by Judith Tarr
She’d tangled herself in a brief knot, and he was speaking, ordering dinner with perfect and not perceptibly strained casualness. “Wine and bread and onions for both of us, Umma, “ he said, “and what else have you got that’s good?”
“Snails fried with garlic in olive oil?” she suggested. She’d been holding her breath, she discovered, but she’d had to let it out to play the polite proprietor. “I had Lucius bring me back a basketful of snails this morning.” And Lucius, no doubt, had had as much fun catching them as an eight-year-old boy could. An incongruous bit of English doggerel went reeling through her head: Snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.
“Those do sound good,” Titus Calidius Severus said. Nicole had to clamp down hard on a giggle. His son, whose name Nicole resigned herself yet again to having to pick up from conversation, licked his lips and nodded, smiling widely. The smile, at least, was different from his father’s. Titus Calidius Severus was much too sure of himself to indulge in such a goofy grin.
Nicole would sooner have done the snails in butter herself. They had butter in Carnuntum — had it and looked down their noses at it. It was their last resort when they couldn’t get olive oil. No accounting for taste. Nicole thought, the phrase forming in her mind in English and Latin at the same time. De gusttbus non disputandum.
“Two orders of snails,” she called to Julia. “I’ll get the rest.”
“All right, Mistress,” Julia said from behind the counter. She dropped the snails and chopped garlic into the fierce hiss of hot oil. A wonderful smell wafted out from the pan: oil, garlic, the fishy-sweet scent of snails. Butter would have smelled even better, in Nicole’s opinion, but she was, as far as she could tell, a minority of one. Olive oil was healthier, she consoled herself — until she remembered that the oil, like most of the wine in Carnuntum, was imported in glazed amphorae. She’d never imagined worrying about whether lead was more likely to be dangerous than cholesterol. She’d never imagined living in a place where nobody worried about either one.
Calidius Severus’ son kept watching Julia while she fried the snails. She’d glance at him every now and again, too, and preen a little. If that didn’t mean he’d gone upstairs with her a few times, Nicole would have been astonished.
As Nicole brought them the wine and bread and onions, Titus Calidius Severus whispered something to his son. The younger man frowned. “Is what my father says true?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Nicole answered evenly, arranging food and drink, cups and bowls, on the table in front of them. “What does your father say?”
“That you aren’t letting Julia screw for money anymore,” he said.
She couldn’t say she was startled, though shocked was another matter. From everything she’d heard, Romans charged through the bushes instead of beating around them.
“Yes, it’s true,” Nicole said, in a tone that couldn’t mean anything but, Want to make something out of it?
Before his son could make anything out of it, Titus Calidius Severus said, “Why in Ahriman’s name would Ofanius Valens lie to me, Gaius? Why would he lie about something like that, anyhow? No money in it.” He glanced up at Nicole. His expression was honestly curious. “Why aren’t you letting her screw for money anymore?”
“I decided I would sooner have a little less money than be a part-time madam,” she replied as starchily as she knew how.
Gaius Calidius Severus still looked miffed. His father grunted the way he did when he was thinking about something that, in his opinion, bore thinking on. “All right, that’s not a bad answer,” he said at last. “It will likely do your soul good when judging time comes.”
Titus Calidius Severus looked to be on the point of saying something more, but just then Julia sashayed between Nicole and the table, accompanied by a powerful odor of garlic. She carried two dishes of snails and a pair of spoons, which she set down with a flourish. Nicole couldn’t help but notice that the movements showed off her full breasts in the slightly snug tunic, and the fine curve of her hips and buttocks as she turned and sauntered back to the cookfire. The two Calidii pried their eyes off her long enough to pry the snails out of their shells with the handles of the spoons. No doubt about it, when it came to a choice between food and sex, food had at best an even chance.
They ate with lip-smacking relish. They both, obviously, appreciated Nicole’s recipe, if not her social ideas.
Julia didn’t appreciate those, either. As she took her place again by the fire, she put in a bump and a wiggle that would have led to a vice-squad bust on any L.A. street. Gaius Calidius Severus had eaten a couple of snails — enough to take the edge off his hunger for food. The third one stopped halfway to his mouth, forgotten in the glory of the scenery. His eyes reminded Nicole pointedly of the sheep’s eyes she’d seen in the market.
His father watched, too, not without admiration. Men did that. A lot of the time, they didn’t even seem to know they were doing it. It was the way they were made, the kaffeeklatsch queens had said to one another, back in Indiana. Fabia Ursa said it, too, when she came round for a morning’s gossip. So what, Nicole wondered, might Umma have said if she’d caught her boyfriend ogling her slave? Something interesting, she hoped. Something memorable. Something better than Nicole’s tongue-tied silence.
Or maybe the fuller and dyer was checking Julia out for a different reason. Turning back to Nicole, he said, “Do I hear rightly that you’re thinking about manumitting her?”
“Yes, it’s true,” Nicole repeated in the same truculent tone as before. But curiosity got the better of her defiance; she couldn’t keep from asking, “Where did you hear that?”
His smile was on the crooked side, and matched his lopsided shrug. “Somebody who talked to somebody who talked to your brother — you know what gossip’s like. If I heard it straight, your brother isn’t any too happy about it, either.”
“No, he’s not.” Nicole tossed her head. “He’ll get over it — or if he doesn’t, too bad for him. It’s not his business; it’s mine.”
Titus and Gaius Calidius Severus stared at her with the same deeply shocked expression Julia had inflicted on her when she’d said that before. In damned near comic chorus, they echoed Julia word for word: “It’s family business.” And that, their tone said, should most certainly be that.
Not for me, Nicole thought stubbornly. Not now. and not while I’m alive to say so. “I’m not going to let that smother me,” she said aloud. “I’ll do what’s best for me and what’s best for Julia. If that’s not what the family wants — then too bad for the family. They can just learn to live with it.”
“Well,” said Calidius Severus after a long pause, clicking his tongue between his teeth. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. “ It was not, his expression said, how he would have looked at it. “Families can be a pain, no two ways about it. But you do hate to throw out the connections. You never can tell how things will go — only the gods know that. We mortals, well… it never hurts to have something to fall back on.”
Good, sound, sensible advice. Even if he did smell like an outhouse on a hot summer day, Titus Calidius Severus was a good and sensible man. But Nicole hadn’t got to Carnuntum by being sensible. “I’ll take my chances,” she said.
He shrugged again. “Hey, I’m not your family. You’re not stuck with me.” He smiled that crooked smile again, too, which did the oddest — just this side of annoying — things to her middle. “Like I’m telling you something you didn’t already know.”
Oh, she could read him perfectly well. You used to want me and now you don’t, and I can’t figure out why. That was what he meant. Still, he didn’t say it, not out loud. He didn’t sound angry, either, just perplexed. When you got down to it, that was a pretty… civilized way of going about things. It was a hell of a lot more civilized than the come-ons she’d suffered through in California. The guys who’d made those hadn’t even been to bed with her, and they were assuming rights she damned well didn’t want to give t
hem. Calidius Severus had slept with her, or thought he had; and he was letting her decide just how to handle this thing between them.
Damn, she was starting to like him again. Worse; to sympathize with him. She wasn’t used to sympathizing with a man. Men were pains, every last one of them. Except — this one didn’t seem to be, nor did he seem to be pretending. He really was a decent sort. She should have hated him for it. Instead, she hated herself either for letting down the side so far as to actually like a member of the Y-chromosome set, or for being such a bitch that she couldn’t see a decent human being when he stood in front of her face.
He had to make it worse, too, when she wouldn’t rise to his bait. He shrugged one last time, reached into his belt pouch, didn’t push or lecture her, but just said, “I know what I owe you for everything but the snails. You don’t do those often enough for me to remember.”
“A dupondius a plate,” she said. It came out clear enough, after all, through a throat just a little tight.
Calidius Severus didn’t complain. No one else had, either. He paid the bill, then put down an extra as. “Give this to Lucius. The hunter deserves his reward.”
Gaius Calidius Severus set down anas, too. “Can Julia have it?” he asked, adding, “She did cook them up very nicely.”
Nicole looked at Titus Calidius Severus. The fuller and dyer pursed his lips and looked up at the sooty ceiling. He didn’t say anything. He very loudly didn’t say it. Watching him not saying it, watching his son thinking he’d been subtle and not given away what was really on his mind, or perhaps on his crotch, made Nicole want to laugh — or snarl.
All right. Titus Calidius Severus had given her one victory. She could give him this other, minor one. As she was expected to, she said, “Yes, Julia can have the as.”
Gaius Calidius Severus looked as if he would have clapped his hands and bounced up and down, if he hadn’t remembered his manly dignity. “Oh, good!” he said with another of his goofy grins.
His father pursed his lips again. This time, instead of looking at the ceiling, he glanced at Nicole. They shared a moment of silent amusement.
Yes, shared it. It felt… good. Dammit, it felt good.
Titus Calidius Severus ended it with ease that Nicole could envy. He got to his feet, moving briskly but comfortably, and said, “Come on, son. We’d better get back. No matter how much you wish it would, the work doesn’t do itself.” He nodded to Nicole. “See you soon.”
“All right,” she answered automatically, and a little more warmly than she’d expected.
Both women watched the Calidii Severi walk back across the street, the son a slighter, paler copy of the father. Nicole didn’t know what expression Julia wore, nor did she care to glance at her, to find out.
Julia came up beside her, a redolence composed of garlic and wool and unwashed body — the same as ever, but somehow more bearable than it had been just a few days ago. She picked up the copper coin the younger Calidius Severus had left for her. “I think Gaius is very nice,” she announced.
“Of course you do,” Nicole said. And caught herself too late. Her tone was snide, and worse than snide.
It didn’t offend Julia, or Julia didn’t admit to being offended. She nodded, that was all, and slipped the coin into her mouth till she could go up to her room. She accepted Nicole’s meanness as plain truth. Compared to that, Nicole would sooner have seen her offended.
Slaves accept such things, she thought. Free women rebel against them. But she didn’t say anything — which was a cowardly thing, and a sensible thing, and a thing she didn’t admire herself for; but she did it nevertheless. This place was getting under her skin. The next thing she knew, she’d be deciding to keep Julia a slave, because The Family objected to the waste of such valuable property. Giving herself to herself — what a horrible thing.
Nicole was comforted, a little. She still had most of her irony intact. She was safe enough — for now.
A woman left the tavern looking less happy than she might have. Julia said, “Tsk, tsk,” a sound that hadn’t changed much when Nicole dropped back in time.
“What’s wrong?” Nicole asked, a bit distracted: she was taking the latest batch of bread out of the oven.
“I’m afraid you might have offended your cousin Primigenia, Mistress,” Julia said, which, given the care slaves had to use when speaking, meant Nicole sure as blazes had offended Cousin Primigenia. Julia went on, “You treated her like you’d never set eyes on her before in your life.”
Nicole lifted out the last of the loaves and set it on the counter to cool — carefully, because the bread was hot and the action kept her from hitting the wall that she could see rushing toward her at freeway speed. With Brigomarus, she’d lucked out. With other people, she’d either been given enough clues to go on with, or she’d been able to cover for her ignorance — most often because of Julia.
Nicole slid a glance at the slave. Julia was wearing one of her blander expressions. Was she figuring things out? Had she kept quiet deliberately, to see what would happen?
Of course not. Nicole thought. How could she know Umma wasn’t Umma anymore? Nicole had been scrambling as fast as she could, as hard as she could, to keep up with things. She’d been doing well, she’d thought. Till now.
She had to say something. Julia was starting to shuffle her feet. She put on a kind of frantic nonchalance, straightening up, dusting her hands, making a show of inspecting the row of nicely browned loaves. “Well,” she said, “that’s done. As for Pnmigenia… I must have had too much on my mind. I swear I didn’t even see her. I’ll make it up to her next time, that’s all.”
That was only about half true. Nicole had seen Primigenia. The woman was a little hard to miss: she had the beginning of a harelip. A surgeon in the twentieth century would have repaired it while she was a baby. Here, she had to live with it. Nicole remembered thinking, What a shame. She’s not bad-looking otherwise.
At the moment, she hoped Julia hadn’t seen her looking. Or had taken her stare for abstraction, figuring the accounts, maybe, or making a mental shopping list for tomorrow’s trip to the market.
Julia didn’t appear to have seen, or else had decided to play the game by Nicole’s rules. In a way. “I hope she doesn’t take it too hard, “ she said. “Your brother’s angry at you as it is. You don’t want to get your whole family up in arms.”
“That’s the last thing I want.” Nicole paused. That was it; she’d had it. She had to say it, and never mind what Julia thought. “No, the next to last thing. The last thing I want is for people to think they can tell me what to do.”
Julia sighed. People had been telling her what to do since she was born. That thought, and the thought of a family row on the horizon, crystallized the timing of the decision Nicole had already made. “Come on, Julia. We’re going over to the town-council building and do what we have to do to set you free.”
“Right now?” Julia said. Nicole nodded. Julia still looked as if she didn’t believe it. “You’re going to close the place down and everything?”
“That’s right,” Nicole said with the crispness of a decision well and firmly made. It felt wonderful. “Fabia Ursa can keep an eye on the children while we’re gone.” Fabia Ursa was by now a fixture of Nicole’s morning routine. Nicole had learned in the course of her chatter that she and her husband owned the house-shop combination next door to Nicole’s, the one she’d seen across the alley the first morning she’d awakened in Carnuntum. They were brassworkers and tinkers: they made and repaired pots and pans. Or rather, the husband did; Fabia Ursa had the skill and the craft, she said, but with this baby coming after she’d lost two, she was taking things slower than usual. Hence her mornings in Umma’s tavern.
She’d just left a while before, in fact, saying that she needed to see to something in the shop. If Nicole strained, she could hear that clear, somewhat strident voice chattering to a customer as it chattered in her own ear every morning.
Lucius and Aurelia did
n’t raise a ruckus about having Fabia Ursa watch them; they had someplace less familiar in which to get into mischief. Nicole overheard Aurelia reminding Lucius, quite seriously, “We do have to be a little bit careful. Fabia Ursa will wallop us if we’re naughty. “
Nicole stiffened — a reaction she had much too often in this world and time. What was she supposed to make of that? Should she tell Fabia Ursa not to hit them even if they misbehaved? Fabia Ursa was a gentle soul, as people went in Carnuntum, but she was completely unsentimental — and Nicole had heard her, more than once, approve of a woman who spanked her children. If Nicole tried to force her to lay off the kids, she’d smile, pat Nicole’s arm, and say kindly, “Oh, very well, dear, if you insist — but since I can’t possibly keep from hitting a child who’s being a brat, I can’t possibly look after your children for you, now, can I?”
It wasn’t easy, understanding these people. Worse: Nicole was starting to think they might have a point. Children were, as a species, better behaved here than she remembered them being in L.A. They said please and thank you. They called women ma’am. If they ran around yelling and being a pain in the ass, somebody smacked them, and that was that.
So. Should she tighten up herself? Even her own — well, Umma’s — children thought her soft. They were used to being smacked and brought up short. It hadn’t damaged them that she could see.
No. She shook her head. She couldn’t hit them; she just could not. It was too much like her father coming home drunk and slapping his wife around, or one of the kids if they were closer. Her hand, upraised to strike a blow, mutated into her father’s hand in her mind’s eye, and she froze.
She’d pretend she hadn’t heard. Better that than trying to explain everything to a pair of children who couldn’t imagine equating a well-earned slap or two with abuse.