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.
Veronica looked well with yellow hair. She also looked well with glossy blue-black curls, auburn towers of Celtic plaits, or rolling chestnut waves. If ever she grew old (though it seemed unlikely she would last so long) Veronica would be utterly distinguished once she settled for a smart silvery bun. Of them all, the present yellow crimping perhaps best suited the daintiness of her face.
Her language had never been dainty. "Caenis, don't be such a stupid pen-pushing cow!"
As Caenis had said to Antonia, her old friend had a good heart. "Juno! I spy some terrible spots on your back, Veronica."
A game try.
"Oh, piddle! Give me a scrapedown, love—but don't try to drive me off the racecourse. I said—"
"I heard what you said."
"Yes, but do you listen?" Veronica bawled.
They had known each other since they were ten, and as neither was in a position to bring a body-slave, they had been scraping each other's backs with one borrowed strigil or another ever since. Caenis helped Veronica obliterate her shoulder rash; Veronica, using similarly brutal techniques, helped Caenis shed unsatisfactory men. Most of the men who had ever approached Caenis were hopeless; strong-minded angry girls are curiously attracted to inadequate types. She had not even told Veronica about the very worst. Nor had Veronica, who was softhearted in some respects, ever mentioned that there were several perfectly decent men who regarded Caenis with secret fondness; Veronica thought accepting fondness would be a fatal mistake.
"Darling, this character is completely insignificant. It's taken me half a day even to find out his name." It had taken Caenis herself three weeks of hard effort with the usher Maritimus to extract any information. "Time you were fixed up with someone useful, girl. Why do you always frighten the good ones off? Oh, you don't even intend to look!"
Caenis writhed. "I do; I do! I tell myself an Indian pearl earring or several are just what I need—then I look at the types who might offer, and I curl up. It's not just the thought of their podgy fingers paddling in your private places; most of them are so lacking, Veronica."
"Keep away from men with talent," Veronica barked. "If he falls, you may follow. If he rises, you'll be dropped. Ouch! "
"Sorry. Give me your oil flask. Phew! "
"Deposited as an offering on the altar of love," Veronica muttered.
"It's disgusting."
"It's very expensive."
"It would be—I'll use mine."
As her friend ministered, Veronica lifted her own flask and sniffed at it uncertainly; she had educated views on material items, yet sometimes Caenis managed to shake her confidence.
"It's a pretty bottle," Caenis consoled kindly. It was pink Syrian glass, traced with fine spirals and so delicate it seemed ready to shatter from the very heat of any hand that held it up to admire its translucence. That did not excuse the oil within this fine Syrian product from smelling as if it were concocted from the reproductive glands of a camel.
Wriggling her shoulders Veronica demanded, "Well, failing some old millionaire to tickle your fancy, why refuse your Sabine friend?" She used the term "Sabine" as an insult.
Caenis knew the answer; she had spent all night thinking it up. "Because my Sabine friend has intelligence and good humor; both of those are qualities I like far too much."
Veronica recognized how serious this was. "You're smitten!"
"Oh, I can't risk that."
"No; you can't. That's losing in every way. But if you don't take the poor one and you won't find a rich one, you'd better work damned hard, then pray that your noble lady notices! Antonia may give you your freedom one day—but yours will be a small pension, Caenis, and not even happy memories at this rate. . . ."
She turned around, grabbing at the oil flask, though before she started to dribble the stuff down her friend's own immaculate back she kissed her on the top of her head; she was a demonstrative girl. It was another way in which they had nothing in common.
"Now, the minute he turns up with his present, I want to hear what it is."
* * *
Vespasian did not turn up with his present; he did not turn up at all.
As Caenis gradually realized that the aggravating bastard had reached the same decision as herself, she started to dodge Veronica by taking a swim. Veronica rarely permitted herself to be dodged.
In the end she appeared at the side of the swimming bath, slapped down her rope sandals on the marble rim in a way that indicated she was not intending to go away, then waited for Caenis to surge up to her reluctantly. Caenis stayed in the water, floating on her back. Veronica stretched a fine ankle and splished the surface with one beautiful toe. They gazed at one another for a moment beneath the echoing hollow vault. Women's voices chattered against the pouring of water from jugs in the washing rooms in the background.
"Your friend's bunked off to Reate," Veronica shouted, at her most businesslike. "He's run home to his mother!"
Reate, famous to all Italy as the source of the finest white edible snails, was the Flavian family home. Vespasian's grandfather had settled there, and he himself had been born at Falacrina nearby. Reate was where his mother lived, where both he and his brother owned summer estates, sixty miles east of Rome. No one traveled so far and to such a country area unless they meant to stay.
Veronica usually tried to be kind, for she felt Caenis had never enjoyed much of a life. "Some of them don't know the rules. When you say no, they think you mean it."
Caenis bobbed away from the side of the swimming bath, then paddled gently back. "I did."
"Darling, there's your answer, then!"
Before she back-flipped like some overeager performing dolphin, Caenis added with rueful bitterness, "It's my own fault. When he promised that he would see me again, I forgot the free citizen's prerogative—not to bother to tell the truth to someone else's scabby slave!"
Then Veronica replied with the two things a girl needed her friend to say: "You're not scabby, you're lovely—and your Sabine friend's a fool!"
* * *
Going home to his mother was not the ideal escape. His mother had plans for him.
Flavius Vespasianus had been brought up in a family where women had a voice. The men went about their business in a perfectly capable manner, but they owed their position in society to the women they had married, and those women refused to be ciphers. For instance, though his brother had the same cognomen as their father, Vespasian was named after his mother. Vespasia Polla was not unique in receiving this sign of respect, though many women were denied it.
Vespasian's grandfather had married money; then his father allied himself to social status. While his father was away making a useful fortune as a banker in Helvetia, Vespasian had been brought up by his grandmother Tertulla on her large estate at Cosa on the northwest coast of Italy. Nowadays, with the family established nearer to Rome, his mother had assumed the influence that his grandmother had wielded during his happy childhood in Etruria.