"I was just a slave; why didn't you?" Caenis asked coldly.
"Same reason you were saying no." Their eyes met. "Forget the rules," he said. "We share our lives; we are a partnership; that is our way."
Caenis protested hoarsely, "Oh Vespasian, you cannot!"
The Emperor adopted the formal air of a man who was about to make a speech. "Lady, there are only two things I cannot do. You are a freedwoman; I am not allowed to marry you. Nor, therefore, can I make you an empress. You may never be Caenis Augusta; when we're dead you will not be invited by the Senate to join me as a god. Neither of us takes that seriously—nor, I suspect, do the gods! But you were born in that Palace a slave; you shall rule it. You who were once Caesar's possession shall live equal to a Caesar of your own. I can give you no titles, but while I live, Antonia Caenis, Caenis my darling, you shall have the state, the place, the position, the respect. . . . No dark nooks in corridors. Our terms were to go side by side."
It was a good speech. Caenis replied from a gentle heart, "We never had terms. You and I never sank to that. You and I managed with trust, decency, fondness for each other's quaint ways—and in a real crisis the fact, O my Caesar, that you owed me ten thousand sesterces!"
Unintentionally she had reminded him. At once he rose and came a little way toward her. He stuck something solemnly under a lamp, then whistled quietly. "Don't argue. That's my banker's draft for you. No more votes for you to buy. I need four hundred million sesterces to put the Empire back on its feet, but that can be arranged without your nest egg now!"
Caenis was curious to know how a man who never managed to make any money for himself planned to find four hundred million sesterces for the State. His eyes gleamed, longing to explain. Vespasian's father was a tax collector; Rome had forgotten that.
"You and I are square, lass. I pay my debts, and I don't forget. Caenis, you have such faith in the public man; trust the private man too."
She did. They were one. They laughed at the same things, grew angry at the same time, scoffed at hypocrisy in the same tone of voice. They were comfortable together; they were close. Their daily lives ran at the same pace. After four years away, the world and their own lives in upheaval, he had walked through that door—and really, neither of them needed to say anything at all.
She sat riveted by the banker's draft. The fact that Flavius Vespasianus owed her money had always been her lifeline; it kept one notional tie between them, whatever else occurred. They did not need it any longer.
A yard away, he was waiting. The room had become very quiet.
"Caenis, you daft old woman, be gracious to a poor old man."
"Is it what you really want?"
"Yes. Oh yes!"
"Why?"
"You know very well why." He seemed to have been saying that to her for years. Her chin lifted, telling him so. When for once he decided to explain, it was without fuss or drama: "I love you. I always did. I always will."
Caenis could not answer him.
It seemed to Vespasian there was something wrong with her face. Her mouth had set in an odd line; her eyes were squeezed too tightly closed. It was so strange that he felt temporarily crippled by doubt. Caenis held out her hand to him, helpless to reassure him any other way. He had never seen her cry before.
In amazement he flung open his arms. "Oh, my poor lass!" The first sob, restricted for so long, hurt her throat. She was on her feet. With one stride he clamped her in a great, comforting imperial embrace. "Come here; come here to me. . . ." He was wrestling his bangle from her hand to slide it back over her wrist into its proper place. That she had taken it off must have been bothering him ever since he came in. "Oh Caenis, my dear love!"
He meant it. He had meant it all along. She bruised her forehead on the padded bosses of his rich embroidery.
* * *
People had come. Outside the door there were the restless shuffles and chinks of the Emperor's retinue filling her hall, parking their spears against her furniture and crowding down her passageways . . . the floors hardly dry and big men in gigantic boots trampling all over them. Vespasian ignored it. They could hear Aglaus in ecstatic form, giving the Palace rankers a good ear-bashing. Twelve lictors leaned on their axes and wilted before his scintillating sarcasm. Praetorian Guards braced themselves for backchat, while their centurion of the day felt the perspiration running helplessly between the cheek guard of his helmet and his rigid jaw. Litter-bearers were wetting themselves with worry out on the public road; secretaries flexed their note tablets; a chamberlain with high blood pressure prepared to expire against the old fern tub on the step. The Emperor's chief wardrobe master had brought—upon a tiny crimson cushion with four slithery silken tassels—the Emperor's missing wreath.
"There," chortled Vespasian, aware of it all and yet oblivious. "Oh, love; if it's all too much for you, however do you imagine that I feel? Blow your nose on the purple; never mind if the dye runs. You cry. Cry on the most important shoulder in the world; snuffle all over the silly gold braid."
"The wretched stuff will go green. . . ." She knew about imperial embroidery.
She raised her damp face. The man she had loved all her life sniffed slightly himself just before he grinned. He was just the same. "Look—we'll have to go now."
Caenis was still crying.
"That's settled, then. So are you ever," enquired Vespasian curiously, "going to condescend to kiss the Emperor of Rome?"
She stopped crying. She wished she had thought of it before. "Titus," she said, as if she had just remembered to welcome him home. "Titus—oh, Titus, I'm so glad to see you!"
She waited until he had finished drying her face on the rather prickly edge of the imperial gown. It took some time because Vespasian was a soldier, so he carried out practical tasks with textbook thoroughness. Of all the luxuries she would be able to command, none would equal the careful attentions of those big familiar hands.
Then Caenis kissed the Emperor. She kissed him as fiercely as she had kissed him once before, intending the man to realize exactly how she felt. Enjoying it immensely, he allowed her to finish, then this time kissed her back, with a tenderness that balanced her defiance and a glint in his eye that promised more to come. For a moment they stood locked together, sharing their own deep companionship and peace.
"There's no winner," Caenis told him.
He laughed. "No contest! You always were a challenge; that was understood. Now come home to your palace, lass, and dine in state with me!"
From the day Caenis met him, she had known what he might be. "You will be Caesar. And I—"
He gave her a tolerant look. "You will be Caesar's lady," said the Emperor Vespasian.
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
The political events in this story are true.
Vespasian ruled the Empire for ten years. He died of natural causes and was succeeded by each of his sons in turn. Although Domitian became a tyrant who was murdered by members of his own household, the Flavian dynasty had long before then reestablished peace and prosperity, making possible the Golden Age of the Second Century, when the Roman Empire's political and cultural achievements were to reach their height.
Caenis lived with the Emperor for the rest of her life.