The Course of Honour (19 page)

She fell silent, having noticed with more interest than usual that her leg was touching the leg of the man to her left. It had been an accident, but she ignored what had happened and so did he. He was Lucius Anicius, a knight who had made a fortune in charioteers: not her type at all. He spent a lot of time with the Praetorian Guards and was, Caenis realised afterwards, probably the one person present who was fully aware of the burning hatred felt for Caligula by their current commander, Cassius Chaerea. Caligula was always giving obscene watchwords to Chaerea, a decent, proper man who had to pass them on straight-faced to the rest of the Guard.

Anicius said, seeming to take her part, ‘The question seems to be, not whether a plot will succeed—but which one it will be.' Agreeing, people laughed and listed some of them: Aemilius Regulus, an unknown from Spain; a senator called Vinicianus who had been friendly with the dead Lepidus; Chaerea, the much-humiliated commander of the Praetorian Guard; members of the Emperor's own household, particularly his freedman Callistus . . . Those were the acknowledged plotters. Any moment someone here would be revealing the secret ones.

Caenis saw Veronica signal to her waitresses to bring in towering platters of fruit. In a crisis she always ordered the dessert. Peeling it kept troublemakers quiet.

‘Personally,' mused Veronica to lighten the atmosphere, ‘I think Incitatus is the only one who comes out of this reign at all well.'

Incitatus was Caligula's racehorse. He lived in his own house with a marble stable, purple horse blankets, jewelled saddlery and troops of slaves to attend to his every need. There was a rumour that Caligula intended to award Incitatus a consulship.

Caenis, who held there was no reason to believe Incitatus would do any worse than some of the legitimate candidates for consul, now relented and helped Veronica out. ‘Io! Incitatus is modest, hospitable, kind to his slaves—and rises above the glamour to run his heart out on the track. Have a pomegranate and don't worry!' As she called cheerfully across the table, she finally shifted her leg. Lucius Anicius plundered the cornucopia, nodding for more wine. The wine at Veronica's was tolerable, and her stewards had a knack of warming it
pleasantly with herbs, but for good professional reasons she discouraged too much drink. While he waited for the rather slow service, Anicius helped Caenis to a hand of grapes.

People were now talking about the Emperor's military deeds in Germany. This was simple scandal, so Caenis saw Veronica relax. Caligula had rattled about Europe in spectacular battledress, fleecing the good burghers of Lugdunum in Gaul at compulsory auctions of Palace furniture, throwing his uncle Claudius fully clad into the Rhine, taking hostages from a primary school, then chasing them like fugitives up a road, and finally marching home with a bunch of ‘German' prisoners of war who turned out to be just tall bemused Gauls with their hair and beards dyed red.

‘I do feel,' Caenis observed in an undertone to Anicius, ‘that a man who owes his position to the adoration of the army was unwise to take the field unless he could live up to the gallantry the army expects!'

‘Oh yes; he's a bully—but also a complete coward.' Anicius poured wine for her from the flagon he had captured. He had not bothered to grab the water-jug so they tilted their cups together and like hardened drinkers took it neat. They drank in silence, cynically observing the rest with hooded eyes.

By now the older men were lathering themselves into fine indignation over the Emperor's Ovation, a kind of secondary triumph which he had been awarded for the British affair. After showing himself in Germany, Caligula had assembled a huge invasion force and fleet, announcing his intention of seizing the island which Julius Caesar had failed to keep. He accepted homage from a British princeling who had been exiled for arguing with his Celtic papa, and then announced Britain's surrender without even setting foot in the place.

Returning home, the Emperor abused the Senate roundly for omitting to vote him a full triumph. It was a vicious circle; his express orders had been that they must not.

‘Antonia Caenis, I'll tell you an amusing story about Britain,' muttered Anicius. ‘In a minute.'

A praetor had smoothed things over by suggesting that special Games be held to celebrate the Emperor's German campaign. This was all the more creditable to the praetor since as holder of that office
he would be expected to help pay for the Games himself. He had no money, Caenis knew; it was Vespasian. He then gratified the Emperor by thanking him before the full Senate for his graciousness, simply because Caligula had invited him to dine at the Palace.

Caenis heard this praetor's name being scoffed at without a pang. ‘Poor lad!' she commented drily. ‘Dinner is going to test him a bit. He tends to nod off; Olympian Jove won't like it if he dozes over the ambrosia.'

Everyone laughed.

Veronica, who was not a sentimentalist, remarked briskly, ‘I dare say if his eyes start to droop, his wife will give him a kick!' And without looking again at Caenis, she signalled to her waitresses to start clearing the tables and let in the Spanish dancing girls.

Caenis hated Spanish dancers. She groaned in disgust, ‘Oh Juno! Not the tambourines and castanets!'

It was a cliché to have girls from Gades to entertain your dinner guests. That never prevented their popularity, sweeping the floor with their handsome hair, while furiously clicking and clattering.

She knew what would happen next. Veronica was already bestowing her charm on the man at her side; he was faintly pink, thrilled at being singled out, but forgetting the premium he would have to pay. Soon there would be other pairings and disappearings, with or without the dancers whose moral reputation ranked only slightly above Syrian flute-girls (who at least could play). Then Caenis would be left here to preside over noncombatants, taking charge in Veronica's place while tiresome men tirelessly talked.

For once a surge of resentment swept her. ‘Lucius Anicius, your funny story would be kind.'

Assenting suavely, he stabbed his knife into a peach. ‘They are trying to keep this dark. Apparently the conquest of Britain involved much more than giving houseroom to some British king's delinquent boy. God-on-earth conquered the Ocean.'

Caenis gazed at him over the rim of her cup. ‘I heard God-on-earth built a lighthouse,' she offered.

‘True.' Anicius was leering at the dancing girls. ‘Very public-spirited
in that wild part of the world—No; I think you'll like this: I'm told he paraded all his soldiers on the beach, and commanded them to gather seashells in their helmets and tunic skirts. He's brought it all back to the Capitol in chests, and presented it to the Senate as the tribute of the sea.'

Caenis flashed her teeth against the cup. ‘Cowries and cuttlefish, winkles and whelks? Imagine the smell! Oh yes,' she agreed slowly. ‘Oh I like that very much.'

‘Good!' responded Anicius, returning his attention lazily to her. He was the sort of man who spent a great deal of time wrestling and playing handball at the baths; he was built like a barrack wall. ‘This must be the first time I've seduced a woman by talking politics.'

Caenis, who had enjoyed dressing for this evening more than she had done for a long time, tidied the folds of her gown with a well-manicured fingernail; for a moment she dipped her ochred eyes—then raised them and held his look. ‘Is that what you are doing?'

‘Am I not?'

‘Oh yes, I think so,' she murmured, though he was not her type at all. ‘Lord, why me?' she asked.

She had wondered if he had instructions from Veronica, though if so his next reply was far too blunt. He laughed. ‘Lady, why not?'

She laid her hand formally upon his iron fist as he helped her rise and led her from the room.

 

She had chosen well. She knew a disaster would end her confidence for good, but there was no danger of that. Anicius used his women with a vigour that bordered on force; Caenis, in wild mood, took and was taken with a spirit that matched his. It was over very quickly; she was glad of that.

She conducted herself irreproachably. She avoided disgrace; she was free. No stranger would realise how detached she wanted to remain. Only when she thought herself awake alone afterwards did she creep against a wall and give way to the relief of deep, convulsing, almost silent sobs.

After she was still Lucius Anicius moved. It hardly mattered. She had no desire to see the man again; nor would he expect to seek her out. ‘Too much wine?' He was curt, but not rude.

In a moment Caenis said quietly, ‘No. Sorry.'

‘Feeling all right?'

‘Wonderful, lord!'

‘What is the lady thinking then?'

Drained of all feeling, Caenis spoke candidly with her head against the wall. ‘That the saddest sight of this stupid reign must be a decent man reduced to flattering a political grotesque.' The name of the praetor Vespasianus remained unsaid.

She heard Anicius move again. Not without instinct, he asked wryly, ‘Do I take it we have just crossed your Rubicon?' Then when she did not answer, he proved she had chosen someone more generous than she had thought; he whistled softly. ‘Why me?'

Allowing her to fling it back to him—
‘Why not?'

 

After four mad years the Emperor Gaius, nick-named Caligula, was to die during the Augustan Games in the Portico of the Danaids on the Palatine. The plot was so open, conspirators called out and wished each other luck as they took their seats. A mime was produced, which involved the death of a king and his daughter, with the use of much stage blood. Retiring for lunch, the Emperor declined to follow his uncle Claudius down the alley lined with imperial slaves, but paused to greet a group of young boys practising to sing for him later, then took a short cut down one of the covered passages. There Cassius Chaerea, the Guards commander, came to ask for the day's password, and was given the usual obscene answer. Chaerea drew his sword and stabbed Caligula, at which the group he had organised rushed in to finish off their victim before his special cohort of German bodyguards, shut out from the corridor, could burst in to save him. The conspirators then fled through the nearby House of Livia.

Chaos broke out. The German bodyguard ran amok and killed three senators. A group of Praetorian Guards invaded the imperial quarters, discovered Caesonia, the Emperor's wife, murdered her
and dashed out the brains of Drusilla, her infant child. The Senate gathered on the Capitol, which was defensible, having had the forethought to take with them the State and Military Treasuries so they could pay their way out of trouble. The mob milled about in the Forum below, where they were harangued by men from noble families who wanted to claim they had not been involved in the plot.

The Senate briefly fancied that the Republic might be restored, though individual members were acutely aware that would threaten their personal power. But then an odd accident intervened. Some soldiers, cheerily looting the Palace, found the last remaining adult male of the imperial family hiding behind a curtain and for a joke proclaimed him Emperor.

The poor soul they seized on was Claudius, the son whom Antonia had always called ridiculous.

 

 

 

 

T
he imperial freedman Narcissus could not remember who this woman was.

‘Well,' she cried, with more irony than most people were using nowadays. ‘A new emperor; a new Chief Secretary!' He was the most important man on Claudius' staff; he was expected to recognise everyone.

She had probably touched thirty. She had neither the flounces nor the necklaces of some citizen's matronly wife, yet despite all the spear-carriers, cloak and footwear attendants, name-takers and door-keepers, she had got into his office, brushing off the paraphernalia of delay as carelessly as a naiad paddling through foam; she knew palaces. He wondered:
one of us?

‘Narcissus.'
Yes. And she knew she had floored him.
‘Little did I imagine that one day I should find you in an office as big as a wrestling hall, with a desk like Aphrodite's bedstead and a ruby signet ring. Come to that, which of us foresaw clownish Claudius being shouldered through the streets by the Praetorian Guards? Did somebody in the Praetorians get up with a headache, or did they only get the headache after they realised what they had done?'

Narcissus, who had shared some interesting conversations in the last few weeks, made no answer while he went on sizing her up. Quality clothes—sage-green linen, evenly dyed and belted in with
simple cords; a modest stole; gold at her arm; a pair of shoulder brooches, with very good garnets in antique metalwork. A stately walk; a gloss of hair folded back neatly from a vividly reminiscent face; that rapid gaze. He was certain he knew her. He knew those searching eyes.

Since he had not asked her to sit, she stood. His stern act rebounded; the freedman felt himself rebuked. He cleared his throat and signalled her to a stool.

Dammit; he definitely knew that air of haughty rebellion as she declined.

‘It has been a long time,' she derided him gently. ‘I used to think you were wonderful.' Her eyes had a teasing gleam that must be new. ‘Easily the most intelligent man that I had ever known . . . So this elevation of yours is not,
O my master
, entirely unexpected—' She had excellent manners; she was graciously helping him out now. ‘You always said I was the quickest child you ever taught—but I should never get anywhere until my handwriting was neat.'

Of course!

Twenty years ago. He remembered now; he had a meticulous brain with a long reach. Thin as a strip of wind, and that morose, wounded stare that ripped into you like teasel hooks. Oh, he remembered this one: he used to start explaining something difficult, but before he was halfway through the logic, she would be up and asking questions on a point he hadn't intended to cover for another hour. The only thing that ever really held her back was that she understood the end of the lesson before her leaping brain had properly learned the steps along the way.