The Course of Honour (32 page)

Dressing to go out had taken her longer than usual—even though Caenis was impatient of fiddling and liked to follow a steady routine. Now preparing for sleep took no time at all. Her elegant white and gold gown was already over the back of a chair; she felt spitefully glad she had decided against a brighter colour, which she knew Vespasian would prefer. She poured water for herself, one-handedly scrubbing the cosmetics from her face with a sponge. There came a succession of angry sounds at the snapping down of hairpins and brooches, then her bangle clanged on the shelf. The decorative hairstyle that had taken Chloe an hour to create took Caenis two minutes to unwind before she was bending forward to comb the tangled mass with brisk swishing strokes. She stopped muttering, but amongst all the noise that she had introduced she failed to notice the distant knocking then a low murmur of voices. In her room after more vicious combing, she straightened with a great sweep of hair, then one earring chinked.

Aglaus knocked quickly and entered at once, carefully closing the door. Caenis did not encourage anyone to come into her room without permission; something had occurred. ‘Excuse me, madam; your friend's popped back—'

She understood his haste, and the low voice. Then Vespasian himself opened the door.

Aglaus was shocked. ‘Oh! Sir! I know there are special rules for heroes, but the lady's in her bedroom in her vest!'

She was perfectly decent, in a good under-tunic from neck to floor, yet she felt deeply embarrassed. Vespasian quickly brushed courtesies aside. ‘Sorry, Caenis. Something I meant to say.' Somewhere, perhaps in her own hall, he had shed the heavy folds of his toga. It made him look much more comfortable: the country boy with brown arms and his tunic slouched over his belt.

Aglaus was an excellent steward. He had a fine ear, or eye, or whatever it took, for dealing with visitors just as his lady required. His problems started when Caenis herself did not know what she wanted to do. Scooping up her trail of discarded shoes, shawl, belt, he crossed swiftly and forced the shutters closed, snuffing the outside noise. It gave her time to think. ‘I'll ask one of the girls—'

Caenis found she was furious, though not with him. ‘Don't bother. Thanks, Aglaus.'

‘Right. Well! As things seem to be so informal I expect you can let the gent out for yourself.'

‘I expect I can,' Caenis agreed grimly. ‘Good night, Aglaus.'

He stomped off in a huff.

Then once again they were alone. Because she was so flustered, Caenis began speaking too rapidly: ‘Vespasian, I never was a proud girl, but I should not from choice receive you in my slippers with my face-paint all scrubbed off!'

He stayed where he was in the centre of the room.

‘Luckily I had not yet put my teeth away in their silver box and my wig on its stand—' She wished she had not said that, for it made her self-conscious about having her hair loose. She was too old; it looked foolish. It was her own hair really; they were indeed her own teeth. He might not recognise the joke.

She turned away to replace the comb on her dressing-shelf, only to hear him approach. She spun back, but it was worse; he had come right behind her so she turned almost into his arms. Drawing an agitated breath she stepped away, but was stopped by the shelf behind her. A warm tremor shimmered over her skin.

‘You've still got one earring—' Vespasian offered simply, beginning to reach for it.

‘I can manage!' She wrenched it off and hurled it to join its fellow with another skedaddling chink. He had lost her goodwill. She wanted him to go.

‘Calm down,' he appealed, though a gleam in his eyes said frankly that she would not be Caenis unless she were pointlessly ranting, most of the time. He was not the least put out by it. ‘What's the matter?'

Caenis sighed; she heard Vespasian grunt; they both relaxed. ‘What did you come to say?' she asked in a quieter tone.

In his aimless, curious way he picked up her bangle. ‘Did I give you this?'

‘You did.' She was terse with irritation; their two names were still engraved clear enough inside.

‘Sweet of you to look it out.'

‘I wear it every day. It's good gold and I'm fond of it.'

He put it down. ‘It's very plain. Would you like a better one?'

‘No.'

Now he was at the earrings. ‘Who gave you those?'

‘Marius.'

For a moment he needed to think who Marius was; she enjoyed that. He dropped the earrings quickly into a box where they did not belong. Tetchily Caenis moved them out of the box to a tray. On reflection she remembered that these—gold acorns dangling from rectangles of green glass that could almost pass for emeralds—were a present from Veronica. She decided not to correct herself.

For the first time their eyes really met. She and Vespasian had never been shy with one another; they were shy now.

‘I'm frightened to touch you,' he admitted, very close and quiet. Frightened or not, she found he was looping up a strand of her hair on one finger to watch the light shimmer along it.

Caenis tossed her head to pull free, but she replied sensibly enough, ‘I'm not used to you any more; you're not used to me.'

He shrugged. ‘I'm just the same.'

He was so close that Caenis could see the intentions forming in his face; instinctively she put her hands on his shoulders as if to keep him at a distance. His face set.

‘You are the Hero of Britain!' she scoffed. Conscience dissolved her. She was at least old enough now to ask directly for what she wanted. She intended him to know it was her choice. Her voice dropped. ‘Would that Hero accept a kiss from an admirer?'

Vespasian frowned, evaluating the change in her mood.

Without waiting she leant forward and kissed him—a mere brush of the lips like a moth landing on a sleeper's face in the night. It was really to see what he would do. He closed his eyes briefly, but otherwise hardly moved.

The sensation of their kiss clung with alarming intensity even when she drew away. Vespasian prevented her moving again with one warm hand on her shoulder, his fingers catching in her hair. Caenis could hear the blood in her own veins. He looked desperately sad; at first she thought she had made a terrible mistake.

The mistake was in doubting him. Suddenly she could see how great his self-control had been. She glimpsed the moment when he broke. He began to draw close to kiss her conventionally, but it was too much for him.
‘Oh lass!'

Then her cheek banged against his as they hugged one another like people meeting on a quayside after a long separation in far distant countries, two people falling into one another's arms and holding each other tight as if they would never be able to let go.

After a while his breathing eased and she heard him whisper hoarsely, ‘What can I say to you?'

Still locked in his embrace, never wanting it to end, Caenis closed her eyes. Buried in the braided edge on his tunic her face had crumpled. She would not let him see her misery, but he must know; he must be able to feel her shaking. ‘I suppose the Hero of Britain has a great many women asking to go to bed with him?'

‘Some.'

‘And what about my old friend Vespasian?'

‘Poor unimportant beggar—rather less!'

Caenis leant away so she could look at him. Her face was drawn. His too. ‘Well, there's an offer here—if he wants it.'

She watched the shadows go out of his expression, to be replaced by some tenderness that she could not bear to contemplate. He released her completely, with a small open-palmed gesture, but his hand found hers as at once they walked together to the bed.

 

 

 

 

C
aenis had begun to believe she could not do it.

Nothing was going to happen. The situation was too important, and she was still standing on her dignity. It was all going wrong. She felt lumpen like wood, an unresponsive trunk.

She had accepted it. She was content merely to be with him, content with whatever companionship there inevitably was, and yet despite herself she must have made some sound. Hearing her distress he stopped. ‘Sorry.'

She realised he had been waiting for her. She kept perfectly still. He was not a man with whom she wanted to pretend.

Being careful to disturb nothing else, Vespasian stretched one arm to the small table at the side of the bed and gradually moved the tiny pottery lamp which gave the only light in the room. She realised, with misgivings, it was the lamp she hated, where a satyr and a faun were doing unspeakable things to each other around the air-hole and the wick. She was relieved he left it there.

In the slight increase of light, Vespasian brought his arm back and set his hand on her brow, shading her eyes while he searched for whatever she was thinking. He could not be sure whether, after all, he was entirely welcome. Caenis herself was experiencing belated doubt. Perhaps the truth was that even though she wanted him so
badly she could not bear to admit how she felt. She must be still quarrelling with him for leaving her.

‘Not doing very well, am I?'

Suddenly he was smiling. The intimate sunny grin he kept for his friends was inviting her to share his self-mockery, and she found it irresistible. She was already reabsorbing the familiar feel, the scent, the size, the warmth, the pleasure of him.

For Caenis he had always been a good-looking man. He had a wonderful face. The interplay of strain and amusement was fascinating; she could watch his concentration at work, then without warning he would brighten into a crackle of shared good humour. All the time those deep, steady eyes were seeking hers. He was a man of such passionate decency. It was impossible to deal with him in her normal mood of prickly resentment.

‘It's me,' he told her softly. The tension went sliding from her. His straightforwardness reached out to her. ‘You remember me.'

She remembered: her Sabine friend; the second half of her.

She felt her senses afloat at once, almost before he bent his head to kiss her and moved to start making love again. Her body began to answer his. When the moment came, they were together. When the moment came, it was with an intensity that seemed not to have diminished but increased with time, and experience, and their separate knowledge of triumph and loss.

Afterwards he stayed with her, in complete silence, for a long while. Even when he was compelled to move from her he would not speak. But he held her; he was still holding her when she plunged abruptly into sleep and when, many hours later, she awoke.

 

It was just before dawn. For a short period the hubbub around the city gate had faded as the carters and revellers dispersed to their beds, while the early morning street-sounds of bakers and labourers going to their work had yet to begin. Even the sick were sleeping now. In this silent room the lamp had long snuffed itself; there was the faintest shift in the dim quality of the natural light.

Only gradually did Caenis realise that she had woken more comfortable, warmer, more tranquilly rested than usual. Only slowly did she become aware that her pillow was Vespasian's firm chest and that she was trapped in utter security under the weight of his arm across her back and his hand at her breast. She lay motionless, but her eyelashes had been tickling his ribs; she felt his fingers intertwine in her hair, where it grew thickest at the back of her head, softening away any last shreds of tension from her neck. He was awake. He had been awake for perhaps an hour before.

‘Titus; you're still here!'

‘Mmm.'

He always woke in the early hours. At home he would rise and use this time to read or attend to his correspondence without interruptions while others slept. Here he had simply lain still, lost in thought, holding Caenis in his arms.

She snuggled closer but said dutifully, ‘I shan't mind if you want to go.'

There was no change in the slow motion massaging the tendons of her neck. ‘Wanted to say good morning to you first.'

Then she leant up on one elbow looking at him. ‘Hello, Titus.'

‘Hello, my lass.' In the grey light she could make out nothing of his face, but his voice was full of amusement. ‘Oh,
Caenis
! . . . People will think we are mad.'

‘People,' remarked Caenis tartly, ‘don't think! Thank the gods none of them need know that you bought back my favours with a sack of Sabine apples and half a crate of plums.'

‘If they find out your weakness, you could be swamped under punnets of soft fruit . . .' Vespasian sounded unusually dreamy. ‘Rome soaking up raspberry juice like a must-cake pudding. Trolleyloads of apricots blocking the Sacred Way. Quagmires of quinces, pears piled like the Pannonian Alps—mmm!' He stopped speculating to allow Caenis to kiss him quiet. ‘Blackberries—mmm! Mulberries—
mm-mmm
!'

She was still fretting about his public life. ‘Do you want me to get up with you, Titus?'

His sudden roll caught her unawares as he swept her back against
the pillows full length, lying above her in his most sensual embrace. ‘I said,' he said, ‘I wanted to say good morning to you first.'

Then Caenis stopped worrying about his waiting secretary at home; she recognised from his wicked tone that he intended far more than a mere verbal greeting. She stopped worrying about anything, as Vespasian began once again to touch her where she needed to be touched and hold her as she wanted to be held. This time there was no difficulty. He knew as Caenis knew herself that he was, and that he would always be, welcome.

The next time she woke he was no longer with her, but her body and all her spirit sang with the joy of his having been there.

 

 

 

 

T
he noise from the Praetorian Camp was now quite loud even though the whole house was orientated towards its inner courtyards. Light increased the disturbance, as somebody unkind unfastened a shutter. ‘Morning, madam. Rise and shine!'