A Sword in Time

by Cidney Swanson

  She tried asking a few more passersby, who ignored her or said, “Ignoro,” but then her luck changed. A stocky sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy sporting classic bedsheet attire approached her, asking her something that included the words domus and Quintus.

  “Yes!” she replied excitedly. “Si! Da! Whatever! Ubi domus Quintus Valerius?”

  The guy smiled and gestured toward a narrow alleyway overhung with upper stories that made it considerably darker than the street she’d been on. Just as her spidey-senses started tingling, toga-youth seemed to change his mind about showing her where Quintus lived. Shoving her into one of Rome’s ubiquitous alcoves, he pinned her against the rough wall and slipped a sweaty hand under her tunic.

  Her heart rate tripling, she shouted, “Hey! Not okay! Non!” Pushing against him, she tried to spin free, but he shoved her hard, slamming the back of her skull into a wooden shutter.

  Automatically, she shouted, “Ow!” but there was no one to hear her in the empty alley. How could she have been so stupid! Deftly, the young Roman pinned both her arms with his hands while trying to wedge his knee between her thighs. She struggled to get a hand free—anything free—but it was a losing proposition; her legs were trapped between his legs and the wall. The Roman scum knew what he was doing, like he’d done it before.

  Rage and some self-defense training kicked in, and DaVinci took a deep breath to shout at the top of her lungs, but the boy, sensing what she was thinking, slapped a heavy hand over her mouth before she got the chance. His knee parted her thighs. Instinctually, she screamed, but her voice was muffled beneath his hand.

  This wasn’t happening this wasn’t happening this wasn’t happening.

  But it was. What would Leia do?

  DaVinci’s mind skittered, and then she realized that by covering her mouth, the youth was forced to hold both her wrists with one hand, which gave her better odds for freeing an arm. She wrenched a hand free and then reached sideways, bent her elbow, and delivered a sound strike to his nose with the heel of her palm. The hand covering her mouth slipped, and she shouted, “Back off,” managing at that moment to wriggle free and dash back into the adjacent crowded street. Chasing her, the boy shouted one of the obscenities she’d looked up earlier. She wished she could remember one to shout back. Turning, she saw him. A bloom of bright red streamed from his nostrils as he squared off in front of her. She braced herself for a solid knee-to-the-groin, but a few heads were already turning their way, and her assailant seemed to be having second thoughts.

  Backing away, he shouted, “Servum nequam,” spewing blood and spittle at her, and then dashed away into the crowded street.

  He was gone. She was safe.

  He was gone he was gone he was gone.

  Shaking, she rearranged her tunic, which had slid halfway down one shoulder. She was safe. This was a victory, so why was she shaking like a leaf? Leia would not be shaking, dammit! Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them back, furious at herself.

  It was at this moment that a woman carrying five flat loaves of bread approached her. DaVinci, still blinking back angry tears, met the woman’s eyes. DaVinci couldn’t understand a single word the woman was saying to her, but, with a start, she recognized the wide-set eyes, the strong nose, and the determined chin. It was the nursemaid from earlier. It was the compassionate face of someone who seemed to guess what DaVinci had just been through, and that made it the face of a friend.

  38

  • DAVINCI •

  Rome, 53 BC

  It took a few more Latin sentences from the nursemaid before DaVinci heard any words she recognized, but she was pretty sure vino meant the same thing in ancient Rome that it meant in her time. While she felt more like throwing back a sugary black coffee, something told her neither sugar nor coffee were making their way to Italy for a millennium or more. And honestly, maybe something with alcohol would be more settling at the moment.

  “Vino,” she said to the woman. “Vino, si.”

  The woman laughed and murmured, “Vino, sic. Vino, sic,” and a whole bunch of other things DaVinci couldn’t understand.

  But she could follow the woman to the vino, no problemo, and hopefully to a place where she could sit down a moment and let her heart rate return to normal. The back of her head was throbbing slightly. Was wine an analgesic? It couldn’t hurt.

  Besides, she’d gone to all this trouble to get a picture of Quintus’s offspring, and this woman knew the answer to the combination of ubi plus domus plus Quintus. DaVinci sure as heck wasn’t going back without the toddler’s picture, not after what she’d been through.

  On the way to domus Quintus Valerius or whatever it was called, DaVinci managed to dig out her dictionary and flip it open to a page with “to speak” on it. She then informed her companion, “I no dicere Latino,” which was apparently a butchered enough version of the sentence to convince the woman of its truthfulness. From that point on, the woman began to add hand gestures to everything she said.

  Some of the gestures made sense: miming taking a sip from a cup. Others left DaVinci baffled, and could have meant anything from “hunger” to “menstrual cramps” to “when’s the baby due?”

  The woman repeated the gesture, tapping her belly again and then tapping the loaves she carried.

  Hoping her new BFF was asking her if she wanted one of those fresh loaves of bread, DaVinci mimicked the belly gesture, following it by pointing to her mouth and nodding vigorously.

  This made the woman laugh, but to DaVinci’s disappointment, the nurse didn’t offer her any of the bread she was carrying. Maybe it was rude to eat in the streets. They reached what she took to be Quintus’s domus, and the nurse brought her to the back and into a kitchen. Or . . . possibly a kitchen. Without a dishwasher, fridge, or stove, it was hard to be sure.

  DaVinci was instructed to sit on the floor, which was tiled in a black-and-white geometric pattern. She hoped “sit down” was the instruction, at least. She sat—collapsed, really—and sighed heavily. This was so not the morning she’d planned for herself.

  The woman reached down to hand her a piece of bread. Very dry bread. Not the fresh stuff she’d been carrying. Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all that.

  DaVinci lifted the hunk to her mouth, but the woman flapped her hands, saying, “Non, non, non,” which didn’t take a lot of imagination to translate. DaVinci set the bread down in her lap and awaited further instruction.

  Was she supposed to say grace first? Wait for the nurse to sit down beside her and take the first bite? She felt the vastness of the cultural knowledge she was missing. She had absolutely no idea how to be Roman. The thought, or maybe just the entire horrible morning, brought a lump to her throat. That vino would be really nice right about now. How much vino would it take for a 110-pound weakling to drink herself into oblivion?

  The woman was now speaking in a softer tone, which DaVinci felt pretty sure was meant to calm her. She swallowed and tried to look self-composed. The nursemaid, fussing with an amphora like those in DaVinci’s art history books, had the look of someone who’d seen it all. Someone who’d beat up a few groping backstreet thugs herself. DaVinci felt a rush of gratitude. How did you say thank you in Latin? As soon as the woman’s back was turned, she peered into Quintus’s dictionary. Gratias tibi ago seemed like the right thing to say: I give thanks to you.

  “Gratias tibi . . . uh . . . ahh-go,” murmured DaVinci.

  The woman turned and beamed at her, presenting her with a cup of wine. She then mimed dunking the bread in the wine.

  “Oh,” replied DaVinci, smiling. This was how you conquered dry bread. Genius. “Got it,” she said out loud, dunking her bread.

  “Gottitta,” said the woman, nodding and smiling. “Gottitta!”

  It took DaVinci a moment, but then she realized the woman was repeating a version of what she’d heard DaVinci say.

  Out of sheer gratitude, DaVinci said, “Got it,” two more times, nodding, smiling, and dunking her
bread.

  While she was chewing her bread, DaVinci heard the shrill laughter of a child from another part of the house. This seemed to be a cue to the nursemaid to run out of the room, leaving DaVinci to the pleasures of her daily, day-old bread soaked in vinegary, watered-down wine, and seasoned with peace, quiet, and safety.

  “I will never take safety for granted again,” she murmured, dunking her bread. If she were stuck here, she couldn’t afford to take her safety for granted. If she were stuck here . . . It didn’t bear thinking of. She wouldn’t think of it. Lifting the sopping crust to her mouth, she focused on not thinking about it. Focused on chewing. Swallowing. Getting rid of the lump in her throat that kept popping back to say hello every time she thought of home. Fortunately, the wine had begun to warm her belly. Maybe she could ask for an escort back to the apartment . . . Of course, Leia wouldn’t have demanded an escort. She would have simply kept her wits about her and not allowed dubious youths to lead her into dark alleys.

  Today would have been a lot easier with a blaster, DaVinci thought gloomily.

  The cries of the child had been quickly silenced, and now DaVinci could hear the voice of another woman. By peering around the threshold, DaVinci could see the other woman. She was unmistakably the boy’s mother. Quintus’s wife. Mother and child had the same eyes, the same eyebrows, the same rosebud mouths. Quintus had been right about the kid not looking like him at all. And, wow, his wife was young. Like, younger than Klee and Kahlo.

  A moment later she heard a man’s voice, calling, “Mucia!”

  The young wife looked to where the voice was coming from.

  Mucia, huh? The name wouldn’t win any popularity contests in America.

  The man called again. His voice didn’t sound exactly like Quintus’s, but she supposed that Quintus wouldn’t sound exactly like Quintus after so many months spent speaking another language. Or possibly this Quintus had a cold.

  The nurse and Mucia continued to converse. The man in the other room continued to call until Quintus’s wife, looking in the direction of the voice, set her son beside the nurse and strode away.

  When the little boy toddled into the kitchen, DaVinci felt the same flutter of purposefulness from earlier. She was here to make sure Quintus had something to remember his son by. Something to hold on to when they got back where they belonged. Well, where DaVinci belonged. She felt a pang of sympathy for Quintus. For him, going “home” wasn’t the same thing at all.

  Maybe she should record a short video . . .

  The toddler, mumbling in what DaVinci assumed was baby-Latin, sat down next to her and accepted a piece of the newer, softer bread from his nurse.

  In between bites, the child babbled to DaVinci, showing her various treasures he carried in a small straw basket. A seashell, a piece of saffron-yellow yarn, and some rocks. Lots of rocks. Which apparently needed lots of description. Possibly, he had named them all. DaVinci smiled and laughed and nodded and hoped the nurse would leave so she could take a picture.

  After five or so minutes, the nurse turned to Quintus’s son, pointed a finger and said something in Latin that probably meant: Stay put, you. The boy grinned and nodded and began talking to DaVinci about his rocks all over again.

  DaVinci, wasting no time, snapped several pictures before starting to record a quick video of the lecture on rocks and their praiseworthiness. She’d recorded a full minute when she noticed a noise. A . . . familiar noise. Or rather, a couple of familiar noises. Of the variety made by couples who were, well—

  “Oh my gosh. Seriously?” she whispered to the boy. Should she cover his ears?

  He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, that’s ruined,” she murmured, stopping the recording. Pretty sure Quintus would not want to hear the sound of his other self and his wife getting it on in the back room.

  The little boy, not at all bothered by the noise, continued to babble with his mouth full of bread. Swallowing his food, he held out a rock for DaVinci’s inspection.

  “Hmm, exceptional,” she said, nodding gravely. The boy laughed, and they “discussed” several more rocks in his collection, which was a nice distraction because the moaning was getting hard to ignore. Wow, was it going to be a challenge to look at Quintus with a straight face the next time she saw him.

  “So,” she said to the little boy, “are Mommy and Daddy always this enthusiastic?”

  The little boy’s answer to her question was to hold his piece of saffron-yellow yarn up to DaVinci’s hair.

  “Hey, you nailed it,” she said. “That is totally the color of my hair.”

  (It totally wasn’t.)

  The noise in the other room crescendoed and then, mercifully, stopped.

  The little boy laughed and pointed to where the sound had been coming from.

  And DaVinci laughed, too, because really, what else could you do?

  At this point, the boy’s nursemaid returned, muttering under her breath, shaking her head, and then sighing as she looked at Quintus’s son. The nurse ruffled the child’s hair and chucked him under the chin.

  DaVinci stood up. While the goings-on had been going on, she’d searched the dictionary to find the Latin word for depart. She was just about to put the new word to good use when the little boy shouted and jumped up, crying, “Tata!”

  The little guy ran out of the kitchen and straight into the arms of a hunky-looking Roman, who was rearranging his toga and was followed by Quintus’s wife, rearranging her dress.

  “Tata! Tata! Tata!” shouted the little boy.

  It was the word Quintus said Roman kids used for Daddy.

  The problem was, the man with Quintus’s wife wasn’t Quintus.

  39

  • DAVINCI •

  Rome, 53 BC

  DaVinci left the domus of Quintus Valerius feeling sick to her stomach. Why had she gone to Quintus’s house? Why hadn’t she just stuck to admiring the buildings and fending off assailants?

  She never should have gone inside. She hadn’t asked to see any of that. Or hear any of that. Ugh! She didn’t want to know about the personal life of Quintus’s wife. His lying, betraying, getting-some-on-the-side wife. Of course, she wasn’t, technically, the wife of the Quintus DaVinci knew, but that hardly mattered.

  She tried to push the whole thing out of her mind. She was in Rome. Everything she’d heard and seen was in the past. Like, the really ancient, dead-and-buried past. She shouldn’t think about it.

  The list of things she needed not to think about was getting long.

  Her eye caught on a tiled mosaic set over a butcher’s shop door, intricate and strangely beautiful considering the subject matter was, well, butchering. Down the walls on either side, she saw scrollwork painted in red and ochre, done with a tiny but confident brushstroke. The next shop she passed, and the next, and the next, were each painted and tiled with similar levels of detail, of care, of beauty.

  But in spite of the beauty surrounding her, she kept finding herself drifting back to the sights and sounds of Quintus’s domus. The Quintus she knew might not be affected by it like the Quintus she didn’t know, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think her Quintus wouldn’t care. Of course he would care. So much for showing him the video. She should have just stayed put in her fourth-story, windowless jail cell. Ugh. How could Mucia have done that? And on top of the affair, she was apparently passing off another man’s child as Quintus’s child.

  It really drove home the fact that there was no place for Quintus, her Quintus, here in Rome. He was as much a person without a place as she was, back home. More so, even. At least she hadn’t landed in a strange new life where her closest friends and family members were engaging in illicit liaisons.

  She sighed. Poor Quintus. He might be an oafish soldier, but he was a person, too. She could never breathe a word of what she’d witnessed. That, on top of everything else he’d lost? No. She wouldn’t say a thing.

  Compared to his life, her life back home was practically perfect.
r />   Back home.

  Her stomach twisted.

  Not. Thinking. About. It.

  She tried one last time to work up a decent level of enthusiasm for the perfect Roman arches and fountains with S.P.Q.R. carved above them, but it was no good. Her brain kept returning to the events at Domus Quintus. All the visual cues had been there to confirm the kid wasn’t Quintus’s kid. That little boy looked like Mucia, but he also looked like the man the kid had called Tata. Similar moles, the same hairline, identical ears—all things DaVinci had been trained to examine, categorize, and put to good use in portraiture.

  There was no doubt that the man Mucia was sleeping with was the boy’s real dad, and even though DaVinci hadn’t even known Quintus twenty-four hours ago, she couldn’t shake her feelings of sadness.

  Only when a group of idle Roman men wolf-whistled and called after her, did she find something she could focus on and stay focused on: her safety. Back home, she would have responded with the finger, but here she was nobody. She was a slave. A slave who was eager to get back to the dullness of her windowless cell unharmed.

  As she reentered the room, her lips drew tight and thin. It really was a horrible little room. She was tired now and contemplated napping on the bed, but . . . fleas. She considered her surroundings gloomily, but then she noticed someone had brought a few more things into the room. On the table that held the oil lamp, there was a flask and a small lump of . . . something. And on the far side of the room was a bowl. Ah. A piss pot.

  “Lovely,” she said, turning to investigate the flask instead.

  It was full of the same watered-down, vinegary sort of wine the nurse had given her. The lump turned out to be a small wrapped packet of olives. She wondered if the offerings were an ancient Roman version of a hotel wet bar, handy and overpriced. But she was hungry. Starving, actually. She gobbled the olives—surprisingly salty—and drank the wine, which was much more appealing now that the olives had made her thirsty.