by Judith Tarr
“I — think so,” Julia answered hesitantly.
“I do,” Gaius Calidius Severus said. “I know just where it is. Do you want me to take the donkey back and let his family know he’s — indisposed?”
“Would you?” Nicole said. And had to add: “Will your father mind if you take so much time off from work?”
“Not if I’m doing a favor for you,” he answered. That flustered her more than she might have expected. Of course he knew what was going on. There couldn’t be much of anybody who didn’t.
Her nod was sharper than his comment deserved. He bobbed his own head by way of reply, with no irony that she could discern, and went to take charge of the donkey.
“He’s very nice,” Julia said. “A little too young, but very nice.”
She hadn’t thought he was too young when she went upstairs with him on the day of her manumission. Nicole found she’d come to forgive him that, or most of it. You really couldn’t expect a man that young not to think with his crotch. It was like expecting a cock not to crow at sunrise: you could hope for it, even pray for it, but it wasn’t bloody likely.
Lucius and Aurelia came tearing in from some game out back, and stopped short to stare at Julius Rufus. They didn’t know or care enough to be scared, as Julia was. “What’s wrong with him?” Aurelia wanted to know. But, tavernkeeper’s daughter that she was, she found a logical answer to her own question: “Is he too drunk to go home?”
“No, “ Nicole said flatly. “I’m afraid he’s got the pestilence.”
The rash was coming out on his cheeks and forehead, developing almost like Polaroid film. Aurelia and Lucius had seen plenty of drunks at the tavern, but a man with the pestilence was new and therefore interesting. They edged closer for a better look.
Nicole caught them both with a braced arm. Lucius stopped, but Aurelia pushed against her, scowling. Aurelia never liked to be thwarted.
Nicole didn’t, right now, give a damn what Aurelia liked or didn’t like. “You stay back,” she said to the two of them, sternly enough that she hoped they’d listen. “This is a bad sickness. You can get it if he just breathes on you. Stay away from him.”
“But you brought him inside,” Lucius pointed out. “You and Calidius carried him. Does that mean you’ll get the pestilence, too?”
“I hope not, ‘ Nicole answered, three of the most sincere words she’d ever spoken.
While she was distracted with the kids, a customer came briskly in. He glanced at Julius Rufus, there on the floor, and raised his eyebrows. “He’s got it, has he?” He passed the sick man without evident qualm and sat at a table near the middle of the tavern. “A cup of your two-as wine,” he said, “and some bread and oil.”
Julia served him with a kind of numbed efficiency. While she did that, the kids slipped free of Nicole’s tiring grasp, but didn’t try to get any closer to the sick man. They did hover, big-eyed, clearly waiting for him to do something — bleed, maybe, or vomit spectacularly, or die.
The customer ate, drank. He paid for his order in exact change, and walked out. Either he was as phlegmatic a man as Nicole had met, or he was just plain callous. Or maybe he was both at once.
Nicole had just scrambled herself together and taken thought for spelling Julia at the bar, when Julius Rufus let out a small sigh. A second or two later, Lucius wrinkled his nose. “I think he’s gone and shit himself,” he said matter-of-factly.
The odor that wafted toward Nicole was unmistakable. She felt her own nose wrinkle, and her gorge start to rise. Damn, she thought as she watched a wet spot spread on the front of Julius Rufus’ tunic. “He’s wet himself, too,” she said.
Lucius snickered. “Just like a baby.”
If he’d been within Nicole’s reach, she might have slapped him silly. The impulse was so strong it scared her. “It’s not funny, she said when she could trust her voice. “He’s not doing it on purpose.” She turned to Julia, who was hanging about as if she couldn’t tear herself away. “Fetch me some damp rags, will you? I can’t leave him lying here in his own filth.” Cleaning him was the last thing she wanted to do, but what choice did she have? Unlike Julia, she’d already touched him, already had his breath in her face. She knew she was exposed to the pestilence; she didn’t know whether the freedwoman was. Best not to make it a sure thing.
She swallowed the sour taste of bile, and breathed shallowly so as not to take in more of the combined reek of ammonia and ripe shit. His mouth had fallen open. His eyes were open, too, wide and staring. A moment after she realized she didn’t see him blinking, she noticed she didn’t hear him breathing.
She dropped the dripping rags and snatched his wrist. It was hot, as hot as his forehead had been — maybe hotter. Her finger found the spot outside the tendons, below the fleshy swell at the base of the thumb.
Nothing.
She bore down on the spot, the pulse-spot, where she should feel the beating of his heart. The only pulse she felt was her own. She pressed her palm to the left side of his chest. Nothing there, either. Nothing at all.
“He’s dead,” she said in dull wonder.
“I was afraid of that,” Julia said. “When his bowels let go… that happens, you know. Every time.”
Lucius and Aurelia stared more avidly than ever. A sick man was interesting. A dead one was absolutely riveting.
Gaius Calidius Severus came back while Nicole was still trying to figure out what to do, bringing with him a woman about Julius Rufus’ age and two young men who strongly resembled the brewer. They also had the donkey, from which they’d removed the barrels. Obviously, they’d intended to pack the unconscious man on the donkey’s back, and get him home more easily than if they’d had to carry him.
Nicole had been dreading the moment when she had to tell them the man was dead. It was just as bad as she’d imagined. The men began to bellow, the woman to shriek and wail. “What will we do without him?” she shrilled, over and over. “What are we supposed to do?”
Nicole could think of just one thing. She retreated to the bar and pulled out a toppling pile of cups, and filled them pretty much anyhow. Alcohol was the only tranquilizer the Romans knew. She administered it liberally.
They didn’t thank her for it, or pay her either, but they drank it down. It quieted them somewhat, though the woman couldn’t stop asking what she was supposed to do. Cope, Nicole wanted to snap at her, but refrained.
Still sniveling and weeping, Julius Rufus’ two sons took up his body and draped it over the donkey’s back. It slipped and slid bonelessly; they had to tie it in place. Still without a word of thanks, they set off on their sad journey home, or more likely to the undertaker’s.
People stared as they made their slow way down the street. The cries of Julius Rufus’ widow faded with distance, and sank into silence.
“Times will be hard for them now,” Gaius Calidius Severus said as he paused in the doorway on his way back to work. “I remember how things were when Mother died. They weren’t much different for you, were they, when you lost your husband?”
How would I know? Nicole almost asked, but caught herself in time. Instead, she said, “Times will be hard for the whole city now, if this pestilence is as bad as they say.”
“I’m afraid it’s worse, “ Gaius Calidius Severus murmured, but he managed a smile at Nicole.
To her amazement, she found a smile in return. “Thank you for your help, Gaius,” she said. “It was very, very kind of you.”
She’d been a bit daring in calling her lover’s grown son by his praenomen, but he didn’t protest. He dipped his head to her, that was all, and went quickly across the street.
Nicole stayed by the door, staring at the space where he had been. It was better than what she wanted to stare at, which was the place where the brewer had collapsed.
She hadn’t known how long she stood there, until Julia asked, “Are you all right, Mistress?”
“No, I’m not all right,” Nicole said, “but I’m not sick, either, if that�
��s what you mean.”
Julia didn’t look too greatly reassured. Nicole didn’t have any reassurance to give her. All she had had drained away when she looked into Julius Rums’ face, and saw that he was dead.
If anyone had asked her afterwards, she couldn’t have said how she got through the day. When sunset came at long last, and business slowed and then mercifully stopped, she did something that she’d have been horrified to contemplate, back in West Hills. But in this place and time, it was the only reasonable or rational thing to do. She got quietly and systematically drunk.
14
Hard times through the whole city. When Nicole had said that to Gaius Calidius Severus, she’d had only an intellectual understanding of what it meant. Over the next month or two, as summer passed into autumn, as sunlight softened and morning mists from the Danube began filling the streets of Carnuntum with fog, she felt the meaning of hard times in her belly as well as her head.
In the early days of the pestilence, hardly an hour seemed to go by without the shrieking and moaning of professional mourners, as funeral processions made their somber way out of the city and toward the burial ground. After a while, however, the sounds of formal lamentation, almost as formal as the Mass, began to diminish.
Ofanius Valens explained that to Nicole when he stopped by for breakfast one morning. “From what I hear,” he said, “so many of the mourners are dead, the rest can’t come close to keeping up with all the funerals.”
“That’s horrible,” Nicole said.
“It’s not good,” he conceded, taking an unenthusiastic mouthful of bread and oil. “My family’s been lucky so far, the gods be praised. I’ve only got one cousin down with it, and she doesn’t look like dying. If you make it through the rash, they say, you’re likely to get better, and she’s done that. Half her hair fell out, and she’s peeling like the worst case of sunburn you ever saw, but she’s still with us. How about your kin, Umma?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t heard a word.” And she wouldn’t have much cared if she had, she thought but didn’t add. Whatever Umma thought of her relatives, Nicole had no earthly use for any of them.
Ofanius Valens looked shocked. Everyone in Carnuntum was shocked when someone failed to keep minutest track of anything that had to do with family. But, after a moment, his face cleared. “That’s right.” He nodded as he reminded himself. “You had that squabble with them after you manumitted Julia. Still haven’t made it up, eh?”
Nicole shook her head. “I’m the bad apple in the barrel, as far as they’re concerned.” She straightened. ‘‘They can think whatever they please, for all of me. I’ll get along just fine.”
“You certainly seem to be getting along.” Ofanius Valens spoke with no small wonder. “I’ve known other people who fought with their families. Most of them act like fish hauled out of the Ister” — by which he meant the Danube. He imitated a fish out of water with such popeyed aplomb, Nicole couldn’t help laughing.
Julia laughed, too. So did Lucius, who’d come downstairs while Ofanius Valens was eating. Nicole said, “It’s good to hear people laughing. Not much of that sound in the city these days. “
“Not much reason for it these days,” Ofanius Valens said. “Let’s see what we can do about it.” He aimed his dead-fish stare at Lucius, who broke up in giggles.
Julia started to laugh again. It was like a yawn: contagious. Nicole caught herself just as Julia’s eye caught hers. Their laughter died. They’d been startled into it the first time. They couldn’t invoke it with conscious effort. Lucky Lucius, to be so young and so untroubled.
“Off I go,” Ofanius Valens said. “The gods grant you all good health.” He made one more fish-face at Lucius, who crowed with delight, nodded to Nicole, and blew Julia a kiss. She blew one back. Whistling a jaunty tune, he went on his way.
“He’s a nice man,” Lucius said.
“He is nice,” Julia said with the hint of a sigh. She meant something — several different somethings — other than what Lucius did. Nicole gave her a sharp look, which she ignored. Julia thought with her body first and her mind definitely second.
Business that morning was brisk. Asses, dupondii, sesterces, even a couple of silver denarii clanked into the cash box. Nicole was pleased, but not so pleased as she might have been. Every time somebody coughed, every time somebody sneezed, she jumped. People had been coughing and sneezing in the tavern ever since she’d come to Carnuntum, and no doubt for many years before that. Now she wondered if each cough and sneeze meant a case of pestilence brewing — and if viruses were flying her way, or toward her children, or toward Julia.
A little before noon, Brigomarus came into the tavern. “Uncle Brigo!” Lucius and Aurelia cried out in delight. Nicole, on the other hand, was somewhat less than delighted to see Umma’s brother. By the way he stood, as if he was only there under duress, and by his cold nod, he wasn’t delighted to see her, either.
“How are you?” he asked politely enough, and then the question that seemed more important in Carnuntum than any other: “Have you been well?”
Nicole could answer that, if only to meet politeness with politeness. “Yes, all of us here have been fine, thank heaven,” she said. “And you?”
“I’m as you see. If I’d caught this horror of a disease, I wouldn’t be up and about.” Brigomarus took a deep breath, nerving himself for what he had to say next. “Mother is down with it. I don’t know what her chances are. If I had to guess, I’d say they weren’t good. She still has her wits about her, and she wants to see you. Ila didn’t even want to let you know, but I said I would do it. Just because you wronged the family doesn’t mean we have any business wronging you.”
“I had every right to do what I did, and I was right to do it,” Nicole said stiffly.
“You’re — “ Umma’s brother checked himself. “Never mind. I didn’t come here to start the quarrel over again. Will you come see Mother or not?” To hell with you if you don’t, his tone and posture plainly said.
A deathbed visit to Atpomara, Umma’s disagreeable mother, was about the last thing Nicole wanted. Visiting anybody who was likely to give her the pestilence didn’t rank high on her list, either. But, things being as they were, she didn’t see that she had a choice. She was wearing Umma’s body. She had to take on at least the bare minimum of Umma’s obligations. “I’ll come,” she said.
“Well, good.” Brigomarus sounded pleasantly surprised, as if he’d made the call expecting to be turned down flat. “Let’s go, then.”
“Aren’t you going to stay and play, Uncle Brigo?” Aurelia asked plaintively.
“I can’t,” he told her with more gentleness than Nicole might have expected. “Your grandmother is sick, and she wants to see your mother.”
“Is she going to die?” Lucius asked. In California, a child would have asked the question in tones of disbelief. Lucius merely sounded curious. He knew people died. In Carnuntum, nobody could help knowing it.
“That’s in the hands of the gods,” Brigomarus said. “She wants to see your mother. We have to go.”
The children didn’t beg to go with them, which Nicole found somewhat odd. She’d thought Lucius might, at least. But he stood with his sister and watched them go. They were both unusually quiet, unusually wide-eyed. They’d seen too much death, she thought. They didn’t need to see any more.
Nicole followed Umma’s brother out of the tavern. He strode along for a while with his head down, until they both had to wait as a funeral procession went past. Whoever the deceased was, he’d been important; most of the mourners wore togas, not tunics. Instead of lying on a bier, the corpse was carried in a sedan chair, so that he surveyed the city with his unseeing eyes. A dozen musicians brought up the rear of the procession, making a tremendous racket.
Nicole resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears. When the procession had passed, while her ears were still ringing with the noise, Brigomarus sighed. “In times like this, I don’t want t
o quarrel with anyone in my family. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?”
“Nobody,” Nicole answered. That was true in California, too, but seemed truer in Carnuntum. It was also, she realized a little more slowly than she should have, an offer of truce. “All right, Brigomarus,” she said. “I won’t argue with anyone if no one argues with me.”
He pursed his lips. He might have been expecting more, though what else he could want, she couldn’t imagine. Then he nodded. “That will have to do.”
Damn him, she thought in a rise of temper. She was being generous, and he made her generosity seem a paltry thing.
She made herself relax. However grudging his acceptance, nevertheless, he had accepted the gift. It would, as he’d said, have to do.
Two streets farther on, another funeral procession went past. This one delayed Nicole and Brigomarus less than a minute. Two shrouded corpses, one large, one small, lay side by side on the bier. A woman and a youth on whose cheeks the down was just beginning to darken paced behind it. Both of them wore the blank, car-wreck look of sudden disaster. A few friends and relatives followed them. They had no musicians. Maybe they couldn’t afford any; they looked poor. Maybe the rich man’s family had hired all the musicians in town for his sendoff. And maybe, too, there weren’t so many healthy musicians left to hire.
The bereaved woman sneezed several times, violently, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her tunic. Her son coughed rackingly and continuously, as if he had no power to stop.
“They’re coming down with it, too,” Brigomarus said bleakly. People in the city hadn’t needed long to recognize the early signs of the pestilence.
“Not everyone who gets it dies from it,” Nicole said. “I’ve heard of people getting better.” A couple of heartbeats after she should have, she added, “I hope Mother will be one of them.”
Brigomarus noticed the lapse. He opened his mouth as if to call her on it, then sighed instead. She glared at him. He glared back. They walked side by side, each obviously wishing the other were a hundred miles away.
