Household Gods

It might be her own epitaph, for the matter of that. No one had ever been in a wronger place, or in a wronger time.

But wherever and whenever she was, and however right or wrong that was, she had to live. She had to leave the tavern in search of food, but that wasn’t all she had to go out for. If it had been, she would have stayed at home and sent Julia in her place. No; she had to go out to look for the plaque of Liber and Libera, the one and only plaque that had brought her to Carnuntum. That was no errand she could pass on to Julia. No matter what it cost her to set foot outside that door each day, for the plaque, she did it.

For all her hunting, she never found it. She still gave Liber and Libera their daily libation of wine, when she had any, on the principle that it couldn’t hurt and might help.

And one day, when she’d come home with a bag of mealy apples and a string of little bony fish, and no votive image, she found the plaque on the bar, broken in half and shedding bits on the scrubbed surface. Julia stood over it with exactly the same look of guilt and horror and welling tears as Kimberley might have had if she’d spilled her milk all over the living-room carpet.

This wasn’t just spilled milk. Nicole sucked in a breath. She had no idea what she was going to say. She wasn’t going to scream. She promised herself that.

Julia spoke before Nicole could begin, a rapid rush of words. “Mistress, I’m sorry, so sorry, I picked it up to dust it, and it slipped out of my hand, and it broke. I’ll pay you for it, get you a new one. Just take it out of my wages.”

While she babbled on, Nicole had calmed down considerably. She picked up the two largest pieces and weighed them in her hands. Liber stared blandly at her out of one, Libera out of the other. If they were dismayed to be so abruptly separated, they weren’t about to show it.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said to Julia, and she meant it. “It’s not as if it were any great relic. It wasn’t even working very well – the god and goddess weren’t doing much for us, were they?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said. She’d calmed down, too, with the quickness of a child or a slave, now she knew she wasn’t in trouble for breaking her mistress’ plaque. “Things could be better for us, but they could be a lot worse, too. Remember Antonina.”

“I’m not likely to forget Antonina,” Nicole said, a little coldly. She held onto the coldness. It kept her calm. “Things have been getting uglier lately. I think it’s time to splash ourselves again with Calidius Severus’ perfume.”

Julia made a face. “Oh, do we have to? I’ll never get any extra sesterces for the cash box if we do.”

“Would you rather the Germans took it without paying for it?”

“No!” Julia said, as if by reflex. Then, as thought caught up with instinct: “I don’t want to give the Germans anything.”

“Of course you don’t,“ Nicole said. “If you don’t want to give it to them, they have no business taking it.”

Julia thought about that, long and visibly hard. Then she nodded. “Nobody has any business taking it, if I say no.”

Nicole’s smile was so wide and so rusty, it actually hurt. Maybe after all, in spite of everything, she was managing to do a little consciousness-raising.

Brigomarus came to visit a day or two later, as he made a habit of doing. He stopped inside the door, sniffed and grimaced. “You’re visiting the dyer’s shop again,” he said. Nicole wondered if he meant to sound quite so accusatory.

“The time seemed ripe,” she answered calmly.

Umma’s brother spat in disgust. “Ripe’s the word, and no mistake.”

“That’s bad,” Nicole said. “Very bad.”

He grinned at her. “You started it.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

They smiled at one another. Somehow, over the weeks and months, they’d become, maybe not friends, but definitely not adversaries. They got along. They could laugh together. It wasn’t bad, as sibling relationships went.

Nicole’s smile died first. “So,” Brigomarus said, “tell me what got you going this time.”

She told him bluntly about the murdered man in the street. Brigomarus nodded, all laughter gone. “From what I’m hearing, he wasn’t the only one. In fact, I came here to warn you to stay inside as much as you can for a while. But you seem to be a step ahead of me.”

“Maybe not,” Nicole said. “What have you heard?”

“Not a whole lot,” he answered somberly, “but none of it’s good. The Germans are screaming at me – they’re screaming at everybody. More shields, more arrowheads, more blades, more spearpoints, more everything.”

“And I bet they want it all by yesterday, too,” Nicole said.

“By yest – “ Brigomarus had to pause and work that one out. However tired a joke it was in English, it must have been new in Latin. He regarded her in dawning admiration. “That’s just when they want it, by the gods. You’ve had a way of coming out with things lately, haven’t you?”