Household Gods

17

Nicole wasn’t terrified, she’d gone past that, into an eerie, brittle calm. Julia was shivering so hard, her teeth rattled. She was completely out of her mind with fear. Lucius had crawled under a table, which seemed a good idea to Nicole.

The pounding came again, loud, peremptory. Nicole stayed where she was. If she didn’t do anything, if nobody moved, maybe — maybe -

He didn’t go away. Not hardly. “You open in there!” he bellowed in atrocious Latin. “You open, or we burn. With fire, we burn.”

Was that what had happened beyond the market square? She didn’t doubt for an instant that he’d do it. The place would go up like a torch, and the whole block with it — maybe this whole part of the city.

Whatever these barbarians did to her, it couldn’t be worse than burning alive. If rape is inevitable, her self-defense instructor had said — not reluctantly enough, she’d thought at the time — lie as still as you can, and don’t resist. You’re less likely to get hurt. Some of the students had argued with him, she remembered. But not the ones who had been raped or mugged. They’d nodded, if bitterly. That was the way it was, they said. And wishing wouldn’t make it any different.

Her feet moved of themselves, carrying her blindly toward the pounding. She drew the bar and opened the door.

He was huge, this German. Her head was level with his great barrel of a chest, just about where a bloodstain spattered across his breastplate. It was Roman armor, legionary issue, though that must have been one big legionary.

She raised her eyes from the stain, which she doubted very much was his own blood, to a face that took her every fear, and studied it, and assured her solemnly: it was true. It was pure, unadulterated male, male in the worst sense, male as predator. Lust, ferocity, arrogance — he would do whatever he damn well pleased with her and to her. It didn’t matter the least bit in the world, what she thought or felt. He wanted. He took. That was the way of his world.

He sucked in a deep breath, drinking in the rich scent of his own power. And something a lot more pungent than that.

His nose wrinkled. His first expression was of incredulity. His second, disgust. He made a guttural sound deep in his throat, half a gag, half a snarl.

One of the other Germans called out to the man in front of Nicole. She couldn’t understand a word, but she could well deduce what he was saying: What the devil are you waiting for? Grab her and let’s get on with it!

The German turned his head to answer. Whatever he said, it sounded furious. When he turned back to Nicole, his expression was even uglier than before.

That part, she hadn’t thought through. If he was too revolted to rape her, he could perfectly well kill her instead, and have nearly as good a time doing it. Quick — she had to think quickly.

She beckoned, and spoke slowly and carefully, in case he could understand Latin. “Here, sir. Come in. Would you and your friends like some wine.?”

“Wine?” the German repeated. As the word sank in, he grinned, displaying a mouthful of strong yellow teeth. He shouted it out with a roar of glee. “Wine!”

Maybe the word was the same in their language as in Latin; maybe it was simply a Latin word they all knew. Either way, they all came running. They hadn’t bothered — or, more likely, hadn’t got round to — slaughtering Antonina as the climax to their sport. Even as Nicole shrank back to let the Germans crowd into the tavern, she saw how it ended. Slowly, like a dog whipped and then forgotten, Antonina crawled past the pool of blood around her husband’s corpse, and into her house.

Julia, thank God, had kept her wits about her, though the place was bursting at the seams with Germans. Maybe she reckoned the bar was defense enough to her peace of mind. She stood behind it, dipping up cups as fast as she could. Her face was pale and set; despite the evidence of Nicole’s safety, she didn’t fully trust the stink to protect her. And yet it did — all the more since she was giving the Germans something else they wanted.

Giving? Once they got drunk (or, in some cases, drunker), what would they do? Shopkeepers got killed all too often in Los Angeles robberies; Nicole wasn’t fool enough to think things were any different here.

A thought struck her. It was wild. It was probably crazy. It might get her killed. And yet — maybe, if this wasn’t a robbery… “My friends,” she said, which was a vagrant assumption without means of support if she’d ever seen one, “my friends, the wine is two asses a cup.”

She’d got their attention, and then some. They all stared at her. Julia’s eyes were wider than any of the Germans’. Those who had understood translated for the few who hadn’t. Then they all started to laugh. Some of the laughter was amused. Some — more — was nasty.

One of them, who wore his hair in a topknot that reminded Nicole forcibly of one of the sillier beach-bunny fashions in Malibu, proved to speak rather decent Latin: “Why should we pay for what we can take?”

“If you take without paying, how will anyone in Carnuntum be able to get more for you to have later?” Nicole countered.

If she’d made him angry enough, she was dead. She was also dead if he realized that, with Marcomanni and Quadi and even Lombards — or so Gaius Calidius Severus had said, wherever he was now, and please God let him be all right — rampaging over the landscape, no one in Carnuntum would be able to get much more of anything regardless.

The German reached out and chucked her under the chin, the same gesture Titus Calidius Severus had used — once. She slapped his hand away, as she had Calidius Severus’. She did it altogether without thinking. Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d found another way to get herself in deep, deep trouble.

He stared at her. Some of the other Germans stared at her, too. Rather more of them stared at him, to see what he’d do. Slowly, he said, “You are a woman who thinks like a man.” He reached out again and patted her on the head, as he might have done with a toddler who amused him.

She didn’t bite the hand that patted her, as she would have dearly loved to do. Overbearing, sexist oaf. But, in his overbearing, sexist way, he’d admired her for her boldness. He wouldn’t go on admiring her if she backed down. Whereas, if she kept it up, he might just admire her enough to let her alone. She thrust out her own hand. “Pay up, then,” she said.

Silence stretched. If he decided the joke had gone too far, the next few minutes would be among the most urgently unpleasant she’d ever known, and very likely the last she ever knew. His right hand slid down to his belt. She held her breath. His hand bypassed his sword, and paused at the pouch behind it. He pulled out a coin and slapped it into the palm of Nicole’s hand. “Here. This pays for all, yes?”

It was a little coin, smaller than an as, about the size of a nickel. It was surprisingly heavy, and gleamed brighter than even the shiny brass sesterces that looked like gold… till you had the real thing with which to compare them.

Julia spoke in an awed whisper: “That’s an aureus.”

Nicole had never seen a goldpiece, not in all the time she’d been in Carnuntum. Even silver wasn’t in common circulation, not at the low rung of the economy where the tavern dwelt. She thought — she wasn’t sure, she’d never needed to be sure — an aureus was worth twenty-five denarii. A hundred sesterces. Four hundred asses. A hell of a lot of money.

“Yes,” she said dizzily. “This pays for everything.” Her wits started working again: “Everything to eat and drink, that is.”

The German’s nod was impatient. “Yes, yes,” he said, and then, to put her in her place once more after he’d deigned to yield, “You flatter yourself if you think we want you or your servant here. You stink.”

She hung her head, as if chastened. Down where the German couldn’t see her do it, she grinned. She made herself wipe the expression from her face. But oh, how fine it had felt while she wore it!

The Marcomanni and Quadi — and perhaps even Lombards — drank all the wine she had, and ate most of the food. A few of them left. A few newcomers joined the crowd. Nobody touched Nicole or Julia or Lucius, or offered harm. They’d won a kind of immunity, between Calidius Severus’ stale piss and Nicole’s food and drink.

She knew how lucky she was. She’d seen horror. She’d heard it. She kept hearing it, too. Every so often, close by or far away, a woman would start screaming. She knew what that meant. The first time or two or three, she told herself she should rush out, find a weapon, do something about it. But no matter how brave she might be, she’d end up killed or thrown down beside the other woman and served up as the second course. It made her sick, but there was no getting away from it. Not one person in Carnuntum, male, female, it didn’t matter, could do a thing. They were conquered. And this was what conquest was. She’d built a tiny raft of what might be safety. In the fallen city, that was — that would have to be — miracle enough.

The gathering was becoming rather rowdy. The frat-party ambience had thickened, till Nicole could almost see these murdering bastards as a gang of Sig-Eps and Tri-Delts celebrating a hard day’s beer-bashing with a nightlong carouse.

One of them sprang up, egged on by his friends, and put on such a long, jut-jawed face that there was no mistaking what he was trying to be: a Roman citizen in the full draped weight of the toga, thirty pounds of chalk-whitened wool, throwing up his hands and squealing like a woman as a big bluff German cleaned out his cash box.

It was terrible, reprehensible, and ultimately very sad, and yet it was screamingly funny. The Germans were rolling on the floor, howling with laughter. And it was funny. Eddie Murphy could have used it without changing a thing — thirty pounds of toga, forty pounds of gold chains, what difference did it make? Nicole couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing.

The sound of it brought her up short. These men had just murdered one of her neighbors and gang-raped another in the middle of the street, and she was laughing with them? God, for a vial of poison to drop in their wine. And a dose for herself, for succumbing to the oldest disease in the world: falling into sympathy with the oppressor.

As had been happening once in a while as the afternoon wore on, somebody new swaggered through the door. He was a horrible sight, his tunic and trousers splashed with blood. None of it was his. He took a place at a table in the middle of the room, roared for wine — Nicole spitefully gave him the last of the one-as rotgut; he swilled it down without seeming to notice. Everybody wanted to know, by gestures and grunted words, how he’d come to be covered with gore. His answer was graphic, with much thrusting and slashing of the air. They laughed and pounded the tables. He stabbed a finger at his crotch and mimed the thrust and grind of a good fast rape.

They clapped and cheered. They gathered round him and pounded him on the back. Amid the gluey vowels and guttural consonants of their incomprehensible speech, Nicole understood clearly what they thought of him. He’d scored in their reckoning, and scored big.

And would anything change, really, in eighteen hundred years? Never mind the small scale of fraternity hazings and barroom gang rapes. The twentieth century had institutionalized slaughter, and turned rape into a science. Serbs massacred Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and drove women into rape camps. She’d be willing to bet they boasted of the horrors they’d committed, and sat around in bars and cheered one another on.

But, in one respect, things had changed. Once the Serbs had had their fun, they’d done their best to hide it from the world. They buried in mass graves the people they’d slaughtered, and denied that the rape camps had ever existed.

These Germans didn’t think like that. Not in the least. They saw nothing shameful in what they did; felt no need to hide it from the world. They had every right, they seemed to believe, to rob and rape, murder and pillage.

They were terrible people. And they were proud of it. They were completely, unreachably alien.

All too soon and all too completely, the wine ran out. Nicole poured the last dregs into a cup, served it to a German who wouldn’t have cared if she’d given him vinegar, and stood empty-handed and beginning, all over again, to be afraid.

But the German with the topknot, the one who’d given her the aureus, patted her on the head again as if she’d been a favorite dog, and said, “No one hurts you here today. I say this — I, Swemblas.” He struck a pose, with a lift of his head that told her the topknot and the Roman armor meant something. He was a man of substance, a chieftain maybe, or someone who had ambitions to be.

“I’m glad,” she said to him. Then, after a pause and a moment’s thought: “I’d be even gladder if you granted the same immunity to everyone in Carnuntum.”

Swemblas laughed. “Ho! Ho, little woman, you make good jokes! Carnuntum is ours now. We will enjoy it. You Romans are too weak to stop us. If you were not, we would not be here.”

He was honest, she granted him that. You have what we want, and we’re strong enough to take it away from you. So we damn well will.

The twentieth century had spilled more blood than this small-time butcher ever dreamt of, working toward proving that greed and violence were not to be tolerated in an enlightened world. Here in the second century, greed and violence were the virtues of the hour. And who was she to tell them otherwise?

One of the Germans sat where he could see at an angle out the door. He pointed, laughed, and said something in his own language that made his friends echo his laughter.

“What’s funny?” Nicole asked Swemblas, emboldened by the knowledge of his name and by the promise he’d made her.

He actually condescended to explain. “We are many drunken Germans, and here is also a drunken Roman.”

And there he came, staggering along the street. Nicole saw the stagger first, before anything else. Her lip curled in anger and contempt. Carnuntum had fallen, and this idiot could think of nothing better to do about it than soak himself in wine.

Then he lifted his head, and she gasped in recognition. It was Gaius Calidius Severus. He’d never get drunk at such a time. He’d gone off to fight; there was no way he’d come back sloshed, even to drown his sorrow at defeat.

“He’s not drunk,” she said suddenly. “He’s hurt.” She ran out past the staring Germans, caring only that none of them tried to stop her.

Her lover’s son had lost his sword. When he turned his head to stare blankly at her, the left side of his face and his beard were crusted with dried blood. Her eye followed the track of it to an enormous lump above and in front of his ear.

He stopped, swaying, and blinked at her. “Mistress Umma?” he said doubtfully, as if he wasn’t sure he knew her.

One of his eyes had a large pupil, the other a small. Concussion. “Gaius,” Nicole said sharply, hoping the sound of his name would help him focus. “What hit you?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was vague. He winced. “I have an awful headache.” He peered down at his right hand, and opened his eyes wide in surprise. “Where did my sword go?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said. Maybe he’d dropped it when he got hurt. If he had, he was probably lucky. The Germans would have been sure to set upon an armed man, where an unarmed one might be — appeared to have been — a figure of fun. “Where have you been all this time?”

“Wandering, I suppose,” he said, still in that dreamy, foggy tone. “I only remembered where I live a little while ago.”

Nicole nodded. Concussion indeed. She didn’t want to bring him into the tavern; no telling what her unwelcome guests might decide to do. She pointed him toward the door of his own shop. “Go in there. Go upstairs. Lie down, but don’t go to sleep. You might not wake up. I’ll come and check in on you as soon as I can.”

He started to nod, then stopped with another wince. A small hiss of pain escaped him. “I’ll do that.” He hesitated, then added, “We lost, didn’t we?”

The legionary’s corpse still lay in the street, though Germans had stolen his sword and armor. The body of Antonina’s husband sprawled not far from it. There were no dead Germans. All of those were alive, well, and roaring their way through a drinking song behind her.

“Yes, “ Nicole said dryly in a lull between verses. “We lost.”

“I thought so,” he said. He looked around a little more alertly than before. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know.” Nicole took a deep breath. If it struck him as normal to stand in the middle of the street talking about the fall of Carnuntum, and with no fear of the enemy either — maybe, after all, it wasn’t invariably fatal to be an adult male in a conquered city — then he was still sufficiently fuddled to be in need of a keeper. She turned him bodily and pointed him toward his own door. “Don’t worry about it now. Just go in, go upstairs, but remember: try to stay awake. Julia or I will check on you as soon as we can.”

He didn’t argue with her, which was also an indication that he wasn’t quite right. He went where she directed him, into his shop. She heard the slide of the bar in the door, and drew a sigh of relief. Some of his wits were scrambled, but some still worked. If he could keep from falling asleep in the next few — minutes, she decided; she’d send Julia over right away, and make her stay there. Julia’s methods of keeping him from falling into a coma might not be exactly family fare, but if they worked, Nicole didn’t care.

But first, as long as Nicole was out, there was one more thing that needed doing. Her stomach crunched at the thought of it. But who else was there?

She slipped back into the tavern. Nobody appeared to notice her. They were all either drowning in the beer that was holding out now the wine was gone, or snoring on the tables or between the stools.

Julia was still standing behind the bar. She greeted Nicole with a look of joy that stabbed Nicole with guilt, but the guilt would be worse if Nicole didn’t do this second errand. Nicole spoke as softly as she could and still be heard: “Will you be all right here by yourself for a little while? I have to check on poor Antonina.”

Julia’s face fell, but she kept her chin up regardless. “I suppose it will be all right,” she said. “If they were going to throw us down and do what they did to her, they’d have done it by now.”

Lucius had gone upstairs not long before Gaius Calidius Severus found his way home. None of the Germans had given him any trouble. One of them had picked up his wooden sword from the floor, thwacked him on the bottom with it, not very hard, then handed it to him. The German had laughed, even when he glared, and called him something in German that got Lucius a round of salutes. He’d kept Lucius by him for a while, plying him with walnuts and coaxing him until finally, unwillingly, he smiled. Then the German let him go. The man was still there, still eating walnuts, swapping war stories with a tableful of his fellows. There was no scarlet brand on his forehead, nothing to mark him as rapist or murderer. He was rather ordinary, really. Shave him, cut his hair, dress him in jeans and a shirt, and he’d be just another big blond guy in a bar.

Nicole knew better. She slipped out of the tavern again and walked warily down the street to Antonina’s house. When she was out in front taking care of Calidius Severus, it had been one thing; she’d been in sight of the tavern, and under Swemblas’ protection. Antonina lived just far enough to be out of reach if another barbarian happened by, and happened to be hungry for blood or a woman or both.

But no one accosted her. The street was deserted. She made it safely to the door, and knocked.

No one answered. She knocked again. Still no reply. A chill ran down her back. Antonina might have hanged herself, or slit her wrists, or thrust a knife into a vein. After what the Germans had done to her, she might not want to live. Nicole knew enough of rape trauma to know that, and to be seriously afraid.

This was Nicole’s worst twentieth-century nightmare come to life. Men with unlimited license to do as they pleased, with and to women. Next to this, Tony Gallagher’s crude come-on in the office had been the height of Old World courtesy.

She braced to knock yet again, but hesitated. Hadn’t the German pounded on the door before he dragged Antonina out? She must think there was another barbarian out here, looking for more sport.

“Antonina? ‘ she called. “It’s Umma.”

Something stirred inside, a rustle, a muted scrape. Nicole sagged in relief. It might not be Antonina — for all she knew, it was a rat scuttling across the floor — but there was something, someone, alive in there. She knocked again, less peremptorily.

“Go away!” Antonina snapped at her from within, as sharp as ever, and deeply exasperated. “Leave me alone.”

Nicole almost laughed. Yes, that was Antonina, all charm and sweetness. “I want to help, if I can,” Nicole said.

The door opened abruptly. Antonina glared out at Nicole. “Help what? Help spread news of my shame through the whole city?”

“No!” Nicole protested. Damn, if only she’d found a spare hour a day to serve on a crisis hotline. She knew what those operators were supposed to do, but not how they were supposed to do it. She’d been too busy divorcing Frank, raising two kids, making partner…

She breathed deep and let it out slowly. Patience. That much she knew. You had to be patient. “Look. What happened wasn’t your fault. No one should think any less of you because of it.”

Antonina stared at her as if she’d never seen her before. After a stretching pause, she said, “You’d better come in.” Nicole gathered her wits and did as she was told. Antonina shut the door behind her and barred it tightly. “Don’t want those murdering demons coming by and seeing us,” she said.

“I should think not,” Nicole said. Voice soft, movements slow. It worked with animals; why not with a severely traumatized human? They stood in a darkened room, darker than the tavern had been, with all the shutters closed tight, and one stingy lamp burning. The room was full of shadows: shadows draped over furniture, hung on the walls, piled on the floor.

Antonina’s late husband had been a tailor. These weren’t shadows. These were cloaks and tunics and hoods, some cut, some half-sewn, some all but finished and waiting for the final touches. Bolts of cloth stood against the far wall, some with pieces cut and hanging, others bound up tightly. The air was full of the odor of new wool.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” Nicole said. “He was a brave man.”

“Castinus?” Antonina snorted. “Sure he was brave. He was stupid.” Nicole couldn’t think what to say. Antonina sounded as if she’d barely known the man at all, still less loved and married him. “Stupid,” she repeated. “He never in his life did anything so — so — “ Then, to Nicole’s lasting astonishment and considerable dismay, she gasped. Her eyes opened wide. And she cried out, a great, raw wail of pain and loss. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She flung herself into Nicole’s arms and wept as if her heart would break.

Nicole unlocked the joints that had gone rigid when Antonina sprang at her, and stroked Antonina’s filthy hair as she had Lucius’ earlier. “Yes. Grieve. It’s all right. It’s good. Let it all out. You’ll feel better.”

“I’ll never feel better!” Antonina cried. Then she stiffened. She pulled away from Nicole and looked about wildly. “I have to be quiet. They’ll hear me if I’m not quiet. ‘ And yet, as she looked around, as she saw the evidence of her husband’s labors wherever her eyes fell, a new, long wail escaped her, and she dove again for what security she might find m Nicole’s arms.

“It’s all right,” Nicole said somewhat lamely. “I’m sure it’s all right.” And then, bitterly: “They like hearing women mourn. It reminds them how bold and brave and downright manly they are, to give us cause to weep.”

“Barbarians,” Antonina spat, in between spasms of tears. She clung to Nicole for a very long time. When she pulled away, it was sudden, as if she’d brought herself forcibly under control. Tears still dripped from her eyes; her nose was running. She wiped it on her sleeve. No handkerchiefs here. No Kleenex. She looked at Nicole through those red and streaming eyes, and sniffed loudly. “Thank you,” she said with what for Antonina was considerable graciousness. “The way things usually are between us, I hadn’t expected this from you.” She paused to draw a long breath. “Sometimes it’s not so bad to be wrong.”

“No,” Nicole said. “It’s not.”

Antonina sniffed again, almost her old scornful sound. “I can tell why the barbarians didn’t bother you. What did you do, take a bath in the chamberpot? I wish I’d thought of that.” This was good, Nicole thought. Antonina was herself again, more or less.

Nicole answered the question with some pride: “I took Julia across the street to Gaius Calidius Severus’ and splashed us both with the really ripe stuff.”

“That was clever,” Antonina said, “though I’d have thought Julia would have enjoyed taking on a dozen or so stalwart Marcomanni.” Yes, she was definitely on the mend: she was up to being bitchy again.

Nicole sighed. “If Julia wants to sleep with the Germans, she probably will, and there isn’t much anybody can do about it. But if she doesn’t want to, they have no right to force her.”

“They have a right,” Antonina said bleakly: “the right of the strong over the weak.” She held up a hand before Nicole could speak. “Yes, my dear, I do understand you, but when has the world ever paid attention to a woman’s rights?”

“Not often enough,” Nicole had to concede.

Antonina nodded. She had no idea how long that would continue, but neither did she have any idea how much better things would get. Los Angeles of the Nineties, warts and all, was an infinitely better time and place for a woman than second-century Carnuntum.

Nicole knew that now. She also knew, or feared, that like most such wisdom, it came too late to do her any good.

Antonina’s storm of weeping had passed, and she seemed much the better for it. She wouldn’t be a danger to herself now, Nicole thought. Later, if she had a relapse, she might try something, but somehow Nicole suspected that Antonina was too tough for that.

“Listen,” Nicole said. “I have to go back — poor Julia’s all alone with a tavern full of drunken Germans. You come by if you need me, or call. One of us will come. “

“I’ll be all right,” Antonina said. “You go. Slit a German throat or two for me, will you?”

“I wish,” Nicole sighed.

Antonina didn’t laugh, or even smile, but her expression as she saw Nicole off was brighter than it had been since before Carnuntum fell. Nicole knew a moment’s apprehension: what if Antonina found a kitchen knife and came hunting Germans?

Not likely. People here might be unsanitary and they might be inclined toward sexism, but they weren’t casual killers. Not like the people who had conquered them. Which was probably why the Germans had won and the Romans had lost, but that was not a thought Nicole wanted to dwell on. Not if she had to face a tavern packed with drunken, snoring Germans.

Julia had drawn a stool up behind the bar and perched on it, elbows on the bar, chin in hands. She acknowledged Nicole with a lift of the brows: for Julia, a strikingly undemonstrative greeting. Her words revealed the cause of her preoccupation: “If we had anywhere to hide the bodies, I’d cut all their throats.”

“You and Antonina both,” Nicole said.

“Really? She’s alive?” Julia’s lack of enthusiasm wasn’t laudable, but Nicole could more or less understand it. Antonina wasn’t the most popular person in the neighborhood.

“Alive and well enough,” Nicole answered.

“That’s good,” said Julia, deliberately, as if she’d thought over all sides of it, and made a considered decision.

That was more than Nicole could do, but somehow she had to try. She surveyed the human wreckage, and noted the chorus of snores, which was a bit more melodious than what the Romans called music. “Let’s leave them here and go up to bed. With that aureus, we’re ahead of the game no matter how much more they eat.” Then, as a new thought occurred to her: “If you want to bring your blanket and sleep behind a door that locks, I don’t mind at all.”

“That’s kind of you, Mistress, but I’ll be fine where I am,” Julia replied. “If they’re in that kind of mood, a barred door won’t stop them. Breaking it down might even get them more excited.”

Nicole hadn’t thought of that. “You’re probably right,” she said.

Julia didn’t dwell on it. She yawned hugely and stretched. “I’ll look in on Gaius Calidius Severus before I go to bed,” she said.

“Good,” Nicole said. “I was going to ask if you’d do that. Make sure his pupils are the same size. If they are, it’s probably all right to let him sleep.”

“I do hope they are,” said Julia. “He’s not happy about having to stay awake and listen to the city fall.” She paused. “If he needs to be kept awake… I’ll stay with him.”

Nicole opened her mouth, thought better of it, nodded. “Go on,” she said. “I won’t be closing up, with this many men on the floor. You can come in when you’re ready, and not worry about disturbing me.”

Julia didn’t linger. When she was gone, Nicole sighed faintly and looked around her. The wine was all gone, but there were dregs enough in the cups that Julia had collected and set aside for cleaning. Nicole found the one with the most in it, and poured the contents in front of the image of Liber and Libera. She didn’t say her prayer just then. But the wish was stronger than it had ever been.

When she’d barred the door of her room and lain down in bed, then she prayed. She prayed as she’d never prayed before. Not just to be free of a world and time that weren’t and had never been her own. To be safe. To be where war like this never came, and cities weren’t sacked, or women raped in the street in broad daylight, except in backward parts of the world where she need never go.

For all the potency of her wishing, and for all the strength of her prayer, when she woke, she woke to Carnuntum. Down below, men were groaning and swearing in guttural German, cursing the wine they’d drunk and the hangover it had given them.

She shook her head. They’d be wanting breakfast, and she’d better see what she could find. No matter who was in charge here, she had to stay alive until she could find a way to escape. There was a way. There had to be one. Didn’t there?

The sack of Carnuntum went on for five days. As long as chaos was the order of the day, Nicole and Julia made daily trips across the street to keep themselves stinking and unattractive to would-be rapists. Gaius Calidius Severus had needed to be watched for much of that first night, according to Julia, but by morning he was groggy, headachy, but on the mend. He didn’t need much looking after, once he was back on his feet, except what Julia was minded to give him.

One morning, just as Nicole was coming out of the shop with Julia, pungent with a new application of what Nicole was thinking of as rape repellent, they met Antonina on her way in. She wrinkled her nose, nodded, and went on by. Nicole swallowed a smile. So: Antonina had decided to join the anti-rape league. Good for Antonina.

Young Calidius Severus endured several days of dreadful, pounding headaches before the pain gradually began to recede. He never did recall how he’d got that lump on the side of his head. “It must have been a rock,” he said, over at the tavern, in an hour when it was blessedly empty of Germans. “It must have been. If a German had caught me with the flat of his blade, he wouldn’t have stopped there. He’d have slit my throat or cut off my head.”

Nicole nodded. “I think you’re right. It had to be something like that, something that made you drop your sword.”

“I suppose so,” he said, “but I don’t know. I expect I never will.”

He dipped his bread in olive oil and ate. Nicole still had plenty of grain and, if anything, an oversupply of oil for the tiny amount of business she was doing. She was out of wine: the Germans had made sure of that.

Being out of wine meant drinking water. She didn’t dare go over to the market square to find out if more wine was to be had, not yet. She didn’t think any would be, anyhow, not judging by all the drunken barbarians she’d seen. At her insistence, Julia boiled water in the biggest pots they had. “This is a silly business, Mistress,” the freedwoman insisted.

“Do it anyhow,” Nicole said. Being the boss gave her the privilege of being arbitrary. She’d long since seen that arguments and explanations based on what the twentieth century knew and the second century didn’t were worse than useless. “It can’t hurt anything, can it?”

“I suppose not.” Julia was still dubious, but did as she was told. When, after a day or two, nobody came down with the runs, she allowed as how it might not have been such a bad idea. That was the biggest concession Nicole had ever wrung from her.

More and more Germans came into Carnuntum. Some were celebrating the destruction of the legionary camp down the river. Some came to plunder and steal, though the pickings by now were thin. A lot simply passed through, on their way south toward other Roman towns and more Roman loot.

“All the Roman Empire will be ours,” Swemblas boasted one day. “Every bit of it.”

Nicole didn’t argue with him. She thought there’d been Roman Emperors after Marcus Aurelius, but she wasn’t sure enough of it to say so. Not to mention that disagreeing with one of the new German masters of Carnuntum was likely to prove hazardous to her health.

He didn’t stay long, in any case. A tavern without wine had far less appeal to him than one with it. “If you have no wine, what good are you?” he demanded.

“You and your friends drank all I had,” Nicole answered, not too sharply, she hoped. “How am I supposed to get more?”

“In the market, of course,” Swemblas said in a tone she knew all too well. Male arrogance and superiority, patronizing the silly little woman, and letting her know just what an idiot she was.

His astonishment was all the stronger for that, when Nicole laughed in his face. “Suppose I can go to the market without having a dozen of your friends pull me down and rape me, the way they did to my neighbor,” she said. Swemblas’ expression went from astonished to shocked, likely because she dared talk so directly about what he did for fun. “Suppose I can do that,” she said. “I’m not sure I can, but suppose. You people have drunk or stolen all the wine the merchants had on hand. Where are they going to get more?”

“It is not my problem,” Swemblas said. “It is for the merchants to do.”

“Good luck,” Nicole said serenely. “Now the war is here, and south of here, not off somewhere farther west.” Being vague let her conceal how ignorant she was of local geography. But then, a lot of people who’d been born and raised in Carnuntum knew little of Vindobona, twenty miles up the Danube, and less about any place farther away. “If you were a Roman wine merchant, would you want to come up to Carnuntum from Italy, knowing there were Germans in the way?”

“I am not a merchant. I am not a Roman. I do not want to be either,” Swemblas said with dignity. And without a further word, he strode out.

He’d entirely missed the point. Nicole sighed. She shouldn’t have expected anything different. Had the Germans been able to see anything from anyone else’s point of view, they wouldn’t have reckoned robbery and rape and murder to be fine sport, or applauded one another for them.

The next day, whether she wanted to or not, Nicole had to go to market. She was out of everything but grain and oil, and those were starting to run low.

Julia tried to talk her out of it. “Mistress,” she said, “the less you show yourself, the safer you’ll be.”

“Yes, but if I get to the market square now, I have a better chance of finding things before it’s picked clean,” Nicole answered. She wasn’t as bold as she sounded, but Julia didn’t call her on it. Julia was still shaking her head as Nicole went out the door.

There were Germans in the streets, swaggering about with a lordly air. In front of the shop where Nicole had bought her image of Liber and Libera, one of the conquerors picked up a votive plaque with an image of the naked Venus. He ran a hand over the limestone curves as if fondling a real woman.

“Gut!” he grunted, or close enough. The shopkeeper stood motionless. The German laughed, tucked the plaque under his arm, and sauntered off. The stonecarver stared after him, but knew better than to demand payment.

Something about the incident stopped Nicole cold. It wasn’t the theft — that was common enough these days. It wasn’t the shopkeeper’s powerlessness, not really. And yet…

I don’t have the right plaque, Nicole thought. The thought was very clear. She’d had it before, and more than once, but never so distinctly. The god and goddess aren’t listening, because the plaque I have — it’s not the one I bought in Petronell. It’s not just the image, or the intent. It’s the connection to me, to my past and future. I need that one, and no other.

She couldn’t prove it. Nor was there any way to do so, unless she found the actual plaque, the one that had brought her here. Did it even exist yet? Would she have to wait another twenty or thirty years before it was made?

No, she thought with a shiver. She had to believe, for her own sanity, that the plaque had brought her back to the time when it was carved. Otherwise, what would be the point of it at all?

She put the thought away for now; because she had an errand, and it was urgent. It wasn’t too terribly hard to distract herself: the city had changed since she last went out to market. Shops that had once been open were closed and shuttered, Germans came and went from houses that had belonged to solid Roman citizens, the few women who were out and about went warily as Nicole herself did, and probably with some kind of weapon concealed in their clothing. Nicole, whose chief weapon was her stink of ancient piss, was just as glad not to be armed. Her self-defense instructor had been blunt about it. “A knife or a gun may make you feel better when you carry it, but you’re just giving a mugger another weapon to use against you. Unless you can shoot or stab to kill or disable, and do it instantly, he’ll get hold of it and he’ll use it. And you’ll be worse off than you were before.”

Armed with a stink that kept even the locals from crowding in too close, Nicole passed the baths and came in sight of the open space of the market square. She stopped, and gasped.

The space was larger, much larger, than it had ever been before. It opened to the north and west, openness in shades of black, the charred ruins of the fire that she’d heard but not seen on the first day of the sack. Houses and shops and a handful of four- and five-story apartment buildings were flattened, burned to the ground.

Romans and Germans, their clothes and hides black with soot, sifted through the wreckage. Some of the Romans were probably trying to salvage what they could from the disaster. Many must have been thieves — as were all of the Germans.

When a Roman found something he was looking for, he slipped it into a pouch or hid it somewhere on his person, as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. When a German found a coin or a ring or anything of value, he held it up and crowed over it. He didn’t care who saw him, or worry that someone else might take his prize away from him.

Nicole shook her head at the fortunes of war, and ventured into the market. Most of the largest stalls were empty, their keepers dead or robbed or simply lying low. The Germans helped themselves to whatever struck their fancy. She watched a barbarian walk away from a sausage-seller gnawing on a length of garlicky stuff he hadn’t paid for. Like the stonecutter, the merchant could only look unhappy. There wouldn’t be a revolt here, not while the Germans were large and strong and trained to fight, and the locals were smaller, weaker, and inclined to leave the fighting to professionals.

Nicole bought a length of sausage for herself. She didn’t have to haggle much to get a good price, rather to her surprise. “You’re only the third person today with money to spend,” the sausage-seller told her. “I’m happy to see any brass at all.”

With the sausage stowed away in her bag, she bought a sack of beans and a sack of peas, and filled another sack with lettuce and onions and cucumbers. That was as much as she could carry. There wasn’t any wine, as she’d fully expected.

Loaded down with her purchases but still trusting to her rape repellent, she left the market with relief. While she’d been busy shopping, she hadn’t taken time to notice the way the Germans eyed the women who’d ventured out to market. Once she was done, as she turned toward home, she grew all too well aware of it: long raking glances, and looks that stripped a woman bare and had their will of her. They didn’t actually drag anybody down and line up for the fun, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do it, or wouldn’t. The sooner she was out of their sight, the better. Her ears burned. She couldn’t move nearly fast enough, burdened as she was; she had to keep to a slower pace.

It felt like a crawl. To these bastards she was meat, nothing more, as free for the taking as a sausage or a sack of barley. If one of them decided to have fun with her, and never mind the stink that surrounded her, she couldn’t stop him. Not if she wanted to stay alive.

As it happened, no one touched her or accosted her. She made it home without undue trouble, and set down her burden of sacks and bags with a sigh of relief.

Julia wasn’t any less relieved than Nicole was. “Mistress!” she said. “You got away with it.”

That was pretty much how Nicole felt, but she wasn’t about to let Julia know it. “We have to eat,” she said. “We can go without a lot of things, but not food.” And if Julia knew exactly how much Nicole was going without, she’d never believe it.

“I just hope there’s food to be had,” Julia said. “The gods only know what the barbarians have done to the farmers outside the city — the ones who didn’t die of the pestilence, that is.”

“If they want money, they’ll have to bring crops into town,” Nicole said. Julia nodded, but she still looked worried. She wasn’t the only one. In all the hard times Nicole had back in the United States, she’d never missed a meal, or even come close. Going hungry because there was no food was something she’d seen on the news, flashed into her living room by satellite from somewhere else. That it could happen to her… With all the horrors she’d seen since she came to Carnuntum, she was a fool if she thought she’d be immune to any of them. She had to plan ahead. If she could lay in a supply, she’d better do it soon. And not just for herself, either. For Lucius — because if he starved to death, all his future died with him, and Nicole with it.

Later that afternoon, Brigomarus came by: his first visit since the city fell. Nicole couldn’t really fault him for taking this long to do his brotherly duty. She hadn’t exactly taken pains to make sure he was all right, either. When he was well past the door and within smelling distance of the bar, he sniffed and nearly gagged. “Phew! Smells like somebody dumped a pisspot in here.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to smell,” Nicole answered tartly. “It keeps the Germans away.”

“Keeps the customers away, too, I shouldn’t wonder,” Umma’s brother said.

“Customers are the least of my worries right now,” Nicole shot back.

“Really? ‘ Brigomarus raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought your family was the least of your worries. Didn’t you even stop to wonder if Tabica and I were alive?”

Nicole had a perfectly good excuse, and she didn’t hesitate to use it: “Today was the first time I’d even gone to the market square. I don’t go out if I can help it. If Tabica is doing anything different, she’s a fool.”

He chewed on that for a while, frowning. Then he nodded. She was supposed to be grateful, obviously, that he, the mighty male, had come round to her way of thinking. He wasn’t any different from a German, when you got down to it.

At least he wouldn’t hack her head off for talking back to him, though he might try to bite it off. “All right,” he said ungraciously. “Tabica’s staying in, yes. Now let it go. I didn’t come over to start the fight again.”

“No?” Nicole inquired. “It sure seemed that way.”

“I said I didn’t.” He scowled. After all this time, he still wasn’t used to backtalk from someone he recognized as his sister. “What do you want from me?”

“An apology would be nice,” Nicole said.

Now he stared. So did Julia. Nicole knew she was pushing it, but she didn’t care. If Brigomarus didn’t want to play by her rules, she was perfectly willing and able to have nothing more to do with him. It had taken her a while, but she’d come to realize just how much leverage that gave her. She really didn’t care — and he did. Desperately. As far as he knew, she was family. As she very well knew, she wasn’t. What mattered greatly to him meant nothing to her.

She held all the power. He might not understand it, but he knew it. Therefore, with bad grace, he yielded. “I’m sorry,” he said, doing a better job of it than Lucius might have, but not much. “I’m glad you’re safe here.” That sounded a little more as if he meant it.

“Safe?” Nicole’s laugh had a raw edge. She saw in her mind Antonina turned into a toy, a thing, for the amusement of any barbarian who happened to wander down the street. She knew how easily that could have happened to Julia, or to her. She saw Antonina’s husband, too, with the side of his head smashed in and blood puddled in the street, soaking into the dirt. “We’re not safe. It’s just that nothing horrible has happened to us yet.”

Brigomarus didn’t like that anymore than anything else she’d said, but he was an honest man, on the whole. He nodded. “I see. Anything can happen to any of us, any time. And there’s nothing we can do about it.” He paused. “I suppose… it must be worse for a woman.”

Nicole and Julia exchanged glances. Amazing, Nicole thought. He sees it. He actually sees it.

It was amazing. Women here really were the weaker sex. On the whole, they were smaller than men, and not so strong. Without the machines that made brute strength largely irrelevant, that mattered. Nicole had never realized how much women had benefited from the Industrial Revolution. She’d either taken machines for granted or sneered at them. If she ever got back to California, she promised whatever gods might be listening, she would never sneer again.

And, beyond even that, women had babies. That still complicated their lives in the twentieth century, but by that time the risk of dying in childbed had grown very small. It was alive and well in Carnuntum. So was the risk of getting pregnant whenever a woman lay down with a man. She knew how unreliable the plug of wool she’d used had been, and how lucky she was not to have been caught.

Engineering. Science. Medicine. She’d never realized how important they were till she had to do without them. Without them, could women in the modern West have come as close to equality as they had? She doubted it.

Resolutely, she dragged her mind back to the here-and-now. This was no time to be mulling over the extent of her education, still less to be yearning for her own place and time. Brigo, unlike Julia or the Calidii Severi, wasn’t likely to cut her slack while she lost herself in a reverie. She put on an expression of polite interest and inquired, “What are you doing these days?”

He seemed relieved to take refuge in small talk. “Same as always,” he answered: “making shields. Only difference is, the Germans take them now, not the legion. My work is good enough to keep them happy, so mostly they leave me alone.”

“You make shields… for the Germans?” Nicole asked in disbelief. What was the old word for a collaborator? Quisling, that was it. Umma’s brother was a quisling.

Or was he? “Yes, I make shields for them,” he said. “If I say no, they’ll kill me — either that or I’ll starve, which amounts to the same thing. When they come in here, do you say, ‘No, I won’t give you any bread. Get out!’?”

She lowered her eyes. No. She didn’t. She never had, not even when they’d come straight in from gang-banging Antonina. She’d been afraid, and she’d wanted to live. So — was that what a quisling was? Someone who went right on doing what he would have been doing if the Germans hadn’t come, but doing it, now, for the Germans?

But he was making an implement of war. She was simply feeding them. An army ran on its stomach. Where had she heard that? It didn’t matter. Collaboration was collaboration, whatever the extent of it.

She held up a hand. “No, I didn’t turn them down when they ordered me to feed them. Let it go, Brigo. You’re doing what you need to get by. So am I.” He opened his mouth to say something. She thought she knew what he had in mind. She forestalled him. “I am sorry for the way it sounded.”

“Well!” For the first time in a long while, she saw Umma’s brother grin. “I was wondering if you could only take apologies; you had no idea how to give them back. I’m glad to see it isn’t so.”

“Fair is fair,” Nicole answered.

“I suppose so,” Brigomarus said, by which he no doubt meant he was perfectly content to hang onto the privileges that went with being male. He half-turned as if to leave, but turned back with a snap of the fingers. “When I was coming through the market square, I saw that one of the farmers had brought in a cartload of wine. It’s just the cheap local stuff, of course, but if you can’t get anything else, it starts to look pretty good.”

“I’ll say it does!” Nicole wasn’t about to hug him, but she was as tempted as she’d ever been. She headed straight for the cash box instead. “I was in the market just this morning, but he hadn’t come in then. If I can get a jar or two before he sells out — “

“Or before the Germans steal everything he has,” Julia put in.

“Or that, too,” Nicole agreed. She turned to Brigomarus. “Will you come with me and help carry some of it back? I’ll give you a jar to take home.” She hesitated. Then she said it, hating it but knowing it was the truth: “It would be nice to have a man along.”

She wasn’t trying to do or say anything to feed his ego, but she’d succeeded in doing precisely that. He could hardly look eager — that would give away too much — but he didn’t turn his back on her, either. “I’ll come,” he said. “I don’t know how much good I’ll be if the Germans decide to get nasty, but I’ll do what I can.”

Nicole thanked him honestly enough. He wasn’t really a bad man, as men went in this century. She’d seen better, in the Calidii Severi, but she’d also seen much worse.

It was a men’s day at the baths. When Nicole and Brigomarus came round the corner, Romans and Germans came and went interchangeably, though neither fraternized with the other.

Then out through the entranceway strolled a pair of courtesans in nearly transparent linen tunics. Maybe they were the same pair Nicole had seen when she first went up the stairs to the baths herself. Every German within sight whipped his head about and stood transfixed.

Ye gods, Nicole thought. Prostitutes could be raped, too, and these women were flaunting everything they had. No civilized jurisdiction accepted revealing clothing as an excuse for rape, but this was no civilized jurisdiction. If the Germans dragged an ordinary and none too attractive woman from her own home and gang-raped her in the street, what would they do to women on display like this?

They fawned on them. If they’d had chocolates and vast bouquets of flowers, they would have showered them on the hookers. As it was, they stared and gaped and stammered like awed teenagers suddenly confronted by Claudia Schiffer. Nicole suppressed a strong impulse to retch.

Brigomarus, on the other hand, was highly amused. “They don’t have anything like that in the forests of Germany, I’ll bet you.”

Nicole started to snap at him, but checked herself. What was his comment but the second-century version of her reflection on teenagers and supermodels? In the end, she simply said, “When you think how they treated so many women here, seeing this hurts.”

“Ah.” Brigomarus nodded. “Yes, I can see how it might. The world must look different out of a woman’s eyes.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He looked astonished. It wasn’t that family didn’t kiss here; they did. But she had been on anything but kissing terms with Umma’s family. Here, for once, Brigomarus had found exactly the right thing to say.

She felt like kissing him again when she was able to buy two jars of wine from the fellow in the market square. The farmer demanded Falernian prices for it, though it was the local rotgut in the local yellow-brown earthenware. Nicole took her best shot at getting him to come down: “Suppose I walk away and let the barbarians steal it from you? How much will you get then?”

He didn’t blink. “The chance I take of that is part of the reason I have to charge so cursed much for what I do sell.”

When he wouldn’t budge, Nicole paid up. As she and Brigomarus were carrying the wine back toward the tavern, he said, “You’ll have to charge Falernian prices, too, or you’ll lose money.”

“Then I will,” she said robustly. “Not many places will have any wine at all. People will pay.” She was sure of that. Half the people who came into the tavern complained about having to drink water; a good many complained about coming down sick afterwards. Whenever she suggested boiling the water before drinking it, people looked at her as if she were nuts.

She and Brigomarus were almost home safe, and unmolested, when two big red-faced Germans planted themselves in their paths. One rested a meaty hand on the hilt of his sword. The other proved to speak some Latin. “What have you in those jars?” he demanded. “Is wine, yes?”

Nicole’s mind raced. “Is wine, no,” she answered. “Is piss for my dye-works. Want to drink some?” She thrust her jar at the German.

The outhouse reek that still came off her lent force to her words. The barbarian recoiled, spitting out dismayed gutturals. His friend asked a question. The answer he got left him revolted, too. They both took off in a hurry.

Brigomarus looked ready to burst with suppressed laughter. He kissed her instead, quick but firm, as a brother should. “Even if you do smell bad,” he said.

“That’s all right,” she said. “That’s better than all right.”

They were still laughing when they walked into the tavern. Julia looked up at them in surprise. “I haven’t heard the two of you laugh like that in a long time,” she said.

“Since the pestilence,” Nicole said. Her laughter had died.

“Longer than that,” Julia said. “It’s probably been since — hmm.” She paused. “Since last spring, I guess.”

Since Umma moved out and Nicole moved in. I ruined the neighborhood — and the neighborhood has been doing its best to ruin me.

She actually enjoyed telling Julia why she and Brigo had been laughing. God, she had changed.

Not for the worse, she hoped. Julia laughed at the joke. So did Lucius, when he came running in from outside. He laughed harder than anyone else. At his age, gross-out humor was the best kind.

Nicole set her jar of wine behind the bar. Brigo followed suit. She grinned at him suddenly. “Let’s have some wine,” she said. And if she’d known a year ago that she’d say such a thing, let alone say it with such relish, she’d have been flatly appalled. Carnuntum had changed her in ways she never could have imagined. It had also, and forcibly, changed her attitude toward life in Los Angeles. She longed for that life, even while she laughed and bantered and poured out cups of horrible wine. But she was trapped here, in this life she’d thought she wanted. She might never escape; never be free of it, unless or until she died.