Household Gods

That practically forced Nicole to say a word. She found one: “Good.” Julia shot her a quizzical glance. Nicole wondered why. Umma, surely, would have said the same thing. But Nicole had been in Umma’s body for more than six months now. Julia had got used to her odd, squeamish reactions to perfectly normal and acceptable things.

Good grief, thought Nicole. She’d done it. She’d surprised the by now unsurprisable Julia.

She nodded slowly, letting the moment stretch. “Good,” she said again. No one ought to be too predictable.

Saturnalia felt amazingly like Christmas. No one had ever heard of a Christmas tree, which was too bad; Nicole loved the glitter of the tree, and one would have looked – well, interesting over by the bar. But everything else was remarkably similar.

The resemblance extended all the way to getting a present from someone for whom she hadn’t bought one in return. Skinny, short-tempered Antonina presented her with a glazed pottery dog that was one of the ugliest things she’d ever seen – and that included her mother’s set of Staffordshire dogs. Even those were more appealing than this thing was.

“Thank you so much,” she said as warmly as she could. For all she knew, the damn critter was the height of swank in these parts. “Wait just one moment, would you? I have your present upstairs.”

She hurried up the stairs in a haze of desperation, with the rags of her smile still clinging to her face. Her bedroom offered little enough sanctuary. But – for a wonder, her eyes lit on just the thing. She snatched the terra sigillata bowl from the set on her chest of drawers, dusted it off hastily, and trotted back down the stairs. She was getting stronger at last: she didn’t even think about passing out from so much exertion. With as much of a flourish as she could muster, she presented the bowl to her neighbor.

Antonina made gratified noises much like the ones she’d used herself. She and Nicole drank wine together. Good cheer reigned, as much as it ever did around Antonina. After a suitable interval, she said as cordial a goodbye as Nicole had ever heard from her, and went on out the door, bowl in hand.

As soon as she was gone, Julia picked up the dog and made a ghastly face – almost as ghastly as the dog’s own. “By the gods, that’s a hideous little thing, isn’t it?”

“You think so, too?” said Nicole. “Well; one has to be polite. Maybe she thinks it’s the height of fashion.”

“Hardly!” said Julia, in a tone so like a Valley Girl that Nicole almost burst out laughing. But there would have been no explaining the distinctive intonations of “As if!” to a second-century Roman freedwoman in the valley of the Danube.

It was a relief, actually, to know that she might get rid of the ceramic tumor without offending local standards of good taste.

“I’ll bet somebody gave it to her, and she’s just getting rid of it to keep from spending any money on a decent present,” Julia said.

“Then we’re even,” Nicole said, “because I pulled that bowl off the dresser and dusted it off, and there it was.”

“It wasn’t a bad bowl,” Julia said. “But this…” She juggled the dog from hand to hand. It slipped; Nicole held her breath. But it didn’t fall. Julia plunked it down on the bar, right by the bowl of nuts.

“It doesn’t look half bad there,” Nicole observed.

“Maybe a customer will have a few too many and knock it on the floor,” said Julia.

“Maybe there’s treasure hidden inside it.”

Julia’s eyes gleamed. Then she laughed in disbelief. “No! Not if Antonina gave it to you. You can bet, if there’d been anything in there, she’d have winkled it out.”

“Dear old Antonina,” Nicole said with a theatrical sigh.

One way and another, the two of them spent a very pleasant half-hour dragging Antonina’s name through the mud. There was plenty of that outside, and not a little inside, either. No point in letting it go to waste.

When the dishfest wound down, Nicole filled a bowl of soup and a jar of wine, and took them across the street to Gaius Calidius Severus. He was in no condition to romp on the sheets with Julia now. The pestilence had him fully in its grip. If she could get a little nourishment into him, he might be able to fight the disease. There wasn’t much more she, or anyone else in Carnuntum, could do.

It was almost as chilly inside the shop as on the street. That was true in the tavern, too. Fires and braziers were all very well – when you stood right by them. If you didn’t, you froze your backside off. That probably had a lot to do with the death rate. People who might have recovered if they could have got warm, shivered and sank and died. Please, God, Nicole thought, don’t let that happen to Calidius Severus.