He had wandered right up to her table. Perching on the edge, he went on gazing around as if even a run-down cubbyhole in the Palace were new to him. An oil lamp tilted alarmingly. Caenis leaned down hard with her elbows so the table would not rock over and tip him on the floor. He knew she was doing it, but made no attempt to shift his weight. She folded her hands atop the tablets that she had just finished sorting, to prevent Vespasian (who was craning his head) from reading them.
"Good evening, lord."
Flavius Vespasianus had a rare but wonderful grin. "You're mellowing. Last time I was told to skip over the Styx!"
"The lady Antonia's secretariat respects the privilege of rank." Caenis was now allowed to be as ironic as the person she was addressing would accept. Authority attached to her through the importance of her mistress and the responsibility of her post. Antonia's visitors treated her with deference. "Are you rich yet, tribune?" she taunted.
"I shall never be rich; but I have brought you a present. Don't get excited; it's nothing to wear." He had come completely unattended. There was a rather greasy parcel squashed under his arm.
"Can you eat it?" she giggled unexpectedly.
"I owe you a sausage."
"And this is it? After two years, lord?"
"I had to go to Thrace," he told her gravely. "If I had missed the sea crossing it would have been the end of my career." He spoke as if he had seriously considered missing his ship anyway. Caenis felt an odd flutter. She ignored it stalwartly. He handed her the parcel. "I presume you are a girl who likes pickled fish?" She loved pickled fish. "Manage a stuffed egg?"
"Only one?"
"I ate the other on the way."
Genuinely shocked, she exclaimed before she could stop herself, "In the street, lord?"
"In the street," he returned placidly. For a moment she thought him a real country boy, innocent of his offense; then his gaze danced on her troubled face; he knew. Caenis frowned with a mixture of pleasure and puzzlement. She imagined him shambling through Rome's clamorous streets. Probably he would carry it off. Probably no one even noticed: a knight, a tribune newly released from military service and qualified for the highest administrative posts, all on his own, carrying a parcel, munching a stuffed egg.
"Deplorable," he agreed wickedly. "So—here's a man who pays his debts."
"Outside my experience!"
Her wry comment on the harshness of her moral world made him pause; then he continued, "I've been trying to find you for days. I'm such a permanent fixture the sausage-maker thinks I must be spying on him for his wife. I would have arrived earlier today, but the stuff was wrapped in some second-rate poet's cast-off manuscript. You know how it is—you glimpse one half-good phrase, then an hour goes by with you standing on the same street corner unraveling the paper trying to find the last appalling verse. . . . Well, can we share this?"
Caenis was beginning to feel frightened. Every word he uttered snatched at her sympathy. Alone with her for the first time, he made no effort to be gallant; nor did he fuss. Perhaps he supposed knights and senators were always dropping in with picnics. Those brown eyes knew exactly what he was doing to her. Suddenly he tried to beg for information: "There were some grand events in Rome after I went back to Thrace. Were you aware what lay in store for Sejanus?"
Caenis still regarded Antonia's letter as a matter of confidence. Besides, she was trained to deflect curiosity from strangers. She demanded sternly, "I don't expect you thought to bring any bread?" Then, before he had time to look crestfallen, she reached down and pulled out the flat circular loaf she had been intending to nibble later on her own. "I think we should decamp to the pantry," she said. "I don't want to be caught using my lady's letter to the King of Judaea as a napkin for eating pickled fish!"
* * *
Caenis now owned a plate. "Chipped but not cracked, rather like my heart . . ."
He did not laugh. He had a way of looking noncommittal while he listened, so she could hardly tell whether she amused or astonished him.
It was a different time of year. April. The Emperor still away on Capri. The days lengthening but the Palace lying silent again, lit by myriad oil lamps for no one's benefit.
This time they had the sausage cold. Vespasian sliced it up himself. "I don't like this as much as yours; I should have asked you what to get." It was a smoked Lucanian salami, rather strong on the cumin, not enough savory and rue. Caenis did not complain. It was the only present she had ever received. Veronica would have mocked; Veronica's idea of a present was something sparkly and easy to pawn.
"When you have waited over a year for a debt," Caenis commented benignly, "you make the best of whatever turns up."
After a while he demanded, still chewing, "Are you allowed any free time on your own?"
This was what she wanted to avoid. Being stupidly straightforward, she told him the truth: "Sometimes."
"What do you do with yourself?"
"Tomorrow I am going to see a mime actor."
He looked interested; she groaned inwardly. "I heard you singing. And you like the dancers?"
"I like the flute music. You can lose yourself," she muttered, not wanting to talk about it. She knew better than to entrust her soul to anyone of rank.
"You don't need losing," he chivvied her. "Going with someone nice?"
"Oh yes!" she snapped without thinking. "With myself." She crunched her teeth into a crisp curl of the loaf and pointedly did not look at him. There was a very slight pause.
"No man?"
Better prepared now, she was able to duck the question: "Men are not nice, lord. Sometimes useful, occasionally amusing, hardly ever genuine, and never nice."
"Women are worse; they cost a lot and still let you down." He was teasing. She let it pass.
"Actually, I go by myself because I seriously object when idiots talk to me through the music."
He smiled, because he recognized that was just like her. She was as single-minded as himself. "Who's doing the mime?"
"Blathyllos."
"Any good? I might come too. I don't talk; I always go to sleep. Luckily I never snore."
They could not go to the theater as a couple. They would not be permitted to sit together; even women of his own rank must watch separately. Antonia's slave should not be seen alone with him in any case. But he asked, without hesitation, "Would you meet me afterward?" Absorbing herself in biting a peppercorn from the pickled fish, Caenis tried not to answer. He interpreted her silence his own way. "Where shall I find you?"
Too late; she was committed. Her heart pounded. "A young lord who does not know the theater rendezvous?" she reproved, still foolishly attempting to slither out of this.
"Sheltered upbringing."
"Bit old-fashioned?" There was no escape. The truth had to be stated. She reminded him baldly: "I am somebody else's slave."
"I appreciate that."
Defiance overtook her. "Well then, if you mean it, you could meet me here beforehand. Ask anyone; they will find me."
For the first time the senator's brother seemed uncomfortable. "Who shall I ask for?" His sources of information must be thinner than hers.
She took a deep breath. Giving her name seemed a step she could never revoke. "Caenis," she said awkwardly.
"Caenis?" He tested it out in his strong voice. It was Greek; that was only a convention of slavery. "Caenis!" he exclaimed again, and his speaking her name made everything unbearably intimate.
"Just Caenis," she muttered.
"Just nothing!" he retorted angrily. She guessed he meant she should not denigrate herself. "And listen, Caenis: Always ask a visitor who he is!" He was evidently wanting her to ask his own name. "The most dismal words in the world are ‘Someone called to see you; I don't know who it was. . . . Don't be put at a disadvantage. You can't afford to be pushed into assumptions about anybody's status; you need to know for sure. You have to judge whether a person rates refreshments or only your polished sneer." He stood up. "So in answer to your next question—"