by Judith Tarr
“This is astonishing,” he said when he was finally done. “If I had not seen you write it with my own eyes, Mistress, ah, Umma” — he had to check the papyrus for her name, though she’d given it to him; obviously he was one of those people for whom nothing was real till it was written down — “I would not have believed it. Why, this might almost be a brief prepared by a gentleman of the legal profession. Astonishing,” he said again.
He’d intended his words as high praise. But it wasn’t high enough to suit Nicole. “What do you mean, almost?” she demanded.
“Well,” he replied, glad of a chance to get sniffy again, “of course you do not cite the relevant laws and imperial decrees, nor the opinions of the leading jurisconsults, but the reasoning is nonetheless very clear and forceful.”
“Ah, “ Nicole said. Damn. She wasn’t a trained lawyer here; she didn’t have the citations at her fingertips, nor know where to find them.
She could learn. She was sure of that. She’d learned in the United States, and things were undoubtedly simpler here. But where would she find the time? Most days, at least before the Germans came, she’d had trouble finding time to use the chamberpot. Even if by a miracle she could squeeze a spare hour out of the day, where would she find someone to train her, or books from which to study? The next book of any sort she saw here would be the first.
She’d missed a few words of the aide’s reply. He condescended, superciliously, to repeat himself: “I will be certain this comes to the Emperor’s attention. It may intrigue him. Let me see.” He glanced again at the statement. “Yes, you have described your place of residence most precisely. Should anything further be required of you, you will be summoned.”
That sounded altogether too much like, Don’t call us: we’ll call you. “What if I’m not summoned?” Nicole asked.
“The choice is the Emperor’s,” the aide replied. “As I say, I will bring this to his notice. Past that, the matter is in his hands. Who could be above the Emperor, to compel him to change his mind?”
“The law could. Justice could,” Nicole said. That was certainly true in the U.S.A., where no one was above the law. Did it also hold in the Roman Empire? If it did, did it hold for Marcus Aurelius?
Maybe not, by the way his administrative assistant’s jaw dropped. But the man didn’t tell her she was crazy, either. “What a — sophisticated attitude for a tavernkeeper to hold.” His nod had a certain finality to it, an air of dismissal.
Nicole didn’t bother to argue. There was a limit to how far anyone could push a bureaucrat. She’d tested his limits and then some. It was the best she could do; the rest was in the hands of the gods.
Julia was waiting at the tavern, fairly dancing with eagerness. She barely let Nicole get in through the door before she started in. “Did you see him? Did you?” She might have been talking about a god, or a god’s first cousin.
Nicole almost hated to disappoint her. “No, I didn’t. I had to leave a petition with an aide. We’ll see if anything comes of it.” It had better, she thought. If Marcus Aurelius ignored her case, how much trouble would picketing the town-council building cause? Plenty, she would imagine. She almost smiled at the prospect.
“I hope something does come of it,” Julia said. “I think it will, I really do. He is supposed to be a good man.”
“We’ll see,” Nicole said. She wasn’t as sure of Marcus Aurelius’ goodness as Julia was. He was the Roman Emperor, after all. She’d taken time to find out what exactly that meant. He wasn’t a king, not exactly, and it wasn’t necessarily hereditary, though it could be. What Marcus Aurelius was, was the chief political figure in a vast, ancient, and sometimes terribly corrupt empire.
Nicole had precious little use for politicians — which, considering the state of politics in late-twentieth-century America, was hardly surprising. As far as she was concerned, the higher a politician rose, the more lies he had to tell to get there, and the more likely he’d tell even bigger lies once he got to the top.
Julia didn’t share Nicole’s worries, or her cynicism either. She was already off on another subject. “While you were out,” she said, “a crier came by. There’ll be grain in the city in a day or two.”
That caught Nicole’s attention. “Oh! That is good news.” Bread, real bread. Cakes. Buns and rolls and… She stopped before she got carried away. “I hope the price isn’t too outrageous. Though they probably wouldn’t dare to try too much gouging, not with the Emperor right here to see it.”
Before Julia could answer, an odd, rhythmic clanking brought them both to the windows and the open door. This wasn’t the sharp clash and clang of swordplay. It was duller, steadier. Down the street toward the eastern gate marched a somber procession of Marcomanni and Quadi — Nicole never had learned to tell the tribes apart — chained together in gangs of ten. Many, many gangs often. Roman soldiers herded them onward, some with knotted whips, others with drawn swords.
“They’re on their way to the slave markets,” Julia said with vindictive satisfaction. “I hope they all get worked to death in the mines.”
But Nicole was watching the legionaries, not the Germans. Was one of them the man who’d violated her with such callous — practiced? — efficiency? Of itself, her left hand rose to her neck. She’d felt a Roman blade there. Had she given the legionary any trouble, she had no doubt that blade would have drunk her life. In the capture of a city, what was one body more or less?
Her gaze might have gone fearfully from one Roman soldier to another, but more people were watching the Quadi and Marcomanni. Passersby on the sidewalk jeered the captured barbarians. One of the locals almost echoed Julia: “A short life and a merry one, boys, grubbing for iron or lead!” He laughed, loud and long.
The Germans ignored him. They must have heard a hundred such jeers as they marched through the city. Their heads were down, that had been carried with such casual arrogance. Their broad shoulders were bent, their feet shuffling, not even a hint of their old swagger.
A shriek of raw rage split the afternoon. Nicole jumped half out of her skin. “That’s Antonina!” Julia exclaimed. She sprinted for the doorway, with Nicole in close pursuit.
Nicole got there just in time to watch Antonina burst from her own door, dodge a legionary with a move Michael Jordan would have envied, and smash an enormous pot over the head of one of the Germans. Shards flew like shrapnel. The German staggered. Blood poured down his face. Nicole marveled that he didn’t fall over dead.
“Mithras, lady, what was that for?” bellowed the legionary Antonina had evaded.
“What do you think?” she shot back. “The day the town fell, he and a gang of his cousins raped me right here in the street.” She tried to kick the prisoner in the crotch, but he twisted away; her foot caught him in the hipbone. She followed him down the street, kicking him and cursing as vilely as she knew how. The guards laughed and clapped and cheered her on.
Nicole was astonished at the bolt of jealousy that pierced her. Antonina had at least a measure of revenge for what had happened to her. She had closure. When she finally left off trying to maim the barbarian who’d raped her, she walked back toward her house with her shoulders straight and her head high. She had, at last, put the nightmare behind her.
And what have I got? Nicole’s laughter had a bitter edge. Closure? She laughed again. How was she supposed to avenge herself on the Roman legionary who’d forced himself on her and into her? She couldn’t identify him five minutes after he shot his seed into her. She’d never recognize him now. He was — a man. That had been an advantage in the United States. It wasn’t just an advantage here. It was everything.
Her gaze flicked to Liber and Libera, sitting serenely in their plaque behind the bar. They’d given her exactly what she’d thought she wanted. What a cruel gift it had turned out to be.
And now they would not send her home. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they just didn’t care. Maybe they were laughing at her, just as Frank must have done when he started his affa
ir with Dawn.
She looked back toward Antonina’s house. Her sour-tempered neighbor was getting on with things — and she couldn’t. That would take a miracle. She’d already had one; that must be her quota. It was more than most people ever got.
At last, the parade ended. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Marcomanni and Quadi had shambled past her doorway. Nicole kept an eye out for Antonina, in case she emerged to smash more crockery over the head of an astonished German, but that door stayed shut, and Antonina stayed within.
As the last straggling prisoner shuffled out of sight, pricked on by a sword in his backside, Julia stretched and wriggled and sighed. “It’s so good to be back inside the empire again.”
“Why?” Nicole asked bleakly. “Do you feel so much safer with the heroic legionaries to protect you?”
Julia nodded automatically. Then memory struck: she bit her lip.
Nicole didn’t tax her with it. Nicole’s problem was Nicole’s own. She did her best to get on with the rest of the day, to do what she would normally have done: look after the tavern, rustle up meals, make sure the three of them were fed. Once the grain came in, if the price was low enough, she could open the tavern again. That would be good. That would take her mind off — things.
Sometimes, for a few minutes at a stretch, she actually managed to forget. Then something — a shadow, a voice in the street, the clank of armor as a soldier strutted past — would bring back memory: reeling, falling, scale mail pressed to her body, hard hand ripping at her drawers. Then she would start to shake. Almost, she wished he’d cut her throat when he was done. Then she wouldn’t have to relive it, over and over again.
The sun sank in the northwest, throwing a long shaft of sunlight into the tavern’s doorway. The interior brightened then, as much as it ever could. But her gloom was pitch-black. No mere sunlight could begin to pierce it.
Shadows in the doorway made her look up; made her tense, too, involuntarily, braced for fight or flight. Even in silhouette, she could tell that the men she saw were strangers: they wore togas, as few of her customers ever had. “Mistress Umma, the tavernkeeper?” one of them asked in Latin more elegant than that commonly spoken in Carnuntum.
“Yes,” she said after a pause. Then: “Who are you?”
He didn’t deign to answer that. He stood just on the threshold, though it meant he had to raise his voice slightly to converse with Nicole by the bar. There was no way, his attitude said, he was going farther in. Even as far as he’d gone, he’d need a good, long stint in the baths to wash off the stink of commoner.
That rankled. And never mind that Nicole had felt remarkably much like it when she first came to Carnuntum. He wasn’t too savory, either, by American standards. Not without soap or deodorant.
He sniffed loudly. In that Latin equivalent of an Oxford accent, he declaimed — said was too mild a word: “The Emperor has received your plea. I am instructed to invite you to supper with him, to discuss the matter.”
He didn’t ask if she’d come. That would have given her too much choice in the matter.
Just for that, she was tempted to be too busy. But the Emperor wasn’t necessarily responsible for the rudeness of his staff — and he was the Emperor. If she tried to play power games with him, she would lose. She didn’t have the faintest hope of winning.
“Yes, of course I’ll come,” Nicole said. Her own words sounded harsh and unlovely in her ears, like raw down-home Indiana next to the most mellifluous Oxbridge.
Julia was staring as if her eyes would fall out of her head. Nicole wondered if there was a single thought behind them, or any emotion but awe.
She didn’t have time for awe. “Wait here while I change my tunic,” she said.
Marcus Aurelius’ messengers looked, just then, as flummoxed as Julia. Nicole smiled at them, nodded, and went serenely upstairs. Not till she was out of their sight did she leap into a run, rip into the bedroom, tear off her ratty old tunic with the grease-stains on the front, and pull on her best one. If she could have showered and done her hair, she would have. She made what order she could with fingers and comb, which wasn’t much, and stopped to breathe. No matter what she did, the Roman Emperor was going to know what kind of life she led. Her best tunic probably wouldn’t be good enough for a slave in his household.
So let him see, and let him ponder it if he could. She was an honest businesswoman, a solid if by no means wealthy citizen. She had just as much right as anyone else, to justice under the law.
She firmed her chin and squared her shoulders and marched back downstairs. A sneaking niggle of doubt evaporated: the Emperor’s messengers were still there, arms folded, feet tapping, all too obviously displeased by what they must regard as her insolence.
Too bad for them. “Let’s go,” she said briskly.
As they walked toward the town-council building, the aide who’d done the talking kept right on doing it. “The Emperor would have you know that he means no insult by supping with you seated rather than reclining. It is his own usual practice: one of his many austerities.”
Nicole raised an eyebrow. “Really? Thank you, then. I’m glad to know what to expect.”
She was, in fact, relieved. She’d never eaten while lying down, and she hadn’t the faintest idea how to do it without slopping dinner all over herself. Certainly nobody in her social circle did any such thing. It must be the height of high fashion.
Stolid legionaries stood guard outside the town hall. They might have been the same who’d stood there this morning, or they might not. There was no way to tell. In the manner of sentries even in her own time, they kept their eyes fixed straight again as Nicole passed through the gate. Her gaze flicked from one side to the other. Was one of them the man who had assaulted her? How would she ever know?
She’d never look at a Roman legionary in armor again without wondering, Is that it? Is he the one?
For that matter, how many of them had done to other women in Carnuntum what that one had done to her? Had any other victims come forward? Would women in this time actually do any such thing?
All this time, Nicole had lived in this world, and still she didn’t know the most basic things: how people thought, how they felt, how they reacted to trauma. She was in a country so foreign that she just barely began to understand a small part of it, and even of that she wasn’t completely certain.
Her reflections brought her down one passage and then another, till she found herself in a largeish room that faced west. The last of the sun, with the help of several lamps much larger and more ornate than her own, lit the chamber amazingly well, even without electricity. Even so, she couldn’t see much of what was in it against the glare: only that there was a man standing by one of the windows, a black outline against the sunset light.
One of her guides had pushed in ahead of her — officiously, she thought. “Sir,” he said, “here is the woman.”
“Of course,” said the shadow by the window. The aide backed out of the room, as smooth as if on wheels, and ushered Nicole in with a sharp flick of the hand.
She found her heart was beating hard and her palms were clammy. What in the world was she supposed to do or say in front of the Emperor of the Romans? What if she committed some hideous faux pas? What would he do then? Throw her out on her ear? Fling her into jail? Shout “Off with her head!”?
The shadow moved away from the window, coming clearer little by little, till finally she had a good view of his face. That reassured her, a little. He looked both older and tireder than he did on his coins. And he looked more like a college professor — a philosopher, as Titus Calidius Severus would have said; she had to put down the stab of loss at the memory, as sharp now as it had ever been, and there was no time for it here, dammit -
Oh, damn, she thought, groping for the train of her reflection. More like a college professor than a politician. Yes. Maybe that was a good sign.
He peered at her — no eyeglasses or contacts here. “You would be the tavernkeeper Umma?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicole answered, using the same form of address as the aide had. If that wasn’t fancy enough to suit the Emperor, no doubt he’d let her know.
But he only said, “Come in, then, and we shall go from eggs to apples, as the proverb puts it.” His Latin was even more astringently pure than that spoken by his servitors. When Nicole spoke, she often dropped a final m or s. as someone speaking casual English might say workin’ for working. Everybody in Carnuntum talked that way. Marcus Aurelius didn’t. In his mouth, every verb form, every noun ending, was perfectly distinct.
“Thank you, sir,” she said to him in her rough country accent, and went where he beckoned her, to a beautiful wooden table with an inlaid top, set near enough to the window to catch the light, but not so near as to dazzle the eyes. She took the chair that had been set on the far side. An army of guards didn’t leap out of the walls to haul her off to the dungeon. Boldly, she ventured to add, “And thank you for hearing my petition.”
Marcus Aurelius smiled as he took the chair across from her. “You are welcome,” he replied. “That petition is one of the most intriguing documents to have come before me in some time. Had Alexander not seen you write it with his own eyes, he would have thought it the work of someone of much higher station in life. Most intriguing.”
“All I did was set out what happened to me and what I’d like you to do about it,” Nicole said. There was no way she wanted Marcus Aurelius to ask too many questions about how she’d learned to write like that. She had no good answers for him, and nothing he was likely to believe.
He wasn’t going to let it go. She should have known he wouldn’t. “The reasoning is as forceful and direct as if a skilled advocate had composed it. I do not agree with all your conclusions, not by any means, but you argue them well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Nicole was saved by the dinner bell, in a manner of speaking: just then a servant — or more likely a slave — brought in a jar of wine and the first course. It did include eggs, eggs hard-boiled and seasoned with olive oil and pepper. They rested on lettuce also oiled and peppered — and vinegared as well. It could have been a salad from a trendy bistro in L.A., where the cuisine was nouvelle and the decor minimalist.
