by Judith Tarr
Either way, she amazed herself with how much she could sleep. She might almost have been a hibernating animal. When slate-gray gloom turned black, she would wrap herself in her blankets, and not know another thing till black lightened again toward gloom. After a while even a bursting bladder couldn’t wake her; she slept straight through, woke and half-fell on the pot, and staggered downstairs to scrape out another day’s living.
As December advanced, Julia and Lucius started to get excited about something called the Saturnalia. With all that they said about it, Nicole understood how and why the English word came to be associated with revelry. It was a whole week’s festival, centered on the winter solstice; it celebrated the sun’s turn back toward the north. Sunreturn — inch by inch, day by day, creeping once again toward the long brilliant days and brief starlit nights of summer.
No wonder they made a festival out of it. Even the dim vague dream of honest daylight was enough to perk Nicole up, though the dirty-gray reality of the days dragged her down soon enough.
Then Lucius started dropping hints. “Did you see the game board old Furius Picatus has in his shop around the corner? It’s hollow, and it’s got a set of dice in the middle. Jupiter! The games I could play, if I had that.”
Why, Nicole thought, Saturnalia was like Christmas. People gave presents — and kids dropped hints. A game board and dice were preferable to the latest media tie-in, hands down, no questions asked. So — had Christmas presents begun in the tradition of the Saturnalia? Did they really go that far back?
She’d always loved Christmas, even when it was trendy to emulate Ebenezer Scrooge. Choosing and buying presents, hiding them, waiting to see the faces when they were unwrapped at last — she was like a little kid. “About the only time you ever were,” Frank had said to her after the divorce. At this distance, she could grant that maybe he was right. But better to be a kid once a year than never to be a kid at all.
Yes, even in a year that had brought so much shock, and so much death. This was a time for warmth, and for such light as there could be. She wouldn’t forget grief, or put the dead out of her mind completely, but she could give herself, at least for this season, entirely to the living.
She bought the board and dice for Lucius, bargaining Furius Picatus down to a price that was almost reasonable. Then she found a little greenish glass jar of rosewater for Julia, packaging that would have been the height of trendiness in Neiman-Marcus, and a pair of sandals for Brigomarus. She measured his feet from prints he left on the muddied tavern floor — pretty damn clever, if she thought so herself. For Gaius Calidius Severus she bought a belt of woven leather, very fine and fancy, with a gleaming brass buckle. She was vastly pleased with that, and with the price she’d got the leather-worker down to — her bargaining skills were honed by now to a wicked edge.
Two days before the first day of the festival, Gaius Calidius Severus came over for a cup of wine. He hadn’t been by for a day or two: busy, she’d supposed, with orders for gifts. He greeted her less brightly than usual, and stumbled as he sat down. Then, as she brought him his cup of two-as wine, he doubled up in a fit of sneezing and coughing. It looked — oh, God, it looked like the pestilence.
He straightened, wiping his eyes. Something in his face told her not to say anything. He drank his wine, made small talk that she forgot as soon as the words had gone through her head, and went back home, mumbling something about a dye lot that had to come out right then, and he hoped it was the right shade, too; it was for one of his pickier customers.
Nicole stood by the bar, watching him go. There was no one else in the tavern just then, only Julia kneading a batch of the best bread in Carnuntum. “It’s not fair,” Nicole said to her, bursting out with it before she even had time to think. “It’s not right. He took care of his father. He took care of us. The sickness passed him by. Now it’s been gone for months — and he’s got it. Why?”
Julia shrugged. She knew as well as Nicole did, there wasn’t any answer to that. After a bit, she said, “He didn’t seem too bad yet, did he?”
“No,” Nicole said, “not yet. But we know it gets worse. Don’t we?”
“Oh, yes.” Julia didn’t say anything more than that. She didn’t need to. Her cheekbones still showed sharp as wind-carved rock under her skin, with no padding of flesh to smooth their outline. She’d have been a knockout in certain parts of Beverly Hills, where you could never be too rich or too thin, but in Carnuntum Ofanius Valens was right: she was a creature in sore need of feeding up.
She finished kneading the lump of dough on the countertop, washed her hands in a bowl of water, and dried them on her tunic. Then, in a tone that said she’d made her decision and that was that, she said, “He took care of me when I was sick. I’m going over there to take care of him. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Nicole blinked, startled. Julia had never asserted herself this way before. Nicole should be welcoming it as a declaration of freedom. Instead, she found herself — annoyed? No, of course not. She was being practical, that was all. There was work to do here. “If he’s not that bad, he won’t need to be taken care of yet,” she said.
Julia looked at her. They were both speaking Latin, but they were not speaking the same language. As if to make that clear, the freedwoman said, “He’ll still enjoy it now. Later… who knows? He may never have another chance.” While Nicole was still groping for a reply, Julia walked calmly out of the tavern and down the sidewalk, toward the stepping stones.
Nicole opened her mouth to call out, but closed it again. Julia was a free woman, and an adult. Even if she was Nicole’s employee, her mind and her decisions were her own. As Nicole watched, she came up the walk on the far side of the muddy street and opened the door to the shop where Gaius Calidius Severus now worked alone. She closed the door after her. Nicole couldn’t see any more than that, but she didn’t need to. Her imagination worked perfectly well.
She’d never used sex to say thank you even to Frank, let alone to a neighbor who’d been nice to her. Most of the time, Julia’s freewheeling approach to such things made her want to pound her head against the top of the bar. This once, she resolved to say not a word.
Frank would have been amazed. She was the epitome of the Midwestern prude, he’d told her often enough. “Judge plenty, and be damned sure nobody judges you,” he’d said. She didn’t even remember what she’d replied. Something lame, she was sure.
Julia came back not too long after — an hour, maybe; maybe less. She wasn’t any more or less kempt than ever, but there was a flush on her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. It almost made her look like her old robust self.
Nicole didn’t ask, but Julia answered regardless. “Tomorrow might have been too late,“ she said, “but today — it was fine. “
That practically forced Nicole to say a word. She found one: “Good.” Julia shot her a quizzical glance. Nicole wondered why. Umma, surely, would have said the same thing. But Nicole had been in Umma’s body for more than six months now. Julia had got used to her odd, squeamish reactions to perfectly normal and acceptable things.
Good grief, thought Nicole. She’d done it. She’d surprised the by now unsurprisable Julia.
She nodded slowly, letting the moment stretch. “Good,” she said again. No one ought to be too predictable.
Saturnalia felt amazingly like Christmas. No one had ever heard of a Christmas tree, which was too bad; Nicole loved the glitter of the tree, and one would have looked — well, interesting over by the bar. But everything else was remarkably similar.
The resemblance extended all the way to getting a present from someone for whom she hadn’t bought one in return. Skinny, short-tempered Antonina presented her with a glazed pottery dog that was one of the ugliest things she’d ever seen — and that included her mother’s set of Staffordshire dogs. Even those were more appealing than this thing was.
“Thank you so much,” she said as warmly as she could. For all she knew, the damn critter was the height of sw
ank in these parts. “Wait just one moment, would you? I have your present upstairs.”
She hurried up the stairs in a haze of desperation, with the rags of her smile still clinging to her face. Her bedroom offered little enough sanctuary. But — for a wonder, her eyes lit on just the thing. She snatched the terra sigillata bowl from the set on her chest of drawers, dusted it off hastily, and trotted back down the stairs. She was getting stronger at last: she didn’t even think about passing out from so much exertion. With as much of a flourish as she could muster, she presented the bowl to her neighbor.
Antonina made gratified noises much like the ones she’d used herself. She and Nicole drank wine together. Good cheer reigned, as much as it ever did around Antonina. After a suitable interval, she said as cordial a goodbye as Nicole had ever heard from her, and went on out the door, bowl in hand.
As soon as she was gone, Julia picked up the dog and made a ghastly face — almost as ghastly as the dog’s own. “By the gods, that’s a hideous little thing, isn’t it?”
“You think so, too?” said Nicole. “Well; one has to be polite. Maybe she thinks it’s the height of fashion.”
“Hardly!” said Julia, in a tone so like a Valley Girl that Nicole almost burst out laughing. But there would have been no explaining the distinctive intonations of “As if!” to a second-century Roman freedwoman in the valley of the Danube.
It was a relief, actually, to know that she might get rid of the ceramic tumor without offending local standards of good taste.
“I’ll bet somebody gave it to her, and she’s just getting rid of it to keep from spending any money on a decent present,” Julia said.
“Then we’re even,” Nicole said, “because I pulled that bowl off the dresser and dusted it off, and there it was.”
“It wasn’t a bad bowl,” Julia said. “But this…” She juggled the dog from hand to hand. It slipped; Nicole held her breath. But it didn’t fall. Julia plunked it down on the bar, right by the bowl of nuts.
“It doesn’t look half bad there,” Nicole observed.
“Maybe a customer will have a few too many and knock it on the floor,” said Julia.
“Maybe there’s treasure hidden inside it.”
Julia’s eyes gleamed. Then she laughed in disbelief. “No! Not if Antonina gave it to you. You can bet, if there’d been anything in there, she’d have winkled it out.”
“Dear old Antonina,” Nicole said with a theatrical sigh.
One way and another, the two of them spent a very pleasant half-hour dragging Antonina’s name through the mud. There was plenty of that outside, and not a little inside, either. No point in letting it go to waste.
When the dishfest wound down, Nicole filled a bowl of soup and a jar of wine, and took them across the street to Gaius Calidius Severus. He was in no condition to romp on the sheets with Julia now. The pestilence had him fully in its grip. If she could get a little nourishment into him, he might be able to fight the disease. There wasn’t much more she, or anyone else in Carnuntum, could do.
It was almost as chilly inside the shop as on the street. That was true in the tavern, too. Fires and braziers were all very well — when you stood right by them. If you didn’t, you froze your backside off. That probably had a lot to do with the death rate. People who might have recovered if they could have got warm, shivered and sank and died. Please, God, Nicole thought, don’t let that happen to Calidius Severus.
Even in winter, the fuller and dyer’s shop stank to high heaven. Nicole held her breath as she strode quickly through it and climbed the stairs to Gaius Calidius Severus’ bedroom. There she had to breathe or turn blue, drawing in a whiff of a completely different stink: the sickroom reek of slops and sour sweat that Nicole had first smelled in the room where Umma’s mother died, and then soon after in her own house.
Gaius Calidius Severus had kicked off most of the covers she’d tucked over him the last time she visited. He hadn’t, fortunately, kicked over the chamberpot by the bed. Nicole scooped it up and dumped it out the window. “There,” she muttered. “That’ll be better.”
The sound of her voice made him look in her direction. He wasn’t altogether out of his head with fever, as she had been. But he wasn’t quite connected to the real world, either. He proved it by asking, “What are you doing, Mother?”
“I’m just getting rid of what’s in the chamberpot,” Nicole answered. She didn’t say she was his mother, but neither did she say she wasn’t. If thinking his mother was taking care of him made him feel a tiny bit better, that was good; let him think it.
It didn’t seem to help a lot, if it helped at all. His expression changed; he began to wriggle, and then to thrash. She braced to leap, in case his fever had turned to convulsions, but as suddenly as he’d begun, he lay still. In a small voice full of shame, he said, “Mother, I’m afraid I’ve had an accident.”
Nicole’s nose would have told her as much: the stink in the room had worsened, even though the chamberpot was empty. “Don’t worry about it,” she said soothingly. “I’ll take care of it.” Did he think he was a little boy just learning to use the pot? Or did he know how old he was, but not who she was? It didn’t really matter. Either way, she had to clean him off, just as, last summer, he’d done for her.
In a way, it wasn’t too awfully different from changing Justin’s diaper after an especially messy load. In another, it was completely different. Gaius Calidius Severus was emphatically and rather impressively made like a man, not a boy. No wonder Julia likes him, Nicole thought through the slight vertigo of trying not to breathe. “I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she reassured him. “Everything will be all right.”
When he was as clean as he was going to be, and the remains tossed out the window with the rest, she let her hand rest for a moment against his cheek. As soon as she’d done it, she wished she hadn’t. She didn’t really want to know how high his fever was. But he let out a sigh and leaned very lightly against her palm. Maybe it was cool; maybe it comforted him. Either way, he seemed a little better, a little less troubled.
She spooned soup into him. When he’d taken all he was going to take, which was about a third of the bowl, she poured a cup of wine and held it to his lips. He coughed and spluttered. With a faint sigh, she dipped the spoon into that, too, and got it into him more successfully. One small swallow at a time, he did pretty well, all things considered: he took more than he had the last time, and much more than the time before that. It was progress. She’d take it.
Just as she was about to leave, when she thought he’d fallen asleep, he roused enough to speak. “Thank you, Mistress Umma.”
She turned in surprise. He still sounded like hell, but he knew who she was.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, more to be saying something than for any other reason. She knew how he felt: as if he had one whole foot and three toes of the other in the grave. She’d felt the same way herself not so long before.
“Terrible,” he answered, right on cue. He sounded it. He looked it. But he had recognized her, and that was a big step forward. He yawned. “Do you mind if I sleep?”
“Not even a little bit,” Nicole said warmly. That was good; oh, that was very good indeed. She’d slept, too, slept and slept, after she came out of her delirium. She’d awakened feeling lousy, but she’d been on the mend. Maybe he was, too.
She hated to leave him, but she had the tavern to run, and Julia was waiting. She broke the news as soon as she’d passed the door. Julia clapped her hands in delight. “Maybe we’ve turned the corner,” she said. “Maybe we’ve turned the corner at last.”
“Please,” Nicole said, not knowing Whom she was entreating, and not much caring, either, “let it be so.”
Gaius Calidius Severus lived. The first time he came across the street on his own, he looked like a tattered shadow of his usually vigorous self. But he was up and moving, and that was all that really mattered. Nicole gave him a pla
te of fried snails and a cup of Falernian, and wouldn’t take an as for any of it. “Your father knew how far he’d get, arguing with me,” she said when he tried to protest. “Are you going to give me trouble now?”
“No, Mistress Umma,” he said meekly. He ate obediently, and drank, with the little widening of the eyes everyone got at the first wonderful taste of Falernian.
Julia sauntered past his table, putting everything she had into it, which was quite a lot. He didn’t look up from the wine. Well, Nicole thought, he isn’t quite back to normal yet. A little while longer, and a little way to go. But he was well on track, and that was good enough.
New Year’s was celebrated not with horns and paper hats but with clay lamps stamped with the two-faced image of Janus. On the morning of the festival, Julia pulled a couple of them from the back of a shelf, dusted them, filled them with oil, and lit them.
“This year,” Nicole said, studying one of the images in the flicker of its flame, “I want to look ahead, not behind. Things will be better. They won’t get worse.”
“May it be so,” Julia said fervently. And after a moment: “The gods know, it would be hard for things to get much worse.”
Half an hour couldn’t have gone by before a funeral procession made its slow way down the muddy street toward Carnuntum’s southwestern gate, the gate that led to the graveyard. Nicole watched it for a moment, then deliberately turned her head. She’d already seen more death in half a year in Carnuntum than in her whole life in the United States. She didn’t want or need to be reminded of it again. Not today. Not when there was a future to look forward to, and a life to live.
Since the day he got up from his bed to savor snails and Falernian, Gaius Calidius Severus had come over every day at about the same time. He was back to paying for his own food and drink, which dropped him down to bread and oil and onions and two-as wine, but he professed himself happy with it.
