Household Gods

The lamp Julia brought was marginally brighter than the one Nicole had left by the door after it burned out. It still shed about as much light as a nightlight back in West Hills.

Julia set it down on a stool and stepped back against the wall and waited.

That was what guards did in Frank’s pet old movies. The gesture must mean the same here as there. It was Nicole’s show. She looked around a little desperately. So now what?

In West Hills, she had known what to do. Here – Here, her own toothache, which hadn’t gone away, which as far as she could tell would never go away, had already taught her Latin didn’t have a word for Tylenol. It didn’t have a word for aspirin, either. By unpleasant but perfect logic, no word meant nothing.

Back in West Hills, she wouldn’t have thought of giving aspirin to kids with fever anyhow, because of the small but real risk of Reye’s syndrome. Back in West Hills, she’d had other, better choices. Her mother, who hadn’t, and who hadn’t known about Reye’s syndrome, either, had given Nicole aspirin plenty of times. Nothing bad had happened. Nicole would have given it to Lucius and Aurelia – and taken some herself – without a qualm, if only she’d had any.

Julia stirred, probably deciding Nicole wasn’t thinking straight because she was sick. “Shall I get the willow-bark decoction, Mistress?” she asked.

Oh, joy, Nicole thought. A folk remedy. In West Hills, she’d have laughed it off. In Carnuntum, without any other useful choice, she grasped at it almost eagerly. It might not do any good, but it might not hurt, either. Folk remedies weren’t supposed to kill, were they?

Julia was waiting for her to say something. “Yes,” she said more impatiently than she’d meant. “Yes, go on, go get it – please,” she added a bit belatedly.

Julia seemed almost relieved to be snapped at, though the politeness of the last word made her eyes roll briefly before she darted back down the stairs.

The children might be sick, but they weren’t too sick to make a whole range of revolted noises. “Willow bark!” said Lucius, who seemed the livelier of the two. “Ick! Ick ick ick!”

“Be quiet,” Nicole said to him. No, snapped at him. She was too blasted sick herself to be nice about it. Somewhat to her surprise, he shut up, though he kept making horrible faces.

Julia came back none too soon with a bottle and a tiny cup. The stuff she poured out looked horrid and smelled worse, but Nicole held her nose and gulped it down regardless. Its taste was even worse than its smell – gaggingly, throat-wrenchingly bitter.

The kids were staring at her as if she’d done something ridiculously brave. Taking medicine, it seemed, was no more popular in Carnuntum than it had been in California. That might have been funny, had she felt less like dying.

She’d expected the stuff to be nasty. It was. It was also familiar, which she hadn’t expected. When she’d had a sore throat, her mother had made her gargle with a couple of aspirins dissolved in warm water. God, she’d hated that! This taste wasn’t far from it.

Nicole made the kids take the decoction anyway. If it tasted like aspirin, maybe it had something like aspirin in it. Hadn’t she heard or read somewhere that aspirin came from some folk remedy or other? Maybe it came from this one.

“Julia, you’re feeling all right,” Nicole said tiredly, “and I’m not.” Even in the dim lamplight, she saw how smug Julia looked. She lacked the energy to call her on it. “Would you take care of the chamberpots in here and in my room, please?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Julia said. Her method of taking care of a pot was to pick it up, carry it to the window, and dump it out on the ground below. She went back to Nicole’s bedroom and did the same thing with the one in there, or so the second wet splat declared.

The words were shocked right out of Nicole’s head. If there’d been any to be found, they would have come out in a shriek. No toilets was one thing. No sewers – but Rome had sewers! She’d seen a documentary. Where were Carnuntum’s sewers? Didn’t these people know anything about sanitation?

No wonder flies buzzed in through her window. And no wonder at all that Carnuntum smelled the way it did – and the water wasn’t fit to drink.

The willow-bark decoction made her feel better – not a lot better, but some. And the kids’ foreheads were cooler. They’d stopped groaning and subsided into a fretful doze. She hugged them and, after a little hesitation, kissed them. They didn’t object. She felt strange: half like a babysitter, taking care of children not her own; half like a mother. If these had really been her own -

She didn’t know any Latin lullabies. On sudden inspiration, and because she couldn’t think of anything else, she hummed “Rockabye Baby.” Even without the English words, maybe the tune would do the trick. Apparently it did. First Aurelia’s breathing, then Lucius’, slowed and deepened into the cadence of sleep.