Household Gods

She was threatening the drover in fine L.A. fashion: Don’t Tread On Me, and I’ll clobber you if you try. But he didn’t get the nuances. His ox had brought him within peering distance of the fallen man. “Gods and goddesses,” he said, “he’s got the pestilence!” He plied his stick on the ox with ferocious vigor. The ox bent its head and pressed on at half a mile an hour instead of a quarter, steering as wide around the crumpled body as it could. Nicole didn’t see it slacken, but the drover redoubled his efforts once he’d passed the obstacle. The ox lowed in protest. The cart’s axle squeaked and groaned. The man in it looked over his shoulder till the street bent and took him out of sight, as if the death in the street could follow him, and be beaten off if it came too close.

Gaius Calidius Severus stood watching him go, just as Nicole had done. When he was gone, the young dyer turned back to Nicole. “Has he got the pestilence, Umma?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nicole answered. She didn’t try to soften it for him. Maybe she should have. He was her lover’s son, after all. But right at the moment, she had no softness in her. She rolled Julius Rufus onto his back, got a grip on his armpits, and set about dragging him back toward the tavern.

“Here,” Gaius Calidius Severus said, “you don’t need to do that all by yourself.” He got hold of Julius Rufus’ ankles and lifted while she dragged. Between the two of them, they carried the sick man into the tavern.

Nicole was more than glad of the help, but she wished Gaius Calidius Severus hadn’t exposed himself to the disease. She also wished she hadn’t exposed herself, but it had been too late to worry about that since Julius Rufus rolled her barrel of beer into the tavern.

She eased the unconscious brewer down next to the wall by the door, where no one would step on him, and thanked her helper with honest gratitude. He blushed a bit and shuffled his feet. “Any time, “ he said. “There was too much of him for you to haul by yourself, I could see that. Mithras teaches that a man shouldn’t just think what’s right: he should do what’s right.”

Nicole liked that. Yet Mithraism, from all she’d heard, had no place for women.

She shrugged. This was hardly the time to worry about the finer points of religious doctrine.

Julia was back in the tavern from wherever she’d been: women’s day at the baths, from the look and smell of her. The place was empty of customers, a stroke of good luck for which Nicole was deeply grateful.

Julia’s eyes were a little too wide, her stare a little too fixed. But she had wits enough not to burst out in hysteria. Nicole brought her to order with a sharp word. “Julia – do you know where Julius Rufus has his brewery?”

“I – think so,” Julia answered hesitantly.

“I do,” Gaius Calidius Severus said. “I know just where it is. Do you want me to take the donkey back and let his family know he’s – indisposed?”

“Would you?” Nicole said. And had to add: “Will your father mind if you take so much time off from work?”

“Not if I’m doing a favor for you,” he answered. That flustered her more than she might have expected. Of course he knew what was going on. There couldn’t be much of anybody who didn’t.

Her nod was sharper than his comment deserved. He bobbed his own head by way of reply, with no irony that she could discern, and went to take charge of the donkey.

“He’s very nice,” Julia said. “A little too young, but very nice.”

She hadn’t thought he was too young when she went upstairs with him on the day of her manumission. Nicole found she’d come to forgive him that, or most of it. You really couldn’t expect a man that young not to think with his crotch. It was like expecting a cock not to crow at sunrise: you could hope for it, even pray for it, but it wasn’t bloody likely.

Lucius and Aurelia came tearing in from some game out back, and stopped short to stare at Julius Rufus. They didn’t know or care enough to be scared, as Julia was. “What’s wrong with him?” Aurelia wanted to know. But, tavernkeeper’s daughter that she was, she found a logical answer to her own question: “Is he too drunk to go home?”

“No, “ Nicole said flatly. “I’m afraid he’s got the pestilence.”

The rash was coming out on his cheeks and forehead, developing almost like Polaroid film. Aurelia and Lucius had seen plenty of drunks at the tavern, but a man with the pestilence was new and therefore interesting. They edged closer for a better look.

Nicole caught them both with a braced arm. Lucius stopped, but Aurelia pushed against her, scowling. Aurelia never liked to be thwarted.

Nicole didn’t, right now, give a damn what Aurelia liked or didn’t like. “You stay back,” she said to the two of them, sternly enough that she hoped they’d listen. “This is a bad sickness. You can get it if he just breathes on you. Stay away from him.”

“But you brought him inside,” Lucius pointed out. “You and Calidius carried him. Does that mean you’ll get the pestilence, too?”