The Course of Honour Read online

  Under Macro’s tutelage he cultivated a pious image at first. Among his first popular actions was a journey to fetch the ashes of his mother and brother from their island prisons for ceremonial interment in the Mausoleum of Augustus; at the same time he renamed the month of September after his father Germanicus. Even then there were signs of extravagance, for in honouring his sisters, particularly his favourite, Drusilla, he went to extraordinary lengths, giving them the privileges of the Vestal Virgins, allowing them, though women, to watch the Games from the imperial seats, featuring all three on the coinage, and including them in the vow of allegiance which the consuls swore.

  He did banish all the painted androgynous perverts who had entertained Tiberius. For a time he set to with political will, reducing taxation, relieving censorship, reinstating the independence of the courts, compensating householders for losses through fire, purging scoundrels from the lists of senators and knights. But Rome was his plaything. There he could soak in baths scented with exotic oils, invent extravagant cuisine, dress in outlandish tunics and footwear, flood the Saepta for naval battles, build his own racetrack, gamble like a fanatic, and indulge in chariot races and theatrical shows to his heart’s content. He was a man who had been an underprivileged child, now given a whole city as his personal toy.

  His relationship with his grandmother became prickly right at the start. Shortly after his accession the new Emperor sponsored a decree in the Senate to confer upon Antonia all of the honours which had been awarded to the Empress Livia during her lifetime. Antonia had always taken a sour pride in refusing to emulate Livia. She had rejected every title offered by Tiberius, even after she informed him of the dangers of Sejanus. Now it made no difference. Respect for his noble grandmother would enhance Caligula’s reputation: the honours were hers. It was as useless to refuse the gifts as to hope the respect was genuine.

  Caenis noticed Antonia began to look physically grey. People wondered afterwards if Caligula tried to poison her. It was not so. He simply eroded her spirit. She had been responsible for him after Livia died, and she was aware of the danger in overloading him with honours – or even too much responsibility. Antonia felt bound to attempt to restrain him, which inevitably turned him against her.

  Caenis found her one day with her face streaming with silent tears. ‘Never have children!’ she said bluntly. ‘Never marry, and be thankful that you have no family!’

  Caenis remained still, allowing Antonia the opportunity to speak. ‘I have been to see the Emperor. He makes unfortunate friends; he is too easily influenced. But I am accused of interference, of course.’

  During those first few weeks of his reign she was still the only real influence for good upon Caligula. She alone dared urge restraint. But when she requested a private interview, he offended against all decency by bringing Macro, his unsavoury commander of the Guards. It was an insult to his grandmother, and perhaps a threat too. If Caligula had been truly mature he would not have needed to do it. Still, it was now being said openly that Macro was grooming a protégé who would soon need no tutor.

  Caenis was furious at the insult to Antonia. ‘I would have come with you! I am not afraid.’

  ‘Perhaps we should all be afraid, Caenis.’

  Antonia was heavy with despair. Caenis lifted away the mantle she wore outdoors, helped her to her long chair, settled feather-filled cushions under her spine, pursed her mouth in warning to disperse the house slaves who were flitting about in uncertainty.

  Antonia sighed wearily. ‘My grandson Gaius Caligula informs me he can do whatever he likes to anybody. It is effrontery – but it is all too tragically true!’ Caenis had never heard her speak with such bitterness. ‘The fate of everyone in Rome and the Empire rests in his hands. He is not fit. Not even his father could control him – not even Germanicus. And the fools have given him unrestrained power!’

  They were silent for some time, Caenis hoping that her patroness would share whatever had occurred; however, Antonia had regained her rigid self-discipline. When she did speak, it was to say in her normal abrupt tone, ‘You are expecting your friend. Is he here?’ When Caenis was with Antonia, Vespasian usually waited in another room. ‘Call him in!’ commanded her mistress, for once surprising her.

  He entered quietly, a sturdy figure with all the well-tempered qualities the latest wild crop of Claudians completely lacked.

  ‘Flavius Vespasianus, there is no point lurking in corners. Caenis has the sensitivity of a guardian goose on the Capitol; the girl can hear your footfall three streets away and I know she has heard your arrival by the way she jumps!’

  For a moment the old lady’s attention seemed to wander. She had become markedly frail lately, although six months earlier she had been still strong enough to have visited her villa at Bauli, where she had defiantly tackled Tiberius about his treatment of her rakish, debt-ridden protégé Herod Agrippa, walking alongside the Emperor’s litter until he acquiesced to her demands for leniency. That spirit seemed to falter lately. Now when she gave Vespasian her hand Antonia held on to his much longer than he expected, gazing at him as if she had forgotten to let go. Her fingers were ridged like the bark of a carob tree. In the end she did release him; then he bent to kiss Caenis on the cheek, though he murmured, ‘Excuse me –’ politely to Antonia first.

  ‘Well; I have not seen much of you!’ Antonia scolded him; it was slightly unreasonable since she had always remained impatient of their friendship. ‘Caenis tells me you are standing for aedile?’ This post, as one of the curators of the city, was the next step in the cursus honorum, his upward progress through the various ranks of the Senate. ‘Confident?’

  ‘Not in the least!’ Vespasian returned frankly. ‘Too provincial and too poor.’

  Antonia considered the point. ‘Too much the bachelor.’

  There was a complex array of legal discouragements to the single life, partly hitting a citizen where it hurt most, in his bank box, but also giving precedence to married men and fathers at elections. Not only were bachelors disreputable, they were disloyal to their ancestors and the State. Even so, Antonia seemed comparatively indulgent. ‘Your day will come. Caenis believes in you. Take my word for it, that makes you exceptional!’

  Vespasian was standing just behind Caenis’ couch and although public gestures of affection, were traditionally improper he set one hand on her shoulder and kept it there, his thumb moving fitfully against her neck. Old-fashioned as she was, Antonia seemed not to object. Caenis herself peacefully laid her hand upon Vespasian’s to still his caress.

  After one of the remote pauses which were becoming characteristic Antonia observed unpredictably to Caenis, ‘Always favour a man who is tolerant of old ladies: you will be an old lady yourself one day.’

  Caenis let her hand fall.

  Vespasian said nothing. He must know, as Caenis did, that she would have to cope with old age by herself. They were both realistic people.

  Antonia was surveying him, while he steadily returned her stare. They were in some subtle way vying with one another. Caenis felt troubled. These were the two people she allowed herself to love; their jealousy of her affection seemed ridiculous.

  ‘I cannot require you to take care of her,’ Antonia said to him. ‘You are in no position to make promises.’

  Despite the critical undertone, he humphed with amusement. ‘Madam, we both know Caenis. She will insist on taking care of herself.’

  ‘Oh she expects to get her own way,’ Antonia scoffed. ‘But sometimes even she will need a friend.’

  ‘Caenis will always have more friends than she realises,’ Vespasian declared in a low tone.

  They were now speaking as if Caenis had left the room. Embarrassed for Vespasian, she wondered why women always imagined that caring for someone gave them the right to interfere.

  Then her patroness turned to her with a swift and unusually intense smile. ‘Forgive me, Caenis; I must leave one person at least who is prepared to overrule you!’

  It
was an odd scene, which left Caenis puzzled and disturbed.

  Antonia’s son Claudius was expected. His visits were rare. The butt of the court for his apparent feeble-mindedness, he had been deemed unsuitable for public life – a bitter contrast with his glorious brother, Germanicus. He had retreated into obscure branches of scholarship; he aggravated his mother and tried to keep out of her way.

  Anticipating a visit had made Antonia restless. She told Caenis and Vespasian to take themselves off, but before they left the room she suddenly called Vespasian back. ‘You invited Caenis to your grandmother’s villa at Cosa?’ He had; Caenis refused to go.

  Annoyed that the subject had come up, Caenis stood glaring from the doorway. She had consistently avoided Vespasian’s family, for while they probably did not object to his taking a mistress who was highly placed and obviously discreet, dealing with a freedwoman socially would be as difficult for them as for her. His grandmother, the formidable old lady who had brought him up, was dead, yet even now visiting her house seemed indelicate to Caenis.

  ‘Madam –’

  ‘I want you to go,’ Antonia interrupted her. ‘Go, and enjoy yourself.’

  At that moment her son was announced; it would be discourteous to let him find his mother quarrelling. Claudius came in, with that vivid shock of white hair and the strange halting gait; he made as if to kiss his mother, thought better of it, started to say something to Caenis, decided against that too, then seated himself, looking immediately more controlled and more at ease. Antonia visibly struggled to disguise her agitation. Their relationship was hopeless. Claudius was too close; with him her normal inflexible courtesy broke down. Then her tension communicated to him, so that in her presence his tic and his stammer grew far worse.

  ‘Caenis is going to Cosa,’ Antonia said gruffly. ‘With her friend.’ It was impossible to rebel against this public instruction. ‘Do you know Flavius Vespasianus? My son –’

  In this way it turned out that Vespasian was introduced to Claudius, and by Antonia herself. Although she thought her son ridiculous and ineffectual, he was the grandson of Augustus after all. The pretence had to be maintained politely that Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus was a useful person for an obscure young senator to know.

  XIV

  Caenis could not understand why people regarded travelling as a nuisance. Until she went to Cosa she had never been any distance outside Rome. She found the experience wonderful.

  Admittedly it was an uncomfortable journey. First she made her way alone by chair, over the river at the Pons Sublicius, through the Fourteenth District where the street-sellers and other itinerants lived, to the outskirts of the city. Vespasian met her on the Via Aurelia with a two-wheeled conveyance drawn by a pair of unkempt mules.

  ‘Bring cushions,’ he had warned tersely. It was good advice.

  Some people travelled in massive four-wheeled stagecoaches, big enough to take their beds yet effortlessly dashed along by two pairs of swift and shining steeds. Some owned carriages lined out with scarlet silk curtains, decorated with silver filigree, equipped with integral footrests, wicker food baskets and fold-down draughtsboards to keep them entertained. Even within the city most senators were carried about reclining in litters borne high on the shoulders of fearsomely tall slaves. The Flavian brothers shared a light fly with just room for two people and a wineskin; luggage was tied on the roof with a goat-hair rope. The Sabine territory was supposed to be famous for fine quality mules. One of theirs, Brimo, was notorious all along the old Salt Road to Reate for his snorting bad-temper. The other, though sweeter-natured, was susceptible to bald patches and missing an ear; Brimo had bitten it off.

  Caenis discovered that the hazards of travelling made Vespasian unusually bad-tempered. Fortunately he spared her. Caenis was no trouble; Caenis only gazed about, uncomplaining and utterly enthralled.

  The first time they stopped to rest she walked by herself a little way into the open countryside where she simply stood, with her arms wide, soaking in the unimpeded spring sunlight and the peace. They were in Etruria. They had wanted to make the town of Caere for lunch, but Brimo decided to slack. Instead they had eaten salad and fruit amongst the soft round tumuli of the Etruscan houses of the dead. To the right were low hills; to the left newly ploughed fields stretched towards the distant twinkle of the sea.

  Vespasian, calmer now, came up behind her. He tickled her neck with a great piece of grass; Caenis took no notice.

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’

  ‘Looking at the emptiness – so much sky!’ She had never been out of the city before.

  Vespasian scratched his ear, amazed.

  Cosa was eighty miles north from Rome as the crow flies, more by road. An imperial courier could have covered the distance easily in two days with time to spare for a meal, a bath and a massage in the mansio; not so the Flavian mules. Trailing at a crawl through Tarquinii, Vespasian muttered they would all go home by sea.

  Cape Cosa unfurled out into the ocean on a stout stem like a bullock’s ear. The town lay just to the south, where the peninsula joined the land, with a strange lagoon filled with light as green as bottle-glass. Small boys, like Vespasian himself years before, jumped tirelessly into the clear water then raced back along the mole to jump in again. Cosa was a neat Greek-founded sea town with an unhurried atmosphere. Vespasian’s grandmother’s estate lay a little way to the east. It was perfectly obvious this would always be his favourite place.

  Afterwards Caenis rarely spoke of the time she had spent at Cosa. She knew it was their one chance to live together in the same house. She glimpsed Vespasian as he was at home; watched the full span of his day in its regular rhythm from waking before dawn, through correspondence in the morning, lunch and a siesta in bed with her, then a bath and his cheerful dinner at night. She observed the good-humoured mistrust between him and his slaves – he expecting to be cheated, they grumbling at his miserliness – yet all somehow rubbing along together loyally for years; if he was mocked by other people, they knew he also mocked himself. People who dealt with him regularly all accepted the man as he was.

  He showed Caenis the places that held memories of his childhood, the objects about the house that recalled his grandmother. He was preserving the villa as it had always been. It was his festival place. Here his face lightened; his intensity relaxed. He was visibly happy; and seeing him so made Caenis set aside her own doubts in order to be happy with him.

  Most people, Caenis supposed, existed in their hopes for the future; she could never do that. She must live for the present. At least now she would never again be someone with no past. She too would have, if she could bear them, affectionate memories to carry forward to her old age.

  They did go home by sea. Caenis liked sailing even more than travelling overland.

  By the time they came into Rome from Ostia it was all she could do to disguise her gathering misery. This was not simply because she had been forced to view so closely all she could never possess. She thought she knew why Vespasian had wanted to take her to Cosa. It was his favourite place: he was arranging for his own memories to include one of Caenis there. With leaden foreboding, she guessed why: their time together would not last much longer.

  She was too depressed even to be surprised when he made a detour with her chair to the apartment where his brother lived. Vespasian lived there too, though he was planning to take rooms of his own before the next elections in order to seem a more substantial candidate; no one would take seriously a man who only lodged in his brother’s attic.

  Caenis had never been there before. She waited outside in the chair while Vespasian went into the apartment block. The area was run-down but adequate; Caenis recognised the district, somewhere near the Esquiline on the less fashionable side. There was a wonderful parchment and papyrus warehouse nearby where she had been once or twice to order supplies.

  He came back. ‘Step indoors for a moment.’

  He had opened the half-door and offered his arm fo
r her to clamber out before she had any time to hesitate.

  It appeared Sabinus was not at home. His wife stood waiting in the hall, a short girl about Caenis’ age with a round pleasant face that looked understandably concerned. Theirs was a house rather bare of furniture and what they did have was all rather heavy and old-fashioned, though Caenis guessed that was just Sabinus’ sombre taste. There were massive red curtains that looked difficult to draw. Though the atmosphere was initially so formal, all the legs of the sidetables and couches had been scuffed by children’s toys.

  She experienced a sensation that this visit had been prearranged. Afterwards she felt certain, though she never found out how Vespasian knew what had happened. They wanted to take her into a side room, but she was already demanding in agitation, ‘What is it? Titus!’

  Sabinus’ wife reached for her hand. Caenis felt a sense of despair closing in.

  He said, ‘I wanted to tell you this myself.’ She knew. He was leaving her. ‘Lass, I didn’t want you to get out of the chair and see the cypress trees standing at the door, the house dressed up in mourning –’ She did not know after all. Sometimes the brain is stubbornly slow. She put up one hand, foolishly smoothing her hair. He had to tell her, for even then she did not understand. ‘Your lady Antonia is dead.’

  She refused to accept it. She did not move; she could not speak.

  ‘Caenis! Oh my dear –’