by Judith Tarr
Julia raised an eyebrow, but mercifully didn’t ask questions. Sometimes, Nicole reflected with a twinge of residual guilt, it wasn’t too inconvenient that Julia had been a slave. Slaves learned, better and faster than most, when it didn’t pay to be curious.
Lazy in the afterglow, Nicole sprawled next to and on Titus Calidius Severus. Her head lay on his chest, one arm stretched across his belly, one thigh draped over him so the rest of her leg lay between his. She was, emphatically, a satisfied customer.
“It’s good with you,” she said, and raised her hand to stroke his cheek. In the light of the one lamp on the chest of drawers, the arm’s shadow leaped and swooped.
His own free arm slid slowly along her flank, tracing the smooth, economical curves of Umma’s body. One corner of Nicole’s mouth twisted. In Los Angeles, this body would have been sleek. Here, it was skinny. Just one more example of you can’t win no matter how hard you try syndrome.
“You make me a happy man,” he said, and, as if to prove it, tilted her face up and kissed her. He wasn’t after a second round. He was just… enjoying himself. So, for that matter, was she. He was good in bed, and she didn’t think she was too bad there either; but more than that, they liked one another. They took pleasure in each other’s company.
Idly, she wondered why she’d been lucky enough to find a good lover when so little in the rest of Carnuntum had turned out to be any good at all. Polluted water, lead everywhere, slavery, brutality, sexism, appalling notions of medicine — and, in the middle of all that, as good a lover as any she’d ever known in the United States. She pondered Calidius’ shadowed face the way a D.A. pondered a piece of evidence that didn’t fit a pattern.
And then, after a moment, it did, or she thought it did. In their waterworks, in their pottery glazes, in their political and legal institutions, in what their doctors knew — in all those things and more, the Romans lacked eighteen hundred years of collective experience she’d taken for granted. She’d had no idea how much she’d taken it for granted, either, till she’d had her face rubbed in it.
But sex wasn’t something that tended to improve through collective experience. It was something everybody learned for herself or himself over the course of a lifetime. It might get more athletic, it might get more esoteric — she remembered some rather interesting nights when she was in law school, when she and a certain young man had worked their way through the greatest hits of the Kama Sutra — but when it came down to it, it could be just as good in plain vanilla as in the fanciest flavor you could imagine. Maybe that meant Alley Oop the caveman had been able to keep Mrs. Oop happy, too. For Mrs. Oop’s sake, Nicole hoped so.
She laughed a little. The exhalation stirred the hair on Calidius Severus’ chest. He raised an eyebrow. “What’s funny?”
“I think I’ve figured out why you’re so good,” she answered.
“And that’s funny?” He snorted. “You didn’t need to go and do any figuring for that. I could have told you: it’s the company I keep.”
Nobody had ever said anything remotely like that to her. Frank certainly hadn’t. Most of the men she’d dated since Frank had been too busy thinking about either themselves or their chances of getting laid to imagine saying such a thing. For a stretching instant, she wanted to cry. Then she wanted something else. She was amazed to discover how much she wanted it. Well, she thought, aphrodisiacs are where you find them.
Getting what else she wanted took considerable effort, but, in the end, it turned out to be effort well spent. She was, she thought, pretty well spent herself. So was Titus Calidius Severus. He peered up at her while she still sat astride him. “You can be my jockey any day,” he said.
She reached down to stroke his cheek again. Her hand lingered, savoring the crispness of his beard and the smoothness of the cheek above it, then paused. Almost of itself, it went to his forehead. “You’re warm,” she said in sudden sharp suspicion. No afterglow this time; alarm killed it even though he still nestled, shrinking, inside her.
He laughed and made light of it: “After what we’ve been doing? You’d best believe I’m warm.” Without warning, he pinched her. She jerked and squeaked. He flopped out of her.
She let him jolly and cajole her as he got into his tunic and sandals. But she knew the sweaty feel of skin after love; that was how her own skin felt now. He hadn’t felt like that. He’d been warm and dry, the way Kimberley and Justin sometimes were before they came down with something. If you came down with something in Carnuntum now…
“I’m fine,” he said downstairs in the doorway, as they embraced. They’d taken to doing that, safe enough in the shadow of the entrance, but this night or very early morning, it lasted a little longer, and held a little tighter. He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as her. “Fine. See? Fit as can be, and ready to whip my weight in lions.”
He still felt warm, or Nicole thought he did. She wasn’t quite sure. Maybe she was a little warm herself. Or maybe she was letting her imagination and her fear run away with her. She hoped so.
Titus Calidius Severus coughed sharply, several times, as he crossed the street. When he got back to his own door, he looked over his shoulder. Nicole stared at the dim white smudge of his face in the dawn. His eyes were almost preternaturally dark. He shook his head and went inside. His step had a jaunty bounce to it, as if to prove to her that there was nothing wrong with him. No, nothing at all.
Nicole fled upstairs. Behind the barred door of her bedroom, she gave way to the brief luxury of tears. They were more tears of rage, rage that the pestilence might come between her and most of the good she’d found in Carnuntum, than tears of fear.
She sneezed. A moment later, she sneezed again. And again. It didn’t feel like a cold coming on. It felt like the flu. It felt like a killer flu.
She wished she hadn’t thought of it that way. The tears that came next were tears of fear.
She slept for a little while, maybe, a heavy sleep, full of formless dreams. When she got up, she still felt fluish, fluish and a little hung over, too; though she hadn’t drunk that much the night before, the light hurt her eyes as it had when she’d deliberately got plastered with Julia. The tavern seemed too bright, though it must have been almost totally dark. When she opened the front door, she had to blink several times against the glare.
While she was blinking, Titus Calidius Severus emerged from his shop with his amphorae. They waved to each other. “How are you? ‘ they said, each an echo of the other. It was not a simple morning pleasantry. They both really wanted — needed — to know.
“Fine,” they answered, both at the same time. Nicole knew she was lying. And so was Titus Calidius Severus. If he didn’t know that, she would have been astonished.
She went back inside, welcoming the dimness after the blaze of the morning. Julia was just coming downstairs, heavy-eyed and yawning. She swallowed her yawn, nearly choked on it, in embarrassment at finding Nicole there ahead of her. “I’m sorry, Mistress,” she said, sounding genuinely apologetic but not terrified, the way she had before Nicole manumitted her: one small step at a time, she was learning to be free. “How are you this morning?”
“Fine,” Nicole answered, as she had for Titus Calidius Severus. If she said it often enough, if she made other people believe it, maybe it would turn out to be true.
She failed before she’d begun. Julia stiffened at the sound of her voice, and peered at her. “Fine? Are you, Mistress Umma?” She strode to a window and set hand to the shutters. “Come over here, “ she said sharply, “and let me take a look at you.” She might have been talking to Lucius or Aurelia.
That was irritating, but Nicole lacked the energy to rise to it. Julia flung the shutters wide. Daylight streamed in, dazzling her. Tears of pain ran down her cheeks. She started to flinch away from it, but forced herself to hold still. Even so, she raised a hand to shield against the worst of the glare.
Julia clicked her tongue. “Oh, Mistress,” she said. She laid her h
and on Nicole’s forehead. When she lowered it, her face was tight with worry. “Oh, Mistress,” she said again. “I’m afraid you’ve got — “ She didn’t say it. Instead, she tugged at the neckline of her tunic and spat onto her bosom.
“I’m afraid I’ve got it, too,” Nicole said. She didn’t say the word, the one whose ill omen Julia had tried to cast aside: pestilence. She let out a sigh that, she realized too late, had probably sent a few million viruses into Julia’s face. She sighed again, this time averting her face. “Whether I do or I don’t, I’ve got to keep going as long as I can.”
It wasn’t bravery, not really. It was denial. Julius Rufus had said it while he stood in front of her with a fever hot enough to bake bread. Bare minutes later, he’d collapsed in the street. Within the hour, he was dead, slipped away quietly while he lay just inside the doorway of the tavern.
That was a nice, cheerful note on which to start the morning.
Nicole was sicker than a dog, but she wasn’t close to collapse. Yet. She didn’t think. When Lucius and Aurelia came down for breakfast, Nicole examined them like a hawk — from a distance, to minimize the chance of breathing disease onto them. They both seemed fine: hungry and rowdy. She didn’t know how much that proved. She’d been rowdy herself the night before. She coughed. Wet snot tickled her nose and made her sneeze. The love she’d enjoyed — and how she had enjoyed it! — with Titus Calidius Severus seemed a million miles away.
Customers came in: not too many. That helped Nicole, who was moving slower than she should have, to deal with them. Some of them were moving slower than they should have, too, as if they’d been recorded at 45 rpm and were playing back at 33 1/3.
That phrase wouldn’t mean anything to Kimberley and Justin. All they’d know would be CDs and tapes. Records would be primitive, outmoded. She laughed. She’d learned more about primitive and outmoded than she’d ever dreamt possible. Was a record primitive in an oxcart?
She was aware enough to realize her wits were starting to wander. When she thought about it, she could force them back into — or close to — their proper path. When she didn’t think about it, they started drifting again.
Brigomarus came in that afternoon. He was still healthy, but he looked grim. “Flavius Probus just died, ‘ he said. He didn’t sound astonished, as an American would have been to announce the death of someone in the prime of life. He sounded weary; this was but one more death piled on many. “He — Umma, are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” Nicole answered. It wasn’t easy to make herself pay attention, but she managed. “Too bad about him.”
“Too bad? Is that all you can say?” Brigomarus started to cloud up, but checked himself. He took a long look at her. “Oh, by the gods, you’ve got it, too.”
“I think so,” Nicole said vaguely. Again, she forced herself to focus. “You’d better go home, Brigo. It’s catching from person to person, you know. I don’t suppose I want to make you sick.” She wouldn’t have put it that way if she’d been well, but she wouldn’t have had to warn him then, either.
He didn’t take offense. Maybe he didn’t notice the way she phrased it; maybe he made allowances for the pestilence. He said, “As long as I’m well, I’ll come back and see how you’re doing. I’ll do what I can for you — you are my sister, no matter how — “ He broke off. “You are my sister.”
“That’s true. I am your sister.” It was nice to know they could agree on something.
Brigomarus didn’t linger after that. Nicole was interested to see how he got up and drifted out the door, moving as if he were underwater. After a while — Nicole wasn’t sure how long — Julia said, “Mistress, you ought to go upstairs and go to bed.”
“No, that’s what you do,” Nicole said: the first thing that popped into her head. She laughed. She thought it was funny. But she didn’t have a sense of humor. Nothing was funny to her. Frank had said it often enough. “Dawn makes me laugh,” he’d said after he split. Damned blasted cliche.
Damn: she was sicker than she’d thought.
Julia didn’t seem to think the joke was very funny, and Julia did have a sense of humor. “I don’t mean go to bed with anyone,” she said. Maybe she, like Brigomarus, was making allowances. Maybe she was just feeling literal. “I mean by yourself, to rest.”
“But I can’t rest.” Even through the haze of illness, Nicole knew that. “If I rest, the work won’t get done.” Yes, she sounded like Julius Rufus. She pressed her hand to her own forehead. She was hot. She didn’t think she was as hot as the brewer had been, but her palm was hot, too, so she couldn’t be sure. “I’ve got to go on.”
“What if you fall over?” Julia asked reasonably.
“If I fall over, I probably would have fallen over in bed, too,” Nicole replied. “You can drag me upstairs then.” Maybe I’ll die on the way up. Maybe I’ll take two aspirins and feel better in the morning. No. No aspirins. She remembered — no aspirins. But something… something. “The willow-bark decoction!” she exclaimed, inordinately proud that she’d remembered.
But Julia said, “We haven’t got any more. Poor Fabia Ursa used what we had — and how much good did it do her?”
Nicole hadn’t remembered that. “Go out and buy a new jar.” It had done a little good when she’d been down with the galloping trots. Maybe it would do a little good now. Would that be enough? What could Nicole do but hope?
Julia seemed eager to snatch whatever hope she could find. She scooped coins out of the cash box and left at a lope. After she was gone — quite a while after — Nicole realized she had no idea how much money Julia had scooped up. Well, if her freedwoman had ripped her off, she damn well had, and that was that.
Julia came back fairly quickly with a little jar clutched in her hand. She dumped a handful of money back in the cash box. Either she’d been honest or she was covering her tracks. Nicole rebuked herself as soon as she’d thought that, poured the potion into a cup of wine and honey, and drank it down. It still tasted hideously bitter — yes, like aspirin in the back of her throat. She chopped onions, trying not to chop off any fingers while she was doing it, and waited to see if the medicine would help.
It did — a little. Instead of feeling very hot and disconnected from the world around her, after an hour or so she felt hot and distantly connected to the world around her. She still didn’t feel good, or anything close to it. She snapped and railed at Julia and the children. Every little thing set her off; it was all she could do not to take it out on the customers. Of course she knew why she was so irritable, but she couldn’t help it. The words came out all by themselves, with nothing conscious in them at all.
Toward evening of what had seemed an endless day, Titus Calidius Severus crossed the street and swayed into the tavern. Maybe it was her fever, but he seemed to weave where he stood, like waterweeds in a current. He ordered bread and wine, but before Nicole could reach for the loaf, he grimaced and shook his head. “No, just wine,” he said, setting a dupondius on the bar. “The two-as. I haven’t had any appetite today. “
Nicole realized she’d hardly eaten anything, either. The thought of food, even food as bland as bread, made her stomach cringe. “How are you?” she asked as she brought the fuller and dyer his wine.
He studied her. It took a while; he seemed to have to pause and remember why he was doing it. Finally, he said, “About the same as you are, I expect.” He sighed and shook his head. “Not much point to pretending anymore, is there? We’ve got it, sure as sure.”
“Yes, I think we do,” Nicole said with a kind of relief. She hadn’t known how much effort it took to deny the truth. It was like a load off her back — even with the fear that replaced it, the bone-deep dread of death.
Calidius Severus frowned and stuck a finger in his ear, as if he didn’t think he’d heard right. “What was that?”
“Yes, I think we do,” Nicole repeated. Listening to the words, she realized they were in English. She said them again, this time in Latin.
“Ah.” Calidius face cleared. “I wondered if you couldn’t talk right, or if the fever was doing funny things to my ears. What were those noises you were making? Sounded almost like the grunts the Quadi use for a language.”
“I don’t know — I suppose it must be the fever.” Nicole had never made that kind of slip before. She hoped she never made it again. This time, at least, she had an excuse for it. Next time…
There couldn’t be a next time. There mustn’t be.
“The fever,” Titus Calidius Severus agreed. “And the eyes — I’m like an owl in the daylight.” Nicole nodded. He went on, “Then the rash comes — and then we find out if we live or die.” He tossed back the rest of his wine. “One way or the other, it won’t be too long.”
“No.” Back in Los Angeles, Nicole hadn’t worried about dying young, except for a few brief, dreadful moments on the freeway. She thought she should have been more upset. If she’d felt better, if she’d been more fully a part of the world, she would have been terrified. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have had so much to worry about if she’d felt better.
“Everyone else here well?” the fuller and dyer asked.
“So far,” Nicole said. “And your son?”
“Gaius is fine — so far, as you say,” Calidius Severus answered.
Wearily, blearily, Nicole shook her head. “My brother-in-law died today — Brigomarus brought me the news. By the time it’s over, half the people in town will be dead.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” Calidius Severus said, but before Nicole could feel even a little bit hopeful, he went on, “By what I’ve heard, down in Italy and Greece it’s killing one in four, maybe one in three. “
A fourth to a third of the people in Italy and Greece — dead? From a disease? A pestilence? Nicole thought again of the Black Plague, and of that TV documentary about the horrible things disease had done to the Native Americans. Again, the sickness already in her kept her from knowing the full weight of horror. Even through the fog, it was bad enough.
