The Course of Honour Page 14

  Caenis would always have the courage to be true to herself; at her lowest ebb, she now possessed the gift of a joyous past.

  Sanely, she went on with her life.

  XIX

  When the Emperor’s uncle Claudius married Valeria Messalina – this sad jest was entirely a whim of Caligula’s – Caenis was privileged to attend. Messalina came of impeccable family, she was wealthy, she was exquisite – and she looked about nineteen. Claudius was forty-seven.

  Teenage brides were common in patrician society; it gave a man the chance to train up the child in his own house his own way, which is what men sometimes imagine they want. For a person so susceptible to women as Claudius though, this girl was a disaster. He fell head over heels in love, before he had spoken to her twice. The sly cat would run rings round him. Still, that too is what some men want.

  ‘I should be grateful if you felt able to come, Caenis,’ he had faltered. ‘A man at his wedding needs the support of his family and friends. Of course, I will have the Emperor . . .’

  Caenis gave him one of her looks. ‘Sir, your nephew the Emperor may stand as your family, though I doubt whether in this matter he has acted as one of your friends!’

  She always spoke to Claudius firmly and extremely frankly. He permitted it. In all other respects Caenis treated him as her patron, a courtesy which few members of his late mother’s household would ever emulate.

  When he had realised, many months after everybody else had noticed, that Caenis was no longer Vespasian’s mistress, Tiberius Claudius had enquired tentatively whether she would like to become one of his mistresses instead, but Caenis had dealt frankly and firmly with that too.

  ‘I shall come to your wedding, sir,’ she promised. ‘For your daughter’s sake, for your mother’s – and as one of your good friends.’

  They both knew, there were not many of those.

  Going to a wedding attended also by the Emperor won Caenis a certain amount of prestige in the Twelfth District. Another event at about the same time lent even more crazy colour to her reputation. This was a visit to her apartment by Veronica. That girl surely knew how to make herself useful. Every man in the block now treated Caenis with awe. The vintner and furrier became positively chummy, longing for another glimpse of her dazzling friend. Caenis did not point out that Veronica had no energy to spare for walking up five flights of stairs so was unlikely to repeat their treat.

  She never understood why Caenis did it. Least of all for a steep rent. Paying money to a man for anything was a concept Veronica found ridiculous.

  Veronica herself had decided with the advent of Caligula that sharing the Palace with an emperor was not for her. For one thing, she was disgusted by the imperial bordello he devised. Having finely decorated a suite of rooms at the Palace he threw them open to all comers, offering loans to the men who visited and shamelessly listing the income as donations to the imperial treasury. With such competition, how was a simple girl expected to make her way?

  Veronica had acted with alacrity. She understood that senators did not want compulsory brothels at the Palace, where Caligula’s idea of adding insult to the Senate – whom he now passionately hated – was that they should be forced to bring their wives. A man enjoying off-side relaxation wanted a different face than the one at home. Veronica purchased her freedom, skipped the Palace, and began to offer an establishment that was equally expensive without the political disadvantages and the risks. At Veronica’s there were no wives.

  She did not, of course, pay rent. She occupied a prestigious mansion which she looked after for an octogenarian ex-consul who never visited Rome. The consul paid all the bills and when he died he left Veronica the house. Meanwhile her success was assured. She let it be known that no one need apply who commanded less than a hundred million sesterces; rather than be thought too poor to attend her salon, clients flocked in.

  Veronica repeatedly asked Caenis to live with her. Caenis always refused. She did however go there sometimes in the evening. She liked Veronica’s house for the same reasons as the elderly gentlemen of conservative opinions who treated it like a military dining club: the place was warm, the cooks were excellent, the women were civilised, and the sanitation worked.

  Caenis came to be regarded as a kind of inky-fingered duenna. Her connections were respectable and when she felt like it (not invariably) she made people laugh. She never slept with men, though for three years Veronica tenaciously shovelled men her way. If necessary, Caenis slid them off elsewhere. It was not always necessary. Many were grateful that she made no demands. Some men who patronise exclusive salons are frightened they cannot live up to expectations (Veronica agreed tartly that most could not). For them, talking to Caenis was polite and safe.

  Caenis herself did not altogether appreciate the arrangement. The men Veronica thought suitable for her all fell into a certain type: recent widowers with far too much to say now about their previously neglected wives, or bachelors so trying that their loneliness was all too understandable. The other thing they had in common, Caenis soon noticed, was that none of them was a man whom Veronica wanted to have to entertain herself. Being a convenience sometimes rankled.

  She put up with the situation. Caenis never lost her sense of humour entirely.

  Sometimes there was political talk. Veronica discouraged this. Treason could lead to trouble, and if things became too heated men lost their tempers and stormed off without wanting a girl, which reduced her income. Caenis, who only went there for something to eat and companionship, rather enjoyed the politics.

  On one occasion she thought Veronica would have a seizure: someone openly raised the question of disposing of the Emperor.

  Caenis noted that there was not the shocked silence that anyone who lived outside Rome would expect. By now Caligula had worn the purple for four years; he had also dressed up in silken robes encrusted with gemstones, theatrical costumes, elaborate military uniforms (usually with the breastplate of Alexander which he claimed he had stolen from the hero’s tomb), and rather common women’s dresses in colours which did not suit his pasty face. His behaviour had been odd, baffling, and exorbitantly expensive. While staying at Antonia’s villa at Bauli, he dreamt up a plan to defy the old prophecy that he could as soon become Emperor as ride dry-shod over the sea at Baiae: he built a three-mile bridge of galleys, turfed it over and for two days trundled in a chariot to and fro across the Gulf; several people cheering his entourage were knocked into the sea and drowned. He had bankrupted the Treasury with his constant Games and circuses; he brought business to a standstill and even cancelled the rites of mourning so no one had an excuse not to attend his shows. His cruelties extended from the execution of his own cousin King Ptolomy of Mauretania (who had offended him at a gladiatorial display by winning the crowd’s applause for a smart purple cloak), to dispatching common criminals in batches, without even a glance at the charge-sheet, in order to feed their carcasses to his panthers and lions. He blighted trade with fierce taxation. He chained up the granaries when the populace were starving. No one forgot how he had worried his grandmother to death.

  People were now looking back fondly to the golden age of Augustus, a man who in retrospect had genuinely seemed to want to do right. People remembered that even under Tiberius the city and the provinces were efficiently run. After four years there was a slow groundswell of understanding in Rome that Caligula must be removed. He was still not yet thirty. People felt tired just thinking how long they might have to endure him if nothing was done. Needless to say, most people hoped somebody else would volunteer to risk doing it.

  There had been one plot, apparently brewed by his sister Agrippina. Drusilla, to whom he was most deeply attached, had died suddenly; her death caused a florid outburst of grief in the Emperor, who proclaimed Drusilla a goddess, established a cult for her, ordered public mourning on a scale that was disaster for small traders, and then fled to the country to soak himself in misery (mitigated by occasional gambling bouts).

  A
fterwards the position of the surviving sisters, Agrippina and Livilla, had declined. While accompanying their brother on a visit to Germany they found themselves accused – probably rightly – of plotting with Lepidus, Drusilla’s widower. He was executed and they were exiled, but first Agrippina was compelled to bring the cremated remains of Lepidus, who was allegedly her lover, back to Rome in a casket – a grim parody of her mother returning from Syria with the relics of the dead hero Germanicus. The Senate had had to frame its reaction cautiously, and since the plot had been put down, there was only one tactful course: one of the praetors issued congratulations to the Emperor on his expedition, then denounced Lepidus and suggested that his ashes should be denied the family mausoleum and cast out unburied.

  The praetor concerned was Flavius Vespasianus.

  When plotting came up in conversation it was Caenis herself who said quietly, ‘There will always be the convention that the Senate creates the Emperor – then cannot be seen doing away with him.’

  There were senators in the room. Mostly they followed the pattern of slow, sombre, self-opinionated men in late middle age. Now, after feeding on swan cunningly presented as porpoise, turbot in aspic, and suckling-pig served with two wine sauces reduced to a delicate glaze, they were lying on their couches holding back belches whilst pontificating bitterly on the world’s decline. They thought this was daring enough.

  Caenis felt disinclined to let them get away with it. ‘It will be,’ she suggested, ‘some disgusted individual who dares to plunge in the knife.’ Veronica closed her eyes, gleaming silver with mercury. Caenis refused to take the hint. ‘Then the Senate, to excuse its own cowardice, will execute that individual for his courage.’

  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.’ Anici
us 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.