The Course of Honour Read online

  The legions in Moesia, who happened to include the Third Gallica, a group of stout characters recently sent there from Syria, sat down sensibly with a list of all the Roman governors and senior ex-consuls who might be eligible for their support. One by one they crossed these off as unsuitable. At the end a single name remained. They held a democratic vote. The man’s popularity was unanimously confirmed. The legions in Moesia methodically stripped their standards of the plaques that bore the dead Otho’s name, then nailed up instead the title of the new Emperor they had chosen for themselves.

  His name was:

  VESPASIAN.

  On 1 July Tiberius Alexander, the Prefect of Egypt, to whom Vespasian had written tentatively sounding out his views, made those views plain. Alexander was an equestrian who had risen to great position; he had started life as a freedman of Antonia’s, so he had an inevitable loyalty to those who had enjoyed her patronage. Tiberius Alexander called upon his own legions to hail Vespasian as Emperor.

  Meanwhile the legions in Moesia were persuading their neighbours in Pannonia to join their cause; their Pannonian neighbours encouraged the legions in Dalmatia to do the same. One by one provinces and kingdoms followed them – Asia, Achaea, Cappadocia and Galatia – until a complete crescent surrounding the far end of the Mediterranean had declared for the eastern Emperor. Spain was friendly to Vespasian; Britain too. On the morning of 3 July in Judaea Vespasian’s own soldiers decided of their own accord to stop greeting him as governor. When he came out from his bedroom his bodyguard exchanged quick glances, saluted him, ‘Caesar!’ then defied him to put them all on a charge.

  Vespasian spoke to them quietly, in his soldierly manner. The word spread: he had accepted the nomination. On the same day, without even waiting for Titus to return from a liaison trip to Syria, he received the oath of allegiance himself from his own delighted troops. It was reported to Caenis that Vespasian had looked pleased but bewildered.

  In Rome, Vitellius censored any mention of Vespasian’s name. It was pointless; everybody knew. There would be another civil war. If Vespasian lost it he, his two sons, probably his brother, and possibly even his brother’s children too, would die. If he died, far away, Caenis would not even attend his funeral.

  If he survived, it would be far worse for her.

  She believed there was no better man in the Empire to undertake this role. She also knew there would be no question any longer that Vespasian could allow a freedwoman to share his life. Like Nero’s Actë, as a common girl who bore no grudges she might be suitable to entertain him occasionally – but only within carefully defined sexual limits. The very qualities that had once brought him back to her, the decent temperament that made him ideal to govern, would inevitably take him from her now. Vespasian would behave as an emperor should. Their fine, equal partnership would be broken. She had received from fortune the greatest gift she could ever expect. She had enjoyed it for longer than a decade; now she had to give it back.

  She said to Aglaus, when she granted him his freedom, ‘I have decided it would be best if I moved back to my own house in the Via Nomentana. Perhaps you could mention it for me to the leaseholder.’

  Aglaus knew she had continued to pay her ground rent all this time. He had organised it for her himself. It was supposed never to be mentioned, though Aglaus understood that Vespasian knew. Two men together, Vespasian and Aglaus had quietly agreed: independent that one. She did not trust her luck. She had had every faith in Vespasian, but none in life.

  Aglaus was an excellent steward; he had paid her rent discreetly and refrained from teasing her. Caenis was therefore surprised, even though his new status as a free citizen allowed him greater frankness, when he replied bleakly, ‘I think you’ll want to explain that to the leaseholder yourself.’

  Not for the first time that year, Caenis went cold.

  Aglaus braced himself and told her: ‘Well, it’s not necessary, actually. The lease was acquired by someone else. Vespasian bought it, just before you went to Africa; that was one of the reasons he was so short of cash. He told me, and told me to explain it to you if anything ever happened to him – I don’t think the present business was what he really had in mind! He rewrote his will at the same time to provide for you, but he wanted you to have something of your own in case anything went wrong. The estate is yours; it’s been yours for years. He bought it, but the deeds are in your name.’

  Caenis stared. For some reason she suddenly remembered Marius Pomponius Gallus, the man she was supposed to have married, who left her in his will (as Vespasian said at the time) little more than the price of a new hat.

  ‘You had better tell me,’ she commented coolly, ‘exactly what you and that old miser have been doing with my rent.’

  ‘Bank account in the Forum – also in your name – I can tell you the number: bit of capital for you, he said.’ Aglaus smiled. Clearly he felt confident that he possessed legitimate orders from the master of their household. How like a man. ‘It wasn’t just that he thought he might die first. He told me you might one day get tired of him –’

  ‘Hah!’ retorted Caenis briskly.

  Aglaus only smiled again. He looked tired; he was worried about her. ‘He wanted you to be secure if you upped and left.’ Well, she was doing that. There was an aching silence. ‘May I ask you something, madam? Have you given me my freedom because you think my loyalty to Vespasian is greater than my loyalty to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Caenis.

  She had done, of course. Because he was her gift from Narcissus, she had gone on keeping Aglaus long after she knew he deserved his release. Now with the world in tumult she did not blame him if he wanted to throw in his lot with the Emperor he admired; she had decided to allow him the choice. Besides, she wanted to be free herself to act without pressure from his frank sarcasm and disapproving scowl.

  ‘You and the new Emperor seem very close!’

  He did look sheepish. With Aglaus this was a rare sight. But he said, speaking in a low voice with a steadiness he obviously copied from Vespasian, ‘The new Emperor and I, madam, always had an interest in common.’

  Caenis ignored that.

  Perhaps for the first time she was acknowledging the change in their position. As his patron now, she sought his candid advice: ‘Are you suggesting I am making a mistake?’

  Her freedman’s courage grew. ‘No,’ Aglaus replied quietly, for he knew better than anybody how high her standards were. ‘You cannot be an embarrassment to him. We have both lived in that Palace. We know the filthy rules. There is no place for us now with Vespasian. You are right, madam; time to go home.’

  Once again, therefore, Caenis was living on her own. At the time when she moved, no one looked askance. Rome was in chaos. There were soldiers everywhere, filling the camps, bunking down in the Porticos, cluttering up temple forecourts with bivouacs and braziers, billeting themselves willy-nilly on private citizens. Officers dashed about with unnecessary escorts, showing off. By day the streets were full of bored German and Gallic auxiliaries – shaggy lumps in animal skins, peering into shops, jostling passers-by, squabbling over prostitutes, and tripping over the kerb-stones of the unfamiliar pavements. They swam in the river until they all caught fever and started an epidemic. Every night came sounds of looting. Soon all the best mansions were abandoned and boarded up. There were regular fires. Scarpering from the home of such a prominent man seemed a wise move. In fact Aglaus asked to come too.

  Since she now understood that he thought he had a mission, Caenis did not forbid it. He was wrong, of course: Caenis would look after herself.

  It took six months to conclude the civil war; six months of deprivation in the country and terror in Rome, to bring Vitellius within sight of abdication.

  It was during that time Veronica became ill. She knew, as Caenis did, that she would die. Caenis went to see her.

  ‘Well, Veronica: here’s some lovely Sabine fruit!’

  Pain was sculpted on every line of Veronica’s once-exqui
site face. Her bones stood; the flesh had started to shrink. She would not last until Vespasian reached Rome. Her beauty had become a ruin of its former self, clad in the remnants of her vitality like the soft muffling of lichen on fallen stones.

  ‘Oh thanks! Good of you to come. Talk to me, Caenis. Make me laugh; make me angry; anything to make me forget! Tell me about that dangerous man of yours!’

  Caenis had hoped to avoid a confrontation with Veronica. ‘I’m a freedwoman,’ she stated crisply. ‘Vespasian was never mine.’

  Veronica interpreted this in her own style. ‘Hah! She’s talking about the abundantly equipped Queen of Judaea.’

  The beautiful Berenice had apparently made all speed to offer Vespasian her most generous support. Handy to own a fleet, Caenis thought. ‘Leave it!’ she warned.

  Veronica scoffed. ‘What, like some dead thing my cat has dropped between us on the tiles, which we pretend we haven’t seen? Queen Berenice – the wonder of our age . . . Be wise; ignore it. May not even be true.’ She changed her tone to a confidential mutter. ‘Is he coming yet?’

  Caenis resisted the request to be drawn into indiscretion. It was easy enough; she knew little. Vespasian rarely wrote to her now. His last brief colourless note merely told her he was well. He said he missed her; she doubted that. She had not replied.

  She contented herself with what was, despite all the censorship, common knowledge. ‘No. He’s not coming. Generals we have never heard of, dear, are marching on Italy with legions who worship exotic gods from countries we can hardly find on the map.’

  ‘So what’s happening?’

  ‘As far as I can understand it – there is no formal news from the east, but Sabinus lets me know what he can – the plan is that Vespasian will sail to Egypt to batten down the winter corn supply that’s intended for Italy. Bread is running short already; the profiteers seem to have grasped the point with their usual smart business sense. A general called Antonius Primus is invading northern Italy with all the Balkan legions, while this person Mucianus has crossed the Hellespont and will turn up unexpectedly somewhere on the eastern coast. Primus is nicknamed Beaky and has some kind of criminal record though that did not deter Nero from giving him a legion, while Mucianus is a silky orator who sleeps with anything that moves, preferably male. Perhaps Vespasian hopes by contrast to appear immaculate.’

  ‘Stodgy old bastard! I don’t know how you put up with him.’

  ‘Here as you know, Vitellius’ rough-necks tear Rome apart and poor Sabinus, who has been elected Prefect of the City yet again, struggles to keep public order and loyally obey the man whom his own brother is opposing. Ludicrous! How wise of you, my darling, to keep indoors.’

  Veronica had listened with half her attention. ‘He’ll do it, your man. I see that now. This was always what he was waiting for. It’s wonderful.’

  Caenis asked drily, ‘Bit of a change of heart, dear?’

  ‘I,’ said Veronica proudly, ‘am loyal to my Emperor!’ Then she pleaded almost, for she knew perfectly well what attitude Caenis was bound to take: ‘Oh I’m a drab hag deteriorating on a faded couch, with cold feet and a dying brain – but it warms me to think of you, a Caesar’s darling! Caenis, you must do this. You owe it to all the girls in all the Palaces who sleep on flea-ridden pallets on stone ledges in cold cells, and who live by the hope that one day they will rise to a better place –’

  Caenis could bear it no longer. Her own girlish dreams of breaking her shackles and stalking some throne room in a damask dress and a tasteless ruby coronet were long dead. All she wanted was to share her daily life with a man whose face brightened when he saw her. She finally told Veronica the truth. ‘Pensioned off, dear.’

  ‘Never!’

  They began to argue, which was what Caenis had dreaded. ‘Look, Veronica, he and I shared our lives on equal terms; for over ten years. Few wives are as close to their husbands as I was to him. How can I accept less?’

  ‘He took you back.’

  ‘He took me back while he was a private citizen.’

  ‘Into his house.’

  ‘But there’s no place for me in his Palace.’

  ‘Juno, Caenis; how can you be so stupid – how can you be so calm?’

  ‘Realistic.’

  ‘Mad.’

  Caenis suddenly snapped. She cried out to her friend, whom she would probably not see in any lucid state again, as she had never allowed herself to do before: ‘Oh I am not calm, girl! It’s the bitterest of ironies and I am very angry! A freedwoman; oh Juno, Veronica, I would be better as his slave – then at least he could keep me where he lives without public offence. This is impossible. Once I did accept that I had lost him; I learnt to exist without him. I’m too old now to face all that anguish again. I’m too tired. I’m too frightened of what it will be like, never again having him there. I haven’t any strength to deal with this.’ Her voice dropped to an even more painful note. ‘I hope he stays in the East; I hope he never comes. I tell you, I would sooner lose him to Queen Berenice, who married her uncle and sleeps with her brother, than have to see Vespasian in Rome as a stranger!’

  Struggling to raise herself on one pitifully thin arm, Veronica complained in bewilderment, ‘But he cares for you!’

  ‘Of course he does!’ Caenis bellowed. ‘I know it; even he knows. He came back for me after half a lifetime. I was stout, and grey-haired, nasty-tempered and the wrong social class, but back he came. I cannot pretend any longer that the man did not care!’

  ‘You were never stout,’ murmured her loyal friend.

  Caenis careered on heedlessly. ‘So here I am, just where I was thirty years ago; worse, because I actually know now how he cares! Yet I have to stand back again, knowing what it means. I have to watch his face – oh his poor sorry face – while that dear good man, the only straightforward honest man that I have ever met, tells me all over again that he must let me go!’

  The silence rang through Veronica’s house.

  Caenis went home.

  XXXIX

  The last time Caenis saw Flavius Sabinus there was a violent rainstorm in the streets. It had been a terrible winter, with disastrous floods sweeping across the low ground on the Tiber’s left bank. The Prefect of the City came wearily into her quiet room, where the rain could only just be heard outside the windows; she brought him at once to the intimate circle of a hot charcoal brazier to dry off and warm his ancient bones.

  It was December in that eventful year. The week before, Caenis had lost a tooth; it was preoccupying her pathetically. As she huddled in a wrap Sabinus pulled back his cheek to show her a half-row of his own missing, so then they laughed and compared notes on the onset of pains, on the fading of appetites, on the lightness of sleep. Caenis flexed her finger knuckles where they were shiny and sore, probably not with chilblains as she pretended, but rheumatism.

  ‘Came to see how you were, lass.’ She was tired. She kept waking in the night from her dream about Britannicus and Titus. ‘Domitian should be keeping an eye on you but he’s far too busy seducing senators’ wives.’

  Vitellius had placed Domitian under house arrest, though he still managed to act the imperial lad-about-town. His father’s rise had gone to Domitian’s head, unlike Titus, who was by all accounts taking it sensibly. Titus was to take over as commander-in-chief in Judaea. He would be responsible for the siege of Jerusalem, though for the time being he remained in Alexandria with the Emperor. Domitian was stuck here with his fussy uncle Sabinus, and no real public role.

  Vespasian had no intention of leaving Egypt yet, as far as anyone knew. In his absence his status in Rome steadily grew. News from Italy carried east, but during the winter Vitellius could obtain no intelligence the other way. The silence enhanced Vespasian’s mystique. Meanwhile the grain shortage was beginning to tell; when Vespasian came with the cornships he would be eagerly welcomed by a starving populace.

  The armed struggle that had occupied the previous six months was best not remembered. Rome’s ca
sual attitude to dispatching other races was matched by a poignant reverence for the shedding of its own citizens’ blood. For legion to fight legion, brother to die at brother’s hand, racked Italy and the city both.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ Caenis told Sabinus. ‘Your position as City Prefect must be dreadful.’

  It was Rome that wanted Sabinus to continue in his post; for Rome he felt obliged to do it. Sabinus was held in great reverence, greater than his brother if the truth were told. His first stint of governing the city had been three years; now he had done it for another eight.

  ‘Well. Exciting times!’

  In his way he glossed over the problem. He remained a gentle, pleasant, well-respected, well-intentioned man, who was desperately trying to reconcile Vitellius to the inevitable without further bloodshed or disruption in the capital. ‘I do my best.’ He stared into the brazier, holding out his hands to the warmth. The red glow gleamed on his troubled face. Any frown, like his restrained smile, brought out a momentary likeness to his famous brother.

  ‘You do wonders. But, Sabinus!’

  For an instant Caenis had glimpsed that he was an old man carried on by an outgrown reputation, an old man rightly afraid he was at the verge of losing his grip.

  ‘I know. They listen to me, Caenis; well, I hope they do.’

  They did – so far.

  Rain lashed the small windowpanes in long, beaded diagonal streaks. They talked for a time about the news that was filtering through, particularly about the sack of Cremona. In a display of spectacular generalship, Vespasian’s man Antonius Primus had crossed the Pannonian Alps, established his headquarters at Verona, then defeated a large Vitellian army at Bedriacum, the scene of their own victory over Otho; the price was a disastrous siege of Cremona nearby, culminating in an immense fire.