The two women made no attempt to breach protocol by entering the temple, but approached the outdoor altar. Veronica offered to this dark lady a small cluster of violets; then prayed aloud with her own inimitable good cheer: "O Cybele, Mother of the Gods, Lady of Salvation, accept these blossoms. Make me handsome at thirty, rich at forty, and please, lady, dead by fifty! Make me careful, make me cheerful, and (if you must, O Cybele!) make me good."

Caenis produced no offering. But she looked back, glimpsing through the portal the hard face of the goddess from the east who was supposedly friendly to women, and she prayed in her heart. O Cybele, great Idaean Mother, let me not love him more than I can bear! Adding, because she did love him and she recognized in him a man who would be genuinely concerned at her yearning pain, And, O Cybele, don't let him love me!

* * *

Two years was a long time to keep a secret from somebody so close. But she never said.

Well; once.

Once, at the end of a dinner party, when she was tired and at her low time of the month, when she had perhaps in consequence drunk far too much, he muttered something under his breath to her, with his head against her head, something spectacularly rude about one of the other guests, which made her suddenly giggle so much that her tension slithered away like a runnel of sand until, weak with laughter, she let herself exclaim with the force of desperate truth, "Oh, I love you!"

Then she did not know how to cope.

People had probably heard. It was not what she had said that mattered, but what saying it aloud had done to her. The look on Vespasian's own face was so odd, she was forced to apologize, sliding atilt to her feet: "I've had too much wine; I'm embarrassing us. I'll go home—you don't need to come. . . ."

But he came. He came, ambling after her like some great loyal mastiff, nuzzling the back of her neck while she tried to put on her outdoor shoes, towing along when she went for her chair, clambering in with her, to the despair of the slaves who had to carry them both, and then fondling her on the way home almost to the point of highway rape. He came into the house, nibbling her left ear, bribing the porter who did not normally expect to let him indoors so late; he came with her all through the elegant corridors, wrapping her around pillars with tipsy abandon, then growling rumbustiously when she escaped. He came, mad as a clown in some rude Atellan farce, into her room.

Where in darkness and complete silence he seized her, every line of his body melting into hers, and kissed her, absolutely sober, absolutely serious, absolutely still. Terrified, she tried to close her brain to the fact that he understood. She was ashamed to speak; he would not let her. Elated by a passion that seemed to devastate them both, he undressed himself; he undressed her; he brought her to the bed, still without speaking a word, as if what he wanted to say was inexplicable. Then he made love to her as even he never had, befuddled as she was, befuddled as she thought he was, drawing them to ecstasy over and over again. When Caenis slept, perhaps the deepest slumber of her life, for once he was there throughout the night, not even lying at her side, but encircling her with every limb, every inch of him flooding her with abundant companionship.

Vespasian awoke just before dawn; his lifelong habit. Caenis awoke with the change in his breathing, which was, whenever she had the chance, a habit of hers. He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

"I enjoyed that!"

"So did I."

His mouth tightened into the line that she recognized as his most personal smile. "I thought you did!"

* * *

He left the house quietly. They never mentioned the incident afterward. Sometimes she caught Vespasian's eye carefully upon her when she knew he thought her preoccupied, and then, although Caenis was not normally given to frantic gaiety, she would turn on him and pelt him with mimosa blossoms, or snatch the cushions from under his elbow, or tickle his feet.

After they settled down, she always knew when he was watching her again.

THIRTEEN

The Emperor Tiberius died in his seventy-eighth year, at Cape Misenum. He had been riding to Rome, but turned back when his pet snake was discovered dead and half-devoured by ants. Caenis thought any pet doomed to be hand-fed daily by Tiberius would fling itself cheerily to the ants.

Soothsayers decided that if the Emperor entered the city he would be torn apart by the mob. For once their interpretation seemed adept. Tiberius' last years had witnessed a reign of terror during which the appalling cruelties inflicted upon his own family and on members of the Senate were only equaled by the vile debaucheries to which the Emperor subjected himself. Show trials for alleged treason had become commonplace. His absence encouraged wild rumors about his personal habits. Rome viewed him with horror, and his death was greeted with joy.

It was typical of Tiberius' malevolence that since he knew people wanted him to die he had struggled violently to disappoint them. He had tried to disguise his failing strength, and clung so stubbornly to life and power that he even climbed out of bed calling for his dinner after being once pronounced dead. In the end his impatient young heir, Caligula, was widely believed to have assisted his adoptive grandfather into the underworld by applying a pillow to his face.

Caligula was a tall, pale, prematurely balding youth. Caenis had known him slightly when he lived with Antonia before being summoned by Tiberius to Capri, perhaps to be trained as a successor—or simply to let Tiberius gloat over the viper he would be bequeathing to Rome. The young man appeared to have a quicker intelligence than his coheir, Gemellus, was reputedly eager to learn, and had distinguished himself at an early age making formal public speeches, including the funeral oration for his great-grandmother Livia. Yet Tiberius had held reservations about him, and uneasy stories circulated. He was certainly under the influence of Macro, Sejanus' even more brutal successor as chief of the Praetorians, the man who permitted his wife to have an affair with Caligula, and who probably helped him speed Tiberius' death.

Caesars who overstayed their welcome must expect to be hurried along. Even Augustus was supposed to have been poisoned at the end by his famously devoted wife. Of the nine Caesars who ruled Rome during Caenis' lifetime, only one would die of natural causes, quietly succeeded by his own elder son; only one sardonic soul would leave the world joking even at death: "Dear me! I feel I must be turning into a god!"

If Caligula had a sense of humor, it was to prove macabre, and he wanted his divinity in his lifetime. Yet he began discreetly. The Senate was too frightened of the army to protest when he asked to be awarded sole rights as Emperor; the army loved him because since a baby he had been their mascot, and while armies may change their minds or their loyalties, they do not so readily change their mascots. No doubt encouraged by their commander, Macro, he had awarded each of the Praetorian Guards a thousand sesterces, which ensured their loyalty. Two days after Tiberius died, Caligula supplanted his coheir, Gemellus, and assumed in a single decree of the Senate all the powers that Augustus and Tiberius had collected gradually and with modesty.

Rome first hailed his succession as a new golden age. He was the people's pet, their shining star. He was the son of their hero Germanicus, and after twenty years of Tiberius, who terrified and appalled everyone, Rome badly wanted to find good in Germanicus' son. Gemellus was quickly sidelined. At twenty-five Caligula had become lord of the civilized world.

Caenis was to observe that the worst Emperors all began with sanctimoniously proper acts. Caligula, Nero, and also Domitian—though she never saw him rule in his own right—started public life with a show of youthful good behavior. It was as if those whose balance of mind was most vulnerable to excess made a last effort to win real admiration before absolute power sent them off their heads.