Household Gods

Then there was a silence. Lucius looked from one to the other of them, obviously thought about asking again, equally obviously decided it wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Nicole went on standing at the foot of the stairs, with her eyes leaking tears.

Julia crossed the tavern in a few swift strides, and folded her arms around Nicole. Nicole shrank inside them. She was comforted, she was supposed to be comforted.

She never wanted to be touched by another human being again.

Julia petted her as if she’d been a child or an animal. “There, Mistress,” she said. “There. That’s a terrible thing to happen to a woman.”

“Isn’t it?” Nicole said, still in a voice a thousand miles – a thousand lightyears – from her own. “I don’t even know who he was. I couldn’t pick him out from any other soldier. He was just – a man in a helmet. A son of a whore in a helmet.”

“Even if you can’t pick the wretch out of a crowd, you ought to complain to the Emperor,” Julia said. “He’s supposed to care that things like that don’t happen.”

“The Emperor?” Nicole would never have thought of that, not even close. She hadn’t thought there was anything she could do, except be a victim – the universal lot of women in this time and place. But to go right up to the Emperor and tell him what had been done to her – She tried to imagine going up to the President of the United States, past his wall of press corps, White House staff, Secret Service…

Here she was, diehard product of a democratic nation, and she had a better chance, if Julia was right, of walking up to the Roman Emperor and getting him to listen to her, than she did with her own elected President.

Still. Julia knew this world. She hadn’t been wrong about it yet. If she thought Marcus Aurelius himself might listen to a tavernkeeper from the fringe of his empire, then maybe, just maybe, he would.

With the coming of purpose, fear and shock ebbed. Anger and outrage were swift to take their place. “The Emperor,” Nicole repeated, grimly now. “Yes, I’ll take my case to the Emperor.”

20

Marcus Aurelius entered the city the day the German hordes broke and fled. He took up residence in the town-council building near the market square. Nicole wondered just how complicated it would be to get an audience with him. Less complicated, probably, than it would have been to get in to see the President, or Julia wouldn’t have suggested it, but even kings of minor countries had hordes of flunkies to keep the great unwashed away from their majesty. The more minor the country, in fact, the greater the hordes seemed to be.

By that token, since Rome was the greatest empire in the world, it should be a relatively simple matter to see its Emperor. Nicole approached the town hall with a bold face and a fluttering heart – and found that she was not the first nor yet the last to come in search of the imperial ear. People were going in and coming out, nearly all men, most in armor or in togas but a few in tunics. She worked her way into the stream, passing the armored guards who decorated the door just like guards in a Hollywood epic, and working her way inside.

There the stream divided, some going here, some going there. She had no idea where to begin.

She chose a direction more or less at random, and started down a hallway. A man stepped out of a door, so suddenly she started, and barred her way. He wasn’t a guard, and he wasn’t in armor. He wore a toga, a surprisingly white affair with a narrow and somehow pretentious crimson stripe. “And what may be your purpose here?” he inquired in Latin almost painful in its purity.

She’d prepared a speech for just such an eventuality: short, pithy, but comprehensive. The functionary heard her out with an arched brow and a supercilious expression. “And what evidence have you that the alleged assault in fact occurred?” he asked when she’d come to the end of it.

Nicole drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t all that inconsiderable. “Would you like to see the knot in my head? The bruises on my chest? The ones on my backside? Do you want to see what forcible sexual intercourse does to a woman’s private parts?”

The aide’s eyebrows leaped. “Thank you, no,” he said with a flicker of disgust. Maybe he wouldn’t care to view a woman’s private parts under any circumstances. He went on with the same chilly precision as before: “If you would care to present me with a written statement of your claim, so it may be examined before being put to the Emperor, who is, after all, you will understand, a busy man…”

His voice trailed away. His smile was small and smug. His meaning was abundantly clear. Just blow yourself off, lady. What were the odds that a tavernkeeper would be able to give him a written statement, or have enough money to hire someone to do a proper job of it?

Nicole favored him with a sweetly carnivorous smile. No matter what the odds, he’d bet and lost. He just didn’t know it yet. “May I borrow pen and ink and papyrus?” she asked in dulcet tones.