Household Gods

Yet again, Nicole shook herself back into what passed for reality. “It’s a lot better than laying into me with a stick,” she said. “I’ve seen too much of that lately. I think it’s cruel. “

The fuller and dyer shrugged. “One way or another, you’ve got to get the work out of them. If they won’t go by themselves, you make ‘em. They’re just animals. It’s not like they feel things the way people do.”

Nicole was as certain animals did feel things the way people did as Calidius Severus evidently was that they didn’t. She opened her mouth to argue the point, but something else and more urgent pushed itself to the front of her mind. “People beat slaves, too, and they haven’t got any excuse at all for that.”

While they talked — she wouldn’t quite call it argued — they’d reached the entrance to the amphitheater. Titus Calidius Severus handed a sestertius to an attendant — a slave? He got no change back; admission was a dupondius apiece.

Only when that was done and they’d been waved through the gate did he respond to Nicole. As he had before, he said, “One way or another, you’ve got to get the work out of them.”

Nicole swallowed a sigh. She should have known what he’d say. How could she expect anything different? “I’d rather use the parsnip of freedom than the stick,” she said.

“The parsnip of freedom?” Calidius Severus grinned his crooked grin. “Now there’s a phrase to send men marching into battle!” His grin faded. “Some masters do that. For some slaves, it works. But one man’s not the same as another, same as one donkey’s not the same as another. Some are too stubborn to go forward unless you make ‘em do it.”

That held a hard core of common sense — if you believed there was nothing wrong with slavery. “If a free man won’t work, you can fire him and replace him with someone else who will,” Nicole said.

“Or more likely with someone else who won’t, either.” The fuller and dyer held up a hand before she could counter that. “Like I said before, it’s a nice day. We’re here at the beast show. Is this worth arguing about right now?”

That also was hard common sense, but Nicole didn’t like it any better for that. Her years in law school had left her convinced that anything was worth arguing about, any time she was in the mood to argue. But she was at the beast show, and she was curious about it; and she was also on a date. It was, in an odd way, both a first date and not. For her, yes; for Calidius Severus, no. “I guess it’ll keep,” she said, a little grudgingly.

“Good,” he answered with apparent relief. “For a while there, I figured they’d put us down on the floor, and the crowd could watch us go at it instead of the beasts.” He took a deep breath, shook his head, and held out his hand, offering it as if it had been a gift. His voice was brisk. “Come on.”

Nicole was getting just a small bit tired of take-charge masculinity; but not enough, yet, to kick at it. She let him take her hand — if nothing else, it made sure they weren’t separated in the jostle of the crowd — and lead her into the amphitheater.

It was larger than she remembered, or maybe it only seemed so because there were so many people in it. When there’d been no more than a handful of tired tourists and a guide droning on in three different languages, it hadn’t looked big enough to hold more than a few hundred. In fact, it held several thousand — maybe five, maybe ten; Nicole had never been much good at that kind of estimate. The seats on which they crowded together were backless wooden benches. Vendors ran up and down the aisles, singing out their wares: sweet rolls and sausages and wine. It wasn’t all that different, in looks and atmosphere, from a college football game.

Titus Calidius Severus pointed up along a row of benches. “Hurry up, Umma! There’s a couple of good ones, right on the aisle. Quick now, before someone else gets in ahead of us.” He suited action to words, flinging his backside down just ahead of another man who’d spotted the same seats at the same time. Nicole sat beside him with, she hoped, a little more decorum but no less dispatch. The man who’d been aiming for the seats, and his wife or lady friend, glowered at them but didn’t offer to fight over it.

Nicole took a deep breath of air that was, for a change, not particularly redolent, and made herself as comfortable as she could. She’d have been glad of a cushion like the one she’d carried to football games.

Some people nearby actually had cushions, or had thought ahead and brought a cloak or extra tunic to soften the seat. Next time, she thought. “How long before the show starts?” she asked.

“Shouldn’t be too much longer.” The fuller and dyer looked over his shoulder. She did the same, to see what he saw: rows of benches still open, and people shuffling into them, picking spots, calling to escorts and friends as they found good ones. “They’ll let it get fuller than this before they turn the first critters loose. Slowpokes always grumble when they miss the opening rounds.”

While Calidius Severus spoke, a vendor had been working his way toward them. Calidius Severus raised a brow at Nicole. “Want some wine?”

Nicole nodded with barely an instant’s hesitation. She was hesitating less and less over it now, and worrying less about it, too — which worried her in itself.

Calidius Severus ordered wine for them both, and paid for it, too, playing by rules as old, it seemed, as recorded time. The wine wasn’t even as good as her one-as special in the tavern, and the cup she had to drink it from was indifferently clean. The vendor stood hovering expectantly till she and Calidius Severus finished, then took back the cups — no disposable paper or styrofoam here. He filled them again for a pair of young men down the row, and handed them over without bothering even to wipe the rims. Nicole ducked her head and wiped surreptitiously at her mouth with the sleeve of her tunic. It wouldn’t even begin to do any good, but it did make her feel a little better.

Calidius Severus saw her do it, but he misunderstood why. “I know it’s not very good stuff,“ he said, “but you can’t expect much at a place like this.”

Nicole nodded. God knew, she’d had food and drink as bad as this wine or worse at games and concerts, and probably not much more sanitary, either.

As she opened her mouth to respond to him, a stir, a change in the crowd, drew her eye downward. A plump little man strutted out into the middle of the sand-strewn floor of the amphitheater. He turned this way and that, arms spread wide, inviting people to notice him. The crowd’s noise sank to a dull roar. He lifted his head and sent a surprisingly deep and resonant voice ringing up through the levels. “Welcome to the beast show for today. ‘

Applause was his answer: shouting, cheering, clapping of hands. He turned all the way about, arms spread even wider than before, till the applause died to a few fugitive finger-snappings and a catcall or two. Then he went on, “As one half of our first event, we have a… lion!” The crowd roared at that, louder than any lion Nicole had ever heard of. The emcee — Nicole couldn’t think of him any other way — went on, “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, captured with incredible courage and risk in the jungles of distant Cilicia and brought to Carnuntum across land and sea for your entertainment and delight, the fiercest killer in all the world — the king of beasts!”

Nicole was glad she wasn’t drinking wine just then. If she had been, she would have snarfed it right out her nose. The tubby little Roman sounded exactly like every fast-talking pitchman she’d ever loathed on late-night TV. She couldn’t help it; she started to giggle.

Titus Calidius Severus didn’t giggle. It would have been unmanly. But he chuckled. “Faustinianus does lay it on with a trowel, doesn’t he?” he said.

It wasn’t particularly witty, but between wine and sun and the absurd little man with his oversized voice, Nicole laughed out loud.

From somewhere under the amphitheater, the lion let out a short, coughing roar. Nicole shut her mouth with a snap. God only knew how many millions of years of evolution were screaming at her, That noise means danger!

Calidius had fallen silent, too. His right hand snatched at something across his body, caught at air and stopped. “Mithras!” he said with a note of surprise. “I’ll be cursed if I wasn’t reaching for my sword.”

“There you hear him, folks — the king of beasts indeed,” the emcee — Faustinianus — said. His voice echoed up through sudden silence. “And with him today you’ll be seeing a creature you know well. Yes, ladies and gentlemen: with him we have one of our very own Pannonian bears! “

He didn’t get much in the way of applause this time: a scattering of handclaps from here and there around the arena. “Cheapskates,” Calidius Severus muttered, speaking for them all. “Probably be the only lion in the whole show, too.”

Nicole didn’t say anything. She had never seen a Pannonian bear, whatever that was.