Household Gods

Nicole with a nearsighted scowl and an audible sigh as she told him her trouble. “Step out into the light and let me see,” he said.

Passersby veered off course and paused to gape while Terentianus positioned her in a convenient patch of sunlight — imagine; sunlight, and she was in too much pain to enjoy it — and peered into her mouth. “Yes,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Yes, yes. Bad, very bad. I’m afraid — yes, it will have to come out.”

“Why should you be afraid?” she snapped. “It’s not your tooth.”

He looked startled, but then he laughed. He had a remarkably pleasant and infectious laugh. “Oh!” he said. “Good, that’s very good. I’ll have to remember it.” Which meant, no doubt, that he’d be boring people with it for the next twenty years. After a brief pause, he added, “My fee is one denarius. Payable in advance.”

Nicole had had the forethought to bring a purse with her — no health insurance here. She laid four sesterces in his waiting hand. As they disappeared into the depths of his belt pouch, she said, “I don’t suppose anybody ever wants to pay you afterwards.”

“Not likely,” he agreed dolefully. Then he gave her a prescription that no twentieth-century dentist would have resorted to: “You see Resatus’ tavern there, across the street? Go on over. Drink three cups of wine, neat, as fast as you can. Then come back. I’ll give you a draught of poppy juice. As soon as that takes effect, I’ll pull the tooth.”

He wanted her as numb as she could get. She gave him credit for that.

The tavern was a somewhat larger place than her own, and somewhat more upscale: she paid two asses for her own one-as wine, and it was served in Samian ware. Resatus himself took her order, and gave her a good dose of sympathy with it. “Another one of Terentianus’ patients, are you?” he said. “Good luck to you, then.”

She thanked him with somewhat less than complete sincerity, and drank the wine down doggedly, cup after overpriced cup.

When she made her way to Terentianus’ shop, her feet wanted to go off in a different direction altogether. She’d never been drunk in the morning before. It was a peculiar sensation. All the shadows were pointing the wrong way. But then, being drunk itself was peculiar. Till she came to Carnuntum, she’d never known what it was like. She wished to the innumerable Roman gods that she didn’t have to do it at all.

Terentianus regarded her wobbly stance and bleary eyes with somber approval. He rummaged in a box under a table, and produced a small jar of murky blue glass. “Here. Drink this down. It won’t be long now till it’s over.”

Nicole didn’t know if she liked the sound of that. She took a deep breath, to steady herself, and nearly heaved up the wine she’d drunk; but it stayed put. She pulled out the stopper and saluted Terentianus: Bottoms up.

The stuff was thick and syrupy. It tasted of wine and, overpoweringly, of the poppyseeds on the egg bread her mother would buy every once in a while, when she could scrape up the extra cash for something tastier than Wonder or Langendorf. The memory kept her, somehow, from gagging on it. Terentianus waved her to a stool by the window. She drifted rather than walked to it, and sat when he told her to, because she couldn’t think of anything better to do. The poppy juice — opium, yes — struck her a stronger yet softer blow than the wine had. She felt sleepy and stupid and floaty. The pain backed away, never quite absent, but not quite present, either. The effect was a little like CoTylenol, and a little like being drunk out of her skull. Somewhere far away and yet very near, there was still pain, a great deal of it. But it didn’t touch her.

She yawned. The poppy juice, so full of sleep, reminded her that she’d slept hardly at all the night before.

She didn’t notice when Terentianus left the shop. She did notice when he came back with a pair of burly strangers. She stared at them in dreamy confusion. “Who are they?” she asked. Her tongue felt thick; the words sounded slurred. “Why are they here? Do they have toothaches, too?”

“They’re to hold you down, of course,” Terentianus said calmly. He gestured. One of the men got behind Nicole in one long stride. Before she could move, he seized her arms. The other squatted beside her and got a grip on her legs. She struggled feebly, but they were immovable. Altogether, the preparations seemed more conducive to rape than to dentistry.

If she’d been even slightly less gone in wine and the drug, she would have tried to fight her way out of there. But she was helpless. If the doctor was into raping his patients, there was not one thing she could do about it.

Terentianus loomed over her. He was fully and warmly clothed, and no sign of any erection, either. What he held was far worse. It looked like nothing so much as a large pair of needle-nosed pliers. “Open up,” he said. “The sooner it’s begun, the sooner it’s over.”

Nicole took a deep, steadying breath, and opened her mouth as wide as it would go. The dental forceps advanced inexorably, till her eyes crossed in trying to follow it. It wasn’t chrome-plated or shiny. It was plain gray- black iron, unrusted at least. She didn’t even want to know how unsanitary it was.

She clamped her eyes shut as it disappeared into her mouth. She could taste it, the cold, metallic taste of iron. It closed on the bad tooth: pressure, and the beginning of a twinge. Before she could jerk away, Terentianus’ left hand braced on her forehead, holding her steady. He grunted, gathering himself. He pulled.

Pain. No, pain. No — PAIN!

No wonder he’d brought in hired muscle, she’d think later, when she had any room in her for thought. At that moment, all she wanted was to rip out his balls and stuff them down his throat. Or if that wasn’t enough, beat him to a bloody pulp. Then maybe — maybe — he’d feel a tenth of the pain he inflicted on her.

She tried to lunge to her feet and run like hell. Hands like iron bars held her down. One of the thugs grunted: she was fighting good and hard. Maybe she’d caught him somewhere that mattered.

Wine or no wine, poppy juice or no poppy juice, the pain drove her right out of her mind. She heard, far away, a bubbling, half-choked scream. That was her own voice. She didn’t even get the gift of unconsciousness. She was awake, aware, and hideously alert.

After an eternity of white-hot agony, she heard and felt a snap. Her eyes snapped open. Terentianus staggered back with something clenched in the forceps: the cartoon-simple shape of a tooth, with a horror-comic smear of pus and blood. Blood flooded Nicole’s mouth, thick and foul. She spat scarlet, barely missing the grinning bastard who held her legs.

Terentianus stood back, safely out of reach, and examined his prize. “Very nice,“ he said. “Very neat job, if I say so myself.” He fished around in a basket and handed Nicole a square of wool that must have been part of a tunic once, long ago. “Here you are. Keep it pressed to the wound until the bleeding stops. Rinse your mouth out with wine two or three times a day — it will heal better if you do. You might say a prayer or two to Aesculapius, see if it helps. It certainly couldn’t hurt.”

Nicole spat again, another bright splash of blood on the rammed-earth floor. The ape who’d held her arms not only let her go, he gave her a sympathetic pat on the back. “It’s not easy,” he said. “Terentianus did one of mine a couple of years ago, and it hurt like a red-hot poker.”

She stared blankly at him. Sympathy was the last thing she’d expected, and just about the last thing she wanted. She couldn’t bring herself to thank him. She nodded, which was the best she could do, and spat once more, and took the cloth from Terentianus. Her hand trembled uncontrollably. The pain had diminished a little, but it still lapped at every corner of her world. Wine and poppy juice had taken the edge off her toothache. Against the pain of this minor surgery, they were no better than a child’s sand-dike against a tidal wave.

Terentianus patted her shoulder lightly. “Sit there as long as you need to,” he said. “There’s no hurry.”

Good thing he didn’t charge by the hour, she thought. She was vaguely aware of him thanking his helpers, paying them an as apiece, and sending them on their way. The cloth turned more nearly red than gray. Little by little, the bleeding slowed. She should go, she thought. She should get back to the tavern. She stood up. Her head reeled. She sat down again, in a hurry.

A fat man stalked through the door, backed Terentianus up against a table, and let go with a litany of complaint about his hemorrhoids. “That cream you gave me didn’t do a bit of good,” he said indignantly.

Terentianus might be cornered, but he wasn’t cowed. “It’s the best I have, Pupianus,” he said. “The only other choice is the scalpel.”

“No, thank you!” the fat man said with the air of a man who knew what he wanted and, more to the point, what he didn’t. “I’m not letting anybody near me with a knife, and that’s flat.”