Household Gods

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.

“Yes, I’d like that,” she said. Then the apprehension struck. She’d thought she’d like the beast show, too. Who knew what surprises might lurk in a seemingly innocent mime? “They’re not going to kill anybody, are they?”