Household Gods

think? But it fit these Germans just as well, in a different way.

She’d thought — she’d been sure — she was getting away from war when she fell back through time. She’d thought — she’d been sure of — all sorts of things when she came to Carnuntum. Very few of them had turned out to be true, or anything close to it. She’d hated the late twentieth century while she was living in it. From the perspective of the second century, it looked like the earthly paradise.

Perspective, she thought, is a wonderful thing.

“We have the wall,” she said. And had she ever stopped to think why Carnuntum had a wall? Very basic principle of legal theory: laws existed to prevent people from doing things to harm other people. A wall wasn’t just there to look pretty and provide a nice high place for lovers to walk on fine summer evenings. It was there for a reason: to keep out nasty neighbors.

Everybody here knew that. They knew something else, too — even the children. “We have the wall,” Lucius agreed, “and the legion.” He slapped the hilt of his toy sword. It was thrust in his belt at the precise angle at which the Roman soldiers wore their real ones.

“That’s not a whole legion,” Ofanius Valens said gloomily, “and what there is of it won’t be enough. They’ll defend their camp first and worry about us afterwards. I’d do the same in their sandals.”

“What I want to know,” Julia said with unaccustomed sharpness, “is why the barbarians won’t leave us alone. We haven’t done them any harm.”

My God, Nicole thought, even here and now, the small and the weak came out with the same cry of protest as they had all through the blood-spattered twentieth century. And yet this was the Roman Empire. It was by no means small, and she’d never heard it was weak. “Don’t the Germans know they’re like a dog fighting an elephant?” she demanded.

Ofanius Valens laughed, but the sound was bitter. “They know they’ve had a fine time plundering Roman provinces and then scurrying back across the river into their forest. Now we’re weak from the pestilence — easy pickings, they’ll be thinking.”

“We drove them out of Aquileia.” Nicole remembered that from her very first, panicky trip to the market square. She still didn’t know exactly where Aquileia was, but what did that matter?

Ofanius nodded. “So we did. And I’d be happier if they’d never got down that far.”

“Maybe everything will come out all right here,” Julia said, reaching for Nicole’s optimism — which Nicole was almost ready to call naivete. “Maybe it will, if the gods stay kind.”

“Here’s hoping it does. “ Ofanius Valens lifted his cup, peered into it, and seemed astonished to find it empty. “Have to do something about that,” he said, and fumbled a couple of asses out of the pouch he wore on his belt. Nicole took the cup and filled it yet again.

“Thank you, Umma,” he said when she set it on the table in front of him. He lifted it once more, wobbling a tiny bit — he’d had three cups, after all. “Here’s to peace, prosperity, and the Germans staying on their side of the river.”

Back in California, Nicole had had an earthquake emergency kit, with blankets and food that would keep, and bottled water and a frying pan and matches and charcoal for the barbecue and a first-aid kit all stored in a plastic trash can and waiting for a disaster she hoped would never come. She wondered if she ought to start a war emergency kit here. And if she did, what would she put in it? So many things she’d taken for granted in California didn’t exist here. She could get together wine and salt fish and olive oil. That would be better than nothing — and if the war held off, she could always sell what was in the kit.

She shook her head. She was as twitchy as a cat on a freeway. The Germans and the legionaries had set everyone’s nerves on edge. Still — there were soldiers in the city where there hadn’t been any before. Someone else, someone who might have reason to know, was twitchy too. Maybe she’d get together that emergency kit after all.

The Marcomanni and the Quadi broke into Carnuntum on a misty spring morning. They used the mist to their advantage, for it kept anyone on the southern bank of the Danube from spying their boats till they were almost ashore.

Nicole was just putting the first loaves of the morning into the oven when the sound of horns throughout the city brought her bolt upright. The fierce brass bray put her in mind of the civil-defense sirens that had wailed on the last Friday of each month when she was a girl in Indiana. If this was a drill, it was awfully realistic. A commotion outside brought her running to the door. People were running up and down the street, shouting and screaming. She picked words out of the tumult: “Marcomanni! Quadi! Germans!” Then even those were lost in the general roar of alarm and dismay and fear.

A squad of legionaries streamed past, running east toward the nearest wall. The iron scales of their armor clattered against one another. They would have sounded much the same if they’d been wearing suits made of tin cans. Nicole wondered if any of them was carrying one of Brigomarus’ shields.

Julia tugged at Nicole’s tunic, urgent as a frightened child. “What can we do, Mistress? Where shall we go? How can we hide?”

Nicole took a deep breath. She’d have loved to cling to someone bigger and stronger, too, but there wasn’t anybody here to take on the job. “I can’t think of a thing to do that we aren’t doing already,” she said. “Let’s just sit tight.”

Julia was white around the edges, and her eyes were wild. She was coping better, at that, than anyone outside.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, ran a fragment of what couldn’t have been a real poem, odds are you don’t understand the situation.

Julia, unfortunately, understood all too well. “If they get into the city, Mistress — “

She didn’t go on. Nor did she have to. Nicole had seen enough televised horror to have some idea of what could happen. She’d never in her wildest nightmares imagined that it might happen to her.

Suddenly, she began to laugh. Julia’s eyes opened even wider. Nicole took the freedwoman by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go across the street.” Julia plainly thought she was crazy, but equally plainly was not going to let Nicole out of her sight.

Gaius Calidius Severus was stropping a sword that must have belonged to his father. The edge had already taken on a sheen, striking against the dull gray-black of the blade. He looked up from his work in surprise. “Mistress Umma! Julia! What are you doing here?”

Julia didn’t have any answer for that. Nicole took a deep breath. As always, the fuller and dyer’s shop stank. This once, the ammoniacal reek was not only welcome, it was a blessed inspiration. “If the Germans get into Carnuntum, who knows what they’ll do?” she said. “Whatever it is, I don’t want them doing it to Julia and me.” She beckoned briskly. “Come here, Julia.”

Obedient as if she were still a slave, Julia followed Nicole to a wooden tub in which wool was soaking in stale piss. “Here, dip your arms in it up to the elbow. Splash yourself with it, too,” she said, matching action to words. “If any German wants something from us that we don’t feel like giving, he’ll need a strong stomach.”

Julia gaped. The laughter that burst out of her was half hysterical, but it was laughter. She kissed Nicole on the cheek; the corner of her mouth barely brushed the corner of Nicole’s. “Mistress, how did you ever think of anything so clever?” She plunged her arms into the vat with a good will, and with much less revulsion than Nicole had felt.

“That is clever,” Gaius Calidius Severus said, running a fingertip down the edge of the blade. He frowned, and went back to his stropping.

“Do you know what to do with that thing?” Nicole asked him.

“As much as my father and his friends taught me,” he replied calmly. “Better to use it on the Quadi and Marcomanni than to sit around here till they use their swords on me, don’t you think?” He left off stropping, tested it this time on his arm. It shaved a neat patch of soft black hair. He nodded, satisfied. Before Nicole realized what he was up to, he sprang to his feet and loped out of the shop. “Shut the door behind you when you leave, will you?” he called back over his shoulder.

By the time Nicole pulled the door closed, Gaius Calidius Severus was around the corner and out of sight. “How much chance do you think he has?” she asked Julia.

It wasn’t quite a rhetorical question, and Julia didn’t treat it as such. She shrugged. “Who knows? It’s in the gods’ hands.” Nicole looked down at her own hands, which still stank of sour piss. Julia went on, “If we can keep the barbarians outside the wall, we’ll be all right. If we can’t — “ She shrugged again.