Household Gods

Although Julia clucked like an unhappy mother hen, Nicole wasn’t altogether unhappy when the fuller and dyer stayed out of the restaurant for a few days after her trip to the market. She hoped that meant she’d made him stop and think. No one, she told herself fiercely – not Umma’s brother, not Umma’s lover, no one – was going to take her for granted here.

Despite that determination, her nerves twanged like a Nashville guitar string when, two or three days after she and Brigomarus had got nowhere, Calidius Severus walked in with a man about half his age who otherwise looked just like him – and, unfortunately, smelled just like him, too. They sat down together like an identical-twin act, exact same stoop, exact same turn of the head, even the same shift and hitch on their respective stools. Nicole, watching them, felt a small, distinct shock, a Why didn’t he tell me? shock, much the same as if she’d found a wedding ring on Calidius Severus’ finger. But he couldn’t be married, could he? No. Julia had said he was a widower.

She’d tangled herself in a brief knot, and he was speaking, ordering dinner with perfect and not perceptibly strained casualness. “Wine and bread and onions for both of us, Umma, “ he said, “and what else have you got that’s good?”

“Snails fried with garlic in olive oil?” she suggested. She’d been holding her breath, she discovered, but she’d had to let it out to play the polite proprietor. “I had Lucius bring me back a basketful of snails this morning.” And Lucius, no doubt, had had as much fun catching them as an eight-year-old boy could. An incongruous bit of English doggerel went reeling through her head: Snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.

“Those do sound good,” Titus Calidius Severus said. Nicole had to clamp down hard on a giggle. His son, whose name Nicole resigned herself yet again to having to pick up from conversation, licked his lips and nodded, smiling widely. The smile, at least, was different from his father’s. Titus Calidius Severus was much too sure of himself to indulge in such a goofy grin.

Nicole would sooner have done the snails in butter herself. They had butter in Carnuntum – had it and looked down their noses at it. It was their last resort when they couldn’t get olive oil. No accounting for taste. Nicole thought, the phrase forming in her mind in English and Latin at the same time. De gusttbus non disputandum.

“Two orders of snails,” she called to Julia. “I’ll get the rest.”

“All right, Mistress,” Julia said from behind the counter. She dropped the snails and chopped garlic into the fierce hiss of hot oil. A wonderful smell wafted out from the pan: oil, garlic, the fishy-sweet scent of snails. Butter would have smelled even better, in Nicole’s opinion, but she was, as far as she could tell, a minority of one. Olive oil was healthier, she consoled herself – until she remembered that the oil, like most of the wine in Carnuntum, was imported in glazed amphorae. She’d never imagined worrying about whether lead was more likely to be dangerous than cholesterol. She’d never imagined living in a place where nobody worried about either one.

Calidius Severus’ son kept watching Julia while she fried the snails. She’d glance at him every now and again, too, and preen a little. If that didn’t mean he’d gone upstairs with her a few times, Nicole would have been astonished.

As Nicole brought them the wine and bread and onions, Titus Calidius Severus whispered something to his son. The younger man frowned. “Is what my father says true?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Nicole answered evenly, arranging food and drink, cups and bowls, on the table in front of them. “What does your father say?”

“That you aren’t letting Julia screw for money anymore,” he said.

She couldn’t say she was startled, though shocked was another matter. From everything she’d heard, Romans charged through the bushes instead of beating around them.

“Yes, it’s true,” Nicole said, in a tone that couldn’t mean anything but, Want to make something out of it?

Before his son could make anything out of it, Titus Calidius Severus said, “Why in Ahriman’s name would Ofanius Valens lie to me, Gaius? Why would he lie about something like that, anyhow? No money in it.” He glanced up at Nicole. His expression was honestly curious. “Why aren’t you letting her screw for money anymore?”

“I decided I would sooner have a little less money than be a part-time madam,” she replied as starchily as she knew how.

Gaius Calidius Severus still looked miffed. His father grunted the way he did when he was thinking about something that, in his opinion, bore thinking on. “All right, that’s not a bad answer,” he said at last. “It will likely do your soul good when judging time comes.”