Since she now understood that he thought he had a mission, Caenis did not forbid it. He was wrong, of course; Caenis would look after herself.
* * *
It took six months to conclude the civil war, six months of deprivation in the country and terror in Rome, to bring Vitellius within sight of abdication.
It was during that time Veronica became ill. She knew, as Caenis did, that she would die. Caenis went to see her.
"Well, Veronica: here's some lovely Sabine fruit!"
Pain was sculpted on every line of Veronica's once-exquisite face. Her bones stood out; the flesh had started to shrink. She would not last until Vespasian reached Rome. Her beauty had become a ruin of its former self, clad in the remnants of her vitality like the soft muffling of lichen on fallen stones.
"Oh, thanks! Good of you to come. Talk to me, Caenis. Make me laugh; make me angry; anything to make me forget! Tell me about that dangerous man of yours!"
Caenis had hoped to avoid a confrontation with Veronica. "I'm a freedwoman," she stated crisply. "Vespasian was never mine."
Veronica interpreted this in her own style. "Hah! She's talking about the abundantly equipped Queen of Judaea."
The beautiful Berenice had apparently made all speed to offer Vespasian her most generous support. Handy to own a fleet, Caenis thought. "Leave it!" she warned.
Veronica scoffed. "What, like some dead thing my cat has dropped between us on the tiles, which we pretend we haven't seen? Queen Berenice—the wonder of our age . . . Be wise; ignore it. May not even be true." She changed her tone to a confidential mutter. "Is he coming yet?"
Caenis resisted the request to be drawn into indiscretion. It was easy enough; she knew little. Vespasian rarely wrote to her now. His last brief colorless note merely told her he was well. He said he missed her; she doubted that. She had not replied.
She contented herself with what was, despite all the censorship, common knowledge. "No. He's not coming. Generals we have never heard of, dear, are marching on Italy with legions who worship exotic gods from countries we can hardly find on the map."
"So what's happening?"
"As far as I can understand it—there is no formal news from the east, but Sabinus lets me know what he can—the plan is that Vespasian will sail to Egypt to batten down the winter corn supply that's intended for Italy. Bread is running short already; the profiteers seem to have grasped the point with their usual smart business sense. A general called Antonius Primus is invading northern Italy with all the Balkan legions, while this person Mucianus has crossed the Hellespont and will turn up unexpectedly somewhere on the eastern coast. Primus is nicknamed Beaky and has some kind of criminal record, though that did not deter Nero from giving him a legion, while Mucianus is a silky orator who sleeps with anything that moves, preferably male. Perhaps Vespasian hopes by contrast to appear immaculate."
"Stodgy old bastard! I don't know how you put up with him."
"Here as you know, Vitellius' roughnecks tear Rome apart, and poor Sabinus, who has been elected Prefect of the City yet again, struggles to keep public order and loyally obey the man whom his own brother is opposing. Ludicrous! How wise of you, my darling, to keep indoors."
Veronica had listened with half her attention. "He'll do it, your man. I see that now. This was always what he was waiting for. It's wonderful."
Caenis asked drily, "Bit of a change of heart, dear?"
"I," said Veronica proudly, "am loyal to my Emperor!" Then she pleaded almost, for she knew perfectly well what attitude Caenis was bound to take: "Oh, I'm a drab hag deteriorating on a faded couch, with cold feet and a dying brain—but it warms me to think of you, a Caesar's darling! Caenis, you must do this. You owe it to all the girls in all the Palaces who sleep on flea-ridden pallets on stone ledges in cold cells, and who live by the hope that one day they will rise to a better place. . . ."
Caenis could bear it no longer. Her own girlish dreams of breaking her shackles and stalking some throne room in a damask dress and a tasteless ruby coronet were long dead. All she wanted was to share her daily life with a man whose face brightened when he saw her. She finally told Veronica the truth. "Pensioned off, dear."
"Never!"
They began to argue, which was what Caenis had dreaded.
"Look, Veronica, he and I shared our lives on equal terms, for over ten years. Few wives are as close to their husbands as I was to him. How can I accept less?"
"He took you back."
"He took me back while he was a private citizen."
"Into his house."
"But there's no place for me in his Palace."
"Juno, Caenis; how can you be so stupid—how can you be so calm?"
"Realistic."
"Mad."
Caenis suddenly snapped. She cried out to her friend, whom she would probably not see in any lucid state again, as she had never allowed herself to do before: "Oh, I am not calm, girl! It's the bitterest of ironies, and I am very angry! A freedwoman; oh Juno, Veronica, I would be better as his slave—then at least he could keep me where he lives without public offense. This is impossible. Once I did accept that I had lost him; I learned to exist without him. I'm too old now to face all that anguish again. I'm too tired. I'm too frightened of what it will be like, never again having him there. I haven't any strength to deal with this." Her voice dropped to an even more painful note. "I hope he stays in the East; I hope he never comes. I tell you, I would sooner lose him to Queen Berenice, who married her uncle and sleeps with her brother, than have to see Vespasian in Rome as a stranger!"
Struggling to raise herself on one pitifully thin arm, Veronica complained in bewilderment, "But he cares for you!"
"Of course he does!" Caenis bellowed. "I know it; even he knows. He came back for me after half a lifetime. I was stout, and grayhaired, nasty-tempered and the wrong social class, but back he came. I cannot pretend any longer that the man did not care!"
"You were never stout," murmured her loyal friend.
Caenis careered on heedlessly. "So here I am, just where I was thirty years ago; worse, because I actually know now how he cares! Yet I have to stand back again, knowing what it means. I have to watch his face—oh, his poor sorry face—while that dear good man, the only straightforward honest man that I have ever met, tells me all over again that he must let me go!"
The silence rang through Veronica's house.
Caenis went home.
THIRTY-NINE
The last time Caenis saw Flavius Sabinus there was a violent rainstorm in the streets. It had been a terrible winter, with disastrous floods sweeping across the low ground on the Tiber's left bank. The Prefect of the City came wearily into her quiet room, where the rain could only just be heard outside the windows; she brought him at once to the intimate circle of a hot charcoal brazier to dry off and warm his ancient bones.
It was December in that eventful year. The week before, Caenis had lost a tooth; it was preoccupying her pathetically. As she huddled in a wrap, Sabinus pulled back his cheek to show her a half-row of his own missing, so then they laughed and compared notes on the onset of pains, on the fading of appetites, on the lightness of sleep. Caenis flexed her finger knuckles where they were shiny and sore, probably not with chilblains as she pretended, but rheumatism.
"Came to see how you were, lass." She was tired. She kept waking in the night from her dream about Britannicus and Titus. "Domitian should be keeping an eye on you, but he's far too busy seducing senators' wives."
Vitellius had placed Domitian under house arrest, though he still managed to act like the imperial lad-about-town. His father's rise had gone to Domitian's head, unlike Titus, who was by all accounts taking it sensibly. Titus was to take over as commander in chief in Judaea. He would be responsible for the siege of Jerusalem, though for the time being he remained in Alexandria with the Emperor. Domitian was stuck here with his fussy uncle Sabinus, and no real public role.