Household Gods

Ididn’t go looking for a prostitute, she thought starchily. But there’d been that fast-talking son of a bitch who’d made all that noise about being the youngest man in his firm to make senior partner, except of course he hadn’t made it yet, but everybody knew it was just a matter of time. She couldn’t even remember his name. She’d let him talk her into bed just to prove that she could still get a man; that a man could still want her, even if Frank had traded her in on a younger model. Compared to that, a straightforward transaction with a whore didn’t look quite so bad.

At long last Longinius lulus finished his wine. “Thanks, Umma,” he said, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic. “I’ll head over to the market square, I guess. Either I’ll find a wet nurse there who can take on another baby, or else I’ll find somebody who knows one.”

“Ask at Sextus Viridius’ stall,” Julia said. “I heard one of his daughters might be setting up as a wet nurse, since her husband walked out on her and left her with a newborn baby.”

Longinius lulus looked ready to kiss her, but either he was too shy or he had more self-control than Nicole might have credited him with. “I’ll try that,” he said. “Thank you, Julia.”

She smiled. He waved impartially at them both, but mostly at Julia, and left in rather better spirits than Nicole might have expected.

She let out a long sigh. Part of it was sympathy for the tinker’s plight. The rest was a desire to rid her lungs of as much of the air he’d breathed at her as she could.

Julia echoed her sigh. “He’s having a hard time,” she said. “First his wife, now his baby’s nurse – you’d think he’d done some god a bad turn. And yet he’s such a nice man. If I had any luck to spare, I’d give it to him.”

“Would you?” Nicole said slowly.

Julia nodded. Her eyes were wide and earnest. What was she thinking of, taking Longinius lulus upstairs as a personal act of charity?

Nicole actually caught herself thinking, Maybe, the next time he comes and the place isn’t busy, I’ll find myself an errand to run. Just once. As a gift to him. She wasn’t even particularly shocked to catch herself at it. Julia wasn’t being coerced. She honestly wanted to do something for him, and that something was all the gift she had to give. He’d be happy. She’d be happy. Nicole could live with it, if she had to.

On the day when Julius Rufus was due for his regular beer delivery, he showed up as he always did, leading a small and tottery donkey with four large barrels of sour beer strapped to its back. Nicole caught sight of them outside the tavern, in between one customer going out and another coming in, and reached the door in time to see him unfasten one of the barrels from its cat’s cradle of leather lashings and ease it to the ground. He tipped it on its side and rolled it into the tavern. She had to jump aside or it would have rolled over her toe.

“Good day, Mistress Umma,” he said as he always did. “Good thing my next stop is close by, or poor old Midas here would get all lopsided.” He laughed, but he wasn’t his usual hearty self. He looked as worn as his joke, and his cheeks were flushed. He heaved the barrel up on its end beside the bar, and leaned there for a moment to get his breath back. “Let me have a cup of your two-as wine, would you? Gods, it’s hot today.”

Nicole hadn’t particularly noticed. After Indianapolis and especially after L.A., none of the summer weather she’d seen in Carnuntum struck her as anything more than warm. A lot of it, today included, didn’t even measure up to that.

She slipped past him behind the bar and dipped up his cup of wine. When she turned to bring it to him, he’d sunk down onto a stool. He was scratching the side of his neck between the edge of his beard and the neck opening for his tunic, and frowning. “Has something bitten me there?” he asked her. “It itches.”

Nicole peered at the reddened skin. It wasn’t just the scratching that had turned it that angry shade. “It doesn’t look like a bite,” she said. “It looks more like some kind of a… rash.” She swallowed. She felt as if she’d just done a one-and-a-half gainer into a dry pool. Yes, it looked like a rash. The kind of rash that went with the measles. She’d seen it at several rows’ distance in the amphitheater, and marked the resemblance. Now, from close up, there was no mistaking it.

Her thoughts must have shown in her face. Or maybe Julius Rufus had been coughing and sneezing for the past three or four days, and all the while done his best to tell himself he was fine, he was just coming down with a cold. As his eyes met hers, they went wide. He knew what a rash could mean. His voice lowered to a whisper. “Is it the pestilence?”