The Course of Honour (26 page)

‘Oh these accursed imperial women! First we come home from the back of beyond to find Messalina picking off every friend or colleague Claudius owns, then you and Pallas set him up with another scheming, suspicious, incestuous Julian cow who decides to make it her business to run the Empire—' This description of the Augusta, as Agrippina now styled herself, exactly fitted Narcissus' own opinion, Caenis knew.

He murmured fussily, ‘Consul, you are under stress.'

‘
Stress!
Narcissus, the woman's impossible. I have to deal with her so long as Claudius leaves her loose. Oh I'll stick out my term, but she must know what I think.'

‘She knows what you said when Caligula accused her of adultery and conspiracy!' Narcissus reprimanded him.

‘So we're permanent enemies! When my time's up as Consul I'll have to leave the court.'

‘Sounds wise!'

‘Sounds unjust!'

Narcissus shrugged in that slightly oriental way. ‘Yes. Still, serenity and leisure on your country estate: it's a Roman ideal. You'll be balloted soon for a provincial governorship. Enjoy yourself meanwhile. Weed your vines, or whatever you have; keep your head down and keep your temper. A good man—best out of the way.'

The Consul was still furious. ‘I'll have nothing!'

Narcissus suddenly sat up. ‘No, sir! On my list you have an honest wife and three healthy children, the army's acclaim, the Senate's respect and the liking of a great many private citizens. Your funds may be low—'

This was not the best way to calm Vespasian down. He hurled what was left of the branch into the pond, slightly splashing the edge of her white funereal dress so Caenis pulled back her feet to protect it. She only ever owned one. There were few people Caenis thought worth wearing mourning for.

‘Low? Low? Listen,' Vespasian raged. ‘I've thought about this! She's going to block my appointment; I know it. Anyway, if I do get a province, I'll need to mortgage my estate just to be able to live in the proper style, even abroad. Is this right? My children were born into beggary; we have no family silver on the table and Domitian's just made his poor little entrance in an attic over Pomegranate Street.' He was well into his stride. Domitian was his second son, born at the end of October. There was a daughter too. ‘I shall be a governor who runs mule-trains and dabbles in franchises for fish—a trader in tuna, a fiddler with flounders, a man permanently after his percentage on cuttlefish and cubes of cod! Your lady-friend can stop twitching and laugh if she likes.'

Caenis, who had been sinking deeper into herself, realised abruptly that she was the audience for whom his last flamboyant outburst had been played.

Vespasian had at first been ignoring her as deliberately as she was ignoring him; suddenly he turned and addressed her directly with that disconcerting drop in his tone: ‘Hello, Caenis!'

‘Hello,' she said.

It was the first time they had spoken for nearly thirteen years.

 

The Chief Secretary, whose very inexperience made him a sentimentalist, noticed at once that the Consul stopped frowning. Vespasian's mood had clarified like a wax tablet melting for reuse. Even so it seemed that these two wanted nothing more to say to one another.

Sucking his lower lip, the Consul challenged the freedman again, ‘Well! If you're so sure it's going to be all right, which province will I get?'

‘Africa,' replied Narcissus. Vespasian whistled; Caenis stirred: Africa was the prize.

‘Thought it was supposed to be a lottery?'

‘Oh it is, Consul! Never let anybody tell you otherwise.' Repenting his frankness, Narcissus told him carefully, ‘You must keep up your state.'

‘Oh thanks!' Vespasian was scathing, but looked preoccupied; Caenis knew he would be trying to work out just how the lottery was fiddled. So was she. ‘Ask your gloomy visitor if she needs her savings yet?'

Narcissus merely looked demure but when Caenis continued to stare into the pool in silence he felt obliged to clear his throat and ask, ‘Do you, Caenis?'

Caenis replied quietly, to Narcissus, ‘No.'

‘Generous friends!' rapped Narcissus to Vespasian.

He commented tersely, to Narcissus, ‘Yes.' Then he burst out at Caenis herself. ‘Always in white these days! You look terrible in white.' Caenis was damned if at this time of her life she was going to start letting men tell her what she ought to wear. He detected the thought. ‘Sorry. Impertinent. You'll have to forgive me; I've known you a long time.'

‘No, Consul.' He was startled. So was she, yet she continued without mercy: ‘You knew me,' Caenis told him bluntly, ‘for a
short
while,
a very long time ago
!'

She shot to her feet, tight-lipped, and walked away to another part of the garden by herself.

There was a tense silence. Narcissus had no idea what he ought to do. ‘Shall I—'

‘Leave her!' Vespasian whipped towards him. ‘So long as she gets angry,' he explained clearly, as if it were important that in future Narcissus understood this, ‘she's all right.' There was another pause. Vespasian was staring the way Caenis had gone.

Narcissus muttered, ‘I'll—'

‘No. I'll go.'

‘Then I had better explain why she's—'

‘No need,' said Vespasian. ‘I know. Of course I know.'

 

Her feelings had nothing to do with Vespasian being there.

She sat on a seat beside the dripping fronds of a monumental fern, breathing hard, with one hand to her head. It was all too much. Marius dead, and now his stupid will . . . He had left her precisely half as much again as he had left to each of his freedmen: enough to embarrass his family, yet a harshly unequal gesture for a woman who had been prepared to become his wife. She wanted to refuse the legacy, as any heir was entitled to do. His cautiousness was so insulting.

She sat, thinking about this, and thinking too about Marius. She still knew he was a comparatively decent man. He had not understood what he had done.

Someone was coming for her. She heard the footsteps, while trying to ignore them.

‘Caenis?' Her Sabine friend.

He waited, the other side of the fern, to let her readjust. Probably afraid she had been crying. Left to herself she probably would have been. People never knew when to leave you to yourself.

‘Your old Greek nanny panicked.'

‘I'll come.' Caenis sat forwards intending to rise, but Vespasian was on the narrow path, sticky with fallen leaves. He was blocking her way.

‘Don't get up.' He stayed there; so she stayed on the seat. ‘You're wanting advice?'

Caenis said nothing. Obviously Narcissus had told him everything. Politicians were so arrogant about other people's private affairs.

Vespasian risked it: ‘Share your troubles with a friendly magistrate. I won't charge,' he chivvied, as she still sat stony-faced. He was more heavily built and a great deal more pompous nowadays. ‘Though you might consider a drop in the interest on my loan.' She still said nothing. He went on, with the natural complaisant assumption that
no one in good society would ever be deliberately rude, ‘Tell me to mind my own business if you like—'

‘
Mind your own business, Consul!
' Caenis roared.

She turned away bitterly.

But all he said was, ‘Don't be daft, lass!' then came and sat beside her on the bench. Caenis was probably forty. Even in the country, nobody was ever going to call her ‘lass' again.

‘Don't fight.'

‘Don't interfere!'

‘Look; Caenis—'

‘Leave me alone!'

‘I can't; I promised your lady a long time ago—I had heard you were planning to get married. I'm so sorry.' Caenis once again spun to her feet. He snapped: ‘Oh, sit down, you short-tempered shrike, and listen to me!'

Marius would never have called her names. Nor, she knew, would she ever in fact have married him. This stranger knew her better than Marius would ever have done.

‘Come on; come back.'

Although she did not storm off she huddled away, shrouding herself in the white robe he so hated. He sighed. Then, speaking formally as a magistrate he told her, ‘Listen then. It's quite simple. Legally the choice is yours. But unless you feel very strongly, my advice is to keep quiet. The man is dead; you can't get back at him. Taking a stand is fine in principle, but you'll be the one who ends up feeling wretched. If you reject his miserable legacy, you'll stir up more bad feeling than if you meekly accept and spend it all on a new hat.' Caenis had the grace to nod. His voice softened. ‘There's a knee here you can sit on if you want to have a cry.' She ignored that. After a moment he demanded sourly, ‘Whatever did you want to get married for anyway?'

‘Oh the usual reasons!' Caenis flared. ‘Bed, board, someone to bully—and a half-decent companion for my old age!'

Vespasian laughed.

She whirled back towards him so at last he could see just how colourless she was, and her despair. He was truly appalled. Whatever she was intending to hurl at him died on the instant.

In fact they had frightened one another.

Yet he was not Rome's Consul for nothing. His face went blank. He turned the situation at once. He stood up. ‘Yes; quite right. Better go back. That oily-chinned old woman of a freedman will think something's going on.'

So they went back.

‘Get your advice?' Narcissus fluffed.

‘Yes.'

‘Will you take it?'

‘Probably.'

‘
There!
' Narcissus exclaimed, like the nanny Vespasian had called him; Vespasian to his credit openly winced.

Unable to bear any more of this, Caenis was determined to go home. Narcissus embraced her as he usually did when she left. He said to Vespasian (so Caenis began to wonder just how many conversations about her these two had held), ‘I'll have to fix her up with a nice tolerant widower; somebody brave, someone the Empire owes a favour to—'

Caenis broke free. ‘Oh you brass-necked cretin! Being saddled with a half-baked widower is
not
what I require at all.'

Even Vespasian crackled, ‘Great gods, Narcissus—leave the poor girl alone!'

For a second she felt they were haggling over her, as Vespasian had once done with Antonia. They talked across her, about her, at her, with men's knowing air. They liked to flatter themselves they could help in her business affairs. They liked to fidget when she showed distress. Because they were men they were competitive. Neither wanted her. Neither wanted to know anything of her private aches. But neither wanted the other to show he knew her best.

Vespasian held out his hand. In front of Narcissus, she really had no choice; Caenis gave him her own. A Consul probably shook hands with hundreds of people every day. But not crushing most of them in such a deliberate grip. ‘Antonia Caenis.'

When he spoke her name she had to look away.

 

______

 

After she had gone, Narcissus agitated primly, ‘Thanks. Anything happen?'

‘We had a brief but bloody fight.' Vespasian was staring at him. ‘Nothing unusual.'

‘Actually, I was afraid that seeing you might upset her.'

Some grim jest twitched at one corner of the Consul's mouth.

‘She's all right,' he said. Helpless, Narcissus realised the full extent of the mistake he had made. ‘She's used to it,' Vespasian stated drably. Then, after the faintest pause, ‘No doubt one day I'll get used to it myself.'

 

 

 

 

C
laudius had married Agrippina on the New Year's Day immediately following Messalina's death. On that occasion Caenis made an excuse not to attend the wedding. She could not in conscience offer her support.

On the day Claudius was married, Lucius Silanus, who had been betrothed for years to the Emperor's infant daughter Octavia, accepted the inevitable and committed suicide (a heavy hint that he was in disgrace had been dropped when he was struck off as praetor with only one day of the magistracy left to serve). Agrippina's son by her previous marriage, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, was betrothed to Octavia instead.

At Agrippina's urging, Ahenobarbus was soon also adopted by Claudius. This raised some eyebrows. No outsider had ever been adopted into the patrician Claudian house, and besides, the Emperor had a son of his own; the adoption unnecessarily supplanted Britannicus. As a newcomer to the family Ahenobarbus took a Claudian surname; now he was called Nero.

One of the arguments used by Pallas to secure Nero's adoption was that Claudius ought to arrange a protector for his own boy. Ironically, from then on even during his father's lifetime, Britannicus was treated at the Palace as an unwelcome guest of doubtful parentage; any slaves or freedmen loyal to him were gradually removed and
officers in the army who gave him their allegiance were encouraged to transfer abroad or promoted out of the way. His new brother gave him no support, entirely the opposite.

Next, Claudius agreed that Nero should be declared of age early and start his public career. He became a consul designate without holding other positions, and was styled Prince of Youth. There was a difficult scene when Britannicus refused to address him by his adopted name. Britannicus was disciplined, his best tutors were dismissed, and he lost even more of his slaves.

At the age of sixteen Nero married Octavia. This made Octavia his sister, his cousin and his wife; Claudius was both his father and father-in-law. Even by the contorted standards of the Julio-Claudian house it was unusual. Nero arranged celebratory Games in honour of the Emperor, appearing himself in full triumphal robes while Britannicus wore the usual narrow-striped tunic of a boy at school. People in the audience exchanged old-fashioned looks.

There was now a most unfortunate change: Britannicus briefly became popular again. Claudius, who for a long time after Messalina's death had viewed Britannicus with painful reserve, seemed to rediscover his original dislike of Nero, who was indeed regarded as highly unpleasant by all people of style and taste. Instead the Emperor took to flinging his arms round Britannicus whenever they met, quoting darkly in Greek and exclaiming, ‘Grow up quickly, my boy, and your father will tell you his plan!'