Household Gods

If she’d made him angry enough, she was dead. She was also dead if he realized that, with Marcomanni and Quadi and even Lombards – or so Gaius Calidius Severus had said, wherever he was now, and please God let him be all right – rampaging over the landscape, no one in Carnuntum would be able to get much more of anything regardless.

The German reached out and chucked her under the chin, the same gesture Titus Calidius Severus had used – once. She slapped his hand away, as she had Calidius Severus’. She did it altogether without thinking. Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d found another way to get herself in deep, deep trouble.

He stared at her. Some of the other Germans stared at her, too. Rather more of them stared at him, to see what he’d do. Slowly, he said, “You are a woman who thinks like a man.” He reached out again and patted her on the head, as he might have done with a toddler who amused him.

She didn’t bite the hand that patted her, as she would have dearly loved to do. Overbearing, sexist oaf. But, in his overbearing, sexist way, he’d admired her for her boldness. He wouldn’t go on admiring her if she backed down. Whereas, if she kept it up, he might just admire her enough to let her alone. She thrust out her own hand. “Pay up, then,” she said.

Silence stretched. If he decided the joke had gone too far, the next few minutes would be among the most urgently unpleasant she’d ever known, and very likely the last she ever knew. His right hand slid down to his belt. She held her breath. His hand bypassed his sword, and paused at the pouch behind it. He pulled out a coin and slapped it into the palm of Nicole’s hand. “Here. This pays for all, yes?”

It was a little coin, smaller than an as, about the size of a nickel. It was surprisingly heavy, and gleamed brighter than even the shiny brass sesterces that looked like gold… till you had the real thing with which to compare them.

Julia spoke in an awed whisper: “That’s an aureus.”

Nicole had never seen a goldpiece, not in all the time she’d been in Carnuntum. Even silver wasn’t in common circulation, not at the low rung of the economy where the tavern dwelt. She thought – she wasn’t sure, she’d never needed to be sure – an aureus was worth twenty-five denarii. A hundred sesterces. Four hundred asses. A hell of a lot of money.

“Yes,” she said dizzily. “This pays for everything.” Her wits started working again: “Everything to eat and drink, that is.”

The German’s nod was impatient. “Yes, yes,” he said, and then, to put her in her place once more after he’d deigned to yield, “You flatter yourself if you think we want you or your servant here. You stink.”

She hung her head, as if chastened. Down where the German couldn’t see her do it, she grinned. She made herself wipe the expression from her face. But oh, how fine it had felt while she wore it!

The Marcomanni and Quadi – and perhaps even Lombards – drank all the wine she had, and ate most of the food. A few of them left. A few newcomers joined the crowd. Nobody touched Nicole or Julia or Lucius, or offered harm. They’d won a kind of immunity, between Calidius Severus’ stale piss and Nicole’s food and drink.

She knew how lucky she was. She’d seen horror. She’d heard it. She kept hearing it, too. Every so often, close by or far away, a woman would start screaming. She knew what that meant. The first time or two or three, she told herself she should rush out, find a weapon, do something about it. But no matter how brave she might be, she’d end up killed or thrown down beside the other woman and served up as the second course. It made her sick, but there was no getting away from it. Not one person in Carnuntum, male, female, it didn’t matter, could do a thing. They were conquered. And this was what conquest was. She’d built a tiny raft of what might be safety. In the fallen city, that was – that would have to be – miracle enough.

The gathering was becoming rather rowdy. The frat-party ambience had thickened, till Nicole could almost see these murdering bastards as a gang of Sig-Eps and Tri-Delts celebrating a hard day’s beer-bashing with a nightlong carouse.

One of them sprang up, egged on by his friends, and put on such a long, jut-jawed face that there was no mistaking what he was trying to be: a Roman citizen in the full draped weight of the toga, thirty pounds of chalk-whitened wool, throwing up his hands and squealing like a woman as a big bluff German cleaned out his cash box.

It was terrible, reprehensible, and ultimately very sad, and yet it was screamingly funny. The Germans were rolling on the floor, howling with laughter. And it was funny. Eddie Murphy could have used it without changing a thing – thirty pounds of toga, forty pounds of gold chains, what difference did it make? Nicole couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing.