Household Gods

“Don’t you worry about Brigomarus. Just leave him to me.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Julia still sounded dutiful. She sounded, Nicole supposed, very much the way a slave was supposed to sound. The contrast with Julia’s usual, freer manner was strong enough to bring Nicole up short, and to stab her with guilt — which was probably what Julia intended.

Slaves and children, Nicole thought. They’re powerless — but they can manipulate the ones in power, to get what they think they want. And hadn’t she done the same thing herself more times than she could count, growing up and going to school and working in a law firm that took equity so far and not an inch further?

Two afternoons later, Brigomarus breezed into the tavern. Luck was looking after Nicole again. She didn’t need to wonder who this casual type was who blew in as if he owned the place. Lucius, who’d been cracking walnuts, shouted “Uncle Brigo!” and tried to tackle him.

He swept the boy up, tipped him upside down, and bonked his head on a tabletop. Lucius squealed in delight. Brigomarus tipped him back upright and set him bouncing on his feet, and pulled a handful of candied figs from his belt pouch. Lucius snatched them as eagerly as if he hadn’t been eating as many walnuts as he dropped into the bowl, and danced around the room while Aurelia, who’d heard the uproar and come downstairs to see what was happening, fell on her uncle and held him hostage till he surrendered a second handful of figs.

“Greedy kids,” he said affectionately, planting himself on a stool and thumping the table with a fist. “Let me have some wine, would you, sister? I’d have been back sooner, but they’ve had us making shields from dawn to dusk. The war with the tribes across the river isn’t anywhere near over yet, you mark my words. “

Nicole dipped a cup of Falernian for him, figuring family deserved the best. Maybe Umma hadn’t been that generous: Brigomarus’ eyebrows rose and he smacked his lips. He downed the cup with as much pleasure as thirst.

She studied him while he drank. He looked like one of Umma’s relatives, sure enough. He was, she suspected, a younger brother, though not by much. He was a little fairer than Umma, his eyes hazel rather than brown, but they shared long faces and prominent noses and sharp cheekbones. His beard obscured the shape of his chin, but she supposed it was narrow and rather pointed, like her — Umma’s — own. He was rather good-looking, in a lean and hungry way. If she’d been her California self, she might not have wanted to know him; he looked hard and a little dangerous, though his ready smile and easy manner tended to conceal it.

Lucius pestered him, tugging at his arm, voice escalating into a whine: “Wrestle me, Uncle Brigo! Come on, let’s wrestle, come on, Uncle Brigo!”

“No,” Brigomarus said. Lucius kept at him, tugging harder, ignoring Brigomarus’ frown and reiterated, “No!” Brigomarus casually hauled off and smacked him upside the head, harder than Nicole had ever hit a child in her life. “Cut it out, kid,” he said. “I want to talk to your mother.”

Lucius rocked with the blow, but he didn’t start crying or screaming. “Oh, all right, Uncle Brigo,” he said, disappointed but evidently undamaged.

If he had started to cry, Nicole would have been on Brigomarus like a tiger. As it was, she wanted to yell at him anyhow. It was hard to hold herself back, to be sensible, to keep from giving herself away. Julia was inclined to take Nicole’s odd moments in stride. Somehow, Nicole didn’t think Brigomarus would be so accommodating.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked him, and hoped she sounded enough like his sister to pass muster.

Evidently she did. He answered a question with a question: “What’s this I hear about you wanting to set Julia free?”

Nicole’s heart jumped, but she held steady. “It’s true,“ she said. “I do.” She’d had time enough over the past couple of days to frame a response that, from what Julia had said, a person from here and now could legitimately have made: “I decided that I didn’t want her to have to sleep with customers to get a little spending money.” She kept wanting to say pocket change, but nobody in Carnuntum knew about pockets.

Brigomarus raised his eyebrows. “What? That never bothered you before.” He sucked on a front tooth, as if it helped him get his thoughts in order. “I hate to lose the money she cost, too — and if one of those customers knocked her up, the brat would bring a nice piece of change.” By his tone, he might have been trying to talk his sister out of a real-estate deal he thought foolish. Like Julia and everyone else Nicole had seen in this place, he had not the slightest sense that anything was wrong with or about slavery itself.

It drove Nicole crazy. The casual way in which Brigomarus spoke of selling a child for profit made her belly go tight and cold. “Setting Julia free is what I want to do,” she said with unshaken determination, “and I’m going to do it.”

Brigomarus scowled. “Listen, you know it’s not that simple.” He paused as if to control his temper, or maybe to come up with an argument a silly woman would understand. “Look, Umma, if you’re bound and determined, I don’t want to fight over it. Life is too short as it is. Let’s do it like this, if you’ve got your mind set on it.” He waited for Nicole’s emphatic nod, then went on, “Let her earn more money and keep more money, so she can pay back what she cost.”

Julia’s face fell. Nicole could make a pretty good guess what that meant: with what Julia could make, she’d never be able to pay for herself — unless she sold her body, and sold it and sold it… That was partly why Nicole shook her head even more violently than she’d nodded, but only partly. She could not stomach owning a slave for one more instant. And there was no way in hell she was going to compromise with the system by taking money from Julia in return for Julia’s freedom. “No,” Nicole said. “I’m going to emancipate her, and that’s that. “

“I say you’re not going to do anything of the sort.” Brigomarus sounded as revoltingly sure of himself as any senior partner at her old law firm.

“You may be my brother” — and then again, you may not — “but you’re not my master, so don’t treat me as if you think you are,” Nicole snapped. Brigomarus stared at her as if she, or rather Umma, had never spoken to him like that before. If Umma hadn’t, she’d probably wasted a lot of good chances. “She’s not your slave, she’s mine, and I’m going to do with her as I think best.”

“As you think best?” Brigomarus¹ eyebrows had climbed to his hairline in an expression of comic incredulity — but there was nothing comic about his tone. “And what does that have to do with it? You have a family, Umma, and you seem to have forgotten about it.”

“I haven’t forgotten!” Nicole said hotly — and honestly enough. She never forgot Kimberley or Justin, either, even in the deep throes of life in Carnuntum.

She knew what he meant, nevertheless, and couldn’t help a stab of guilt at the actual, if not technical, falsehood.

“Oh, you haven’t?” Brigomarus drawled. “Not that I’d blame you for wanting to forget dear Mother and our snotty sisters, after they’ve married up and you’ve stayed where we came from, and I know they never waste a chance to remind you of it, either. But even so, Umma, and even if you don’t care what this does to the rest of the family, I never imagined you, of all people, throwing away good money for no good reason.”

Nicole stiffened her back and lifted her chin. “I’m going to do what’s best for me and what’s best for Julia, and that’s all I’m worried about,” she said.

She’d shocked Brigomarus: she saw it in his eyes. And she’d shocked Julia, which shocked her in turn.

Well, she thought, if the second century isn’t ready for a little twentieth-century assertiveness — and only a little, because she’d soft-pedaled it as best she could — too damn bad.

Stiffly, Brigomarus said, “We’ll speak of this further when you’ve come to your senses. The gods grant it be soon.” He looked into his cup, saw he had a swallow of wine left, and gulped it down. Then he stalked out of the tavern, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. He hadn’t, Nicole noticed, said good-bye, even to the kids.

“Mistress — “ Julia looked and sounded deeply worried. “Mistress, are you really sure you want to quarrel with your family over me? A family’s the most important thing in the world. If you don’t have a family you’re on good terms with, who’s going to nurse you when you’re sick? Who’s going to take care of your children if you die? Who’s going to help you if you go into debt? If I had a family, I’d never get them angry at me.”

Nicole looked at Julia as if seeing her for the first time. She was all alone in the world. As a slave, she was more thoroughly isolated from everyone around her than anyone in the twentieth century could be. That, thought Nicole, no doubt made her look at family with a wistful longing only distantly connected to anything real. You needed to be in a family to know how horrible it could actually be.

Umma apparently knew. “Dear” Mother and a couple of upwardly mobile sisters, was it? Then they probably