The Course of Honour (40 page)

‘Never!'

They began to argue, which was what Caenis had dreaded. ‘Look, Veronica, he and I shared our lives on equal terms; for over ten years. Few wives are as close to their husbands as I was to him. How can I accept less?'

‘He took you back.'

‘He took me back while he was a private citizen.'

‘Into his house.'

‘But there's no place for me in his Palace.'

‘Juno, Caenis; how can you be so stupid—how can you be so calm?'

‘Realistic.'

‘Mad.'

Caenis suddenly snapped. She cried out to her friend, whom she would probably not see in any lucid state again, as she had never allowed herself to do before: ‘Oh I am not calm, girl! It's the bitterest of ironies and I am very angry! A freedwoman; oh Juno, Veronica, I would be better as his slave—then at least he could keep me where he lives without public offence. This is impossible. Once I did accept that I had lost him; I learnt to exist without him. I'm too old now to face all that anguish again. I'm too tired. I'm too frightened of what it will be like, never again having him there. I haven't any strength to deal with this.' Her voice dropped to an even more painful note. ‘I hope he stays in the East; I hope he never comes. I tell you, I would sooner lose him to Queen Berenice, who married her uncle and sleeps with her brother, than have to see Vespasian in Rome as a stranger!'

Struggling to raise herself on one pitifully thin arm, Veronica complained in bewilderment, ‘But he cares for you!'

‘Of course he does!' Caenis bellowed. ‘I know it; even he knows. He came back for me after half a lifetime. I was stout, and grey-haired, nasty-tempered and the wrong social class, but back he came. I cannot pretend any longer that the man did not care!'

‘You were never stout,' murmured her loyal friend.

Caenis careered on heedlessly. ‘So here I am, just where I was
thirty years ago; worse, because I actually know now how he cares! Yet I have to stand back again, knowing what it means. I have to watch his face—oh his poor sorry face—while that dear good man, the only straightforward honest man that I have ever met, tells me all over again that he must let me go!'

The silence rang through Veronica's house.

Caenis went home.

 

 

 

 

T
he last time Caenis saw Flavius Sabinus there was a violent rainstorm in the streets. It had been a terrible winter, with disastrous floods sweeping across the low ground on the Tiber's left bank. The Prefect of the City came wearily into her quiet room, where the rain could only just be heard outside the windows; she brought him at once to the intimate circle of a hot charcoal brazier to dry off and warm his ancient bones.

It was December in that eventful year. The week before, Caenis had lost a tooth; it was preoccupying her pathetically. As she huddled in a wrap Sabinus pulled back his cheek to show her a half-row of his own missing, so then they laughed and compared notes on the onset of pains, on the fading of appetites, on the lightness of sleep. Caenis flexed her finger knuckles where they were shiny and sore, probably not with chilblains as she pretended, but rheumatism.

‘Came to see how you were, lass.' She was tired. She kept waking in the night from her dream about Britannicus and Titus. ‘Domitian should be keeping an eye on you but he's far too busy seducing senators' wives.'

Vitellius had placed Domitian under house arrest, though he still managed to act the imperial lad-about-town. His father's rise had gone to Domitian's head, unlike Titus, who was by all accounts taking it sensibly. Titus was to take over as commander-in-chief in Judaea.
He would be responsible for the siege of Jerusalem, though for the time being he remained in Alexandria with the Emperor. Domitian was stuck here with his fussy uncle Sabinus, and no real public role.

Vespasian had no intention of leaving Egypt yet, as far as anyone knew. In his absence his status in Rome steadily grew. News from Italy carried east, but during the winter Vitellius could obtain no intelligence the other way. The silence enhanced Vespasian's mystique. Meanwhile the grain shortage was beginning to tell; when Vespasian came with the cornships he would be eagerly welcomed by a starving populace.

The armed struggle that had occupied the previous six months was best not remembered. Rome's casual attitude to dispatching other races was matched by a poignant reverence for the shedding of its own citizens' blood. For legion to fight legion, brother to die at brother's hand, racked Italy and the city both.

‘I've been thinking about you,' Caenis told Sabinus. ‘Your position as City Prefect must be dreadful.'

It was Rome that wanted Sabinus to continue in his post; for Rome he felt obliged to do it. Sabinus was held in great reverence, greater than his brother if the truth were told. His first stint of governing the city had been three years; now he had done it for another eight.

‘Well. Exciting times!'

In his way he glossed over the problem. He remained a gentle, pleasant, well-respected, well-intentioned man, who was desperately trying to reconcile Vitellius to the inevitable without further bloodshed or disruption in the capital. ‘I do my best.' He stared into the brazier, holding out his hands to the warmth. The red glow gleamed on his troubled face. Any frown, like his restrained smile, brought out a momentary likeness to his famous brother.

‘You do wonders. But, Sabinus!'

For an instant Caenis had glimpsed that he was an old man carried on by an outgrown reputation, an old man rightly afraid he was at the verge of losing his grip.

‘I know. They listen to me, Caenis; well, I hope they do.'

They did—so far.

Rain lashed the small windowpanes in long, beaded diagonal
streaks. They talked for a time about the news that was filtering through, particularly about the sack of Cremona. In a display of spectacular generalship, Vespasian's man Antonius Primus had crossed the Pannonian Alps, established his headquarters at Verona, then defeated a large Vitellian army at Bedriacum, the scene of their own victory over Otho; the price was a disastrous siege of Cremona nearby, culminating in an immense fire.

‘Is it all true?' Caenis requested. ‘Tell me it's not.'

‘Afraid so. Packed for the annual fair. Irresistible. The burning was not ordered by Antonius—I have his word. It began during the siege. He could not be expected to restrain forty thousand men who had just defeated the famous legions from Germany and saw the nearby city as their personal prize.'

Caenis was angry. ‘Murder and rape; rape and murder. Old men and children torn from hand to hand, mocked and assaulted; women and boys violated; four days of carnage. Everything plundered; looters even stealing from themselves. Then the whole city burnt! Not a building left standing—just one solitary temple, outside the city walls.'

Sabinus looked uneasy. ‘Civil war; it's brutal and bitter.'

‘This is what Vespasian has done.'

As her passion crackled Vespasian's brother reprimanded her briskly, ‘No; no! What he will stop, lass. Vitellius is so unpopular that if my brother did not make this claim against him someone else would. You know that. The Empire is sadly adrift. Vespasian is the best man; you must agree. There is more chance of a lasting peace at the end of this with Vespasian and his sons—'

Caenis had relaxed fairly early in the speech, but Sabinus had always talked too much. ‘Well, then. What happens now, Sabinus?'

‘Our troops rest, celebrate the Saturnalia, then march on Rome. I'm talking to Vitellius constantly; he assures me he is ready to abdicate.'

‘Do you believe him?'

In his innocence Sabinus was shocked that she asked. ‘Must do!'

She did not wish to dishearten him; he was a good man. ‘Well done then. So . . . the Emperor Vespasian!' Her tone softened. They
had come, they both realised, to the point of his call. ‘Flavius Sabinus, don't be embarrassed. I understand what must be done. I have been your brother's best supporter all these years; should I offend against his reputation now? You know why I moved back here to my own house.'

‘You are a good friend to the Flavians.'

He felt awkward. They both knew what his brave, clear-principled wife would have said about this.

Caenis reassured him gently, ‘The Flavians were good friends to me.'

So he understood; his brother's mistress would do whatever had to be done. Caenis, the ex-secretary, would behave as she had been trained, with discretion and self-effacement. She would do it, moreover, despite anything his brother himself might say.

Flavius Sabinus leant back his head and sighed. ‘This is very sad.' Caenis said nothing. ‘Very sad,' he repeated sombrely.

He meant it. But for him, as for anyone who cared what happened to Rome, the important thing was a satisfactory resolution to the confusion, culminating in the best man taking charge. It was time to end Claudian vulgarity and scandal, time for Flavian discipline, hard work, and dedication to the public good. Time for Vespasian to be respectable again.

So although Flavius Sabinus honestly felt that what must happen to Caenis was tragic, though he liked her, and his late wife had liked her even more, he felt she had had a good run. His sadness was the type which must be dealt with staunchly then put aside.

‘I have suggested,' he told her kindly, ‘that if you feel uncomfortable in Rome, you might be allowed to live on our grandmother's estate at Cosa.'

Caenis drew a sharp breath. ‘And what does Caesar say to that?'

Sabinus shifted with embarrassment. ‘No answer yet.'

Conflicting emotions battered her. ‘It is his favourite place!' she protested at last.

Vespasian's brother, who had known her as long as Vespasian himself, looked at her with a trace of the Flavian sentiment. They were
poor, but they paid their debts. She would be provided for with decent courtesy. And Cosa was a good long way away. ‘Well. Think about it. I feel sure he will offer, if that is what you would like. Of course, you are quite right about the place. But you,' acknowledged the Prefect of the City unexpectedly, ‘have always been my brother's favourite person.'

He was remembering the day when they discovered her, a scrawny fractious solitary girl amidst all those incongruous perfume flasks and jars. He was trying not to remember the look he had seen that day upon Vespasian's face.

 

In the last days of Vitellius, Flavius Sabinus continually attempted to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict before Vespasian's two triumphant generals reached Rome.

Antonius Primus had encountered the last remnants of the Vitellian field army without bloodshed. They met at Narnia, sixty miles north of Rome. Caenis knew Narnia; though it was on a different highway, it lay only twenty miles from Reate. The Vitellians had marched down through the Umbrian Hills to meet Primus with standards aloft and banners fluttering—but they kept their swords sheathed. They paraded through the Narnia Gap right to the point where Primus had drawn up his own men in closed ranks and full battledress on either side of the road to Rome. In silence the Flavian army parted, then simply closed around the Vitellians until the two groups stood amalgamated into one. In many ways it was the most moving sight of the entire war.

Now Primus was waiting for Mucianus, who had been held up by a Dacian rebellion at their backs, to join him at Ocriculum. They were just forty-five miles, say two days' standard march, from Rome. Rome lay two days away from being sacked by Roman troops. After the destruction of Cremona, the point was not lost.

Vitellius at last agreed to abdicate. He left the Palace and made a suitable speech of renunciation in the Forum. Friends gathered at the house of Flavius Sabinus to congratulate him on the skill with which he had resolved the situation. It was all over—apparently.

However, while attempting to leave the Palatine, Vitellius found all the roads blocked with barricades. Not knowing what else to do, he returned to the Palace. His supporters rallied to him in the night. Rumours of the change quickly spread. As Prefect of the City, Sabinus gave an order confining all troops to barracks; the order was widely ignored. Aware that Mucianus and Primus were so near, he then assembled his family, including his nephew Domitian, and seized Capitol Hill intending to make a stand until the Flavian generals arrived.

The Capitol, founded by the Roman Kings then completed under the free Republic, had stood throughout the centuries whatever else barbarians managed to assault. It had survived Rome's sack by marauding Gallic tribes. It had survived the invasion of Lars Porsenna in times so ancient no one was certain any longer whether they were history or myth. The citadel had been destroyed once by accident, but never in war. The Flavians seemed pretty safe.

It was the night of 18 December. It was raining again, all night. In the pitch black no one could tell friend from foe; watchwords went unrecognised or unheard. Even so the cordon flung around the citadel by Vitellius was so loose that messages from Sabinus passed in and out easily. But the next day Vitellian soldiers attacked on two sides; some climbed the Hundred Steps from the Clivus Capitolinus, others broke in on the opposite side by way of the Gemonian Steps. What had seemed casual now became desperate. Sabinus' men tore the roof-tiles from the temples to hurl down on the attackers' heads and rooted up the statues to form frantic barriers at the gates. At some point during the confusion one side or the other started a fire which raged through the houses on the lower slopes, then while all Rome watched in horror the flames leapt uphill towards the Temple of Jupiter.

The temple was the site for Rome's most solemn religious ceremonies. Here the Senate convened their first meeting of every year. From this temple the statues of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were carried down into the city and paraded during festivals. To this temple victorious generals brought home their trophies. It was packed with dedicated treasure. The roof was covered with tiles of gilded bronze, the doors were plated with gold, and the peristyle was hung with solemn edicts engraved on ancient bronze plaques. The temple had
symbolised Rome's destiny for hundreds of years. It had given poets their famous epithet for the Golden Capitol. It was the heart of the Empire. The Temple of Jupiter on Capitol Hill in Rome was the centre of the civilised world. On 19 December in the Year of the Four Emperors the Temple of Jupiter burnt to the ground.