Household Gods

Gaius Calidius Severus had been right about what people would say, or not say, of Nicole’s resorting to a sedan chair. Ila said not a word as she walked along beside the litter. If Umma’s sister didn’t complain about something Nicole did, it wasn’t worth complaining about.

Ila probably had other things on her mind, at that. She was sneezing and coughing in a way that made Nicole’s stomach clench. Brigomarus wasn’t there; he was down with it, which explained why he hadn’t come to help Nicole as he’d promised. She’d been fool enough to hope he was just being censorious again, or that he’d found some new reason to be aggravated with her. His absence mattered more than she would have expected. He’d been a sort of constant in this world, as close to family as she could get, arguments and all. She didn’t want him hanging about playing Big Brother, but she didn’t want him dead, either.

Along with Ila came Sextus Longinius lulus, who hadn’t caught the pestilence in spite of everything; Ofanius Vaiens, who’d survived a milder bout than Nicole’s; and sharp-tongued Antonina and her husband, a mousy little man whose name Nicole never had learned. As funeral processions went in these days, it was a largeish gathering, and kindhearted. None of these people needed to be here; they all must be worn out with attending funerals. And still they’d come to see Aurelia to her rest.

Nicole had refused to hire mourners – another thing that Ila had declined to comment on; really, she had to be ill, if she kept quiet about that – but she had asked the undertaker to arrange for a priest. The one provided was a type that must be universal: thickset, florid, with a well-padded middle and an even more well-padded vocabulary. He mouthed platitudes about innocence plucked too soon, and flowers cut down before their prime, and the golden hope of a better world. She’d heard just about the same words, in just about the same plummy tone, on a Sunday-morning Gospel hour. All this man lacked was the shiny suit and the pompadour.

Nicole tuned him out as best she could. She’d asked for a priest, after all. She should have expected what she got. It wouldn’t have been any different in the twentieth century; it hadn’t been when her grandfather died. He’d been a determined non-churchgoer, but the family had been just as determined to give him a Christian sendoff. The priest they found hadn’t known the man at all, had given a eulogy so generic as to be ludicrous, and had referred throughout to the deceased, whose name was Richard Uphoff, as “our dearly departed Bob Upton.”

At least this man got Aurelia’s name right, if nothing else about her. Nicole fixed her eyes on the bier, on the small shrouded figure, seeming so much smaller in death. No larger, really, than Kimberley had been, the night before Nicole vanished out of that world and into this one. This dream turned nightmare, this life suddenly so full of death.

Nicole’s throat was aching-tight. She couldn’t cry. She wanted to scream. Someone else was, away across the cemetery: shrieking and wailing. It wasn’t the voice of a hired mourner; those had their own style, almost like a religious chant. This was too wild, too unrestrained.

That wasn’t the American way of death. Even in a world that had never heard of America, Nicole couldn’t bring herself to indulge in it. She sat in the sedan chair in silence while the undertaker’s assistants laid the body in the small, muddy hole that was all the grave Aurelia would get. Then she had to get out of the chair, and, though she tottered like an old woman, lay one of Julia’s good loaves and a jar of raisins and a jug of heavily watered wine in the grave. She’d wanted to bring Aurelia’s favorite honeyed cake, but she’d thought of it too late. There’d been no time to make one.

It was ridiculous to think the dead child could notice what was missing, or care; and yet it mattered very much. Too much, maybe. The wine was Falernian – that much Nicole could give her. Poor little Aurelia, who’d never had the chance to have much, at least had that to take into the grave with her.

As Nicole knelt by the grave, unable to muster the strength to rise, the skies at last gave up their burden of rain. “Even the heavens are weeping,” He said, proving the Romans were no more immune to sentiment than to the pestilence.

The gravediggers hadn’t been lazing on the grass on this of all days.

Even before Nicole was ready to stand up, they were standing over the grave, spades shouldered like rifles. So shoot me, Nicole thought bitterly. Somehow, she got to her feet, slipping a little on the muddy grass, and wrapped her cloak about herself. Stiffly, unsteadily, she half climbed, half fell back into the covered chair. “Take me home,” she said to the bearers. They hardly grunted as they lifted her. She’d never been other than lean, and now, with the sickness, she was skeletal. And they must be eager to get in out of the rain.