by Judith Tarr
Lucius might be silly, but he wasn’t stupid. He recognized the sort of question that meant he should make himself scarce.
He didn’t recognize it quite soon enough. Nicole caught him by the arm as he scooted past. Her free hand applied a fundamental lesson to his seat of knowledge. His squawk had more surprise in it than pain. Her second whack remedied the imbalance.
She let him go. He scampered off, not much the worse for wear. He didn’t indulge in the tears and histrionics that an American child would have gone in for. Less than a minute later, he was laughing again.
Children were tough little creatures: tougher than Nicole had realized. She was the one who stood as if poleaxed, staring at her own hand. Why in the world had she just done that? She never had before. She would have been appalled if she’d thought before she did it. She was worried, that was it. Worried half to death. That worry had magnified her anger at what was, at worst, mild misbehavior.
It didn’t seem reason enough. It probably wasn’t. But it also probably hadn’t been child abuse. Nicole wouldn’t have said that before she came to Carnuntum. It was happening again: the Romans she lived among had infected her with their own attitudes.
It was better than being infected with measles, or whatever this new and deadly disease was.
She was still thinking about that when Sextus Longinius lulus came in and sat at one of the tables near the door. “Let me have a cup of your one-as wine, would you, Umma,” he said, “and some olives, too, if you please.”
When she’d given him what he asked for and he’d paid her, she paused. He looked all right — not wonderful, not happy, but not broken down with grief, either. People who couldn’t deal with death wouldn’t last long in this world. “How’s your son?” she asked.
He spat out an olive pit and drank a swallow of wine. “He seems healthy enough, the gods be praised. Fabia Honorata’s looking after him right now.”
Nicole suppressed a stab of guilt. She should have gone over there days ago and seen if she could help. But she’d been busy, the tavern took up most of her time, she had her own kids to raise -
No, she thought. Face it. She hadn’t gone over because she hadn’t known what to say, and she couldn’t be bothered with a baby on top of everything else.
She raised an eyebrow at the baby’s father. “Fabia Honorata? Not the wet nurse?”
“No, not the wet nurse,” Longinius lulus answered. He did look a little haggard after all. “That’s the other reason I came in here. She’s sick. It’s the new sickness that’s been going around, the one that really hits you hard. Gods only know if she’ll pull through. I wanted to ask you who nursed Aurelia. That wasn’t so long ago — she might still be in business.”
Nicole’s first thought was pity. What a life for a woman, going from baby to baby, no more valued for herself than a milk cow, and not too different from one either. Perpetually full and aching breasts, no relief from baby howls and babyshit, and no time off unless she wanted her livelihood to dry up.
Hard on the heels of that came fear. If the wet nurse was down with the pestilence, that meant she’d brought it into the tinker’s shop. Even now it might be fighting a still-silent war against his body’s defenses. And if that was so, then he was breathing it right into her face.
She didn’t want to feel what she felt — it wasn’t noble at all. She wanted him to go away. She gave what answer she could, as patiently as she could, considering. “I don’t really remember the name of the woman who nursed Aurelia,” she said. “It’s been a bit of a while, after all. Julia, do you recall?”
Julia came to the rescue as she so often had before, with the ingrained habit of obedience, and a nature that accepted whatever people chose to throw at her. “Wasn’t that Velina, the wet nurse who used to live on the other side of the place where the town council meets?” she said. “Didn’t she and her husband move back to Vindobona last year, to be with his kin?”
“Yes, she did. I remember that,” Longinius lulus said. Nicole nodded and hoped her face didn’t look too blankly foolish. She’d had to do that again and again when pretending to recall things Umma certainly would have remembered. Sooner or later, someone was going to trip her up over it.
Not today. Please God, not tomorrow either, or the day after.
“What will you do now?” she asked Longinius lulus.
He sighed. “Have to look for somebody else, I suppose,” he answered. “I can’t feed him myself, though I wish to heaven I could. It’d be a lot easier and cheaper. If Fabia Ursa had lived — “ He broke off, took a deep breath, blinked rapidly but held in the tears. “It’s the gods’ will. Isis’ priestess said it, so it must be true.”
But it wasn’t the gods’ will. It was plain old ignorance and lack of sanitation. Fabia Ursa needn’t have died.
If Nicole had told anyone how antibiotics could cure childbed fever, they’d have thought she was mad. And she couldn’t prove that it worked. She knew that it worked, but not why it worked or how to make it work. It had been just the same with the measles vaccine, and with the concept of antisepsis, of touching a woman in labor with absolutely clean hands so that she wouldn’t pick up the germs that caused childbed fever. Nobody here believed that such a thing could exist. And she had no way to show them.
If she’d stopped to think at all, before she lived this life, she’d have thought that she could save the world with all the things she knew. But she didn’t know anything that really mattered — anything that could help, or that anyone would let her use to help.
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning all of it, more than he could ever know.
“I’m sorry, too,” Longinius lulus said. “I miss Fabia.”
And yet, even as he said it, and seemed to mean it, his eyes slid toward Julia, who stood at the hand mill grinding grain into flour. Julia couldn’t even be conscious of the way the tunic clung to her body as she worked, or how her breasts bounced, big double handfuls that had never been softened or slackened by the bearing or nursing of a baby.
All Nicole’s sympathy for him evaporated. Was that why he missed Fabia Ursa: because she was available whenever he wanted a stroke? Did he think he could go upstairs with Julia, someday when Nicole wasn’t around to say no?
Nicole scowled. She was angry at him, but at herself too. He’d loved his wife — he’d worn it on his face when he looked at her, and in his voice when he spoke of her. If he was still a normal man, if he still could want what a woman gave, who was she to fault him for it? Nicole hadn’t exactly shut herself down when Frank walked out, either.
I didn’t go looking for a prostitute, she thought starchily. But there’d been that fast-talking son of a bitch who’d made all that noise about being the youngest man in his firm to make senior partner, except of course he hadn’t made it yet, but everybody knew it was just a matter of time. She couldn’t even remember his name. She’d let him talk her into bed just to prove that she could still get a man; that a man could still want her, even if Frank had traded her in on a younger model. Compared to that, a straightforward transaction with a whore didn’t look quite so bad.
At long last Longinius lulus finished his wine. “Thanks, Umma,” he said, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic. “I’ll head over to the market square, I guess. Either I’ll find a wet nurse there who can take on another baby, or else I’ll find somebody who knows one.”
“Ask at Sextus Viridius’ stall,” Julia said. “I heard one of his daughters might be setting up as a wet nurse, since her husband walked out on her and left her with a newborn baby.”
Longinius lulus looked ready to kiss her, but either he was too shy or he had more self-control than Nicole might have credited him with. “I’ll try that,” he said. “Thank you, Julia.”
She smiled. He waved impartially at them both, but mostly at Julia, and left in rather better spirits than Nicole might have expected.
She let out a long sigh. Part of it was sympathy for the tinker’s plight. The rest was
a desire to rid her lungs of as much of the air he’d breathed at her as she could.
Julia echoed her sigh. “He’s having a hard time,” she said. “First his wife, now his baby’s nurse — you’d think he’d done some god a bad turn. And yet he’s such a nice man. If I had any luck to spare, I’d give it to him.”
“Would you?” Nicole said slowly.
Julia nodded. Her eyes were wide and earnest. What was she thinking of, taking Longinius lulus upstairs as a personal act of charity?
Nicole actually caught herself thinking, Maybe, the next time he comes and the place isn’t busy, I’ll find myself an errand to run. Just once. As a gift to him. She wasn’t even particularly shocked to catch herself at it. Julia wasn’t being coerced. She honestly wanted to do something for him, and that something was all the gift she had to give. He’d be happy. She’d be happy. Nicole could live with it, if she had to.
On the day when Julius Rufus was due for his regular beer delivery, he showed up as he always did, leading a small and tottery donkey with four large barrels of sour beer strapped to its back. Nicole caught sight of them outside the tavern, in between one customer going out and another coming in, and reached the door in time to see him unfasten one of the barrels from its cat’s cradle of leather lashings and ease it to the ground. He tipped it on its side and rolled it into the tavern. She had to jump aside or it would have rolled over her toe.
“Good day, Mistress Umma,” he said as he always did. “Good thing my next stop is close by, or poor old Midas here would get all lopsided.” He laughed, but he wasn’t his usual hearty self. He looked as worn as his joke, and his cheeks were flushed. He heaved the barrel up on its end beside the bar, and leaned there for a moment to get his breath back. “Let me have a cup of your two-as wine, would you? Gods, it’s hot today.”
Nicole hadn’t particularly noticed. After Indianapolis and especially after L.A., none of the summer weather she’d seen in Carnuntum struck her as anything more than warm. A lot of it, today included, didn’t even measure up to that.
She slipped past him behind the bar and dipped up his cup of wine. When she turned to bring it to him, he’d sunk down onto a stool. He was scratching the side of his neck between the edge of his beard and the neck opening for his tunic, and frowning. “Has something bitten me there?” he asked her. “It itches.”
Nicole peered at the reddened skin. It wasn’t just the scratching that had turned it that angry shade. “It doesn’t look like a bite,” she said. “It looks more like some kind of a… rash.” She swallowed. She felt as if she’d just done a one-and-a-half gainer into a dry pool. Yes, it looked like a rash. The kind of rash that went with the measles. She’d seen it at several rows’ distance in the amphitheater, and marked the resemblance. Now, from close up, there was no mistaking it.
Her thoughts must have shown in her face. Or maybe Julius Rufus had been coughing and sneezing for the past three or four days, and all the while done his best to tell himself he was fine, he was just coming down with a cold. As his eyes met hers, they went wide. He knew what a rash could mean. His voice lowered to a whisper. “Is it the pestilence?”
“I don’t know,” she lied — a white lie, she told herself. She debated the next thing, but really, if she was going to get it, she would; she couldn’t be any more exposed than she had been by now. And wasn’t measles one of the diseases that was contagious before the symptoms showed? Whether it was or it wasn’t, the damage by now was done. As if he were a sick child, she said, “Here. Let me feel your forehead.”
Obediently, he raised his head and tilted it back. Nicole laid her palm on his forehead. Even before she touched him, she felt the heat radiating from his skin. She had to will herself not to jerk away in alarm. God, he was hot. 104 degrees? 105? 106? She couldn’t tell, not exactly. She hadn’t felt that kind of fever often enough to gauge the temperature. She didn’t ever want to again, either. He was burning up.
“Have I got a fever?” he asked.
She felt the hysterical laughter rising, but she had a little control left. She didn’t let it out. Why on earth hadn’t he passed out right there in front of her, as the woman in the amphitheater had done?
She answered him, because she had to say something, and he was waiting. “Yes,” she said. “You are pretty warm.” And the Danube is damp, and the sun is bright, and… As surreptitiously as she could, she wiped her hand on the coarse wool of her tunic. Too late, of course. Much too late. But she couldn’t stop herself. “Maybe you shouldn’t deliver the rest of your beer this morning,” she said as tactfully as she could. “Maybe you should go home and lie down.”
He shook his head, and wobbled when he did it, so that he almost fell off the stool. “Oh, no, Mistress Umma. Even if it is the pestilence, I can’t do that. Too much work to do. Besides, I hear it kills you if you’re lying down, same as if you’re standing up. Got to keep going.” He shook his head again, this time vaguely, as if he didn’t know where he was going even if he was going there.
Nicole wanted to shake him, but if she did, she’d knock him clean over. There wasn’t anybody around to pick him up, either. One way and another, anybody who’d been in the tavern had managed to make himself scarce. Julia was nowhere in evidence, nor the kids either. She was alone with a very, and perhaps deathly, ill man.
She did what she could, which was damned little. “If you rest, you’ll be more able to fight off the disease,” she said.
“I can’t help it,” he said with the kind of mulishness she’d seen before in people too ill to think straight. “I’ve got to go on.” It took him two tries before he could stand up. “Thank you for the wine.” He’d had only the one cup, but he staggered like a man far gone. Which he was — but not in wine.
Nicole stayed where she was as he made his listing, swaying his way to the door. She couldn’t make herself move, still less lend him a hand. A kind of horror held her rooted, a sick fascination. This is what death looks like, a small voice said in the corner of her mind.
The donkey waited patiently under its somewhat lightened burden. Julius Rufus took its leadrope with something that, at a distance and in bad light, might have been taken for his usual briskness. The donkey, well habituated to its rounds, took a step forward. Julius Rufus crumpled to the ground, right there in the middle of the street. The donkey stopped and stood, head low, ears drooping. Very well, its stance said. If one step was all it needed to take, then one step it would be.
Nicole couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the fallen man till a shadow fell across his body. Gaius Calidius Severus stood there, staring down. He must have been watching from inside the dyer’s shop.
Something about him, maybe just his presence, freed Nicole. She could move, could make her way out of the tavern and stand on the doorstep while an oxcart rattled and creaked its way down the street. The man in it caught her eye as he came closer. His expression was blankly hostile, the expression of a driver on a California freeway, going where he was going and God help anyone who got in his way. But oxcarts being what they were, wide open and dead slow, he had time to bellow at her as he came on: “Get that cursed drunk out of the road, lady, or I’ll roll right over him.”
“He’s not drunk, he’s sick, and you’ll be a lot sicker if you try running over him,” Nicole snapped — with no little satisfaction. On the freeway, you never got to answer back, or if you tried, you got shot.
She was threatening the drover in fine L.A. fashion: Don’t Tread On Me, and I’ll clobber you if you try. But he didn’t get the nuances. His ox had brought him within peering distance of the fallen man. “Gods and goddesses,” he said, “he’s got the pestilence!” He plied his stick on the ox with ferocious vigor. The ox bent its head and pressed on at half a mile an hour instead of a quarter, steering as wide around the crumpled body as it could. Nicole didn’t see it slacken, but the drover redoubled his efforts once he’d passed the obstacle. The ox lowed in protest. The cart’s axle squeaked and groaned. The man in it l
ooked over his shoulder till the street bent and took him out of sight, as if the death in the street could follow him, and be beaten off if it came too close.
Gaius Calidius Severus stood watching him go, just as Nicole had done. When he was gone, the young dyer turned back to Nicole. “Has he got the pestilence, Umma?” he asked.
“Yes,” Nicole answered. She didn’t try to soften it for him. Maybe she should have. He was her lover’s son, after all. But right at the moment, she had no softness in her. She rolled Julius Rufus onto his back, got a grip on his armpits, and set about dragging him back toward the tavern.
“Here,” Gaius Calidius Severus said, “you don’t need to do that all by yourself.” He got hold of Julius Rufus’ ankles and lifted while she dragged. Between the two of them, they carried the sick man into the tavern.
Nicole was more than glad of the help, but she wished Gaius Calidius Severus hadn’t exposed himself to the disease. She also wished she hadn’t exposed herself, but it had been too late to worry about that since Julius Rufus rolled her barrel of beer into the tavern.
She eased the unconscious brewer down next to the wall by the door, where no one would step on him, and thanked her helper with honest gratitude. He blushed a bit and shuffled his feet. “Any time, “ he said. “There was too much of him for you to haul by yourself, I could see that. Mithras teaches that a man shouldn’t just think what’s right: he should do what’s right.”
Nicole liked that. Yet Mithraism, from all she’d heard, had no place for women.
She shrugged. This was hardly the time to worry about the finer points of religious doctrine.
Julia was back in the tavern from wherever she’d been: women’s day at the baths, from the look and smell of her. The place was empty of customers, a stroke of good luck for which Nicole was deeply grateful.
Julia’s eyes were a little too wide, her stare a little too fixed. But she had wits enough not to burst out in hysteria. Nicole brought her to order with a sharp word. “Julia — do you know where Julius Rufus has his brewery?”