Afterward Vespasian exclaimed, with his wild, wide grin, "Well, lady! That was an occasion to treasure when we are old and incapable!"
He was strong and endlessly healthy; even after he made love with the fervor of a man who regarded this as the most natural and enjoyable way of taking exercise, his rib cage soon rose and fell again in its normal regular rhythm.
Caenis, gasping, thumped his chest. "Oh, I'm speechless!"
"What a change."
"You great ox; you'll never be incapable. You'll still be sending for some girl—or a whole troupe—to liven your afternoons when you're seventy!"
Chortling, he flung back his great head, and for some minutes they lay together in silence before talking more reflectively.
"Wonder if we'll know each other then?"
It was an unfair question; men could be such pigs. Caenis responded drily, "I imagine I shall have died of drudgery long before."
He croaked, mimicking the astrologer at the Theater of Balbus, "Her life is kindly; kindly her death. . . ." He knew well enough that Caenis rejected omens. She had told him: Whatever either of them were to become must lie in themselves. Neither had any advantages, or anyone to help. Life would be only what they chose to make it, grappling within the straitjacket of society. "You were quiet tonight," he suddenly observed. She was less startled that he noticed than that he commented. "What were you thinking about?"
She did not answer.
He usually knew anyway. "Has your lady's house been reoccupied yet? What about Claudius?"
To his own surprise as much as anyone's, Claudius had been selected by Caligula for the honor of sharing the Consulship with his Emperor. Claudius had never held public office of any kind before, since both Augustus and Tiberius openly judged him unsuitable. As Caligula's colleague as well as his uncle, he had been compelled to go to live at the Palace. He was bound to be looking for a way to escape, and his mother's house might partially provide one.
"You are quite right," agreed Caenis, though Vespasian had not said it. "I shall need somewhere of my own to live."
Without any hesitation he asked her, "Want to come here?"
She was dumbfounded.
Caenis wanted to live with Vespasian more than anything.
"No, Titus. No, thank you. No."
It was unbelievable even a man could be so crass. Damn it, she had thought Vespasian relatively humane. She sat up abruptly, hugging her knees. She could not bear this.
"Why not?" he demanded stubbornly.
Caenis resisted the temptation to wrench away from him, to walk out and never come back. She compressed her anger, though she had no inhibitions about letting it show: "Dear heart, I'll never catch a rich senator if they all know I'm living with you! And how, in Juno's name, am I expected to get you sensibly married off? Besides, if I come here while you are single, what is to happen to me afterward? Oh you bastard, you absolute bastard; you know all this!" He had an aggravating habit of merely looking intrigued when somebody completely lost control. "I do hope you have noticed," Caenis went on coolly, fighting down her temper as she spoke, "how rare it is for me to call you names."
He said nothing. There was no doubt; he had noticed. He knew he had punished her beyond reasonable limits.
Still he persisted, as if it were in some way relevant. "Caenis—do you think my career will ever come to anything?"
More tolerant with the apparent change of subject, she answered at once: "Certainly. You know I do."
He sighed slowly. "If I thought not . . ." Perhaps fortunately, he did not finish. "Once, when I was a lad, my father took an augury that his second son would be something really special. This was a long time ago—and I won't tell you what I'm supposed to become! My grandmother burst her girdle laughing. Told my father he was going dreamy. Said he should be ashamed to act the dunce in front of his own mother!"
Caenis laughed. "I like the sound of your old granny!"
"My old granny"—Vespasian chuckled—"would not have liked the sound of you! She would have known you were after my cash."
Giggling, because he was so poor it was ludicrous, she turned around to him slightly, as she did so feeling his mighty hand spread companionably on her back. His eyes seemed unusually still. "Titus, you don't need superstitious permission. You won't fail. You can be whatever you want."
His palm moved methodically along her spine. She tried to ignore the goose pimples. He was doing it on purpose, to tease her, and to calm her down. "Hah! Going to encourage me? Live out your ambitions through me like the crazed crows of the imperial family? Are you a schemer, lass? A palace puppeteer?"
Hurt again, she dropped her head onto her knees. "You are not mine to manipulate! Oh, you'll take your aedileship next time around, and everything will be easier for you after that. But I hope—"
He had scrambled up close, wrapping his arms around her, knees and all. Eagerly he demanded, "What? What do you hope? Caenis, tell me your hope!"
"That when you are grizzled and famous," she mumbled against his shoulder, "you may still sometimes remember munching a sausage in a pantry with a bad-tempered slave."
"Oh, my dear lass!"
When someone touched him on a nerve, he was utterly soft. If Caenis had owned the confidence of a Veronica, she would have realized she could easily bring him to tears. Instead he pretended to be smiling, then drew her back down with him; a man of his build needed exercise, and making love to women was an easy way to get it.
Besides, he wanted to make another memory for their old age.
* * *
It was not long afterward that he made his next trip to Reate. His mother still lived there at the family home. He was a good son; Caenis was used to him visiting his mother. She never went with him; she knew that she and his mother would never meet.
A woman of both force and tact, Vespasia Polla probably did not like the sound of Caenis either; she would never waste her breath saying so. She was one of the few people who knew how, and when, to persuade her stubborn younger son to settle into something he really did not want to do. He had loved his grandmother Tertulla; he liked to please his mother. Throughout his life he would be a man who nursed a serious regard for the women who were close to him.
He was affectionate with his mistress. And, Caenis knew, one day he would be loyal to his wife.
SIXTEEN
As soon as she saw his face she understood everything.
He had come to her at home in Antonia's house, unexpected and unannounced, while she thought him still at Reate. She went through the motions; Caenis after all was a first-class secretary. She had been trained to behave with aplomb in any social emergency.
"Titus! You're back in Rome."
"I'm back," he stated somberly. "Oh, Caenis!"
It was all perfectly obvious from his face.
* * *
The scene fixed itself in her memory as if she were some hapless insect being slowly trapped in the bark of a stone pine, transfixed under a sluggish ooze of amber for the next two thousand years. There it all was: the woven rug in faded shades of crimson and blue at her feet, folded under at one far corner; the Greek black-figure vases displayed on the sideboard; the list she had been checking, which fell from her hand as she rose at his entrance; the pin on the shoulder of her dress that worked loose and scratched her if she moved but which she could not spare concentration to refasten. The chandelier had creaked on its ceiling-chain as he carefully closed the door.
There was nothing unusual in his expression itself. He always frowned in that grim way; people laughed at him, but there was nothing he could do to change it. She recognized the horror only because every plane of that face had set rigid in misery.