Household Gods

Sextus Longinius lulus and Fabia Ursa took their leave not long after. Nicole couldn’t tell which was holding which up. If she’d had to guess, she’d have said the tinker’s wife was propping up her husband.

As if their departure had been a signal, Ofanius Valens wandered off as well. Nicole caught the glance he shot at Julia as he passed her: a strange expression, almost but not quite unreadable, composed of lust and affection, amusement and resentment. She could imagine what he was thinking. I wasn’t enough for you, was I? Well, next time we’ll see what you think!

Not, thought Nicole with sodden determination, that he was going to get a next time. She’d have that talk with Julia. Tomorrow. After the hangover that was coming. Yes.

Gaius Calidius Severus had been sipping his wine slowly, as if waiting for Ofanius Valens to leave first. It was a kind of possessiveness, Nicole supposed. This is my territory, it said. If he’d been a dog, he’d probably have lifted his leg at a spot between Ofanius Valens and Julia.

Once his rival was gone, he seemed to decide that Julia didn’t need further staking out. He finished off his wine, pulled his cloak up over his head, and headed for the door. Just as he passed it, his father called out, “Don’t fall into a vat of piss till I get back! I won’t be but a minute.” Gaius laughed and ducked out into the rain.

Which left Julia, sound asleep, and Nicole, too wide awake, and Titus Calidius Severus. As if to punctuate the moment, Julia let out a snore that was almost a bleat. Nicole wished she would wake up. Upstairs she heard the voices, not too loud, of Lucius and Aurelia playing. The children were being very good, extraordinarily good. Nicole wished they would have a fight and come down to tattle on each other. She didn’t want to be alone, or as close to alone as made no difference, with Titus Calidius Severus.

He wanted to be alone with her. He’d made sure he would be, staying behind after everyone else had left. It was just as much a statement as the timing of his son’s departure.

Nicole looked around for a blunt instrument in case he got out of hand. She didn’t have to look far. The Romans didn’t have soft plastics. Everything they made was pottery or metal or wood. She had only to choose her weapon.

But the fuller and dyer didn’t look as if he planned to do anything too reprehensible. He sat on the stool, peering from his empty cup to Nicole and back again. “I miss you, Umma,” he said. “I still haven’t figured out what I did to get you upset with me, but I miss you. I want you to know that.”

“I do know,” she said. She wasn’t just saying it to fill the silence. His approach, if it was an approach, was honestly civilized — more civilized than anything she’d got in Los Angeles after Frank dumped her. Frank hadn’t exactly been the soul of gentility, either, come to that. She hadn’t known a man could be.

This man was civilized enough to make her feel downright guilty. Till Nicole muscled herself, thanks to Liber and Libera, into Umma’s body, Calidius Severus and Umma had had what they probably thought was a good solid relationship. So what did that make her? A homewrecker?

She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help being Nicole and not Umma; being a twentieth-century lawyer and not a second-century tavernkeeper.

He was waiting for her to go on. That was civilized, too: a kind of instinctive politeness, a courtesy so well trained as to be automatic. She sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “The past few weeks… everything’s been so confused. Half the time I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”

“You haven’t been yourself,” Calidius Severus agreed. It wasn’t the first time Nicole had heard that in Carnuntum. The people who said it didn’t know how right they were — and Lord, was she glad of that. The fuller and dyer shrugged and got to his feet. “Well, I won’t trouble you anymore about it now. I thought there might be something you wanted to say that you didn’t want to say in front of people, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s nothing like that,” she said in dull embarrassment. “I told you it was nothing like that when we were walking back from the market square.”

In three quick steps, and before she quite realized it, he was standing beside her. She suppressed the flinch, she hoped, before he could have seen it. She hadn’t known he could move so fast, or with such unexpected strength.

But he didn’t touch her. He didn’t do that. “What is it, then?” he demanded. His voice was as firmly under control as his body was, and as rigid with tension.

He must have realized that he wasn’t going to get an answer. He shrugged again — he had a whole repertoire of shrugs, a shrug for every occasion — and leaned forward. Before she could pull away, before she was even sure of what he was going to do, he kissed her. It was gentle, no force; just the brush of his lips, with a faint tickle of beard and mustache. “Take care of yourself, Umma,” he said. “I do love you, you know.” Before she could find words to reply, he was gone.

9

Nicole stared at the place where Titus Calidius Severus had been. “Now why did he have to go and say something like that?” she muttered in English. His kiss hadn’t been revolting — on the contrary. That worried her more than if she’d wanted to gag at it. He’d been in the tavern, he and his son, long enough that she’d stopped noticing the reek of stale piss that followed them wherever they went. The rest…

She hadn’t been the least bit interested in sex, with Titus Calidius Severus or anyone else, since she came to Carnuntum. She’d felt anything but sexy herself. She was grubby all the time. She was lousy. She had a yeast infection that didn’t want to go away, which left her generally unenthusiastic about her private parts. She never got anywhere near enough sleep. It was hard enough to live in this body every hour of every day, without trying to warm up right good and proper, too.

And yet… It wasn’t that she wanted Calidius Severus. It was that she might have wanted him. Her mind and self might not remember him, but her body too clearly did. It had memories, it seemed, small yearnings, tinglings that woke when he looked at her or touched her or, as he had just now, kissed her.

With thoughts as disturbing as these, and leading in even more disturbing directions, she was almost pathetically glad to greet the dripping customer who blew in out of the rain and loudly demanded bread and honey and wine — so loudly, in fact, that he woke Julia.

She started bolt upright, eyes enormous with terror, a deer-in-the-headlights look if Nicole had ever seen one. Nicole could read her face as if it had been yesterday’s newspaper. Oh, gods — sleeping on the job. What would her mistress do to her? How would she talk her way out of it?

Then, as Nicole tried to watch and serve the customer at the same time, the truth dawned on her. Nicole — Umma — wasn’t her mistress anymore. Her relief was as strong as her fear had been, swept over it and drowned it, and let her stand reasonably straight and make her way over to the bar, where she dipped a cup of the two- as wine and brought it to the still dripping, faintly steaming customer.

After the man had paid and left, Nicole said, “Julia, if you doze off on me tomorrow, you will be in trouble.”

Julia grinned at her. “Oh, yes, I know that,” she said. She carefully did not include the title that she’d always put in before. No Mistress, not any longer. “Today was special, though. With the wine and the loving and all.” She stretched with a sinuous, sinful wriggle. Then she hiccuped, which made her laugh. She was full of herself, bubbling over with freedom — and, Nicole caught herself thinking, license. Nicole had known women like that. Girls, too, in high school. There, they were called sluts — even called themselves that, like a badge of pride.

Julia’s straightforward sluttiness — all right, earthiness — had always irked Nicole. Now it made her jealous. And that made her angry at herself, because she was jealous.

She covered both jealousy and anger with work. Of that there was always plenty and then some. She washed cups and washed cups and washed cups; she’d almost run out of clean ones. Julia ground flour to bake bread. She and Nicole took turns at the oven, keeping the fire even and gauging when the baking would be done. Time was when Nicole had thought the labor-saving devices in her kitchen in West Hills didn’t really save labor — that was just hype. She knew much better now.

And today was a slow day. Because of the rain, it looked as if the tavern would get by with one baking, two at the outside, instead of the usual four. It didn’t help the cash box much, but it made life easier for the staff — all