TEN

  Vespasian was brief:

  O Lady! A rogue from Crete would very much like to see you!

  T.F.V.

  He had written to her before.

  The letters Vespasian wrote to her from abroad had not been embarrassing effusions. Caenis knew a great deal about love letters, from scribing them for other people. She had been deeply relieved when her own correspondent did not eulogize her as the soul of his heart and the heart of his soul, nor describe her divine eyes as entirely the wrong color, nor spend half a page announcing in gynecological detail the intimacies she could expect upon his return. Juno be praised, he never exclaimed that she was just like his mother. Instead he possessed the gift of apt quotation and a fine eye for the absurd. He told her interesting facts about his province and rude anecdotes about the people with whom he dealt. Years later, when he had earned a wide reputation as a joker, Caenis still thought that none of Vespasian’s reported wit was so wickedly funny as the letters that he had written to her as a young man from Crete.

  She had expected him to practice his shorthand. In fact, since she had given him her ciphering notes too, he used code. At the back of her reference sheets he had found a system the teenaged Caenis once invented herself: “My Code: By Caenis” was excellent; without the key, it took Caenis herself three weeks to unravel Vespasian’s first letter, even though she had once been the star of her cipher class.

  She took a long time to reply. Caenis had never written a letter for herself. Vespasian’s second arrived before she had answered his first. Yet by the middle of his tour she too had found her style and her length; she settled into speaking directly with the candor that he obviously liked, and learned to enjoy herself. Enjoying herself was almost certainly a mistake, but she no longer cared.

  * * *

  For reasons she could not explain, Caenis had never mentioned to him that she had gained her freedom.

  That year a sense of fatality had afflicted her mistress, Antonia. She was bound to feel the loneliness of a woman whose contemporaries had all gone, many in grim circumstances, which as an elderly lady she remembered more distinctly than her breakfast that morning. She was smitten by an urge to set things in order.

  Discussing with Caenis the library that bore Octavia’s name, for the first time she had reminisced about her mother. Abandoned by Mark Antony, Octavia had brought up single-handedly not only their own children, but first Antony’s by his stormy marriage to Fulvia and, eventually, even his children with Cleopatra. “Not an easy woman, my mother,” Antonia had admitted. “Impossible not to admire her—I am sure even my father always did that—but she often seemed reproachful and difficult to like.”

  This was an intriguing glimpse of the legendary, much-loved sister of Augustus, so famous for her goodness. Caenis ventured curiously, “Do you think if your mother had been less formidable, Mark Antony might have come back from Egypt?”

  “Oh no!” Antonia was definite. “Losing a man to a woman is one thing—giving him up to politics is final.”

  On her birthday Antonia had freed several of her slaves who deserved retirement. Pallas was among them, rewarded by freedom and a large estate in Egypt for his good service with the letter about Sejanus. Diadumenus, the Chief Secretary, took his deserved retirement; Caenis was to be promoted. Antonia had asked her to prepare the manumission documents, which at last gave her the opportunity to speak on her own behalf: “Madam, you know I have been saving since before I came to you. I want to ask to buy my freedom.”

  Immediately there was a sense of strain.

  She had known Antonia would not like it. Her patroness expected to plan her slaves’ lives for them; in the Palace there had been much less scope for advancement, but at least matters of business could be broached without irritating anybody else. She watched the old lady trying to be tolerant.

  “That will be unnecessary.” Reluctantly Antonia explained that Caenis was to be freed one day under her will.

  “Madam, I am grateful, but I should hardly enjoy looking forward to your death.”

  “Oh, I don’t enjoy it myself! Now be serious; I cannot let you waste your money.”

  Caenis sat still. She would pay for her freedom if she had to, but it would take all her resources. She would have nothing at all to live on afterward. She had a bitter grasp of financial needs. Yet she wanted to be free. She had saved what she knew to be a good secretary’s price; she was desperate to realize her ambition now. So many disasters might intervene otherwise. A will could be altered; Antonia’s heirs might not honor it; the Senate might change the law. Now that citizenship stood within her grasp through her own enterprise, Caenis could not bear to wait.

  Antonia understood the situation. A secretary might not command the outrageous price of a handsome driver or a sloe-eyed dancing girl, but Caenis, trained in the imperial school and with such good Greek, was still a prize. The fact that she managed to save her worth indicated strong willpower. Even with the offer of acquiring her freedom for nothing eventually, she would still be prepared for hardship in order to gain it now.

  “You have to be thirty years old.” Caenis felt younger, but since she did not know her age she bluffed it out. Antonia pursed her mouth, yet let that issue drop. “You are forcing my hand, Caenis!”

  Caenis made no reply. There was a long, not entirely amicable silence.

  Antonia asked stiffly, “Do you want to get married?” Caenis shuddered. “Do you wish to set up in some business? Run a salon? Open a shop?” Caenis laughed. Antonia breathed; the rings on her gnarled fingers flashed restlessly. “Would you leave me?”

  “Not if you would let me stay.”

  Antonia knew she was beaten.

  She sighed. “Don’t expect too much,” she warned. “A slave is sheltered; a free woman faces more responsibilities than you may realize.”

  Although Caenis was too sensitive to argue, she lifted her head; she saw Antonia close her eyes momentarily, with a faint smile. They both knew Caenis would glide into responsibility fearlessly. She was ready to be her own woman. To hold her back would condemn her. Anyone who cared for her must sympathize.

  “Perhaps you will be good enough,” the lady Antonia instructed her, with petulant formality, “to prepare for me another of these documents.” Caenis knew her well enough to wait. “You will not be asked to buy your citizenship. Caenis, you are stubborn and independent—but, my dear, this was to be my gift to you and I refuse to forgo that pleasure!”

  * * *

  So it was now to a distinguished imperial freedwoman that Vespasian had to dispatch his least ruffianly slave. Not only was Antonia’s house the highest-ranking private home in Rome; by virtue of their position close to the imperial family, her freedwoman possessed more clout than any tax collector’s son. Vespasian would not consider visiting the House of Livia without his own patron, Lucius Vitellius, and he felt wary of making a personal approach to Caenis before he knew how she would react. He was not entirely certain his scab-kneed lad would be admitted.

  He was right that here they had no WELCOME sign set into their scrubbed mosaic floor. However, letters addressed to Caenis were always promptly delivered, and Vespasian’s slave was permitted to wait for her reply. At ease in her long chair in one of the tasteful reception rooms, with her own slavegirl in attendance for decency’s sake, Caenis smiled a little as she dictated it to a thin Greek scribe.

  So pleasant to hear from you; so kind of you to remember me. You may visit me here at any time, tomorrow perhaps if you wish. I should very much like to see you!

  A.C.

  Vespasian decided not to wait until tomorrow.

  ELEVEN

  The House of Livia, Antonia’s house, like any substantial residence in Rome turned inward on courtyards full of quiet sunlight and the soothing splash of fountains. Blank walls faced outward, even though this dwelling possessed the added seclusion of a position on the Palatine. Everything was designed to eliminate the bustle of exterior crowds and to provide, even within the capital, a family haven of strict privacy and peace. The architects had not reckoned with the havoc that the mad Julio-Claudian family could cause in any haven, but for once the defect was not the architects’ fault.

  There was one courtyard garden, shaded in summer by a fig tree and overhead roses, surrounded by a colonnade. Nobody went there much nowadays. The wicker chairs and folding tables were stored on one side, together with terra-cotta urns of tender bulbs that had been brought under the roof for shelter. Entranced by a neglected sprawl of jasmine, Caenis had made this her private domain. It was a faintly dusty, comfortable place, kept private from formal visitors. She liked to lounge there even late in the day, when the palest sunshine lancing down low over the main pantiles soon made it surprisingly warm. Sometimes after dinner, when Antonia retired early to bed, Caenis sat there in silence in the dark.

  Her little slave, a child who lacked any susceptibility to the romance of private thought, usually brought her a bowl of pistachios and a proper table lamp.

  * * *

  “Hello, Caenis.”

  There was a lamp being brought but no nuts, and it was not her little slave.

  “Who is it?” she gurgled foolishly. Pointless; no one else spoke her name with the solemnity of a religious address. Vespasian’s substantial shadow unraveled and shrank down and up the folding doors that led out from the house. “Oh! I had better call my girl.”

  “You had better not,” he retorted calmly. “I’ve just given her a copper to keep out of the way.”

  Reaching her, he held aloft his pottery lamp: the same sunny disposition, the same frowning face. Gazing back, where she reclined among cushions, wrapped in a deep-blue robe, Caenis felt herself breaking into a slow, tranquil grin to welcome him.

  “Antonia Caenis; Caenis Antonia!” He pronounced it in full as a deliberate compliment, acknowledging her new right to be named after her patroness: that bad-tempered slavey he had first met with the pan of hot sausage, forever now allied to the noble families of Augustus Caesar and Mark Antony.

  “Just Caenis.” She shrugged. He barked with mirth; she would never change.

  He set his lamp on a plinth. “An imperial freedwoman,” he marveled. “Smiling on a veranda under the stars.” He sat on the edge of a pillar base, holding his head ruefully between his hands. “O elegant and influential young lady! Far, far above a poor provincial bumpkin’s reach.”

  “Never,” Caenis told him softly. The dim lamplight wavered on that wonderfully jovial face, so the shadow of his nose hooked in a mad slant over one cheek, while the outline of his chin lapped wildly down into the hollow of his throat.

  “Never? Oh, I think in many ways you always were. . . .” She felt like a flattered queen. He said, shining with joy for her, “You look as if your heart could burst with pride. You should have told me you had been made up—I suppose you know I’ve followed you about all day. I won’t tell you the things I was starting to imagine when I saw how you were queening it. Fortunately the Saepta Julia shuts up shop quite late.”

  The Saepta Julia was the market for jewelry and antiques; Caenis reckoned it was not one of Vespasian’s customary haunts. “I thought the Saepta was where a gentleman goes when he wants to waste a great deal of money.”

  “Spend a lot, anyway,” remarked Vespasian lightly. “There you are. With my congratulations. Don’t get excited; you can’t eat it.” Withdrawing his right hand from the fold of his toga, he dropped a small but heavy package into her lap. It was tied with the kind of sleek ribbon that stated that the contents had been purchased at hideous cost.

  Deeply troubled, Caenis shook her head. “My word, this does look like a bribe, senator!”

  “Sadly for me, I know you can’t be bought. Go on.”

  “What is it?” She was as stubborn as ever.

  “New shackles.” He waited for her to look. It was a good gold bangle, in strikingly elegant taste, and of first-quality gold. “Since you like to sit in the dark,” he said, “I shall have to tell you I had your name engraved inside—so you can’t pawn it, and neither can you take it back. Your name, and also,” he added bravely, “mine.”

  There was a very slight pause.

  “It’s lovely. . . . You can’t afford it,” she protested. “You know you can’t.”

  “No. A polite girl,” Vespasian observed, “would try it on.” Caenis obediently did so.

  That pillar base was striking up cold through his clothes; he stood up. For a bad moment she thought he was already taking his leave.

  “Titus, thank you!”

  He was visibly surprised. “You accept my gift?”

  “Certainly.”

  They both knew that with her obstinate streak she might not intend accepting anything else; she wondered if his spirits sank. Without exactly flirting, she found herself enjoying her sense of command.

  As she admired the bangle, Caenis lifted her feet from the floor. She was sitting in a silly summer chair that hung like a cradle from a frame. Now she automatically stretched her toes and swung; when she slowed, Vespasian lent a helping hand.

  “Welcome home!” she exclaimed belatedly, looking up. “Thank you for writing to me; I enjoyed your letters.”

  “Thank you too.”

  “My last to you has probably gone astray.”

  Nothing ruffled him. “Probably lie in the Cretan quaestors’ work box for the next forty years, filed under ‘Too Difficult.’ . . . Glad to see me back?”

  “Mmm!” The chair spun slightly, so her robe brushed against him before he steadied the basketwork, then pushed the contraption straight again. Lulled by the methodical rhythm of the swing, Caenis murmured, “I have heard that the girls in Crete are famously attractive.”

  “The girls in Crete,” returned Vespasian gravely, “are ravishing. But their fathers are famously fierce.”

  “I expect people manage.”

  “I believe people do.” He pushed her chair slightly harder than before. “Of course you always get the odd romantic who prefers to save up his initiative for some clever brown eyes he left behind at home. . . . Antonia Caenis,” he mused, perhaps changing the subject. “Caenis, in the dark with her shoes off—lovely feet!—Caenis, in a hanging chair. Very rash, young lady, some bad man may tip you out!”

  And Vespasian tipped her out himself.

  * * *

  Her heart stopped.

  He caught her, as he meant to do, with one strong arm around her, while the other held back the chair and saved it from banging into her. He brought her close against him, as she immediately realized he would. He turned her into the tiny pool of lamplight so he could search her face while she could see the determination lighting his. As she came into his arms it felt as natural and secure as she had always known it would.

  She squealed once, then grew still. “Titus—”

  “Caenis—”

  They both knew what was going to happen next. They knew Caenis wanted it as much as he.

  In the second when she passed from the cold atmosphere of the terrace into the warmth of his embrace she shivered, because she was startled, yet there was never any doubt. She had long ago made her choice. Against his chest she was conscious of his struggle to control his breath; her back arched slightly under the pressure of his arm; she caught his face between both hands, and they moved together into an unfaltering kiss. At her eager response she heard his groan of relief, then afterward as her cheek pressed his, he felt her own shuddering sigh.

  “Come to bed with me, Caenis. Oh—” Unable even to wait for her reply, he kissed her again, at demanding length. “Convinced?”

  Caenis, who even now did not smile easily, smiled at Vespasian. “Convinced!”

  Then he astonished her again; he suddenly held her, not in the great wrestler’s hug she expected, but as tenderly as some ceramic almost too delicate to touch, while he muttered against the complicated pleating of her hair. “Oh, Antonia Caenis. . . . Welcome to freedom—and welcome to me!” Then she knew this was a truly sentimental man. She put it from her mind. “Is there somewhere we can go?” He could have taken her then and there, in the dark, among the stored furniture and tubs of desiccated flowers; he was ready, and her need was as urgent as his.

  But Caenis possessed a modest comfortable room where, as a freedwoman, she was entitled to entertain her friends. She was proud of her achievements; she took him there.

  * * *

  It was as she had always expected. This man was her other half. The bungled conjunctions in her previous experience were swept from her memory. The unwelcome clutches that had once seemed to be her only future could be angrily rebuffed. She would never again fall prey to incongruous hangers-on. She need never be coerced by her own insecurity. Now she knew everything. She had found the joy she had tried so hard to believe in.

  They were perfectly at ease. They had already established a companionship that ran deep and true. Each took, each gave, with overwhelming honesty, openness, and delight.

  When at the end Vespasian rolled over and lay on his back, he covered with one great hand deep brown eyes that were no longer so steady. “Oh, lass!”

  Caenis was laughing as she rested her head upon his hammering heart, one arm outflung across his body to the edge of the bed. “Oh yes!”

  She felt his breathing start to settle, but he was not asleep, for after a time he drew the coverlet around her and gathered her close. When he spoke his voice sounded subdued, as if he had somehow been caught off guard. “A fine pair, you and I.”

  Caenis found and kissed his hand. After a moment she confessed, “I wish you had not given me your present.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I did not want a bribe.”

  By then he was shaking with laughter. “You deserve a present. And you’re well worth a bribe! . . . I was certain it would make you say no.” His arm tightened around her; his voice steadied. “I won’t be shaken off now.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to send me away.”

  He knew her at least as well as she knew herself, for that was of course what Caenis had intended to do.