The Course of Honour Read online

  There was nothing she could do. Caenis realised at once. The taster had made no attempt to try it; he would have been warned not to. The poison must be in the cold water.

  If she had called out, Britannicus would never have heard her above the din. It was too late anyway. She saw. Nero’s triumphant half-shadowed glance. She watched the young Octavia notice what was happening, whiten, then grow expressionless as she knew she must. Even Agrippina for an instant showed by her consternation that she had been no party to this.

  Britannicus drank.

  At the first mouthful he dropped the cup. His whole body convulsed. He stopped breathing. He fell. Britannicus crashed full length across the low table in front of his couch where the bearers had placed his family’s household gods, so when the diners’ cacophony stilled in amazement, the dreadful hush was broken by a slowly settling scrape on the tiny marble tiles as the Claudian god of the larder skittered in ever diminishing half-circles over the floor, then finally came to rest.

  Everyone stopped talking. Everyone looked at the Emperor.

  Slaves had scattered in terror; Britannicus’ friends were transfixed. Nero signalled for people to carry his imperial brother from the room. Caenis was already fastening her sandal straps.

  Nero said – announced it perfectly coolly – made the claim without a stammer – uttered it without a blush – that Britannicus was epileptic: he had been epileptic all his life; he would soon recover his senses and his sight. Nero ordered the banquet to recommence, which after a short silence it did.

  Caenis was already halfway from the room.

  As she went she turned back once, to glance at Octavia. The girl sat motionless. There was no lack of courage there. Her brother had been killed by her husband in front of her, and she had to endure it. Nobody would support her if she tried to protest.

  Caenis turned away; but before she did she had spotted Vespasian’s son, Titus. She noticed the young idiot pick up his friend’s skittled winecup, and taste what remained of the dregs.

  By the time she found the right anteroom, Britannicus was dead.

  XXVII

  Britannicus was dead.

  There were people everywhere, none of them with the slightest sense. They had carried him into a salon where one or two slaves of his own and some dilatory Palace attendants were milling about. Caenis felt her new sandals skid on the glistening tessellated floor as she barged through a knot of waiters to come to him. They had him on a couch, his head lolling awkwardly over the edge, arms and legs all akimbo as he had been dropped. Pulling his tunic straight for decency Caenis took him in her arms.

  There was nothing she could do.

  So many murders; it had become a way of life. Apart from Antonia, who was close to her heart at this moment, Britannicus was the first Caenis had really known and loved. She realised something now: she had always believed she lived by expecting the worst. That was quite wrong. She had lived in hope. It was the only way she could bear continuing. She and Britannicus had come here tonight in that spirit, because they knew they had no other choice.

  Hope is such a foolish thing: Britannicus was dead.

  Ignoring all the others she pulled up his eyelids, listened for breathing, massaged him, called to him, pounded several times hard on his chest in a helpless attempt to restart his heart or clear any blockage if he had simply choked. She knew something of what to do; it was part of the lumber of useful information she had been collecting all her life. Now someone who seemed to be a Greek doctor was standing nearby, but he let her act as she wanted and made no effort to correct or encourage her. It was always up to you. Other fools just stood around.

  There was nothing to be done but she worked on, even knowing it was pointless, to avoid having to think. She did her best for Antonia; for Claudius; for Narcissus; for the sweet-natured boy himself. She did it for herself too. In the end she abandoned the attempt and sat, still nursing Britannicus in her arms, her tender fingers smoothing the death-throe grimace from his elfin face. There was nothing to be done.

  People fled: Nero had come.

  The young Emperor, swaying slightly, had appeared on the threshold. Everyone except Caenis was terrified. She remembered saying to Antonia that emperors saw too many faces full of fear.

  Nero knew he was dead. Oh Nero knew. He himself must have stood over the poisoner Lucusta after the first bungled attempt, beating her and bullying her to boil down her black ooze until it would work. In his own bedroom Nero had seen the poison instantly kill a pig. He knew. Nobody bothered to say, and, of course, he did not need to ask.

  Caenis had never been so angry in her life. She had nothing left; nothing to lose. She was about to fling at him the words that needed saying, however swiftly they condemned her. Once, once if never again, she would tell the ruler of the world that it was not for him to abuse the power of life and death purely to gratify his ambition and cruelty . . . But then she became aware of someone else: Titus. That boy Titus. Vespasian’s son.

  He too must have come in, and was half-lying on another couch. At the Emperor’s entrance he started to haul himself upright, although he could hardly move. Gods, he was like his father when he set his jaw! He was about to lose his temper. He had to be stopped.

  Caenis flung back her head and addressed the Emperor across the width of the room in the iced voice of a trained secretary whose work has been regrettably disturbed by some untidy break in office routine. ‘An unfortunate occurrence, lord! Please don’t disturb yourself. It seems there is no more we can do. Your brother,’ she stated crisply, using the word ‘brother’ with a whiplash of malice, ‘is cured of his epilepsy now!’

  The lad Titus had become brick-red with defiance, bursting with the indiscretion of youth. One leg was bent beneath him on the couch; he was struggling to break free. With any luck he would collapse.

  ‘With permission, lord,’ Caenis asked the Emperor though she did not care whether he gave permission or not, ‘as a client of your family I will attend to the funeral.’

  ‘Tonight,’ Nero said, in his brash voice. ‘Hasty deaths should be hastily removed.’

  Titus gagged. The Emperor turned upon him his bloodless gaze.

  ‘Too much wine!’ Caenis uttered with contempt. ‘The young fool’s drunk.’

  Moving with that disgusting cormorant strut, Nero then left his family’s female client to tidy up death and drunkenness together.

  Caenis sprang to life. ‘Demetrius, close the door!’ She was already setting down her pointless burden gently and squirming to her feet. ‘Hot water and salt!’ she barked to her slave. ‘Not from the dining room; be quick but be discreet. Demetrius, run!’

  As she reached him Titus began to slither towards the floor. She caught him under one armpit – this was the moment where all her future nightmares would begin: that painfully familiar Flavian face slipping past her knee, with chaos all around them, while she heard her own voice appealing to him not to die. He was a well-made chunky young man, gripping his stomach in obvious agony. He was too heavy; she had to let him slide to the ground, where she knelt, gathering him against her knees with one hand supporting his warm head.

  ‘I drank –’

  ‘I know.’

  He was flopping semiconscious; in a moment he would be gone. She began to shake him like a maid plumping a pillow; she slapped him; she shouted his name. ‘Titus! Come along now; this won’t do. Wake up; Titus!’

  Demetrius was at her side. Thankfully Aglaus chose his subordinates for their quick response in a crisis. Caenis herself mixed a strong emetic while Demetrius began the desperate process of hauling Titus upright again. Seating him on the couch seemed to revive him to some degree. He was white-knuckled with pain. His eyes looked opaque. ‘Come along; drink. Titus, you know you must!’

  She held his head, gripping the curly hair at the back of his neck, forcing him to swallow the warm brine. He drank it all. He wanted to live; he was a fighter in the stubborn Flavian mould, and he trusted her instinctivel
y.

  ‘Demetrius, find my litter; bring it in here. Say I’m ill if needs be. Nothing to do here until I get him to vomit the poison.’

  Titus was changing colour even as she spoke, from his hectic flush to a dreadful doughy grey. Demetrius met her eyes. She nodded; her slave slipped away.

  ‘Britannicus –’

  ‘Britannicus is gone. I’m so sorry. I know you were his friend. Save your energy; Titus, do try to throw up.’ He would not need much trying; he had that worried look. ‘One day,’ Caenis promised him grimly, ‘all this will be stopped. One day, Titus; you and I will see a better world.’

  Then Vespasian’s son was violently sick all over her feet.

  He was mortified. ‘Oh lady, I’m so sorry –’

  Her new sandals! But he looked better. ‘Thanks, sweetheart. Come on; try again. I don’t think I liked them anyway, and I certainly don’t like them now.’

  Behind her, she suddenly heard the wailing of the slaves who attended a death to clamour in case there was a hope that the victim might after all wake. People had no sense of discretion. This was the ritual, so they performed it mindlessly. Nobody murdered in this palace was required to be revived. People had no sense.

  No one paid any attention to Titus and herself. Just as well. Too close an association with this poisoning would do the Flavians no good.

  She had been prepared to thrust chicken-feathers down the boy’s throat but by now he was being helplessly ill. Caenis talked to him, willing him through, holding him more kindly now. He no longer seemed conscious of his surroundings, but she tried to make her voice reach his brain and drag him back. She was losing him; she could see that.

  ‘Titus! Titus, come on, my Flavian; you can do better than this.’

  He groaned. Still talking, she massaged his limp, sweating hands. ‘What a truly awful banquet; I don’t know why I came. Abandoned by my host – Titus, make an effort, please! – the floor show was deplorable, and I had to leave before the decent drinking got under way . . .’ He had nothing more to bring back. Wiping his face, she let him rest with his poor fevered head against her upper arm. Tears splashed on to his cheek; her own tears. ‘Oh my darling; don’t die, Titus! I can never tell Vespasian that I let him lose his son.’

  Demetrius was back with her litter and its two frightened bearers. She gave them quiet instructions. They were to take the boy to his father’s empty apartment; Demetrius would go to explain, or if there were no servants there he would fetch Aglaus instead to look after the boy.

  Titus was wrestling against unconsciousness as they lifted him inside the chair. Just before she closed the half-door Caenis leant in to tuck her shawl around him. He was shivering uncontrollably; she had never seen anyone so white.

  He opened his eyes in a moment of puzzled lucidity. ‘Do you know my father well?’

  ‘Not any more,’ stated Caenis tersely. ‘And you can tell him from me, I can manage without his off-spring being sick in my best new shoes!’

  Yet she kissed him, before the bearers began to move off – that old social gesture of affection, the light touch on the cheek. So once again, Titus felt the lady’s tears.

  Perhaps he had glimpsed that a little of the love she once gave to Britannicus had transferred in that dreadful hour to him. Perhaps too, he recognised the shadow of another kind of feeling. Within the soft folds of that lady’s shawl he shuddered, for as he was carried away from the Palace to the safety of his father’s house he understood that he had trespassed among the secrets of a grown-up world. Unimagined aspects of his own existence faced him. With the heart-rending clarity of someone who was dangerously ill he was viewing not merely his father, with whom he had always been on the best of terms, and his mother, whom he loved as he should, but also this lady with whom he was sharing the loss of his friend. Love of Britannicus seemed their special interest, a bond even more private than the fact she had just saved his life.

  But there was something else between them too. She had called him her darling. Then, with a flood of sensation as intense as biting on an unexpected clove, Titus Vespasianus understood her warning and her plea. He realised exactly why, when they spoke about tonight to other people, they would have to make such a joke about him ruining her shoes.

  XXVIII

  They buried Britannicus in the pouring rain.

  Someone with enormous forethought had provided a pyre. Slaves must have been building it before the banquet even began. So a small group of friends cremated the son of Claudius on the Palatine that same night, while Nero watched from his dining room much as Caligula had once watched Antonia’s funeral. It was raining from the start, but when they brought the boy’s ashes to the Mausoleum of Augustus in the north of the city, all the heavens opened and this was taken for a sign of the gods’ wrath. For Caenis, the filthy weather merely matched the filthiness of life.

  It was a pitiful group that trailed out to the Field of Mars then through the sodden public walks to the Mausoleum. As they approached, the weather was so bad they could barely make out the exterior, mounded with earth in the Etruscan style, though massively terraced and planted with cypress trees. The bronze statue of Augustus which surmounted the great circular tomb was quite invisible in the murk.

  The wind keened eerily in the trees. It was night; the company sparse and deeply depressed. When lightning flashed off the obelisks which guarded the entrance to that dark place, those who had been brave enough to attend the cremation understood that all the new optimistic order was now quite lost. Their unexpected Emperor Claudius had been decreed a god; as they brought his murdered son to the family tomb, that was the final irony.

  The mourners descended by the flaring light of torches to deposit the urn in the white marble basement. It took place without eulogy or ceremony. Nero had forbidden a procession. There was no time to bring out the masks of Britannicus’ ancestors. People came hurriedly; muttered their farewells; departed into the storm. So they buried the last of the Claudians, the son of a deified emperor, yet murdered in boyhood as so many were, with nobody willing or able to raise a hand in his defence. So they buried Britannicus, in the pouring rain.

  Caenis went home.

  She was shaking. She was sneezing. She had no shoes and no shawl; she was drenched. She was entering a state of shock. She had been wet for a long time, since before the cremation when she washed her feet and the hem of her dress in a fountain, leaving her ruined sandals on the rim. Noticing she had lost her litter, Pallas took her in his own. They did not like one another but as clients of the same family, decency demanded he did not let her walk across the north of the city weeping and barefoot, in the dark, alone. Caenis was past knowing what had happened to her, and had she known she would not have cared. By next day she was seriously ill.

  Caenis was so ill, for so long, that she reached a point of not even understanding who or where she was. Aglaus must have coped. She never really knew. Doctors came, though not often; Aglaus told her afterwards that despite any delirium, at the first sniff of poppyseed and cabbage-water she had managed to be magnificently rude. Even when she started to recover she could barely find the energy to lie in bed hoping there would be nothing to decide or do.

  Eventually she passed into a stage of being bored yet unable to concentrate, so once again she could only drowse, while occasional tears whimpered down the line of her cheekbone and chin. Even her flute-girl was more than she could bear; after a few minutes of the softest music her head hurt. People sent fruit, which she did not eat. People came; she begged not to have to see them because she realised she was too miserable to cope – then when she knew they had gone she became desolate with loneliness.

  Every night, when the delirium returned, there was the dream: young Titus falling to the floor at her feet while she begged him not to die. That dream at least grew so familiar it seemed almost comforting.

  At last the day arrived when she woke and knew she was much better than the day before.

  ‘You have a visitor,’ Ch
loe, her maid, offered, at which for the first time Caenis looked keen to know who.

  Then a familiar scathing voice burbled, ‘Don’t worry; it’s only me! And don’t try to turn me out.’ It was Veronica. To see her was glorious. ‘Juno, Caenis; look at you! The rumour’s true then, that you had pneumonia?’

  ‘That rumour’s not true; I have not had pneumonia, I’ve still got it!’

  Veronica dismissed the maid herself. At first she sat beside the bed, so wonderfully sane, with that well-groomed inquisitive face. It was a tall bed, so she soon gave up the wicker chair which made her crane her slender neck; instead she perched up on the edge of the coverlet with one slim foot on the step at the side.

  Caenis drifted back to the real shore of the world. Her room, which had for so long been a hall of leaping ghosts, assumed its familiar shape: smaller, and even on a wintry afternoon full of light. Once again it became her special place – the great screw-down clothes-press in one corner smoothing her own tunics and cloaks, the long Egyptian chest, the wicker chair, her dressing table which was set with her jumble of knick-knack boxes, half-empty cream pots, pin trays, combs and perfume jars. Though she had lived among them for many days and nights, she greeted her own things now like a traveller returning from a long journey: her silver scarf-case, her sandalwood trinket drawers, her pottery lamps, that ancient rug in warm stripes of cinnabar red and umber, which clashed with the cushions and the crimson counterpane but was so cosy and comforting under her feet while she dressed that she never managed to change it for a newer, harsher one . . .

  ‘I have brought you some nice barley broth, Caenis; I left it with your cook. Don’t for one moment imagine I made it myself, though I did give it a poke with a spoon so my woman would think I know what kitchens are about.’

  Veronica had wonderful taste in clothes. She had come in a purple so deep-dyed it was certainly illegal; her presence filled the room with vibrant colour even before she began to speak in that familiar racy style. They looked at one another, and were at once as they had always been, two women who spoke one language, two women who shared a conspiracy against life.