Household Gods

The next day dawned bright and warm, by no means as common a thing in that part of the world as it was in California. Nicole had come to welcome sun through the newly opened shutters of a morning, instead of taking it for granted. But today, as she squinted in the bright light after the stuffy dimness of her bedroom, the smile died as soon as it was born. There was an empty place in the world, a vacancy where Fabia Ursa had been. She’d been a constant, almost daily presence in Nicole’s life, not drinking much, but eating like a teenager, packing it away somewhere in that bird-boned frame. Her voice had washed over Nicole while she went about the business of the tavern, a half-annoying, half-comforting rattle of gossip, opinions, hearsay, and cheerful nonsense. She’d always had something to say to the kids, and had looked after them when Nicole needed an extra hand, without complaint and without asking to be paid. Nicole had found ways: a bowl of stew or a chunk of bread with olive oil on the house, or a cup of wine for her husband if he happened by.

Now she was gone. The funeral was this morning, just late enough to let her open the tavern and yet again leave Julia to look after it while she went elsewhere. Julia didn’t object. She liked the sensation of being the owner of the place, Nicole thought; and if she was turning tricks for spending money, she could do it a whole lot more easily when Nicole was away.

Nicole didn’t want to think about that today. She didn’t want to think about death, either, but death wasn’t so easily evaded.

Most of the neighbors had turned out for the funeral procession. They seemed like a decent crowd as they gathered in the alley, waiting for the body to be carried out of the house, but there couldn’t have been more than a couple of dozen in all. Two women whom Nicole couldn’t immediately place by name or face took their places at the head of what would be a small, sad procession. They were hired mourners, she realized, in garments artistically rent and with hair almost too dramatically disarrayed. As two strapping undertaker’s assistants carried the body out of the house, wrapped in a linen shroud and laid on a wooden bier, the mourners began to keen. A pair of flute-players, one with a large instrument, one with a small, joined in just out of synch. The combined racket put Nicole in mind of scalded cats.

The procession wound its slow way out of the alley and into the broader street beyond. Nicole happened to be close to the front, not far in back of Sextus Longinius lulus, who walked behind the bier. He carried his son in his arms, the son for whose life his wife had given her own. He looked eerily calm. Shock, Nicole thought. It wasn’t real to him yet. Later, when it hit, he’d fall hard, but for now he was well in control of himself.

She debated disturbing him now or waiting till later. Later might not come; now was here. She said it, then, and hoped for the best: “Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head. “Oh, no. The funeral club is paying for everything. I’ve put in my sesterces for years; now it’s my turn to get the use of them.”

“Oh,” Nicole said, feeling oddly foolish. “How – forethoughtful.” The funeral club sounded like the closest thing to life insurance she’d heard of since coming to Carnuntum. Not that she could imagine genuine life insurance in a world like this one. The premiums would have been murderous. If somebody as young and healthy as Fabia Ursa could die from a simple infection… If Fabia Ursa could die like that, nobody was safe. Nicole shivered, though the day was warm as days went in Carnuntum.

“We have the babies buried under the stairs,” Longinius lulus said in conversational tones. “If it weren’t for the pollution, I’d have put Fabia beside ‘em, but adults have to go outside the city wall.”

For a moment Nicole wondered how, except by its size, an adult’s body would produce pollution but a baby’s wouldn’t. Decay was decay, regardless of the scale.

It dawned on her belatedly that he had to mean religious, not environmental, pollution. As far as she could tell, all the Romans wanted to do with the environment was exploit it.

The funeral procession made its way through the city to the gate that led to the amphitheater. Once outside, however, it swung southeast toward the graveyard Nicole had seen on the day she went to the beast show. A woman stood waiting there, in a tunic that shone blinding white in the sun. A priestess, Nicole thought. Sexists or no, the Romans had female priests. The Catholic Church rather emphatically didn’t, nor did most of the other conservative Christian denominations. And what does that say? she thought.

“Isis,” a man said off to the side, dismissively. “Isis is a women’s god.”

“Well, and what do you expect?” said the man beside him. “It’s a woman we’re burying. If it had been a man, now, we’d be saying our prayers to a proper god.”