With an angry jerk at the cushions under her back, Antonia conceded, "Ask Athenaïs to find you something decent to wear."
Caenis felt startled. She had been intending to borrow Veronica's best blue gown, since she knew that Veronica had worked herself an invitation to a function that required only a silver anklet and a wisp of gauze.
"Something will be found for you," Antonia brusquely said again.
Then, much as she distrusted other people's support, Caenis understood that in speaking out she had softened Antonia's strict principles. Her mistress would keep her, and indulge her. She had earned more than her lady's goodwill. She had become her favorite.
* * *
Something was found; something wonderful. Athenaïs, who mended Antonia's clothes, carried the garment to her cubicle. Her face split with a shy grin. "Pamphila has screwed up her face and let you have this!" Pamphila was the wardrobe mistress. She always ensured that her own turnout was spectacular, but was not renowned for parting with good things to other slaves.
Caenis whistled, which made Athenaïs giggle. She was deeply in awe of the secretary for being able to read and write, even though Caenis had made it plain since she first entered Antonia's household that to anyone half sensible she was perfectly approachable. Athenaïs immediately made her try on the dress, then squatted on the floor to alter the hem length, frowning with concentration as her nimble fingers flew. She seemed even more excited than Caenis was herself.
"I don't suppose you could persuade Pamphila to find me an undertunic too?"
Athenaïs scoffed. "I don't suppose you would like to try being the person who asked her?"
"No; I know my limits, dear!"
So Caenis came to the pantomime in her own shift, but a gown that had once belonged to the daughter of Mark Antony. It was one that showed its pedigree, in a shade of amber brown, as plain as it had once been expensive. Veronica would think it dull stuff, but Caenis recognized true elegance. It was linen woven through in Tyre with Chinese silk, a material so light she found it fabulous to wear. The dress moved as she moved; it lay soft against the skin, tenderly cool during the heat of the day, then with the evening chill whisperingly warm.
"You look nice," Vespasian remarked. No man had ever said that to Caenis before; none had ever thought he needed to. But he, as usual, was examining her. "You look happy."
For the first time Caenis glimpsed that although exquisite features and fine robes must help, real good looks depended on a glad heart. "Happy?" she quipped. "Well, strolling out with a bankrupt will soon settle that! Shall we walk?" she asked helpfully.
"I do have the price of a litter for my female companion."
"Of course," she murmured. No slave traveled in such style. Teasing him helped cover her unease. "But I was afraid that if you spent your small change now, you might have to miss your intermission honeycake."
"Thanks!" he said, suddenly meeting her halfway. "I do like a girl who grasps the practicalities."
Caenis stated quietly for the second time that week, "I think a girl in my position has to."
They walked.
SIX
To walk through Rome was to bludgeon through one teeming city bazaar. The main time for trade was in the morning before the fabric of the buildings and the air in the streets heated up unbearably, but in Mediterranean tradition, after a long siesta—lunch, nap, a little light lovemaking—businesses gradually reopened for their second, more leisurely session in the afternoon. This was the time at which Caenis and Vespasian set out.
They were starting on the Palatine, where the imperial family and those wealthy enough to imitate them had established their pleasant detached residences along the lower flank, with fine views over the Forum. When they plunged down from the Hill it was to make their way to the Theater of Balbus along the Triumphal Way; their passage was hectic. To the rest of the world the Empire was giving the elegance of planned public buildings in spacious piazzas, wide roads, and new towns built upon geometric street plans that were foursquare as the military forts from which they derived. Rome itself remained an eight-hundred-year-old honeycomb, a traditional maze of tight-cornered streets that clambered up and down the Seven Hills, often no more than inadequate passageways, twisting alleys, aimless double-backs, and crumbling cul-de-sacs. All of these were packed to the bursting point.
"I'm going to lose you," Vespasian muttered. "Better hold my hand."
"Oh no!" In horror Caenis buried her hands under the light folds of her stole. He raised a dour eyebrow; she would not give way.
The press of people in the narrow streets did not deter a man of his sturdiness. Keeping close behind his shoulder, she slipped after him as he moved unhurriedly; he forced a path more courteously than most men of his status ever managed. He checked frequently, though she sensed he was sufficiently alive to her presence to know immediately if they did separate in the crush. Once a water-carrier with two wildly sloshing cauldrons slung on a bowed pole pushed impatiently between them on his way from a public fountain to the upper quarters of an apartment block; she caught at Vespasian's toga, but with one of his abrupt smiles he was already slowing up to wait for her.
Freckles of sunlight flickered on their faces as they reached the smaller streets; these were just wide enough to glimpse the sky far away between corners of the roofs on the six-story blocks whose cramped apartments were piled one upon the other like towers of slipper-limpets on a rock. Everywhere taverns and workshops spilled out in front of them, for by day life was lived in the streets. The pillars of the arcades were garlanded with metalware—bronze flagons and copper jugs with chains through their handles like preposterous necklaces. They stepped around leaning stacks of pottery, then ducked under baskets hung on ropes above their heads. They squeezed past touts with trays of piping-hot meat pies, pressed back under balconies as sedan chairs jostled by, paused to watch a game of checkers on a makeshift board scratched in the dust. Assailed by noise and smells and the shoving of a polyglot humanity that at times carried them along helpless on the tide, at length they reached their destination.
"Show me your ticket!" Caenis commanded. "Then I can look for you—but you mustn't wave." Gravely he produced the ivory disc from which she memorized the number of his seat. "If you still want to see me, I'll wait over there afterward by the fortune-teller's booth. If I leave early I'll send down a message."
"I'll be there," he assented somberly.
* * *
Women sat at the top of the third tier of seats in the theater, after the various ranks of masculine citizens; Caenis had saved up for a ticket, to avoid having to stand on the upper terrace with foreigners and less thrifty slaves. Even from this high perch she soon picked out Vespasian; already the way he moved seemed vividly familiar. Usually she followed a play almost ahead of the actor, but she constantly lost Blathyllos today. Her concentration kept skittering off to the fourteen rows in the first tier, which were reserved for knights.
The art of the tragic pantomime had developed nearly to its peak. Few new plays were written; those shown now comprised part of the communal memory. The mood of the story was conveyed by an orchestra of winds and percussion, while the words, which the audience often knew by heart, were sung by either a small choir or a soloist. Nowadays there was only one actor, who portrayed all the parts; he honed himself for this with a strict regimen of diet and exercise. He presented the action through a combination of mime and dance, where each gesture, each glance, each delicate flexing of a muscle, each precise modulation of a nerve, caught the imagination and through the imagination the heart.