Household Gods

Julia didn’t go pale, or reel, or seem at all shocked. “Oh,” she said without much evident emotion. “That’s too bad.”

People in Carnuntum were on very much more intimate – and much more casual – terms with death than people were in the United States of the late twentieth century. Julia’s offhand observation was one more signpost on a well-marked road. She took for granted the possibility that a person could get sick and drop dead, just like that. From what Nicole had seen of the state of the medical art, that wasn’t the least bit surprising.

They worked in silence, in the well-worn groove of two people who’d been coworkers for so long, they no longer needed to think about how they shared this task or that. Just as the bread came out of the oven, the first of the morning’s regulars showed up at the door. He hawked and spat before he came in, and coughed.

Nicole had let down her guard a little. Her stomach had even begun to unclench. Now it went as tight as a fist. Julia, oblivious, served the man his regular cup of one-as wine and his half-loaf of bread with olive oil to dip it in.

As he thanked and paid her, a confusion of distant sound resolved itself into sense. A funeral procession made its sorrowful way toward and then past the tavern. Professional mourners wailed and keened. Musicians thumped and tootled their dirges. Friends and relatives of the deceased straggled behind the bier. They’d gone for an older extravagance than Fabia Ursa’s funeral party had: faces streaked with ashes, tunics ceremonially rent. Under the marks of formal grief, their expressions were set, stunned. Just outside the doorway, one of them said, “But he was so young!”

So, Nicole thought numbly. People could think like that here, too. She resisted an urge to run out and ask what the boy had died of. People did die of things other than pestilence. Young people especially, and children most of all.

She was not reassured. When the procession had passed and faded into the background hum of the city, someone in the street sneezed. She jumped like a startled cat.

Right behind her, Lucius sneezed explosively. Her heart leaped into her throat. She whirled. “Are you all right?” she practically shrieked at him.

When she’d first come to Carnuntum, that concern would have been partly feigned. Not now. Little by little, by almost imperceptible stages, Lucius and Aurelia had become hers. And if one of hers was sneezing -

But he looked at her as if she’d gone demented, and laughed at her expression. “Oh, Mother! I’m fine.”

Julia glared at him, and shook her finger under his nose. Which, Nicole happened to notice, had a somewhat dusty look to it. “He was trying to breathe flour,” she said. “I saw him grab a pinch.”

“Oh, he was, was he?” Nicole said in a dangerous purr. “You did, did you?”

Lucius might be silly, but he wasn’t stupid. He recognized the sort of question that meant he should make himself scarce.

He didn’t recognize it quite soon enough. Nicole caught him by the arm as he scooted past. Her free hand applied a fundamental lesson to his seat of knowledge. His squawk had more surprise in it than pain. Her second whack remedied the imbalance.

She let him go. He scampered off, not much the worse for wear. He didn’t indulge in the tears and histrionics that an American child would have gone in for. Less than a minute later, he was laughing again.

Children were tough little creatures: tougher than Nicole had realized. She was the one who stood as if poleaxed, staring at her own hand. Why in the world had she just done that? She never had before. She would have been appalled if she’d thought before she did it. She was worried, that was it. Worried half to death. That worry had magnified her anger at what was, at worst, mild misbehavior.

It didn’t seem reason enough. It probably wasn’t. But it also probably hadn’t been child abuse. Nicole wouldn’t have said that before she came to Carnuntum. It was happening again: the Romans she lived among had infected her with their own attitudes.

It was better than being infected with measles, or whatever this new and deadly disease was.

She was still thinking about that when Sextus Longinius lulus came in and sat at one of the tables near the door. “Let me have a cup of your one-as wine, would you, Umma,” he said, “and some olives, too, if you please.”

When she’d given him what he asked for and he’d paid her, she paused. He looked all right – not wonderful, not happy, but not broken down with grief, either. People who couldn’t deal with death wouldn’t last long in this world. “How’s your son?” she asked.

He spat out an olive pit and drank a swallow of wine. “He seems healthy enough, the gods be praised. Fabia Honorata’s looking after him right now.”

Nicole suppressed a stab of guilt. She should have gone over there days ago and seen if she could help. But she’d been busy, the tavern took up most of her time, she had her own kids to raise -