Household Gods

Nicole could imagine. Late pregnancy, as she knew too well, was hell. She nodded and waved to Sextus Longinius, who popped back into his house to fetch his wife. Nicole walked down the narrow, muddy stone sidewalk, thankful, and not for the first time, that the street boasted a sidewalk at all; some didn’t. Like a mountain goat jumping from crag to crag, she crossed the street on the stepping stones. The sidewalk on the other side was even narrower. A patch of mud had oozed onto it from the overloaded street. She slipped and slid and almost fell into the morass; flailed wildly and caught herself up against the damp wall. She clung there for a moment, breathing hard, more with stress than with exertion. An involuntary swim in the odorous, ordurous mud of Carnuntum was not her idea of a good time.

Titus Calidius Severus hadn’t set the amphorae in front of his shop today. Maybe he thought the product he’d get would be too diluted to do him any good; probably he feared the jars would float away. A nice little river ran just about where he liked to thrust the pointy ends of the jars.

Nicole opened the door a little too quickly for her stomach’s peace of mind. A monumental stink assaulted her and almost knocked her off her feet.

Through streaming eyes and gagging coughs, she managed to discern Titus and Gaius Calidius Severus near the end of a row of wooden tubs, doing the double-double routine with something thick, dark, and cottony-looking. It was, she realized, some kind of wool, and the substance they were sloshing it around in was stale piss. When they straightened up to greet her, the stuff ran down their hands and arms and dripped from their fingertips onto the floor. They didn’t bother with rushes; they let the piss make its own noxious mud.

“Good morning, Umma,” Titus Calidius Severus said. If the stench bothered him – if he even noticed it – he didn’t show it. “Haven’t seen you in here for a couple of weeks. What can I do for you today?”

Did he sound hopeful? Maybe he did. Nicole ignored his tone just as he ignored the smell. Business, she thought. Stick to business. “Can you and your son come over to the tavern for a little while?” she asked.

Titus looked at Gaius. They knew what was going on, too. This wasn’t like Los Angeles, where people could live next door to each other for years without bothering to learn each other’s names. Here, everyone knew what everyone else was thinking.

“Who else have you got?” the fuller and dyer asked.

“Sextus Longinius lulus and his wife,” Nicole answered.

“Fabia Ursa doesn’t count,” Calidius Severus said, just as Sextus Longinius had. But maybe Calidius Severus had learned something from the past week or two of dealing with the stranger in Umma’s body. He held up his hand before she could snap at him, and said hastily, “Don’t blame me, Umma! It’s how the law works. You’ll still have three men as witnesses, which ought to do you well enough. Of course it would be even better if Brigomarus were acting for you, but – “

“No,” Nicole said sharply. “This is my business, and he’s too stubborn to see it. I’ll take care of it. She’s my slave, not his.”

“Now who’s the stubborn one? “ Titus Calidius Severus chuckled. So did his son. Nicole didn’t see the joke, herself. She waited till they finished their male bonding or whatever it was. It happened soon enough, and the fuller and dyer sobered. He said slowly, “I’m not sure this is the wisest thing, and I’m not easy about it in my mind, either, if you want the honest truth. But you’re clearly set on it, and you’re the one I’ve got to live with day to day. You’ll settle it with your family, or you won’t – that’s between you and them. Personally, I hope you do. Meanwhile,” he said with an air of decision, “we’ll do what you ask. Gaius, run upstairs and get our cloaks, would you? It’s still coming down out there.”

Gaius wasted no time in obeying. He had to be as hungry for entertainment as Sextus Longinius was.

He and his father threw the cloaks on over their tunics and pulled up the hoods. Nicole hadn’t seen any umbrellas in Carnuntum. A parasol, yes, shielding the face of an obviously wealthy woman from the sun in the market square one day, but no umbrellas. Maybe I could discover those, too, she thought. She was developing a whole list of potentially profitable “inventions,” any one of which would make life a fair bit easier.

Picture it now, she thought: a nice little operation, eight or ten or a dozen employees – all free men and women, of course – chatting happily as they made umbrellas. It was a bit too much like a Worker’s Paradise ad, but then again, why not? They’d make a good living, collect benefits – another thing to invent, right there – and she… she’d get rich. Or well-to-do, at least. Latin might even come up with a new word, a word for yuppie, luppa?