Julia giggled hysterically.
* * *
Caenis had known as early as March. She anticipated what would happen, exactly as Titus did. In many ways it was Titus himself who decided events.
They had been expecting Titus home; he was supposed to be coming to intercede with Galba about his father's still unconfirmed command. He never arrived. Caenis stood in the room that servants had opened and aired for him, with his letter in her hand, telling her so guardedly that he had decided not to come. Always polite, still he gave her no reason. She sensed it was one he could not yet formulate. She bent to smooth the coverlet on his newly made bed, while mentally she canceled preparations and plans. As she listened to the silence, she realized that this was not simply a matter of disappointing the butcher and the fishmonger, of removing a pot of scillas from his window ledge and piling his pillows back into the blanket chest. A chill caught her, as she dreaded that because of what he was doing now Titus might never again be able to return to Rome.
He had actually sailed for home; that made it worse. His letter was written from Greece. When Galba had still not forwarded instructions to Judaea by March, with the campaign season at hand Vespasian had sent Titus back to Rome, to bend the knee in homage and ask formally for a new commission, releasing the Flavians to be up and at Jerusalem as they wanted. That was all they wanted, whatever foolish rumors flew about it in Rome afterward.
In fact by the time Titus put to sea, Galba was already two months dead. There had been trouble with the army, because he had promised them a bounty, which it soon became clear he did not intend to pay. Detachments of soldiers, particularly those in Upper Germany, who originally helped quell the Vindex rebellion, refused to take the New Year's Day oath of allegiance to a mean-handed Spanish appointee, and asked the Praetorian Guards to nominate another emperor who would be acceptable to all. Galba's adoption of Piso was intended to reassure them. Instead it antagonized Otho, who had been Galba's most significant supporter and who was not unnaturally expecting the privilege of imperial adoption himself. Hence Otho's bid. Hence Galba's murder. Hence young Titus Flavius Vespasianus, now abruptly yachting on a strange new tack in the eastern Mediterranean.
Titus had reached Greece when he met messengers bringing news of Galba's death. He should have continued his journey to salute Otho instead. His companion, King Agrippa, did indeed go on to Rome. Titus turned back alone. He visited Paphos. There stood a prophetic oracle, which he consulted at length. He spent a long time on his own, lost in thought. Then quite suddenly he sailed back to his father.
Nothing was said. But from that moment Caenis knew what was happening. Aglaus, who had been with her for nearly twenty years, saw the change in her face. It was, as he told Julia, enough to make him believe his mistress might be terminally ill.
There are two ways at least of being brave. In a sudden emergency, when the adrenaline floods, people act with courage because they have no time or no imagination to appreciate how much danger they are in. To have courage in a sudden crisis is comparatively easy. There are obvious and positive things to do. But to remain brave over a long period is a very different matter. To wait and to watch, for month after month, while inevitable tragedy stalks closer, that is the test. That exacts courage of a deliberate, self-wounding kind.
Life was hard. Caenis had always known it. Some people endure that certainty all their lives. If ever they dare think otherwise, life restores their bitter understanding soon enough. Like her steward, Caenis would remember the Year of the Four Emperors. She would remember, because it would be when her shared life with Flavius Vespasianus had to come to a swift, unplanned end.
She was not ill. Her freedman worked that out eventually. Some time at the beginning of that summer it struck Aglaus that the lifeless look on his lady's face was one that of course he recognized: It was the classic expression of an old, exhausted, badly beaten, dismally broken-down slave.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Once Titus had sailed back to Syria there was never any question what he wanted his father to do.
He himself began working toward it immediately. Titus could always attract the friendship of the most unlikely men, so with adept diplomacy he persuaded Licinius Mucianus, the Syrian Governor, who was one of several statesmen who might himself have joined in the free-for-all, to set aside any jealousy he had felt toward Vespasian and abandon his own possible claim for power. The two provincial governors had previously loathed one another with cordial contempt; Titus brought them together. Mucianus joined Titus in urging Vespasian to act.
Spanish troops had reached Galba. Otho was acclaimed by the Praetorian Guards. The German army raised Vitellius; now in Judaea the Fifth, Tenth, and Fifteenth Legions sat in their camps deprived of action, all talking politics. Soldiers should never be allowed to do that. Yet Vespasian held his men in a firm discipline. He made no move; neither did they. Titus and Mucianus continued their private pressure for long hours in Vespasian's tent.
* * *
Otho's reign was so short, only four months, that Vespasian's views on him as a "pea-brained Neronian pimp," which he wrote to Caenis, were soon redundant. When Aulus Vitellius pranced through Gaul to snatch the Empire like a bullying child with a coveted toy, Vespasian grew more angry. Both he and his campaign-hardened soldiers were seized with indignation. Vitellius in his youth had been one of the aristocratic boys who entertained Tiberius in debauchery on Capri. He had raced chariots with Caligula. He was a glutton. He was a drunkard. Now he was being carried toward Rome in extravagant triumph, crossing rivers in barges wreathed with garlands while a huge train of hangers-on made merry at the expense of the populace, looting and terrorizing the countryside. It accorded ill with the Sabine ideal of public service.
Even Vespasian did nothing. Having drawn up his three legions to take the oath of allegiance to their new Emperor Otho, four months later he drew them up again, himself expressionless, and made them take the oath to Vitellius. His behavior on both occasions was exemplary. It was the soldiers, normally so boisterous at accessions, who when called upon to swear their allegiance just stood in their ranks in devastating silence. They stared at Vespasian; Vespasian stared back at them. Their mood was plain. Everyone present could see the commander in Judaea was genuinely moved.
Still he did nothing. He knew that to seize power was the first step only; holding it posed a very different task. He was instinctively modest. He listened to the appeals of his friends; he considered the risks. He remained withdrawn, watchful, apparently calm, although Titus knew, and Caenis could imagine, how the real state of his mind was highly active and alert. Many men know when to act; a few know when to wait. Vespasian let Otho and Vitellius fight it out among themselves.
Otho died well. Lurking in Brixellum he heard how, despite earlier successes and the ill-preparedness of the German troops, his own army had been crushed at Bedriacum. He made the brave decision not to expose his supporters to further bloodshed. After encouraging his staff and making arrangements for their escape, he burned his official correspondence, attended to his private affairs, then retired to his quarters. He drank a glass of cold water, tested the points of two daggers, placed one beneath his pillow, and spent a last quiet night. At dawn he awoke and stabbed himself fatally once. He received an unpretentious funeral and a monument so modest it belied how far his reputation had been redeemed by his courageous death.