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.
Vespasian had no intention of leaving Egypt yet, as far as anyone knew. In his absence his status in Rome steadily grew. News from Italy carried east, but during the winter Vitellius could obtain no intelligence the other way. The silence enhanced Vespasian's mystique. Meanwhile the grain shortage was beginning to tell; when Vespasian came with the wheat ships he would be eagerly welcomed by a starving populace.
The armed struggle that had occupied the previous six months was best not remembered. Rome's casual attitude to dispatching other races was matched by a poignant reverence for the shedding of its own citizens' blood. For legion to fight legion, brother to die at brother's hand, racked Italy and the city both.
"I've been thinking about you," Caenis told Sabinus. "Your position as City Prefect must be dreadful."
It was Rome that wanted Sabinus to continue in his post; for Rome he felt obliged to do it. Sabinus was held in great reverence, greater than his brother, if the truth were told. His first stint of governing the city had been three years; now he had done it for another eight.
"Well. Exciting times!"
In his way he glossed over the problem. He remained a gentle, pleasant, well-respected, well-intentioned man, who was desperately trying to reconcile Vitellius to the inevitable without further bloodshed or disruption in the capital. "I do my best." He stared into the brazier, holding out his hands to the warmth. The red glow gleamed on his troubled face. Any frown, like his restrained smile, brought out a momentary likeness to his famous brother.
"You do wonders. But, Sabinus!"
For an instant Caenis had glimpsed that he was an old man carried on by an outgrown reputation, an old man rightly afraid he was at the verge of losing his grip.
"I know. They listen to me, Caenis; well, I hope they do."
They did—so far.
Rain lashed the small windowpanes in long, beaded diagonal streaks. They talked for a time about the news that was filtering through, particularly about the sack of Cremona. In a display of spectacular generalship, Vespasian's man Antonius Primus had crossed the Pannonian Alps, established his headquarters at Verona, then defeated a large Vitellian army at Bedriacum, the scene of their own victory over Otho; the price was a disastrous siege of Cremona nearby, culminating in an immense fire.
"Is it all true?" Caenis requested. "Tell me it's not."
"Afraid so. Packed for the annual fair. Irresistible. The burning was not ordered by Antonius—I have his word. It began during the siege. He could not be expected to restrain forty thousand men who had just defeated the famous legions from Germany and saw the nearby city as their personal prize."
Caenis was angry. "Murder and rape; rape and murder. Old men and children torn from hand to hand, mocked and assaulted; women and boys violated; four days of carnage. Everything plundered; looters even stealing from themselves. Then the whole city burned! Not a building left standing—just one solitary temple, outside the city walls."
Sabinus looked uneasy. "Civil war; it's brutal and bitter."
"This is what Vespasian has done."
As her passion crackled Vespasian's brother reprimanded her briskly, "No; no! What he will stop, lass. Vitellius is so unpopular that if my brother did not make this claim against him someone else would. You know that. The Empire is sadly adrift. Vespasian is the best man; you must agree. There is more chance of a lasting peace at the end of this with Vespasian and his sons—"
Caenis had relaxed fairly early in the speech, but Sabinus had always talked too much. "Well, then. What happens now, Sabinus?"
"Our troops rest, celebrate the Saturnalia, then march on Rome. I'm talking to Vitellius constantly; he assures me he is ready to abdicate."
"Do you believe him?"
In his innocence Sabinus was shocked that she asked. "I must!"
She did not wish to dishearten him; he was a good man. "Well done, then. So . . . the Emperor Vespasian!" Her tone softened. They had come, they both realized, to the point of his call. "Flavius Sabinus, don't be embarrassed. I understand what must be done. I have been your brother's best supporter all these years; should I offend against his reputation now? You know why I moved back here to my own house."
"You are a good friend to the Flavians."
He felt awkward. They both knew what his brave, clear-principled wife would have said about this.
Caenis reassured him gently, "The Flavians were good friends to me."
So he understood; his brother's mistress would do whatever had to be done. Caenis, the ex-secretary, would behave as she had been trained, with discretion and self-effacement. She would do it, moreover, despite anything his brother himself might say.
Flavius Sabinus leaned back his head and sighed. "This is very sad." Caenis said nothing. "Very sad," he repeated somberly.
He meant it. But for him, as for anyone who cared what happened to Rome, the important thing was a satisfactory resolution to the confusion, culminating in the best man taking charge. It was time to end Claudian vulgarity and scandal, time for Flavian discipline, hard work, and dedication to the public good. Time for Vespasian to be respectable again.
So although Flavius Sabinus honestly felt that what must happen to Caenis was tragic, though he liked her, and his late wife had liked her even more, he felt she had had a good run. His sadness was the type that must be dealt with staunchly, then put aside.