Household Gods

“It is not my problem,” Swemblas said. “It is for the merchants to do.”

“Good luck,” Nicole said serenely. “Now the war is here, and south of here, not off somewhere farther west.” Being vague let her conceal how ignorant she was of local geography. But then, a lot of people who’d been born and raised in Carnuntum knew little of Vindobona, twenty miles up the Danube, and less about any place farther away. “If you were a Roman wine merchant, would you want to come up to Carnuntum from Italy, knowing there were Germans in the way?”

“I am not a merchant. I am not a Roman. I do not want to be either,” Swemblas said with dignity. And without a further word, he strode out.

He’d entirely missed the point. Nicole sighed. She shouldn’t have expected anything different. Had the Germans been able to see anything from anyone else’s point of view, they wouldn’t have reckoned robbery and rape and murder to be fine sport, or applauded one another for them.

The next day, whether she wanted to or not, Nicole had to go to market. She was out of everything but grain and oil, and those were starting to run low.

Julia tried to talk her out of it. “Mistress,” she said, “the less you show yourself, the safer you’ll be.”

“Yes, but if I get to the market square now, I have a better chance of finding things before it’s picked clean,” Nicole answered. She wasn’t as bold as she sounded, but Julia didn’t call her on it. Julia was still shaking her head as Nicole went out the door.

There were Germans in the streets, swaggering about with a lordly air. In front of the shop where Nicole had bought her image of Liber and Libera, one of the conquerors picked up a votive plaque with an image of the naked Venus. He ran a hand over the limestone curves as if fondling a real woman.

“Gut!” he grunted, or close enough. The shopkeeper stood motionless. The German laughed, tucked the plaque under his arm, and sauntered off. The stonecarver stared after him, but knew better than to demand payment.

Something about the incident stopped Nicole cold. It wasn’t the theft – that was common enough these days. It wasn’t the shopkeeper’s powerlessness, not really. And yet…

Idon’t have the right plaque, Nicole thought. The thought was very clear. She’d had it before, and more than once, but never so distinctly. The god and goddess aren’t listening, because the plaque I have – it’s not the one I bought in Petronell. It’s not just the image, or the intent. It’s the connection to me, to my past and future. I need that one, and no other.

She couldn’t prove it. Nor was there any way to do so, unless she found the actual plaque, the one that had brought her here. Did it even exist yet? Would she have to wait another twenty or thirty years before it was made?

No, she thought with a shiver. She had to believe, for her own sanity, that the plaque had brought her back to the time when it was carved. Otherwise, what would be the point of it at all?

She put the thought away for now; because she had an errand, and it was urgent. It wasn’t too terribly hard to distract herself: the city had changed since she last went out to market. Shops that had once been open were closed and shuttered, Germans came and went from houses that had belonged to solid Roman citizens, the few women who were out and about went warily as Nicole herself did, and probably with some kind of weapon concealed in their clothing. Nicole, whose chief weapon was her stink of ancient piss, was just as glad not to be armed. Her self-defense instructor had been blunt about it. “A knife or a gun may make you feel better when you carry it, but you’re just giving a mugger another weapon to use against you. Unless you can shoot or stab to kill or disable, and do it instantly, he’ll get hold of it and he’ll use it. And you’ll be worse off than you were before.”

Armed with a stink that kept even the locals from crowding in too close, Nicole passed the baths and came in sight of the open space of the market square. She stopped, and gasped.

The space was larger, much larger, than it had ever been before. It opened to the north and west, openness in shades of black, the charred ruins of the fire that she’d heard but not seen on the first day of the sack. Houses and shops and a handful of four- and five-story apartment buildings were flattened, burned to the ground.

Romans and Germans, their clothes and hides black with soot, sifted through the wreckage. Some of the Romans were probably trying to salvage what they could from the disaster. Many must have been thieves – as were all of the Germans.