Household Gods

Her eyes had adapted to the tiny amount of light that slipped through the shuttered window. She had no trouble seeing her way to the door, or unbarring it and peering out. She listened, head cocked, then nodded. Julia was snoring, a deeper counterpoint to the children’s diatonic scale.

She padded barefoot down the stairs. Calidius Severus followed so close he almost trod on her heels. She plotted a path through the tables and stools between the stairs and the door, and cheered herself under her breath when they both reached the door unscathed. She saw his crooked grin in the light of a wan moon. He hugged her tight. “I’ll get through tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that,” he said. “I’ll just go on and on. Just the way we all do.”

She sighed, and nodded. She, too. There was no other way to get through life in Carnuntum and still keep herself within shouting distance of sanity. “You have good sense, she said.

“Do I?” He shrugged. “What am I doing here in the middle of the night, then?” He started to chuck her under the chin, but caught himself, and kissed her instead. “Kissing’s better,” he said, “after all.”

She could hardly argue with that. It was hard to let him go; hard, maybe, for him to let her go. But they were practical people. They parted briskly enough. He went to his own place and his son and his work. She went to hers. Day after tomorrow, when it was again a men’s day at the baths, he’d be back. She could count on that, as sure and as regular as the clockwork that Rome had never known.

The next morning, when Nicole opened her door for business, the amphorae were out in front of Calidius Severus’ shop. Maybe Gaius had put them there, she thought, until she saw movement inside, and recognized the bristle of Titus’ beard. She felt logey and slow. He must feel much the same. For the first time in a while, she’d have given a great deal for a pot of coffee and a pair of mugs, and a jump-start for both of them.

As she scooped salted olives from their amphora into a wooden bowl, Dexter the doctor trudged past. He had his leather satchel in his hand: not quite a little black bag, but close. On impulse she left the bar, went quickly to the door and called to him: “Dexter! How is the woman who took sick in the amphitheater?”

He paused in his stride. He didn’t seem as annoyed to be stopped as he might. He looked tired, she thought, and pale. Up all night, probably, practicing his trade.

“The woman in the amphitheater?” he asked. “They buried her yesterday.”

Nicole stood flatfooted. She’d expected it. She’d dreaded it. And yet…

He didn’t wait for her to get her wits back. “I’m off to another case now,” he said. “Aesculapius grant me better fortune.” As he turned to go, a storm of sneezing overtook him, and a rattle of coughing in its wake.

Oh Lord. He had it, too. Nicole caught herself wiping her hands frantically on her tunic, though she hadn’t touched him at all. How many people had that woman infected at the show? How many of them were sneezing and coughing, but hadn’t yet broken out with the rash that signaled full onset of the disease? How many people were going to catch the disease in the baths? Just about everyone in Carnuntum went to the baths; they were always crowded. A plague couldn’t ask for a better breeding ground.

Nicole’s last bastion of optimism crumbled. She shook her head and turned back to the tavern. There was a cold feeling in her stomach, and an ache that wasn’t hunger. She was familiar with it from this and that: an accident on the freeway, the California bar exam. It was fear.

Julia was up at last, a little late – and was that a sign she was getting sick? Nicole quashed that stab of worry. Julia was cleaner than she’d been when Nicole first arrived in Carnuntum, now she had money and a little time for the baths, but she still had a fondness for tight tunics and a disgusting tendency to wake up cheerful and stay that way till the rest of the world caught up with her. Or not; Julia didn’t care.

Her curiosity was as sharp as ever, too. “What were you talking to Dexter about?” she asked as she worked flour into the first batch of the day’s bread.

Nicole started chopping nuts and raisins for sweet cakes. She took her time in answering. “We were talking about the woman who got sick when Titus and I were at the mime show,” she said. She didn’t really have to, or particularly want to, but Julia was the closest thing she had to a female friend in this world. She had a pressing need, suddenly, to share the worry with someone else.

Julia didn’t appear to know or care that there was something to worry about. She smiled at Nicole’s use of Titus Calidius Severus’ praenomen. She’d made it clear long since that she thought the two of them were a good match. If she could see them married off, Nicole was sure, she’d be the happiest freedwoman in Carnuntum. “How is the woman?” she asked.

“Dead, ‘ Nicole answered baldly.