The Course of Honour (15 page)

Caligula had not attended Antonia's funeral. He watched the burning pyre through his dining-room window, joking about it with Macro, the commander of the Guards. Antonia's ashes were placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus but with minimal ceremony.

 

‘Caenis!' Flavius Sabinus usually took his leave with a word for her. ‘My wife sends you kind regards.'

Caenis had not seen his wife again, nor did she honestly expect to; still the girl took trouble to send her compliments, often accompanied by flowers or some other gift. Her warmth appeared quite genuine.

‘This young lady's looking tired!' Sabinus then chided his brother.

Vespasian tucked a solid arm around her waist. ‘She'll be all right. I've bought her a slab of must-cake—great restorative powers!'

Sabinus smiled at her sadly. He was hard-working and affable; he suspected Caenis needed more than sweetmeats. Once he had put aside his basic disapproval, he felt that his younger brother treated his mistress too casually. It was useless to try to explain that Vespasian's
small but careful present meant far more to her than a string of beads snatched from a jeweller's tray with no real thought behind the gift.

‘Mmm—come to bed!' murmured Vespasian, kissing her after his brother had gone.

Caenis pierced him with a steely eye. ‘What about my cake?'

‘Well, bring it of course.'

‘You'll have crumbs in the covers—'

‘I have noticed,' Vespasian commented, ‘that when you and I eat anything there are rarely any crumbs.'

The must-cake was splendid, and he was absolutely right: there were no crumbs. Caenis responded with an enthusiasm that in Veronica's scale of values would equate to repaying a pair of Etruscan earrings or a silver collar.

Afterwards Vespasian exclaimed, with his wild, wide grin, ‘Well, lady! That was an occasion to treasure when we are old and incapable!'

He was strong and endlessly healthy; even after making love with the fervour of a man who regarded this as the most natural and enjoyable way of taking exercise, his ribcage soon rose and fell again in its normal regular rhythm.

Caenis, gasping, thumped his chest. ‘Oh I'm speechless!'

‘What a change.'

‘You great ox; you'll never be incapable. You'll still be sending for some girl—or a whole troupe—to liven your afternoons when you're seventy!'

Chortling, he flung back his great head, and for some minutes they lay together in silence before talking more reflectively.

‘Wonder if we'll know each other then?'

It was an unfair question: men could be such pigs. Caenis responded drily, ‘I imagine I shall have died of drudgery long before.'

He croaked, mimicking the astrologer at the Theatre of Balbus, ‘
Her life is kindly; kindly her death
 . . .' He knew well enough that Caenis rejected omens. She had told him, whatever either of them were to become must lie in themselves. Neither had any advantages, nor anyone to help. Life would be only what they chose to make it,
grappling within the straitjacket of society. ‘You were quiet tonight,' he suddenly observed. She was less startled that he noticed than that he commented. ‘What were you thinking about?'

She did not answer.

He usually knew anyway. ‘Has your lady's house been reoccupied yet? What about Claudius?'

To his own surprise as much as anyone's, Claudius had been selected by Caligula for the honour of sharing the Consulship with his Emperor. Claudius had never held public office of any kind before, since both Augustus and Tiberius openly judged him unsuitable. As Caligula's colleague as well as his uncle, he had been compelled to go to live at the Palace. He was bound to be looking for a way to escape, and his mother's house might partially provide one.

‘You are quite right,' agreed Caenis, though Vespasian had not said it. ‘I shall need somewhere of my own to live.'

Without any hesitation he asked her, ‘Want to come here?'

She was dumbfounded.

Caenis wanted to live with Vespasian more than anything.

‘No, Titus. No thank you. No.'

It was unbelievable even a man could be so crass. Dammit, she had thought Vespasian relatively humane. She sat up abruptly, hugging her knees. She could not bear this.

‘Why not?' he demanded stubbornly.

Caenis resisted the temptation to wrench away from him, to walk out and never come back. She compressed her anger, though she had no inhibitions about letting it show: ‘Dear heart, I'll never catch a rich senator if they all know I'm living with you! And how, in Juno's name, am I expected to get you sensibly married off? Besides, if I come here while you are single, what is to happen to me afterwards? Oh you bastard, you absolute bastard; you know all this!' He had an aggravating habit of merely looking intrigued when somebody completely lost control. ‘I do hope you have noticed,' Caenis went on coolly, fighting down her temper as she spoke, ‘how rare it is for me to call you names.'

He said nothing. There was no doubt: he had noticed. He knew he had punished her beyond reasonable limits.

Still he persisted, as if it were in some way relevant, ‘Caenis—do you think my career will ever come to anything?'

More tolerant with the apparent change of subject, she answered at once: ‘Certainly. You know I do.'

He sighed slowly. ‘If I thought not . . .' Perhaps fortunately he did not finish. ‘Once, when I was a lad, my father took an augury that his second son would be something really special. This was a long time ago—and I won't tell you what I'm supposed to become! My grandmother burst her girdle laughing. Told my father he was going dreamy. Said he should be ashamed to act the dunce in front of his own mother.'

Caenis laughed. ‘I like the sound of your old granny!'

‘My old granny,' Vespasian chuckled, ‘would not have liked the sound of you! She would have known you were after my cash.'

Giggling, because he was so poor it was ludicrous, she turned round to him slightly, as she did so feeling his mighty hand spread companionably on her back. His eyes seemed unusually still. ‘Titus, you don't need superstitious permission. You won't fail. You can be whatever you want.'

His palm moved methodically along her spine. She tried to ignore the goosepimples. He was doing it on purpose, to tease her, and to calm her down. ‘Hah! Going to encourage me? Live out your ambitions through me like the crazed crows of the imperial family? Are you a schemer, lass? A palace puppeteer?'

Hurt again, she dropped her head on to her knees. ‘You are not mine to manipulate! Oh you'll take your aedileship next time around and everything will be easier for you after that. But I hope—'

He had scrambled up close, wrapping his arms round her, knees and all. Eagerly he demanded, ‘What? What do you hope? Caenis, tell me your hope!'

‘That when you are grizzled and famous,' she mumbled against his shoulder, ‘you may still sometimes remember munching a sausage in a pantry with a bad-tempered slave.'

‘Oh my dear lass!'

When someone touched him on a nerve, he was utterly soft. If Caenis had owned the confidence of a Veronica, she would have realised she
could easily bring him to tears. Instead he pretended to be smiling, then drew her back down with him; a man of his build needed exercise, and making love to women was an easy way to take it.

Besides, he wanted to make another memory for their old age.

 

It was not long afterwards he made his next trip to Reate. His mother still lived there at the family home. He was a good son; Caenis was used to him visiting his mother. She never went with him; she knew that she and his mother would never meet.

A woman of both force and tact, Vespasia Polla probably did not like the sound of Caenis either; she would never waste her breath saying so. She was one of the few people who knew how, and when, to persuade her stubborn younger son to settle into something he really did not want to do. He had loved his grandmother Tertulla; he liked to please his mother. Throughout his life he would be a man who nursed a serious regard for the women who were close to him.

He was affectionate with his mistress. And, Caenis knew, one day he would be loyal to his wife.

 

 

 

 

A
s soon as she saw his face she understood everything.

He had come to her at home in Antonia's house, unexpected and unannounced, while she thought him still at Reate. She went through the motions; Caenis after all was a first-class secretary. She had been trained to behave with aplomb in any social emergency.

‘Titus! You're back in Rome.'

‘I'm back,' he stated sombrely.
‘Oh Caenis!'

It was all perfectly obvious from his face.

 

The scene fixed itself in her memory as if she were some hapless insect being slowly trapped in the bark of a stone pine, transfixed under a sluggish ooze of amber for the next two thousand years. There it all was: the woven rug in faded shades of crimson and blue at her feet, folded under at one far corner; the Greek black-figure vases displayed on the sideboard; the list she had been checking which fell from her hand as she rose at his entrance; the pin on the shoulder of her dress that worked loose and scratched her if she moved but which she could not spare concentration to refasten. The chandelier had creaked on its ceiling-chain as he carefully closed the door.

There was nothing unusual in his expression itself. He always frowned in that grim way; people laughed at him but there was
nothing he could do to change it. She recognised the horror only because every plane of that face had set rigid in misery.

Her voice sounded remarkably ordinary. ‘Whatever's the matter? Tell me.'

He came right up to her. Apparently it felt inappropriate to kiss her. She did not want to be kissed—then she wanted it desperately. For a moment he placed both hands on her shoulders; meeting her stare, he let his arms drop.

‘You guess. A suitable woman has agreed to be my wife.'

Caenis wanted to fight. She could never win. There was no enemy. She heard herself saying in a low respectable voice, ‘Quite right. Dear me; what took so long? Yes. You must. Well! . . . Rich, I hope?'

Vespasian was drawing her to a couch where he made her sit, taking a place beside her, holding her hand—not so much to console her, for he would realise from her resistance that she could hardly bear to be touched, but as if he himself needed to grip some part of her in order to go on. ‘The rich ones,' he confided greyly, ‘seemed curiously slow to take me up. She is not. Do you really want to hear?'

Caenis closed her eyes. For some quaint reason she seemed to nod her head. ‘Other people are bound to tell me. I would rather have it from you.'

‘Well. Someone from Ferentium. Father in the financial service; not quite a provincial but she should understand my difficulties. Her father had to appear before a Board of Arbitration to establish her right to the full citizenship but I think it went through on the nod—' He was using the tone which on other subjects had been his vehicle for asking her advice. He fell silent.

‘Good character?' Caenis encouraged drily.

He answered like a man under examination in the Senate on some imperial informer's wild charge of impropriety: ‘Oh; all right!' He relented. He sighed. He forced himself to be less offhand. ‘No; let's be fair—a decent woman.'

‘You've seen her?'

‘Yes.'

‘Slept with her?' Caenis demanded.

‘No,' Vespasian answered patiently. Really it could not matter any
more, yet Caenis was glad of that. ‘I had better tell you; she has been someone's mistress—Statilius Capella, a senator from Africa—'

Gods, she was nothing! Caenis snapped, ‘Excellent! A senator? Decent of you both to leave one free for the rest of us . . .' She took back her hand and stood up, pacing the room.

‘Caenis, don't.'

He followed her, as she ought to have known that he would. She wanted to crouch in some dark place like a hurt beast. There was this dreadful need to be civilised. There was this appalling obligation: not to hurt him. She had no escape.

‘Caenis, I'm desperately sorry. Don't be brave and bitter. Scream at me if you like, rant, rave, beat my chest with your fists, cry; cry all you want and I'll probably join in—' It was hideous; he was frantic.

Caenis let him take her into his arms.

‘Titus, hush. It was brave of you to come. I appreciate your honesty. You don't have to dread a scene.'

She stood there, not responding, but leaning patiently up against him until, helpless, he let her go. ‘Shall I leave you now?'

It was over. Everything was over.

‘Wait a moment; please.' Her numb brain reminded her to make everything absolutely clear. ‘You know I shall not see you again.'

‘No.'

He would not create difficulties. Nor would she, come to that. There was only one kind of discipline for either of them now.

‘Not even acknowledge you; it's best . . . What are your plans?' she asked more gently.

‘Oh—aedile, praetor, then start angling for an army post.' His tone was more harsh than she had ever heard it. ‘The
cursus honorum
stretches idyllically away!'

‘Titus? Oh love, what is it?' Caenis had to ask.

It was Vespasian's turn to move away. He stood rigid, that face still as drained of colour as it was of permitted emotion. He was quite obviously deeply upset.

For the first and only time he said curtly, ‘You were right all along. We should never have done this.'

There was nothing she could safely reply.

She held him; what else could she do?

‘Stupidity.'

‘Never say that. Don't devalue it.' She folded her arms around him, rocking slightly, with her face against his, though safely turned away.