Lindsey Davis - The course of Honor

The Twelfth District was being visited by the Emperor.

* * *

By this time Caligula had developed the startling mania for which he would become a legend. The previous year he had suffered a devastating illness. Rumors ran riot about what form this took—epilepsy, perhaps, or some inflammation of the brain brought on by stress. Whatever it was, once he recovered he had changed fully into the monster that had been merely foreshadowed before. He was ready to test his power to the limit—and there was no limit.

He killed his rival, Gemellus. Son of Livilla, Antonia's disgraced daughter and according to scandalmongers son of Sejanus too, Gemellus had been pushed aside by the Senate in the euphoria that greeted Caligula's accession. Although Caligula had formally adopted him as a gesture assuring the family succession, his generosity soon gave way to suspicion and contempt. His own illness caused him to accuse Gemellus of plotting to seize power. He complained that Gemellus was afraid of being poisoned—a wise enough fear—and that he constantly stank of antidotes (Gemellus was a hypochondriac, who regularly took linctus for a cough).

Caligula had Gemellus executed. A military tribune sliced off his head with a sword. There was no antidote for that, as Caligula remarked.

Shortly afterward Macro, the commander of the Guards, was impeached for pandering his wife to Caligula, then forced to commit suicide. He had possibly conspired with Gemellus while the Emperor was ill—and had certainly reminded his protégé once too often of services rendered.

The Emperor then declared himself a living god. Caenis thought privately that Caligula's claim to be Capitoline Jove did founder on the fact that it was reported he regularly slept with his own three sisters. Caligula's sisters were a frightful trio. The real Capitoline Jove would have better taste.

* * *

Even before Caenis saw him on the Via Appia, she realized it was Caligula from the sneering presence of the Praetorian Guard, strutting like spurred fighting cocks in their glittering breastplates and stiff red helmet sprouts. The tradespeople craning their necks were suitably wary, more of the Guards' dismal reputation than the man at their center who was so incongruously dressed up as Jupiter. Caenis instantly recognized his high forehead and balding head. Hard to tell what the people made of that false curling beard, the bracelets, the face paint and the stage thunderbolt; it was an insult to their intelligence, yet they seemed to respond with good-humored sympathy. They stared at Caligula not because he was demented, but simply because he was the Emperor. Apparently they accepted his mania as matter-of-factly as they accepted the local cooper's spastic child and the pastry cook who saw cockatrices biting his legs when he was drunk.

Jupiter was enough in command of his senses to have noticed that conditions in the Twelfth District were scruffy. He was now enjoying himself, having a divine rant. The gracious god had been struck by the filth in the road and pavements, and to the delight of the populace, he was venting his fury on the officer who held public responsibility for cleaning the streets. Berating this man at Olympian length, Jove paused long enough to restick a corner of his beard that had in the heat of the moment come unglued, then ordered his soldiers, "Fill up the folds of his toga with this mud!"

Caenis stood appalled. It was a terrible humiliation for an aedile—and she immediately recognized this one: Vespasian.

Evil with malice, the Praetorians set to. Gleefully seizing potsherds from the clogged gutters, they began to scoop up mud and load it into the heavy folds of the aedile's toga. He knew what he had done—and he knew the risks of offending a mad emperor. He stood meekly enough, arms outspread and head bowed before the rattling of the tinsel thunderbolt. It was a disgrace, but a light punishment. In a different moment of Caligula's caprice he could as easily have called for an executioner.

The crowd cheered. Caligula acknowledged the applause and passed on. The Praetorians reluctantly abandoned their sport and followed him.

Left behind, Vespasian folded his arms to support the strange weight of his filthy garments. The crowd stilled. He made no attempt to shake free the clods.

"Well, citizens"—his voice carried grimly; people began to shuffle amid their mirth—"we all know the system. Shovels out!"

They all knew the system. In the ten days it would take him to arrange official contractors to do the work at their expense, each piece of pavement would be transformed by its frontager, rather than face a fine to pay the contractors; then the aedile would move on to harry the next district; in another two weeks all the mud and debris and donkey droppings would be back. The problem was not entirely his fault; the hallowed system had a great deal to do with it. Faced with their own responsibilities, the crowd diplomatically melted away.

It had begun to rain. Jason started to dart across the road, but Caenis trapped him with a firm grip on the scruff of his neck. "Wait, sunshine!" Absently he began to pick at the loaf she intended for lunch.

Caenis stood absolutely still. Nonetheless she had been found by the aedile's temperate stare. He was shaking off his personal slaves as they fussed around his ruined clothes. Across the five-yard width of the Via Appia her quiet eyes locked onto his. Vespasian had the grace to blush.

And then, allowing his muck-encumbered toga to be plucked away by his dithering slaves, he broke into what she knew was his rarest and richest grin. He made no move to cross the street; neither did she. Very slowly, in disapproval of his public disgrace, Caenis shook her head. Then she spun neatly on the ball of her foot. Slim and straight, with one hand gripping the elbow of her youthful bodyguard, she slipped across the highway and disappeared into the impenetrable warren of streets on the other side.

Flavius Vespasianus made no attempt to follow her.

EIGHTEEN

She had tried to forget. She had tried to stabilize her life. Now she was plunged once again into turmoil and loss. The worst part was how, even while the familiar wash of panic set her heart banging, she recognized that simply to see Vespasian had lit her life. All her being sang with happiness.

Yet Caenis refused to feed on tragic foolishness. She knew she must reject such stupid joy at the mere glimpse of some man smiling at her in the street.

* * *

Watching Vespasian take his native soil so curiously to his bosom had delayed her beyond the time when she usually reached home. Midday: the tiny children who sat on cut-down benches under the street awning and chanted their lessons so automatically, while their great eyes wandered from their master to any distraction, had now finished their sad torture and scampered home. Their desultory master was starting to furl the leather awning on a pole.

The furrier had drawn and bolted his shutters, then retreated up the ladder to the backbreaking loft above his workshop, where he lived with his family. The wineshop was still open; wineshops rarely closed. However, the three old men who habitually sat there had decided to drain the earthenware tumblers over which they had been dreaming for the previous two hours, and go home to whichever bent little wife or brawling, sprawling daughter normally provided them with lunch.

Jason set off at once up the five flights of stone stairs. Caenis stayed behind, for somebody was waiting in the wineshop, wanting her to write a letter about a will. Since she had her stylus case with her, she sat down at a stained table. The task was swiftly done.

Caenis looked ruefully at the handful of coppers she had earned. "Just enough for a jug of my new Campanian!" consoled the vintner. "Steel yourself for the stairs!"