Lindsey Davis - The course of Honor

She had been sitting quietly with Vespasian. He was smiling at her. He tended to smile a great deal in private now; they were both as light-headed as rapturous young things. Then the door crashed open. (Caenis wondered how often the door hinges in Flavian homes had to be renewed.) The two boys, Titus and Domitian, burst into the room.

"Aha!" From what Vespasian had already told her Caenis knew enough to realize that the mere fact that they were obviously conspiring boded badly.

Their heroic papa had started to look unusually diffident. "Aha!" he retorted, with boisterous fatherly cheer. Then Titus strode across the floor in the full dignity of outraged seventeen, while Domitian ran alongside, a pugnacious six-year-old who was silently egging his elder brother on. It was Titus who had exclaimed. Domitian was running too fast to speak. "Our noble papa— and a lady friend !"

It was plain that they knew her intended position. Vespasian must have made some formal announcement. They had discussed it hotly between themselves. They were bent on demanding that this situation be renegotiated on lines that better suited them. Boys do like to be respectable.

They had not until that moment known who their father's mistress was.

Caenis gracefully turned; her eyebrows arched in apparent mild surprise. Titus stopped. He clapped his hand to his head in frank and blissful amazement. He looked well. Better still, shining with delight. "Oh, but you said you did not know him anymore!"

"We renewed our acquaintance." Caenis smiled. Titus was no longer any threat. He adored her. He always would.

"Come here!" said Vespasian cheerfully to the little one, pulling him into the security of that great arm. "Now watch Titus realize that his old father has snaffled his special turtledove from under his nose."

Since Titus was by now saying nothing, Domitian, who was too young to be sensitive to immediate change, piped up aggressively, "Is this to be my stepmother?" in tones of disgust.

Before Vespasian could speak, Caenis answered the child calmly, "If you are thinking that you would not like it, Domitian, let me tell you at once, I should not like it either. No; I am not," she assured him. "So you don't have to hate me, and I shall not feel obliged to be wicked to you."

The boy stared. They would never be friends, but he knew that temporarily at least Caenis had beaten him.

Vespasian, who evidently fell into the rough-and-tumble category of fathers, engaged Domitian in a minor bout of punch-bag scuffling. Whether this reassured anybody, Caenis could not tell. Certainly Domitian himself wriggled under his father's arm as soon as he could escape, in order to demand of Titus, "What shall we do?"

Pulling the stiff enraged figure from his father, Titus stooped down to fix his brother's eye. "We are going to welcome this lady to our house."

"You said—"

"It was a mistake."

"Does that mean," persisted Domitian, genuinely puzzled, "we have to be polite?"

Titus gripped his brother by one tight fist. He walked the curly-headed tot, who looked much more appealing than he ever was, to where Caenis sat.

"Yes," said Titus, before he gravely kissed her cheek and made Domitian do the same. "It's a democratic vote: two to one against you in the other voting-urn—Father and me."

"You agree with Papa? Why?"

"Little brother, she once saved my life."

"Sweet, aren't they?" grinned their proud father.

Caenis pursed her mouth. "Wonderful! And both so like their papa."

* * *

There was comment on their relationship, at least initially. Veronica said, switching her opinion, as sweetly illogical as ever, "I saw it coming years ago. Now watch yourself, girl; at your time of life this could be an expensive mistake."

"You have to admire him," Caenis told her levelly.

"What—for taking his old mistress back? It stinks! I admire you, for accepting him."

"It shows that I think he's worth it."

"It shows he's a complete worm, and you're a sucker. With no need to put himself out again, he gets himself a treasure—a good manager, clever and amusing, an armful any man would envy—"

"A canteen of cutlery, a good set of Greek bowls, cheap shorthand, and no risk any longer of having ragamuffin children." Caenis spoke with a deliberate lightness that would prove to Veronica that she knew all the implications. Then, more benevolent than Veronica had ever seen her in thirty years, she handed her friend a small object, which she took from a clip on her belt.

"Whatever's that?"

It was an old iron key. From a nation whose ironmasters and brass-founders were of the highest caliber, this was a pitiful specimen. It was two inches long, with a bent stem and missing one of its rusty teeth; it hung from a short piece of twisted leather thong that was greasy and blackened with age; an unsavory toggle, possibly amber but probably some grimmer fossil, was knotted at the farther end.

Caenis explained: "What you have in your hand is a symbolic gesture of the sentimental Sabine kind. I shall never be married with the witnesses and auguries; he won't take me in torchlight procession to his house; his servants will not greet me with fire and salt when I arrive. But there used to be a tradition—most people don't bother anymore—that a Roman ceremonially handed the keys of his house to his bride as a sign that she was now in charge of his domestic affairs."

"So?" demanded Veronica curiously, eyeing askance the grizzly little relic that still lay on her palm.

"That is the key to Vespasian's store-cupboard," Caenis reported. Veronica hastily handed it back.

* * *

Their living together hardly merited public notice. Vespasian had been right. Because he had done all society required, society took a lenient view when he did that which—in theory—ought to be condemned. Besides, almost from the first day their partnership appeared to everyone as they saw it themselves: the inevitable way for Caenis and Vespasian to live. There was no fuss. There were few confrontations. Vespasian now held such a substantial reputation that an act of open eccentricity actually enhanced his position. Rome, which had bound itself in edicts and regulations, admired a man with the self-confidence to stand up for principles of his own in his personal affairs.

Vespasian was still living quietly in country retirement, which helped. He kept his house in Rome, since a consular senator had to appear from time to time, unless he wanted to be reprimanded by the Emperor—or worse. But he spent as much time as possible at Reate, and that suited everyone. His provincial appointment was continually deferred. Nobody told him that the delay was due to the enmity of Agrippina, but he drew the obvious conclusion. He had become more of an outsider than ever, not that he seemed to mind too much. He was still ambitious enough to want the post, but dreaded the expense of it.

The Emperor's mother had enjoyed a brief spell of unprecedented influence, but caused such outrage by her assumption of almost equal powers with Nero and her improper public appearances as his consort that a year after his accession Nero was able to insist that she withdraw from the main Palace complex and take up residence in the House of Livia. This freed Nero to indulge in artistic pursuits, sexual license with male and female conquests, all-day banquets, gladiatorial shows, and a fairly humane political policy encouraged by his mentors, the philosopher Seneca and the Praetorian commander Burrus.

His alleged incest with Agrippina was long past. Eventually his irritation at her cloying mother-love and her dominating ambition reached the point where in the grand Claudian tradition he determined to be rid of her. Exile to a small island seemed insufficient; she had been exiled before, and proved she could survive and return worse than ever. At first he tormented her with lawsuits and encouraged her to take unwanted holidays. It took him four years of such scheming to work up the courage for a serious attack. Then, while Agrippina was staying at Antonia's huge seaside villa at Bauli, he managed to dispose of her—though not without a farcical series of failed attempts. He failed to poison her (she kept taking antidotes), or drown her (when her galley fell to pieces in the Bay of Naples, she swam to safety), or to crush her under a collapsible ceiling (someone had warned her it was there). He stopped being subtle. He simply had her put to the sword: one more of Antonia's grandchildren violently destroyed. But the accusation of matricide was one Nero would find harder to shake off than he first realized.