Household Gods

by Judith Tarr

  As her eye caught his, his own lit up, but he didn’t go so far as to smile. She couldn’t tell if he heard the two men talking. He must have. If so, he wasn’t passing judgment, or at least, not that she could see.

  Maybe he didn’t want to. He was a veteran, she knew that. Should she give him the benefit of the doubt? She shrugged. Maybe.

  The procession made its way into the cemetery. It had spread out along the road; now, as it passed among the stones, it formed into a straggling line.

  The priestess waited for them. She hadn’t moved at all except for the wind tugging at her robes. Nicole wondered how, in a world bereft of bleach or detergent, she managed to keep them so blindingly white.

  Nicole needed a little while before she could see past that white and shining shape to the darkness beside it. The priestess stood near the edge of a newly dug grave. The men who must have dug the grave sprawled on the grass not far away, passing a jar back and forth. Slaves or free? Nicole wondered.

  No folding chairs here, and nowhere to sit but on a gravestone — which no one went so far as to try. The mourners stood around the grave, each seeming somehow to stand a little apart from the others. They’d seemed pathetically few in the city and on the road. Here they closed in and made a sizable crowd. Nicole had to slip between two taller neighbors to keep her eyes on the priestess.

  The mourners had fallen silent. Nicole hadn’t realized how intensely irritating their shrieking and keening was until it stopped, and she luxuriated in silence. The undertaker’s assistants brought the bier down from their shoulders with a little too much evident relief. One’s bones cracked as he bent to lower body and bier into the grave. The body rocked slightly, shifting sideways. Nicole caught her breath. But the bier steadied; it sank down into the dark earth.

  It hadn’t been real before, not really. Somehow that one bobble, that almost-fall, brought it home to Nicole. Fabia Ursa was dead.

  The priestess hadn’t moved at all, or spoken a word, or seemed aware that any of them was there. Just as the body sank below the level of the ground, she raised her hands to the heavens. The voice that came out of her was strong, a little harsh, with a flatness in it that was vaguely familiar. So too were the words she spoke. “Queen Isis is she that is the mother of the nature of things, the mistress of all the elements, the initial progeny of the ages, highest of the divine powers, queen of departed spirits, first of the gods in heaven, the single manifestation of all the gods and goddesses.”

  It was no prayer Nicole had ever heard before, but it had that odd, familiar feel. “The luminous summits of the sky, the wholesome breezes of the sea, and the lamented silences of the dead below, Isis controls at her will. Her sole divine power is adored throughout the world in many guises, with differing rites, and with differing names, but the Egyptians, preeminent in ancient lore and worshipping her with their special rites, give Mother Isis her truest name.”

  Fabia Ursa’s baby began to cry. Sextus Longinius lulus passed him to the woman next to him, a nondescript woman of indeterminate age. She slid her arm out of one sleeve of her tunic and exposed a breast, thereby informing Nicole, and anyone else with eyes to see, who she was and what she was doing here. The baby’s cries subsided into gurgles.

  Nicole, distracted by the baby and his nurse, had missed a few words of the priestess’ prayer, declamation, whatever she wanted to call it:“ — take the spirit of this woman who worshipped her and cherish it. May Isis take the spirit of this woman who worshipped her and comfort it. May Isis take the spirit of this woman who worshipped her and give it peace and rest and tranquility forever.”

  “So may it be,” several of the people gathered around the grave said in unison. The hired mourners took up their racket again, wailing and beating their breasts. The musicians kept them company with a racket that certainly made Nicole sad — sad that she had to listen to such a ghastly imitation of music.

  Fabia Honorata had carried a covered jar to the graveside. Now that Longinius lulus’ arms were free of the baby, she handed the jar to him. He took it as if he didn’t know quite what to do with it; then with a start he seemed to remember where he was. He was still in shock. He bent stiffly, and set the jar in the grave beside his wife’s shrouded body. “My dear wife,” he said with the same flatness Nicole had heard in the priestess, the flatness of rote, “I offer you food and drink to take with you on your journey from this world to the next.”

  His voice was steady. But as he knelt beside the grave, looking down at the shape that lay within it, something in him crumpled. For a moment Nicole thought he would faint, or fling himself into the grave with Fabia Ursa’s body.

  Of course he did no such thing. He straightened painfully, as if he were a very old man. As he turned his face again to the sun, Nicole saw tears streaming down his cheeks.

  That, it seemed, was all there was to the funeral. As Longinius lulus stepped away from the grave, the two gravediggers woke from what had looked like a fairly complete stupor, picked up their spades, and ambled toward the grave. They didn’t pay attention to the rapidly dispersing group of people, nor did they show any notable concern for the solemnity of the occasion. Without a word, they dug spades into the pile of earth beside the grave and began to fill it in. Dirt thudded down onto the shrouded body of the woman who had been Umma’s friend, and whom Nicole had liked well enough.

  Nicole suppressed a stab of guilt. Well enough was a cold thing when she stopped to think about it, but the fact was, Fabia Ursa had been a neighbor and an acquaintance. She had not, in Nicole’s mind, been a friend.

  Whatever she had been, one thing was certain. “It’s not fair,” Nicole said to no one in particular. The others had turned away from the grave and headed toward the gate. They weren’t a procession anymore; they were a scattering of individuals and couples, who happened to be in the same place at the same time. Some even seemed to have forgotten what they’d come for: they were laughing and talking. Nicole wanted to grab the lot of them and shake them. “It’s not fair! She had too much to live for, to die like that.”

  Somewhat to her surprise and rather to her dismay, the priestess of Isis heard her. “The gods do as they please,” she said with the hint of a frown. “Who are we to question their will?”

  Shut up, don’t ask questions, and do as you’re told. That was what that meant, in the second century as in the twentieth. Nicole couldn’t buy it, not here. With any real concern for cleanliness, Fabia Ursa never would have contracted that infection in the first place. With a doctor who knew his ass from his elbow, she wouldn’t have died of it. This funeral wasn’t the will of the gods; it was no more and no less than ignorance.

  She said so, injudiciously, but she was past caring for that. The priestess’ expression of shock was almost gratifying — it proved just how ignorant and downright criminally negligent people were in this world and time. “Aemilia is one of the best midwives in the city,” she said, “and as for Dexter, he studied medicine in Athens. Anything mortal men could have done to save your friend, they did. It was no human creature’s fault that she died.”

  Nicole shut her mouth with a snap. If I’d had a shot of penicillin to give her, you’d be singing a different tune, she thought fiercely; but some remnant of common sense kept her from saying it aloud. She’d done enough damage as it was.

  And still — how many people here in Carnuntum, here in the Roman Empire, here all over the world, died young, died in anguish, of injuries and illnesses from which they would easily have recovered in Los Angeles? How many babies died of childhood diseases against which they couldn’t be immunized, because no one knew how?

  She didn’t know the exact answer, but she knew the general one: lots. She shivered. If you were in your thirties in Carnuntum, you couldn’t count on another thirty or forty or fifty years of healthy, active, productive life, as you could in L.A. or Indianapolis. You could wake up dead, for any reason at all. Then, the day after tomorrow, some wine-sodden lout of a gravedigger would be sho
veling dirt over your corpse.

  Maybe Julia had the right idea after all. In a world in which you didn’t know if you’d be alive next week, let alone next year, you really would want to grab hold of whatever pleasure came your way. Eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow you may die. It had been a greeting-card joke in Indianapolis. Here, it was real. It was the truth.

  Everybody else was gone from the cemetery. Even the priestess had disappeared, Nicole had no idea where. For all she knew, the woman had sunk back into the ground, to emerge again when a devotee of Isis came to be buried. The gravediggers had made substantial inroads on the pile of dirt. One of them belched; the other farted. They grinned at each other as if it had been a grand joke.

  Nicole had some vague idea that there was a funeral feast — or a collation of some sort, if not quite on the scale of a banquet — at Longinius lulus’ house. Hadn’t Fabia Honorata said as much? Nicole should probably make an effort to go, put in an appearance, as she’d done at Frank’s faculty parties. She wasn’t any happier about this than about those uncomfortable and ultimately unprofitable gatherings.

  In the end, she didn’t take the extra steps across the alley from the tavern. She went home instead, and took refuge in the smell of wine and beer and bread, the sight of people eating and drinking and being — yes — merry, and the sound of Julia’s voice calling out a greeting that actually sounded glad. Nicole didn’t flatter herself that it was joy to see her; now Julia would be wanting a break from running the place by herself. Not that she wasn’t competent to do it. She was, and highly so. But it was a lot of work for one pair of hands.

  She was laughing as Nicole came in, exchanging banter with one of the regulars. At sight of her former mistress, however, she put on a somber expression, and even managed the gleam of a tear. “How sad,” she said. “Poor Fabia Ursa. Remember how she cried after her babies died? First one and then the other — that must have been so hard for her to bear.”

  Nicole nodded without speaking. Hard wasn’t the word for it. How could any woman lose two babies in a row and stay sane, and still want to try again? And yet how could anyone lose two babies in a row and not want to keep trying? Fabia Ursa must have been torn in two, not wanting to lose another, but wanting desperately to have one, just one, that lived.

  “And now she finally had one that seems healthy, pray the gods it stays so,” Julia said, unconsciously echoing Nicole’s thoughts, “and she dies herself. Where’s the sense in that?”

  “I don’t know,” Nicole answered wearily. “I just don’t know. Maybe things happen for no reason at all. I don’t know that, either.”

  “Then what’s the point of believing in gods?” Julia demanded. Nicole shrugged. Julia’s eyes had gone wide as they always did when she was thinking hard and not particularly conventionally, as if she needed to let more light into her brain.

  Her eyes narrowed again, shutting off the ray of reason. She shook her head. “You have to believe in the gods. If you don’t, what’s the point to anything?”

  Nicole shrugged again, heavily. At the moment, she wasn’t convinced anything had a point. “Pour me a cup of one-as wine, would you, please?” she said. Maybe it would take the edge off her gloom.

  Only after Julia had filled the cup and handed it over, and Nicole had drunk it half down, did it strike her. She was using the wine as a drug again, as she had at the beast show. She was drinking to dull her senses. To forget her grief and the anger that went with it. In short, to take the edge off reality.

  She had been on the way toward feeling better. Now she felt worse. She set the cup down with an effort that dismayed her. She steeled herself to do something, anything. Wait on one of the customers who’d begun to drum on the tables. Take the bread out of the oven. Check the seasoning in the stewpot.

  She’d do all those things. But first, she picked up the cup again, and drained it.

  “A good evening to you, Mistress Umma.” The last of the day’s customers ate a salted olive, spat the pit on the floor, and took the last swig from his cup of beer. He set a sestertius on the table and got to his feet. “I’d better head on home, before my wife sets the dog on me when I come through the door. She’s bound and determined that anybody who comes in after sundown must be a thief in the night.”

  “Not quite so dark as that,” Nicole said. The sun was setting, and twilight lingered, though for a shorter time than it had at the height of summer. The man had an as coming in change, but he didn’t wait for it. He hurried out the door. Maybe he hadn’t been joking about his wife and the dog.

  “I’ll light some lamps,” Julia said behind her.

  “Why bother?” Nicole said. She was still tired, and her mood was still black in spite of liberal applications of wine. She’d have closed the tavern after the funeral that morning if she hadn’t needed the money. To Julia, she said, “We might as well shut down. We’re not going to bring in many more people at this hour of the day.”

  “More like the first hour of the night,” Julia said. The Romans gave every day twelve hours and every night twelve, too. Daylight hours were long in summer, short in winter, nighttime the reverse. It wasn’t the system Nicole was used to, but it worked well enough, especially in the absence of clocks. The only problem came in the in-between hours, when nobody quite agreed on what time of day or night it was.

  As Nicole was turning toward the stairs, someone called from the doorway: “Am I too late for a cup of wine?”

  Had it been someone Nicole had never seen before, she would have said yes and sent him on his way. But it was Titus Calidius Severus. She almost frightened herself with how glad she was to see him. “Of course not,” she answered him. “Come in, come in. Julia, light a lamp after all.”

  Julia nodded just a shade too eagerly. She lit a lamp and set it on the table at which Calidius Severus had chosen to sit. Then she yawned — theatrically? Nicole couldn’t tell. Julia said, “You’re right, I think. We’re not going to get many more tonight. By your leave, I’ll go on up to bed.”

  That was more transparent than any of the glass Nicole had seen in Carnuntum. But ordering her freedwoman to stay down here with her would have been pretty transparent, too, to say nothing of insulting to Calidius Severus. Nicole had seen often enough that he wasn’t the sort who couldn’t hear no. She nodded to Julia without visible hesitation.

  Calidius set a couple of sesterces on the table. “Let me have a cup of Falernian,’ he said, “and get one for yourself, too. Fellow came in this afternoon, paid me a debt he’s owed me most of a year. I’ve got a little money.” His chuckle was wry. “Who says the gods don’t work miracles every now and again?”

  Nicole didn’t feel like having any more wine, but she didn’t see how she could turn down her friend, either — for friend he was, just as surely as Fabia Ursa had been no more than a cordial acquaintance. As she plied the dipper, the baby next door started to cry. She jerked her head toward the noise. “Sometimes the gods choose not to work miracles.”

  “That’s so.” In the lamplight, the fuller and dyer’s frown was full of shadows. The baby kept on crying. Calidius Severus sighed. “Poor Longinius. He’s going to have a tough time now. He thought the sun rose and set on Fabia Ursa.”

  “They were happy together.” Nicole carried the two cups of wine to the table, hooked a stool with her ankle, and sat opposite Calidius. She was peripherally aware of tables that still needed wiping, floor that could use a sweeping, and the last of the day’s stew baking onto the bottom of a pot. None of them mattered much, right at the moment.

  Calidius Severus took the cup she pushed toward him and sipped. Cheap wine you chugged down as fast as you could, to get past the taste. Falernian you sipped if you could, savoring the rich sweetness. “Ah,” he said. “That’s the stuff.” He frowned. “You’re not drinking.”

  She made herself raise the cup to her lips. The wine was sweet. If she didn’t think about lead, if she didn’t think about alcohol, she might even have said it was good. “
It was hard losing Fabia Ursa,” she said at last. “That should never have happened.”

  “Dexter’s a pretty fair doctor,” Titus Calidius Severus said. “He did everything he knew how to do.”

  “But he didn’t know enough!” Nicole blazed at him as she hadn’t quite had the temerity to blaze at Isis’ priestess.

  Still, she thought unwillingly, it wasn’t Dexter’s fault, not really. In an odd way, it was Nicole’s, for knowing what would be possible eighteen hundred years from now, and blaming the doctor because he didn’t. The fuller and dyer was right; Dexter had done everything he knew how to do.

  “Talk to any honest doctor and he’ll tell you he doesn’t know as much as he’d like to.” Calidius Severus reached across the table and set his hand on Nicole’s. In a different tone of voice, he went on, “Who does?”

  The lamp sputtered and flared, bringing out the dark stains that would never leave the fuller and dyer’s skin. Nicole smelled the hot olive oil inside the lamp. After a moment, she realized that was all she smelled. Calidius Severus had lost his usual summer-privy reek. “You’ve been to the baths!” she said.

  “What if I have?” He shrugged with elaborate casualness. “If I pay a call on a lady, I don’t want her to think less of me because my work makes me smell like a pissoir.”

  “Oh,” Nicole said. It was more of a gasp than a word. She didn’t know if she dared laugh. It wasn’t funny, not at all. And yet she hadn’t thought, not really, that he understood how bad he smelled. His nose must have accustomed itself to the reek, just as hers had got used to the stink of Carnuntum.

  He was watching, waiting for her to speak. “That was very… thoughtful of you,” she said a little desperately — and with dawning awareness. She knew what he had in mind. She wasn’t surprised. What else, after all, did a man usually have on his mind?