The Course of Honour (36 page)

Vespasian, who was reading a letter, grunted.

Titus ventured, more cautiously, ‘Father, I never really understood why you came on the concert tour. It was obviously an exercise in regal self-indulgence. We could have tossed dice on whether Nero offended you mortally, or you him.'

Vespasian sniffed this time.

‘Playing his part in public life,' scoffed Caenis.

‘By nodding off?' Titus guffawed. ‘Well! I'm going for a walk. Yet again.' There was not much else to do.

‘Give me a kiss then,' Caenis commanded.

Titus was on the point of leaving his couch, when there came a sudden commotion outside the dining room. Before anyone could move, through the doors from the terrace burst a terrified plough-ox that had broken its yoke and run amok. An aimless horn swept a table lamp to the ground with a sickening crash. Caenis, who was not
keen on animals even in their proper place, stayed perfectly still. The ox dusted a shelf with the frowsty clump of its tail.

The room was small; the ox was huge. The servants who had been about to clear away breakfast all took to their heels. Caenis noticed even Titus swallowed. Vespasian looked over the top of his letter; the ox snorted then dribbled menacingly, as its frantic hooves scrabbled on the tiled floor.

‘Hello, boy!' Vespasian greeted him. ‘Lost your way?'

‘Oh my love,' scolded Caenis, ‘I wish you wouldn't invite your friends for breakfast.'

The ox took one step farther into the room; she picked up a spoon, the only implement to hand. She wondered if smacking it hard on the nose would make it go away. They could hear the approaching, panicky voices of the tillers of Greek fields who had lost their angry but valuable animal.

‘Dear heart,' Caenis murmured seductively to Vespasian, ‘do tell us what to do.'

‘Trying to think of a plan,' he mused. ‘Difficult logistics.'

‘Well, you're the country boy!' Caenis snapped.

‘The poor creature's frightened,' Titus sympathised.

‘
I'm
frightened,' said Caenis, ‘and I live here, so I take precedence! I'd like to go to my room and do a decent bit of sewing so perhaps one of you men could be masterful and sort out this incident.'

‘I've never seen you do sewing,' Vespasian commented in wry surprise, then he continued talking amiably to the ox.

The tillers of Greek fields were peering in horror around the shattered doors. The ox filled the room. There was no space to turn it round. The tillers of fields plainly regretted having come to look.

‘Shoo!' snarled Caenis crossly to the ox. ‘Go home.'

Then the ox, charmed perhaps by the quality of Flavian repartee, suddenly advanced towards Vespasian, bowed its great head and sank to one knee as if it were very tired.

The chattering of the tillers of fields dropped to an awestruck hum. Even Caenis and Titus looked impressed.

Titus said, ‘You have to hand it to him. For the son of a tax-collector he knows how to bring a damn great beastie down at his feet!'

Removing an ox backwards from a small decorative room requires great skill. It was a skill which the owners of the runaway ox possessed only fragmentarily. The two Flavians provided a rope and offered them much sound advice based on military tactics and higher mathematics. By the time everyone had gone it was lunchtime and the room was wrecked.

Vespasian finally allowed himself to say, ‘By the gods, I thought we came out of that rather well.'

Titus lay on his back on a bench. ‘Something to write home to Domitian anyway. I think I might faint now if nobody minds.'

‘Symbol of power, an ox, you know,' Vespasian winked, knowing Caenis would be annoyed.

‘You are living in disgrace on a mountain top, eating fruit,' she quipped nastily. ‘The only powerful thing round here is the smell of manure. Tell me, why is breakfast with the Flavians always so nerve-racking?'

Since the ox had gone home and she was still holding the spoon, she smacked Vespasian with the spoon instead.

 

Not long afterwards he was summoned back to the court. Knowing how Caenis felt about breakfast he waited to tell her until they were at lunch.

‘I'm coming with you,' she said at once.

‘No, you're not. If this means Nero has thought up a suitable way of executing a man who snores through his songs—slow torture by bagpipes, I dare say, or drowning in a water-organ—then I'll have to endure it—but no usurping Claudian with his brains in his backside is going to get his hands on my family!'

‘In law I'm not your family,' Caenis commented quietly. Vespasian often swore though not so often in front of her because the Sabines were famously old-fashioned and in all cultures being old-fashioned means denying women any fun; but he said tersely, ‘Sod the law.'

Caenis nonetheless went with him.

 

______

 

He was spared strangling with a lyre string.

They found themselves presented with a mansion in which to lodge; they were invited to dine with the Emperor; the chamberlain now greeted them with oozing respect. Vespasian was welcomed by Nero himself with flattery, good wishes, and every sign of amity. Vespasian had dreamt that his family would start to prosper from the day Nero lost a tooth; as they arrived they passed Nero's dentist with a molar on a little silver dish.

After dinner he was called into conference with the Emperor and his chief advisers, such as they nowadays were. When he emerged he had been offered a new post. He told Caenis at once what it was, and at once she understood what it must mean.

They returned to their donated villa in complete silence. Late as it was, Vespasian sent off a message to bring Titus as soon as possible. All the way home he had gripped her hand tightly in his.

They went into a room where they could sit. The house which Nero had placed at their disposal belonged to some wealthy old man who rarely visited. It was furnished in Roman fashion, but crammed with Greek artefacts. Every room was burdened with sideboards groaning under black-figure bowls and vases, bronzes, and pottery statuettes. There were carpets hung on the walls. Marble gods shared the dining room while the buffet table used at lunchtime was five hundred years old. It was like living in an art gallery. The very rugs flung over the ivory-legged couches were draped not for comfort but display. Caenis hated it.

Vespasian took a chair; she sat sideways on a couch. This reversal of the normal pattern was typical of the casual way they had always lived. One of their own slaves, sensing late-night discussion, poured them amber resinated wine, unasked. For a long time neither drank. Once they were alone Caenis wished Vespasian would come nearer but she realised that he wanted to be able to look at her. True to her old training her face gave little away.

There had been a serious rebellion in Judaea. Vespasian had been offered the province, plus control of a large army, with permission to take Titus on his staff. It was, as he admitted to Caenis at once, partly in recognition of his military talent but mainly because he was too
obscure to pose any political threat if a major fighting force were entrusted to his command. The appointment would be for the usual period of three years.

Caenis tried to remember what she knew about Judaea. It was another restless province at the far end of the Empire, which Rome viewed with mixed intrigue and unease. Caligula had once caused a trauma when he devised a plan to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem—a plan fortunately never carried out. The ruling house was riven by domestic squabbles but had been drawn to Rome under Augustus. Caenis herself had known the late King, Herod Agrippa, a close friend of the Emperors Caligula and Claudius, who had helped persuade Claudius to take the throne. He had been brought up in the House of Livia by Antonia, who remained his friend and champion for life. Judaea was now ruled by his son, who had been placed in power by Claudius.

The recent troubles were the product of a rising mood of nationalism, aggravated by a series of Roman officials whose attitude had been unhelpful. Cestius Gallus, then Governor of Syria, had taken in troops to put down the unrest and been dramatically routed at considerable expense of equipment, the capture of an eagle and unacceptable loss of life. War was now inevitable. Nero feared that war in Judaea boded ill for the rest of the Empire; that was why he had humbled his musical pride. Having already executed the greatest soldier of their age, Domitius Corbulo, for being too successful, Nero realised that Vespasian was the only man he had left who would be capable of taking on the troubles in Judaea.

 

Caenis and Vespasian considered Nero's offer quietly. After a decade of sharing daily routines their patterns of thought were so similar, their sensitivity so acute, that it took few words to plunge into—and out of—what others might have made an endless debate.

Vespasian, his eyes never leaving her, offered fairly, ‘If you want me to decline this, will you please say?'

‘Do you want an excuse not to go?'

A ridiculous question, drily posed. At fifty-seven some men abandon enterprise; others are open to a new lease of life. Vespasian was
eager. He wanted to show the establishment exactly what a plain man of good sense and real administrative calibre could do. He would rise to this opportunity perhaps even more strongly than he might have done in earlier days, for he was calmer and more confident.

‘I can say I'm an old man.'

‘You'll be lying then.'

‘Caenis, I want to know what you think.' He paused. ‘I can't take you, not into a battle zone.'

She had realised that. She had been thinking about it all the way home. ‘No. It would be dangerous and pointless.'

‘Quite. I wouldn't see you anyway. I'd have to lock you in some fortress miles from the fighting. You'd be bored and I'd be anxious. We could hardly ever meet.'

That he had even considered it was a graceful compliment. Caenis responded swiftly, ‘I know. I'm not afraid to come with you—' He breathed with affectionate laughter, so she felt herself smile. ‘But I'll stay in Rome. You need someone to look after things at home. You must go. Apart from the fact that you want it, I have,' she told him stiffly, ‘given too much to your career to stop supporting you now.'

He did not immediately speak, then asked gruffly, ‘Mind it?'

‘Yes.'

‘So do I. You know that, lass.'

Their eyes met, and held fast for a long time, though he made no move to approach her. She wanted to go to him, but was afraid her control would break. Tonight, for the first time, she no longer thought of herself as a girl. She felt the effect of every past year in her tired eyes, her lightening bones, her panic-stricken brain. Vespasian sat with her showing a grave concern that racked her more than indifference.

After a time they both slowly drank their wine. Caenis went to bed. He did not come to her. He recognised she would welcome time alone to adjust to her need to be brave. And already he had too much to think about. He could not spare himself to help her.

She saw little of Vespasian or Titus in the following days. They were working incessantly, commissioning their officers, studying maps,
scouring the briefs and dispatches that poured in the moment their appointment was officially announced. Titus was to sail to Egypt to collect the Fifteenth Legion from Alexandria. Vespasian would travel overland after crossing the Hellespont, to make his first contact with the Governor of Syria.

Caenis was interested in the problem, and they made no attempt to shut her out. Yet Vespasian and Titus were forming a close association for an enterprise she would only be able to watch from the sidelines. Once they left Greece, theirs would be a life of action, immediacy and change. Caenis faced three years of suspense, hearing news selectively and long after the event. Once they did leave her she had decided to travel in Greece alone before returning to Italy; she had never been afraid of being by herself. That did not mean she was not lonely now. Even Vespasian's birthday passed with less than usual ceremony.

On the last night she sat with Vespasian and Titus until it grew dark, while they still worked. Then despairing of acknowledgement she went quietly to bed. She heard Titus go to his room, striding perhaps more noisily than usual. He called good night in a low voice as he passed her door.

The house that she hated grew silent.

Caenis was in bed. She had been trying to read, for she was unable to sleep, but the scroll now lay still half unrolled on a side table; Narcissus would have had something to say about that. The knock on her door was so gentle she was still wondering whether she had heard it when Vespasian came in.

‘May I? Saw your light. I'm glad you're still awake.'

He came and sat on her bed. Shadows from the disturbed lamp raced for a time up the wall. He was weary, subdued, but obviously wanting to talk to her. ‘All the work is done. I was determined to finish it so my mind was clear—did you think I had forgotten you?'

‘No,' Caenis lied. Catching the dregs of her resentment, his eyes flickered momentarily. Her self-pity melted away at once.

Smiling, Vespasian told her, ‘I've just had a novel experience—I've been given some fatherly advice by my son!'

Caenis was as fond of Titus as he of her; sensing they had quarrelled, she frowned. ‘What was that?'

‘He said I should put aside the planning and send for you to my room.' She stared down at her folded hands. ‘Boy's a fool,' Vespasian commented. Besides an attractive temperament, Titus had an enquiring mind, a phenomenal memory, less wit but probably more culture than his critical papa. He was loyal, generous, tactful and spirited—a delightful young man. And no fool.

Nor was his father.

‘Antonia Caenis, I don't send for you; I never did and never will—you come of your own accord. You're not some girl to be called for in the afternoon, then used—and paid—and sent away again until the next gracious summons from the old man. Besides'—his voice dropped—‘he either has no imagination, or lacks the experience to know.' She looked up, her heart pattering. Vespasian seduced her with his eyes. ‘It's so much more fun trying to persuade you to invite me to stay here with you!'