The course of Honor

The seer was an overweight greasy Chaldean in a shiny emerald overshirt, his knuckles carbuncled with mysterious scarab rings. He wore bright green laced-up pointed shoes: Caenis had made it her lifelong rule never to trust a man with peculiar footwear.

Narcissus, who knew just what she would think about this business, avoided meeting her eye; he was obviously hoping Caenis would go away. She crossed her ankles calmly, looked dignified, and stayed. When Brita

Brita

The physiognomist stood in silence, looking at Brita

The physiognomist stepped back. Caenis and Brita

Even Narcissus seemed nonplussed.

Titus, who was lively as a monkey in a warehouse of soft fruit, was bursting to ask a question, but he was forestalled. Narcissus had not been a bureaucrat for thirty years in order to be baffled by the mysteries of Ur. "No?" he challenged briskly. The pained monosyllable indicated that this verdict was too short, too vague, and much too expensive for the Privy Purse.

"No," repeated the Chaldean. Sensing a proposed abatement in his fee, he condescended to explain: "He will never succeed his father. I presume that is what you wish to know?"

It seemed to Caenis that anyone with the smallest knowledge of Claudian family life—or as much awareness of recent history as could be gleaned from skimming lightly through the obituaries in the Daily Gazette—would be able to make that prophecy.

"Are you sure?" Narcissus was bound to be disappointed.

"Certainly!" The man brushed him aside with an irritation that Caenis quite enjoyed.

He was heading for the door, but Narcissus liked to get his money's worth from specialists. "So what do you expect to happen to him instead?"

A prince learns to put up with impertinence; Brita

The physiognomist gave Narcissus a pitying look. "He will live out his span, sir, as we all must, then as we all must he will die."

"How long is the span?" urged the Chief Secretary harshly.

This time Caenis felt the long-limbed boy tense beneath her hands. At once she stated curtly, "Brita

The physiognomist seemed to like her firmness; he nodded to the boy. Some things were confidential to the victim, apparently, even when the Privy Purse was footing the bill. Narcissus had to subside.

Only when he reached the door did the man turn back. "Of course," he said, "the other will."

There was a small pause. He had hardly glanced at Titus the whole time. No one liked to risk offending the man again, but when the attendant started to lift the door curtain, so she thought they were going to lose him, Caenis demanded patiently, "Titus will what?"

The Chaldean did not hesitate. "He will succeed his father."

"As what?"

"As whatever his father is or becomes!" Even Caenis was making his hackles rise. "I ca

Caenis laughed. She pointed to her Sabine friend's son, then told the man in ringing tones, "There! Is there no imagination in the Chaldees? Add a nose like a boxer on the brink of retirement, and you have it."

For the first time the man showed that he too could smile. "Ah, that face!" he mocked. (He was not being paid for Titus, let alone his Sabine papa.) "That would be the face of a nobody."

Then at once Caenis wished she had not asked, because although she was certain Vespasian himself would have roared with delight, the poor child kneeling beside Brita

Yet she found an answer for him: "Oh, that has been prophesied," said Caenis, with a slight smile. "Of my face one has said, ‘It can never be upon the coinage.' "

"He spoke well!" observed the Chaldean, who obviously appreciated a pointless remark.

TWENTY-SIX

The face-detector was quite right: Brita

The light that had cheered the early years of Claudius' reign went out with Messalina's death. He allowed Agrippina, who was a strong, strong-willed woman in the single-minded political mold of her family, to govern the Empire. She did it as ruthlessly as she governed Claudius himself. And when Brita

The Emperor's death was not immediately a

Claudius had left a will, but it was never read in public.

* * *

When his father died, the young prince Brita

Brita

Narcissus had problems of his own. Even before Claudius died he had been ill. In a leftover minister from the previous reign an indisposition was clearly convenient; Narcissus' illness was strongly encouraged by Agrippina and her son. He had never expected a quiet retirement. He withdrew to "convalesce" at Sinuessa on the Bay of Naples. But death was his only tactful course.