Laughing, the farmer turned to Jeremy and said, “I'd like to see him get a better deal from anybody else.”
Jeremy nodded. The farmer thought the way a merchant had to think. But if your city was in danger, didn't you have to ease off on that approach? If you didn't, wouldn't you end up without a city to do business in? Who decided when you did that? How did whoever it was draw the line?
Those were all good questions. Jeremy didn't have good answers for any of them. He was scratching his head as he went on to the temple dedicated to the Emperor's spirit.
When he stopped in the narthex to get a pinch of incense to light on the altar, the clerk who took his three denari for it looked puzzled. “By the records, Ieremeo Soltero, you have already made the required offering. Why are you here?”
“To make another offering,” Jeremy said. “Polisso may be in danger, after all.”
“How… public-spirited of you,” the clerk said.
Jeremy did his best to look modest. He felt more like a hypocrite than ever. But he wanted officials seeing him acting public-spirited. It might help take the heat off Amanda and him. Even if it didn't, it couldn't hurt. And what were three denari to him? Nothing but Monopoly money.
The clerk gave him his receipt and the incense. It smelled sweeter than the last pinch he'd got. Maybe they saved extra-cheap stuff for people making required offerings, and gave you something better if you were doing it because you really wanted to. Jeremy didn't know for sure. Up till now, he didn't think any trader had made offerings that weren't required.
He carried the incense into the temple proper. There they were; all the gods the Romans recognized, in statue or painting or mosaic form. They all seemed to be looking at him. He didn't believe in any of them except possibly Jesus, and the Jesus he knew wasn't the same as the one in this world. The effect was impressive even so.
Several pinches of incense already smoked on the altar. Either other people wanted to look public-spirited, or they were worried. Well, I'm worried, too, Jeremy thought. But he didn't believe lighting this incense would help make his worries go away.
He lit it anyhow, then stepped on the twig he'd used to make it start burning. The smoke from the incense definitely smelled better than it had the last time he sacrificed. The image of Honorio Prisco III stared blindly from behind the altar. Jeremy recited the prayer an Imperial Christian gave the Emperor's spirit. It still felt more like pledging allegiance to the flag than praying. But neither of the two men who stood near the altar to listen to prayers complained. He'd done what he needed to do, and he'd done it right.
And now he understood-a little better, anyhow-what his dad said about the uses of hypocrisy. He wondered if he'd ever have the chance to tell Dad so.
Even though Amanda's house had running water, she liked visiting the fountain. People of the female persuasion couldn't go as many places or do as many things in this world as men could. At the baths and at the public fountains, age and wealth and social class didn't matter so much. A woman could say what she pleased, and a lot of women did.
When Amanda went to the fountain on a warm, sticky summer afternoon, she found several women complaining about the soldiers quartered in their houses. “They eat like dragons,” said a plump middle-aged woman in a saffron tunic. “And then they grumble about the cooking! Do they pay a sestertio for what they get? Do they? Not likely!”
Another woman, also plump, nodded. “They lie around snoring till all hours, too. And they don't bathe often enough- or at all.” She held her nose. For good measure, she scratched as if she had fleas.
Amanda wondered how much she'd had to do with soldiers before. Her tunic was saffron yellow, too, which meant she had money. Saffron dye wasn't cheap here. And, in this world, you had to be rich to have enough food to get overweight.
A couple of lines of Kipling from English Lit also ran through Amanda's head.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' “Chuck 'im out, the brute!”
But it's “Savior of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot.
They'd never heard of Kipling in Agrippan Rome. But he understood what made them tick, all right.
“The soldiers aren't so bad,” the slave girl named Maria said in a low voice. “We have some in our house, too, and they don't do anything worse than pat me a little.”
In the home timeline, that would have been bad enough. It struck Maria as a miracle of moderation here. Different worlds, different standards. Amanda had to work to make herself remember that. It wasn't always easy. Of course, next to Maria's being a slave to begin with, how big a deal was it that some soldiers let their hands roam more than they might have? Probably not very.
Maria asked, “How is your mother? I have not seen her for a while.”
“She and Father, uh, left Polisso,” Amanda said. “He took her to a healer in Carnuto who's supposed to be one of the best, this side of Rome or Athens.”
“I hope he will help her,” Maria said gravely. She didn't say anything about Dad and Mom leaving the two Solters children on their own here. By local standards, they were plenty old enough to take care of themselves.
“I got a letter from my father not long ago,” Amanda said. “He says Mother is doing much better.”
“She will do better away from Polisso. I think that's very likely,” Maria said. With a sour smile, Amanda nodded. Maria let out a small, sad sigh. “Having your letters must be nice. You can talk back and forth with Carnuto, and I can't even make myself heard across the street sometimes.”
I can talk back and forth a lot farther than that-or I could if we weren't cut off, Amanda thought. Out loud, she said, “If you want, I could teach you your letters. It isn't very hard. Then you'd be able to read and write, too, at least some. And it's like anything else. The more you do, the easier it gets.”
Maria's jaw dropped. “Could you?” she whispered. “I don't think my owner would mind. I'd be worth more to him if I knew something like that. And”-her eyes widened-“and I'd be able to read the Bible for myself. What could be better than that?”
Not all the books in the New Testament here were the same as they were in the home timeline. The Gospel according to John didn't exist in Agrippan Rome. It was supposed to date from the first half of the second century. By then, history here was different enough from what had happened in Amanda's world that John either hadn't written or had never been born at all. The Acts of the Apostles had the same name, but didn't say all the same things. And some of Paul's epistles went to churches to which he hadn't written in the home timeline. Comparative Bible scholarship across timelines was a field that was just getting off the ground.
It was also a field Maria had never heard of. She never would, either. As far as she knew, hers was the Bible. Amanda said, “Yes, I think you should be able to.” There were two or three translations into classical Latin (none by St. Jerome, who'd never lived here) and several more into neoLatin. Some of those were from the classical Latin, others from the original Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek. Imperial Christians had an official version. Other kinds of Christians had different favorites.
“The Bible. The word of God, in my mouth.“ Maria looked as if she'd just gone to heaven. ”It would be a miracle.“
“No, it wouldn't,” Amanda said. “It's just something you learn how to do, like-like weaving, for instance.”
“But everybody learns how to spin and weave,” Maria said. “You have to, or you don't have any clothes. Reading isn't like that. Plenty of free women-plenty of rich women, even-can't read.”
“It's not hard, honest,” Amanda said. In the home timeline, the only people who could spin or weave were the ones who did it for a hobby and the ones who worked in living-history museums. Almost everybody could read, though. Across the timelines, people first learned what they most needed to know. Back home, that was reading. Here, it was weaving.
Livia Plurabella came up and said, “May I speak to you for a moment, Amanda Soltera?”
“Sure
,” Amanda said, and turned away from Maria. The slave dropped her eyes to the cobblestones. When free people spoke with each other, she had to show she knew her place. Amanda asked, “Is something wrong with the razor you bought, my lady?”
“No, no, no.” Impatiently, the banker's wife shook her head. “I just wanted to put a flea in your ear.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda understood the phrase. The older woman wanted to warn her about something. She didn't know what the banker's wife thought she needed warning about.
Livia Plurabella spelled it out: “It's all very well to be polite to a creature like that.” She pointed toward Maria, who still made as if she were paying no attention to her social betters. “It's all very well to be polite, yes. We are by the fountain, after all. The usual rules do slip. If they didn't, we'd never hear anything juicy, would we?” She smiled, but only for a moment. “There is a difference, you know, between being polite and being friendly. That's a bit much, don't you think?“
The most annoying thing was, Livia Plurabella meant well. She was trying to save Amanda from showing bad manners. That meant Amanda couldn't get as angry as she wanted to. Smashing her water jug over the older woman's head would get her talked about, no matter how tempting it was. She said, “Oh, it's all right. I don't think the slave girl minds.”
Livia Plurabella took a deep breath. “Whether she minds isn't the point, dear,” she said sharply. Then she gave Amanda a suspicious look. “Are you making fun of me, young lady?”
“I wouldn't do that for the world,“ Amanda exclaimed.
“Hmm.” The banker's wife didn't seem any happier. “On your head be it,” she said, and stalked away.
On your head be it. No matter how Amanda usually aped the manners of this world, she wasn't really part of it. She didn't feel in her belly that being friendly with a slave was wrong, the way a free woman here would. Livia Plurabella's warning would have horrified a local merchant's daughter. It wouldn't have been necessary in the first place, because a local merchant's daughter would have played by the rules without needing to be warned. If Amanda felt like breaking the rules every once in a while, she would, and that was all there was to it.
She turned back to Maria. “Where were we? Talking about how easy reading is, weren't we?”
The slave girl said, “Don't get into trouble on my account, Mistress Amanda.” She sounded worried. She looked worried, too.
Amanda snorted. “She can't do anything to me.” Only after the words were out of her mouth did she wonder how true they were. A banker's wife was an important person in Polisso. Which people you knew, what connections you had, mattered more here than in Los Angeles. Connections mattered back home, but the laws and customs there assumed one person was just as good, just as important, as another. That wasn't true here.
Maria's expression showed how untrue it was. The slave said, “She's got clout.”
“Well, if you think we don't…” Amanda let that trail away. The merchants from Crosstime Traffic had money. Nothing made a better start for connections. But money was only a start. Amanda wasn't from here. Livia Plurabella was local. And the authorities in Polisso were already curious-to say the least-about how the crosstime traders operated. If you think we don't have clout… you may be right.
She filled her jar at the fountain. Most of the women swung full jars up onto their heads and carried them home that way. A few, though, carried them on the hip full as well as empty. Even with a hand up to support the jar on her head, she couldn't have been smooth and graceful like the locals. She would have looked like a clodhopper, a country bumpkin-but country bumpkins carried water jugs on their heads, too.
She had just left the fountain when she heard a noise like distant thunder. It came from the north. But it wasn't thunder. Some clouds drifted across the sky, but there was no sign of rain. For a moment, she was puzzled. Then she knew what it had to be-gunfire. The Lietuvan army was on the way.
Eight
Jeremy didn't know whether climbing up on the city wall was a good idea. Amanda thought he was nuts. Maybe he was. But he wanted to see what was going on out beyond Polisso. He wasn't the only one, either. Lots of locals were up there, staring out at the advancing Lietuvan army.
Soldiers hurried back and forth on the top of the wall. If ordinary people got in their way, they pushed them aside. They didn't waste time being nice. Not far from Jeremy, a soldier knocked a man sprawling. When the local lurched to his feet, blood dripped down his face. He didn't say anything. If he had, the soldiers might have pitched him off the wall, and it was a long way down.
On came the Lietuvans. Their army was bigger than the Roman force that had come into Polisso. It flew banners of gold, green, and red-the colors of Lithuania in the home timeline. Lietuvan soldiers wore dull blue surcoats and tunics and breeches. That made them easy to tell apart from the Romans. Their helmets were simpler-more like iron pots plopped on their heads. Their weapons seemed almost identical, though. Horsemen had pistols or lances or bows and sabers. Foot soldiers carried pikes or muskets and straight swords.
They had cannon, too. You couldn't very well besiege a town without them. Slowly, the guns left the road and began taking up positions around the city. Cavalrymen went with them to protect them from any Roman attack.
But the Romans didn't seem interested in sallying from Polisso, not right then. Instead, they started shooting from the wall. Jeremy wished he had earplugs. Having a cannon go off close by was like getting smacked in the side of the head.
Flames belched from the gun's muzzle. So did a great cloud of dark gray smoke. The cannon and its four-wheeled carriage jerked back from the recoil. Ropes kept it from jerking back too far. At a sergeant's shouted orders, the gun crew yanked on the ropes and ran it forward again. A man with a dripping swab on the end of a long pole stuck it down the barrel to make sure no bits of powder or wadding still smoldered inside. The swab steamed when he brought it out again.
That smoke made Jeremy cough. It also smelled familiar. He wondered why for a couple of seconds. He'd never stood near a cannon going off before. Then he knew what the odor reminded him of. He'd smelled it at parks on the Fourth of July, when they set off fireworks. Gunpowder then, gunpowder now. Pretty flowers of flame in the night air then. A cannonball flying now.
Jeremy saw the divot it kicked up when it hit. It kept rolling after it struck the ground, too. The Lietuvans in its path dodged. Jeremy had read about a Civil War soldier who tried to stop a rolling cannonball with his foot. He'd ended up having the foot amputated.
The cannon crew were reloading as fast as they could. Another man used a tool called a worm-like a short corkscrew on the end of a long pole-to drag out any chunks of wadding the swab might have missed. As soon as he finished, still another man set a bag of powder in the muzzle of the gun. A soldier with a rammer shoved it down to the back of the cannon. In went the cannonball. It got rammed down, too. So did rags-the wadding-which made the cannonball fit tightly inside the barrel.
At the rear of the cannon, a soldier poked a sharp spike into the touch-hole. He punctured the powder bag so fire could reach the charge inside. To make sure it did, he sprinkled a little finely ground gunpowder in and around the touch-hole. “Ready!” he yelled to the sergeant. All the men on the gun crew jumped to one side, so the recoiling gun carriage wouldn't run over them.
“Fire!” the sergeant shouted. A soldier with a length of slowly burning fuse-they called it match here-on the end of a long stick, a linstock, brought the smoldering end to the touch-hole. Jeremy heard a brief fizz as the fine priming powder there caught. Then-boom!-the powder in the main charge caught and sent the cannonball hurtling toward the Lietuvans. The whole cycle started over.
Other cannon on the walls of Polisso were shooting, too. The din was unbelievable. And the Lietuvans started shooting back. Not all of their guns could reach the wall. Every so often, though, the wall would shudder under Jeremy's feet when a ball thudded home.
And Lietuvan f
oot soldiers marched forward so they could shoot their muskets at the Romans on the wall. They didn't break up and spread out, the way modern soldiers in the home timeline would have. Instead, they stayed in neat formation. A cannonball plowed through one block of men. Half a dozen
Lietuvans went down one after the next, dead or maimed. The rest closed ranks and kept coming.
How did you train a man so he wouldn't run away when the fellow next to him got torn to pieces? This wasn't videogame blood. It was real. It would splatter you, all hot and wet. You could smell it. And you had to know it could have been your blood, it could be your blood next. But the Lietuvans advanced anyhow.
A gate opened-not one of the main city gates but a postern gate, a little one. Out thundered some of the heavy cavalry Jeremy had followed into the city not long before. The lancers roared toward a block of Lietuvan infantrymen.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Some of the matchlocks the Lietuvans carried went off. Two or three Roman horsemen and horses fell. The rest pitched into the Lietuvans, first with their lances, then with swords.
“Ha!” said a man near Jeremy. “We caught 'em by surprise. They didn't post pikemen out in front of their musketeers. Our lancers would've had a harder time then.”
He might have been talking about a football team not blitzing the quarterback on the other side. He wasn't a soldier. His tunic might have been twin to Jeremy's. But he spoke with a serious fan's serious knowledge. Civilians here knew how the game of war was played. Wars came along often enough to let the rules be known. They didn't change much from one to the next.
Out on the battlefield, more Lietuvan soldiers came up to help the men under attack. The Roman horsemen broke off the fight and galloped back toward the city. Behind them, Lietuvan muskets banged. Another couple of Romans slid out of the saddle. One of them thrashed and writhed on the grass. The other lay very still.
The rest of the cavalry got back into Polisso. The spectators and some of the soldiers on the walls cheered. Jeremy found himself yelling and clapping his hands along with everybody else. He wondered if he had lost his mind. This wasn't a football game. People were dying, really and truly dying, out there. How could you cheer?
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