Household Gods

She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell. Maybe the Roman who’d raped her had died five minutes later, killed by a spear in the gut. Maybe, on the other hand, he was sitting on a stool in the tavern this very moment, drinking a cup of cheap wine, eating bread and oil, and watching her backside. Maybe he was laughing, knowing she couldn’t have recognized him in his armor and helmet. And maybe he was thinking, That’s the piece of ass I had the day we took this little rat hole of a city. Not bad, for provincial meat. Maybe I’ll have me another taste.

One night after closing time, as she and Julia were finishing the last of the cleanup, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She told Julia what she went through with every legionary who talked the way they seemed to make a point of talking. Julia paused in scrubbing down the last of the tables. “I do understand why you’re worried about it,” she said, “but I wouldn’t be, if I were you. What happens when an army takes a city isn’t likely to happen again once the city’s safe and settled.”

That made sense, as did most of what Julia said. She’d seen it with the Germans here. And even in the twentieth-century United States, act of war went into a lot of contracts and insurance policies alongside act of God as a justification for nonperformance.

Nicole said, “The top part of my mind understands what you’re saying. It even thinks you’re right. But down underneath – “ She shuddered. “Every time I see a legionary, I want to go somewhere and hide – or else I want to kill him. Sometimes both at once.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Julia answered. “But you can’t do that, you know. You have to go on with your life as best you can.”

“I suppose so,” Nicole said with a sigh. Again, Julia’s advice was brisk and rational. If Nicole followed it, she’d be better off than if she ignored it. But, as she’d said, what the Roman soldier had done to her went down far below the part of her mind where rationality lived. A man had treated her as if she were nothing but a piece of meat with a handy hole. There was nothing reasonable or logical about her reaction to it.

She glanced behind the counter, toward the plaque of Liber and Libera. There sat the god and goddess, just as they had for so long on her nightstand back in West Hills. They weren’t any more active than they’d been then, either, or any more helpful. They just… sat there.

What more do you want from me? she demanded silently. What more can you want from me? Do you want me to die here? Is that what you’re waiting for?

The god and goddess were as uncommunicative as ever. It wasn’t, now, that they didn’t hear her, as when she’d had that other, now broken plaque, or that all the lines were busy. It was subtly different. They heard her, but, for whatever reason, they were choosing not to listen.

She trudged up to bed, and lay there in the light of the lamp she kept lit, now, all night long. The shutters were closed and tightly barred. It wasn’t likely any man would come creeping in through the window, but she just felt more comfortable knowing that he’d have to break down the shutters if he tried it.

She lay in bed, and she kept up her barrage of prayer, pleading, whatever one wanted to call it. Wasn’t enough enough? She’d worked her fingers to the bone, she’d been hungry, she’d slowly poisoned herself every time she ate or drank, she’d been sick and almost died; she’d gone through anything but painless dentistry and almost wished she’d been dead. She’d seen the city sacked, she’d seen cruelty to animals and cruelty to slaves and cruelty to women that was so automatic, people didn’t even know they were being cruel. She’d been raped. And still she was trapped here.

And what did she have to put on the good side of the ledger? Titus Calidius Severus – yes, certainly. But the pestilence had killed him. And Marcus Aurelius. She’d never regret that she’d been able to meet him. There’d never been a man like him before, nor ever would be again.

She would have done anything this side of being raped again, to escape Carnuntum for California. Even that… Would she? Could she go through that, if it brought her home?

Yes. She could. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, the worst thing she could imagine. But if that was the price of her escape from the second century – she would pay it.