The Course of Honour (24 page)

If Messalina had not captivated Callistus, Pallas or Narcissus it was only because she never tried. She preferred Mnester, the ballet dancer, for a time; afterwards a parade of young knights, senators, gladiators, soldiers, ambassadors even, then finally Gaius Silius, a consul elect at an impressively youthful age who was, as Veronica said, the best-looking man in Rome.

Caenis reflected, ‘I suppose she feels there is no point being an empress unless you can pick and choose.'

Veronica winced and peered at her sideways, not sure how much Caenis knew. ‘Darling, Messalina is not choosy at all!'

Caenis nodded; she knew.

Whether, as people besotted by her crimes wanted afterwards to recall, Messalina really did leave the Palace at night disguised in a blonde wig to offer her fine body to all corners at a common brothel was to some extent irrelevant. Her behaviour was bad enough to make people believe it. Her bored trifling with noblemen, then her infatuation with Silius and the dangerous farce to which it led were true, and enough to bring about her fall. If satirical poets and salacious biographers wanted to be bawdy about an empress, it would be good news for booksellers. It was not so good for Octavia and Britannicus. But they were Antonia's grandchildren; in their family tradition unless they became monsters themselves, life would deal monstrously with them.

Messalina's affair with Gaius Silius was too dangerous. Lovers alone might have been overlooked; revolution could not be. When the Empress actually persuaded Silius to divorce his noble wife—at which he with logic and some spirit responded by asking the Empress to divorce her husband in return—Narcissus had little choice but to act. He summoned the Emperor's committed friends to a meeting at his own house. Caenis now realised the full value of this house: it was wonderfully comfortable, packed with pleasing works of art, he had Alexandrian flautists, there were flatfish in marble pools, the kitchen never closed and the water was always warm. It was an ideal place to plot.

‘As a woman am I invited on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief?' Caenis demanded of Narcissus scathingly. He did not
deny it. He knew she was truculent and outspoken, but blisteringly loyal to Antonia's family. He knew too that she despised Messalina but probably understood her.

It was Narcissus himself, still with his old pinched oriental nose but nowadays distinctly fleshy otherwise, who set out the situation for the rest: ‘It's quite clear Messalina has been waiting for our man's visit to Ostia. He's gone off to inaugurate his new harbour. This evening, while Claudius is safely out of Rome, she will marry Silius. You can't blame him—tangling with the Empress is dangerous enough; he may as well risk everything on the throw. So he marries Messalina, in full form; he adopts Britannicus, and they grapple for the throne.'

Callistus, who as Secretary of Petitions spent his whole life stating the obvious to people who did not want to hear it, said at once, ‘That's the end of us!'

No one answered. For some, that was not entirely the point. It would be the end of them, and their man—and all their work.

Pallas, Antonia's old messenger, shifted suddenly on his couch, exclaiming in exasperation, ‘I still can't believe it can go so far and poor besotted Claudius has not the slightest idea.'

After a moment Narcissus murmured, almost in embarrassment for their man, ‘You know Claudius.' And when no one answered that either, ‘Well; he has a great deal on his mind.'

It was true. Claudius as Emperor had produced the energy and concentration that only a true eccentric ever shows. In the year his wife tried to divorce him (Romans were always divorcing their wives; it struck Caenis irreverently that while it was discourteous of Messalina not to mention to her husband her plans for that afternoon, at least taking the initiative herself made a change)—in that year, Claudius was preoccupied with his administrative duties as Censor, easing the penalties for debt, issuing edicts about snakebites and against unruly behaviour in the theatre, then finishing construction of his splendid aqueducts which brought the clear water of the Caerulean springs fifty miles from the mountains across the Campagna on arches that were in some places a hundred feet high. He had continued to write scholarly histories. He involved himself in the internal affairs of Armenia and Germany, then in a speech whose political
diplomacy would have astonished those who had judged him inadequate in his youth, he persuaded the Senate to open their ranks to some long-standing allies from Gaul. He survived an assassination attempt without losing his nerve. He gave time to his pet schemes: he revived the College of Soothsayers and introduced three new letters into the official alphabet.

It was the eighth centenary of the traditional founding of Rome. Claudius inaugurated the
Ludi Saecularii
, the ancient commemorative Games. They were supposed to be held only once every hundred years so no one would attend who had ever seen them before; in fact Augustus had held them too, but that was a mere technicality. This time there was a Trojan Pageant in the Circus at which young boys from leading families performed intricate feats of horsemanship while their parents and grandparents chewed off their nails expecting tantrums, broken legs and trampled heads. On this occasion Britannicus led one of the dressage teams. The other was taken by Domitius Ahenobarbus, the son of Claudius' niece Agrippina. He was three years older and far more confident so of course he came off best; although Britannicus conducted himself with the gravity of a tiny Aeneas in the field, as soon as the dimple-kneed imperial infant reached home it ended in tears.

Claudius did all this, and no one had ever suggested he was too busy to pay attention to his wife. Everyone else knew, she was too busy for him.

 

Caenis spoke, since no one else would risk it: ‘Claudius believes his pretty darling is matchless in bed and a perfect mother—faithful, devoted, clever, helpful and sweet. Whatever you do, remember he believes that
because it is what he wants to believe.
'

Various freedmen wriggled and scratched themselves, sensing some general criticism of their sex.

She leant forwards with her elbows on her knees. She addressed herself to Narcissus, partly because she knew and understood him best, and partly because his colleagues were arguing for caution, frightened that interference would have unpleasant results for themselves.
‘Show him that they are stealing his throne—he believes himself the best man to hold it now. Perhaps he is. His ignorance of Messalina's antics makes it easier; the truth will be devastating, and he is a vain man. She can work him; ensure that she never gets the chance. Work him yourselves—' She used the plural, though she guessed that this would be one man's work. ‘What will affect Claudius most will be the fact that she has thrown up their marriage in his face.'

It struck Narcissus that Caenis was not, as it had turned out, telling them the woman's point of view but the man's. He glanced at Callistus and Pallas for support, failed to find it, then rehearsed what he could say: ‘Yes. “
Sir, do you know you are divorced
” . . . ' He ended with a gesture, open-palmed like an acrobat. The effect was sinister.

‘That poor besotted bastard!' Callistus commented.

 

Going home afterwards, Caenis reflected privately how Claudius had a graceful knack of choosing whom to trust as his friends. His wives were disasters and though all four of those, including Messalina, had been chosen for him by his relatives, Caenis doubted he would do better for himself. In marriage a man looked for a boost to his bank account, adornment for his home, and a submissive sexual partner. It would be a man of rare intelligence who realised he might so much more wisely share his household with a friend.

That was a long night.

The sharp clear morning with its indigo sky had become the blazing autumn afternoon when Narcissus came to Caenis at Antonia's house. She had never seen anyone so completely exhausted. He owned a home that ran with peaceful decorum, yet she saw on this one occasion that to return to his good-tempered battalions of servants would be to remain unbearably alone. He had passed beyond his private strength. His competence was all used up.

‘Freedman, rest. I will send word; I will watch.'

She dismissed all her own slaves. Then she herself attended to the shutters, poured water for him to wash his hands and face, mixed wine with honey which he proved too tired to drink, took his shoes, set the cushions around him and laid the rug over him while he slept.

Caenis stayed in the room.

‘Thank you,' he said briefly when he woke.

He lay on his back for a long while, the rug flung aside now so she could see his hands interlaced limply on his chest. Narcissus' hands were unusually small. She had noticed that when she was fourteen and secretly in love with him in a frightening physical way, as a girl will be with a teacher who concentrates her mind. They had come a long way since then.

He was thinking. From a nearby reclining chair Caenis silently watched; it was an intimacy few would ever share with him. The olive-skinned face was hollow-cheeked in rare relaxation, although he knew she was there. His eyes were frantic with thought and dark with melancholy; their gaze fluttered about the ceiling, from bead-and-dart cornice to the plaster moulding that had been smoked to an oily gloss by lamps, and on to the solid ball from which hung the delicate bronze swansnecks of an unlit chandelier. He saw nothing.

People blamed the man for personal ambition. Yet his gratitude to Claudius would always come from a full heart. He regretted his patron's weaknesses, but appreciated the man's strengths and did so completely without cynicism. There was love there. He would be glad that he had saved the day (Caenis recognised from his stillness how he must have done that) but Narcissus would not really exult. He would feel for his man's tragedy as Claudius himself, understandably, could not bear to feel.

Sensing some shift in the focus of his reverie, Caenis asked gently, ‘Well?'

‘I have watched a heart break.' He closed his eyes.

Finally he spoke again. ‘How does a man react? While returning from a journey in all innocence, he meets the stark news that his wife has taken a lover—many lovers—there is incontrovertible proof. Now she has left him without a word and been married, in front of witnesses: banquet, bridal regalia, sacrifices, new marital bed. All this is common knowledge in the city from the Senate and the army down to the sleaziest barbershops and waterfront booths. His clean white pearl has been rolled in a night-soil cart. His betrayal is a barrack-room byword. Caenis, what should he do?'

He turned on his elbow and stared at her.

‘What happened?' she asked again in her calm, quiet way.

‘He said very little. I don't suppose he ever will. The story was so fantastic he realised it must be true. As we approached Rome on his return from Ostia, Messalina was celebrating the marriage with a mock grape harvest at the Gardens of Lucullus. Hair flowing in the breeze, treading vats, waving Bacchic wands—everyone disgustingly drunk. You can imagine the scene.'

There was a fastidious pause. The gardens had once belonged to Asinius Gallus; Messalina accused him of adultery with a woman of whom she was jealous, then compelled him to judicial suicide; it was the easiest way to wrest away the man from his gardens, which he had refused to sell. ‘Her party vanished; most of them were picked up later by the Guards. She walked—walked!—the whole length of the city almost alone, then started out towards Ostia in a garden-rubbish cart. She took the Chief Vestal Virgin to help argue her case, and sent for the children to soften his heart.'

‘Poor mites!'

Caenis imagined them brought by panic-stricken maids, presented to a silent father more or less in the public street, glimpsing their mother distraught, terrified by wild faces and the charged atmosphere—then taken home to an empty palace with no one to explain. Britannicus was seven, Octavia not much more than a year older. Caenis would go and see them when she could.

Narcissus went on in that terrible dull tone, ‘Vitellius was there, but he couldn't bring himself to say much.' That was Lucius Vitellius, Vespasian's old patron. He was the Emperor's closest adviser, almost his only friend.

‘So who had to tell him?'

‘I stuck with him wherever he went. Rode in his carriage, talked to him constantly. My instinct was to remain in the background—' Caenis violently shook her head. Narcissus agreed: ‘No. Wrong. So; when she found us—which frankly I wasn't expecting—I managed to outface her temporarily with the plain fact of the wedding and a charge-sheet of her crimes. She decided to cry a lot—bad mistake; no chance to speak to him. As soon as I could, I sent the Vestal packing,
had the children removed, opened up Silius' house. I showed Claudius how it was stuffed with his own things—his household slaves, the masks of the Caesars, his family heirlooms; oh he was angry then. So I got him to the Praetorian Camp—' By now his voice was dragging with suppressed reluctance to relive that sorry night. ‘For a time I seem to have taken command of the Guards myself. Sometimes, Caenis, I think we live in an old wives' tale! The Guards rallied; I believe I made some sort of speech. By the time we had him sat down to his dinner in the Palace the situation was stable, with most of the conspirators tried and hanged.'

‘And the woman?'

‘The woman executed. Run through with a tribune's sword.'

Caenis swallowed, saw his face, then for his sake asked in a neutral tone, ‘On whose orders?'

‘On the Emperor's orders,' said Narcissus. He sighed. ‘Or so I had to say.'

 

After a silence, Narcissus confided, as if he could hardly bear it but had to share this with someone, ‘You know, he called for her at dinner. Truly, I had told him she was dead. He never asked me how. Then later he wondered aloud where she was. He was drunk.' That was not unusual. Claudius was also extremely forgetful, whether for convenience or not. ‘ “That poor unfortunate woman,” he called her.'