Household Gods

Right now, at this moment in the long skein of time, they were children, as real and unmistakable as Justin or Kimberley. They tore into breakfast as if, if they ate it fast enough, they’d grow into adulthood between the first bite and the last. She kept her mouth shut when they soaked their bread in olive oil and ate it greasy and dripping. They were growing children. They could get away with it.

At least, she thought, they aren’t swilling down cholesterol with the fat. Did people in the Roman Empire even know what cholesterol was?

The children’s table manners could have been better, but she kept quiet about those, too. For now. Lucius wolfed down every crumb of his bread, licked lips glistening with oil, and snapped to the young woman, “Julia! More bread.”

“Yes, young sir,” Julia said, and dropped her own breakfast to rise and do as he ordered. She smiled a-trifle sadly at Nicole. “Doesn’t he sound just like his father, Mistress? He tries so hard to be a little man – so good of him, and so well done, with your poor husband gone among the shades so young. We’ve need of a man about the house.”

Nicole reined in her first response, which was to demand to know what was so good about a man underfoot. So she was a widow, was she? Well, good for the late Mr. Umma, whatever his name had been. At least he’d had the courtesy to die instead of running off with the cute young thing next door.

Lucius snatched the bread that Julia brought him and sopped it in oil, without so much as a word or a glance. Nicole frowned. Table manners were one thing. Courtesy was another altogether. “Lucius,” she said sternly, “that was impolite. I didn’t hear you say ‘please’ to Julia. And what should you have said when she brought you your bread?”

Lucius looked at her as if she’d gone off her head. “What should I have said, Mother?”

He didn’t sound as if he was sassing her, though the words could hardly mean anything else. Nicole took a deep breath and counted to five before she answered. “What about ‘thank you’?”

Lucius’ straight black brows went up. “ ‘Thank you? To a slave?”

Nicole’s mouth was open. She shut it. She looked at Julia in a dawning horror. She couldn’t be a slave. Slaves were something out of -

Something out of old dead history. This was old dead history. This, right now, this world she was living in.

Julia didn’t even blink at what Lucius had called her, or at his tone. She sat back down in her place – a little apart from the others, Nicole saw as if for the first time, and on a lower stool, so that her head was a little below theirs. She kept it bowed even lower as she tucked into her own bread and oil and, with a sort of cautious defiance in the glance she shot at Nicole, her wine.

When Nicole thought of slavery, she thought of African-Americans and cotton fields and the Civil War. She vaguely recalled a movie or two about Rome, and something about slaves. Slave revolts? Chariot races? Charlton Heston? Frank would have known, damn him. Frank had a thing for Fifties movie epics. She’d ignored them when he had them on, except to notice that there was a lot of noise and bare skin, and costumes that made her think of a slow night in a Vegas casino. She’d forgotten all that when she prayed to come back to Roman days. She’d never imagined that she’d come back as a slaveowner. No late-twentieth-century minds thought like that.

Neither did they think of traveling back in time at all, not seriously. Not unless they were heavily into fantasy and gaming and all the rest of that unreal nonsense.

This was real enough. So was Julia, sitting there drinking the last of her wine with a little too clearly evident enjoyment.

While Nicole sat speechless, Aurelia held out her cup to Julia and said, “Get me some more wine.” Her eyes flicked to Nicole. She added, “Please.” Her smug little smile was the image of Kimberley’s. Look how good I’m being, it proclaimed to the world, and look what a nasty brat my brother is.

Nicole had always detested that smugness in Kimberley. It didn’t look any better in Aurelia, or do her any more good, either. Nicole snatched the cup from her hand before Julia could take it. She raised it to her nose and sniffed. The odor was unmistakable. “You are giving the children wine?” Her voice was quiet, dangerously so.

Julia understood her. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, as quietly, but without the deadly edge. There was a suggestion of great patience and of indulging a preposterous fancy, but it was too faint to do more than bristle at. “Of course I am, Mistress. I watered the wine half and half, just as I always do. I’d never give it to them neat. You know that, Mistress.”