privileges that went with being male. He half-turned as if to leave, but turned back with a snap of the fingers. “When I was coming through the market square, I saw that one of the farmers had brought in a cartload of wine. It’s just the cheap local stuff, of course, but if you can’t get anything else, it starts to look pretty good.”
“I’ll say it does!” Nicole wasn’t about to hug him, but she was as tempted as she’d ever been. She headed straight for the cash box instead. “I was in the market just this morning, but he hadn’t come in then. If I can get a jar or two before he sells out — “
“Or before the Germans steal everything he has,” Julia put in.
“Or that, too,” Nicole agreed. She turned to Brigomarus. “Will you come with me and help carry some of it back? I’ll give you a jar to take home.” She hesitated. Then she said it, hating it but knowing it was the truth: “It would be nice to have a man along.”
She wasn’t trying to do or say anything to feed his ego, but she’d succeeded in doing precisely that. He could hardly look eager — that would give away too much — but he didn’t turn his back on her, either. “I’ll come,” he said. “I don’t know how much good I’ll be if the Germans decide to get nasty, but I’ll do what I can.”
Nicole thanked him honestly enough. He wasn’t really a bad man, as men went in this century. She’d seen better, in the Calidii Severi, but she’d also seen much worse.
It was a men’s day at the baths. When Nicole and Brigomarus came round the corner, Romans and Germans came and went interchangeably, though neither fraternized with the other.
Then out through the entranceway strolled a pair of courtesans in nearly transparent linen tunics. Maybe they were the same pair Nicole had seen when she first went up the stairs to the baths herself. Every German within sight whipped his head about and stood transfixed.
Ye gods, Nicole thought. Prostitutes could be raped, too, and these women were flaunting everything they had. No civilized jurisdiction accepted revealing clothing as an excuse for rape, but this was no civilized jurisdiction. If the Germans dragged an ordinary and none too attractive woman from her own home and gang-raped her in the street, what would they do to women on display like this?
They fawned on them. If they’d had chocolates and vast bouquets of flowers, they would have showered them on the hookers. As it was, they stared and gaped and stammered like awed teenagers suddenly confronted by Claudia Schiffer. Nicole suppressed a strong impulse to retch.
Brigomarus, on the other hand, was highly amused. “They don’t have anything like
Nicole started to snap at him, but checked herself. What was his comment but the second-century version of her reflection on teenagers and supermodels? In the end, she simply said, “When you think how they treated so many women here, seeing this hurts.”
“Ah.” Brigomarus nodded. “Yes, I can see how it might. The world must look different out of a woman’s eyes.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He looked astonished. It wasn’t that family didn’t kiss here; they did. But she had been on anything but kissing terms with Umma’s family. Here, for once, Brigomarus had found exactly the right thing to say.
She felt like kissing him again when she was able to buy two jars of wine from the fellow in the market square. The farmer demanded Falernian prices for it, though it was the local rotgut in the local yellow-brown earthenware. Nicole took her best shot at getting him to come down: “Suppose I walk away and let the barbarians steal it from you? How much will you get then?”
He didn’t blink. “The chance I take of that is part of the reason I have to charge so cursed much for what I do sell.”
When he wouldn’t budge, Nicole paid up. As she and Brigomarus were carrying the wine back toward the tavern, he said, “You’ll have to charge Falernian prices, too, or you’ll lose money.”
“Then I will,” she said robustly. “Not many places will have any wine at all. People will pay.” She was sure of that. Half the people who came into the tavern complained about having to drink water; a good many complained about coming down sick afterwards. Whenever she suggested boiling the water before drinking it, people looked at her as if she were nuts.
She and Brigomarus were almost home safe, and unmolested, when two big red-faced Germans planted themselves in their paths. One rested a meaty hand on the hilt of his sword. The other proved to speak some Latin. “What have you in those jars?” he demanded. “Is wine, yes?”
Nicole’s mind raced. “Is wine, no,” she answered. “Is piss for my dye-works. Want to drink some?” She thrust her jar at the German.
The outhouse reek that still came off her lent force to her words. The barbarian recoiled, spitting out dismayed gutturals. His friend asked a question. The answer he got left him revolted, too. They both took off in a hurry.
Brigomarus looked ready to burst with suppressed laughter. He kissed her instead, quick but firm, as a brother should. “Even if you do smell bad,” he said.
“That’s all right,” she said. “That’s better than all right.”
They were still laughing when they walked into the tavern. Julia looked up at them in surprise. “I haven’t heard the two of you laugh like that in a long time,” she said.
“Since the pestilence,” Nicole said. Her laughter had died.
“Longer than that,” Julia said. “It’s probably been since — hmm.” She paused. “Since last spring, I guess.”
Since Umma moved out and Nicole moved in.
She actually enjoyed telling Julia why she and Brigo had been laughing. God, she had changed.
Not for the worse, she hoped. Julia laughed at the joke. So did Lucius, when he came running in from outside. He laughed harder than anyone else. At his age, gross-out humor was the best kind.
Nicole set her jar of wine behind the bar. Brigo followed suit. She grinned at him suddenly. “Let’s have some wine,” she said. And if she’d known a year ago that she’d say such a thing, let alone say it with such relish, she’d have been flatly appalled. Carnuntum had changed her in ways she never could have imagined. It had also, and forcibly, changed her attitude toward life in Los Angeles. She longed for that life, even while she laughed and bantered and poured out cups of horrible wine. But she was trapped here, in this life she’d thought she wanted. She might never escape; never be free of it, unless or until she died.
18
Little by little, the folk of Carnuntum learned to live with the occupation of their city. They drank water, though sometimes it made them sick, or beer or bad local wine in place of the better vintages that could not come up from the south. When the olive oil ran out — which took a while, because, in contrast to the wine, the Germans had no interest in helping to consume it — they made do with butter. They complained about it, too, loud, long, and rarely with any inventiveness. Nicole liked butter quite a bit, as long as it was fresh. But without refrigeration, it went rancid much faster than oil.
Gaius Calidius Severus despised the stuff. “The smell stays in my mustache,” he complained, “and I have to live with it all day long.”
Compared to rancid piss, rancid butter didn’t seem that bad to Nicole, but she didn’t tax him with it. She was too fond of him. He’d done a great deal for her, and he was a hell of a good kid. Very soon now, he was going to be a very nice young man.
Little by little, she and Julia left off splashing themselves with
One day, a man who happened to be selling apples in the market square said to Nicole, “Umma, have you heard? My cousin Avitianus, the one with the farm out past the amphitheater — you know, the one who’s got the six girls and just the one boy and that one’s addled in the head? Well, the Germans took two of his sheep and
