Household Gods

by Judith Tarr

  Nicole reined in her first response, which was to demand to know what was so good about a man underfoot. So she was a widow, was she? Well, good for the late Mr. Umma, whatever his name had been. At least he’d had the courtesy to die instead of running off with the cute young thing next door.

  Lucius snatched the bread that Julia brought him and sopped it in oil, without so much as a word or a glance. Nicole frowned. Table manners were one thing. Courtesy was another altogether. “Lucius,” she said sternly, “that was impolite. I didn’t hear you say ‘please’ to Julia. And what should you have said when she brought you your bread?”

  Lucius looked at her as if she’d gone off her head. “What should I have said, Mother?”

  He didn’t sound as if he was sassing her, though the words could hardly mean anything else. Nicole took a deep breath and counted to five before she answered. “What about ‘thank you’?”

  Lucius’ straight black brows went up. “ ‘Thank you? To a slave?”

  Nicole’s mouth was open. She shut it. She looked at Julia in a dawning horror. She couldn’t be a slave. Slaves were something out of -

  Something out of old dead history. This was old dead history. This, right now, this world she was living in.

  Julia didn’t even blink at what Lucius had called her, or at his tone. She sat back down in her place — a little apart from the others, Nicole saw as if for the first time, and on a lower stool, so that her head was a little below theirs. She kept it bowed even lower as she tucked into her own bread and oil and, with a sort of cautious defiance in the glance she shot at Nicole, her wine.

  When Nicole thought of slavery, she thought of African-Americans and cotton fields and the Civil War. She vaguely recalled a movie or two about Rome, and something about slaves. Slave revolts? Chariot races? Charlton Heston? Frank would have known, damn him. Frank had a thing for Fifties movie epics. She’d ignored them when he had them on, except to notice that there was a lot of noise and bare skin, and costumes that made her think of a slow night in a Vegas casino. She’d forgotten all that when she prayed to come back to Roman days. She’d never imagined that she’d come back as a slaveowner. No late-twentieth-century minds thought like that.

  Neither did they think of traveling back in time at all, not seriously. Not unless they were heavily into fantasy and gaming and all the rest of that unreal nonsense.

  This was real enough. So was Julia, sitting there drinking the last of her wine with a little too clearly evident enjoyment.

  While Nicole sat speechless, Aurelia held out her cup to Julia and said, “Get me some more wine.” Her eyes flicked to Nicole. She added, “Please.” Her smug little smile was the image of Kimberley’s. Look how good I’m being, it proclaimed to the world, and look what a nasty brat my brother is.

  Nicole had always detested that smugness in Kimberley. It didn’t look any better in Aurelia, or do her any more good, either. Nicole snatched the cup from her hand before Julia could take it. She raised it to her nose and sniffed. The odor was unmistakable. “You are giving the children wine?” Her voice was quiet, dangerously so.

  Julia understood her. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, as quietly, but without the deadly edge. There was a suggestion of great patience and of indulging a preposterous fancy, but it was too faint to do more than bristle at. “Of course I am, Mistress. I watered the wine half and half, just as I always do. I’d never give it to them neat. You know that, Mistress.”

  Nicole didn’t care what excuses she made, nor listen to her beyond that first, damning yes. “You gave them wine,” she said again, incredulous. “What are you trying to do, turn them into — “ She groped in her new Latin vocabulary, hunting for the word that was so clear in English: alcoholics. There wasn’t any such word. The best she could wasn’t quite good enough: “Are you trying to turn them into drunkards?”

  “I said,” Julia said with an air of shaky determination, “I watered it exactly as I should, as I was supposed to — as you, Mistress, always told me to — till now.”

  She thought she’d done right, Nicole realized. She was so sure of it that she’d even held her ground against her — her owner. Nicole shuddered. Julia, oblivious, went on, “Mistress, by all the gods I don’t know why you’ve taken so against wine today. Are you feeling well? Are you ill? Should I fetch you some poppy juice?”

  Poppy juice? Opium? One can of worms at a time. Nicole thought. “I am not ill,” she said with taut-strung patience. “And you are not to give my children wine for breakfast.”

  “Then,” said Julia, still defiant, “what am I supposed to give them?”

  “Milk, of course,” Nicole answered sharply. Didn’t she know that? Didn’t anybody?

  Apparently not. “Milk?” the children and Julia said in chorus, all three; and in the same shocked tone, too. Lucius and Aurelia hacked and gagged and made disgusted faces. You’d have thought she’d just tried to feed them a plate of lima beans.

  “Milk?” Aurelia repeated. “It’s slimy!”

  “It tastes horrible,” Lucius said. They looked at each other and nodded in perfect, and horrified, agreement. Nicole didn’t think they agreed like that very often.

  “It’s expensive,” Julia said, making it sound like a clincher. “And besides, Mistress, you can’t keep it fresh. It’s even worse than fish. You waste what you don’t use, because it’s sure to be sour the next day, especially this time of year. Please pardon me for telling you, but really, Mistress, what in the world makes you want to feed them milk?”

  “Because it’s full of — “ Nicole found she couldn’t say calcium in Latin, either, even though it sounded like a Latin word to her. This time, her circumlocution was clumsy: “It helps make bones strong.”

  “Barbarians drink milk,” Lucius said, as if that settled everything. “The Marcomanni and the Quadi drink milk.” He stuck out his tongue. Not to be outdone, Aurelia stuck out hers, too.

  Some arguments you just couldn’t win. This looked like one of them. Religion, politics, divorce — on some things, people’s minds locked themselves shut and lost the key. If she tried to force it, she’d get into a fight; and that wouldn’t gain her anything.

  Sidestep, then. “If you won’t drink milk, will you drink water?” she asked. The children didn’t look happy, but they didn’t screw up their faces and make puking noises, either. Neither did Julia, though her expression was eloquent. Nicole threw an argument at the kids to bolster her case: “I drank water this morning, and it hasn’t hurt me.”

  “You did?” Lucius sounded as if she’d just told him — well, as if she’d told him that she’d traveled in time from the twentieth century and she wasn’t his mother at all.

  What joy, she thought. A whole family of alcoholics in training, from the baby on up — and their mother is in business selling wine. She’d fix that, maybe not all in a day considering how Julia and the children had reacted to her suggestion that wine maybe wasn’t the best thing for a human to drink, but by Liber and Libera she would show them how a healthy person ought to live. “I certainly did drink water this morning,” she said to Lucius. “Ask Julia if you don’t believe me. She watched me do it. She even fetched the pitcher and poured me a cup. “

  Lucius laughed. It was a distinctly and viscerally unpleasant sound, a Beavis-and-Butthead snigger. “Huh! That’s funny, Mother. You can’t believe a slave about anything. Only way they can testify is if you torture them.” He made a horrible face at Julia, a twisted devil-snarl, and jabbed his finger at her, with indescribable boy-type sound effects: hissing and bubbling and an abrupt, blood-curdling shriek.

  He was making it up. He had to be. But Julia’s white face and the sudden change in her silence, the way her shoulders went tight and hunched under her sad bag of a tunic, ate away at Nicole’s disbelief.

  She’d never taken legal history. It hadn’t been required, and she hadn’t been interested, and she hadn’t had time even if she had been interested. Now, with piercing intensity, she wished that
she had.

  Legal history she might have missed, but she’d been a parent long enough to know how to shut down a thread of discussion that was going in a dangerous direction. Briskly, she said, “We’re not talking about court right now, young man. Are you saying Julia and I would both lie to you about what I drank? ‘

  Lucius shrank suddenly, startling her: flinched into himself, as if he’d expected a slap. “No, Mother,” he said. “I’ll drink water after this, Mother. I promise I will.”

  God, what had he expected? That she’d clobber him, just because he’d been obnoxious? What kind of mother had this Umma been? Not just alcoholism — abuse. Her stomach, even as full of breakfast as it was, felt small and tight and cold.

  It knotted even tighter when Aurelia hastened to agree with her brother. “I’ll drink water, too,” she said. “I’ll drink it right now. Julia, get me some water!”

  Julia glanced at Nicole. Nicole nodded sharply. Julia sighed just audibly, poured Aurelia’s wine into her own cup, and filled Aurelia’s again with water.

  Nicole’s triumph, such as it was, was evaporating fast. Julia had just manipulated herself into a double ration of wine. Umma’s children were flat-out terrified, and their fear had given Nicole the victory. What kind of mother raised her children to be afraid of her? Not any kind of mother I am, Nicole resolved grimly. And Julia — tricky bits aside, Julia obeyed her mistress, oh, sure. But she did it with slow sullenness, neither too slow nor too sullen to be caught and punished, but just enough to make her feelings clear.

  Just what did Julia think wine was? Or was it water she was afraid of? Nicole knew about not drinking the water in Third-World countries, but that was for Americans traveling away from their chlorinated, fluoridated, homogenized, pasteurized, all-clean-and-sanitized local water companies. People who actually lived in those countries did perfectly well on the water there. Wasn’t she — in Umma’s body — still standing up and not crouched groaning over a chamberpot?

  So much ignorance. So much misunderstanding of what was best for people’s health. Maybe Liber and Libera had sent her back to make life better for these people, to teach them about sanitation and hygiene and healthy food and drink. Surely they hadn’t given her her wish just because she wanted it. There had to be something they meant her to do in return.

  If she was to do any good, if that was what she was here for — and never mind if she wasn’t; she’d do it anyhow — she had to learn much more of this world and place than she knew. Knowing Latin, for instance, didn’t seem to let her know where anything was in Carnuntum.

  Still, how hard could that be? Social mores and mental attitudes were rough, and she was working her way gingerly through those. Carnuntum itself was much simpler. If she’d found her way around Los Angeles, all hundreds of square miles of it, and even learned to drive its freeways without going catatonic with terror — she could learn what she needed to know about this much smaller, much less complicated town.

  She didn’t know the date, either. Well, she could ask that, and she did, casually, as if it had slipped her mind.

  “It’s four days before the Kalends of June, Mistress,” Julia said, and then added, “I think.” At least she wasn’t surprised to be asked.

  May 28, Nicole thought after a moment of going back and forth between what she knew in Latin and what she knew in English. It was only half an answer, and the smaller half. “Everything’s going out of my head this morning,” she said with what she hoped was a light little laugh. “What year is it?”

  “It’s — what? — the ninth year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius,” Julia said. Her voice held a little of the tone Nicole knew well: The boss is an idiot. it meant. But only a little. It was, oddly, maybe deceptively reassuring. Maybe Umma wasn’t a brutal slavemaster after all.

  Or maybe it meant a slave didn’t dare step too far over the line. Nicole had seen that in offices with tyrannical bosses, or in houses where the parents were too strict. Employees, and kids, learned just how far they could go, and went that far and no further.

  Lucius broke in on her thoughts with the air of the know-it-all proving he really did know it all: “The consuls for the year are Marcus Cornelius Cethegus and Gaius Erucius Clarus.”

  Nice, Nicole thought. And no help at all. She might have heard of Marcus Aurelius once upon a time, but no way in the world did she know when he’d reigned. The other two names had a fine and ringing sound, but they meant exactly nothing. And what difference did it make, anyway, who or what a consul was? Were they like President and Vice President? King and queen? Lord Mayor of London?

  Careful; she was getting sarcastic. She tried one more time, and hoped the strain didn’t show in her voice: “I wonder what year this would be by the Christian calendar?”

  Lucius and Aurelia gaped, then made gagging noises — exactly as they’d done when she’d suggested they drink milk. Julia said with prim firmness, “I didn’t even know those nasty people had a calendar. I don’t have anything to do with them. They’re all crazy, or so you’d think, the way they act. Even I know better, and I’m only a slave. They don’t respect the gods. They won’t worship the Princeps — why, they throw themselves on legionaries’ swords if anyone tries to make them. If you ask me, they deserve whatever they get.”

  That was more than Nicole had bargained for. She thought of herself as a Catholic, though she’d gone to church only a handful of times since she got married, and not at all since the divorce. Visions of catechism class, crucifix on the wall and sappy long-faced Jesus, Christians and lions and legionaries dicing in front of the Cross, swirled in her head, fast enough to make her dizzy. All that, and Victor Mature standing up to Peter Ustinov in a purple gown, while the choir’s voices swelled in the background.

  She’d gone back that far? God. Or Jesus. Or somebody. And she hadn’t come back as a Christian, either. Somehow it had never occurred to her that that could happen, that she’d be — a pagan. Or something. It was startling how that struck her, that same twisting in the stomach she’d had when she was seven years old and had learned that not only were some people not Catholic, some people didn’t even believe in Jesus. “Will they go to hell?” she’d asked her mother.

  She didn’t remember what her mother had said. Something impatient, probably: “Shut up and eat your dinner.” Her mother didn’t like answering hard questions. Her catechism teacher, when she asked the same question, had gone on about sincere belief, tolerance for other religions, and differing views of the afterlife. It had been more than she’d been ready to swallow, at that age. In a lot of ways, it still was.

  Even worse than being a pagan, than being surrounded by pagans, was hearing one of them scorn the religion she’d grown up in. Never mind that she’d fallen away from it. Maybe political correctness had something in it after all. For that matter, so did simple politeness.

  She drew breath to begin a reprimand, but let it out again without saying anything. What good would it do? She’d learned long ago never to get into arguments over politics or religion. People’s minds were always made up.

  She glanced at Lucius and Aurelia. Was Aurelia named for Marcus Aurelius? Did they do things like that here?

  For that matter, weren’t the children supposed to be getting ready for school? Did they even go to school? If they did, they weren’t showing any signs of it. Or was today Saturday? Sunday? Did Saturday or Sunday matter in Carnuntum in the ninth year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, whenever that was? How could she find out without looking like an idiot again?

  Before she could find an answer to any of those crowding questions, Julia said, “Oh! Mistress, here’s Ofanius Valens. He’s early today.” She leaped up and ran busily about, as if the boss had come into the office and found the secretaries in the middle of a kaffeeklatsch.

  Nicole leaped up, too, but, once she was up, had no idea what to do. Christ! she thought in panic. A customer! At least Julia had given her his name. She scrambled to remember what a proper restaurant owner woul
d say to a regular. “Good day to you, Ofanius Valens,” she said as smoothly as she could manage — fund-raisers were good practice; so were jury selections. “What can we get for you?”

  He sat down on a stool: a thin fellow a few years younger than she, not too clean but not too dirty, either. He’d had horrible acne in his youth, which couldn’t be that long ago; his beard didn’t hide all the scars. “First time you’ve even asked in a while,” he said with a familiar chuckle. “My usual will do fine, thanks.”

  And thank you, Ofanius Valens. I’ll remember you in my nightmares. Umma, no doubt, had known what his usual was. Nicole hadn’t the faintest idea. But maybe, she thought with a stab of relief, someone did. “Julia,” she said, “take care of him.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Julia said, and did. Along with his bread and oil, Ofanius Valens favored walnuts and green onions and the wine from under the second lid from the left. As he ate, the eye-watering pungency of the onions moved in around him and settled to stay.

  He seemed content enough to have Julia deal with him rather than Umma in person. Nicole congratulated herself for escaping unscathed, for once, from yet another difficult situation. What she’d done didn’t dawn on her for a few moments. She’d ordered Julia about as a mistress would order a slave.

  No, she told herself. I’d have handled it the same way if she were free and working for me. Maybe that was true. She thought it was true. She devoutly hoped it was.

  She shivered, though the room was warm enough. Every word she spoke to Julia, every gesture she made, couldn’t be a normal human interaction. Not as long as Julia was her property. Everything she did, as long as she knew that, was a political act.

  As soon as Nicole knew how it was done, if it could be done, she’d have to free Julia. She couldn’t go on living like this, owning another human being, treating her like an object. Pretending Julia was a hired servant didn’t cut it. The truth remained, insurmountable.

  Should she free the rest of the slaves, too? For of course there had to be more. Lots of people had to have them, if Umma, who wasn’t particularly wealthy or powerful, could own one. But Nicole couldn’t start right this instant. She didn’t know enough — and reality, in the person of Ofanius Valens, intervened. He fumbled in the pouch he wore attached to his belt. “An as for the bread,” he said, and slapped a copper coin about the size of a quarter on the table in front of him. “An as for the oil.” He brought out another copper coin.