The Course of Honour (5 page)

‘The lady Antonia's secretariat respects the privilege of rank.' Caenis was now allowed to be as ironic as the person she was addressing would accept. Authority attached to her through the importance of her mistress and the responsibility of her post. Antonia's visitors treated her with deference. ‘Are you rich yet, tribune?' she taunted.

‘I shall never be rich; but I have brought you a present. Don't get excited; it's nothing to wear.' He had come completely unattended. There was a rather greasy parcel squashed under his arm.

‘Can you eat it?' she giggled unexpectedly.

‘I owe you a sausage.'

‘And this is it? After
two years
, lord?'

‘I had to go to Thrace,' he told her gravely. ‘If I had missed the sea-crossing it would have been the end of my career.' He spoke as if he had seriously considered missing his ship anyway. Caenis felt an odd flutter. She ignored it stalwartly. He handed her the parcel. ‘I presume
you are a girl who likes pickled fish?' She loved pickled fish. ‘Manage a stuffed egg?'

‘Only one?'

‘I ate the other on the way.'

Genuinely shocked, she exclaimed before she could stop herself, ‘
In the street
, lord?'

‘In the street,' he returned placidly. For a moment she thought him a real country boy, innocent of his offence, then his gaze danced on her troubled face; he knew. Caenis frowned with a mixture of pleasure and puzzlement. She imagined him, shambling through Rome's clamorous streets. Probably he would carry it off. Probably no one even noticed: a knight, a tribune newly released from military service and qualified for the highest administrative posts, all on his own, carrying a parcel, munching a stuffed egg.

‘Deplorable,' he agreed wickedly. ‘So: here's a man who pays his debts.'

‘Outside my experience!'

Her wry comment on the harshness of her moral world made him pause, then he continued, ‘I've been trying to find you for days. I'm such a permanent fixture the sausage-maker thinks I must be spying on him for his wife. I would have arrived earlier today, but the stuff was wrapped in some second-rate poet's cast-off manuscript. You know how it is—you glimpse one half-good phrase then an hour goes by with you stood on the same street corner unravelling the paper trying to find the last appalling verse . . . Well, can we share this?'

Caenis was beginning to feel frightened. Every word he uttered snatched at her sympathy. Alone with her for the first time, he made no effort to be gallant; nor did he fuss. Perhaps he supposed knights and senators were always dropping in with picnics. Those brown eyes knew exactly what he was doing to her. Suddenly he tried to beg for information: ‘There were some grand events in Rome after I went back to Thrace. Were you aware what lay in store for Sejanus?'

Caenis still regarded Antonia's letter as a matter of confidence. Besides, she was trained to deflect curiosity from strangers. She demanded sternly, ‘I don't expect you thought to bring any bread?' Then before he had time to look crestfallen, she reached down and
hooked out the flat circular loaf she had been intending to nibble later on her own. ‘I think we should decamp to the pantry,' she said. ‘I don't want to be caught using my lady's letter to the King of Judaea as a napkin for eating pickled fish!'

 

Caenis now owned a plate. ‘Chipped but not cracked, rather like my heart . . .'

He did not laugh. He had a way of looking noncommittal while he listened, so she could hardly tell whether she amused or astonished him.

It was a different time of year. April. The Emperor still away on Capri. The days lengthening but the Palace lying silent again, lit by a myriad oil lamps for no one's benefit.

This time they had the sausage cold. Vespasian sliced it up himself. ‘I don't like this as much as yours; I should have asked you what to get—' It was a smoked Lucanian salami, rather strong on the cumin, not enough savory and rue. Caenis did not complain. It was the only present she had ever received. Veronica would have mocked; Veronica's idea of a present was something sparkly and easy to pawn.

‘When you have waited over a year for a debt,' Caenis commented benignly, ‘you make the best of whatever turns up.'

After a while he demanded, still chewing, ‘Are you allowed any free time on your own?'

This was what she wanted to avoid. Being stupidly straightforward, she told him the truth: ‘Sometimes.'

‘What do you do with yourself?'

‘Tomorrow I am going to see a mime actor.'

He looked interested; she groaned inwardly. ‘I heard you singing. And you like the dancers?'

‘I like the flute music. You can lose yourself,' she muttered, not wanting to talk about it. She knew better than to entrust her soul to anyone of rank.

‘You don't need losing,' he chivvied her. ‘Going with someone nice?'

‘Oh yes!' she snapped without thinking. ‘With myself.' She
crunched her teeth into a crisp curl of the loaf and pointedly did not look at him. There was a very slight pause.

‘No man?'

Better prepared now, she was able to duck the question: ‘Men are not nice, lord. Sometimes useful, occasionally amusing, hardly ever genuine, and never nice.'

‘Women are worse; they cost a lot and still let you down.' He was teasing. She let it pass.

‘Actually I go by myself because I seriously object when idiots talk to me through the music.'

He smiled, because he recognised that was just like her. She was as single-minded as himself. ‘Who's doing the mime?'

‘Blathyllos.'

‘Any good? I might come too. I don't talk; I always go to sleep. Luckily I never snore.'

They could not go to the theatre as a couple. They would not be permitted to sit together; even women of his own rank must watch separately. Antonia's slave should not be seen alone with him in any case. But he asked, without hesitation, ‘Would you meet me afterwards?' Absorbing herself in biting a peppercorn from the pickled fish, Caenis tried not to answer. He interpreted her silence his own way. ‘Where shall I find you?'

Too late; she was committed. Her heart pounded. ‘A young lord who does not know the theatre rendezvous?' she reproved, still foolishly attempting to slither out of this.

‘Sheltered upbringing.'

‘Bit old-fashioned?' There was no escape. The truth had to be stated. She reminded him baldly: ‘I am somebody else's slave.'

‘I appreciate that.'

Defiance overtook her. ‘Well then, if you mean it, you could meet me here beforehand. Ask anyone; they will find me.'

For the first time the senator's brother seemed uncomfortable. ‘Who shall I ask for?' His sources of information must be thinner than hers.

She took a deep breath. Giving her name seemed a step she could never revoke. ‘Caenis,' she said awkwardly.

‘Caenis?' He tested it out in his strong voice. It was Greek; that was only a convention of slavery. ‘Caenis!' he exclaimed again, and his speaking her name made everything unbearably intimate.

‘Just Caenis,' she muttered.

‘Just nothing!' he retorted angrily. She guessed he meant she should not denigrate herself. ‘And listen, Caenis: always ask a visitor who he is!' He was evidently wanting her to ask his own name. ‘The most dismal words in the world are “Someone called to see you; I don't know who it was . . .” Don't be put at a disadvantage. You can't afford to be pushed into assumptions about anybody's status; you need to know for sure. You have to judge whether a person rates refreshments or only your polished sneer.' He stood up. ‘So in answer to your next question—'

He must have thought she would have forgotten. She interrupted calmly: ‘Your name is Titus Flavius Vespasianus.' He began to grin with delight at once. She recited in her most efficient voice, ‘Your father was Flavius Sabinus, a citizen of Reate, so your voting tribe is the Quirina; your mother is Vespasia Polla. You wear the gold ring of the knights. Your patron is the elevated Lucius Vitellius, who brings your brother to Antonia's house—'

‘Do you speak to my brother?' he interrupted in surprise.

‘No, certainly not.' She was determined to reach her joke: ‘You are a second son with no reputation, but respectable so I need to be polite—' Vespasian clenched the corner of his mouth in anticipation; he possessed a rapidly developing sense of humour and liked what he had glimpsed of hers. So Caenis said, knowing how much he would enjoy it, ‘As for your rating refreshments, lord—I worked out your status the first time we met!'

 

 

 

 

W
hen Vespasian collected her he held out his hand and swiftly clasped hers. Nobody had ever done that before.

‘Hello, Caenis.' With the greeting his voice dropped half a tone. Her breath tangled somewhere above her middle ribs as she withdrew her hand with care.

‘Hello—' She did not know how to address him.

He gazed at her for a moment inscrutably. ‘Titus,' he instructed.

Very few people ever used his personal name. In the offhand Roman way his whole family were named Titus—grandfather, father, brothers and cousins all the same—so people called him Vespasian, even at home. This intimacy offered to Caenis was the measure of the mistake the man was letting himself make. Presumably he did not realise; Caenis did.

‘You look nice.'

For once she smiled. Antonia had given her a new dress.

 

She had felt compelled to mention him to Antonia.

‘Madam, when I go to the theatre this evening, I have made an arrangement to meet a gentleman.' The statement plunged her into visible difficulty. Doubt was transfiguring her mistress' face.

They had been in a room at Livia's House where the walls were
decorated with elegant swags of greenery looped between columns, below a high golden frieze portraying tiny figures in dreamy cityscapes. Antonia reclined in a long sloping chair while Caenis perched on a low stool with a tablet on her knees. Antonia liked to work hard without distractions, but once they finished sometimes she kept back her secretary for a few moments of casual talk. It did her good to unbend. She tired more easily nowadays than she wanted to admit. She had lived twice as long as many people and survived more griefs than most.

The old lady stirred. Her well-attended skin had preserved its sweet suppleness until now, but her face had grown thinner and since Livilla's disgrace despair was beginning to show in the fine creases at the corners of her eyes.

The moment had become awkward.

‘Why are you telling me?' Antonia demanded. ‘Do you wish me to forbid it?'

Caenis was taking an enormous risk. When the Chief Secretary, Diadumenus, had first stipulated that Antonia must be told of any approaches from knights or senators he had meant approaches on business matters; there ought to be no other kind of commerce with their lady's slaves.

‘I prefer to be open, madam.'

In other households it was usually understood that other commerce did occur . . . Not here. Or if here, it never happened openly.

Even after knowing Caenis for several years, Antonia immediately decided her slave had loose morals and would be easy prey for a political shark. It was unfair; Caenis had always been scrupulous.

‘You ask me to condone the friendship? How long have you been dealing with this man?'

Caenis said tersely, ‘I don't
deal
with him. I don't even know if he expects it.'

Antonia moved impatiently. ‘Come; who is he?'

‘Flavius Vespasianus, a knight from Reate. The family are not prominent though his brother, Sabinus, has been here as a client of Lucius Vitellius. Madam, you asked me long ago if I had male followers, and I told you no.'

There was some improvement in Antonia's expression. ‘So what is this?'

‘A slight friendship I struck up with a newcomer to Rome, nothing more.' How could it be? The sheer impossibility filled her with dread. ‘He has been on service abroad and has few friends in Rome.'

‘Yet he sought you out!'

‘I believe that was coincidence.'

‘You believe nothing of the sort! Is he seeking only your favours, or does he hope for influence?'

‘That I do not know,' admitted Caenis. ‘But if I find out what he thinks he is seeking, the sooner I can disillusion him.'

Antonia sighed with irritation. ‘Are you deceiving yourself—or trying to deceive me?' Caenis wisely made no reply. ‘Have you confided in anybody else? I thought you were friendly with that girl Veronica?'

With a pang of resentment, Caenis finally grasped how nearly her friendship with Veronica had jeopardised her post. She took the opportunity to speak up: ‘Veronica has a good heart. I do like her, but that does not mean I admire her life. And she has never influenced mine, madam.' She smiled reassuringly. ‘I have never even mentioned Vespasian to Veronica.'

‘I will not have my staff used by ambitious young men,' declared Antonia, though she liked people who stood up to her; she could be weakening.

Caenis decided to show she was shrewd. ‘I value my position too highly to risk it through foolishness. Besides, madam, if your court is seen as a desirable forum for young men who wish to advance in public life—as it must be—then he and his brother have obtained their entrée anyway. Somebody, their father perhaps, has ensured that they are taken up by Vitellius. Vespasian cannot believe knowing me will improve on that.'

Now her mistress seemed amused. ‘Then, my dear, what does he want?'

‘I suppose, what they all want,' Caenis decided, so as two women together they laughed and nodded distrustfully. ‘He will be due for a disappointment! Madam, if he intends to pick my brains for your secrets, I shall certainly give him a sharp answer. I believe he knows
that. No—as I told you, I suspect he is just a young man who lacks friends in Rome. I am under no delusions; once he finds his feet in society that will be the end of me.'