The Course of Honour Page 23

  Veronica said softly, ‘Love, I met your Sabine friend. He was in the Saepta Julia of all places. I gathered there had been an amount of feeble family debate, and the upshot was they felt a polite Flavian ambassador should call on you. Well; I soon stopped that.’

  Caenis managed to smile.

  ‘Your old friend the Hero,’ Veronica went on. She stopped. She was usually so candid her obvious reluctance felt odd. ‘Vespasian apologises. He has had a bereavement –’

  ‘Oh – not the boy?’ Caenis could hardly bear to ask.

  Veronica patted her hand. ‘No. No; not the boy. I saw the boy too. A heart-breaker if ever I met one! He has been dangerously poorly – but will live, though he’s a disgusting saffron colour at the moment.’

  ‘He seemed a tough little shoot. Is he yellow? I was terrified,’ Caenis worried, ‘that his liver might be damaged.’

  ‘Yes. His father was fretting but their doctor says he will recover. He looks strong. You will have to brace yourself: I found them buying an antique Greek vase painted with a whole ocean including a hideous octopus – just your type of thing! The object will come by night on an ox-cart and you’ll need to build a viewing gallery to hold it. It will have cost the child his life-savings, though I dare say the loss will be replenished by discreet paternal hands – assuming Vespasian ever has any money . . . I mention it so you can have your smile of gracious pleasure ready.’

  Caenis practised her gracious smile. Her brain worked only slowly nowadays: ‘What bereavement?’

  Finally Veronica told her, still looking at the counterpane, ‘I believe, his wife. Flavia Domitilla had for a long while not been in the best of health.’ Caenis schooled her face. ‘I deduced that if you wanted, I could arrange for you to meet him,’ Veronica confessed abruptly, after which she was at last able to look up.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Caenis hardly paused for consideration. She could not bear it.

  Veronica smiled. She was in her way an eccentric woman. ‘Well!’

  ‘Did he ask you to ask me, Veronica?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Caenis took a deep breath. ‘Do you blame me for refusing?’

  ‘I certainly do not. You know my views. The man was a liability from the start. Incidentally, he still has no money. And good gods, it must be nearly twenty years.’

  ‘Probably is,’ Caenis marvelled wryly. ‘See him again? Juno –’ Veronica let her maunder on. ‘I filled my life. I had to; it was too long to waste. I was never the docile Penelope type – what, twenty years with nothing to show but a nicely stitched sampler and ruined eyes? Then some raddled old traveller turns up expecting you to have fed his dog and kept his favourite winecup dusted on the sideboard, and be ready to rub liniment on his scars and listen to his dreadful stories until he drops? Oh Veronica! Whatever does the silly man expect?’

  Veronica thought about it. ‘Who’s Penelope? Do I know her?’

  ‘Oh in a story. She waited for a hero for twenty years.’

  ‘A man wrote that!’ Veronica guessed acutely.

  Vespasian would be forty-six next November. On the seventeenth: Caenis still remembered his birthday date.

  It was indeed nearly twenty years. That dark corridor between rage and simple disappointment, where a bright young girl’s uneasy hopes dulled into resignation; her long, tired decline into just another elderly, dowdy, ordinary woman.

  It was all far too late. They could never go back. And Caenis would not like to see a man she had once loved so dearly on any lesser understanding now.

  Veronica broke into her reverie to say quietly, ‘It’s an insult. If it makes you feel any better, I told him exactly what I think.’

  ‘I’m not insulted.’

  Caenis imagined that Vespasian would treat Veronica warily. She was not his type, though he would admire her as an artefact. He would not, however, want her to tell him what she thought.

  ‘Credit where credit is due,’ Veronica admitted, ‘I do believe he badly wants to thank you for saving his son.’

  Caenis spread her hands with a watery smile. ‘Tell him I am thanked. But he knows what I feel about being asked to console widowers.’

  ‘I’ll soon settle him!’ Veronica became brisk. She stood up, shaking her jewelled skirts. ‘And now, if you can face it, I want to smother you with rugs and take you in my litter to a shoemaker few people can afford, who will measure you for the prettiest and most comfortable pair of new sandals in Rome.’

  Caenis began to climb shakily out of bed. ‘That I can face!’ She paused, with one bare foot feeling for the step.

  Veronica paused too. ‘This is a gift from me, Caenis.’

  Caenis did not so easily give up. ‘And whose was the idea?’

  ‘Ah that,’ conceded the friend she had known since she was ten, ‘I am not supposed to say.’

  Caenis worked out for herself that Vespasian had made the suggestion, but left Veronica to pay for the shoes.

  So, cheered at least by comfortable feet (which any sensible woman valued highly – most of all if she had once been a barefoot slave) Caenis gradually came back into society. There did not seem a lot to come back. for.

  Veronica had obviously assumed Caenis would behave exactly as she did herself. Next time she came she cried, ‘Right! Have you seen him yet?’

  ‘No,’ Caenis answered.

  ‘You are intending to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hasn’t he asked you again?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes.’

  ‘Well, that seems clear!’

  ‘Titus sent the octopus vase with a note from his father saying he’d like to hear my opinion of it. I thanked Titus formally by letter but didn’t answer his father’s note. Satisfied?’

  ‘He must make new arrangements, Caenis. He strikes me as the dozy, loyal type. The minute he comes to visit you, I want to hear.’

  Caenis, who was feeling better, quietly quartered herself a pear which a kind friend had sent her from the storeroom of his country estate north of Rome.

  Vespasian had gone back to Reate, taking his son.

  ‘He’s having a terrible time lately,’ Veronica told her, persisting doggedly. ‘He lost his daughter too.’ Then Caenis was genuinely distressed, for she imagined that Vespasian was a man who would make his daughter a favourite. ‘Childbirth, I imagine. Teenaged bride; poor little shrimp. She left a baby,’ warbled Veronica. ‘Little girl, I believe: yet another Flavia.’

  Vespasian was a grandfather! The ridiculous old devil was courting her through a third party like a bashful teenage boy. Caenis could accept he was the type of man to reminisce fondly over his youth, but she had assumed anyone so hard-headed would realise the past should now lie undisturbed.

  The fool kept sending her fruit. Sometimes Caenis felt she was the only person in Rome with any tact or sense. And a grandfather: at this news, for the first time since she was ill, she actually began to laugh out loud. Veronica shrieked for a servant; she could tell the poor woman still needed rest.

  As Caenis expected, Vespasian never came. Fruit kept arriving in unmarked Sabine baskets for the next six months. She ate the fruit, but never responded. In the end he gave up.

  After all, it was nearly twenty years. A woman learns to cope. A woman knows she must.

  Until one day, when she has grown accustomed to life’s centrifugal drag, suddenly the earth tilts. And an elderly, dowdy, ordinary woman may find herself quite unexpectedly thrown off among the stars.

  PART FIVE:

  A HALF-DECENT COMPANION

  When the Caesar was Nero

  XXIX

  The Via Nomentana: sunlit on a lunchtime in September.

  A man walked steadily up one side of the road from the city, crossed at the Nomentana Gate, then walked slowly away again. In the main thoroughfare were baths and a public lavatory, and the local streetmarket, its stalls lively with poultry and singing birds. The pale round cheeses looked excellent and the fish were displayed on moist mats of da
rk green leaves in patterns of circles and stars; pilchards in basketfuls glittered like well-polished cutlery, crayfish peered out of wicker cages still alive, and gleaming blue-black mussels lay in buckets under the shade of the trestle tables. The man counted three sausage shops.

  This was a quiet little nook in the suburbs, cleaner and neater than many parts of Rome. All the shop porticos carried climbing plants, while window boxes frilled the balconies overhead with carnations and ivy, scillas, rosy balsam and hot-orange marigolds. Houseproud owners had swept any litter from the street; the gutters ran free; some of the pavements still shone wet where they had recently been washed. A pert brown dog sat outside a chandler’s looking interested, but made no move to investigate as the man passed again, once more heading for the gate.

  Outside the Porta Nomentana no one was about.

  This was better than where he lived himself in the Sixth District, the Alta Semita, the high quarter on the slopes of the Quirinal full of people who would like something better. Here there was the Praetorian Camp, to be sure, ringing with its aggressive racket by night and day, but apart from the occasional mausoleum along the main road there were only isolated market gardens, making the atmosphere open and airy. The man strolling up and down had lived not far away for years though he had not, until now, ever allowed his steady footsteps to bring him here.

  He attracted the attention of a fat woman who thought he was up to no good; he was clad in senatorial robes though for some reason he had turned up here with no escorting slaves. He looked out of place and shifty. The fat woman was pretending to hang rugs over her balcony while she made up her mind whether to send a slave running to summon the Vigiles. She did not know this was just the stubbornly eccentric ex-Consul Vespasian.

  Passing the chandler’s shop for the third or fourth time he quickened his step abruptly as if he had made up his mind, and dived out through the gate. A short walk brought him to a mansion which was obviously owned by somebody with money, although unlike his own peeling portal the stepped entrance was not crowned with triumphal insignia. In fact there was nothing to indicate who lived here.

  This house had blank walls facing the Nomentana Road, though their formidable air was relieved by the visible tops of trees in the internal courtyards. Reaching those peristyles and colonnades might not be easy; visitors were greeted by a solid, studded, massive black door. A fierce iron inspection-grille took the central position amidst much well-oiled furniture – workmanly hinges with massive pinions, lantern-hooks and locks. A tiled fingerplate warned of a crusty watchdog, though no barking began. Two stone tubs of nodding ferns flanked the white marble step, and the knocker took the form of a well-fed bronze dolphin with an encouraging curly grin.

  He knocked.

  Nothing happened. Indoors no one stirred. There was silence. This must be the time of day when door-porters around the Porta Nomentana ate their lunch and sorted out their gambling debts.

  He banged again, patiently. On a lattice beside the door there was a nasturtium which suffered badly from blackfly, still dripping where someone had sluiced it down to discourage them. In the distance above the market gardens a skylark was singing its heart out.

  Abruptly the porter, with his napkin under his chin, opened the door. He had not bothered to peer through the grille first. Coincidentally he was followed by a steward with an empty shopping basket, who took over as stewards like to do. The visitor watched them note his senatorial toga and then wonder why he seemed to own no slaves. Nobody owned no slaves at all; they put him down as a careless type who had lost his escort in the Forum crush.

  They all three held an interesting conversation in which the unattended senator claimed to be a friend of the lady of the house but refused to give his name, while the steward satirically pretended she was not at home. When they grew bored, the steward admitted she was there, asleep, then threatened to wake her up.

  ‘Mars Ultor!’ exclaimed this man who claimed to know her. ‘Don’t do that. Her temper’s poisonous if anyone breaks her nap!’

  The steward and the porter gazed at each other in surprise, then both agreed that the stranger could be invited in. He knew her; there was no doubt of that.

  Everywhere was spotless. There was a light hall, with a half-length bust of Antonia when young, surrounded by flower petals. Somewhere in the distance a musician was playing a flute. The steward led the visitor across an expensive mosaic floor, around the marbled atrium pool and past several doors opened to allow any breeze to cool the house, then into a feminine sitting room painted in panels of a soft honey-beige with delicate borders of crimson ribboning. Here, apparently, he could wait.

  There was a couch, strewn with casual cushions, or two sloping women’s chairs. He took the couch but sat, so he could watch the door. At his elbow appeared a bronze tripod table with the latest Gazette and a glossy ceramic bowl of fruit. He declined other refreshment but was shown a silver gong to ring if he changed his mind. Once he had gained admittance everything was done with unfussed efficiency. This seemed a comfortable, cheery sort of house: nothing too brash or too opulent, though all chosen with a good eye. The lampstands were rare Etruscan antiques. The slaves were content; their manners businesslike.

  He ate two of the apples because they smelled so fresh and good, then after a moment’s hesitation stowed the stalks on the rim of a lamp. He deduced this was a house where no one would mind if a stranger put his fruit-cores in the wrong place.

  It was wonderfully restful. He felt liable to doze. With an effort he managed to stay the right side of sleep to hear any movement outside. So, when the sunlight finally moved around until it fell through the slatted shutters of a bedroom in another part of the house, he did catch the distant tinkle of a light bell and knew she must be awake.

  Very soon afterwards came swift footsteps in the corridor outside.

  The door began to open. Outside a familiar voice spoke tersely. He folded his arms. The lady of the house walked in.

  She was a middle-aged woman with lucid eyes set in a calm expression. It was deceptive; she was trained to appear tranquil in public. Not tall, not beautiful, she moved with self-contained assurance though her rig was far from ornate: a green-grape gown and a bangle she had owned for years. Her hair, still dark but with fine silver wings above the ears, was rolled simply for an afternoon at home, then speared in place with a couple of wooden combs. A whisk of some clear, pleasant perfume enlivened the room as she entered. Behind her shoulder the steward ogled anxiously.

  She had recovered from her illness but seemed quieter than ever before. After the first few seconds Vespasian really did not register that she was older, and heavier, and perhaps her spirit was more tired. She was herself. For him, nothing about her that mattered would ever change. His breathing quickened; his brows knit.

  She had obviously guessed who it must be. For old times’ sake he rather hoped she would exclaim, ‘Skip over the Styx; you’re not allowed in here!’ But age and polite manners overtake everyone.

  ‘Hello, Caenis.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Consul.’ Caenis insulted him with the title she must know had expired. ‘Please don’t get up.’

  She could probably tell it had not until that moment struck him that he ought to rise. She was a freedwoman, one of some standing and in her own house; her house, to which she had stubbornly declined to invite him. Her voice sounded steady. It was only in the set of her mouth that an old acquaintance could identify irritation and distaste.

  ‘Aglaus, you should have recognised this gentleman; his stature is in the Forum of Augustus – though perhaps when you’re scuttling to and fro you never glance above their noble marble feet. This one is Flavius Vespasianus – the Hero of Britain.’

  The Hero of Britain twitched his living feet and decided that everything was going to be a great deal more difficult than he had hoped.

  There were fairly decent women, Vespasian knew since they had already made the situation plain to him, who would readily tolerate
a man of forty-six if his statue stood in the Forum of Augustus and he was entitled to wear a triumphal wreath at public festivals. They would expect him to give them money (he had learnt this too from experience) and he believed it unlikely that any of them would want to stay friends – if that was the correct designation for such types – for as long as twenty years.

  It never once occurred to him that Antonia Caenis might no longer be his friend.

  Nor after twenty years was he surprised to find her angry; she had been angry all her life, Narcissus had told him that. Resting his chin on one hand, watching her while she briskly dismissed her servant, he noticed changes – particularly in the assured way she moved, here in her home, and the low tenor of her voice as she spoke familiarly to the steward. He noticed too, with an internal burn of excitement, what had not changed about this woman: that her scowl made him smile; that her hard edge made him soft; that merely to sit in her presence for a few moments had brought him peace, and a sense of wellbeing he had not known for years.

  That was when he knew he still thought, What an interesting girl!

  XXX

  Caenis had been furious when they told her he was here.

  After her nap she was as usual well-tempered, joking with Chloe as the girl massaged her throat: ‘Rub the oil well in, girl; if the neck’s half decent I may get away with an antique face – strong cheese: intriguingly mature!’

  Then Aglaus appeared, looking oddly smug. ‘Madam, someone came to see you. I don’t know his name.’ She had told him before, he would make a poor secretary.

  ‘A man,’ Chloe informed her. ‘He says, a friend!’

  People liked Caenis, but she had always limited her friends. Her standards were too high; her patience and her temper both too short. She scoffed, ‘A brave man then!’