Household Gods

She’d pretend she hadn’t heard. Better that than trying to explain everything to a pair of children who couldn’t imagine equating a well-earned slap or two with abuse.

If the tavern was going to be closed for the morning, she needed a sign to say so – but there wasn’t any paper, no cardboard, nothing. Here was a world without scrap paper or Post-its, empty of anything handy to write with or on.

But people still did write, and wrote on things. Walls, for example. A piece of charcoal on the whitewashed wall in front of the house did as well as could be expected. It looked like a graffito but it said what she needed it to say, which was the important thing.

Julia watched in wide-eyed wonder. “Calidius Severus was right!” she said. “You don’t just know how to read, you know how to write, too. How did you ever learn that?”

Nicole started to answer, then caught herself. She’d told the fuller and dyer she’d studied on her own, but could she have studied so secretly her own slave didn’t know about it?

A lawyer learned when to talk fast – and when to say nothing. Julia was expecting something; Nicole gave her the barest minimum. “I managed,” she said, and let it go at that.

It seemed to work. Julia looked greatly impressed. Even better, she asked no more awkward questions. Her calm acceptance of the stranger things in life had to be a side effect of her slavery; an art of not seeing what she wasn’t supposed to see, and keeping quiet when silence was the safest course.

Not for much longer, Nicole thought with satisfaction – and the barest hint of guilty apprehension. Julia, free, might ask questions that Julia the slave had never dared to think of.

Then again, she might not. At the moment, she was full of Nicole’s hitherto unsuspected ability. She walked along beside Nicole as if she’d had a whole new world opened to her, pointing to this sign or that bit of graffiti, then listening in awed delight as Nicole read it off to her.

Nicole didn’t mind. It was a lot like going for a walk or a drive with Kimberley or Justin, when they played Read the Sign, Mommy, and tried to figure out what it said before she read it.

Remembering that made her throat tighten a bit. She put the memory aside, focused on this world she’d wished herself into, and worked herself up to enjoying the game. In Carnuntum, after all, you made your own fun, or you didn’t have any. You couldn’t turn the car radio on or dump the kids in front of the TV when you or they got bored. This was all there was: people, imagination, and, at the moment, bits of Latin scribbled on walls.

It was a men’s day at the baths. As Nicole and Julia walked by, clots of freshly bathed and barbered men whistled and called and made propositions that would have made a twentieth-century construction worker blush. One even flipped up his tunic to show what he was offering.

Nicole bristled. Julia slid eyes at the merchandise and sniffed. “I’ve seen better,” she said with a toss of her head – and a sway of the hips that made a whole row of yahoos moan in unison.

“Stop that,” Nicole hissed. “You’re encouraging them.”

“Of course I am,” Julia said, and giggled. “Why not?”

You made your own fun, or you didn’t have any. Nicole’s thought of a moment before rose up and bit her. These grunting pigs were committing blatant sexual harassment. Julia was having a grand time encouraging it. If she wasn’t harassed, in fact wasn’t bothered at all, was it harassment?

“What if they do more than just ogle you?” Nicole demanded. “What if one of them tries to rape you?”

“I’ll stick a knee in his balls,” Julia answered equably. “I’ve done that a time or two. Didn’t take much doing. Word gets around, you know. ‘That one’s tough,’ they say. ‘Look, but don’t touch.’ “

Nicole found that hard to believe. No way men were ever that reasonable. Before she could say so, one of the rougher-hewn types on the steps called out, “Hey, girls! Yeah, the two of you! Come up here to papa. I’ll make you think you died and went to Elysium.” As if that weren’t explicit enough, he grinned and pumped his pelvis, showing off a decent-sized erection under the grubby tunic.

Julia looked him up and down, good and long, tilting her hips and thrusting out her breasts till his tongue was hanging halfway to the ground. Her eye came to rest at last on the bulge under his tunic. Her lip curled. “Will you now?” she said in ripe scorn. “You and what legion?”

Nicole didn’t think that was very funny, but the whole crowd roared with laughter. The would-be superstud flushed crimson and slunk away – back to his wife and sixteen snotty-nosed children, Nicole rather devoutly hoped.