Household Gods

“I’ll never feel better!” Antonina cried. Then she stiffened. She pulled away from Nicole and looked about wildly. “I have to be quiet. They’ll hear me if I’m not quiet. ‘ And yet, as she looked around, as she saw the evidence of her husband’s labors wherever her eyes fell, a new, long wail escaped her, and she dove again for what security she might find m Nicole’s arms.

“It’s all right,” Nicole said somewhat lamely. “I’m sure it’s all right.” And then, bitterly: “They like hearing women mourn. It reminds them how bold and brave and downright manly they are, to give us cause to weep.”

“Barbarians,” Antonina spat, in between spasms of tears. She clung to Nicole for a very long time. When she pulled away, it was sudden, as if she’d brought herself forcibly under control. Tears still dripped from her eyes; her nose was running. She wiped it on her sleeve. No handkerchiefs here. No Kleenex. She looked at Nicole through those red and streaming eyes, and sniffed loudly. “Thank you,” she said with what for Antonina was considerable graciousness. “The way things usually are between us, I hadn’t expected this from you.” She paused to draw a long breath. “Sometimes it’s not so bad to be wrong.”

“No,” Nicole said. “It’s not.”

Antonina sniffed again, almost her old scornful sound. “I can tell why the barbarians didn’t bother you. What did you do, take a bath in the chamberpot? I wish I’d thought of that.” This was good, Nicole thought. Antonina was herself again, more or less.

Nicole answered the question with some pride: “I took Julia across the street to Gaius Calidius Severus’ and splashed us both with the really ripe stuff.”

“That was clever,” Antonina said, “though I’d have thought Julia would have enjoyed taking on a dozen or so stalwart Marcomanni.” Yes, she was definitely on the mend: she was up to being bitchy again.

Nicole sighed. “If Julia wants to sleep with the Germans, she probably will, and there isn’t much anybody can do about it. But if she doesn’t want to, they have no right to force her.”

“They have a right,” Antonina said bleakly: “the right of the strong over the weak.” She held up a hand before Nicole could speak. “Yes, my dear, I do understand you, but when has the world ever paid attention to a woman’s rights?”

“Not often enough,” Nicole had to concede.

Antonina nodded. She had no idea how long that would continue, but neither did she have any idea how much better things would get. Los Angeles of the Nineties, warts and all, was an infinitely better time and place for a woman than second-century Carnuntum.

Nicole knew that now. She also knew, or feared, that like most such wisdom, it came too late to do her any good.

Antonina’s storm of weeping had passed, and she seemed much the better for it. She wouldn’t be a danger to herself now, Nicole thought. Later, if she had a relapse, she might try something, but somehow Nicole suspected that Antonina was too tough for that.

“Listen,” Nicole said. “I have to go back — poor Julia’s all alone with a tavern full of drunken Germans. You come by if you need me, or call. One of us will come. “

“I’ll be all right,” Antonina said. “You go. Slit a German throat or two for me, will you?”

“I wish,” Nicole sighed.

Antonina didn’t laugh, or even smile, but her expression as she saw Nicole off was brighter than it had been since before Carnuntum fell. Nicole knew a moment’s apprehension: what if Antonina found a kitchen knife and came hunting Germans?

Not likely. People here might be unsanitary and they might be inclined toward sexism, but they weren’t casual killers. Not like the people who had conquered them. Which was probably why the Germans had won and the Romans had lost, but that was not a thought Nicole wanted to dwell on. Not if she had to face a tavern packed with drunken, snoring Germans.

Julia had drawn a stool up behind the bar and perched on it, elbows on the bar, chin in hands. She acknowledged Nicole with a lift of the brows: for Julia, a strikingly undemonstrative greeting. Her words revealed the cause of her preoccupation: “If we had anywhere to hide the bodies, I’d cut all their throats.”

“You and Antonina both,” Nicole said.

“Really? She’s alive?” Julia’s lack of enthusiasm wasn’t laudable, but Nicole could more or less understand it. Antonina wasn’t the most popular person in the neighborhood.

“Alive and well enough,” Nicole answered.

“That’s good,” said Julia, deliberately, as if she’d thought over all sides of it, and made a considered decision.

That was more than Nicole could do, but somehow she had to try. She surveyed the human wreckage, and noted the chorus of snores, which was a bit more melodious than what the Romans called music. “Let’s leave them here and go up to bed. With that aureus, we’re ahead of the game no matter how much more they eat.” Then, as a new thought occurred to her: “If you want to bring your blanket and sleep behind a door that locks, I don’t mind at all.”

“That’s kind of you, Mistress, but I’ll be fine where I am,” Julia replied. “If they’re in that kind of mood, a barred door won’t stop them. Breaking it down might even get them more excited.”

Nicole hadn’t thought of that. “You’re probably right,” she said.

Julia didn’t dwell on it. She yawned hugely and stretched. “I’ll look in on Gaius Calidius Severus before I go to bed,” she said.

“Good,” Nicole said. “I was going to ask if you’d do that. Make sure his pupils are the same size. If they are, it’s probably all right to let him sleep.”

“I do hope they are,” said Julia. “He’s not happy about having to stay awake and listen to the city fall.” She paused. “If he needs to be kept awake… I’ll stay with him.”

Nicole opened her mouth, thought better of it, nodded. “Go on,” she said. “I won’t be closing up, with this many men on the floor. You can come in when you’re ready, and not worry about disturbing me.”

Julia didn’t linger. When she was gone, Nicole sighed faintly and looked around her. The wine was all gone, but there were dregs enough in the cups that Julia had collected and set aside for cleaning. Nicole found the one with the most in it, and poured the contents in front of the image of Liber and Libera. She didn’t say her prayer just then. But the wish was stronger than it had ever been.

When she’d barred the door of her room and lain down in bed, then she prayed. She prayed as she’d never prayed before. Not just to be free of a world and time that weren’t and had never been her own. To be safe. To be where war like this never came, and cities weren’t sacked, or women raped in the street in broad daylight, except in backward parts of the world where she need never go.

For all the potency of her wishing, and for all the strength of her prayer, when she woke, she woke to Carnuntum. Down below, men were groaning and swearing in guttural German, cursing the wine they’d drunk and the hangover it had given them.

She shook her head. They’d be wanting breakfast, and she’d better see what she could find. No matter who was in charge here, she had to stay alive until she could find a way to escape. There was a way. There had to be one. Didn’t there?

The sack of Carnuntum went on for five days. As long as chaos was the order of the day, Nicole and Julia made daily trips across the street to keep themselves stinking and unattractive to would-be rapists. Gaius Calidius Severus had needed to be watched for much of that first night, according to Julia, but by morning he was groggy, headachy, but on the mend. He didn’t need much looking after, once he was back on his feet, except what Julia was minded to give him.

One morning, just as Nicole was coming out of the shop with Julia, pungent with a new application of what Nicole was thinking of as rape repellent, they met Antonina on her way in. She wrinkled her nose, nodded, and went on by. Nicole swallowed a smile. So: Antonina had decided to join the anti-rape league. Good for Antonina.

Young Calidius Severus endured several days of dreadful, pounding headaches before the pain gradually began to recede. He never did recall how he’d got that lump on the side of his head. “It must have been a rock,” he said, over at the tavern, in an hour when it was blessedly empty of Germans. “It must have been. If a German had caught me with the flat of his blade, he wouldn’t have stopped there. He’d have slit my throat or cut off my head.”

Nicole nodded. “I think you’re right. It had to be something like that, something that made you drop your