Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

‘So, they get through quite a lot of slaves,’ said Liam sombrely. The three of them watched the line of tethered slaves recede until they were no more than a shifting smudge of pale flesh, shimmering in the heat reflected by the sun-baked cobblestone road.

Liam directed their attention to the road ahead. ‘Welcome to Rome.’

The crucifixes lining Via Aurelia, the road into Rome from the south-west, gave Maddy and Sal their first taste of what horror to expect within the city. For the last mile, on either side of them, crossbars of weather-bleached wood bore the dead and dying, the pitiful frames of emaciated men and women. Those still alive pleaded with them in dry whispers, speaking languages none of them understood. Maddy suspected they were begging for a quick death, pleading for the sharp thrust of a blade between their ribs to end a slow, agonizing torment.

Bob cajoled their ponies across the stone bridge over the River Tiber into the city.

The smell of putrefaction, of disease and burning cadavers, filled the air.

‘This is a nightmare,’ whispered Maddy.

Liam nodded. ‘This isn’t just a starving city, it’s a madman’s personal playground.’

She understood what he meant by that. The roadside was decorated with heads stuck on wooden posts. Some posts sported several older heads pushed down by newer ones, the oldest little more than skulls shrouded in dry tatters of leathered skin. Not all of them were daubed with old flecks of green paint.

‘Some of those were Roman citizens,’ said Liam. ‘There was a crowd of people who were protesting last week while me and Bob were staying.’

‘About what?’ asked Sal.

‘Building materials taken from the Aqua Claudia to be used on Caligula’s stairway,’ replied Bob. ‘The aqueduct was one of the city’s main sources of drinkable water.’

‘Caligula assured the people his first good deed after ascending to Heaven and becoming God would be to cause fresh rainwater to fall on Rome and for the river to be made as clean as mountain water,’ added Liam. ‘When those protesters decided they didn’t actually believe any of that, he had his Praetorians kill the lot of them.’

‘Seriously?’

Liam nodded. ‘Me an’ Bob were right there.’ He hesitated. There were details he didn’t want to describe. ‘Wasn’t very pleasant. We saw that happen on the third night, wasn’t it?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘I was a bit… uh… bit shaken up by that,’ said Liam. He didn’t tell her that he’d spent the following day in the rooms they’d rented. The streets and avenues had been deserted, every last person in the city hiding from Caligula’s petulant rage.

There were people in the avenues now, traders with a meagre stock of items on sale: the carcasses of rats and dogs, for the lucky few who could trade in coin, the scrawny bodies of hares, the hind leg of a wild boar crawling with flies. Citizens and slaves, young and old, looking for scraps of protein. A marketplace that was deathly quiet, a hundred conversations carried out in worried half-whispers, as crows lined clay-tile guttering nearby, cawing noisily without a care for the miserable, shuffling humans they eyed.

‘Caught a glimpse of him,’ continued Liam in a low voice. ‘Saw Caligula himself.’

‘What’s he like?’ asked Sal.

‘Yeah.’ Maddy pulled a tattered sack from the floor of the cart and draped it over her shoulders. She offered one to Sal. Their clothes were going to attract stares unless they covered up.

‘I was never a particularly religious type, you know?’ He shrugged. ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph an’ God, I could take ’em or leave ’em, if you know what I mean. But…’

‘What?’

Liam bit his lip. ‘But I… I’ll swear there’s something of the Devil about him.’

‘Did he look like he could be someone from the future? Anything about him? Clothes? Wristwatch? That kind of thing?’

‘Negative. There was nothing anachronistic,’ replied Bob.

‘Looked like the real thing to me,’ said Liam. ‘Quite mad.’

The cart rattled out of the broad thoroughfare into a much narrower avenue, flanked on either side by once brightly painted three-storeyed buildings, crimson, yellow, green. The paint was old, though, flaking off like dry, leprous skin. Along the front of the buildings, above a portico of loose clay tiles, were precarious-looking wooden balconies and rat runs from which dangled strings of herbs.

‘This is the Subura District,’ said Bob.

‘It’s a pretty rough part of Rome,’ warned Liam. ‘What am I saying? It’s all rough actually. This is where we found some rooms. The Praetorians stay out of it mostly. Even them priests. The collegia run things around here.’

‘ Collegia?’

‘Gangs,’ said Liam. ‘Criminal gangs.’

Maddy looked up at the creaking wooden balconies that loomed over them. ‘Oh, I thought Caligula was like totally in charge of every-’

‘He rules by consent,’ said Bob. ‘While he pays the Praetorian Guard and turns a blind eye to the activities of the collegia, they are effectively his police force.’

‘Mind you,’ cut in Liam, ‘from what bits and pieces we’ve heard, even they think he’s gone too mad.’

As they drew up beyond the last of the traders’ stalls, Bob clicked his tongue and rapped the reins across the ponies’ backs. Their plodding stopped.

‘But, if everyone thinks he’s a crazy fakirchana-head, why is he still in charge? Why hasn’t somebody just got rid of him?’

‘Everyone’s completely afraid of him.’ Liam reached under a lock of his dark hair and adjusted the babel-bud in his ear. ‘Maybe some of them do actually think he’s some sort of god. I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps he’s got his hands on some tech that makes him appear like a god,’ said Maddy. ‘Say a gun… that would do it, right? Make you look like you’ve got super godlike powers? Sheesh, even a plain old flashlight or a cellphone could look godlike, right?’

She looked up at the chaos of wooden slats above them, the colours of robes and togas drying in the noon sun. They were opposite a narrow rat run between buildings, little more than a yard wide, leading to a shadowed courtyard beyond.

The sounds of life echoed out of it: the barking of dogs, the squalling of a baby, the shrill cry of a woman’s voice raised in anger; countless lives lived on top of each other in cramped squalor.

‘Have you seen any tech, Liam? Bob? Anything at all that shouldn’t be here in this time.’

‘Negative.’

‘I’ve seen nothing like that.’ Liam shook his head. ‘If someone did come back here seventeen years ago and they made a big show of themselves, well…’

‘Chariots from the heavens,’ said Maddy, quoting from one of the sources of the time. ‘Some sort of modern vehicles. Trucks or something?’

‘Right… Chariots from the heavens and messengers from God an’ all that. If someone made a big spectacle like that,’ Liam said with a shrug, ‘there’s not a sign of them now.’

Bob hopped down off the cart.

‘It’s like this city just swallowed them up,’ added Liam.

Maddy peered down the rat run into the dark courtyard. ‘That where you were staying?’

‘Aye.’ Liam pointed up the side of a clay-brick wall. ‘Third floor.’ The building looked more modern than she could have imagined a Roman building would look. Five storeys in height, with rickety balconies of wooden slats and wicker screens for privacy.

‘The building’s basic and very smelly. Gets noisy too. And it’s owned by a right miserable old grump. But it is cheap. Just hope he’ll let us have our room back.’ Liam dug into a pouch tied round his waist. Maddy heard coins jangling heavily.