Household Gods

by Judith Tarr

  She poured a bucket of water over him, and then another one, and then felt like giving him another spanking, because that water didn’t flow at the turn of a tap. She or Julia had to lug it from a fountain. Two buckets’ worth of water didn’t make him anything close to clean, either.

  It was, fortunately, a men’s day at the baths. In lieu of running Lucius through a car wash, that would have to do. She went next door to see if Sextus Longinius lulus would take him. The thought of sending Lucius out by himself didn’t appeal to her in the least. City upbringing, city paranoia: maybe it wasn’t necessary here, but then again maybe it was.

  When she came in and paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer light, the tinker was tapping a dented pot back into shape on a form. He smiled at her. She smiled back. But when she explained what she’d come for, he shook his head. “No, Umma, sorry. Not today. I’m backed up for a week as it is.” She could see it, too: heaps and piles of broken or dented utensils, enough to fill the tiny space and spill out into the room behind. He wasn’t insensitive to her disappointment: he said, “I really am sorry. I wish I could, mind, a bath would be nice. But I can’t. Why don’t you try Calidius Severus across the street?”

  “I guess I’ll do that,” she said with something less than enthusiasm. It was embarrassing to keep asking favors of the fuller and dyer. Still, she thought, they were friends even if they weren’t lovers — they were that, weren’t they? If a friend wouldn’t do you a favor, then who would?

  She picked her way down the muddy sidewalk back to the tavern. Lucius, for a wonder, hadn’t gone anywhere. He was in the public room seeing how many stools he could pile on top of one another, while Julia rather irresponsibly ignored him. Nicole rescued number four just before it toppled onto a customer’s head, snagged Lucius, and dragged him out into the street.

  Lucius didn’t look at all disconcerted by her speed or her vehemence. Adventures were all to the good, he seemed to think, and it was an adventure to get magnificently muddy and throw his mother into fits. Her dire threats about what would happen to him if he “accidentally” fell off the stepping stones into the mud would have got a restraining order slapped on her by any judge in the United States. That meant they were — barely — strong enough to make him notice them.

  Titus Calidius Severus was pulling a soggy bolt of linen from a wooden tub when Nicole and Lucius walked into the shop. His arms were blue to the elbow. “Well, well,” he said, laughing as he took in Lucius’ grimy hide. “Have you decided to turn Nubian on us, you young rascal?”

  “Maybe.” Lucius sounded as if he liked the idea. He pointed to the dye on Calidius’ forearms. “So what are you? A mighty warrior Celt?”

  That didn’t mean anything to Nicole, but it made the fuller and dyer laugh louder. “Maybe I am,” he said. “Maybe I’ll chop off your head and hang it over my door there. What do you think of that?”

  “Yes!” Lucius agreed with enthusiasm.

  Violence. Nicole’s lip started to curl, until she remembered some of the dire threats she’d laid in Lucius before she trusted him on the stepping stones. That made her blush faintly, which didn’t help her mood a bit. “If you’re going to the baths today,” she said to Titus Calidius Severus, “would you be so kind as to take him with you and get him back to the color he’s supposed to be?” She didn’t call Calidius by his praenomen; that would have felt like using it to unfair advantage.

  He nodded at once, with every appearance of goodwill. “It’s been a while since I took him, after all, hasn’t it? We could both use a good scrubbing.” He grinned at Lucius. Lucius grinned back. Calidius Severus’ expression changed slightly. “My, and aren’t you getting to be a handsome boy? Just as well your mother sends you with a chaperon. A good-looking boy in the baths by himself — that’s asking for trouble.”

  Lucius shrugged and looked bored. Calidius Severus sighed a little. “Well. You’re young yet. That’s to the good, maybe.” To Nicole he said, “Don’t you worry, Umma. I’ll keep a steady eye on him and keep him safe, and bring him back as good as new.”

  Nicole shivered deep down inside. She’d only been worried about Lucius alone in the streets. She hadn’t thought about what might happen in the baths. She should have, too. She’d seen what kind of place they were. If prostitutes came and went there on men’s days, if women gossiped about masseurs who provided extra services on the side, why wouldn’t men who went after boys — chkkenhawks. a gay friend of hers had called them — also prowl there? She looked at Titus Calidius Severus with a new respect. “Thank you very much, Titus,” she said, deliberately and carefully calling him by his praenomen.

  He noticed. He smiled, nodded. He didn’t press his advantage. Was he really as sensible as that?

  Yes, she thought. He was. Which put him several steps ahead of most of the men she’d known in Indiana and California, let alone Carnuntum.

  “Come on, Lucius, let’s get you cleaned up,” he said. Lucius came without hesitation or backtalk. Calidius Severus’ tone was familiar to Nicole, though she needed a moment to place it. When she did, she snorted. In 1950s war movies that even sleazy cable stations didn’t show till three in the morning, the tough sergeant used precisely that tone with the green kid. It worked like a charm in the movies. Nicole had never imagined that it could work so well in reality.

  Titus Calidius Severus called upstairs to Gaius to explain where he was going and why. His son came down yawning and chewing on a hunk of bread. He shoved the last of it into his mouth and settled without complaint to the work that his father had left — because the work, of course, would not go away.

  Titus and Lucius and Nicole left him to it. After the reeking dimness of the shop, the open air was blinding bright and dizzyingly clean.

  Lucius, whose young eyes adjusted fastest, tugged at Nicole’s arm and pointed across the street. “Look, Mother! Someone’s written something on our front wall.”

  Sure enough, there was a large scrawl by the door. With both eyes on Lucius to keep him from diving back into the mud, Nicole had walked right by without noticing. Now that he’d pointed it out, she read it aloud, sounding out the spikily printed words: “Big beast show in the amphitheater on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of August.” She needed a moment to work out that that was July 20, and another to realize it was only a couple of days away.

  “Ah, Caesar’s victory games,” Calidius Severus said, nodding. “They always put on a good show for those. They bring in beasts people don’t see every day, not just the same old boring bulls and bears.” Absurdly, Nicole thought of Wall Street, and wondered if Rome had, after all, had a stock market. The fuller and dyer went on, “Why, a few years ago, they even had a tiger. Do you remember what a mean-looking bastard he was?”

  “Now that you remind me of it, yes,” Nicole said, to be safe. No way she was letting him know that her memory of Carnuntum stopped cold less than two months before.

  “They may not be able to manage anything that fancy this time, not with that pestilence down in the south and the war tearing up everything off to the west, but it still should be one of the best shows of the year.” Titus Calidius Severus hesitated, then took the plunge: “Would you like to see it with me?”

  A date, Nicole thought. I’ve just been asked out on a date. Who says this place hasn’t got any culture? The fuller and dyer’s voice didn’t have anything of and then you’ll put out for me in it, either. She’d heard more than enough of that since Frank walked out. She’d given up on men as a species then, after so many of them had proved that all a man wanted was one thing.

  But Calidius Severus didn’t seem to want just that. There was no way to tell for sure, not yet, and she’d been burned so badly that she wasn’t going to believe it till she saw it — but she got the distinct feeling nonetheless that even if she kept on saying no to him, he wouldn’t stop being her friend.

  That was the most refreshing discovery she’d made in years. She nodded in his expectant silence, and said, �
�Yes, I would like that. I’ll even pay Julia a little something extra to keep the kids from killing each other. “

  “If you hadn’t set her free, you wouldn’t have to worry about that,” he said. But he shrugged, and let go a sudden and amazingly charming smile. When he smiled, snaggle teeth and all, he was almost handsome. No, Nicole thought; clean up his teeth, wash and deodorize him, and he’d cut a nice swath through the bored wives’ set in West Hills. Those Latin looks of his weren’t bad — weren’t bad at all.

  Fortunately, he couldn’t read her mind, or she’d have been well and truly embarrassed. “Well,” he said, “she’s a freedwoman and that’s that. You make your arrangements with her, and I’ll be by sometime in the morning, to make sure we get good seats.”

  Nicole nodded, but he didn’t give her time to say anything more before he turned to Lucius. “Meanwhile, you, let’s go get that mud off, and I’ll have a bath, too, while we’re at it. Won’t do me a bit of harm.”

  “I should say not,” Lucius said with rudeness that would have won him a swat from Nicole if he’d been close enough. “I might be muddy, but you stink. “

  Titus Calidius Severus didn’t seem offended. He certainly didn’t clobber the little brat. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a judicious air. “There’s enough shit mixed in with the mud to give stale piss a run for its money, don’t you think?” He ruffled the boy’s hair, though Lucius ducked and spluttered and protested. “And I don’t get piss up here, either.”

  Nicole swallowed bile. She’d watched her fair share of animals dropping dung in the middle of the street — and pissing in it, too. Somehow, that hadn’t quite impressed itself on her in connection with Lucius. Mud, so far as she’d ever known it, was nothing but wet dirt. In Carnuntum, it was a lot more than that. It was wet, shitty dirt, full of tetanus and lockjaw — or were they the same thing? — and who knew what else. Christ, what was Lucius liable to come down with, now he’d had his wallow?

  No doubt she’d find out, and quickly enough, too. For the time being, she focused on the thing that Calidius Severus’ gesture reminded her of, the most urgent thing. “Please, make sure you get rid of as many lice and nits as you can. Will you do that for me?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Calidius said, scratching his own head vigorously, as if she’d put him in mind of the colonies thriving there. “Not that you can ever get rid of all of them, but it never hurts to put them down as much as you can.”

  Nicole nodded tightly. Her jaw had set, grinding her teeth together — nothing she intended, and not much she could do about it, either. The broken tooth in back twinged worse than usual. She ignored it. Once or twice, after a trip to the baths and washing lots of bedding — to the dismay of Julia, who’d done most of the work — she’d thought she was rid of her lice, once even for three whole days. But they came back. They always came back. It didn’t matter how — whether she’d missed a few, whether a customer had brought a new batch into the tavern, whatever. There just was no getting rid of them.

  Titus Calidius Severus and Lucius headed off for the baths. The boy walked easily beside the man, chattering at a great rate, more than he ever did with Nicole or Julia. They looked, she thought, like son and father.

  That thought brought her up short for a moment, stopping her on a stepping stone before she recovered herself and went on across the street. Were they father and son? Calidius and Umma had not exactly had a platonic friendship before Nicole arrived to disrupt it.

  She shook her head. No. In all the gossip she’d overheard or been regaled with, she’d never heard the slightest suggestion that Umma had been getting it on the side with her neighbor while her husband was still alive. And he hadn’t died that long ago, from things that Fabia Ursa had said: three or four years at most. Both Lucius and Aurelia were older than that.

  Damn, what had the man’s name been? The clerk in the town hall had told her, but it had slipped right out of her head. So far she hadn’t needed it, but the way her luck ran, eventually she was going to. She just had to pray that the rest of her luck held, and someone said his name before she had to come up with it.

  She glowered at the graffito on the tavern’s wall. If she took a brush to it, she’d probably get rid of the whitewash, too. She’d have to buy more whitewash, then, and paint over it. She glowered more darkly. Another couple of sesterces thrown away. Maybe she’d leave it up, at least until the beast shows were done. It might, she told herself, even draw a couple of customers into the tavern.

  Aurelia erupted through the front door, spotted Nicole, and said, “Eep!” She ducked back in even faster than she’d come out. Nicole laughed. She knew what that meant. Aurelia had been all set to play in the mud, like her brother before her. Foiled, Nicole thought wickedly.

  She went inside with more decorum. The warm rich smell of baking bread fought and almost overwhelmed the city stink. Julia was over at the counter, grinding flour for the next batch.

  As Nicole went to spell her at the mill, a man’s voice spoke behind her. “Mistress Umma?”

  Nicole turned, trying not to seem too startled. The newcomer was a dapper little man, and a total stranger. He knew her, however, or thought he did. Little by little, she was getting used to that. It didn’t drive her to panic much anymore, not the way it had at first.

  Then again, maybe Umma hadn’t known him. He blinked and peered at her as if he might be a bit nearsighted. “My name is Julius Rufus,” he said. He was carrying a small wooden keg, which he set on one of the tables. “I hear you’ve been in the mood to try new things lately.”

  Her heart leaped from a standstill into a pounding gallop. “What? What about it?” Damn — were people all over Carnuntum gossiping about the new and highly eccentric Umma? Old Umma used to be sharp, you bet, but lately she’s gone soft in the head. God — that could get dangerous. Somebody might even -

  But Julius Rufus said, “I’ll tell you what about it,” and her heartbeat slowed to a fast canter. Safe, she was safe. This was a salesman, or she wasn’t a Hoosier of Hoosier born. As if to reassure her even further, he went on in a fast patter that had to be as old as the hills, “I know this tavern has always served nothing but wine — good wine, too, everybody agrees on that. Still and all, if you’ve taken it into your head to try things you haven’t tried before, how about this delicious barley brew here? It’s my very own, brewed up of the finest ingredients, according to an ancient recipe that’s come down through my family since the first Pyramid was a pup.”

  Julia looked up from the quern. “The Marcomanni and Quadi drink beer because they don’t know any better,” she said flatly. “When they get smart, they buy wine from us Romans.”

  Julius Rufus showed teeth as irregular as Calidius Severus’ in an insouciant grin. “Beer has been good enough for the Egyptians since time out of mind, and my beer has been good enough for a nice lot of people in Carnuntum for a good ten years now. There’s some very fine taverns go through a whole barrel of it before they’ve emptied their amphorae of wine.”

  “Barrels,” Nicole murmured. Beer had alcohol in it, of course. But, if it came in barrels, it wouldn’t be full of lead. She fetched a clean cup and a dipper, and bore down on Julius Rufus and his sample cask. “Let me try some.”

  Julia looked astonished. Julius Rufus looked delighted. He lifted the lid of his keg with a flourish. “Help yourself, Mistress Umma — and see for yourself that you’ll have no reason whatsoever to look down your nose at this fine product.”

  When Nicole and Frank toured Austria on their honeymoon, Frank had drunk Austrian beer with conspicuous pleasure. Nicole, despite his urging, had stuck to mineral water. What she wouldn’t give to do that now…

  She shook herself and focused on the task at hand. No help for it, and no escape, either. She dipped up a cupful, raised the cup to her lips, and sipped.

  She had to work hard to hold her face straight. Wine, at least, was sweet. Frank had always said beer was an acquired taste. Nicole wondered why on
earth anyone would want to acquire it. The stuff was bitter. It was sour. She could taste the alcohol in it. The only thing she could say for it was that it might make drunkenness more trouble than it was worth. If everyone reacted to beer the way she did, she might actually make some inroads against alcoholism in Carnuntum.

  She made herself take another sip. It tasted no better than the first. “It’ll never take the place of wine,” she said.

  “Told you so,” Julia said from behind the counter.

  But Julius Rufus was undeterred. “I don’t intend it to take the place of wine,” he said. “I drink wine myself — in fact, if you’ll serve me a cup of your two-as there, I’ll be grateful.” He set a dupondius on the table by the keg. Nicole nodded to Julia, who poured out the wine for him.

  He tossed it down, smacked his lips with stagey relish, and said, “Sure, wine’s good, and plenty of it. But the more choices you give your customers, the more customers you’re likely to get. Don’t you think so, Mistress Umma?”

  He was good. If he’d lived in Los Angeles in the 1990s, he would have sold a hell of a lot of encyclopedias or aluminum siding or whatever he was peddling, because sure as hell he would have been peddling something.

  Even so, if Nicole had intended to say no, he would have been out the door before he got well warmed up to his pitch. Her mother had been death on door-to-door salesmen, and Nicole had continued the family tradition with telemarketers.

  But she wasn’t going to turn this salesman down. If she could get in more choices that didn’t involve ingesting lead in toxic quantities — not to mention a choice that might not involve ingesting quite so much alcohol — then she might not be totally happy, but she’d be happier than she was now. She looked him in the eye and said, “How much do you want for each barrel, and how many cups can I get per barrel?”