Household Gods

20

Marcus Aurelius entered the city the day the German hordes broke and fled. He took up residence in the town-council building near the market square. Nicole wondered just how complicated it would be to get an audience with him. Less complicated, probably, than it would have been to get in to see the President, or Julia wouldn’t have suggested it, but even kings of minor countries had hordes of flunkies to keep the great unwashed away from their majesty. The more minor the country, in fact, the greater the hordes seemed to be.

By that token, since Rome was the greatest empire in the world, it should be a relatively simple matter to see its Emperor. Nicole approached the town hall with a bold face and a fluttering heart — and found that she was not the first nor yet the last to come in search of the imperial ear. People were going in and coming out, nearly all men, most in armor or in togas but a few in tunics. She worked her way into the stream, passing the armored guards who decorated the door just like guards in a Hollywood epic, and working her way inside.

There the stream divided, some going here, some going there. She had no idea where to begin.

She chose a direction more or less at random, and started down a hallway. A man stepped out of a door, so suddenly she started, and barred her way. He wasn’t a guard, and he wasn’t in armor. He wore a toga, a surprisingly white affair with a narrow and somehow pretentious crimson stripe. “And what may be your purpose here?” he inquired in Latin almost painful in its purity.

She’d prepared a speech for just such an eventuality: short, pithy, but comprehensive. The functionary heard her out with an arched brow and a supercilious expression. “And what evidence have you that the alleged assault in fact occurred?” he asked when she’d come to the end of it.

Nicole drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t all that inconsiderable. “Would you like to see the knot in my head? The bruises on my chest? The ones on my backside? Do you want to see what forcible sexual intercourse does to a woman’s private parts?”

The aide’s eyebrows leaped. “Thank you, no,” he said with a flicker of disgust. Maybe he wouldn’t care to view a woman’s private parts under any circumstances. He went on with the same chilly precision as before: “If you would care to present me with a written statement of your claim, so it may be examined before being put to the Emperor, who is, after all, you will understand, a busy man…”

His voice trailed away. His smile was small and smug. His meaning was abundantly clear. Just blow yourself off, lady. What were the odds that a tavernkeeper would be able to give him a written statement, or have enough money to hire someone to do a proper job of it?

Nicole favored him with a sweetly carnivorous smile. No matter what the odds, he’d bet and lost. He just didn’t know it yet. “May I borrow pen and ink and papyrus?” she asked in dulcet tones.

His eyebrows climbed again. “You wish to prepare this written statement yourself?”

Nicole nodded. He pursed his lips. This I’ve got to see — he didn’t shout it, but he didn’t need to.

He clapped his hands. A younger man in a toga without a stripe appeared as if conjured out of the air. He received the order without expression, and disappeared as abruptly as he’d appeared, to return a moment later with the articles Nicole had asked for.

Marcus Aurelius’ aide nodded to Nicole. “Go ahead. Use that desk there, if you like. Take all the time you need.” Sure as hell, there it was again — This I’ve got to see.

“Thank you,” Nicole said pointedly. She went to stand behind the desk — it was small and high, almost like a lectern — and set to work. The aide watched her for a while, long enough to see that she really was writing. Then he shrugged a tiny shrug and turned away to obstruct the next foolish innocent who ventured into his lair.

She laid out her statement like any other legal brief she’d ever drafted: first the facts, then their implications. What is civilization worth when the Marcomanni and Quadi held Carnuntum for months without molesting me in any way, but I was brutally raped by the first Roman legionary I saw during the reconquest of the city? She said not a word about what the Germans had done to poor Antonina. That wasn’t how the game was played.

Finally, she came to the important part: what she wanted the presiding authority — here a Roman Emperor, not a Superior Court judge — to do about the issue at hand. Unfortunately, I cannot positively identify the soldier who violated me. If I could, I would ask for him to be punished to the limit of the law. and for me to receive compensation both from him and from the government of the Roman Empire, under whose agency he acted. I still deserve the latter compensation, for as an agent of the government of the empire he grossly abused the authority entrusted to him, and used it to commit this outrageous crime against me.

Setting it down in writing made her angry all over again. “Bastard,” she muttered under her breath. “Fucking bastard.” She’d welcomed him as a rescuer, and what did she get for it? Thrown down in the dirt. God, if she could make him pay personally for every stroke he’d driven home, she’d do it. But if he didn’t have to pay, somebody would. She’d make damned certain of that.

When she stepped away from the desk, the Emperor’s aide waved her over to where he sat at a table piled with neatly labeled scrolls. “Let’s see what you’ve done,” he said, not quite as if he were talking to a six-year-old child, but close enough. Without a word, she passed him the closely written sheets.

Like every other literate Roman Nicole had seen, he mumbled the words to himself as he read. His eyes swept back and forth a couple of times before those expressive eyebrows of his made another leap, this one higher than either of the other two. After a bit, he paused and stared at Nicole. Then he went back to his mumbling.

“This is astonishing,” he said when he was finally done. “If I had not seen you write it with my own eyes, Mistress, ah, Umma” — he had to check the papyrus for her name, though she’d given it to him; obviously he was one of those people for whom nothing was real till it was written down — “I would not have believed it. Why, this might almost be a brief prepared by a gentleman of the legal profession. Astonishing,” he said again.

He’d intended his words as high praise. But it wasn’t high enough to suit Nicole. “What do you mean, almost?” she demanded.

“Well,” he replied, glad of a chance to get sniffy again, “of course you do not cite the relevant laws and imperial decrees, nor the opinions of the leading jurisconsults, but the reasoning is nonetheless very clear and forceful.”

“Ah, “ Nicole said. Damn. She wasn’t a trained lawyer here; she didn’t have the citations at her fingertips, nor know where to find them.

She could learn. She was sure of that. She’d learned in the United States, and things were undoubtedly simpler here. But where would she find the time? Most days, at least before the Germans came, she’d had trouble finding time to use the chamberpot. Even if by a miracle she could squeeze a spare hour out of the day, where would she find someone to train her, or books from which to study? The next book of any sort she saw here would be the first.

She’d missed a few words of the aide’s reply. He condescended, superciliously, to repeat himself: “I will be certain this comes to the Emperor’s attention. It may intrigue him. Let me see.” He glanced again at the statement. “Yes, you have described your place of residence most precisely. Should anything further be required of you, you will be summoned.”

That sounded altogether too much like, Don’t call us: we’ll call you. “What if I’m not summoned?” Nicole asked.

“The choice is the Emperor’s,” the aide replied. “As I say, I will bring this to his notice. Past that, the matter is in his hands. Who could be above the Emperor, to compel him to change his mind?”

“The law could. Justice could,” Nicole said. That was certainly true in the U.S.A., where no one was above the law. Did it also hold in the Roman Empire? If it did, did it hold for Marcus Aurelius?

Maybe not, by the way his administrative assistant’s jaw dropped. But the man didn’t tell her she was crazy, either. “What a — sophisticated attitude for a tavernkeeper to hold.” His nod had a certain finality to it, an air of dismissal.

Nicole didn’t bother to argue. There was a limit to how far anyone could push a bureaucrat. She’d tested his limits and then some. It was the best she could do; the rest was in the hands of the gods.