Nero

39

I was at a party on the Caelian the evening of 18 July; alone, since Silia was holidaying with Arruntius in Baiae. When I left my friends' house about two in the morning it was a beautiful night, with a full moon and a clear sky.Halfway down Staurus Incline the litter stopped. I could hear the slaves chattering together, but since the poor dears were Gauls that didn't help terribly much.

'Rufillus!' I shouted. 'What's going on?'

My head litter slave opened the curtain.

'Fire, sir,' he said. Gauls don't waste words. Latin ones, anyway.

I got out, a little unsteadily and more than a little angry, prepared to do murder: fires were too common in Rome to merit gawping, and I wanted home to bed.

Then I saw what Rufillus had meant.

The city was burning.

It was burning from beneath where we stood to almost half way to the river, and even from here I could hear the screaming. Once alight, tenements burn like torches, and when they fall they block the surrounding streets and alleyways. The Racetrack District, where the fire was, was one of the most densely populated in Rome, and packed tight with tenements. The gods knew how many were dying down there. Hundreds, certainly. Probably thousands. And the fire was spreading, blown by the wind towards the city centre, destroying and killing as it went. As I watched, a long, low warehouse on the north side of the blaze collapsed in on itself. Tongues of flame leaped up and curved northwards, licking against a new line of buildings no more than a few hundred yards from the Palatine.

'Oh, Serapis!' I whispered. 'Oh, sweet Serapis!'

We weren't alone. People were streaming past us towards the higher ground, filthy, soot-streaked and stinking of smoke and sweat: one man carried a pig, another a bronze cooking stove. There was a child clutching a three-legged toy horse, and a woman with a string of onions. These were the lucky ones. None of them paid us any attention.

I turned back to the Gauls and tried to keep my voice steady.

'Home, dears. And quickly, please.'

We fought our way down Staurus Incline and on to the Septizonium. It was choked solid with traffic and pedestrians, moving at a snail's pace. There was no panic, but it was like being in a captured city surrounded by refugees. Behind us the whole sky was a huge livid bruise; the wind at our backs carried a drift of oily black specks and the stench of charred wood and, horribly, roasted meat. I'd seen fires before, of course, but nothing on this scale. The only way to stop it now would be to form fire breaks by knocking down great swathes of the city in its path. That would take time, and probably more authority than even the consuls might care to exert without the emperor's approval. And Lucius was away in Antium.

Once we were clear of the Tenth District the crowds began to thin. Cuprius Street was no busier than it would've been during the day, and by the time we reached the Quirinal if it hadn't been for the lurid sky behind I could have believed everything was normal. My front gate was open, and the door slave was standing outside gaping at the sky.

I left the litter in the courtyard and hurried indoors. Crito, the head slave, was waiting in the hall.

'The baths are hot, sir,' he said. 'And I've given instructions for the more valuable items of furniture to be crated.'

'Well done, my dear.' I felt unutterably weary as I stripped off my soot-streaked party mantle. 'Very sensible of you.'

We were halfway across Rome from the fire, but if Crito thought we should be ready to evacuate it was as well to be safe.

'Also, sir' — Crito took the mantle — 'there was a message from Laecanius Bassus.'

I paused. 'The junior consul?'

'Yes, sir. He asks if you could possibly meet him at your earliest convenience at Maecenas Tower.'

'Did he say what he wanted?'

'It's not only you, sir. I believe he's calling on the help of several gentlemen outside the Senate. The authorities are very short-handed at the moment, as you'll appreciate.'

That made sense. In July and August most broad-stripers left the city for their villas in the Alban Hills or on the Campanian coast. And Bassus, unlike his senior consular colleague, had more between his ears than bone.

I dozed in the steam room of the baths for an hour or so, had my masseur coax the wine from my tired muscles, and set off for the Esquiline.

The tower was part of Maecenas Gardens, built into the line of the old Servian Wall. The last time I'd been inside was at one of Lucius's all-night parties, in the more circumspect days before Tigellinus when he held his orgies in private. It was eighty feet high, taller than the tallest tenement but far more strongly built, of good stone with oak beams supporting each floor and a solid internal staircase. From the parapeted roof you could see the whole of Rome.

'Petronius! You're the first! Well done, my dear fellow!' Bassus, usually an elegant dresser, looked like he'd slept in his clothes. If he'd slept at all.

I didn't answer. I was staring out over the city. Or what had been the city. The whole southern section from Palatine to Aventine and all the way to the river was hidden by a thick pall of smoke lit with flames. It had been bad enough from down below. From here it was mind-numbing.

Bassus was standing at my elbow.

'Dreadful, isn't it?' he said quietly. 'The whole Eleventh District's ashes. The Palatine'll be next, including the palace itself. Nothing we can do about that.'

Thank the gods Silia was in Baiae; her house was on the Palatine's northern slopes. I was sure that her head slave would've given orders to evacuate all the movable valuables, but the house itself would burn.

'You've sent word to the emperor?' I said.

'The courier left hours ago. I've prayed to Jupiter that Nero comes at once.' He meant it literally, too: Bassus was that rarity in Rome, a pious man who believed prayers had some effect.

'How did it start? Do you know?'

He shrugged. 'Probably in one of the oil shops behind the racetrack. It doesn't matter. What with the dry weather, if we don't stop it now we could lose the whole city.'

I knew that, of course; how could I not, standing there on the tower roof with Rome dying beneath me? It was chilling, though, hearing Bassus put the thought into words.

'What do you want me to do?' I said.

'Come over to the table. I'll show you.'

The 'table' was a number of planks laid over trestles, on which was a scale model of the city.

'Isn't it beautiful?' Bassus said.

'Lovely.' The hills were sculpted in clay, and the river was a line of glass. Public buildings had been carved from ivory, and although the other buildings were simple wooden blocks they were in the right places. There was no sign of the Temple of Claudius, let alone anything more recent, so I guessed the thing was a dozen years old at least, probably more.

'I brought it from the palace.' Bassus signalled to a slave to bring over one of the torches. 'The emperor won't mind, it would've burned anyway. So, Petronius. These're our problem districts.' His finger drew lines in the air above the miniature Rome. 'Isis and Serapis. The Subura, from Palatine to Viminal. The centre itself between the river, the Palatine and the Capitol.'

I nodded. The parts he'd indicated were the fire's natural routes, heavily built-up areas that followed the low ground between the more sparsely-populated hill slopes where tenements gave way to middle- and upper-class housing.

'That's a lot of ground, my dear.'

'Tell me something I don't know.' Bassus rubbed his eyes. 'It's the minimum to keep the blaze contained, but we're stretched thin already and the situation's getting worse. Co-ordination's the problem. We haven't enough men. We need responsible people at ground level, as many as we can get. Organising water supplies, allocating manpower where and when it's needed, clearing buildings, giving the order for demolition.' He paused. 'Well? Will you help?'

'You flatter me,' I said.

He gave a weary grin. 'True, Titus. Very true. But then I'm desperate.'

I laughed. When he wasn't being super-efficient Bassus was excellent company, unlike the aristocratic Licinius Crassus Frugi, who was a bore of quite staggering proportions. Which reminded me.

'By the way, where is your esteemed colleague?' I said.

'At his villa in Tusculum, as far as I know.' Bassus's brows came down. 'Where the bastard can stay, as far as I'm concerned. I may be desperate, but not that much. I'll handle this myself. And carry the can, until Nero gets here.'

'In that case, darling,' I said, 'I'll be delighted to help.'