The Course of Honour (14 page)

Vespasian, calmer now, came up behind her. He tickled her neck with a great piece of grass; Caenis took no notice.

‘Whatever are you doing?'

‘Looking at the emptiness—so much sky!' She had never been out of the city before.

Vespasian scratched his ear, amazed.

Cosa was eighty miles north from Rome as the crow flies, more by road. An imperial courier could have covered the distance easily in two days with time to spare for a meal, a bath and a massage in the
mansio
; not so the Flavian mules. Trailing at a crawl through Tarquinii, Vespasian muttered they would all go home by sea.

Cape Cosa unfurled out into the ocean on a stout stem like a bullock's ear. The town lay just to the south, where the peninsula joined the land, with a strange lagoon filled with light as green as bottle-glass. Small boys, like Vespasian himself years before, jumped tirelessly into the clear water then raced back along the mole to jump in again. Cosa was a neat Greek-founded sea town with an unhurried atmosphere. Vespasian's grandmother's estate lay a little way to the east. It was perfectly obvious this would always be his favourite place.

Afterwards Caenis rarely spoke of the time she had spent at Cosa. She knew it was their one chance to live together in the same house. She glimpsed Vespasian as he was at home; watched the full span of
his day in its regular rhythm from waking before dawn, through correspondence in the morning, lunch and a siesta in bed with her, then a bath and his cheerful dinner at night. She observed the good-humoured mistrust between him and his slaves—he expecting to be cheated, they grumbling at his miserliness—yet all somehow rubbing along together loyally for years; if he was mocked by other people, they knew he also mocked himself. People who dealt with him regularly all accepted the man as he was.

He showed Caenis the places that held memories of his childhood, the objects about the house that recalled his grandmother. He was preserving the villa as it had always been. It was his festival place. Here his face lightened; his intensity relaxed. He was visibly happy; and seeing him so made Caenis set aside her own doubts in order to be happy with him.

Most people, Caenis supposed, existed in their hopes for the future; she could never do that. She must live for the present. At least now she would never again be someone with no past. She too would have, if she could bear them, affectionate memories to carry forward to her old age.

 

They did go home by sea. Caenis liked sailing even more than travelling overland.

By the time they came into Rome from Ostia it was all she could do to disguise her gathering misery. This was not simply because she had been forced to view so closely all she could never possess. She thought she knew why Vespasian had wanted to take her to Cosa. It was his favourite place: he was arranging for his own memories to include one of Caenis there. With leaden foreboding, she guessed why: their time together would not last much longer.

She was too depressed even to be surprised when he made a detour with her chair to the apartment where his brother lived. Vespasian lived there too, though he was planning to take rooms of his own before the next elections in order to seem a more substantial candidate; no one would take seriously a man who only lodged in his brother's attic.

Caenis had never been there before. She waited outside in the chair while Vespasian went into the apartment block. The area was run-down but adequate; Caenis recognised the district, somewhere near the Esquiline on the less fashionable side. There was a wonderful parchment and papyrus warehouse nearby where she had been once or twice to order supplies.

He came back. ‘Step indoors for a moment.'

He had opened the half-door and offered his arm for her to clamber out before she had any time to hesitate.

 

It appeared Sabinus was not at home. His wife stood waiting in the hall, a short girl about Caenis' age with a round pleasant face that looked understandably concerned. Theirs was a house rather bare of furniture and what they did have was all rather heavy and old-fashioned, though Caenis guessed that was just Sabinus' sombre taste. There were massive red curtains that looked difficult to draw. Though the atmosphere was initially so formal, all the legs of the sidetables and couches had been scuffed by children's toys.

She experienced a sensation that this visit had been prearranged. Afterwards she felt certain, though she never found out how Vespasian knew what had happened. They wanted to take her into a side room, but she was already demanding in agitation, ‘What is it?
Titus!
'

Sabinus' wife reached for her hand. Caenis felt a sense of despair closing in.

He said, ‘I wanted to tell you this myself.' She knew. He was leaving her. ‘Lass, I didn't want you to get out of the chair and see the cypress trees standing at the door, the house dressed up in mourning—' She did not know after all. Sometimes the brain is stubbornly slow. She put up one hand, foolishly smoothing her hair. He had to tell her, for even then she did not understand. ‘Your lady Antonia is dead.'

She refused to accept it. She did not move; she could not speak.

‘Caenis! Oh my dear—'

Caenis closed her eyes. Vespasian was holding open his arms, but although she desperately wanted to bury her face in his shoulder she had to blot him out. She could not afford his comfort. If she gave way
now, she would never be brave again—and, Caenis knew, she would certainly have to be brave.

She said, with brutal clarity, to Sabinus' anxious, well-scrubbed wife, ‘I am alone. That lady was all I ever had!'

Vespasian's arms dropped to his side. It was too late to take the words back.

Sabinus' wife—Caenis had been introduced, but she found she could not now remember the young woman's name—had taken her somewhere, some room, a library perhaps.

‘What happened? Was this Caligula?' Caenis asked her.

‘We don't think so. Not directly. It appears to have been natural; she was an old lady, after all. But people are not sure. It may have been her own choice.' Suicide. ‘These things are not given out.'

‘No,' Caenis responded dully. ‘No. They are not.'

‘Cry if you want to.'

But Caenis could not cry.

And then the young woman said, ‘Don't go home yet; stay and have some lunch. There's nothing to be done. You may as well go home braced.'

Caenis almost felt amused. She protested grimly, ‘Your brother-in-law has no right to ask that of you!'

Sabinus' wife looked at her levelly. ‘He didn't,' she said. In that moment Caenis recognised that the wife of Flavius Sabinus was the friend she could never have.

Although eating was almost impossible, she stayed to lunch.

 

When she was ready to leave she refused to let Vespasian go with her. She and Sabinus' wife exchanged weak smiles. They had surprised him; they had even perhaps startled themselves. They were enjoying their small revolt against the order inflicted upon women by men. They had weighed one another up; then sharing that small sad smile they gave way to the social rules. However, it was his brother's wife, not Vespasian, who hugged Caenis at the door.

By then Caenis was impatient to reach home. Her balance had to some extent stabilised but she felt as if she would not entirely accept
Antonia's loss until she returned to the house. She needed to be alone in her own room there before she could even begin to assess her feelings.

Vespasian looked disturbed, but she had no spare concentration for soothing him. ‘Caenis, she wanted you to go to Cosa. It was deliberate.'

‘I should have been with her. Why didn't she know that?'

‘You had a special place with your lady. She knew.' His hands were heavy on her shoulders; she could not easily escape. His own face was white. ‘I imagine she could not bear to see you upset.'

He could not bear it either; Caenis understood. She finally wrenched free and stood off from him. Grimly she took upon herself the duty of the bereaved to reassure those around them. ‘I'm sorry for what I said. I have you; of course; I know.'

Impassive, he said nothing at first, then dismissed it with, ‘This is not the time.'

Being a man he had failed to see that it was only now, now when she was too deep in some other trouble, that she could ever speak of what she felt for him. Yet he had never flinched from reality so Caenis told him tersely, ‘Never lie to me. Tell me the truth, as soon as you must. Don't just hope I will work things out for myself; Titus, don't leave it to me—' She stopped.

‘No,' he said.

Then as she turned to climb aboard her chair, he suddenly spoke out too. ‘Your idea of other people's loyalty is as empty as your view of a country landscape. But, Caenis, in the country, just when you think you have the whole world to yourself, you wander into an olive grove and find some old shepherd squatting on his haunches in the shade.' He paused. His voice rasped. ‘Smiling at you, lass.'

‘The country is your world not mine,' Caenis returned, managing to find a shred of humour for him. ‘And even a city girl, if she reads any poets at all, knows a shepherd is the last person to trust!'

Despite her pleas, Vespasian insisted on going with her as far as Antonia's house. There was nothing she could do; he marched along with the footman in front of the chair.

Bluntly undeterred, when he left her at the door he said, ‘Send to
me when you need me.' Then, since he was a brave man, he cupped her stricken face in his large hands. ‘Lass; I am here. You know that.'

She could not risk flinging her arms around him as she wanted to do, for she must be alone when she started to cry.

‘Caenis—'

She had to stop him. She knew that whatever he was going to say would be more than she could bear. ‘Yes. I know. As my lady said to us, Titus, “Sometimes even Caenis will need a friend.” And when I do, you are here. Yes; I know.'

 

 

 

 

F
lavius Vespasianus was now eligible for the next rank in the senate. He stood for election—and came nowhere.

Caenis was in a mood to feel guilty over anything; she convinced herself that her position in his life had contributed to his defeat. Some years one bad blow follows another until it becomes impossible to tell how far each has been caused by the depletion of spirits resulting from the rest. Losing Antonia had buffeted her badly; she was physically tired and emotionally drained. However her need to grieve had really made her so abstracted it left Vespasian free to canvass support. He did all he could. When he failed, his brother told him his approach had been too diffident; he remained a stranger to many in the Senate. He would have to establish himself more strongly and try again next year.

He started to organise straight away. Caenis watched with reviving fascination as he and Sabinus worked through the entire senatorial list, analysing the voting then discussing whom they might sway. They could only use verbal persuasion; they had no money for bribes.

She realised Vespasian was by no means as politically halfhearted as his initial reluctance had implied. She noticed his incisive mind, his thoroughness, his ability both to plan ahead and then to carry the plan through. Not many men could claim such talents. Of the two brothers it was he who possessed the steadier resolution. Once
Vespasian did decide to act his energy was fiercer and his imagination more acute.

So he sat with Sabinus, lists covering a low table, both leaning forward on their stools, endlessly turning over names. Although they had courted patrons, it was always his brother Vespasian really worked with. Men from the Sabine territory had a tradition of public service and the Flavians were particularly clannish. They kept their political trust within the family.

Caenis was a frequent visitor at the tiny apartment Vespasian now rented; without Antonia she had little to keep her at home. While the men worked, their voices at one constant, thoughtful pitch, she sent away the hesitant skivvy. She served them wine herself, moving about the ill-furnished room in her silent way, drawing the mothy door curtain to deaden the racket from the copper-beater's workshop downstairs, opening the rickety shutters slightly to let in a breeze, which if no less malodorous and hot in such a decrepit neighbourhood was at least different air. Then she would curl up by herself on a battered couch, with an old cloak of Vespasian's over her feet, glad of an opportunity in this low period of her life to lose herself in her own thoughts.

It was taking her a long time to recover from Antonia's death. Caenis, who had respected and loved her as a friend, continued to churn with anger that her last weeks had been marred by discord with the new Emperor. She never found out whether Antonia's death had been by her own hand. Other people in the household assumed she had heard the full details; in fact she preferred not to know.

Claudius had had to speak to her about the will; Antonia had left modest bequests to all her freedwomen and as her primary heir it fell to her son to distribute the money. He said he would do what he could—but it depended on the Emperor. The House of Livia remained imperial property, and so far there was no suggestion that Antonia's freed clients needed to move on; later it was bound to become convenient that they did so—one more problem that Caenis would need to address.

Though they never discussed his mother, she found herself more at ease with Claudius nowadays. For one thing she had noticed that
ever since she was known to be Vespasian's mistress other men had ceased to make unwelcome advances. She could not tell whether this was due to some masculine code, or whether she had herself ceased to signal that she was vulnerable. Perhaps she simply looked older nowadays.

In time it was confirmed that because of its position on the Palatine, the House of Livia would not be sold and neither did any of the imperial family want to claim a right to live there. Caenis was able to stay, preparing inventories of the furniture and household goods. This was not for the normal purpose of a sale at the Saepta Julia. Although Caligula had inherited a bulging treasury from the cautious Tiberius he was running through his funds at an astonishing rate as he delighted the populace with an almost daily programme of theatrical extravagances, public games and wild beast spectaculars, presents thrown from the roof of the main courthouse and gift vouchers left on theatre seats. Already there seemed a good chance that if the thought struck he would overturn his grandmother's will and himself carry off her treasures to replenish the Privy Purse.