Lindsey Davis - The course of Honor

Campanian his brutal red ink never was, but for once she agreed cheerfully to being bamboozled. The vintner took a tumbler himself; he liked any excuse. The schoolmaster had now come in for what was obviously his regular midday tipple, so with blissful expansiveness she offered him a drink too. Caenis had never lost her slave's habit of sharing whatever she might have with those she regarded as her equals in low fortune. The vintner carried off his tot into the curtained nook behind the counter, leaving customers to plunder an amphora for themselves and deposit the money in a dish.

Caenis and the schoolmaster sat for a while in silence. Caenis was lost in her thoughts. The schoolmaster leaned forward, twisting his winecup between both hands. He was obviously shy. He did not on this occasion feel able to stare at her.

A well-trained secretary does not gaze silently into the distance for long. Caenis roused herself and dutifully asked the man how he enjoyed his work. He replied in gruff monosyllables. He looked about forty, but that was because he had badly thinning hair; he grew the rest longer to compensate, but instead of appearing intellectual as he may have hoped, he merely looked badly groomed. He seemed unhappy and unhealthy—someone who regularly drank too much and ate too little, and who paid no attention to personal hygiene, exercise, or sleep. It was well known that immediately after parents paid their fees he spent heavily; then toward the end of each term he ran out of cash. How he kept discipline remained a mystery, for he seemed too indolent to use his staff and too dull to hold the attention otherwise.

"Personally," suggested Caenis, who had been wanting to tackle this subject ever since she arrived, "I believe it is time traditional schoolroom methods were challenged. Don't you agree?"

She knew the traditional method was how he taught: The children recited their letters and numbers over and over, without illustration, without variety, a dreary daily singsong through one or another alphabet. "I was educated at the Palace; they wanted quick results. I have to say that when the Palace needs good secretaries its methods of obtaining them are excellent."

She herself had been blessed with inspired teachers. Every time she went by the nursery here, the sad, bored, patient eyes of these children caused her distress.

Caenis had the rare gift of remembering what it was like to be a child. She wanted to explain to the schoolteacher how half his class were aimlessly repeating by rote what they had learned long before, though they did not understand it while the rest knew nothing at all but had the knack of joining in a second after the others spoke. None of them ever progressed. She wanted to encourage the man to devise some rapport with his charges. She wanted to convince him that he must be interested in what he was doing, so the children would be interested too. . . .

Most men are not keen to hear they are bad at their work. The schoolmaster changed the subject. He lifted her hand and placed it under his grubby tunic, upon his private parts.

* * *

Caenis could not immediately accept what was happening.

Shock transfixed her. She could not bear it. She sprang up; the wine jug flew from the bench; she was furious.

Partly, she was furious with herself. She had forgotten people were not neighborly. Her time with Vespasian had made her too safe. Once so sensitive, she had just issued an invitation without a thought of how it could be misinterpreted.

She felt ill with dismay. She was imaginative enough to realize her response would damage a soul that was already inadequate, but really there were times when an intelligent woman, with burdens of her own, needed to think of herself. Without a word spoken on either side the schoolmaster got to his feet and blundered from the shop. She saw the scorn in his eyes. She realized he had now brutally defined her—for himself, and probably half the neighborhood: tense, teasing, frigid, mentally odd.

She was more angry then, because she saw how easily men might deprive a woman in her circumstances of her self-esteem and her public confidence. It was true she carried within her a great pain. Even so, she knew she lived her life more vividly and with greater good humor than most people around her.

Thanks to that, she was able to put aside all thought of this schoolmaster, his solitary world, his misplaced contempt, before she gained the third flight of stairs to her room. By then she was remembering only a face that was alive with sardonic intelligence. She was exulting in the frank, straightforward, enduring friendliness of a man who had been her lover, a man she had once loved.

Caenis would always have the courage to be true to herself; at her lowest ebb, she now possessed the gift of a joyous past.

Sanely, she went on with her life.

NINETEEN

When the Emperor's uncle Claudius married Valeria Messalina—this sad jest was entirely a whim of Caligula's—Caenis was privileged to attend. Messalina came of impeccable family, she was wealthy, she was exquisite—and she looked about nineteen. Claudius was forty-seven.

Teenaged brides were common in patrician society; it gave a man the chance to train up the child in his own house his own way, which is what men sometimes imagine they want. For a person so susceptible to women as Claudius, though, this girl was a disaster. He fell head over heels in love, before he had spoken to her twice. The sly cat would run rings around him. Still, that too is what some men want.

"I should be grateful if you felt able to come, Caenis," he had faltered. "A man at his wedding needs the support of his family and friends. Of course, I will have the Emperor. . . ."

Caenis gave him one of her looks. "Sir, your nephew the Emperor may stand as your family, though I doubt whether in this matter he has acted as one of your friends!"

She always spoke to Claudius firmly and extremely frankly. He permitted it. In all other respects Caenis treated him as her patron, a courtesy that few members of his late mother's household would ever emulate.

When he had realized, many months after everybody else had noticed, that Caenis was no longer Vespasian's mistress, Tiberius Claudius had enquired tentatively whether she would like to become one of his mistresses instead, but Caenis had dealt frankly and firmly with that too.

"I shall come to your wedding, sir," she promised. "For your daughter's sake, for your mother's—and as one of your good friends."

They both knew; there were not many of those.

* * *

Going to a wedding attended also by the Emperor won Caenis a certain amount of prestige in the Twelfth District. Another event at about the same time lent even more crazy color to her reputation. This was a visit to her apartment by Veronica. That girl surely knew how to make herself useful. Every man in the block now treated Caenis with awe. The vintner and furrier became positively chummy, longing for another glimpse of her dazzling friend. Caenis did not point out that Veronica had no energy to spare for walking up five flights of stairs and so was unlikely to repeat their treat.

She never understood why Caenis did it. Least of all for a steep rent. Paying money to a man for anything was a concept Veronica found ridiculous.

Veronica herself had decided with the advent of Caligula that sharing the Palace with an emperor was not for her. For one thing, she was disgusted by the imperial bordello he devised. Having finely decorated a suite of rooms at the Palace, he threw them open to all comers, offering loans to the men who visited and shamelessly listing the income as donations to the imperial treasury. With such competition, how was a simple girl expected to make her way?

Veronica had acted with alacrity. She understood that senators did not want compulsory brothels at the Palace, where Caligula's idea of adding insult to the Senate—which he now passionately hated—was that they should be forced to bring their wives. A man enjoying offside relaxation wanted a different face than the one at home. Veronica purchased her freedom, skipped the Palace, and began to offer an establishment that was equally expensive without the political disadvantages and the risks. At Veronica's there were no wives.