Household Gods

“Now, though,” Julia said, “now they look like dogs in front of a butcher’s stall.”

A lean and hungry look, Nicole thought. She’d thought it before, about the Romans in this city, with their thin dark faces – and hadn’t Shakespeare written it about a Roman, now that she stopped to think? But it fit these Germans just as well, in a different way.

She’d thought – she’d been sure – she was getting away from war when she fell back through time. She’d thought – she’d been sure of – all sorts of things when she came to Carnuntum. Very few of them had turned out to be true, or anything close to it. She’d hated the late twentieth century while she was living in it. From the perspective of the second century, it looked like the earthly paradise.

Perspective, she thought, is a wonderful thing.

“We have the wall,” she said. And had she ever stopped to think why Carnuntum had a wall? Very basic principle of legal theory: laws existed to prevent people from doing things to harm other people. A wall wasn’t just there to look pretty and provide a nice high place for lovers to walk on fine summer evenings. It was there for a reason: to keep out nasty neighbors.

Everybody here knew that. They knew something else, too – even the children. “We have the wall,” Lucius agreed, “and the legion.” He slapped the hilt of his toy sword. It was thrust in his belt at the precise angle at which the Roman soldiers wore their real ones.

“That’s not a whole legion,” Ofanius Valens said gloomily, “and what there is of it won’t be enough. They’ll defend their camp first and worry about us afterwards. I’d do the same in their sandals.”

“What I want to know,” Julia said with unaccustomed sharpness, “is why the barbarians won’t leave us alone. We haven’t done them any harm.”

My God, Nicole thought, even here and now, the small and the weak came out with the same cry of protest as they had all through the blood-spattered twentieth century. And yet this was the Roman Empire. It was by no means small, and she’d never heard it was weak. “Don’t the Germans know they’re like a dog fighting an elephant?” she demanded.

Ofanius Valens laughed, but the sound was bitter. “They know they’ve had a fine time plundering Roman provinces and then scurrying back across the river into their forest. Now we’re weak from the pestilence – easy pickings, they’ll be thinking.”

“We drove them out of Aquileia.” Nicole remembered that from her very first, panicky trip to the market square. She still didn’t know exactly where Aquileia was, but what did that matter?

Ofanius nodded. “So we did. And I’d be happier if they’d never got down that far.”

“Maybe everything will come out all right here,” Julia said, reaching for Nicole’s optimism – which Nicole was almost ready to call naivete. “Maybe it will, if the gods stay kind.”

“Here’s hoping it does. “ Ofanius Valens lifted his cup, peered into it, and seemed astonished to find it empty. “Have to do something about that,” he said, and fumbled a couple of asses out of the pouch he wore on his belt. Nicole took the cup and filled it yet again.

“Thank you, Umma,” he said when she set it on the table in front of him. He lifted it once more, wobbling a tiny bit – he’d had three cups, after all. “Here’s to peace, prosperity, and the Germans staying on their side of the river.”

Back in California, Nicole had had an earthquake emergency kit, with blankets and food that would keep, and bottled water and a frying pan and matches and charcoal for the barbecue and a first-aid kit all stored in a plastic trash can and waiting for a disaster she hoped would never come. She wondered if she ought to start a war emergency kit here. And if she did, what would she put in it? So many things she’d taken for granted in California didn’t exist here. She could get together wine and salt fish and olive oil. That would be better than nothing – and if the war held off, she could always sell what was in the kit.

She shook her head. She was as twitchy as a cat on a freeway. The Germans and the legionaries had set everyone’s nerves on edge. Still – there were soldiers in the city where there hadn’t been any before. Someone else, someone who might have reason to know, was twitchy too. Maybe she’d get together that emergency kit after all.

The Marcomanni and the Quadi broke into Carnuntum on a misty spring morning. They used the mist to their advantage, for it kept anyone on the southern bank of the Danube from spying their boats till they were almost ashore.