The Course of Honour (2 page)

‘Excuse me, sirs, you are not allowed in here.'

Warily she tried to camouflage her annoyance. In Rome it was wise to be diplomatic. That applied to everyone. Men who thought they possessed the Emperor's confidence today might be exiled or murdered tomorrow. Men who wanted to survive had to inveigle themselves into the clique surrounding Sejanus. Making friends had been unsafe for years, for the wrong association clung like onion juice under a chef's fingernails. Yet so many promising careers were ending in disaster that today's nobodies might just survive to ride in tomorrow's triumph beneath the laurels and ribbons of the golden Etruscan crown.

For a slavegirl it was always best to appear polite: ‘Lords, if you are wanting Veronica—'

‘Oh, do cheer up!' chaffed the first man abruptly. ‘We might prefer you.'

Caenis gave her pan a rapid shimmy, agitating the spatula. She chortled derisively. ‘Rich, I hope?' The two men glanced at one another, then with a similar slow regretful grin both shook their heads. ‘No use to me then!'

She saw their veiled embarrassment: traditionalists with good family morals—in public, anyway. Veronica would shake them. Veronica was the one to astonish a stiff-necked senator. She believed that a slavegirl who was vivacious and pretty could do as well for herself as she pleased.

Caenis was too single-minded and intense; she would have to make a life for herself some other way.

‘We seem to be lost,' explained the cautious man, Sabinus.

‘Your footman let you down?' Caenis queried, nodding at his companion.

‘My brother,' stated the senator; very straight, this senator.

‘What's his name?'

‘Vespasianus.'

‘Why no broad stripes too?' she challenged the brother directly. ‘Not old enough?' Entry to the Senate was at twenty-five; he was probably not long past twenty.

‘You sound like my mother: not clever!' he quipped.

Citizens never normally joked with slavegirls about their noble mothers; Caenis stared at him. He had a broad chest, heavy shoulders, a strong neck. A pleasant face, full of character. His chin jutted up; his nose beaked down; his mouth compressed fiercely, though he seemed good-humoured. He had steady eyes. She looked away. As a slave, she preferred not to meet such a gaze.

‘Not ready for it,' he added, glaring at his brother as if it were a matter of family argument.

Against her better judgement she replied, ‘Or is the Senate not ready for you?' She had already noticed his obstinate roughness, a deliberate refusal to hide his country background and accent; she admired it, though plenty in Rome would call it coarse.

He sensed her interest. If he wanted it (and she reckoned he did), women probably liked him. Caenis resisted the urge.

‘You have lost yourselves in Livia's pantry, sir,' she informed the other man, Sabinus.

There was a sudden stillness, which she secretly enjoyed. Though the cubbyhole looked like a perfumery, the two men would be wondering whether this was where the famous Empress had mixed up the poisons with which, allegedly, she removed those who stood in her way. Livia was dead now, but the rumours had acquired their own momentum and even grew worse.

The two men were nervously surveying the cosmetic jars. Some were empty, their contents evaporated years before; some had leaked
so they sat embedded in a tarry pool. Others remained good: glass flasks of almond oil, soapstone boxes of fine wax and fat, amethystine flagons of pomade, stoppered phials of antimony and extract of seaweed, alabaster pots of red ochre, ash and chalk. No place for a cook; rather an apothecary. Veronica would give three fingers to discover this little cave of treasures.

There were other containers, which Caenis had considered but carefully left untouched upon the shelves. Some ingredients could have no possible benign use and had convinced her it was true that Livia must have been in league with the famous poisoner Lucusta. She would keep that to herself.

‘And what are
you
doing here?' asked Sabinus, in fascination.

‘Cataloguing the cosmetics, sir,' Caenis answered demurely, implying otherwise.

‘For whom?' growled Vespasianus, with a glint that said he would like to know who had replaced Livia as dangerous.

‘Antonia.'

He raised an eyebrow. Perhaps he was ambitious after all.

Her elderly mistress was the most admired woman in Rome. The first lesson Diadumenus had drummed into Caenis was that she must avoid speaking to men who might be trying to manoeuvre themselves into a connection with Antonia. Daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia; Augustus' niece and sister-in-law of Tiberius; mother of the renowned Germanicus; (mother too of the peculiar Claudius and the scandalous Livilla); grandmother of Caligula and Gemellus, who were to share the Empire one day . . . If a woman must be defined by her male relations, the lady Antonia had gathered some plums, even though Caenis privately found them a specked and mildewed crop. Afflicted with these famous men, Antonia was wise, courageous, and not quite worn out by the indignities she had seen. Even the Emperor took her seriously. Even her slavegirls might wield influence.

‘I rarely see my mistress,' Caenis stated quietly, lest there be any misunderstanding. ‘I live in the imperial complex here. Her house is too small.'

This was true, yet being appointed to work as a copyist for Antonia had been a magical opportunity.

Though born a slave, Caenis was no skivvy. She had been singled out as bright, then given an education in office skills: reading, writing, ciphers and shorthand, discretion, deportment, graceful conversation in a pleasant voice. She had first-class Latin, and better than average Greek. She understood arithmetic and cheerfully grappled with accounts. She could even think, though she kept that to herself, since she did not choose to embarrass other people by showing she was superior. Only her morose adolescence had prevented her being placed in one of the imperial bureaux before this. They did not allow you into a bureau until they were sure you could deal firmly with senators.

 

She moved the pan off the brazier and stood up straight to deal with these men now. She had been thoroughly trained. Caenis could melt into backgrounds yet radiate efficiency. She always sat well, to help her handwriting. She stood without slouching; she walked with confidence; she spoke up clearly: she knew how to show uninvited senators to the door with relentless charm.

Whether this applied to pantry doors remained to be seen.

‘Antonia's cook?' Sabinus asked curiously as she moved the pan. Men had no idea.

‘Antonia's secretary,' she boasted.

‘Why the sausage, Antonia's secretary?' asked the brother, still regarding her with that long, frowning stare. ‘Don't they feed you here?'

The way they were hanging around near her food seemed endearingly hopeful. Caenis grinned, though looking down at her pannikin. ‘Oh the daily slave ration: nothing good, and never enough.'

Sabinus winced. ‘Sounds like a middle-class lunch!'

She liked this senator more than she expected. He seemed honest and well-intentioned. She let herself exclaim, ‘Well, everything's relative, lord! A rich knight is more cheerful than a poor senator. To be poor but middle class is still better than being a commoner who hardly has the right to pick his nose in the public street. A slave at the Imperial Palace leads a softer life than the free boatman who lives in
a flooded shack on the Tiber's bank—' Since they did not pull her up, she went on rashly, ‘The power of the Senate has become a delusion; Rome is ruled by the commander of the Praetorian Guard—'

She should never have said that aloud.

To distract them, she rushed on, ‘As for me, I was born in a palace; I have warmth and music, easy work and opportunity to progress. Perhaps more freedom than a high-born Roman girl with a garnet in each ear who lives penned in her father's house with nothing to do but be married off to some wealthy halfwit who spends all his time trying to escape her for intelligent conversation and unforced sexual favours—even perhaps if he's not an
absolute
halfwit, some genuine affection—with the likes of Veronica and me!'

She stopped, breathless. A political statement had escaped her; worse, she had betrayed something of herself: she shifted from foot to foot with unease.

The younger man's serious gaze was disturbing her. That was why she muttered, ‘Oh do stop leering at my sausage! Want a piece?'

There was a shocked pause.

It was unthinkable.

‘No; thank you!' said Sabinus hastily, trying to override his brother—no easy task.

Caenis was gruff but generous. Giving up the struggle for privacy, she offered the young knight a slice on the point of her knife; he nipped it off between his fingers at once.

‘Mmm! This is good!' Laughing now, he watched her while he munched. His grim face lost all its trouble suddenly. She had assumed anyone in a decent white toga dined daily on peacocks aswim in double sauces, yet he ate with the appetite of any starving scullion she knew. Perhaps all their ready money went on laundry bills for togas. ‘Give that fool a bit; he wants it really.'

Caenis eyed the senator. Once again she offered her knife; Sabinus gingerly lifted the food. His brother clapped his shoulder heavily so she caught the gleam of his gold equestrian ring. Then he admitted to Caenis, ‘His footman, as you say! I clear a path in the street, chase off bailiffs and unattractive women, guard his clothes like a dog at the baths—and I see he gets enough to eat.'

She could not tell how much of this was a joke.

By now she found in his face the bright signal that he liked her. She knew the look; she had seen it in men who danced attendance on Veronica. Caenis shrank from it. She found life a burden already. The last thing she needed was fending off some overfriendly hopeful with a broad country accent and no money. ‘Let me give you directions, lords.'

‘We'll get the girl into trouble,' Sabinus warned.

For the first time his brother smiled at her. It was the tight, rueful smile of a man who understood constraints. She was too wise to smile back. Still chewing, he refused to move. Studying the floor, Caenis ate her own sausage from the knife point, slowly. It was decent pork forcemeat, flavoured with myrtle berries, peppercorns and pine nuts; she had tossed it on the heat in oil strewn with the good end of a leek.

Only two slices remained in the pan. The younger brother, Vespasian, reached for one, then stopped and reproached her kindly, ‘You're letting us steal your dinner, lass.'

‘Oh go on!' she urged him, suddenly shy and cross. It had been giving her pleasure to offer something other than a slavegirl's usual trade.

He looked serious. ‘I shall repay the debt.'

‘Perhaps!'

So they had eaten together, she and that big young man with the cheery chin. They ate, while the brother waited; then both licked their fingers and both rapturously sighed. They all laughed.

‘Let me show you the way, lords,' Caenis murmured, newly subdued as the sunlight of a different world filtered into the bleakness of her own. She led them into the corridor; they walked either side of her while she basked in their presence as she took them towards the public rooms.

‘Thanks,' they both said, in the off-hand way of their rank.

Without answer she spun swiftly on the ball of her loosely slippered foot. She walked away as she had been taught: head up, spine straight, movement unhurried and disciplined. The grime and desolation imposed by her birth became irrelevant; she ignored her grey
condition and was herself. She sensed that they had halted, expecting her to look back from the corner; she was afraid to turn, in case she saw them laugh at her.

Neither did. The senator, Flavius Sabinus, accepted their odd adventure quietly enough. As for his brother, he smiled faintly, but he did not mock.

He knew he should not attempt to see her again. Caenis had missed the significance, but he realised at once. It was like him; a swift assessment of the situation followed by his private decision long before any public act. He was due to leave Rome again, due to leave Italy in fact. But all through his long journey back to Thrace, and afterwards, Flavius Vespasianus still thought,
What an interesting girl!

 

 

 

 

A
t dusk that same day, Caenis obeyed her instructions from Diadumenus, and went to check whether their mistress required her services. Washed and with her hair combed, she walked quietly, carrying a bound note tablet and her wooden stylus box.

The House of Livia lay adjacent to the Palace, convenient, yet still private when social distance was required. This was—in theory—the famous modest home which Augustus had ensured he kept. It had helped maintain the myth that despite the honours heaped upon him when he accepted the title of Emperor, he had remained an ordinary citizen: the first among equals, as a phrase wryly had it. In this house, it was said, his wife and daughter had worked at their looms to weave the Emperor's garments as Roman women were traditionally supposed to do for their male relatives. Perhaps sometimes, when other matters did not detain them, Livia and Julia really did devote themselves to weaving. Not often enough, in Julia's case. She had still found time to lead a life so debauched it earned her exile and infamy, then finally death by the sword.

For the past two years since the venerable Empress died, Livia's house had been Antonia's house only; it stood on the south-east corner of the Palatine Hill in an area where notable republicans had once owned houses. Augustus, who was born there, had bought out the other families and made this an exclusive domain of his own. His
original private house had been demolished to make way for his great new Temple of Apollo in the Portico of the Danaids, so the Senate had presented him with a replacement next to the temple with magnificent rooms for entertaining. His wife, Livia, maintained her own modest (though exquisite) house behind the temple. So in effect they had the benefits of a private palace, while still pretending to live in a classically simple Roman home.