Rome Burning (70 page)

Under the jacket, despite the season, he was wearing a loose, well-worn, short-sleeved summer tunic that left his arms bare. On one wrist he wore a kind of leather vambrace, like a piece of armour, on the other a thick band or cuff of stiff black cloth. As he spoke, he thumbed off the right covering, and then the left with more difficulty, having to use his weaker hand. Una looked on, silent, no longer weeping. She had only glimpsed the scars once before.

He glanced down at them, calmly. ‘I’m not ashamed of them now. One day it won’t matter who sees them.’

Una shook her head, dazed, not knowing what to think or where to start. Trying to hold onto something solid and rational, she said again, ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I moved around. In and out of Rome. Germania … Gaul …’

‘Rome?’

‘I couldn’t get much further to begin with,’ he said. ‘Didn’t have any money. It was the easiest place to go, from Tivoli.’

‘But I kept coming back here. Sulien was here all the time. We were here.’

Dama glanced away from her, curtly. ‘Look. This is how it is. I didn’t want anything to do with Novius. I didn’t want to see you with him. I said I’d go and that’s what I did. I’m here now. I’ll go if you like.’

‘No,’ she said, half-resentfully.

‘I am sorry though,’ he promised her, cyan eyes wide open with compassion for her. He shook his head, indicating the raucous disorder outside with apparent disgust. ‘This … today …’

Una managed a small, deflecting smile and made an erasing gesture in the air. He had not said anything resembling,
‘I told you so,’ and she wanted to be sure he would not. She did not want to hear him talk of Marcus.

‘No,’ he agreed, understanding her. ‘Better not. But anyway, I had to come.’ And he went over to her, urging gently, ‘Come on, sit down again. You haven’t eaten anything, have you?’

He found the bread and a couple of eggs. She still had no real appetite, and beyond getting food onto a plate for her, he did not nag her to eat. She could not finish the small meal, but she felt stronger – more awake, and better able to stand being so.

‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘How did you live?’

Dama smiled at her affectionately. ‘Stealing,’ he said. ‘To begin with anyway. Or what
they’d
call stealing. Not much against what they owe us, is it?’

She was free in law, he was not. She felt oddly relieved to be included by him among slaves, among the outsiders and opponents of Rome.

‘I’m pretty good at it,’ he said. ‘I did try for jobs, but there’s not a lot I can do. I can’t compete with slaves. Or anyone who’s got two hands that work properly.’ He looked at his scars again. ‘And I can’t do anything where people get to notice how these match up neatly with a cross.’

‘Crucifixion’s over now,’ Una murmured, remembering sitting at Marcus’ side in the Palace, the day he had announced it to the senators.

Dama nodded, a little grudgingly. ‘Yes. That was good of him. I’ll give him that.’

Una thought of Holzarta: the cabins hidden against the flanks of the gorge, the walkways across the stream, the sophisticated network of alarms and cameras. Dama had designed it all. ‘You should have been an architect,’ she said, ‘Or an engineer.’ Distantly, she wondered what she should have been.

Dama seemed faintly startled, and he was silent for a while, contemplating a life that had never been allowed. ‘Well. Maybe I will – maybe I’ll build things, one day.’

‘So,’ said Una, rather drearily because it seemed so bleak. ‘Is that still what you do?’

Again Dama smiled, the effect on his face disconcertingly
pure, transfiguring. ‘No. Scavenging and keeping myself alive with no reason for it – I don’t care about stealing from Romans, but it’s a
sin
to let your life just drag on and do nothing with it. I couldn’t live like that.’ He looked at her, a look that seemed to lodge in her like a blue dart. ‘And you can’t either, can you?’

Una said in a whisper, ‘No.’

Dama nodded, satisfied, and got up. ‘Are you up to going somewhere?’

Dama had parked an old, nondescript car a few blocks away from her door. A fire-cracker flashed a street away, but the noise and laughter no longer impinged on Una. It had become part of the background.

‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked.

‘I had a friend look by at the clinic, he found out you were working at that Vatican place. I’m sorry if it all sounds a bit sinister, I don’t know how else I could have done it.’

‘You know the clinic?’

‘Oh yes, everyone knows the clinic.’ He sounded proud. ‘I’m glad Sulien’s there. It’s a good thing – it’s what he should be doing.’

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, as he settled his hands on the controls. ‘Driving hurts you.’

‘You know I can manage, if I need to. And it’s better than it was, the muscles are stronger.’

‘I don’t like sitting beside you and knowing you’re hurting yourself.’

‘Well, can you drive? And I mean properly, I’m not risking my neck with you making it up as you go along again.’

Prompted by anyone else, the memory of the long drive into Rome, hoping to save Marcus’ life, would have been painful. From him, it almost amused her. She said frankly, ‘No, I didn’t get round to it.’

‘Then that can be one of the first things you do next,’ said Dama.

He drove north-east, onto the road by which they’d entered Rome, years before, but as they left the city limits on the Via Salaria, they no longer had to pass crosses ranked along the highway. Rome seemed to slide away behind Una like a
weight. In the centre of Rome it was sometimes impossible to believe that the roads led to anything but more city, that it was even possible to emerge into countryside. She was amazed, looking up as the car shifted onto a rough track thirty miles outside Rome, to realise she’d been asleep.

‘This is where it is,’ said Dama.

The track extended downhill through scrubby fields, into a shallow valley. They were approaching a cluster of farm buildings within a thick barbed wire fence. In the dark it was a forbidding place. As they reached the gates, Una glimpsed a sign that read: WARNING: DOGS LOOSE.

Dama laughed at the sight of it and said, ‘They’re only imaginary dogs, so far anyway.’

There were many people ahead, within the fence, and they knew Dama was coming.

Dama stopped the car and turned to look at her. He began, ‘You trusted Novius to abolish slavery, didn’t you?’ His voice was stern, formal.

Una stiffened, wary and disappointed. ‘We shouldn’t talk about him, Dama.’

But Dama pressed, ‘Tell me why it hasn’t happened.’

‘It will,’ said Una tiredly, beginning to regret coming here after all. ‘It’s impossible now with the Nionian situation. And he doesn’t have the full powers of Emperor. When he comes to the throne he will.’

‘So it’s not convenient to do it now,’ summarised Dama. Una sighed and did not answer. ‘Fine,’ he continued softly. ‘Maybe that’s all true. But there are people dying
now
. They’re being crippled, raped, murdered. It’s happening every day all across the filthy world. And
you know
.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Una said, but she no longer felt that she was being forced to bear an attack on Marcus. Instead, she felt a strange, anticipatory excitement.

‘But not these,’ said Dama. And he got out of the car and led the way towards the low, concrete buildings, from which throngs of people began to emerge into the bare yard. All were adult, and none was old, but otherwise they were of all ages, both sexes, every race. And as they saw Dama a blaze of intense, spontaneous feeling flashed from them,
like hot light bouncing off a mirror. They loved him – all of them. Dama raised his better hand, the left, in greeting.

‘In Holzarta we used to wait for people to escape and come to us. There were never many who could do that, but it was better than nothing. Now I go to them, and I get them out. After that, it’s up to them what they want to do, but these choose to be with me. We don’t wait. We’re slaves; it’s our business to put slavery to an end – one person at a time if that’s what it takes.’ He faced Una. He did not touch her, but again his look at her was as emphatic and as intimate as if he’d taken her face in his hands.

‘You should be with us. I want your help.’

*

‘I remember him – I know I remember,’ insisted Lal, after Sulien’s first unconvinced response. ‘He wasn’t wearing those long sleeves like he used to. I saw the scar on his arm. And he held me in the back of the car and told me I’d be safe. It was him. He’s alive.’

Sulien hesitated another second, but then broke into a laugh. ‘Well then, that’s wonderful. But why didn’t he stay? You’d think he could have guessed how worried we all were about him.’

‘I don’t know. It might not have been safe. He wasn’t meant to be there at all, any more than we were. And I suppose I can understand why he might not want to see Una.’

Sulien’s smile faded at the thought of her, alone and unconsoled in her austere flat. ‘But she’ll want to know,’ he said, trying to calculate when best to tell her, and sighed. ‘I wonder why he was in Sina.’

‘Well, we thought it was safe – safer, anyway. You know we sent a lot of people there.’

‘It would have been difficult for him. He had nothing with him that last night, when he disappeared.’

‘He can’t have been there all the time. If he had been, he’d have found my father long before. Perhaps he managed to get by in the Empire for a while, until … I don’t know, something went wrong and he had to leave. He must have been looking for us. I hope he’s all right.’

Just for a second, Sulien experienced a strange, pivoting
feeling that passed before he could have put any name to it. ‘How did he do it?’ he asked, more quietly. ‘If Drusus’ men had found you, how did Dama get you out of the car?’

‘Someone must have …’ said Lal, beginning eagerly before the bright mess of memory had settled into sense. Then she stopped, startled to remember the rumbling noise and impact under the car. She started again, slowly and with less confidence. ‘He attacked the car …’

‘How do you mean, attacked it?’

Lal felt again the surface of the road under her cheek, she saw the gorgeous colour of the burst of flame. ‘There was an explosion,’ she murmured. ‘More than one. The first one wasn’t big. It just stopped the car. Everyone jumped out; they dragged me out of the back and dropped me on the ground. And I just lay there. But they were shooting … at Dama. At Dama’s car. But then there were the other explosions – much bigger. Liuyin was hiding in a ditch beside the road. He pulled me across. Then there was Dama, standing on the road, and the car was on fire … and there was fire everywhere.’ She looked up at Sulien, and finished clearly, ‘Dama had put a mine on the road, and after that I think he used grenades, to draw the soldiers away. To finish them off.’ The memory of the screams she’d heard ripped open suddenly in her mind, and she imagined, too clearly, what Liuyin had urged her not to look at as he crouched over her by the roadside: scattered lumps of scorched flesh, landing wetly on the cracked asphalt. ‘Oh …’ she whispered, and bent forward, hiding her face.

Sulien, guessing what she was thinking, said sternly, ‘Better than what might have happened to you if Drusus had got you. If that’s what it took, thank the gods Dama managed to do it.’

‘Oh, I know. If I see him again, how can I ever thank him? And Liuyin too – it must have been so hard for him. But it’s horrible to think of. Oh, I wish I knew where Dama was.’

They were silent for a few minutes. But while Lal, released from the pressure of remembering, began to relax, Sulien felt himself growing tense. He got up and walked about with one hand wrapped around his unmarked wrist,
saying with an uneasily admiring laugh, ‘So do I. I’d like to know how he did it. It must have taken some doing. I wouldn’t have known how. Even if I could get the explosives, I couldn’t have used them like that. It sounds like he was pretty precise with them. How was he
capable
?’

‘God knows,’ said Lal, wearily. In fact, struck by one of the fits of overwhelming tiredness that she’d suffered since her illness, she did not want to think about those miserable days in the Sinoan countryside any more. She began to notice for the first time how long she’d stayed in Sulien’s flat, and to worry about getting home.

Sulien’s hand ran slowly up from his wrist to the place above the elbow where the bone had been broken. The great column of fire bursting above the ruins of Veii Imperial Arms. Varius lying on the dust, as if dead. Fire all around them, wherever they turned for escape. Scraps of fire snowing down on their backs. A thousand people.

‘What is it?’ asked Lal, for the rhythm of his breath had audibly changed, and he had gone white.

‘Oh,’ said Sulien, with odd dismissiveness, as if it were hardly worth talking about. ‘I’m just thinking of when things happened, when the fires stopped.’ He smiled, shakily. ‘And Tancorix says Edda’s alive. I didn’t really believe her.’

‘Who are Edda and Tancorix?’

‘Edda was a slave,’ said Sulien, and there was something almost like a laugh in his voice. ‘They were all slaves.’ And then he did laugh, announcing wildly, and, to Lal, inexplicably: ‘The
beds
were empty. They had to sleep in shifts