Household Gods

She’d known hunger before. In Indiana and California, she’d spent enough time on diets that hadn’t done much but fray her temper, nibbling carrot sticks when her stomach was yelling for a banana split. But all the hunger she’d endured had been voluntary. Whenever she’d wanted to, or whenever she couldn’t stand it anymore, relief had been no farther away than the nearest bacon double cheeseburger or package of Twinkies or Milky Way bar – anything guaranteed to leap six weeks of Lean Cuisine at a single bound.

Not here. Not now. That mournful litany played yet again in her mind, as it had – how many times? – since she’d come to Carnuntum. This hunger was not consensual. It was forced on her, as much as the Germans had forced themselves on poor Antonina. She’d never thought there could be a connection between hunger and rape, but there it was.

That wasn’t the only unpleasant connection she found. One day, after she came back to the tavern with a couple of trout and a little cheese for which she’d paid more than she could really afford, she put the money she hadn’t spent back in the cash box. By then, she knew to the as how much was supposed to be in there; as hard as times were, she paid much closer attention than she had when they were easier.

She frowned. The box held a few sesterces more than it should have. Till she came back, there hadn’t been any food to eat, let alone to sell to anybody else. Her eye fell on Julia. Julia was scrubbing tables, mostly for something to do; business was too bad to keep her occupied with much else, and there was no flour for bread. She looked the same as she always did, thinner of course, but she was still what yahoos in Indiana would have called a nice piece of ass. Nicole sucked in a breath, and let it out in a spate of words: “Julia! I’ve told you not to – “

Julia wasn’t to be cowed this time, even by Nicole at the start of a rampage. “No, Mistress. We need the money. If we can’t find some way to pay for food, pretty soon I’ll be too skinny for anyone to want me at all. And,” she added after a brief pause, “one of them even knew what he was doing. It wasn’t too bad. He’s the one who paid me double – because, he said, I was worth it.”

She didn’t blush while she said it, or apologize for having a mind of her own. Julia had changed, too. She wasn’t the childlike creature Nicole had first met, who had ducked her head and lowered her eyes and done as she was told.

Nicole found that her fists were clenched. They ached. Carefully, with some effort, she unclenched them. She made herself think, and see what Julia had already seen before her. The big brass coins would help – a great deal. There was no way Nicole could deny it. If it came to a choice between selling oneself and starving… there was another set of choices she’d never imagined herself having to make.

“We should be glad,” Julia said, “that some people still have money to spend on something besides food.”

Disposable income, Nicole thought. She bit down hard on laughter she might not have been able to quell, and said the thing she had to say: “Thanks for sharing what you made instead of keeping it for yourself.”

Julia did look down then, and shrugged as if in embarrassment. “You weren’t bad to me when you owned me. You never kept me hungry, the way some people do with their slaves. Then you went and set me free. That hasn’t been as scary as I thought, especially since you’ve let me stay on here, and earn my keep honestly. I could have had to go out and sell my body just to stay alive. Instead I got to do it when I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it now. I wanted to help.”

That hasn’t been as scary as I thought. Nicole had never heard freedom more faintly praised. And yet, the rest of it was just as honestly put, and it was, in its way, the most genuine expression of gratitude Nicole could ever have asked for. She couldn’t find anything more eloquent to say than, “All right, Julia. Thank you. Just – thank you.”

Julia shrugged and went back to scouring tables. Nicole groped for something more to say, but there wasn’t anything that would work. She went back to the cash box instead, and paused before she shut and locked it, staring down at the brassy gleam of the coins. Her mind was running of itself through everything those extra sesterces would buy, and all the ways she could make them stretch.

Pragmatism. It wasn’t a pretty word, or a laudable trait, but here, in this time and place, it meant survival.