"Not in the least!" Vespasian returned frankly. "Too provincial and too poor."
Antonia considered the point. "Too much the bachelor."
There was a complex array of legal discouragements to the single life, partly hitting a citizen where it hurt most, in his bank box, but also giving precedence to married men and fathers at elections. Not only were bachelors disreputable they were disloyal to their ancestors and the State. Even so, Antonia seemed comparatively indulgent. "Your day will come. Caenis believes in you. Take my word for it; that makes you exceptional!"
Vespasian was standing just behind Caenis' couch, and although public gestures of affection were traditionally improper, he set one hand on her shoulder and kept it there, his thumb moving fitfully against her neck. Old-fashioned as she was, Antonia seemed not to object. Caenis herself peacefully laid her hand upon Vespasian's to still his caress.
After one of the remote pauses that were becoming characteristic, Antonia observed unpredictably to Caenis, "Always favor a man who is tolerant of old ladies; you will be an old lady yourself one day."
Vespasian said nothing. He must know, as Caenis did, that she would have to cope with old age by herself. They were both realistic people.
Antonia was surveying him, while he steadily returned her stare. They were in some subtle way vying with one another. Caenis felt troubled. These were the two people she allowed herself to love; their jealousy of her affection seemed ridiculous.
"I cannot require you to take care of her," Antonia said to him. "You are in no position to make promises."
Despite the critical undertone, he humphed with amusement. "Madam, we both know Caenis. She will insist on taking care of herself."
"Oh, she expects to get her own way," Antonia scoffed. "But sometimes even she will need a friend."
"Caenis will always have more friends than she realizes," Vespasian declared in a low tone.
They were now speaking as if Caenis had left the room. Embarrassed for Vespasian, she wondered why women always imagined that caring for someone gave them the right to interfere.
Then her patroness turned to her with a swift and unusually intense smile. "Forgive me, Caenis; I must leave one person at least who is prepared to overrule you!"
It was an odd scene, which left Caenis puzzled and disturbed.
* * *
Antonia's son Claudius was expected. His visits were rare. The butt of the court for his apparent feeblemindedness, he had been deemed unsuitable for public life—a bitter contrast with his glorious brother, Germanicus. He had retreated into obscure branches of scholarship; he aggravated his mother and tried to keep out of her way.
Anticipating a visit had made Antonia restless. She told Caenis and Vespasian to take themselves off, but before they left the room she suddenly called Vespasian back. "You invited Caenis to your grandmother's villa at Cosa?" He had; Caenis refused to go.
Annoyed that the subject had come up, Caenis stood glaring from the doorway. She had consistently avoided Vespasian's family, for while they probably did not object to his taking a mistress who was highly placed and obviously discreet, dealing with a freedwoman socially would be as difficult for them as for her. His grandmother, the formidable old lady who had brought him up, was dead, yet even now visiting her house seemed indelicate to Caenis.
"Madam—"
"I want you to go," Antonia interrupted her. "Go, and enjoy yourself."
At that moment her son was announced; it would be discourteous to let him find his mother quarreling. Claudius came in, with that vivid shock of white hair and the strange halting gait; he made as if to kiss his mother, thought better of it, started to say something to Caenis, decided against that too, then seated himself, looking immediately more controlled and more at ease. Antonia visibly struggled to disguise her agitation. Their relationship was hopeless. Claudius was too close; with him her normal inflexible courtesy broke down. Then her tension communicated to him, so that in her presence his tic and his stammer grew far worse.
"Caenis is going to Cosa," Antonia said gruffly. "With her friend." It was impossible to rebel against this public instruction. "Do you know Flavius Vespasianus? My son . . ."
In this way it turned out that Vespasian was introduced to Claudius, and by Antonia herself. Although she thought her son ridiculous and ineffectual, he was the grandson of Augustus, after all. The pretense had to be maintained politely that Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus was a useful person for an obscure young senator to know.
FOURTEEN
Caenis could not understand why people regarded traveling as a nuisance. Until she went to Cosa she had never been any distance outside Rome. She found the experience wonderful.
Admittedly it was an uncomfortable journey. First she made her way alone by chair, over the river at the Pons Sublicius, through the Fourteenth District, where the street sellers and other itinerants lived, to the outskirts of the city. Vespasian met her on the Via Aurelia with a two-wheeled conveyance drawn by a pair of unkempt mules.
"Bring cushions," he had warned tersely. It was good advice.
Some people traveled in massive four-wheeled stagecoaches, big enough to take their beds, yet effortlessly dashed along by two pairs of swift and shining steeds. Some owned carriages lined with scarlet silk curtains, decorated with silver filigree, equipped with built-in footrests, wicker food baskets, and fold-down checkerboards to keep them entertained. Even within the city most senators were carried about reclining in litters borne high on the shoulders of fearsomely tall slaves. The Flavian brothers shared a light fly with just room for two people and a wineskin; luggage was tied on the roof with a goat-hair rope. The Sabine territory was supposed to be famous for fine-quality mules. One of theirs, Brimo, was notorious all along the old Salt Road to Reate for his snorting bad temper. The other, though sweeter-natured, was susceptible to bald patches and missing an ear; Brimo had bitten it off.
Caenis discovered that the hazards of traveling made Vespasian unusually bad-tempered. Fortunately he spared her. Caenis was no trouble; Caenis only gazed about, uncomplaining and utterly enthralled.
The first time they stopped to rest she walked by herself a little way into the open countryside, where she simply stood, with her arms wide, soaking in the unimpeded spring sunlight and the peace. They were in Etruria. They had wanted to reach the town of Caere for lunch, but Brimo decided to slack. Instead they had eaten salad and fruit among the soft round tumuli of the Etruscan houses of the dead. To the right were low hills; to the left newly ploughed fields stretched toward the distant twinkle of the sea.
Vespasian, calmer now, came up behind her. He tickled her neck with a great piece of grass; Caenis took no notice.
"Whatever are you doing?"
"Looking at the emptiness—so much sky!" She had never been out of the city before.
Vespasian scratched his ear, amazed.
Cosa was eighty miles north from Rome as the crow flies, more by road. An imperial courier could have covered the distance easily in two days with time to spare for a meal, a bath, and a massage in the mansio; not so the Flavian mules. Trailing at a crawl through Tarquinii, Vespasian muttered that they would all go home by sea.
Cape Cosa unfurled out into the ocean on a stout stem like a bullock's ear. The town lay just to the south, where the peninsula joined the land, with a strange lagoon filled with light as green as bottle glass. Small boys, like Vespasian himself years before, jumped tirelessly into the clear water, then raced back along the mole to jump in again. Cosa was a neat Greek-founded sea town with an unhurried atmosphere. Vespasian's grandmother's estate lay a little way to the east. It was perfectly obvious this would always be his favorite place.