"It's your wonderful knives I want, of course! Are there matching salad servers too? . . . Will you take me on, then?"
"You and I?"
"You and I. I knew a girl once, Caenis—odd little scrap, fierce as a lion, didn't care who she was rude to, nice girl, very good in bed, a true friend—who said life would be what we made it for ourselves."
For the first time since he fed the finch he got to his feet and came to her, holding out his hands. Caenis was trembling. He always knew how to reduce her to rubble, then say exactly the right thing. "Oh, I have missed you!" declared Vespasian in a low voice; she was lost.
With her hands twined in his, but still seated, Caenis spoke, once, what sooner or later she would have to say. Better now, than in some unrelated quarrel afterward. "I have lived the best years of my life, and lived them without you."
He did not flinch. "Agreed."
"I built my own life."
"Yes."
He drew her to her feet. Coming to him, Caenis said, "I missed you too. I missed you more than you or anybody else will ever understand. I have to tell you this. For the sake of what I have been, what I endured, what I have done. This has to be acknowledged between us now."
Gravely he let her speak; probably he did not fear anything she might say because he knew she would always be just. He did not even agitate for her answer. Perhaps he knew what it would be. Then, because even now Caenis could not bear to let him see her cry, she stayed silent for longer than she wanted. She had to struggle to control herself, but in the end she managed in her calm, trained, competent voice: "If it is what you want, yes; I will come."
His reaction was the last thing she expected: She saw, suddenly, that there were tears in his eyes.
"Titus? Oh, love!"
He was smiling the small pale smile that she had seen once before when he left her, though only now, with blinding recognition, did she finally understand it. She saw him swallow as he recovered himself. "Sentimental old beggar. Excuse me; I really didn't think you would."
Faced with an emergency, Caenis was at once herself: "Frankly, if I had thought that you felt sure of me, I don't suppose I would agree."
Then, as he laughed once more in that delighted way, she remembered. It was Crete all over again. In public life the next step after consul was a provincial governorship.
"You are due for a province. Agrippina can't debar you forever. You will be going abroad!" Life never changed.
Last time she had been fending him off; then they were so young, they had years heaped like treasures in spoilheaps ahead of them. This time she was in his arms; he knew exactly how she felt. This time she could let herself feel his devotion to her—and to let him go now would be unbearable.
Titus Flavius Vespasianus muttered a country curse. "I seem to have explained myself badly; or perhaps my assumptions were impertinent. When I asked you to live with me what I meant was that barring riot or rebellion, where I go I hope you will come too."
Caenis could hardly believe it. "One day you will be Governor of Africa; and I—"
"You will be the Governor's lady," he said. "Of course!"
THIRTY-THREE
Sometimes the most major events take place so quietly. Caenis was to live with Vespasian; it was as simple as that.
There were one or two riffles. There was a brief moment of tension the first time she went to Reate. She had been introduced to the servants, who seemed if anything more docile and pleased to see her than the high-handed experts with whom Aglaus had peopled her own home. In the house she had spotted the marks of long-term financial tension: not quite enough furniture, hangings pushed to last half a decade beyond their natural life, even items that were new all faintly drab as if years of having no money made it feel sinful to invest in anything that was genuinely attractive. Caenis did not mind. She was a woman who enjoyed tackling problems.
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."