Household Gods

“He wouldn’t admit to that,” Nicole said. “We had quite an argument about it, as a matter of fact. He wouldn’t admit it was his fault or his government’s fault.” Even though she thought she understood why Marcus Aurelius reasoned as he did, anything less than complete success irked her.

It impressed the hell out of Julia. “You… argued with the Roman Emperor, Mistress?” she said incredulously.

“I sure did,” Nicole answered, “and even though he wouldn’t admit that he and his government were at fault, he gave me this.” She tossed the little leather sack down in front of the freedwoman. Julia stared at it dubiously, as Nicole must have done when the Emperor gave it to her. “Go ahead, open it.”

Julia did as told. Her gasp was altogether satisfactory. She spilled the aurei out on the tabletop. Nicole watched her closely as she put them back into the sack one by one, and made sure all ten were in there when she returned it. That was a lot of money – temptation even for the most honest employee.

“By the gods,” Julia said, softly and reverently, though Nicole thought she revered the cash more than the gods. “He wouldn’t have given you this much if he’d gone to bed with you himself.”

“I didn’t go see him to go to bed with him,” Nicole said with rather more sharpness than was strictly necessary.

“But if he’d wanted to – “ Everything was very straightforward in Julia’s mind. Nicole had seen that time and again. She’d also seen that trying to change Julia’s mind was like pounding your head against a rock: your head would break long before the rock did. This time, she didn’t even try. “Let’s get some sleep,” she said. “Everything turned out as well as it could.”

“I’ll say!” Julia exclaimed. “Almost makes me wish – “

Nicole’s expression brought her up short. As clearly as if it were happening again, Nicole could feel the Roman soldier forcing himself onto her, ramming deep, driving home a lot more than simple physical pain. What it did to her spirit… “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nicole said harshly. “Be glad of that.”

Somebody in the Bible – Jacob? – had seen God face to face, and his life was preserved. After that, he’d become a great man among the Hebrews. Nicole didn’t remember all the details; she hadn’t been to Sunday school in a long, long time. But she’d seen Marcus Aurelius face to face, and not only was her life preserved, she’d come away with ten aurei. That was enough to make her a celebrity in the neighborhood, if not in all of Carnuntum.

She would much rather not have been raped. But since she had been, she would much rather Julia hadn’t said anything about the compensation Marcus Aurelius had given her. Asking Julia not to gossip, though, was like asking a rooster not to crow when the sun came up. You could ask, but it wasn’t likely to do you much good.

As the word spread, she gained customers. Fortunately she had food and drink to sell them; local farmers, those the Marcomanni and Quadi hadn’t killed or kidnapped, started coming back into Carnuntum. And the army had its own supply train with it, and some of the flour and sausage and wine went to the people in the city. Part of that was Marcus Aurelius’ care for the people over whom he ruled. Part, Nicole suspected, would have happened anyhow. Where money and food came together, those with the one couldn’t fail to get their hands on the other.

One consequence of her attack of chutzpah saddened Nicole: Antonina stopped speaking to her. She didn’t know what had caused the estrangement, but she could make a fair guess. If Antonina too had asked for compensation, but been turned down, that would do it. Nicole would have been the first to admit that Antonina had suffered worse than she had herself – but, as a lawyer, she knew only too well that how you phrased your claim often mattered more than what had actually happened to you.

Before long, thanks to all the legionaries in town, the tavern was doing at least as much business as it had before the pestilence and the Germans. A lot of the customers, of course, were the Roman soldiers who had come up to Carnuntum with Marcus Aurelius.

They gave her the creeps. Every so often, one or another of them would ask either her or Julia, “What’s the matter, sweetheart? Don’t you feel like being friendly?” Sometimes Julia did. Though she did her best to stay discreet about it, she was probably doing more business than she ever had before.

But the mere words sweetheart and friendly, spoken together or separately, were enough to freeze Nicole where she stood. Every time she heard them from a legionary, she would stop cold. Her eyes would ache with the effort of peering at a face that was interchangeable with any number of other black-bearded, big-nosed, olive-skinned faces. Was this the man who’d flung her down on her back in the alley and violated her with such efficiency, even aplomb?