Rome Burning by Sophia McDougall Page B

expected;they stared, nonplussed and sceptical, as if they suspected it was a joke. Then painful exhilaration did break from a few, who began to clap and hug each other and weep, and the rest picked up the applause, but more dutifully and doubtfully, and they were interrupted by Drusus striding through them to the head of the room, forcing them to fall aside and leave a path, instinctively.
    ‘Drusus—’ began Marcus, prepared to defend what he had done, but Drusus was already speaking loudly.
    ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ he said, laughing. ‘They’re not exactly yours to give away, are they? It’s a bit – it’s a bit
sly
! What do you think about this, Makaria?’
    Makaria shrugged uncomfortably and said, ‘I don’t know.’ She was looking at the slaves; not the hesitant or guarded ones, who were beginning to file out, but the others, the few ecstatic ones, who stood in small, breathless, oblivious circles. There was a woman in her thirties who no longer looked happy at all, but had buried her face in one palm, sobbing, and wrapped the other arm around her stomach, as if she were in pain there. A dark teenage girl soothed her uncertainly. Makaria muttered, ‘It’s going to be expensive, I know that. We’d better hope at least a tenth of them do leave.’
    ‘Never mind!’ exclaimed Drusus, and he enclosed Marcus in his arms.
    Una was sitting on one of the dining chairs, watching. For three years she had been waiting with a predator’s patience to see Drusus in person. Though he must have appeared in countless pictures, he was rarely the focus of the cameras which always sought out Faustus, or Leo and Clodia, or Marcus himself, so she had no strong sense of his face. But now she saw it, it was familiar. She was not prepared for how much he would look like Marcus.
    Yet he was taller than Marcus, and the straight outline of his face seemed a little clearer or firmer for being framed with dark hair and eyelashes. The smile pulled higher on one side, as it seemed to do for all the Novians – on the right, in Drusus’ case – and the lips were just as full, but Drusus’ mouth was a long, firmly moulded double ripple, moving to a kind of deep peak at its centre. The large, heavilylidded eyes were not grey-blue like Marcus’ but green, like Faustus’ and Makaria’s, and for the moment he was the more handsome, because his whole face was lit with ebullient well-being. He was slightly, becomingly flushed.
    ‘Everyone says you were very good on the longvision,’ continued Drusus. ‘I wish I’d seen it, I was travelling. But I’m here now. It’s so good to see you! It’s been too long, we shouldn’t have let that happen. But I wish it were in happier circumstances – such terrible news!’ But he said all this so fast that his expression had no time to shift into appropriate sorrow.
    Marcus patted his cousin’s back and said, ‘It’s good to see you too,’ but he was unpleasantly startled by the embrace. He could not remember seeing Drusus either so happy or so friendly towards him, and whether or not it was an act, he was taken aback by the cheerful force of it.
    Una was startled too, because Drusus seemed not in the least uncomfortable, and the weird good humour was not only unforced but seemingly bottomless. Drusus was brimming with it: she could see nothing else in him, not guilt, not even jealousy.
    Drusus noticed now that one of Marcus’ hangers-on was incongruously young and female, and looking at him. He asked merrily, ‘Who’s this?’
    ‘This is Una,’ said Marcus, stepping back from him a little.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ said Drusus lightly, looking at her once and briefly wondering why he had wasted curiosity on such a mousey, unattractive person. He felt mild scorn and pity for Marcus. If he had not known she had been a slave he would have looked at her quite differently, and yet this was not in the least because he considered slave-girls untouchable, of course not (there was Amaryllis) –