But even if she had, how long would that last? She’d have to boil all the bedding and all the clothes in her house to have a prayer of banishing them for good — and she had next to no chance that they’d stay banished, not with customers bringing in a whole new shipment five minutes after she’d killed off the last one.
She could get used to stuffing her underwear with rags several days a month, because the other women in Carnuntum had to do the same. She supposed she could get used to chamberpots, because everybody in Carnuntum used chamberpots. Could she get used to being lousy, because everybody in Carnuntum was lousy? Not — bloody — likely. She scrubbed at her scalp again.
A woman a few feet away from her stopped trying to rub dirt off an arm that was hardly more than skin wrapped around bones and started coughing: long, wet, racking coughs that made her ladder-thin body shudder and her face turn dusky purple. When at last she seemed able to pause for breath, Nicole saw flecks of reddish froth in her nostrils and the corners of her lips, as if she’d literally coughed up bits of lung.
Nicole stared transfixed at the swirling, turbid water. The foam had melted right into it. In her mind’s eye, she saw the bacilli floating there, spreading through the plunge, multiplying in that wonderful warm, wet medium. But the germs were too small for her physical eyes to see — for anyone to see. And there were no microscopes here. She remembered that from some class or other, history of science or some such: what a world-shaking discovery that had been. It was still centuries in the future.
And, because germs were too small for human eyes to see, no one in Carnuntum would believe they were there. Everything she’d seen in the city made her sure of that.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t there, or that she didn’t know they were there. She grabbed Aurelia, who was doing her best to imitate an otter. “Time to get out,” Nicole said firmly.
“Oh, Mother! Do you want to go to the sweating room already?” Aurelia sounded like every kid ever born, in any corner of the world.
It did her no good whatever. “Yes, that’s where we’re going,” Nicole said, though she hadn’t known it was till Aurelia mentioned it. All she’d known was that they were getting out of this pool, and they were doing it this instant.
Reluctantly, Aurelia did as she was told. Reluctantly, she led the way down a dim stone passageway to the sweating room, though Nicole wasn’t about to let her know she was doing that.
Outside the room, an attendant stood holding a tray. She held it out as Nicole came up. Haifa dozen leaf- shaped iron blades lay on the tray. “Razor?” she asked.
Nicole took a razor. She held it cautiously; in California, she’d used an electric shaver, not least because she kept slicing herself with blades. This wasn’t just a slicing tool; if you weren’t careful, you could kill somebody with it. Yourself, for instance.
Nevertheless, and in spite of her misgivings, she took it. She’d already seen that nobody in Carnuntum went around
And, having seen how bad the lice problem was, she thought she knew why women here shaved everything but their heads. It was a wonder they didn’t shave their heads, too. Maybe she should do that, and start a fashion?
She wasn’t feeling quite so radical just then. She had chances enough for mayhem as she shaved tender places she’d never tried shaving before with any razor at all, let alone one as potentially lethal as this. The razor was dull, too, and scraped and pulled, and altogether it was not a pleasant process.
Women might shave everywhere, and for good sanitary reasons, too, but Nicole had already seen that men didn’t even shave their faces. So what was fair about that?
Hot air hissed and wheezed through pipes in the walls and floor of the sweating room. Nicole wasn’t the only woman shaving there; the sweat that poured from her helped soften the hair and made it easier for the razor not only to cut the hair but to slide across the skin. Nicole still cut herself three or four times, but she wasn’t the only one doing that, either. Small bloody nicks and muttered curses marked other victims of fashion and hygiene.
Aurelia, being small, was thoroughly baked before Nicole had started to brown. Just as Nicole scraped the last wiry black fuzz from her shin, Aurelia tugged at her free hand. “Let’s jump in the cold plunge now, Mother. I’m melting!” Sweating room… Cold plunge…
When the water started feeling chilly instead of wonderful, Nicole climbed out. Aurelia’s lips were blue, and her teeth chattered. Nicole looked around for a towel, but there didn’t seem to be one. The air of the baths at least was warmer than the water they’d been in. They dried as they walked down the hall back to the stripping-off room, and warmed up, too. Aurelia paused halfway down the hall. “I have to go to the latrine,” she said, and ducked through a doorway.
Nicole, and Umma, too, thank God — or gods — wasn’t one of those women who had to go every ten minutes, or she’d have been in bad shape by now; but her bladder was a little full, and she was curious as to what, if anything, Romans had besides chamberpots. She was envisioning a row of stalls, and in each a malodorous earthen pot, as she stepped from the dim passage into a slightly brighter and much wider space. It was larger than she’d expected, as big as the biggest public restroom she could remember from the twentieth century. It was public, too, no doubt about that. No stalls or partitions separated one hole from another on the long stone bench. You sat down and did what you did in front of everybody, and everybody did her business in front of you.
Nicole’s bladder clamped up tight and wouldn’t let go. Bashful bladder syndrome sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. It was as real as this giant privy and the dozen or so women squatting and chattering and doing their business with no more trouble than the men had had pissing in Titus Calidius Severus’ urn.
Closing her eyes helped. So did the gurgle of flowing water beneath her: houses might not boast running water, but the baths and fountains did. The latrine even had the equivalent of toilet paper: a sponge on a stick in a jar of water. The water was murky. Nicole picked up the sponge with some misgivings, wondering who’d used it last. Nobody else seemed to wonder about that, or care.
The latrine wasn’t all it might have been, but it was bliss compared to squatting over an earthenware jar. In spite of the sweating room and the cold plunge, the baths weren’t all they might have been either; but again, compared to being filthy they were heaven.
Aurelia obviously agreed. “That was nice, Mother,” she said as they got back into their clothes, “even if you did scrub my hair too hard.”
Nicole nodded. “It was nice,” she said. She probably hadn’t got all of Aurelia’s nits, or her own, but she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about going back to work, either, not after this lovely lazy morning. She sighed and squared her shoulders. “It was nice,” she repeated, “but we’ve got to go home.”
7
Nicole was surprisingly glad to see the street she’d come to think of as her own, and the tavern that technically was her own, even after the pleasure of a bath and a romp through the market and the rich indulgence of sticky buns. She’d even got the baker to throw in a basket with a broken handle, no good for displaying his wares but more than good enough for bringing a sampling home. She’d eaten one, too, and Aurelia had had two and was sulking slightly at being denied a third.
Aurelia scampered through the door ahead of her. She paused, licking sticky fingers and letting her eyes adjust. “Hello!” she sang out to the dark within. “I’m — “
She stopped. Her eyes made out shapes that came clearer the longer she stared.
“Oh, hello, Umma,” Ofanius Valens said. He was sitting on a stool. Julia was sitting on his lap. His right arm circled her waist. His left arm had hiked her tunic up to her knees so his hand could slide between her legs. Her tongue was doing something monstrously lewd to his ear.
