Free The Course of Honour by Lindsey Davis Page A

finance official, then given a posting to Crete.

 
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8
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    H ello, 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 full stop. Even then she looked up only with her eyes, the picture of a secretary too intent to interrupt.
    â€˜
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 realised the young knight from Reate was no longer an issue, ignored his name with tact.
    â€˜Ludicrous, isn’t it?’ he smiled.
    â€˜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 judgements to gain experience; most provincials felt this entitlement was one a prudent man should be seen keenly taking up. Itwas late morning; Vespasian had probably come here from the Curia. Bound for Crete, he could only have come to say goodbye.
    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 smelt fresh. (Caenis had succeeded in subverting the prefect in charge.)
    â€˜You’re going to throw me out,’ said Vespasian unhappily.
    â€˜I ought to,’ she replied with controlled candour. ‘I owe it to myself.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜What can I do for you, senator?’ she enquired, honouring him again with his new title, her tone more subdued than the question required.
    Vespasian leant his elbow on her table. The wobbly legs had been stabilised 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 humour danced in his face as Caenis tried to resist laughing too. ‘When I go abroad if I’m just trailinground 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 travelling 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,