Only foolishness would have allowed a young man who had access to this powerful group to miss his opportunity. Unless he chose to run off to be a traveling lyre player, with a beard and battered sandals, Vespasian was bound to end up dancing attendance at the House of Livia.

"I could bar this upstart!" offered Tyrannus.

Tyrannus was the slave who screened Antonia's guests. It was a post she had virtually invented, for in most Roman homes free access to the householder for people wishing to pay their respects or to submit petitions was traditional, but most households were not headed by women. Modesty forbade such free access to the House of Livia.

"There is no reason to bar him." Caenis felt embarrassed to discover that everyone knew Vespasian had sought an entanglement with her—and that it had not happened.

"I'm on your side, Caenis."

"I do appreciate that. We need not punish him."

"Oh, well—if you put his nose out of joint!"

Hardly likely, thought Caenis, as she braced herself to keep calm during Vespasian's visit.

She refused to hide. He too had no intention of pretending they were strangers. In what amounted to a public situation, they were able to find a wry formality for dealing with one another. So they would pass in corridors as if by accident (though it happened quite often). They would treat one another to exaggerated politeness, inquiring after each other's health. They even stood in the atrium discussing the weather as if there had never been that fierce tug of attraction between them.

Yet remembrance of their old friendship never died either. Caenis liked to let Vespasian see important men respectfully seeking her advice about how to approach Antonia. In return, Vespasian would fold his strong arms in his toga and cheerfully wink at her.

When he was twenty-six his mother finally prevailed. He was elected to the Senate, assuming the title of quaestor, a junior finance official, then given a posting to Crete.

EIGHT

"Hello, Caenis." Her Sabine friend.

The odd thing was, even after so long she felt no more surprise when he turned up again wanting to see her than when he had first stayed away.

It was November. Huddled in her cloak because the Palace was freezing, Caenis drove herself to continue writing until the next period. Even then she looked up only with her eyes, the picture of a secretary too intent to interrupt.

"Senator!" She was shocked. Here was Vespasian's familiar burly figure, uneasily swaddled in formal clothes—brilliant white woollen cloth, with wide new purple bands.

She did know he had been elected to the Senate. Antonia sent her every day to copy the news from the Daily Gazette, which was posted up for the public in the Forum. Caenis had recited the latest list of postings to quaestor while Antonia, who realized the young knight from Reate was no longer an issue, ignored his name with tact.

"Ludicrous, isn't it?" He smiled.

"Is your voting tribe short of candidates?" Caenis jibed with mild offensiveness. Senators elect were entitled to sit on special benches and listen in to the judgments to gain experience; most provincials felt this entitlement was one a prudent man should be seen eagerly taking up. It was late morning; Vespasian had probably come here from the Curia. Bound for Crete, he could only have come to say good-bye.

He hovered just inside the door. This time he passed no comment on the decor, even though the damp plaster had been cleanly reinstated, while the new paint on the dados and frescos still smelled fresh. (Caenis had succeeded in subverting the prefect in charge.)

"You're going to throw me out," said Vespasian unhappily.

"I ought to," she replied with controlled candor. "I owe it to myself."

"Of course you do." At last she lifted her head. He said calmly, "Please don't."

Caenis retorted, "Naturally, sir, I abase myself like an oriental ambassador—on my face, on the floor, at your feet!"

She stayed at her table.

Vespasian quietly crossed the room, accepting her sarcasm, then piled his toga in untidy folds on his knees as he took a low stool in front of her. He watched her with those frank brown eyes; she tilted her head, watching him. She remembered the frown; the energy of his stare; his physical stillness—the dangerous feeling that this man was offering his confidence, and she might without warning find she was sharing hers.

"What can I do for you, senator?" she inquired, honoring him again with his new title, her tone more subdued than the question required.

Vespasian leaned his elbow on her table. The wobbly legs had been stabilized for her by a carpenter, who then polished up the whole piece with beeswax. Caenis folded her hands on the farthermost gleaming edge.

He was making no attempt to explain. First he had decided against seeing her again; well, she didn't want to see him. And now he had decided to come back: well!

He said, "I'm trying to get hold of some notes for a decent shorthand system. The ones in the libraries are not for taking away." This ploy was at least novel. Mad humor danced in his face as Caenis tried to resist laughing too. "When I go abroad, if I'm just trailing around after some self-opinionated governor who doesn't trust me to do anything, I may at least manage to learn taking notes properly."

His year as a quaestor would involve traveling out to one of the foreign provinces to be the governor's finance officer and deputy. Unless they happened to have worked together before and had built up a friendship, governors and their quaestors often despised each other. In any case, she imagined Vespasian might make a prickly subordinate.

Delving into the conical basket in which she carried her equipment to and fro, Caenis produced her own battered reference sheets. She had been taught shorthand and several kinds of ciphering long ago. "This is a list of symbols I once made for myself. If you can read my scribble, take it, please."

When taking notes for her own purposes she wrote so quickly her handwriting could be eccentric, but as he glanced through, he nodded. "Thanks." He was just like her; set a document in his hand, and he was instantly devouring it.

While he was still reading she forced herself to say, "I see the Senate has published next year's postings."

"I've drawn Cyrenaica and Crete."

"Crete will be pleasant. . . . When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow." Immediately he looked up. "Sailing when the seas are closed is traditionally the first test in the job. Sorry. I should have come before this. Stupid!" he added tersely.

Caenis did not reply.

The awkward low seat finally got the better of him. He stood up, stretching, though not yet ready to go. He began to pace about the room.

"I see you had the place cleaned up."

"How did you know it was me?" she demanded. Vespasian let out a little laugh. Caenis blushed. "Well, I finally nudged the prefect of works."

He had been inspecting the new fresco. The painters had wanted to do a gladiatorial scene; painters always did. Instead Caenis had insisted on a soothing panorama of gardens, like the one in Livia's House: cranky trellises laden with creepers in whose shade three-legged herons pecked fruit from funereal urns amid unlikely combinations of flowers.

"What does nudging entail?" Vespasian cracked, looking back over his hefty shoulder with a contempt that startled her.

"Oh—the usual!" When caught off guard Caenis could be a belligerent tease. She glanced down, then up again through her eyelashes. Veronica imbued this gesture with resonant sexuality; Caenis got an eyelash in one eye. "I just took an interest in his work."

Vespasian stared.

To soothe him, while she fiddled with the eyelash she commented that Antonia was unlikely to keep this office once Tiberius either died or came home to Rome. It was years since he decamped to Capri. There he now owned a dozen villas, plus a series of grottoes and bowers that provided a pretty playground for acting out orgiastic fantasies—or so it was said. Some of the terrible stories were probably true.