Household Gods

She held up a hand. “No, I didn’t turn them down when they ordered me to feed them. Let it go, Brigo. You’re doing what you need to get by. So am I.” He opened his mouth to say something. She thought she knew what he had in mind. She forestalled him. “I am sorry for the way it sounded.”

“Well!” For the first time in a long while, she saw Umma’s brother grin. “I was wondering if you could only take apologies; you had no idea how to give them back. I’m glad to see it isn’t so.”

“Fair is fair,” Nicole answered.

“I suppose so,” Brigomarus said, by which he no doubt meant he was perfectly content to hang onto the privileges that went with being male. He half-turned as if to leave, but turned back with a snap of the fingers. “When I was coming through the market square, I saw that one of the farmers had brought in a cartload of wine. It’s just the cheap local stuff, of course, but if you can’t get anything else, it starts to look pretty good.”

“I’ll say it does!” Nicole wasn’t about to hug him, but she was as tempted as she’d ever been. She headed straight for the cash box instead. “I was in the market just this morning, but he hadn’t come in then. If I can get a jar or two before he sells out – “

“Or before the Germans steal everything he has,” Julia put in.

“Or that, too,” Nicole agreed. She turned to Brigomarus. “Will you come with me and help carry some of it back? I’ll give you a jar to take home.” She hesitated. Then she said it, hating it but knowing it was the truth: “It would be nice to have a man along.”

She wasn’t trying to do or say anything to feed his ego, but she’d succeeded in doing precisely that. He could hardly look eager – that would give away too much – but he didn’t turn his back on her, either. “I’ll come,” he said. “I don’t know how much good I’ll be if the Germans decide to get nasty, but I’ll do what I can.”

Nicole thanked him honestly enough. He wasn’t really a bad man, as men went in this century. She’d seen better, in the Calidii Severi, but she’d also seen much worse.

It was a men’s day at the baths. When Nicole and Brigomarus came round the corner, Romans and Germans came and went interchangeably, though neither fraternized with the other.

Then out through the entranceway strolled a pair of courtesans in nearly transparent linen tunics. Maybe they were the same pair Nicole had seen when she first went up the stairs to the baths herself. Every German within sight whipped his head about and stood transfixed.

Ye gods, Nicole thought. Prostitutes could be raped, too, and these women were flaunting everything they had. No civilized jurisdiction accepted revealing clothing as an excuse for rape, but this was no civilized jurisdiction. If the Germans dragged an ordinary and none too attractive woman from her own home and gang-raped her in the street, what would they do to women on display like this?

They fawned on them. If they’d had chocolates and vast bouquets of flowers, they would have showered them on the hookers. As it was, they stared and gaped and stammered like awed teenagers suddenly confronted by Claudia Schiffer. Nicole suppressed a strong impulse to retch.

Brigomarus, on the other hand, was highly amused. “They don’t have anything like that in the forests of Germany, I’ll bet you.”

Nicole started to snap at him, but checked herself. What was his comment but the second-century version of her reflection on teenagers and supermodels? In the end, she simply said, “When you think how they treated so many women here, seeing this hurts.”

“Ah.” Brigomarus nodded. “Yes, I can see how it might. The world must look different out of a woman’s eyes.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He looked astonished. It wasn’t that family didn’t kiss here; they did. But she had been on anything but kissing terms with Umma’s family. Here, for once, Brigomarus had found exactly the right thing to say.

She felt like kissing him again when she was able to buy two jars of wine from the fellow in the market square. The farmer demanded Falernian prices for it, though it was the local rotgut in the local yellow-brown earthenware. Nicole took her best shot at getting him to come down: “Suppose I walk away and let the barbarians steal it from you? How much will you get then?”

He didn’t blink. “The chance I take of that is part of the reason I have to charge so cursed much for what I do sell.”

When he wouldn’t budge, Nicole paid up. As she and Brigomarus were carrying the wine back toward the tavern, he said, “You’ll have to charge Falernian prices, too, or you’ll lose money.”

“Then I will,” she said robustly. “Not many places will have any wine at all. People will pay.” She was sure of that. Half the people who came into the tavern complained about having to drink water; a good many complained about coming down sick afterwards. Whenever she suggested boiling the water before drinking it, people looked at her as if she were nuts.