Household Gods

“It tastes horrible,” Lucius said. They looked at each other and nodded in perfect, and horrified, agreement. Nicole didn’t think they agreed like that very often.

“It’s expensive,” Julia said, making it sound like a clincher. “And besides, Mistress, you can’t keep it fresh. It’s even worse than fish. You waste what you don’t use, because it’s sure to be sour the next day, especially this time of year. Please pardon me for telling you, but really, Mistress, what in the world makes you want to feed them milk?”

“Because it’s full of — “ Nicole found she couldn’t say calcium in Latin, either, even though it sounded like a Latin word to her. This time, her circumlocution was clumsy: “It helps make bones strong.”

“Barbarians drink milk,” Lucius said, as if that settled everything. “The Marcomanni and the Quadi drink milk.” He stuck out his tongue. Not to be outdone, Aurelia stuck out hers, too.

Some arguments you just couldn’t win. This looked like one of them. Religion, politics, divorce — on some things, people’s minds locked themselves shut and lost the key. If she tried to force it, she’d get into a fight; and that wouldn’t gain her anything.

Sidestep, then. “If you won’t drink milk, will you drink water?” she asked. The children didn’t look happy, but they didn’t screw up their faces and make puking noises, either. Neither did Julia, though her expression was eloquent. Nicole threw an argument at the kids to bolster her case: “I drank water this morning, and it hasn’t hurt me.”

“You did?” Lucius sounded as if she’d just told him — well, as if she’d told him that she’d traveled in time from the twentieth century and she wasn’t his mother at all.

What joy, she thought. A whole family of alcoholics in training, from the baby on up — and their mother is in business selling wine. She’d fix that, maybe not all in a day considering how Julia and the children had reacted to her suggestion that wine maybe wasn’t the best thing for a human to drink, but by Liber and Libera she would show them how a healthy person ought to live. “I certainly did drink water this morning,” she said to Lucius. “Ask Julia if you don’t believe me. She watched me do it. She even fetched the pitcher and poured me a cup. “

Lucius laughed. It was a distinctly and viscerally unpleasant sound, a Beavis-and-Butthead snigger. “Huh! That’s funny, Mother. You can’t believe a slave about anything. Only way they can testify is if you torture them.” He made a horrible face at Julia, a twisted devil-snarl, and jabbed his finger at her, with indescribable boy-type sound effects: hissing and bubbling and an abrupt, blood-curdling shriek.

He was making it up. He had to be. But Julia’s white face and the sudden change in her silence, the way her shoulders went tight and hunched under her sad bag of a tunic, ate away at Nicole’s disbelief.

She’d never taken legal history. It hadn’t been required, and she hadn’t been interested, and she hadn’t had time even if she had been interested. Now, with piercing intensity, she wished that she had.

Legal history she might have missed, but she’d been a parent long enough to know how to shut down a thread of discussion that was going in a dangerous direction. Briskly, she said, “We’re not talking about court right now, young man. Are you saying Julia and I would both lie to you about what I drank? ‘

Lucius shrank suddenly, startling her: flinched into himself, as if he’d expected a slap. “No, Mother,” he said. “I’ll drink water after this, Mother. I promise I will.”

God, what had he expected? That she’d clobber him, just because he’d been obnoxious? What kind of mother had this Umma been? Not just alcoholism — abuse. Her stomach, even as full of breakfast as it was, felt small and tight and cold.

It knotted even tighter when Aurelia hastened to agree with her brother. “I’ll drink water, too,” she said. “I’ll drink it right now. Julia, get me some water!”

Julia glanced at Nicole. Nicole nodded sharply. Julia sighed just audibly, poured Aurelia’s wine into her own cup, and filled Aurelia’s again with water.

Nicole’s triumph, such as it was, was evaporating fast. Julia had just manipulated herself into a double ration of wine. Umma’s children were flat-out terrified, and their fear had given Nicole the victory. What kind of mother raised her children to be afraid of her? Not any kind of mother I am, Nicole resolved grimly. And Julia — tricky bits aside, Julia obeyed her mistress, oh, sure. But she did it with slow sullenness, neither too slow nor too sullen to be caught and punished, but just enough to make her feelings clear.

Just what did Julia think wine was? Or was it water she was afraid of? Nicole knew about not drinking the water in Third-World countries, but that was for Americans traveling away from their chlorinated, fluoridated, homogenized, pasteurized, all-clean-and-sanitized local water companies. People who actually lived in those countries did perfectly well on the water there. Wasn’t she — in Umma’s body — still standing up and not crouched groaning over a chamberpot?

So much ignorance. So much misunderstanding of what was best for people’s health. Maybe Liber and Libera had sent her back to make life better for these people, to teach them about sanitation and hygiene and healthy food and drink. Surely they hadn’t given her her wish just because she wanted it. There had to be something they meant her to do in return.

If she was to do any good, if that was what she was here for — and never mind if she wasn’t; she’d do it anyhow — she had to learn much more of this world and place than she knew. Knowing Latin, for instance, didn’t seem to let her know where anything was in Carnuntum.

Still, how hard could that be? Social mores and mental attitudes were rough, and she was working her way gingerly through those. Carnuntum itself was much simpler. If she’d found her way around Los Angeles, all hundreds of square miles of it, and even learned to drive its freeways without going catatonic with terror — she could learn what she needed to know about this much smaller, much less complicated town.

She didn’t know the date, either. Well, she could ask that, and she did, casually, as if it had slipped her mind.

“It’s four days before the Kalends of June, Mistress,” Julia said, and then added, “I think.” At least she wasn’t surprised to be asked.

May 28, Nicole thought after a moment of going back and forth between what she knew in Latin and what she knew in English. It was only half an answer, and the smaller half. “Everything’s going out of my head this morning,” she said with what she hoped was a light little laugh. “What year is it?”

“It’s — what? — the ninth year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius,” Julia said. Her voice held a little of the tone Nicole knew well: The boss is an idiot. it meant. But only a little. It was, oddly, maybe deceptively reassuring. Maybe Umma wasn’t a brutal slavemaster after all.

Or maybe it meant a slave didn’t dare step too far over the line. Nicole had seen that in offices with tyrannical bosses, or in houses where the parents were too strict. Employees, and kids, learned just how far they could go, and went that far and no further.

Lucius broke in on her thoughts with the air of the know-it-all proving he really did know it all: “The consuls for the year are Marcus Cornelius Cethegus and Gaius Erucius Clarus.”

Nice, Nicole thought. And no help at all. She might have heard of Marcus Aurelius once upon a time, but no way in the world did she know when he’d reigned. The other two names had a fine and ringing sound, but they meant exactly nothing. And what difference did it make, anyway, who or what a consul was? Were they like President and Vice President? King and queen? Lord Mayor of London?

Careful; she was getting sarcastic. She tried one more time, and hoped the strain didn’t show in her voice: “I wonder what year this would be by the Christian calendar?”

Lucius and Aurelia gaped, then made gagging noises — exactly as they’d done when she’d suggested they drink milk. Julia said with prim firmness, “I didn’t even know those nasty people had a calendar. I don’t have anything to do with them. They’re all crazy, or so you’d think, the way they act. Even I know better, and I’m only a slave. They don’t respect the gods. They won’t worship the Princeps — why, they throw themselves on legionaries’ swords if anyone tries to make them. If you ask me, they deserve whatever they get.”

That was more than Nicole had bargained for. She thought of herself as a Catholic, though she’d gone to church only a handful of times since she got married, and not at all since the divorce. Visions of catechism class, crucifix on the wall and sappy long-faced Jesus, Christians and lions and legionaries dicing in front of the Cross, swirled in her head, fast enough to make her dizzy. All that, and Victor Mature standing up to Peter Ustinov in a purple gown, while the choir’s voices swelled in the background.

She’d gone back that far? God. Or Jesus. Or somebody. And she hadn’t come back as a Christian, either.