Household Gods

She blinked out of her musings to find Fabia Ursa talking to her. “We’ve got plenty of wine here, Umma,” the tinker’s wife said. “We – “ She paused; her face tightened. Nicole watched a contraction ripple across her belly beneath the tight-stretched tunic. When it was gone, she went on calmly enough, “We shouldn’t need to go back to the tavern for more.”

“That depends on how bad the pains get,” one of the neighbors said. “When I delivered Cornelius – my firstborn, if you’ll remember; he died when he was six, a fever took him off suddenly, but before that he was a fine strong boy – I was in labor two whole days and two nights, and come the third day – “

Nicole tuned her out, and hoped Fabia Ursa did, too. The horror stories were as familiar as the sight of the hugely pregnant woman pacing the floor. Eighteen hundred years and halfway around the world, and misery loved company just as much as it ever would.

But Aemilia wasn’t having any of it. Her voice was sharp, cutting across the woman’s babble. “Stop that, Antonina. This is not Fabia’s first delivery. She’s done it twice before; she knows what to expect. Don’t go upsetting her with your foolish chatter when she needs to keep her spirits up.”

Antonina glowered at the midwife, but she shut up. Nicole felt like applauding. The last thing Fabia Ursa needed to do at the moment was panic over her safety or the safety of her baby. Antonina didn’t appear to care a bit about that, but she wasn’t going to argue with Aemilia, either. The midwife looked as if she’d be bad news in a fight.

After an uncomfortable pause, Fabia Ursa’s sister said, “May the gods grant good health to my new nephew or niece. It’s hard, you know. Loving the little ones, knowing they’ll be lucky to live past weaning. It’s so easy to lose them – and so hard to help loving them regardless. “

The rest of the women in the room nodded, and echoed her sigh. From the looks of it, they’d all lost babies or young children. Some more than one – Fabia Ursa herself had lost two, hadn’t she?

Nicole felt that sinking sensation again, the hollow in the pit of her stomach that went with culture shock. Back in Indiana, she’d known a woman whose son had had some sort of congenital heart trouble. He’d died before he was big enough, or strong enough, for the surgery that might have cured him. More than grief, she remembered anger, and a sense of betrayal. Babies weren’t supposed to die. Doctors were supposed to be able to fix them. Death was for the old – and even they were kept from it as long as humanly or medically possible.

Nicole shivered in the odorous warmth of the shop. No wonder they made a spectacle of death here. Death was a commonplace thing, and death of children most common of all.

“Fabia Honorata,” Aemilia said, more gently than she’d spoken to Antonina, “we shouldn’t talk about anything unfortunate here today. A birth is no place for words of ill omen.”

Fabia Ursa’s sister blushed faintly. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. What was I thinking?” She tugged at the neck of her tunic as Nicole had seen Julia do now and then, bent her head and spat onto her breast. She was turning away the omen. No one grimaced or upbraided her for silly superstition. All the women looked on with deadly seriousness. Antonina and Fabia Ursa even imitated her.

Bad omens were as real and appalling here as hard-drive crashes or power failures were to Nicole. But she’d never have been so foolish as to think that snapping her fingers or spitting down her shirt would keep the gremlins away.

Somehow, she didn’t think it would be too wise to say as much.

Nicole sighed. So many things she couldn’t say. People here had very different notions from hers about what was self-evidently true. She didn’t know exactly what they did to people whose ideas were too far from the norm, and she wasn’t eager to find out. There hadn’t been any place to run or hide, down on the floor of the amphitheater.

Fabia Ursa had paused in her pacing only long enough to avert the omen. She went back to it grimly, but not for long. Suddenly she staggered. Nicole, who happened to be closest to her, caught her arm. She was surprisingly heavy for a woman so slight.

She smiled at Nicole, a thin, tight smile. “Thank you, Umma,” she said a little faintly. And then, more clearly, she said, “I’ve done all the walking I’m going to do this time. So if you don’t mind…” Still clinging to Nicole, leaning heavily on her, Fabia Ursa waddled over to the birthing chair and lowered herself into it. She sat for a moment, just breathing; Nicole, relieved of her weight, did much the same.

Fabia Ursa seemed to recover first. “Bring me some wine, somebody,” she said with imperiousness that Nicole had never heard from her before. “I’m not getting up from here until I do it with my baby in my arms.” She swept the room with a glare, as if challenging them all to argue with that.