Household Gods (65 page)

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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Household Gods
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“If the city's burning,” Nicole said, “the Germans will be running, too.” Nicole took a deep breath, to steady herself, and nodded. “We'll run if we have to. The shouting's coming—yes, from the north, and the west, past the market square. The fire may not be able to go around an open space that big.”
“Maybe.” Julia cocked her head, listening. “Yes, north and west—I can hear it, too. I think you're right. Please the gods, I hope you're right!”
They sat in the gloom and waited. Nobody spoke. Lucius fidgeted for a while, then pulled his dice out of the pouch at his belt and squatted on the floor, playing a game of one hand against the other. The rattle of dice in the cup and the dull clatter as they rolled out on the floor struck counterpoint to the distant sounds of fighting and of terror.
Nicole sniffed. Did she smell smoke? Of course she smelled smoke. She always did in Carnuntum. No one ran screaming down the street, pursued by the lick of flames. What had Nicole heard once? Fire was fast, yes. Faster than anyone could imagine who hadn't seen it.
More than once she tensed to jump up, grab whatever she could grab, and take her chances with the Germans. But some remnant of sense kept her where she was. As long as there was no sign of fire nearby, she was infinitely safer behind the barred door of the tavern than running in panic through the streets.
Julia had been sitting still in what might have passed for bovine calm except for the darting of her eyes. “I hope Gaius is all right,” she said suddenly. She spoke young Calidius Severus' praenomen without self-consciousness. Why not?
She'd gone upstairs with him both here and over the dyer's shop. If that didn't entitle her to call him by his first name, what did?
Once upon a time, Gaius' father had complained that Nicole didn't call him by his praenomen. She'd learned that courtesy, and a great deal more.
God, she missed that quiet, practical man with the infuriating habit of being right. His son was going to grow up just like him; she could see the signs.
If, she thought, he lived through the war. If any of them did.
There'd been a long lull, a quiet space in which no one ran past, enemy or friend. Then a new wave of Germans poured in from what had to be a breach in the wall or a gate forced open. Most still carried swords, but they weren't so wary now. They moved at walking pace, traveling in pairs and threes, gawking at the sights. If they'd had cameras, they would have been taking snapshots. They looked like tourists, not like men who expected to have to fight their way through the city.
It took Nicole a distressingly long time to understand what that meant. It was over. The Germans had won.
And to the victors went the spoils. One of the Germans pounded on a door a little way down the street from the tavern. A moment later, Nicole heard the barbarian let out a happy grunt, like a pig in a corncrib. A moment after that, a woman shrieked.
“That's Antonina,” Julia said, her voice the barest thread of whisper.
“Let me go!” Antonina cried, fear and anger warring in her voice. “Let me—” The sharp sound of flesh slapping against flesh cut off her words. She shrieked again, high and shrill. The German laughed. He didn't seem to mind the noise at all.
He wasn't alone, either. From the sound of it, there was a whole pack of them out there, yipping with glee and calling back and forth in their own language. The words weren't
comprehensible, but the tone was all too plain. So was the tone of Antonina's scream.
Nicole didn't move from her seat well back in the tavern. Her head shook of itself.
They couldn't,
she thought in disbelief.
They wouldn't.
Stupid. Of course they could. And if they wouldn't, why had she and Julia doused themselves with stale piss?
From where she sat, she could see through the front windows, at least to the middle of the street. As if he had known that, a great hulking brute of a German dragged Antonina into the frame of the windows and threw her down. Nicole watched in sick fascination, unable to move to her neighbor's rescue, and unable to look away. The rest of the gang crowded in, overwhelming Antonina. She got in one good kick before they had her spread-eagled on her back.
The Germans were shouting and singing, convivial as a gang of frat boys in a campus bar. But, as could happen in a bar, their good cheer turned abruptly to anger. Antonina's husband, that weedy little man whose name Nicole had never got around to learning, appeared from somewhere—the back of his house, maybe, or down the street—and sprang on them, flailing about him with a length of firewood. The barbarian who'd seized Antonina stepped back leisurely from a wild swing, lifted his sword with the same air of unhurried ease, and swept it around in a deadly blur. It slammed the side of the little man's head with a noise like a Nolan Ryan fastball slamming into a watermelon. Blood sprayed, the same explosion of scarlet as Nicole had seen a while ago, when the legionary fell. As the legionary had done, Antonina's husband dropped bonelessly to the ground. The only mercy, as far as Nicole could see, was that he never knew what hit him. Not like the legionary, who had seen his death coming at him in a sweep of bloodied steel.
Antonina screamed on a new note. The Germans holding her down laughed and cheered, not even slightly discommoded by her renewed struggles. The man who'd slain her husband strutted and preened. He was
proud
of himself. And the rest were proud of him. The one who held Antonina's
left arm set his knee on it for a moment and beckoned with his freed hand, as if to say,
Here, you go first.
The killer grinned. He swaggered back toward the huddle of men and the lone, suddenly very quiet woman. He squatted between her legs and ripped off her drawers. The others laughed with a note of incredulity, and let out a spatter of exclamations. The way they pointed and stared, Nicole knew all too well what had set them off. Their women didn't shave down there—and if they hadn't known that women here did, then this was their first rape in Carnuntum. Right here, in front of Nicole. Who couldn't move a muscle to intervene.
The German yanked down his breeches with a grunt, as if to say,
Enough of that.
Without further ado, he thrust his great red club between Antonina's legs, and ground deep.
Nicole turned her face away. Even with her fingers in her ears, she couldn't banish Antonina's cries. They went on and on, as if she'd lost all control over her voice.
Even through that shrill keening, Nicole heard the second, deeper grunt as the barbarian hammered himself to climax and pulled free. He sounded like a pig, a big, self-satisfied boar.
That wasn't the end of it. Not by a long, ugly shot. They took turns, every one, and a handful of others who happened by and stopped to join the fun. After a while, Antonina stopped screaming. Her mouth was open; her voice was gone. Several of the Germans took advantage of that, too, roaring with laughter as they spent themselves down her throat.
Bite him,
Nicole thought fiercely when the first one started.
Bite it right off him.
But Antonina didn't. Maybe she was too far gone. For her sake, Nicole hoped so.
After Frank walked out, Nicole had taken self-defense classes. She'd learned all about what to do if a rapist accosted her.
Or so she'd thought. Knee him in the nuts and scream for the police, and he'd stagger off groaning and clutching at himself. Wouldn't he?
Sure, and if he came back with a dozen burly bastards just
like him, each one toting a sword, and they
were
the police—what then?
In California, liberated or not, she'd felt insecure without a man in the house. Even as miserable a specimen as Frank was still male, and therefore, somehow, a deterrent.
There wasn't anyone here but Lucius. The fuller and dyer's shop across the way was empty; Gaius Calidius Severus was God knew where. Julia was worse than useless. Her ripe body was incentive to rape even at the best of times. Now …
One of the Germans who'd just finished his round with Antonina came ambling toward the tavern, adjusting himself inside his trousers. He took his time about that.
Go away,
Nicole willed him.
God damn you, go away!
If God heard, He wasn't paying attention. The barbarian cupped his hands to shield his eyes from the sun, and peered into the gloom of the tavern. Nicole tried to shrink into invisibility. Lucius had already managed it so well she couldn't see him unless she actively looked for him.
But Julia couldn't bear to sit still any longer. She backed away from the window, pressing against the wall.
The German caught the movement. His eyes gleamed under his heavy brows. He drew back, only to turn and pound on the door.
 
 
N
ICOLE 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.”

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