Household Gods

Nicole listened in a kind of stunned amazement. After a while, it dawned on her what their conversation reminded her of. In her own time, in her own country, people had talked the same way about Muslim suicide bombers in the Holy Land.

To the Calidii Severi, to Julia, to Ofanius Valens, and to Sextus Longinius lulus and Fabia Ursa, whatever Christians Carnuntum had – all the Christians in the Roman Empire, for that matter – were wild-eyed fanatics. Their whole purpose in life was to cause trouble, to make martyrs for their faith. They were, in a word, Terrorists.

So – was it true? Nobody had said any such thing in Sunday school. That was all holy Christian martyrs and wicked Romans and bloody-minded lions. Of course the Christians were right – they’d won in the end, hadn’t they? Nobody ever showed the other side of it. Just the Christians defending their one and true and only faith.

Nicole had been awfully young then, young enough that the world could seem so simple. The older she’d grown, the less things seemed to fit the pattern of her Sunday-school lessons. She shouldn’t be surprised to find this new truth, too: Christians as terrorists, Romans as solid citizens appalled at their extremism.

Or maybe that wasn’t the way it really was, either. Maybe these people here were ignorant, and blindly prejudiced. If they were, and if everyone had a side and no one was all right or all wrong, what did that say about the way the people Nicole had called friends and colleagues in Los Angeles thought about Muslims? Was there any real difference between an early Christian martyr and a car bomber?

Somehow, the fact that there were Jews here bemused her even more than the presence of Christians. This was, after all, the second century of the Christian era. There would have been Christians around here somewhere. Wouldn’t there? Bur Jews back then had had the Holy Land, or so she’d heard. What would they be doing in a remote backwater like Catnuntum?

Titus Calidius Severus spread a fistful of sesterces on the table. “Another round of Falernian,” he declared grandly; like everybody else in the tavern, he was flying high. Nicole scooped up the money, pausing to savor the feel of the coins: cool and round, sliding over one another with a soft clink. They were heavy compared to twentieth-century small change, solid and unmistakably there. When you had a sackful of Roman money, you knew it. No losing a fifty-dollar bill in your pocket here.

She made her way back to the bar to fill more cups. She had to use the dipper slowly and carefully, to keep from dribbling wine on the stone countertop. As long as she didn’t move too fast, she was just fine.

When she carried the cups back to the table, she had a couple of extras. She squinted at them, counted them, counted them again to be sure. Seven – that was the right number, wasn’t it? She looked up from the cups to count noses. Fabia Ursa, Sextus Longinius lulus, Ofanius Valens, Titus Calidius Severus – lord, these names were a mouthful. Didn’t anybody do names like Joe and Bob and Sue here?

Probably just as well they didn’t. She was letting her mind wander again, too. Four people. Five, counting herself. (Umma. Now that was a nice short name. Everybody should have a name like Umma.) Who was missing?

Julia, of course. And Gaius Calidius Severus.

Where they were, and what they were doing up there, required only one guess, especially since Ofanius Valens was staring at the stairway with a discontented expression. What was he thinking? Was he jealous? Or was he wondering if he’d left Julia dissatisfied?

Maybe he had, at that. Maybe, on the other hand, Julia was just setting out to get as much as she could today.

Fabia Ursa spoke Nicole’s thought aloud, as if she’d caught it floating in the rain- and wine-soaked air. “She’ll sleep sound tonight, I’m sure,” she said with a small giggle that ended in a hiccup. Under the tight-stretched fabric of her tunic, the baby kicked as if in protest. She laughed with a catch in it, as if the baby had caught a rib, and rubbed her belly. “It will be a while before I can sleep that way again – what with the baby between us now, and, if Mother Isis is kind, it will wake me up in the night, and keep me running from sunup to sunup.”

Nicole had heard Fabia Ursa mention Isis before; but she’d known the name even before that. She’d read a book once with the goddess’ name in the title. Isis, the book had said, was a goddess in Egypt. Carnuntum and Egypt were a long way apart. The Romans might have had only those hideous, squeaking carts to haul goods and people, but ideas seemed to travel on wings.