf. He asked Sulien, ‘Can you be there with me when I tell him, in case?’

‘All right. Of course,’ said Sulien, uneasily.

‘Well, then, you know what you’re going to do,’ remarked Una.

‘Yes,’ murmured Marcus. He let out his breath shakily, deliberately uncurled the fist that wore the ring, feeling a slight, temporary relief. His body still felt strained with unacted violence. ‘But I don’t ever want to see Drusus again,’ he said. He found he was talking to Varius, Varius was the
one he wanted to know this. ‘If I ever do. If I’m ever in a room with him, I’ll …’ He did not say the words, but once again he could feel what he would do.

The rumour of Drusus’ arrest had begun thriving through the Palace from the moment it happened, despite Glycon’s attempts to quarantine it. As she walked to her father’s rooms, Makaria missed the first signals of it – a group of servants suddenly dispersing at the far end of a passage, the sound of doors opening and closing urgently somewhere below her. Still, though she had changed out of her formal clothes, she felt faintly uncomfortable, as if a mistake had been made. She assumed it was only another bout of anxiety about Faustus and homesickness for her island. On Siphnos, Hypatia, to whom she was closer than anyone else, who could have made her forget the rash of annoyances that always afflicted her in the Palace, would be managing the vineyard without her. Makaria was irritated with her father for insisting on staying in the Palace, she could not see how he could recover here, he would be better off in Greece, away from everything, but the argument was just not worth having, nor was she even sure how she could manage having him there in her real, out-of-Rome life. But as she walked down a flight of stairs she caught a pair of guards looking at her sharply, as one joined the other and muttered something inaudible, and it was suddenly obvious that something had happened, and was being kept from her.

Makaria marched over to them and demanded abruptly, ‘What’s going on?’

The men looked awkward. ‘Nothing, Madam. Some routine security issues. That is, nothing to worry about.’

‘I saw you look at me; you think it concerns me. Don’t lie to me about it.’

‘I’m under orders not to discuss it.’

‘Then you’re disobeying orders by discussing it with each other, as well as
my
order for you to tell me,’ said Makaria impatiently.

‘Please, my Lady,’ said the guard in a low voice, so that she was a little repentant. ‘I can’t. I’m sure Caesar will talk to you soon.’

Makaria frowned, but did not persist. A tremor of anxiety rose into her throat, silencing her and growing worse as she walked away. And of all things, all possible forms of bad news, she found she thought instantly of Drusus. He had acted so strangely by the fountain. But then he’d said he was ill, which had seemed natural enough at the time, perhaps more natural than it might have been in someone else. For though she could not have said he was actually unusually sickly, still there was always something overstrained and wounded about Drusus. Nevertheless, suppose …? She began and then left a gap, she could not bear to think it, and yet she could not avoid the guilty logic: if what she’d done was tell him that something terrible about him was known, if he had a secret and had just learned it wasn’t safe, then how would you expect him to act? Exactly as he had.

Why hadn’t he known about Una before anyway? He’d been so out of things for the last few years – well, so had she, but for him it was different – he’d spent most of his life barely venturing outside Rome, why had he suddenly abandoned it so totally?

She thought she was reasonably level-headed, perhaps she became sullen or cantankerous easily, but that was not the same thing as panic; she didn’t think she was often guilty of summoning up dire consequences on the prompting of nothing. And so she was the more horrified by the sudden gush of possibilities that followed the question:
if all that were so, what would he do next?

Her fear was compromised all the time by the thought that she was being terribly unfair to Drusus.

She found Marcus walking towards her along a passage with Sulien, both of them seeming to pass in and out of their real ages as they moved: older and younger, they looked worn and sombre, but also pale, scared, as if they were walking through stripes of shadow between bright windows.

‘I was coming to find you,’ said Marcus.

Makaria had briefly forgotten that Sulien was Una’s brother; seeing Marcus with Faustus’ doctor she thought she must have been wrong, the news must be about her
father. ‘What is it, is he worse?’ she asked. And then she remembered.

‘It’s not that,’ answered Marcus shortly, and told her where Drusus was.

Makaria put a hand to her mouth. ‘Why? He did something to Una, didn’t he? Is she dead?’ she blurted out, to her own incredulity. The young men stared at her. She was ashamed of being so blunt, so clumsy.

‘No, she’s not dead,’ said Marcus.

‘It was you, then,’ said Sulien. They’d already decided that it seemed likely.

‘How could I know what would happen? Oh no, he can’t, he wouldn’t, I know he wouldn’t,’ moaned Makaria.

‘It’s not all he’s done,’ said Marcus.

‘I must go and see her,’ cried Makaria impulsively, sick with contrition.

‘She’s gone to the baths. You can’t. You don’t know all of it.’

She could anticipate, unwillingly, much of what she was going to be told, but she felt on fire with shame and stupidity, when she heard that Tulliola and Drusus had been lovers. Of course, of
course
it would be that. How could she not have seen when she had always despised Tulliola, had
known
, from the beginning really, how false she was? What Makaria had felt for Drusus would have been only a shared world-weariness that was to do with being a Novian, barely more than a casual liking if it could have been taken out of the fierce complexity of family. She racked her memory now for signs she must have missed, glances between Tulliola and Drusus, times they had been alone together, and she could think of nothing, or at least nothing in Tulliola, always so treacherously opaque. But Drusus – the tension and nervousness for which she had pitied him … ‘Oh, it’s vile,’ she said. ‘How could he? So there’s nothing my father has that he hasn’t tried to get his hands on. He’s not human, he can’t be. And what is this going to do to Daddy? Bringing it all up again will be bad enough.’