by Judith Tarr
What was surprising, and not exactly thrilling either, was the realization that she had it on her mind, too. She glowered down at the wine cup, as if the Falernian in there had betrayed her. But alcohol had very little to do with it. She was sober as a judge — more sober than a couple of judges she’d known. Some of it was fear of extinction hammered home by Fabia Ursa’s untimely death. More, she admitted, had to do with Calidius Severus’ patient pursuit of her. He hadn’t taken no for an answer, but he hadn’t made a nuisance of himself, either. But most of it was the loneliness and isolation she felt here. This, she’d thought, would be her ideal world, her best escape from the twentieth century: simple, idyllic, egalitarian, worth even abandoning her kids; after all, didn’t men do it all the time? It was none of those things — not even close. And now, to her deep dismay, she needed an escape from the escape.
If she could go back -
No. Not even for Kimberley and Justin. She loved them, a fierce, visceral love that had nothing to do with anything she’d done or not done. It hadn’t kept her from leaving them, and it wouldn’t bring her back. Not as long as she found life in that world unlivable. Even Dawn-the-bimbo was better for them than Nicole in the state she’d been in when she made her prayer to Liber and Libera. Nicole now, worn thin with the simple effort of survival in a world she’d never been prepared for and certainly never fit into, was even less able to be the kind of mother they needed. She couldn’t even make this world a better place, and she was living in it. All her grand plans, her ambitions to “invent” everything from the chimney to the cotton swab, had lost themselves somewhere, so completely she couldn’t even regret that they were gone. Every scrap of energy she had was devoted to staying alive, fed, and more or less sane.
All of that came together into a decision of sorts. “Let’s wait a little longer,” she said, “to make sure Julia’s gone to sleep.”
“Well, well,” Titus said in unguarded surprise. Then he laughed quietly. “Well, well.” He laughed again, more freely, with a brightness of joy in it that she found contagious. “However you like. I’ve been saying that all along.”
She sipped at the wine without answering. She’d made a choice, and it wasn’t easily revocable. She should have relaxed into it; been glad for the release, at long last, of tension. Instead, she was twitchier than ever. She was, in a manner of speaking, about to lose her virginity again — her first time in this body. First times were always strange. How much stranger this was, when her lover didn’t even know it was the first time. As far as he knew, this was the same woman he’d made love to — how many times before? Many, if Nicole was any judge.
After a while, her cup was empty. So was Calidius Severus’. It probably had been for a bit. He raised an eyebrow and smiled that lopsided smile of his. It had always appealed to her. Now it made her belly quiver.
She took a deep breath, and nodded. They rose from the table together. She took the lamp to light their way upstairs. No flicking switches here.
At the top of the stairs, she paused to listen. All she heard was a triple chorus of deep, regular breathing. She nodded to Calidius. He slanted her an approving look and headed down the hall toward her bedroom. His strides were long and confident. Why not? He knew the way.
The door shut with a slightly disturbing thud. Nicole resisted the urge to run back and fling it open. She set the lamp on the chest of drawers. By its dim, flickering light, she barred the door as quietly as she could. When she turned back to face the room, she saw two things. The first was what lay beside the lamp on the chest, that Nicole had certainly never put there: a twist of wool and a small wooden box. Nicole could well guess what it contained. Wool and pine resin, Julia had told her. Julia, it seemed, had decided to help Nicole in the best way she could.
The second thing Nicole saw was Calidius Severus standing by the bed. The light made him look younger, and really, not bad at all in his Latin way. Better than Frank Perrin had ever been, that much she could be sure of.
She bent abruptly and blew out the lamp. The room plunged into darkness. “Ahh, why did you go and do that?” Titus Calidius Severus said in a grumpy whisper. “I wanted to see you. Not to mention,” he added pragmatically, “I’m liable to break my fool neck going downstairs without a light.”
“Don’t worry,” Nicole said, with a bit of a snap in it. “We’ll manage. We’ll manage everything just fine.” She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Groping along the top of the chest of drawers, she found the wool and the little box. She couldn’t retreat to a bathroom, and didn’t want Calidius Severus watching while she put the twist in place. Maybe that was twentieth-century modesty, but she didn’t care. It was hers.
She squatted and did what was needful, working by feel. It wasn’t any worse than putting in a diaphragm in a hurry while Frank cooled his heels, and certain other parts of his anatomy, in the marital bed.
When she’d done as well as she could, she rose and groped across the room. She heard him breathing and shuffling around — undressing? Probably. Just short of where her skin told her he was, and the bed just past him, she yanked the tunic off over her head and let it fall to the floor. It was a defiant thing to do, even if he couldn’t see it. She slid down her drawers and stepped out of them, and shifted till she felt the bed’s edge against her knees. She lay back on that solid, invisible surface.
She felt Titus Calidius Severus lie beside her: a creak of the bedframe, a weight tugging at the mattress. His bare flesh was warm against hers. They’d have to be careful in what they did; the bed was narrow for two. Nicole, who slept, as Frank used to say, all over the place, sometimes thought the bed was narrow for one.
He slid an arm under her back. “It’s good to be here with you again,” he breathed in her ear. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you a lot.”
She couldn’t say the same; it would be a lie. She settled for something that maybe was better. “Titus,” she said, clasping her arms around his neck.
“I love you, Umma,” he said as she drew him down.
It wasn’t as awkward as she’d feared it would be. The body remembered, and the mind wasn’t inexperienced, either. She let him lead, and followed as she could. It was much like living in this world. After a while, the dry tightness went out of it. She relaxed and flowed with it, took the release when it came, and was profoundly glad to have been given the gift.
Afterwards, they lay side by side on the narrow bed, body to body as they couldn’t help but be: one of them would fall out otherwise. Nicole looked up at the ceiling. She could make it out by now, by the starlight filtering in through the unshuttered window.
Titus Calidius Severus rested a hand on her hip. It was an easy touch, undemanding, and strikingly intimate. “Happy?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, on the whole sincerely. Given the way the Romans took male domination as an article of faith, she’d wondered — too little too late — if he would climb on, get his jollies, and climb off again, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. If he had, she would never have let him see the inside of her bedroom again.
But he hadn’t. He’d taken the time and effort to make sure she enjoyed herself. He hadn’t made it seem like effort, either; he’d plainly been enjoying himself as he pleased her. Entertainment, she thought. If your options for pleasure were as limited as they were here, wasn’t it sensible to string out the ones you did have, to make them last as long as you could?
“Yes,” she said again, more firmly this time. “I’m happy.” In a way, taking Calidius Severus to bed had been like making love for the first time. He knew better than she did how her body — no, Umma’s body — responded; what it wanted, what made its synapses sing. That wouldn’t last, not with her living inside it, changing it, but this time at least it had been true.
Umma’s body was different from her own, sensitive in a place or two — the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger, the fold at the crook of the elbow — where she hadn’t been; less so in the earlobes, which w
as a pity. The shaving of the pubic hair, the naked skin where she’d been used to something quite different, changed the way she felt. She’d had to swallow giggles once, which she could never have explained without getting into trouble. Razor burn down there?
As for how it felt, scratchy bits aside — she couldn’t exactly tell. Better? Worse? She frowned. More precise, perhaps.
She moved a fraction closer to him, a conscious decision and one she didn’t intend to regret. “And you?” she asked. “Are you happy?”
She’d intended it for a rhetorical question. She had no doubt he’d liked what was going on while it was going on. And he answered, “Oh, yes,” but his voice held a trace of uncertainty that surprised her. After a moment, he went on, “Some of the things you did… you’ve never done before.”
If he hadn’t been lying there next to her, she would have kicked herself for stupidity. She hadn’t made love like Umma. She couldn’t make love like Umma; she didn’t know how Umma did it. She’d made love like Nicole, and Calidius Severus had noticed the difference. He could hardly have helped it. Anyone who thought all cats gray in the dark was a fool, and a blind fool to boot.
As soon as she’d worked her way through that, she felt like kicking herself again. Why would he think she was different now from the way she had been? What likelier explanation than that she’d learned the new ways from somebody else?
She didn’t want him thinking that. Now that she’d decided this relationship was worth having, she didn’t want it poisoned at what was, for her, the very beginning. As lightly as she could, she said, “You know how Julia likes to talk. Some of the things she was talking about sounded like fun. I thought I’d try them.”
He weighed that. Nicole could all but watch the pans of the balance wavering, swinging in his mind, now up, now down, now trembling in the middle. At last, he let out a short bark of laughter. “Julia likes to do more than talk. Never a dull moment there, if half of what Gaius says is true.”
Nicole was so glad he’d accepted the explanation, she almost forgave Julia for being — no bones about it — a slut. Almost. “One of the reasons I freed her was so she wouldn’t feel as if she had to prostitute herself to get a little spare cash, but I’m sure she still does it when I’m away.”
Beside her, the fuller and dyer shrugged. “What can you do? You’re not her mother. You’re not her owner anymore. A patron can do just so much with a client, and then it’s the client’s own lookout. Some people just like going to bed with somebody new every time. I never thought that was so great myself, but maybe I’m the odd one.”
“Yes, you are odd,” she said, sharp enough to surprise herself. “If you ask me, most men are like Julia. It’s women who are like you.”
“Yes, that’s probably so.” And he wasn’t even upset about being told he was like a woman. That took the edge off her temper, and made her feel more than a little foolish. He grunted, the noise he made when he was thinking. After a few breaths, he said, “Ah… Umma.”
“What is it?” Nicole said. Something in his tone told her he was changing the subject. And why did he sound hesitant again?
“Mm…” Yes, he was hesitant, but once he’d got into it, he went on in a rush: “No matter what Julia says, if you pull my foreskin back quite that hard, you’re liable to make a Jew out of me.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She’d expected something philosophical, or something personal, but — she’d hurt him? “Oh.” Her voice came out much smaller than usual. “I’m sorry.” She was blushing, blessedly hidden in the darkness. In the time she came from, she’d never made love to an uncircumcised man. She’d been a little startled to find something extra down there, until she realized that no one here went through circumcision, except, as she’d supposed and he’d just confirmed, the Jews.
He set a kiss on her lips, light, almost too quick to catch. “It’s all right. No damage done. Everything still worked, didn’t it?” Just for a moment, he sounded disgustingly, smugly male. Before she could call him on it, he sat up, jostling her just a little. “I’d better get back across the street. Before I do, though — where’s that chamberpot?”
She fished around under the bed till her hand stumbled against it, pulled it out and handed it to him. He held it in one hand while he pissed standing
up. Nicole sighed, not too loud. That was a hell of a lot more convenient than squatting over the damn thing, as she had to do.
For all his grumbles about breaking his neck in the dark, he went down the stairs as sure and quiet as a cat. Nicole followed more slowly. She didn’t fall there, but she kicked a stool near the front door and hopped the rest of the way, hissing till the pain lost its red edge. Still standing half on one foot and all on the other, she unbarred the door. “Good night,” she said. Somehow that didn’t feel quite right. Something more was called for. “It was a good night, Titus. “
“I thought so,” he said — not so smug, this time, that she wanted to smack him. “I’m glad you did, too.” He gave her one more kiss, a light one, with no heat in it, but as much warmth as she could ever have wished for. “Good night, Umma.”
“Good night,” she repeated. She stayed in the doorway till he opened the door to his own house and went inside. Above his roof, the sky was full of stars.
“Well?” Julia asked the next morning. “Well?” She was practically hopping up and down with curiosity.
“Very well, thank you, Julia — and you?” Nicole said blandly. Unlike the freedwoman, she subscribed to the belief — or possibly labored under the delusion — that one of the things that made a private life private was not talking about it.
Julia stamped her foot in indignation. “Oh, come on, Mistress.” She still slipped and called Nicole that every so often; the habits of years didn’t disappear in a few weeks. She planted her hands on her hips. “You don’t think that wool got there in your room by itself, do you? Or the resin?”
“Maybe they walked,” Nicole answered, deadpan. Julia stared at her. Nicole stared levelly back. Julia began to laugh; she laughed and laughed, till she had to hug herself to stop. Some of the stale jokes of the twentieth century passed for fresh wit here.
Seeing her freedwoman break up made Nicole relent… a little. “Everything is just fine, Julia.”
“Well, that’s good,” Julia said after a pause in which she plainly perceived that she wasn’t going to find out any more. “It’s about time, if you ask me.”
Nicole had gathered some while since what Julia thought of her relations — or lack thereof — with Titus Calidius Severus. While Julia set about building up the fires for another day’s cooking and baking, Nicole went to the front door, unbarred it, and threw it open to show the tavern was ready for business.
Across the street, Titus Calidius Severus was just opening up, too, and setting out the amphorae that gave him the urine he needed for his work. “Good morning, Umma,” he called with a smile and a wave.
Nicole caught herself stiffening, searching for hidden meanings. Stupid, she cursed herself. She waved back — lightly, good; not too strained. “Good morning, Titus,” she said.
Behind her, Julia made a small, interested noise. Nicole realized she hadn’t greeted the fuller and dyer like that of a morning since she’d come to inhabit Umma’s body. This had the look and feel of a custom returned to after a hiatus.
Calidius Severus noticed, too. His smile broadened. He blew her a kiss. Julia made that interested noise again. Absurdly, Nicole felt herself blushing as if she’d been caught in flagrante delicto — a fine Latin phrase — rather than simply receiving a friendly greeting from the neighbor across the street.
She fought down the heat of memory, and blew the kiss back toward him. He grinned and bowed and went inside.
Nicole rounded on Julia. Julia had the sense to get very busy very fast.
Lucius and Aurelia put a merciful end to what was becoming an uncomfortable stretch of silence. Their noise and clatter drove the shadows out
of the tavern. Their voices rang in it, demanding breakfast this instant. Julia was quick to shut them up. She ate with them, and Nicole after a short pause. She was hungrier than she’d expected. She realized, in the middle somewhere, that she’d used her bread to sop up all the olive oil in the little bowl Julia gave her. She didn’t remember having starred to do that, but it seemed a habit these days. It wasn’t making her fat. Some days, in fact, that oil was the only fat she got in her diet. Maybe her body had quietly told her she needed it.
Ofanius Valens was her first customer. He wasn’t a regular anymore, but he had started coming back now and then since Julia’s manumission party. Nicole brought him his bread and scallions and walnuts and a cup of the two-as wine. His usual, she thought, and remembered how terrified she’d been the first time she saw him. Now she knew what two or three dozen people liked to order, maybe more. It felt as easy, as natural as keeping track of the files in her computer.
Titus Calidius Severus came in at midmorning for a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. And thou, she thought facetiously, till she caught a whiff of him. His ammoniacal reek was back in force. Nicole let out a small, silent sigh. If he ever tried to get her to take him to bed when he smelled like that…
Surely he had better sense. If he didn’t, she’d teach him some, and fast. Not that she really thought he needed any education. He’d never even tried to kiss her when he smelled bad.
She realized she was standing over him, staring blindly at him. As she moved to busy herself somewhere else, he said between bites of Julia’s fresh and still-warm bread, “Fellow who came into the shop to pick up some wool I’d dyed for him told me there’s a troupe of actors coming in from Vindobona in a few days. Do you want to take in one of the mimes they put on? He said they were supposed to be pretty good — and if they’re not, we can always throw cabbages at them.”
Vindobona, Nicole had learned, was the name by which Vienna went these days. Although Vienna would go on to put Petronell in the shade, here-and-now Carnuntum was at least as important a city.