“Keep away from men with talent,” Veronica barked. “If he falls, you may follow. If he rises, you’ll be dropped. Ouch! ”

  “Sorry. Give me your oil flask. Phew! ”

  “Deposited as an offering on the altar of love,” Veronica muttered.

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s very expensive.”

  “It would be—I’ll use mine.”

  As her friend ministered, Veronica lifted her own flask and sniffed at it uncertainly; she had educated views on material items, yet sometimes Caenis managed to shake her confidence.

  “It’s a pretty bottle,” Caenis consoled kindly. It was pink Syrian glass, traced with fine spirals and so delicate it seemed ready to shatter from the very heat of any hand that held it up to admire its translucence. That did not excuse the oil within this fine Syrian product from smelling as if it were concocted from the reproductive glands of a camel.

  Wriggling her shoulders Veronica demanded, “Well, failing some old millionaire to tickle your fancy, why refuse your Sabine friend?” She used the term “Sabine” as an insult.

  Caenis knew the answer; she had spent all night thinking it up. “Because my Sabine friend has intelligence and good humor; both of those are qualities I like far too much.”

  Veronica recognized how serious this was. “You’re smitten!”

  “Oh, I can’t risk that.”

  “No; you can’t. That’s losing in every way. But if you don’t take the poor one and you won’t find a rich one, you’d better work damned hard, then pray that your noble lady notices! Antonia may give you your freedom one day—but yours will be a small pension, Caenis, and not even happy memories at this rate. . . .”

  She turned around, grabbing at the oil flask, though before she started to dribble the stuff down her friend’s own immaculate back she kissed her on the top of her head; she was a demonstrative girl. It was another way in which they had nothing in common.

  “Now, the minute he turns up with his present, I want to hear what it is.”

  * * *

  Vespasian did not turn up with his present; he did not turn up at all.

  As Caenis gradually realized that the aggravating bastard had reached the same decision as herself, she started to dodge Veronica by taking a swim. Veronica rarely permitted herself to be dodged.

  In the end she appeared at the side of the swimming bath, slapped down her rope sandals on the marble rim in a way that indicated she was not intending to go away, then waited for Caenis to surge up to her reluctantly. Caenis stayed in the water, floating on her back. Veronica stretched a fine ankle and splished the surface with one beautiful toe. They gazed at one another for a moment beneath the echoing hollow vault. Women’s voices chattered against the pouring of water from jugs in the washing rooms in the background.

  “Your friend’s bunked off to Reate,” Veronica shouted, at her most businesslike. “He’s run home to his mother!”

  Reate, famous to all Italy as the source of the finest white edible snails, was the Flavian family home. Vespasian’s grandfather had settled there, and he himself had been born at Falacrina nearby. Reate was where his mother lived, where both he and his brother owned summer estates, sixty miles east of Rome. No one traveled so far and to such a country area unless they meant to stay.

  Veronica usually tried to be kind, for she felt Caenis had never enjoyed much of a life. “Some of them don’t know the rules. When you say no, they think you mean it.”

  Caenis bobbed away from the side of the swimming bath, then paddled gently back. “I did.”

  “Darling, there’s your answer, then!”

  Before she back-flipped like some overeager performing dolphin, Caenis added with rueful bitterness, “It’s my own fault. When he promised that he would see me again, I forgot the free citizen’s prerogative—not to bother to tell the truth to someone else’s scabby slave!”

  Then Veronica replied with the two things a girl needed her friend to say: “You’re not scabby, you’re lovely—and your Sabine friend’s a fool!”

  * * *

  Going home to his mother was not the ideal escape. His mother had plans for him.

  Flavius Vespasianus had been brought up in a family where women had a voice. The men went about their business in a perfectly capable manner, but they owed their position in society to the women they had married, and those women refused to be ciphers. For instance, though his brother had the same cognomen as their father, Vespasian was named after his mother. Vespasia Polla was not unique in receiving this sign of respect, though many women were denied it.

  Vespasian’s grandfather had married money; then his father allied himself to social status. While his father was away making a useful fortune as a banker in Helvetia, Vespasian had been brought up by his grandmother Tertulla on her large estate at Cosa on the northwest coast of Italy. Nowadays, with the family established nearer to Rome, his mother had assumed the influence that his grandmother had wielded during his happy childhood in Etruria.

  His brother was doing well, as their mother pointed out. Sabinus, who had held the civic post of aedile the year Sejanus fell, had then progressed without difficulty to being elected as a magistrate two years later. By the time he was forty Sabinus would be hoping for a consulship. Meanwhile, Vespasian had reached twenty-five, the year he himself was eligible to stand as a senator, though so far he had done nothing about it. A second son, he had a more easygoing attitude than his brother. He did not want to follow Sabinus into a public career—though he had no clear idea what he hankered for instead. His mother was determined to overcome his restlessness.

  She was winning. She could not make him run in the Senate elections the year that he should have, but soon afterward Vespasian let himself agree to return to Rome. Lucius Vitellius was prevailed upon to introduce him to high circles. This brought him into a tight-knit group of four notable families—the Vitellii, the Petronii, the Plautii, and the Pomponii—who all had long-standing ties of marriage and common interest and who were increasingly prominent in government. After Sejanus fell, their importance had increased. Their members were awarded a flock of consulships, and it was generally perceived that they owed at least some of their success to Antonia.

  Only foolishness would have allowed a young man who had access to this powerful group to miss his opportunity. Unless he chose to run off to be a traveling lyre player, with a beard and battered sandals, Vespasian was bound to end up dancing attendance at the House of Livia.

  “I could bar this upstart!” offered Tyrannus.

  Tyrannus was the slave who screened Antonia’s guests. It was a post she had virtually invented, for in most Roman homes free access to the householder for people wishing to pay their respects or to submit petitions was traditional, but most households were not headed by women. Modesty forbade such free access to the House of Livia.

  “There is no reason to bar him.” Caenis felt embarrassed to discover that everyone knew Vespasian had sought an entanglement with her—and that it had not happened.

  “I’m on your side, Caenis.”

  “I do appreciate that. We need not punish him.”

  “Oh, well—if you put his nose out of joint!”

  Hardly likely, thought Caenis, as she braced herself to keep calm during Vespasian’s visit.

  She refused to hide. He too had no intention of pretending they were strangers. In what amounted to a public situation, they were able to find a wry formality for dealing with one another. So they would pass in corridors as if by accident (though it happened quite often). They would treat one another to exaggerated politeness, inquiring after each other’s health. They even stood in the atrium discussing the weather as if there had never been that fierce tug of attraction between them.

  Yet remembrance of their old friendship never died either. Caenis liked to let Vespasian see important men respectfully seeking her advice about how to approach Antonia. In return, Vespasian would fold his strong arms in his toga and cheerfully wink at her.

  When he was twenty-six his mother finally prevailed. He was elected to the Senate, assuming the title of quaestor, a junior finance official, then given a posting to Crete.

  EIGHT

  “Hello, Caenis.” Her Sabine friend.

  The odd thing was, even after so long she felt no more surprise when he turned up again wanting to see her than when he had first stayed away.

  It was November. Huddled in her cloak because the Palace was freezing, Caenis drove herself to continue writing until the next period. Even then she looked up only with her eyes, the picture of a secretary too intent to interrupt.

  “Senator!” She was shocked. Here was Vespasian’s familiar burly figure, uneasily swaddled in formal clothes—brilliant white woollen cloth, with wide new purple bands.

  She did know he had been elected to the Senate. Antonia sent her every day to copy the news from the Daily Gazette, which was posted up for the public in the Forum. Caenis had recited the latest list of postings to quaestor while Antonia, who realized the young knight from Reate was no longer an issue, ignored his name with tact.

  “Ludicrous, isn’t it?” He smiled.

  “Is your voting tribe short of candidates?” Caenis jibed with mild offensiveness. Senators elect were entitled to sit on special benches and listen in to the judgments to gain experience; most provincials felt this entitlement was one a prudent man should be seen eagerly taking up. It was late morning; Vespasian had probably come here from the Curia. Bound for Crete, he could only have come to say good-bye.

  He hovered just inside the door. This time he passed no comment on the decor, even though the damp plaster had been cleanly reinstated, while the new paint on the dados and frescos still smelled fresh. (Caenis had succeeded in subverting the prefect in charge.)

  “You’re going to throw me out,” said Vespasian unhappily.

  “I ought to,” she replied with controlled candor. “I owe it to myself.”

  “Of course you do.” At last she lifted her head. He said calmly, “Please don’t.”

  Caenis retorted, “Naturally, sir, I abase myself like an oriental ambassador—on my face, on the floor, at your feet!”

  She stayed at her table.

  Vespasian quietly crossed the room, accepting her sarcasm, then piled his toga in untidy folds on his knees as he took a low stool in front of her. He watched her with those frank brown eyes; she tilted her head, watching him. She remembered the frown; the energy of his stare; his physical stillness—the dangerous feeling that this man was offering his confidence, and she might without warning find she was sharing hers.

  “What can I do for you, senator?” she inquired, honoring him again with his new title, her tone more subdued than the question required.

  Vespasian leaned his elbow on her table. The wobbly legs had been stabilized for her by a carpenter, who then polished up the whole piece with beeswax. Caenis folded her hands on the farthermost gleaming edge.

  He was making no attempt to explain. First he had decided against seeing her again; well, she didn’t want to see him. And now he had decided to come back: well!

  He said, “I’m trying to get hold of some notes for a decent shorthand system. The ones in the libraries are not for taking away.” This ploy was at least novel. Mad humor danced in his face as Caenis tried to resist laughing too. “When I go abroad, if I’m just trailing around after some self-opinionated governor who doesn’t trust me to do anything, I may at least manage to learn taking notes properly.”

  His year as a quaestor would involve traveling out to one of the foreign provinces to be the governor’s finance officer and deputy. Unless they happened to have worked together before and had built up a friendship, governors and their quaestors often despised each other. In any case, she imagined Vespasian might make a prickly subordinate.

  Delving into the conical basket in which she carried her equipment to and fro, Caenis produced her own battered reference sheets. She had been taught shorthand and several kinds of ciphering long ago. “This is a list of symbols I once made for myself. If you can read my scribble, take it, please.”

  When taking notes for her own purposes she wrote so quickly her handwriting could be eccentric, but as he glanced through, he nodded. “Thanks.” He was just like her; set a document in his hand, and he was instantly devouring it.

  While he was still reading she forced herself to say, “I see the Senate has published next year’s postings.”

  “I’ve drawn Cyrenaica and Crete.”

  “Crete will be pleasant. . . . When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow.” Immediately he looked up. “Sailing when the seas are closed is traditionally the first test in the job. Sorry. I should have come before this. Stupid!” he added tersely.

  Caenis did not reply.

  The awkward low seat finally got the better of him. He stood up, stretching, though not yet ready to go. He began to pace about the room.

  “I see you had the place cleaned up.”

  “How did you know it was me?” she demanded. Vespasian let out a little laugh. Caenis blushed. “Well, I finally nudged the prefect of works.”

  He had been inspecting the new fresco. The painters had wanted to do a gladiatorial scene; painters always did. Instead Caenis had insisted on a soothing panorama of gardens, like the one in Livia’s House: cranky trellises laden with creepers in whose shade three-legged herons pecked fruit from funereal urns amid unlikely combinations of flowers.

  “What does nudging entail?” Vespasian cracked, looking back over his hefty shoulder with a contempt that startled her.

  “Oh—the usual!” When caught off guard Caenis could be a belligerent tease. She glanced down, then up again through her eyelashes. Veronica imbued this gesture with resonant sexuality; Caenis got an eyelash in one eye. “I just took an interest in his work.”

  Vespasian stared.

  To soothe him, while she fiddled with the eyelash she commented that Antonia was unlikely to keep this office once Tiberius either died or came home to Rome. It was years since he decamped to Capri. There he now owned a dozen villas, plus a series of grottoes and bowers that provided a pretty playground for acting out orgiastic fantasies—or so it was said. Some of the terrible stories were probably true.

  Sometimes the Emperor did make journeys to mainland Italy and circled Rome like a wary crab, informing the Senate that he intended to visit and yet then fleeing back to his hideaway with the headlong panic of a haunted man. Astrologers had decided that the hour of his leaving Rome had been so inauspicious that returning might be fatal. Caenis scoffed at the idea, but Vespasian folded his arms over his glossy new toga and said, “Not if he really believes the prophecy.”

  “That I accept,” Caenis agreed. “He’d be quite likely to collapse if he heard a rat in the hypocaust, or a spider ran over his foot. You know, Antonia believes that is what happened to her son in Syria.”

  “Germanicus? I thought he was poisoned.”

  “He was; but he might have withstood it better if witches had not filled his house with fossils, and feathery monsters, and dead babies under the floorboards, until they frightened him to death.” She was philosophical about Tiberius. “So long as the creatures who parade for the Emperor’s perversions volunteer, let him stay on his island.”

  “Is it all true?” Eyes bright, Vespasian had a respectable man’s shameless curiosity about the Emperor’s fusty sexual habits.

  “Worse.”

  Disturbed, he saw the dismal memories clouding Caenis’ face.

  She braced herself to cope. She had never expressed her views on Tiberius; it had never been safe. Yet in Vespasian she placed absolute trust. To him she could speak. “I was a child when he last lived here, but those years were very dark. His household existed in dread. He was most intrigued by persuading the aristocracy to commit obscenities, but no slave carried him a cup of wine or was sent to fasten his shoe without the risk of being stripped and subjected to indecency—either by him or the men and women who surrounded him. No one could save you if you attracted attention. Childhood was no protection. Ordinary rape was a kindness compared with the alternatives.”

  In the schoolroom she herself had been relatively safe. Even so, as a teenager she had always carried her stylus knife so if she ever met trouble she could stab herself and perhaps take one of the Emperor’s catamites with her. One of her friends had died of suffocation and shock during an ugly ordeal in the Emperor’s underground entertainment room. Caenis would not repeat the details.

  Vespasian walked slowly back to where she sat. Leering curiosity had given way to middle-class distaste. His face remained neutral, though Caenis sensed the concealed throb of anger. “Not you, I hope?”

  “No,” she reassured him somberly, with all the color bleached from her own voice. Simply talking to him had healed her bad memories. “Not me.”

  She noticed a small nerve jerk in his cheek.

  He sat down again. They changed the subject.

  They spoke of Crete. They discussed the problems of running a province that was divided between a Mediterranean island and a tract of North Africa; the main advantage for the quaestor was that he could always send his governor to bumble around the other half of the territory while he enjoyed himself.

  They spoke of Vespasian’s mother. “Is she fabulously pleased with you now?”

  “Afraid so!”

  They had become confederates. They were talking like two outsiders from society. They talked for the months they had already missed and the period of Vespasian’s coming tour; openly and easily, sharing rudeness and laughter, discovery and surprise; until lunchtime, through lunchtime, and into the afternoon. They talked until they were tired.

  Then they sat, two friendly companions just leaning their chins on their hands.

  There were no sounds of habitation. It was so quiet, they could hear the creak of walls contracting in the winter chill and birdsong—a thrush, perhaps—from a far-off deserted park.