The Course of Honour (7 page)

‘No need to get tetchy,' he complained, catching her elbow to slow her down. Unexpectedly self-conscious, she diminished her cracking pace.

It felt strange to be escorted by other slaves. Caenis was interested to notice that after a natural stare to evaluate what their young master had picked up, Vespasian's bodyguards bore her no obvious grudge. She was a girl doing her best; so good luck to her.

‘Did you enjoy the pantomime, lord?'

Although he knew how much she wanted him to share her fierce enjoyment, he made no concessions. ‘Oh, not bad. I think I stayed awake.'

‘Not all the time!' she retaliated hotly. Then she realised he was teasing again so she softened her tone: ‘As far as I could tell from upstairs you nod alarmingly, but you don't snore. The aediles were going to prod you at one point, but you woke up anyway.'

‘Hah!' He pretended to cuff her round the ears.

This was a serious social mistake. Caenis became acutely conscious of her position as a slave. She refused the game; she walked straight, staring stiffly ahead. Vespasian gave no sign, but as long as she knew him he never made such a gesture again. His voice was deliberately friendly as he asked, ‘What about you? Glad you went?'

‘Yes; thank you.'

‘Good.'

By mutual agreement they strolled beside the Tiber, across the Agrippan Bridge and into Caesar's Gardens. At dusk the gardens were rather cold, faintly ominous, and clouded at head-height with scores of nipping midges. Undeterred they toured the whole length; there were not many respectable places where a gentleman and someone else's slavegirl could go. Then he walked her home to Livia's House.

On the Palatine there would be sufficient light from flares, but they had to reach it first; one of his slaves had become their lantern-bearer. Even so, the narrow streets were dim and Caenis began to be afraid Vespasian might risk public familiarity. All he ever did, when builders' wagons or wine merchants' delivery carts trundled dangerously near, was to move her into the shelter of a house portico or close against the shuttered frontage of a shop with a light touch on her arm, at once lifted. She hoped he did not notice how even that raised goose-pricks.

He did notice. His question was typically abrupt: ‘Caenis, will you go to bed with me?'

‘Certainly not!' She rapped back her refusal then, with the issue broached, relief flooded over her.

‘You don't like me?'

‘I like you far too much!' she found herself explaining briskly.

Vespasian rounded on her, forcing her to stop. ‘What's that supposed to mean?' He was a big man, extremely blunt, and far superior in rank. She experienced real alarm. His chin was up, his mouth furiously set.

She faced him with a pattering heart. ‘It means, I cannot afford the risk. I told you; I told you right at the start—I am the property of my mistress, and her approval matters to me. Please come along; people are staring.'

He ignored that. He was standing in the road, refusing to move.

‘You need to take care of yourself too,' Caenis muttered morosely. ‘Find a rich senator with a decent daughter you can marry. You need a fat landed dowry and you must become respectable if you want a career.' This was true; he acknowledged her wise advice. Duty and propriety compelled a citizen to marry, marry a woman of good background and character, then produce children. The
cursus honorum
, the official career ladder for senators, depended on it. ‘I am sorry if there has been a misunderstanding,' Caenis concluded in anxious apology.

‘Straight question: straight answer. Perfectly understood!' He was not angry, but bitterly hurt. With an unusual flash of spite he demanded, ‘Got some fellow slave lined up, then? Jealous, is he? Think I'll scare him off?'

‘Don't be simple,' Caenis rebuked him. ‘Though I imagine you would; you're frightening me . . . I will not have a companion even from among the other slaves. I want to be by myself.'

He was not yet ready to let her smooth his ruffled crest. ‘You should have told me you were so scrupulous!'

This time she would not reply; it was up to him whether he chose to see her distress.

Around them began Rome's terrifying transformation into night. Goods had been whisked from pavements; leaves of folding doors were drawn across shop frontages; bolts thumped heavily into sockets and elaborate padlocks rattled on cold iron chains. Above their
heads a woman's thin-wristed arms hooked a cat and a pot of flowers from a window-ledge then slammed the shutter on a shadowy interior. It was now extremely dark. There were no streetlamps and hardly a chink of light showed where the crowded lodging houses faced the unfriendly streets. The grimmest alleys were emptying. Soon the city would be given over to a lawlessness where even the vigiles who were supposed to police the various districts were likely to dive into a drinking-house rather than answer a call for help.

Vespasian's slaves began to shuffle restlessly.

‘Please come,' Caenis cajoled, concerned for his two guards.

‘Well!' he complained crossly. ‘Why did you bother with me, girl?'

Then Caenis answered with plain honesty, ‘Because I do like you.' In for an
as
, in for an
aureus.
‘I like you,' she admitted, stony-faced, ‘more than anybody I have ever known.'

She could tell that although he stayed where he was, indignant and disappointed in the public thoroughfare, Vespasian was utterly disarmed. Other women may have felt attracted to him, but others were not so direct. Suddenly Caenis recognised his solid exterior concealed genuine sentiment. He would never be able to resist anyone who confessed to wanting him; she dared not contemplate how warmly he would respond.

That was not for her.

‘I suppose,' she acknowledged, ‘this means I shall not see you any more?'

It was darker; she could not properly make out his face, but she heard his short bitter laugh. ‘What do you take me for?' She dropped her head, though his voice was already softening. ‘Oh lass; don't be so feeble. You know when you have some poor beggar on your hook!'

‘Well, why do
you
bother with
me
?' she flung back.

He said very quietly, ‘You know that too.'

His stance relaxed; he began to saunter on in silence, pulling her after him with a curt gesture of his head.

 

He had brought her to Antonia's house. ‘Here we are; your palace, lady!' he declaimed mockingly. His guards were loitering discreetly
behind the Temple of Victory as he lowered his voice. ‘Going to give me a kiss?'

‘No, I'm not.'

She shrank back, but after a brief stare he merely banged on the main door for her. He was persistent, but never aggressive. The porter squinted through his grating then began the extended process of unfastening locks. In the tiny square of lamplight Caenis saw a gleam in Vespasian's eye as he murmured back at her, ‘Well then; are you going to let me kiss you?' At once he mimicked her crazily, ‘ “No, I'm not!” Well, don't expect me to tussle with you in front of other people. Good night, girl. Dream of me and wonder.'

Caenis swallowed. She had no doubt of the energy with which this strong, competent man would take his pleasures—nor his ability to give delight in return. ‘Wonder what, lord?'

‘Wonder—what you missed!'

Looking at him, while trying not to, she felt aware of that.

The house porter was starting to pay attention. She touched Vespasian's hand briefly and turned to go in. ‘Good night, Caenis.' They were friends again. His voice dropped; once more she felt stricken by its private, benevolent note.

She looked back. Vespasian had started walking down the narrow alley between the house and the temple which would eventually take him back down into the Forum or to the Circus Maximus; then he also turned. Suddenly smiling, he raised his arm in farewell. She watched him retrace his steps, closely shadowed now by the two guards. Rome at night was dangerous, yet he had a knack of walking without haste so he seemed invulnerable. Lunging towards him from their dreadful alleyways, robbers and bullies would stay their intended ambush and wait for easier prey.

It was how he walked through life: steady and unperturbed, a man who knew his way and who would arrive unscathed.

 

 

 

 

V
eronica knew about the walk in Caesar's Gardens by next day. ‘Well; you were seen, Caenis!'

People called Rome a place where everything was noticed, and Veronica made it her business to ensure that any snippets about anyone's indiscretions were certainly picked up by her.

‘I can assure you,' Caenis commented bitterly, ‘I have done nothing—'

‘Glad to hear it,' Veronica interrupted. ‘Make them wait. They enjoy it more if they're keyed up—and if
they
enjoy themselves there is always a slim chance you might too! He'll bring you a present next time, to make sure.'

About to protest that he already had done so, Caenis realised that her powers of rhetoric would not stretch to justifying a Lucanian salami and a parchment of pickled fish.

‘He won't,' she declared in a tiny saddened voice. ‘I have decided not to see him again.'

This was dismally true. She had wrestled with the problem all night. It was the most anguished decision she had ever engineered.

‘Oh yes; I usually do that,' Veronica languidly returned. ‘But when they turn up with their present, what can you say?'

 

______

 

Caenis and Veronica had met at the baths. Caenis went every afternoon now, to a women-only one that was open all day (the mixed ones held women's sessions only in the morning, which was useless). She had a general arrangement to meet Veronica, an arrangement which Veronica kept with surprising regularity. She would arrive laden with trinkets that she had collected from admirers, filling the changing room with wafts of cheap perfume, taking up too many pegs with her baskets and mantles and handkerchiefs and scarves. She gave the impression she led a scatterbrained life, blown hither and yon by chance meetings with her numerous pursuers. In fact, fitting so many men into a regular scheme where the paths of those who minded about the others never crossed had long ago taught Veronica to be supremely organised.

Caenis always spent her first fifteen minutes at the baths boot-faced with bad temper. There was a convention that public baths charged women an
as
, while men only had to pay half. Caenis did not see why. In her opinion women were cleaner. It was men who used the exercise yards and swimming baths most often; men who stayed longest clattering over court cases with their friends; men who indecently assaulted the bathhouse attendants; men, moreover, who pretended they had left their money at home and tried to sneak in without paying at all. Paying double always made her angry. Veronica liked to arrive after Caenis had been ensconced in the hot-air room in her rope-soled sandals long enough for torpor to set in.

They had nothing in common as bathhouse companions anyway. Caenis wanted value for money. She went through the suite of rooms from the hot steam to the cold plunge with a gritty intent to extract every possible ounce of sensation and stimulus; if she had time she even patted a ball around or swam, which few women other than those of sinister athleticism ever bothered to do. Veronica came to chat. She certainly would not swim at the moment because her hair had been blonded and the dye would run. In fact she could not even float; she relied on the fine truth that when women with heart's-ease baby faces fall into deep water there are always eager men on hand to
pull them out. Caenis, who lacked this advantage, had taught herself to swim strongly years before.

Veronica looked well with yellow hair. She also looked well with glossy blue-black curls, auburn towers of Celtic plaits, or rolling chestnut waves. If ever she grew old (though it seemed unlikely she would last so long) Veronica would be utterly distinguished once she settled for a smart silvery bun. Of them all, the present yellow crimping perhaps best suited the daintiness of her face.

Her language had never been dainty. ‘Caenis, don't be such a stupid pen-pushing cow!'

As Caenis had said to Antonia, her old friend had a good heart. ‘Juno! I spy some terrible spots on your back, Veronica.'

A game try.

‘Oh piddle! Give me a scrape down, love—but don't try to drive me off the racecourse. I said—'

‘I heard what you said.'

‘Yes, but do you
listen
?' Veronica bawled.

They had known each other since they were ten and as neither was in a position to bring a body-slave they had been scraping each other's back with one borrowed strigil or another ever since. Caenis helped Veronica obliterate her shoulder rash; Veronica, using similarly brutal techniques, helped Caenis shed unsatisfactory men. Most of the men who had ever approached Caenis were hopeless; strong-minded angry girls are curiously attractive to inadequate types. She had not even told Veronica about the very worst. Nor had Veronica, who was soft-hearted in some respects, ever mentioned that there were several perfectly decent men who regarded Caenis with secret fondness; Veronica thought accepting fondness would be a fatal mistake.

‘Darling, this character is completely insignificant. It's taken me half a day even to find out his name.' It had taken Caenis herself three weeks of hard effort with the usher Maritimus to extract any information. ‘Time you were fixed up with someone useful, girl. Why do you always frighten the good ones off? Oh, you don't even intend to look!'

Caenis writhed. ‘I do; I do! I tell myself an Indian pearl earring or
several are just what I need—then I look at the types who might offer, and I curl up. It's not just the thought of their podgy fingers paddling in your private places; most of them are so
lacking
, Veronica.'