Rome Burning (34 page)

But they’d got away with it; everything went as he had hoped, and he even allowed himself to feel proud. From the Nionian side, bearers carried out a kind of moveable shrine, curtained and canopied, a small, silk-roofed tent over a miniature wooden house, resting on poles over the bearers’ shoulders, like a sedan chair. Meanwhile the Roman priestess unveiled a half-size statue of Venus in gold leaf over bronze, standing over a low altar, a bright round mirror – Amaterasu’s symbol – shining in her golden hands. It was a feeble, tawdry, simpering figure, for they had had only a few days to find and requisition a statue of the right size, suitable for quick alteration. Besides the mirror, clouds of clumsy-looking gold drapery had been added, swathed around her in frantic haste, after Varius realised the Nionians’ acceptance of ‘Venus Amaterasu’ would probably disintegrate if the goddess was nearly naked. Consequently, to most of the Romans watching, she did not look like Venus at all.

Marcus went forward without hesitation. Makaria should have been beside him, but resignedly she had stayed in Rome with her father, and instead Marcus was followed by Probus, and Yanisen, the head governor of Terranova, and a few younger noblemen. At the same, precisely timed moment the Nionian lords appeared, and among them was Prince Tadahito, a young man with a long sensitive face, like a hare’s, cautious and alert. He was dressed in steel-blue silk, embroidered with stark gold squares; the central lock of his black hair was tied back from his forehead, the rest falling loose to his shoulders. His youth and his clothes made him conspicuous among the older barons and generals – Kiyowara-no-Sanetomo of Goshu, Mimanano-Fusahira of Koura – but Tadahito was not the only one to stand out, nor the only one who generated a silent, thunderous atmosphere of power. In front of him was the governor of Nionian Terranova, Masarus Cato, as the Romans casually referred to him: Seii-Taishougun Kato-no-Masaru, Lord of Tokogane. He was in his late forties, of no more than medium height, but handsome, his eyes sharp under dense, clear-cut, slightly
slanted brows, his smiling mouth and heavy jaw framed with jet-black blades of hair. While the young Nionian shrine-attendants in their red and white could occasionally be seen to steal shy glances at Prince Tadahito from beneath lowered eyelashes, the older man had drawn looks of frank admiration from the Roman priestesses of Venus. He walked with such electric confidence that beside him the proud young Prince looked almost fragile.

Side by side, the Romans and Nionians bowed to Venus Amaterasu, not to each other; indeed they avoided even looking at each other until it was done. Nothing worse happened than Yanisen’s glower at Lord Kato, his counterpart, which was answered with a calm hostile smile. They both offered Italian wine and honey, along with rice, and Nionian pine branches hung with strips of silk.

Beside Tadahito, Marcus was murmuring with apparent quiet piety, ‘Let this altar be our refuge. Take us into your protection and defend us, kind Venus. Be not offended with us, nor hold us at fault; consider us not unclean. With your father Jupiter, in whom rest the hopes and lives of all humankind, grant that these days prosper. Venus Amaterasu, may you be honoured by this offering.’ He seemed completely at ease. Varius felt affectionately impressed – he was so natural. Varius knew he would have hated being under such open scrutiny himself.

And finally the two parties could turn to each other and begin to exchange polite, wary greetings, but there was still the Sinoan Emperor to be met for the first time. In this case the solution had come from the Nionian side: solemnly, Marcus lifted the
pallium
, the purple-bordered swathe of white cloth, from his own shoulders and put it over Yanisen’s, while Tadahito untied a cord he had worn over the sash of his tunic, and handed it to Kato. Thus loosely representing their two leaders, they could, it had been grudgingly agreed, prostrate themselves before the Emperor to spare Marcus or Tadahito having to do it in person. Still, it was strikingly obvious that both men loathed what was being required of them: Kato’s faint smile tightened and faded; Yanisen’s lips were folded into a stern grimace as if he were about to undergo some kind of physical pain. They both bowed, stiffly,
Kato to the Prince, Yanisen to Marcus, so that at least no one could say they were honouring the Sinoan Emperor above their own monarchs, before they marched reluctantly up the steps, through the high trellis doors into the hall where the Emperor waited. No one accompanied them – the only witnesses to their shame would be the guards, women and eunuchs of the Sinoan court. The rest waited until it was over, and then followed.

The hall was hung with tapestries, set about with large, beautiful, painted vases and ornamental trees, and very bright, full of filtered light through tall shuttered doors and the greenish glass tiles high above. Sitting on the yellow throne, the Emperor must have been at least fifty but looked much younger, baby-like almost, with his round, smooth face, plump body in yellow satin robes, and his air of somnolent indifference to the arrival of the foreigners. He smiled with bored benevolence at the Romans, with just the faintest visible trace of listless antagonism at the Nionians, and scarcely spoke. The Romans talked of him as ‘the Emperor Florens’ – ‘Sing-ji’ was the best reproduction of the actual name into the Western alphabet, but the Romans preferred the loose translation into Latin since they had long considered the Sinoan syllables barbarously impossible to pronounce. And with curiosity or disapproval, they whispered that he was only a puppet, that the Sinoan Empire was truly ruled, quite openly in fact, by a woman, Florens’ mother, the Dowager Empress, whom the Romans called Junosena. But she did not appear in the hall, as the welcoming banquet began. The uneasy guests were seated at long, low, lacquered tables – the Nionians and Romans were given places of scrupulously equal rank, although Florens’ throne rose calmly above them both.

But as they ate the tension was softened and overcome by a seemingly infinite succession of courses, among them dishes as difficult and epicurean as the most eccentric Roman offerings – stewed bear’s paws, turtles cooked with egg yolk, fried swallows – along with fare more recognisable to them – pork, duck, shellfish – so much that even those Romans who baulked at the unfamiliarity of the spices and the combinations of meats could hardly help eating until
they were gorged. With silent tact, spoons and knives of gold and ivory had been laid before them, not the bewildering acrobatic sticks manipulated by the Nionians and Sinoans.

Often the Romans laid down their spoons to scoop up their food with their fingers, as was normal in the Empire. Prince Tadahito turned his eyes away in polite disgust.

Singers and musicians appeared. A little dancer, standing on a small gold pedestal, curled her spine like a bean-stem or an eel; she arched dizzyingly backwards, spinning circles of red felt balanced on her outstretched fingertips, to lift in her teeth a peony laid below her on the floor. Her little upside-down golden face, as it lowered relentlessly back and back, was strangely serene and unreadable, though she could not have been more than eleven years old.

Noriko could just make out a movement of Marcus Novius’ head from time to time, watching through the lattices from her slight hiding place behind the steps of the neighbouring pavilion. The young concubine was no longer at his side – apart from the entertainers, this seemed to be an entirely male gathering. But Noriko dared not get closer for a better view – she was too exposed already.

It went on for hours; the diners were almost worn out with eating. Finally the Emperor withdrew with the same lethargic pomp with which he had appeared, and the banquet came to an end. Outside the hall, in the warm twilight, Tadahito and the other Nionian nobles gathered together on a rounded bridge over a glittering artificial stream, conferring rapidly in low voices. Marcus watched them with faint apprehension. He said quietly to Varius, ‘I think I should talk to the Prince alone.’

The Nionian Emperor, Go-natoku, had remained in Cynoto, but he was not an invalid as Faustus was; he remained a real, if remote authority. As far as Marcus understood it the Nionian party would be acting for him, referring their decisions back to him to be approved – or not. Nevertheless, Marcus’ instinct was to single out the Prince, not only because he assumed that as his father’s heir, Tadahito must have the most authority, but because they had spoken before, and because already he could see himself so clearly through the older men’s eyes: a naïve boy
hardly out of adolescence. He enjoyed his power over the senators in Rome, but these lords were under no obligation to do more than go through the motions of respect. The Prince was so close to him in age, their positions were so similar. Marcus knew he would not feel so vulnerable and fraudulent with him.

Varius murmured, ‘I don’t think that one likes us very much,’ indicating Lord Kato with a minimal move of the head.

Marcus felt the same thing, although the Nionian lord had done nothing but smile at them. He smiled at them now, noticing Varius and Marcus. But it was neither friendly nor ingratiating, although nor was it insincere. His small, fierce smile was somehow at once courteous and rude, the expression of a glowing self-assurance so strong that it was almost joy.

‘He was the one that first requested the troops for their side of the Wall,’ Varius said.

‘But he doesn’t seem to resent being here. Salvius would think it was all a waste of time.’

‘He might welcome the chance to decide what he thinks of
you
,’ suggested Varius.

Marcus sighed and went over to them.

He began in Nionian, out of politeness, although he had never used it to address so many native speakers before, and his middling fluency was suddenly hampered by an attack of self-consciousness. Nevertheless, this time, to Marcus’ faint dismay, as he began to feel he’d been over-confident, there was no taut contest over languages, Tadahito accepted the use of Nionian gracefully, as if he had no knowledge of Latin. ‘It’s good to finally meet you in person,’ he said.

Lord Kato inspected Marcus with calm care. ‘A longer journey for you than for us, Caesar. And this city must seem even stranger to you than we find it,’ he noted, good-humouredly.

‘Perhaps, but I have always thought the Romans and Nionians quite similar,’ said Marcus, a little stiffly, hearing in his own voice the instinctive haughtiness he had learned from childhood. He had become aware of it in the tense days after he first met Una and Sulien, as they crept across Gaul;
he knew now how he fell back upon it most when he felt awkward or unsure of himself. His anxiety was increased by how fluid the power seemed to be between the lord and Tadahito: at present the Prince was standing by quietly, looking unassuming and almost deferential. You must do better than this, Marcus told himself.

Lord Kato’s face managed to communicate total disagreement and distaste, without its actual expression of civil attention seeming to alter at all. ‘Obviously not in superficial things,’ he remarked genially.

‘Well, we have just claimed descent from the same Heaven, and I have noticed similar stories in the histories,’ said Tadahito.

‘Yes, Lord,’ said Kato dutifully, with slight perceptible exasperation.

‘Your Highness, can I speak with you?’ said Marcus, growing impatient. The older men contracted a little at this, as if Marcus had been crudely blunt. Tadahito, however, came with him readily, down a long walkway of scarlet columns between mulberry and apricot trees.

As he had hoped, Marcus felt less like a child dressed up alongside the other young man, and the Prince too seemed to become more confident and vivid away from the others.

‘Your Nionian is good,’ he said, so that Marcus’ pride trapped him in that language, and then, ‘You want to test some idea on me? Please do so.’

‘All things considered, neither one of us has any more right to the territory than the other,’ said Marcus. ‘We could try and renegotiate Mixigana. Some new patched-up version might work for a while, but the strain on the border will build up again in the end. I want us to take down the Wall.’

Tadahito’s pace slowed suddenly, so that it was clearly only self-control that kept him from stopping dead in surprise. His face swung towards Marcus and a quizzical, wordless murmur spooled through his lips.

‘We would treat the land as both Roman and Nionian,’ continued Marcus.

They walked in silence for a moment or two as Tadahito thought. Marcus felt a tense balance of trepidation and hope,
and was convinced the Prince must share it: he
had
to feel how unimaginable it was that two people walking reasonably along like this, with no rancour between them, should ever need to be enemies. And yet real safety lay far off at the end of a long file of hurdles, so many and so separately difficult, that they might sink into fighting in exhausted despair.

‘How can one be a citizen of two nations?’ Tadahito asked. ‘To whose laws would one answer? I assume Rome would not want your people subject to Nionian law any more than we would wish ours to be subject to yours. And if we could somehow blend them into one, how would it be administered, and by whom? What responsibilities would we have to citizens of Mexica or Aravacia, whose lives must be very different from those from Yukimichi, in North Tokogane? And then there are – oh, questions of travel, the natural resources. And what would it mean for both our empires, to have this land between them that is not quite one thing nor the other?’

‘Of course I can’t answer that yet,’ said Marcus. ‘I only want to know if you would try and find the answer with us, if there is one.’

Tadahito hesitated. ‘I hope it is possible,’ he said at last. ‘And my father … hopes a way can be found. But whether it
is
possible – I don’t know. And even if I think so, I am only one voice.’