Household Gods

His eyebrows climbed again. “You wish to prepare this written statement yourself?”

Nicole nodded. He pursed his lips. This I’ve got to see – he didn’t shout it, but he didn’t need to.

He clapped his hands. A younger man in a toga without a stripe appeared as if conjured out of the air. He received the order without expression, and disappeared as abruptly as he’d appeared, to return a moment later with the articles Nicole had asked for.

Marcus Aurelius’ aide nodded to Nicole. “Go ahead. Use that desk there, if you like. Take all the time you need.” Sure as hell, there it was again – This I’ve got to see.

“Thank you,” Nicole said pointedly. She went to stand behind the desk – it was small and high, almost like a lectern – and set to work. The aide watched her for a while, long enough to see that she really was writing. Then he shrugged a tiny shrug and turned away to obstruct the next foolish innocent who ventured into his lair.

She laid out her statement like any other legal brief she’d ever drafted: first the facts, then their implications. What is civilization worth when the Marcomanni and Quadi held Carnuntum for months without molesting me in any way, but I was brutally raped by the first Roman legionary I saw during the reconquest of the city? She said not a word about what the Germans had done to poor Antonina. That wasn’t how the game was played.

Finally, she came to the important part: what she wanted the presiding authority – here a Roman Emperor, not a Superior Court judge – to do about the issue at hand. Unfortunately, I cannot positively identify the soldier who violated me. If I could, I would ask for him to be punished to the limit of the law. and for me to receive compensation both from him and from the government of the Roman Empire, under whose agency he acted. I still deserve the latter compensation, for as an agent of the government of the empire he grossly abused the authority entrusted to him, and used it to commit this outrageous crime against me.

Setting it down in writing made her angry all over again. “Bastard,” she muttered under her breath. “Fucking bastard.” She’d welcomed him as a rescuer, and what did she get for it? Thrown down in the dirt. God, if she could make him pay personally for every stroke he’d driven home, she’d do it. But if he didn’t have to pay, somebody would. She’d make damned certain of that.

When she stepped away from the desk, the Emperor’s aide waved her over to where he sat at a table piled with neatly labeled scrolls. “Let’s see what you’ve done,” he said, not quite as if he were talking to a six-year-old child, but close enough. Without a word, she passed him the closely written sheets.

Like every other literate Roman Nicole had seen, he mumbled the words to himself as he read. His eyes swept back and forth a couple of times before those expressive eyebrows of his made another leap, this one higher than either of the other two. After a bit, he paused and stared at Nicole. Then he went back to his mumbling.

“This is astonishing,” he said when he was finally done. “If I had not seen you write it with my own eyes, Mistress, ah, Umma” – he had to check the papyrus for her name, though she’d given it to him; obviously he was one of those people for whom nothing was real till it was written down – “I would not have believed it. Why, this might almost be a brief prepared by a gentleman of the legal profession. Astonishing,” he said again.

He’d intended his words as high praise. But it wasn’t high enough to suit Nicole. “What do you mean, almost?” she demanded.

“Well,” he replied, glad of a chance to get sniffy again, “of course you do not cite the relevant laws and imperial decrees, nor the opinions of the leading jurisconsults, but the reasoning is nonetheless very clear and forceful.”

“Ah, “ Nicole said. Damn. She wasn’t a trained lawyer here; she didn’t have the citations at her fingertips, nor know where to find them.