The Course of Honour by Lindsey Davis Page A

with a murmur of regret. ‘
What a shame!
’
    After another pause he threw back his heavy head, his eyes on her all the time. ‘Oh lass; I ought to leave you!’
    â€˜You must. I need to do my work.’
    â€˜I don’t want to.’ Yet he was already standing. They persuaded one another into sense; they always would.
    Caenis had to finish correcting the copyists’ work. She clambered to her feet and came round politely to take her visitor to the door. It was the first time she felt easy standing so near to him. Before he lifted the latch he turned back to her, smiling as he warned, ‘I’m going away—but I shall be coming back!’
    Expecting him to make some more determined move, she was startled when he carefully clasped both her hands in his while he stood, looking at her; making her look at him; keeping her close. Any other man gazing at her so intently would have made some declaration. Not Vespasian. It was illegal and impossible; Caenis accepted that he never would.
    Instead, just before he released her he leant forward and kissed her, very lightly, on the cheek. It was not a lover’s kiss. Nor was this formal social statement something a slavegirl would ever expect to receive from a young man of senatorial rank. This was how he must salute his mother and grandmother, how a man of his class would greet a daughter, a sister, or a wife: it was the gesture, between equals, of genuine affection and respect.

 
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PART TWO:
ANTONIA CAENIS
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    When the Caesars were Tiberius and Caligula

 
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9
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    A windswept day in July. A senator, not yet thirty, bronzed from provincial service but today swaddled against the unseasonable gusts in a long brown hooded cloak with a heavy nap, walked into the Imperial Palace. He left his meagre escort of slaves at the entrance then proceeded alone. His pace slowed, more with reminiscence than uncertainty.
    Tiberius still lived on Capri. There was, however, an official correspondence bureau here where the young senator conducted some perfunctory business in connection with his end-of-tour report. The secretary in charge, a Greek freedman called Glaucus, dealt with him restlessly; he found quaestors’ financial statements thin on detail, loosely written, lackadaisical in style.
    â€˜You’ve missed your date badly with this.’
    â€˜Sorry. The new man for Crete was held up by wind and weather. I had to wait out there. Not a lot I could do about that.’ His mildness was even more upsetting than the usual insolence.
    Bitterly the secretary unravelled the report. By the stylish standards of this bureau it would be only a draft; Glaucus would work it over furiously before it was copied for the Emperor and filed. Most of the bored young sprats with whom he was forced to deal would never dream of disappointing his lifetime sense of outrage by producinganything remotely adequate. They were intensely competitive yet had no idea of disciplined hard work.
    This one seemed to have grasped the point. If anything it made Glaucus more venomous. He asked his trick question: where was the breakdown of expenditure on entertaining distinguished visitors?
    â€˜Appendix at the end.’
    On rare occasions Glaucus was compelled to endure the prospect of a sprat who looked certain to go far.
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    Once he was released from his debriefing, the ex-quaestor turned deeper into the Palace interior. Strolling through the poorly swept corridors he passed faded staterooms long commandeered as stores. He took time to reorientate himself, but was soon nosing at that measured pace along a familiar route. He found the door he remembered. He knocked slightly; listened; his face cleared in anticipation; he went in.
    Caenis was not there.
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    Everything had subtly changed. He had expected improvements (more of her ‘nudging’) yet still felt bemused. The light was muffled by a fug from two charcoal braziers; at last her room