Household Gods

Nicole suppressed a stab of guilt. Well enough was a cold thing when she stopped to think about it, but the fact was, Fabia Ursa had been a neighbor and an acquaintance. She had not, in Nicole’s mind, been a friend.

Whatever she had been, one thing was certain. “It’s not fair,” Nicole said to no one in particular. The others had turned away from the grave and headed toward the gate. They weren’t a procession anymore; they were a scattering of individuals and couples, who happened to be in the same place at the same time. Some even seemed to have forgotten what they’d come for: they were laughing and talking. Nicole wanted to grab the lot of them and shake them. “It’s not fair! She had too much to live for, to die like that.”

Somewhat to her surprise and rather to her dismay, the priestess of Isis heard her. “The gods do as they please,” she said with the hint of a frown. “Who are we to question their will?”

Shut up, don’t ask questions, and do as you’re told. That was what that meant, in the second century as in the twentieth. Nicole couldn’t buy it, not here. With any real concern for cleanliness, Fabia Ursa never would have contracted that infection in the first place. With a doctor who knew his ass from his elbow, she wouldn’t have died of it. This funeral wasn’t the will of the gods; it was no more and no less than ignorance.

She said so, injudiciously, but she was past caring for that. The priestess’ expression of shock was almost gratifying — it proved just how ignorant and downright criminally negligent people were in this world and time. “Aemilia is one of the best midwives in the city,” she said, “and as for Dexter, he studied medicine in Athens. Anything mortal men could have done to save your friend, they did. It was no human creature’s fault that she died.”

Nicole shut her mouth with a snap. If I’d had a shot of penicillin to give her, you’d be singing a different tune, she thought fiercely; but some remnant of common sense kept her from saying it aloud. She’d done enough damage as it was.

And still — how many people here in Carnuntum, here in the Roman Empire, here all over the world, died young, died in anguish, of injuries and illnesses from which they would easily have recovered in Los Angeles? How many babies died of childhood diseases against which they couldn’t be immunized, because no one knew how?

She didn’t know the exact answer, but she knew the general one: lots. She shivered. If you were in your thirties in Carnuntum, you couldn’t count on another thirty or forty or fifty years of healthy, active, productive life, as you could in L.A. or Indianapolis. You could wake up dead, for any reason at all. Then, the day after tomorrow, some wine-sodden lout of a gravedigger would be shoveling dirt over your corpse.

Maybe Julia had the right idea after all. In a world in which you didn’t know if you’d be alive next week, let alone next year, you really would want to grab hold of whatever pleasure came your way. Eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow you may die. It had been a greeting-card joke in Indianapolis. Here, it was real. It was the truth.

Everybody else was gone from the cemetery. Even the priestess had disappeared, Nicole had no idea where. For all she knew, the woman had sunk back into the ground, to emerge again when a devotee of Isis came to be buried. The gravediggers had made substantial inroads on the pile of dirt. One of them belched; the other farted. They grinned at each other as if it had been a grand joke.

Nicole had some vague idea that there was a funeral feast — or a collation of some sort, if not quite on the scale of a banquet — at Longinius lulus’ house. Hadn’t Fabia Honorata said as much? Nicole should probably make an effort to go, put in an appearance, as she’d done at Frank’s faculty parties. She wasn’t any happier about this than about those uncomfortable and ultimately unprofitable gatherings.

In the end, she didn’t take the extra steps across the alley from the tavern. She went home instead, and took refuge in the smell of wine and beer and bread, the sight of people eating and drinking and being — yes — merry, and the sound of Julia’s voice calling out a greeting that actually sounded glad. Nicole didn’t flatter herself that it was joy to see her; now Julia would be wanting a break from running the place by herself. Not that she wasn’t competent to do it. She was, and highly so. But it was a lot of work for one pair of hands.

She was laughing as Nicole came in, exchanging banter with one of the regulars. At sight of her former mistress, however, she put on a somber expression, and even managed the gleam of a tear. “How sad,” she said. “Poor Fabia Ursa. Remember how she cried after her babies died? First one and then the other — that must have been so hard for her to bear.”

Nicole nodded without speaking. Hard wasn’t the word for it. How could any woman lose two babies in a row and stay sane, and still want to try again? And yet how could anyone lose two babies in a row and not want to keep trying? Fabia Ursa must have been torn in two, not wanting to lose another, but wanting desperately to have one, just one, that lived.

“And now she finally had one that seems healthy, pray the gods it stays so,” Julia said, unconsciously echoing Nicole’s thoughts, “and she dies herself. Where’s the sense in that?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole answered wearily. “I just don’t know. Maybe things happen for no reason at all. I don’t know that, either.”

“Then what’s the point of believing in gods?” Julia demanded. Nicole shrugged. Julia’s eyes had gone wide as they always did when she was thinking hard and not particularly conventionally, as if she needed to let more light into her brain.

Her eyes narrowed again, shutting off the ray of reason. She shook her head. “You have to believe in the gods. If you don’t, what’s the point to anything?”

Nicole shrugged again, heavily. At the moment, she wasn’t convinced anything had a point. “Pour me a cup of one-as wine, would you, please?” she said. Maybe it would take the edge off her gloom.

Only after Julia had filled the cup and handed it over, and Nicole had drunk it half down, did it strike her. She was using the wine as a drug again, as she had at the beast show. She was drinking to dull her senses. To forget her grief and the anger that went with it. In short, to take the edge off reality.

She had been on the way toward feeling better. Now she felt worse. She set the cup down with an effort that dismayed her. She steeled herself to do something, anything. Wait on one of the customers who’d begun to drum on the tables. Take the bread out of the oven. Check the seasoning in the stewpot.

She’d do all those things. But first, she picked up the cup again, and drained it.

“A good evening to you, Mistress Umma.” The last of the day’s customers ate a salted olive, spat the pit on the floor, and took the last swig from his cup of beer. He set a sestertius on the table and got to his feet. “I’d better head on home, before my wife sets the dog on me when I come through the door. She’s bound and determined that anybody who comes in after sundown must be a thief in the night.”

“Not quite so dark as that,” Nicole said. The sun was setting, and twilight lingered, though for a shorter time than it had at the height of summer. The man had an as coming in change, but he didn’t wait for it. He hurried out the door. Maybe he hadn’t been joking about his wife and the dog.

“I’ll light some lamps,” Julia said behind her.

“Why bother?” Nicole said. She was still tired, and her mood was still black in spite of liberal applications of wine. She’d have closed the tavern after the funeral that morning if she hadn’t needed the money. To Julia, she said, “We might as well shut down. We’re not going to bring in many more people at this hour of the day.”

“More like the first hour of the night,” Julia said. The Romans gave every day twelve hours and every night twelve, too. Daylight hours were long in summer, short in winter, nighttime the reverse. It wasn’t the system Nicole was used to, but it worked well enough, especially in the absence of clocks. The only problem came in the in- between hours, when nobody quite agreed on what time of day or night it was.

As Nicole was turning toward the stairs, someone called from the doorway: “Am I too late for a cup of wine?”

Had it been someone Nicole had never seen before, she would have said yes and sent him on his way. But it was Titus Calidius Severus. She almost frightened herself with how glad she was to see him. “Of course not,” she answered him. “Come in, come in. Julia, light a lamp after all.”

Julia nodded just a shade too eagerly. She lit a lamp and set it on the table at which Calidius Severus had chosen to sit. Then she yawned — theatrically? Nicole couldn’t tell. Julia said, “You’re right, I think. We’re not going to get many more tonight. By your leave, I’ll go on up to bed.”

That was more transparent than any of the glass Nicole had seen in Carnuntum. But ordering her