"Straight question; straight answer. Perfectly understood!" He was not angry, but bitterly hurt. With an unusual flash of spite he demanded, "Got some fellow slave lined up, then? Jealous, is he? Think I'll scare him off?"
"Don't be simple," Caenis rebuked him. "Though I imagine you would; you're frightening me. . . . I will not have a companion even from among the other slaves. I want to be by myself."
He was not yet ready to let her smooth his ruffled crest. "You should have told me you were so scrupulous!"
This time she would not reply; it was up to him whether he chose to see her distress.
Around them began Rome's terrifying transformation into night. Goods had been whisked from pavements; leaves of folding doors were drawn across shop frontages; bolts thumped heavily into sockets, and elaborate padlocks rattled on cold iron chains. Above their heads a woman's thin-wristed arms hooked a cat and a pot of flowers from a window ledge, then slammed the shutter on a shadowy interior. It was now extremely dark. There were no streetlamps, and hardly a chink of light showed where the crowded lodging houses faced the unfriendly streets. The grimmest alleys were emptying. Soon the city would be given over to a lawlessness such that even the vigiles who were supposed to police the various districts were likely to dive into a drinking house rather than answer a call for help.
Vespasian's slave began to shuffle restlessly.
"Please come," Caenis cajoled, concerned for his two guards.
"Well!" he complained crossly. "Why did you bother with me, girl?"
Then Caenis answered with plain honesty, "Because I do like you." In for an as, in for an aureus. "I like you," she admitted, stony-faced, "more than anybody I have ever known."
She could tell that although he stayed where he was, indignant and disappointed in the public thoroughfare, Vespasian was utterly disarmed. Other women may have felt attracted to him, but others were not so direct. Suddenly Caenis recognized that his solid exterior concealed genuine sentiment. He would never be able to resist anyone who confessed to wanting him; she dared not contemplate how warmly he would respond.
That was not for her.
"I suppose," she acknowledged, "this means I shall not see you anymore?"
It was darker; she could not properly make out his face, but she heard his short bitter laugh. "What do you take me for?" She dropped her head, though his voice was already softening. "Oh, lass; don't be so feeble. You know when you have some poor beggar on your hook!"
"Well, why do you bother with me?" she flung back.
He said very quietly, "You know that too."
His stance relaxed; he began to saunter on in silence, pulling her after him with a curt gesture of his head.
* * *
He had brought her to Antonia's house. "Here we are; your palace, lady!" he declaimed mockingly. His guards were loitering discreetly behind the Temple of Victory as he lowered his voice. "Going to give me a kiss?"
"No, I'm not."
She shrank back, but after a brief stare he merely banged on the main door for her. He was persistent, but never aggressive. The porter squinted through his grating, then began the extended process of unfastening locks. In the tiny square of lamplight Caenis saw a gleam in Vespasian's eye as he murmured back at her, "Well then; are you going to let me kiss you?" At once he mimicked her crazily: " ‘No, I'm not!' Well, don't expect me to tussle with you in front of other people. Good night, girl. Dream of me and wonder."
Caenis swallowed. She had no doubt of the energy with which this strong, competent man would take his pleasures—nor his ability to give delight in return. "Wonder what, lord?"
"Wonder—what you missed!"
Looking at him, while trying not to, she felt aware of that.
The house porter was starting to pay attention. She touched Vespasian's hand briefly, and turned to go in. "Good night, Caenis." They were friends again. His voice dropped; once more she felt stricken by its private, benevolent note.
She looked back. Vespasian had started walking down the narrow alley between the house and the temple, which would eventually take him back down into the Forum or to the Circus Maximus; then he also turned. Suddenly smiling, he raised his arm in farewell. She watched him retrace his steps, closely shadowed now by the two guards. Rome at night was dangerous, yet he had a knack of walking without haste so he seemed invulnerable. Lunging toward him from their dreadful alleyways, robbers and bullies would stay their intended ambush and wait for easier prey.
It was how he walked through life: steady and unperturbed, a man who knew his way and who would arrive unscathed.
SEVEN
Veronica knew about the walk in Caesar's Gardens by next day. "Well; you were seen, Caenis!"
People called Rome a place where everything was noticed, and Veronica made it her business to ensure that any snippets about anyone's indiscretions were certainly picked up by her.
"I can assure you," Caenis commented bitterly, "I have done nothing—"
"Glad to hear it," Veronica interrupted. "Make them wait. They enjoy it more if they're keyed up—and if they enjoy themselves there is always a slim chance you might too! He'll bring you a present next time, to make sure."
About to protest that he already had done so, Caenis realized that her powers of rhetoric would not stretch to justifying a Lucanian salami and a parchment of pickled fish.
"He won't," she declared in a tiny saddened voice. "I have decided not to see him again."
This was dismally true. She had wrestled with the problem all night. It was the most anguished decision she had ever engineered.
"Oh yes; I usually do that,"Veronica languidly returned. "But when they turn up with their present, what can you say?"
* * *
Caenis and Veronica had met at the baths. Caenis went every afternoon now, to a woman-only one that was open all day (the mixed ones held women's sessions only in the morning, which was useless). She had a general arrangement to meet Veronica, an arrangement that Veronica kept with surprising regularity. She would arrive laden with trinkets that she had collected from admirers, filling the changing room with wafts of cheap perfume, taking up too many pegs with her baskets and mantles and handkerchiefs and scarves. She gave the impression she led a scatterbrained life, blown hither and yon by chance meetings with her numerous pursuers. In fact, fitting so many men into a regular scheme where the paths of those who minded about the others never crossed had long ago taught Veronica to be supremely organized.
Caenis always spent her first fifteen minutes at the baths bootfaced with bad temper. There was a convention that public baths charged women an as, while men only had to pay half. Caenis did not see why. In her opinion women were cleaner. It was men who used the exercise yards and swimming baths most often; men who stayed longest clattering over court cases with their friends; men who indecently assaulted the bathhouse attendants; men, moreover, who pretended they had left their money at home and tried to sneak in without paying at all. Paying double always made her angry. Veronica liked to arrive after Caenis had been ensconced in the hot-air room in her rope-soled sandals long enough for torpor to set in.
They had nothing in common as bathhouse companions anyway. Caenis wanted value for money. She went through the suite of rooms from the hot steam to the cold plunge with a gritty intent to extract every possible ounce of sensation and stimulus; if she had time she even patted a ball around or swam, which few women other than those of sinister athleticism ever bothered to do. Veronica came to chat. She certainly would not swim at the moment, because her hair had been blonded and the dye would run. In fact she could not even float; she relied on the fine truth that when women with heart's-ease baby faces fall into deep water, there are always eager men on hand to pull them out. Caenis, who lacked this advantage, had taught herself to swim strongly years before.