The Course of Honour Page 7

  ‘Worse.’

  Disturbed, he saw the dismal memories clouding Caenis’ face.

  She braced herself to cope. She had never expressed her views on Tiberius; it had never been safe. Yet in Vespasian she placed absolute trust. To him she could speak. ‘I was a child when he last lived here, but those years were very dark. His household existed in dread. He was most intrigued by persuading the aristocracy to commit obscenities, but no slave carried him a cup of wine or was sent to fasten his shoe without the risk of being stripped and subjected to indecency – either by him or the men and women who surrounded him. No one could save you if you attracted attention. Childhood was no protection. Ordinary rape was a kindness compared with the alternatives.’

  In the schoolroom she herself had been relatively safe. Even so, as a teenager she had always carried her stylus knife so if she ever met trouble she could stab herself and perhaps take one of the Emperor’s catamites with her. One of her friends had died of suffocation and shock during an ugly ordeal in the Emperor’s underground entertainment room. Caenis would not repeat the details.

  Vespasian walked slowly back to where she sat. Leering curiosity had given way to middle-class distaste. His face remained neutral though Caenis sensed the concealed throb of anger. ‘Not you, I hope?’

  ‘No,’ she reassured him sombrely, with all the colour bleached from her own voice. Simply talking to him had healed her bad memories. ‘Not me.’

  She noticed a small nerve jerk in his cheek.

  He sat down again. They changed the subject.

  They spoke of Crete. They discussed the problems of running a province that was divided between a Mediterranean island and a tract of North Africa; the main advantage for the quaestor was that he could always send his governor to bumble round the other half of the territory while he enjoyed himself.

  They spoke of Vespasian’s mother. ‘Is she fabulously pleased with you now?’

  ‘Afraid so!’

  They had become confederates. They were talking like two outsiders from society. They talked for the months they had already missed and the period of Vespasian’s coming tour; openly and easily, sharing rudeness and laughter, discovery and surprise; until lunchtime, through lunchtime, and into the afternoon. They talked until they were tired.

  Then they sat, two friendly companions just leaning their chins on their hands.

  There were no sounds of habitation. It was so quiet they could hear the creak of walls contracting in the winter chill and birdsong – a thrush perhaps – from a far-off deserted park.

  ‘Oh gods, Caenis; this is no good –’ He flung out his arm across her table, stretching his hand towards her. ‘Come here!’

  ‘No!’ Caenis exclaimed. She shrank back from him instinctively.

  Their eyes locked. His hand dropped. He sighed; so did she.

  ‘All right. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re going away!’ she cried.

  They sat in silence again, but their encounter had brought them so close Caenis suddenly confessed with desperate clarity, ‘I am afraid of what I feel.’

  She should never have done it. She saw his face set. Men hated any admission of emotion. Men were terrified of the truth.

  Not this one.

  ‘So am I,’ he acknowledged. ‘But there seems nothing to gain by ignoring it.’ Fiddling with her sticks of sealing wax, his tone was deliberately level. ‘Are you still asking me to leave you alone?’

  ‘I should,’ Caenis returned carefully as she too found herself staring at the edge of the table. ‘You know I am not.’

  Though he wanted to disguise it, his gratitude was unmistakable. They both looked up again. Nothing had happened, yet everything had changed. They both smiled a little at their shared sense of helplessness.

  Flavius Vespasianus was not a man anyone would expect to hold this kind of conversation. To Caenis he seemed too mature, too good-humoured, too cynical to be touched by internal conflict or uncertainty. Yet he was stubbornly himself.

  ‘Hmm! I’m going away,’ he agreed with a murmur of regret. ‘What a shame!’

  After another pause he threw back his heavy head, his eyes on her all the time. ‘Oh lass; I ought to leave you!’

  ‘You must. I need to do my work.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ Yet he was already standing. They persuaded one another into sense; they always would.

  Caenis had to finish correcting the copyists’ work. She clambered to her feet and came round politely to take her visitor to the door. It was the first time she felt easy standing so near to him. Before he lifted the latch he turned back to her, smiling as he warned, ‘I’m going away – but I shall be coming back!’

  Expecting him to make some more determined move, she was startled when he carefully clasped both her hands in his while he stood, looking at her; making her look at him; keeping her close. Any other man gazing at her so intently would have made some declaration. Not Vespasian. It was illegal and impossible; Caenis accepted that he never would.

  Instead, just before he released her he leant forward and kissed her, very lightly, on the cheek. It was not a lover’s kiss. Nor was this formal social statement something a slavegirl would ever expect to receive from a young man of senatorial rank. This was how he must salute his mother and grandmother, how a man of his class would greet a daughter, a sister, or a wife: it was the gesture, between equals, of genuine affection and respect.

  PART TWO:

  ANTONIA CAENIS

  When the Caesars were Tiberius and Caligula

  IX

  A windswept day in July. A senator, not yet thirty, bronzed from provincial service but today swaddled against the unseasonable gusts in a long brown hooded cloak with a heavy nap, walked into the Imperial Palace. He left his meagre escort of slaves at the entrance then proceeded alone. His pace slowed, more with reminiscence than uncertainty.

  Tiberius still lived on Capri. There was, however, an official correspondence bureau here where the young senator conducted some perfunctory business in connection with his end-of-tour report. The secretary in charge, a Greek freedman called Glaucus, dealt with him restlessly; he found quaestors’ financial statements thin on detail, loosely written, lackadaisical in style.

  ‘You’ve missed your date badly with this.’

  ‘Sorry. The new man for Crete was held up by wind and weather. I had to wait out there. Not a lot I could do about that.’ His mildness was even more upsetting than the usual insolence.

  Bitterly the secretary unravelled the report. By the stylish standards of this bureau it would be only a draft; Glaucus would work it over furiously before it was copied for the Emperor and filed. Most of the bored young sprats with whom he was forced to deal would never dream of disappointing his lifetime sense of outrage by producing anything remotely adequate. They were intensely competitive yet had no idea of disciplined hard work.

  This one seemed to have grasped the point. If anything it made Glaucus more venomous. He asked his trick question: where was the breakdown of expenditure on entertaining distinguished visitors?

  ‘Appendix at the end.’

  On rare occasions Glaucus was compelled to endure the prospect of a sprat who looked certain to go far.

  Once he was released from his debriefing, the ex-quaestor turned deeper into the Palace interior. Strolling through the poorly swept corridors he passed faded staterooms long commandeered as stores. He took time to reorientate himself, but was soon nosing at that measured pace along a familiar route. He found the door he remembered. He knocked slightly; listened; his face cleared in anticipation; he went in.

  Caenis was not there.

  Everything had subtly changed. He had expected improvements (more of her ‘nudging’) yet still felt bemused. The light was muffled by a fug from two charcoal braziers; at last her room was warm. Opposite the door there now reposed a respectable table on marble feet, empty except for a bronze candelabrum in the form of a slim nymph with a look of dishevelled surprise.


  There were two places on one side of the room; at each sat a smart young female scribe. Their training must be tiptop and their supervisor obviously kept a strong grip even when she was out. These girls were polite, wary, helpful, nicely spoken little things. They asked his name, though he did not tell them, then they repeated the question, though he still pretended to be deaf. Caenis would be furious with them for letting him get away with it.

  He had only just missed her. Her girls, who were called Phania and Melpomene, thought she was dropping in at the Library of Octavia on her way home for lunch with Antonia; afterwards her nap, of course (Oh of course!), then probably to the baths to meet her friend. Phania and Melpomene related all this, without giggling, even though they realised that this must be the man who wrote to Caenis from Crete. Hoping to discover secrets, they offered to take a message; they offered to let him leave a note. He thanked them, but declined both offers, and he was still frowning as he collected his escort and left.

  Rome had its quiet places.

  He stepped from the pushing turmoil of the street into one of the dusty gardens that were open to the public, where the street-traders’ cries immediately dropped to a distant background hum as if a giant door curtain had just swung closed across the garden gate. Even in Rome a man could stand and think.

  Then, forcing a path along the Via Triumphalis – the same way he had once strolled to the Theatre of Balbus with Caenis at his heels – he came to the great open spaces of the Ninth District where no one was allowed to live except the caretakers of the public buildings and the priests at the temples and monuments. Plenty of people came this way, but once past the elegant Theatre of Marcellus this was another area where the noise dimmed and the pace of daily life pleasantly slowed. On the Field of Mars returning armies traditionally rested and polished up their trophies before their triumphal entry into Rome. The princes of the Empire and their chief men had established their memorial buildings here: the Theatre of Pompey, the Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, and the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  Here too, in a muted corner of the city between that curve in the river and the dominating double heights of Capitol Hill, stood a series of monumental enclosures, the Porticos. Cool marble colonnades surrounded squares containing temples or planted groves, their internal walls adorned with magnificent frescos and their quiet cloisters filled with two centuries of booty from Egypt, Asia Minor and Greece. First on the right was the Portico of Octavia, produced by Augustus in honour of his sister; within its Corinthian columns he had deposited half the workshop of the sculptors Pasiteles and Dionysius, plus some of the finest antiques a civilised collector ever managed to loot, including a Venus and a Cupid of Praxiteles. It contained temples to Jupiter and Juno, and schools. This Portico also boasted a superbly endowed public library.

  The searcher rested, his feet upon crisply frosted grass, his face upturned to the open sky, creamy as papyrus with the faint threat of rain. He gazed absently at Lysippus’ slender group of Alexander and his generals conferring before the Battle of Granicus. Then once again he left his slaves outside, some squatting on their haunches and others lounging out of the wind beside the mighty columns, staring at passers-by.

  The reading room was huge: thousands of manuscript rolls set into the walls like doves in a columbarium, guarded by humourless busts of safely dead historians and poets. He noticed a roped-off area where a major reorganisation was in hand. Caenis could well be involved with this; she was the sort of girl anybody would ask to help.

  He invented an excuse to potter about, enlisting advice from the custodian of maps. ‘Granicus, sir? Is that somewhere near the Bosphorus? No, here we are – it’s on the Sea of Marmora.’

  ‘Thanks. Stupid of me. Must have plodded through Alexander’s campaigns often enough at school.’

  A familiar shape on a mapskin arrested him. Caenis had called the island a scrawny goose braised in a swordfish pot: ‘Somebody interested in Crete?’

  ‘Just been returned, sir.’ The custodian looked sheepish. ‘We don’t normally loan out the maps.’

  ‘Nudged into it, eh?’ The custodian pretended not to understand him. ‘What’s that racket over there?’

  ‘Overhauling the main catalogue, sir; quite a task. A lady who is helping reminded us about the two hundred thousand volumes Mark Antony lifted from the Library at Pergamum. Some poor dog must have recorded those! She said, did we realise that Cleopatra was just a girl who liked to curl up with a good read . . .’ He subsided into giggles.

  After a worrying pause the senator abruptly grinned too, transfiguring his face. ‘Sounds like Caenis!’ He could hear her voice in his head, deceptive and crisp, as she made the daft comment. ‘Is she here?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Another pause.

  Eighteen months abroad was nothing to a man who had already lived away from home, doing his military service at a much younger, more impressionable age. Who could say what eighteen months might bring to an ambitious female slave?

  He had expected Caenis to make her way. Yet there seemed an odd discrepancy today. He had marked her as a worker. Now she seemed to rely on others, while she merely went flitting from place to place never needing to lift her pen; for a slave she was taking horribly public risks.

  ‘Speaking of Caenis – I have something of hers I borrowed.’

  ‘You could drop in on her at Antonia’s house, sir. You might be offered lunch!’

  A much longer pause: Antonia’s house? Drop in? Lunch?

  On rare occasions elderly citizens grew so incapable of managing their own affairs that unscrupulous slaves took over their property and ruled like monarchs in their homes, while the senile patrons were locked away in little rooms and starved . . . Still Antonia had family to protect her interests. Her son Claudius, though kept from public life, was an author and antiquarian – perfectly fit to supervise if ever his mother’s capacities failed. And not Caenis, surely? Caenis could not be capable of abusing an old woman.

  ‘Thanks!’ the senator contented himself with saying sternly in reply.

  He went home. He had lunch by himself.

  There were two hundred public bathhouses in Rome. Fortunately Phania and Melpomene had mentioned which one Caenis used.

  He was struggling down the Clivus Tuscus from the main Roman Forum, dragging his tired train of attendants like a magpie’s unwieldy tail, when Cornelius Capito came out of the bookshop on the corner, hailed him and tagged along. By then the baths were in sight, so he stopped to converse as a man was supposed to do. A detachment of Guards came tramping straight up the centre of the road, grinding down anyone who meandered in their path; as the grumbling crowds pressed back into the gutters, Vespasian and Capito moved under the awning of a wineshop. Vespasian propped himself on the counter with its inset jars of red and white beverages; he paid for warmed measures for his acquaintance and himself, then spun a coin to the captain of his slaves so they too organised a round, glancing at him sideways, unable to believe their luck.

  Vespasian’s slaves knew now that there was a woman on his mind. They were still not sure if it was any particular one.

  Capito gossiped happily of libel actions, charioteers, trade, the elections, his mother-in-law, his gambling debts, his barber’s new Gallic pomades. A companion rarely had to answer him; he just liked a body there to spare him the ignominy of talking to himself . . .

  There were two young women standing on the bathhouse steps.

  ‘What’s up?’ Capito demanded, when his companion’s cursory attention dried up altogether. He bore no malice; he was only surprised that Vespasian had troubled himself to loiter so long. The man was affable, but not renowned for chat.

  ‘Wonder if I know that girl?’

  Capito came to his shoulder.

  One was a blonde, flimsily wrapped in a riveting crimson robe, with parcels spilling around her feet. She was exquisite, and no doubt exquisitely expensive. Cataracts of silver tumbled from her ears,
flashing like cymbals in an amphitheatre parade; filigree ropes wound over her dramatic chest. She remained bare-faced and bare-headed, ignoring passers-by while the bead-sellers, the augurs’ bowl boys, the plasterers, pastry chefs and pensioned-off centurions all longingly stared at her.

  ‘It’s Veronica,’ announced Capito. At once a number of necks craned dangerously amongst their slaves. ‘Much sought after, and amenable to being sought! Want an introduction?’

  The other debated the offer as long as was polite. His slaves watched him curiously, keen for him to try his luck. They knew that when he chose he never went short. They also knew that he reckoned never to pay.

  ‘Not my type.’ He stroked his chin. Capito laughed.

  Even from halfway down the street, Veronica’s companion looked wondrously dignified.

  The second girl – hardly a girl now – was wound several times in modest layers of cloth, wrapped around her body and over her head until her shape was completely disguised and her face invisible. Even so, that fine way she stood was all her own. Capito had said nothing about her. Nor did Vespasian. ‘Thanks, Capito.’

  With a nod to his escort, he shed everyone and began to work nearer up the street.

  He was waiting for the women to separate but despite the poor weather they were dawdling on the steps. He stopped, side-stepping under the portico of a butcher’s shop, pretending to eye up a rack of Spanish hams.

  At last: Veronica was being collected by a double sedan chair; behind its opaque talc windows lurked a shadowy figure, no doubt some well-gilded crab. She scrambled aboard. The other woman patiently helped hand in the parcels, then leant forwards to allow herself to be kissed goodbye. As she straightened, her mantle fell back from her head. It was definitely Caenis.

  She looked different.

  This Caenis had parted her hair in the middle, twisted back interesting loops above her ears with glinting combs, then pinned up all the rest in fantastic plaits. With a man’s eccentricity he wondered first of all why? – before he realised from the smart, poised, elegant set of her head exactly why: that was how Caenis had been born to look. The real question was: who paid for her hairdresser?