by Judith Tarr
“I suppose so,” he said, “but I don’t know. I expect I never will.”
He dipped his bread in olive oil and ate. Nicole still had plenty of grain and, if anything, an oversupply of oil for the tiny amount of business she was doing. She was out of wine: the Germans had made sure of that.
Being out of wine meant drinking water. She didn’t dare go over to the market square to find out if more wine was to be had, not yet. She didn’t think any would be, anyhow, not judging by all the drunken barbarians she’d seen. At her insistence, Julia boiled water in the biggest pots they had. “This is a silly business, Mistress,” the freedwoman insisted.
“Do it anyhow,” Nicole said. Being the boss gave her the privilege of being arbitrary. She’d long since seen that arguments and explanations based on what the twentieth century knew and the second century didn’t were worse than useless. “It can’t hurt anything, can it?”
“I suppose not.” Julia was still dubious, but did as she was told. When, after a day or two, nobody came down with the runs, she allowed as how it might not have been such a bad idea. That was the biggest concession Nicole had ever wrung from her.
More and more Germans came into Carnuntum. Some were celebrating the destruction of the legionary camp down the river. Some came to plunder and steal, though the pickings by now were thin. A lot simply passed through, on their way south toward other Roman towns and more Roman loot.
“All the Roman Empire will be ours,” Swemblas boasted one day. “Every bit of it.”
Nicole didn’t argue with him. She thought there’d been Roman Emperors after Marcus Aurelius, but she wasn’t sure enough of it to say so. Not to mention that disagreeing with one of the new German masters of Carnuntum was likely to prove hazardous to her health.
He didn’t stay long, in any case. A tavern without wine had far less appeal to him than one with it. “If you have no wine, what good are you?” he demanded.
“You and your friends drank all I had,” Nicole answered, not too sharply, she hoped. “How am I supposed to get more?”
“In the market, of course,” Swemblas said in a tone she knew all too well. Male arrogance and superiority, patronizing the silly little woman, and letting her know just what an idiot she was.
His astonishment was all the stronger for that, when Nicole laughed in his face. “Suppose I can go to the market without having a dozen of your friends pull me down and rape me, the way they did to my neighbor,” she said. Swemblas’ expression went from astonished to shocked, likely because she dared talk so directly about what he did for fun. “Suppose I can do that,” she said. “I’m not sure I can, but suppose. You people have drunk or stolen all the wine the merchants had on hand. Where are they going to get more?”
“It is not my problem,” Swemblas said. “It is for the merchants to do.”
“Good luck,” Nicole said serenely. “Now the war is here, and south of here, not off somewhere farther west.” Being vague let her conceal how ignorant she was of local geography. But then, a lot of people who’d been born and raised in Carnuntum knew little of Vindobona, twenty miles up the Danube, and less about any place farther away. “If you were a Roman wine merchant, would you want to come up to Carnuntum from Italy, knowing there were Germans in the way?”
“I am not a merchant. I am not a Roman. I do not want to be either,” Swemblas said with dignity. And without a further word, he strode out.
He’d entirely missed the point. Nicole sighed. She shouldn’t have expected anything different. Had the Germans been able to see anything from anyone else’s point of view, they wouldn’t have reckoned robbery and rape and murder to be fine sport, or applauded one another for them.
The next day, whether she wanted to or not, Nicole had to go to market. She was out of everything but grain and oil, and those were starting to run low.
Julia tried to talk her out of it. “Mistress,” she said, “the less you show yourself, the safer you’ll be.”
“Yes, but if I get to the market square now, I have a better chance of finding things before it’s picked clean,” Nicole answered. She wasn’t as bold as she sounded, but Julia didn’t call her on it. Julia was still shaking her head as Nicole went out the door.
There were Germans in the streets, swaggering about with a lordly air. In front of the shop where Nicole had bought her image of Liber and Libera, one of the conquerors picked up a votive plaque with an image of the naked Venus. He ran a hand over the limestone curves as if fondling a real woman.
“Gut!” he grunted, or close enough. The shopkeeper stood motionless. The German laughed, tucked the plaque under his arm, and sauntered off. The stonecarver stared after him, but knew better than to demand payment.
Something about the incident stopped Nicole cold. It wasn’t the theft — that was common enough these days. It wasn’t the shopkeeper’s powerlessness, not really. And yet…
I don’t have the right plaque, Nicole thought. The thought was very clear. She’d had it before, and more than once, but never so distinctly. The god and goddess aren’t listening, because the plaque I have — it’s not the one I bought in Petronell. It’s not just the image, or the intent. It’s the connection to me, to my past and future. I need that one, and no other.
She couldn’t prove it. Nor was there any way to do so, unless she found the actual plaque, the one that had brought her here. Did it even exist yet? Would she have to wait another twenty or thirty years before it was made?
No, she thought with a shiver. She had to believe, for her own sanity, that the plaque had brought her back to the time when it was carved. Otherwise, what would be the point of it at all?
She put the thought away for now; because she had an errand, and it was urgent. It wasn’t too terribly hard to distract herself: the city had changed since she last went out to market. Shops that had once been open were closed and shuttered, Germans came and went from houses that had belonged to solid Roman citizens, the few women who were out and about went warily as Nicole herself did, and probably with some kind of weapon concealed in their clothing. Nicole, whose chief weapon was her stink of ancient piss, was just as glad not to be armed. Her self-defense instructor had been blunt about it. “A knife or a gun may make you feel better when you carry it, but you’re just giving a mugger another weapon to use against you. Unless you can shoot or stab to kill or disable, and do it instantly, he’ll get hold of it and he’ll use it. And you’ll be worse off than you were before.”
Armed with a stink that kept even the locals from crowding in too close, Nicole passed the baths and came in sight of the open space of the market square. She stopped, and gasped.
The space was larger, much larger, than it had ever been before. It opened to the north and west, openness in shades of black, the charred ruins of the fire that she’d heard but not seen on the first day of the sack. Houses and shops and a handful of four- and five-story apartment buildings were flattened, burned to the ground.
Romans and Germans, their clothes and hides black with soot, sifted through the wreckage. Some of the Romans were probably trying to salvage what they could from the disaster. Many must have been thieves — as were all of the Germans.
When a Roman found something he was looking for, he slipped it into a pouch or hid it somewhere on his person, as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. When a German found a coin or a ring or anything of value, he held it up and crowed over it. He didn’t care who saw him, or worry that someone else might take his prize away from him.
Nicole shook her head at the fortunes of war, and ventured into the market. Most of the largest stalls were empty, their keepers dead or robbed or simply lying low. The Germans helped themselves to whatever struck their fancy. She watched a barbarian walk away from a sausage-seller gnawing on a length of garlicky stuff he hadn’t paid for. Like the stonecutter, the merchant could only look unhappy. There wouldn’t be a revolt here, not while the Germans were large and strong and trained to fight, and the locals were smaller, we
aker, and inclined to leave the fighting to professionals.
Nicole bought a length of sausage for herself. She didn’t have to haggle much to get a good price, rather to her surprise. “You’re only the third person today with money to spend,” the sausage-seller told her. “I’m happy to see any brass at all.”
With the sausage stowed away in her bag, she bought a sack of beans and a sack of peas, and filled another sack with lettuce and onions and cucumbers. That was as much as she could carry. There wasn’t any wine, as she’d fully expected.
Loaded down with her purchases but still trusting to her rape repellent, she left the market with relief. While she’d been busy shopping, she hadn’t taken time to notice the way the Germans eyed the women who’d ventured out to market. Once she was done, as she turned toward home, she grew all too well aware of it: long raking glances, and looks that stripped a woman bare and had their will of her. They didn’t actually drag anybody down and line up for the fun, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do it, or wouldn’t. The sooner she was out of their sight, the better. Her ears burned. She couldn’t move nearly fast enough, burdened as she was; she had to keep to a slower pace.
It felt like a crawl. To these bastards she was meat, nothing more, as free for the taking as a sausage or a sack of barley. If one of them decided to have fun with her, and never mind the stink that surrounded her, she couldn’t stop him. Not if she wanted to stay alive.
As it happened, no one touched her or accosted her. She made it home without undue trouble, and set down her burden of sacks and bags with a sigh of relief.
Julia wasn’t any less relieved than Nicole was. “Mistress!” she said. “You got away with it.”
That was pretty much how Nicole felt, but she wasn’t about to let Julia know it. “We have to eat,” she said. “We can go without a lot of things, but not food.” And if Julia knew exactly how much Nicole was going without, she’d never believe it.
“I just hope there’s food to be had,” Julia said. “The gods only know what the barbarians have done to the farmers outside the city — the ones who didn’t die of the pestilence, that is.”
“If they want money, they’ll have to bring crops into town,” Nicole said. Julia nodded, but she still looked worried. She wasn’t the only one. In all the hard times Nicole had back in the United States, she’d never missed a meal, or even come close. Going hungry because there was no food was something she’d seen on the news, flashed into her living room by satellite from somewhere else. That it could happen to her… With all the horrors she’d seen since she came to Carnuntum, she was a fool if she thought she’d be immune to any of them. She had to plan ahead. If she could lay in a supply, she’d better do it soon. And not just for herself, either. For Lucius — because if he starved to death, all his future died with him, and Nicole with it.
Later that afternoon, Brigomarus came by: his first visit since the city fell. Nicole couldn’t really fault him for taking this long to do his brotherly duty. She hadn’t exactly taken pains to make sure he was all right, either. When he was well past the door and within smelling distance of the bar, he sniffed and nearly gagged. “Phew! Smells like somebody dumped a pisspot in here.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to smell,” Nicole answered tartly. “It keeps the Germans away.”
“Keeps the customers away, too, I shouldn’t wonder,” Umma’s brother said.
“Customers are the least of my worries right now,” Nicole shot back.
“Really? ‘ Brigomarus raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought your family was the least of your worries. Didn’t you even stop to wonder if Tabica and I were alive?”
Nicole had a perfectly good excuse, and she didn’t hesitate to use it: “Today was the first time I’d even gone to the market square. I don’t go out if I can help it. If Tabica is doing anything different, she’s a fool.”
He chewed on that for a while, frowning. Then he nodded. She was supposed to be grateful, obviously, that he, the mighty male, had come round to her way of thinking. He wasn’t any different from a German, when you got down to it.
At least he wouldn’t hack her head off for talking back to him, though he might try to bite it off. “All right,” he said ungraciously. “Tabica’s staying in, yes. Now let it go. I didn’t come over to start the fight again.”
“No?” Nicole inquired. “It sure seemed that way.”
“I said I didn’t.” He scowled. After all this time, he still wasn’t used to backtalk from someone he recognized as his sister. “What do you want from me?”
“An apology would be nice,” Nicole said.
Now he stared. So did Julia. Nicole knew she was pushing it, but she didn’t care. If Brigomarus didn’t want to play by her rules, she was perfectly willing and able to have nothing more to do with him. It had taken her a while, but she’d come to realize just how much leverage that gave her. She really didn’t care — and he did. Desperately. As far as he knew, she was family. As she very well knew, she wasn’t. What mattered greatly to him meant nothing to her.
She held all the power. He might not understand it, but he knew it. Therefore, with bad grace, he yielded. “I’m sorry,” he said, doing a better job of it than Lucius might have, but not much. “I’m glad you’re safe here.” That sounded a little more as if he meant it.
“Safe?” Nicole’s laugh had a raw edge. She saw in her mind Antonina turned into a toy, a thing, for the amusement of any barbarian who happened to wander down the street. She knew how easily that could have happened to Julia, or to her. She saw Antonina’s husband, too, with the side of his head smashed in and blood puddled in the street, soaking into the dirt. “We’re not safe. It’s just that nothing horrible has happened to us yet.”
Brigomarus didn’t like that anymore than anything else she’d said, but he was an honest man, on the whole. He nodded. “I see. Anything can happen to any of us, any time. And there’s nothing we can do about it.” He paused. “I suppose… it must be worse for a woman.”
Nicole and Julia exchanged glances. Amazing, Nicole thought. He sees it. He actually sees it.
It was amazing. Women here really were the weaker sex. On the whole, they were smaller than men, and not so strong. Without the machines that made brute strength largely irrelevant, that mattered. Nicole had never realized how much women had benefited from the Industrial Revolution. She’d either taken machines for granted or sneered at them. If she ever got back to California, she promised whatever gods might be listening, she would never sneer again.
And, beyond even that, women had babies. That still complicated their lives in the twentieth century, but by that time the risk of dying in childbed had grown very small. It was alive and well in Carnuntum. So was the risk of getting pregnant whenever a woman lay down with a man. She knew how unreliable the plug of wool she’d used had been, and how lucky she was not to have been caught.
Engineering. Science. Medicine. She’d never realized how important they were till she had to do without them. Without them, could women in the modern West have come as close to equality as they had? She doubted it.
Resolutely, she dragged her mind back to the here-and-now. This was no time to be mulling over the extent of her education, still less to be yearning for her own place and time. Brigo, unlike Julia or the Calidii Severi, wasn’t likely to cut her slack while she lost herself in a reverie. She put on an expression of polite interest and inquired, “What are you doing these days?”
He seemed relieved to take refuge in small talk. “Same as always,” he answered: “making shields. Only difference is, the Germans take them now, not the legion. My work is good enough to keep them happy, so mostly they leave me alone.”
“You make shields… for the Germans?” Nicole asked in disbelief. What was the old word for a collaborator? Quisling, that was it. Umma’s brother was a quisling.
Or was he? “Yes, I make shields for them,” he said. “If I say no, they’ll kill me — either that or I’ll starve, w
hich amounts to the same thing. When they come in here, do you say, ‘No, I won’t give you any bread. Get out!’?”
She lowered her eyes. No. She didn’t. She never had, not even when they’d come straight in from gang-banging Antonina. She’d been afraid, and she’d wanted to live. So — was that what a quisling was? Someone who went right on doing what he would have been doing if the Germans hadn’t come, but doing it, now, for the Germans?
But he was making an implement of war. She was simply feeding them. An army ran on its stomach. Where had she heard that? It didn’t matter. Collaboration was collaboration, whatever the extent of it.
She held up a hand. “No, I didn’t turn them down when they ordered me to feed them. Let it go, Brigo. You’re doing what you need to get by. So am I.” He opened his mouth to say something. She thought she knew what he had in mind. She forestalled him. “I am sorry for the way it sounded.”
“Well!” For the first time in a long while, she saw Umma’s brother grin. “I was wondering if you could only take apologies; you had no idea how to give them back. I’m glad to see it isn’t so.”
“Fair is fair,” Nicole answered.
“I suppose so,” Brigomarus said, by which he no doubt meant he was perfectly content to hang onto the privileges that went with being male. He half-turned as if to leave, but turned back with a snap of the fingers. “When I was coming through the market square, I saw that one of the farmers had brought in a cartload of wine. It’s just the cheap local stuff, of course, but if you can’t get anything else, it starts to look pretty good.”
“I’ll say it does!” Nicole wasn’t about to hug him, but she was as tempted as she’d ever been. She headed straight for the cash box instead. “I was in the market just this morning, but he hadn’t come in then. If I can get a jar or two before he sells out — “
“Or before the Germans steal everything he has,” Julia put in.
“Or that, too,” Nicole agreed. She turned to Brigomarus. “Will you come with me and help carry some of it back? I’ll give you a jar to take home.” She hesitated. Then she said it, hating it but knowing it was the truth: “It would be nice to have a man along.”
