Household Gods

If she’d done that, maybe fat Faustinianus, at some future beast show, would have announced the just and proper execution of So-and-So, convicted of the heinous crime of Christianity. Lions? It was always lions in the Sunday-school stories. From what she’d seen with Calidius Severus, bears or wolves would do as well.

She left the alleyway a little too quickly, as if someone could guess that she too, in the spirit, was born and raised a Christian. Foolish fear; a Christian in the world she came from was as solid a citizen as a pagan here.

Still, she was glad to leave that wall behind, and gladder yet to find that the alley opened onto a street, which opened onto one of the long, straight main avenues. That one, she recognized. She was deeply relieved to see no sign of the young Christian with the extraordinary turn of speed.

Titus Calidius Severus was in the tavern, eating walnuts, and now and then tossing bits of shell at Lucius, who thought it was great sport. He had a cup of wine in front of him, from which he’d clearly been sipping. “How’s your mother?” he and Julia asked in the same breath.

She’s not my mother! Nicole knew better than to say. She mustered a sigh, and an expression that, if not devastated, was at least grave. “She’s got it, no question. Maybe she’ll get better. Maybe – “ She shrugged.

Calidius Severus nodded in evident sympathy. “Don’t say it. That way you won’t have words of evil omen on your conscience if – “ He didn’t say it, either.

“Get me a cup of the one-as, would you, Julia?” Nicole sat at the table with the fuller and dyer. He set a hand on her shoulder, reassuringly, just for a moment, then let it drop. She was more comforted than she might have expected, and surprised, because she hadn’t expected to need comfort. When Julia brought the wine, she emptied half the cup in a long, dizzying swallow.

Her trouble wasn’t what they had to be thinking. She felt nothing for the loss of a mother she’d never known, who’d never been hers. Atpomara was a horrible old woman, rude and high-handed, with not a jot of compassion in her. Nicole hated her guts.

The wine didn’t dim the thing that bothered her. She couldn’t forget what Atpomara had said. She couldn’t make herself believe the woman had been out of her head from fever, either, however much she wanted to believe just that.

And there wasn’t a single person she could talk to, whom she trusted enough to share even part of her secret. Titus Calidius Severus would reckon her mad. Or, worse – he might believe her. He’d think her possessed by a demon. Who knew what he might do then? He was a reasonable man, as men went here. But in a situation that went beyond reason, he’d turn on her. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t.

In part to break the silence, in part to turn her mind aside from fretting to no useful purpose, she mentioned the Christian she’d surprised. It was stupid, maybe, but it did turn the conversation onto a new track.

“I’ve seen those scrawls,” Julia said. “I didn’t know what the words say, but I’ve seen the fish and the cross. There’ve been more of them lately than there used to be.”

“There have, haven’t there?” Titus Calidius Severus said. “I can read the words. Bunch of cursed nonsense, if you ask me. The Jews go on and on about only having one god, so how can that god have a son, especially a son who’s a crucified rebel? If you ask me, too many people don’t think these things through. Even the Jews can’t buy this one.”

Nicole had never considered herself religious; if anything, she’d been an agnostic. But this was not just the faith but the culture she’d been raised in, and here was this urine-reeking man with his hands dyed blue to the elbows, dissecting it as if it were just another crazy cult. The nerve he’d struck was almost as painful as the one in her sore tooth.

“If it’s all nonsense,” she asked him tightly, “why are there more Christian slogans on the walls these days? Doesn’t that sound as if more and more people are believing what the Christians say?” She knew it; she had eighteen hundred years of hindsight. Not one of which she could safely claim – but that, for the moment, was beside the point.

“Maybe more people are believing in it,” the fuller and dyer answered, “but maybe they aren’t. Times are hard, with the pestilence and with the war against the Germans off to the west of here. The world’s not a very nice place right now. When things go bad in this world, it’s only natural for people to worry more about the next one. And if that Christian nonsense were true, it’d be easier to have a happy afterlife as a Christian than any other way I can think of. No wonder light-minded folks drift that way.”