Household Gods (74 page)

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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Household Gods
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Spilled milk,
Nicole thought. She slammed and barred the door. “When Julia comes back, let her in,” she said. “Otherwise, leave the door barred. Don't you go outside again. Do you hear me?”
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But her black scowl made up for any deficiencies in his verbal comprehension. He gulped and nodded. He actually, for a moment, looked obedient.
That didn't last long, to be sure. “Why is the back of your tunic all dirty?” he asked as Nicole gritted her teeth to tackle
the stairs. She didn't answer. He didn't pursue it, either, to her relief.
She made it to her room after what seemed an age. As soon as she was inside, with the door bolted behind her, she ripped off her drawers and hurled them away. She wet a rag in the
terra sigillata
pitcher, soaked it till it ran with water. Then she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed at her thigh and between her legs. Evidence for forensics didn't matter, not here. No matter how many times she washed herself, she didn't feel clean. She doubted she'd ever feel clean again.
She was still scrubbing, whimpering with the pain, when the door opened below. It had better be Julia. Because if it wasn't, Lucius—and Nicole, too, to be honest about it—was in big trouble. She hurled the rag after the drawers and bolted downstairs.
It was Julia, of course, looking lazy and sated and altogether content with the world. “Hello, Mistress,” she said brightly. “Have you seen? The legions are back! Now we'll all go back to … Her voice ran down. Her eyes narrowed. For the first time she seemed actually to see Nicole. “By the gods, what
happened
to you?”
“The legions are back,” Nicole said. Her voice was flat, dead. “You didn't need to tell me. I … met a legionary.”
Julia had lived in this world a lot longer than Nicole had, and had seen a lot more of it, too. Her eyes went wide: that almost bovine expression of hers, one of the intractable relics of her slave days, which concealed a great deal of her intelligence. “He didn't,” she said, but her tone belied the words.
“Yes, he did,” Nicole said. “All this time, the Marcomanni and the Quadi didn't, and the first cursed Roman legionary I saw … did. Let's hear it for the defenders of civilization.” Tears dripped down her cheeks. She hadn't even noticed that she'd started to cry.
“He did what, Mother?” Lucius asked, butting in between them, innocently curious.
“Never mind,” Nicole and Julia said together.
Then there was a silence. Lucius looked from one to the other of them, obviously thought about asking again, equally
obviously decided it wasn't the wisest thing to do. Nicole went on standing at the foot of the stairs, with her eyes leaking tears.
Julia crossed the tavern in a few swift strides, and folded her arms around Nicole. Nicole shrank inside them. She was comforted, she was supposed to be comforted.
She never wanted to be touched by another human being again.
Julia petted her as if she'd been a child or an animal. “There, Mistress,” she said. “There. That's a terrible thing to happen to a woman.”
“Isn't it?” Nicole said, still in a voice a thousand miles—a thousand lightyears—from her own. “I don't even know who he was. I couldn't pick him out from any other soldier. He was just—a man in a helmet. A son of a whore in a helmet.”
“Even if you can't pick the wretch out of a crowd, you ought to complain to the Emperor,” Julia said. “He's supposed to care that things like that don't happen.”
“The Emperor?” Nicole would never have thought of that, not even close. She hadn't thought there was anything she could do, except be a victim—the universal lot of women in this time and place. But to go right up to the
Emperor
and tell him what had been done to her—She tried to imagine going up to the President of the United States, past his wall of press corps, White House staff, Secret Service …
Here she was, diehard product of a democratic nation, and she had a better chance, if Julia was right, of walking up to the Roman Emperor and getting him to listen to her, than she did with her own elected President.
Still. Julia knew this world. She hadn't been wrong about it yet. If she thought Marcus Aurelius himself might listen to a tavernkeeper from the fringe of his empire, then maybe, just maybe, he would.
With the coming of purpose, fear and shock ebbed. Anger and outrage were swift to take their place. “The Emperor,” Nicole repeated, grimly now. “Yes, I'll take my case to the Emperor.”
 
 
M
ARCUS AURELIUS ENTERED THE city the day the German hordes broke and fled. He took up residence in the town-council building near the market square. Nicole wondered just how complicated it would be to get an audience with him. Less complicated, probably, than it would have been to get in to see the President, or Julia wouldn't have suggested it, but even kings of minor countries had hordes of flunkies to keep the great unwashed away from their majesty. The more minor the country, in fact, the greater the hordes seemed to be.
By that token, since Rome was the greatest empire in the world, it should be a relatively simple matter to see its Emperor. Nicole approached the town hall with a bold face and a fluttering heart—and found that she was not the first nor yet the last to come in search of the imperial ear. People were going in and coming out, nearly all men, most in armor or in togas but a few in tunics. She worked her way into the stream, passing the armored guards who decorated the door just like guards in a Hollywood epic, and working her way inside.
There the stream divided, some going here, some going there. She had no idea where to begin.
She chose a direction more or less at random, and started down a hallway. A man stepped out of a door, so suddenly she started, and barred her way. He wasn't a guard, and he wasn't in armor. He wore a toga, a surprisingly white affair with a narrow and somehow pretentious crimson stripe. “And what may be your purpose here?” he inquired in Latin almost painful in its purity.
She'd prepared a speech for just such an eventuality: short, pithy, but comprehensive. The functionary heard her out with
an arched brow and a supercilious expression. “And what evidence have you that the alleged assault in fact occurred?” he asked when she'd come to the end of it.
Nicole drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't all that inconsiderable. “Would you like to see the knot in my head? The bruises on my chest? The ones on my backside? Do you want to see what forcible sexual intercourse does to a woman's private parts?”
The aide's eyebrows leaped. “Thank you, no,” he said with a flicker of disgust. Maybe he wouldn't care to view a woman's private parts under any circumstances. He went on with the same chilly precision as before: “If you would care to present me with a written statement of your claim, so it may be examined before being put to the Emperor, who is, after all, you will understand, a busy man …”
His voice trailed away. His smile was small and smug. His meaning was abundantly clear.
Just blow yourself off, lady.
What were the odds that a tavernkeeper would be able to give him a written statement, or have enough money to hire someone to do a proper job of it?
Nicole favored him with a sweetly carnivorous smile. No matter what the odds, he'd bet and lost. He just didn't know it yet. “May I borrow pen and ink and papyrus?” she asked in dulcet tones.
His eyebrows climbed again. “You wish to prepare this written statement
yourself?
”
Nicole nodded. He pursed his lips.
This I've got to see
—he didn't shout it, but he didn't need to.
He clapped his hands. A younger man in a toga without a stripe appeared as if conjured out of the air. He received the order without expression, and disappeared as abruptly as he'd appeared, to return a moment later with the articles Nicole had asked for.
Marcus Aurelius' aide nodded to Nicole. “Go ahead. Use that desk there, if you like. Take all the time you need.” Sure as hell, there it was again—
This I've got to see.
“Thank you,” Nicole said pointedly. She went to stand behind the desk—it was small and high, almost like a
lectern—and set to work. The aide watched her for a while, long enough to see that she really was writing. Then he shrugged a tiny shrug and turned away to obstruct the next foolish innocent who ventured into his lair.
She laid out her statement like any other legal brief she'd ever drafted: first the facts, then their implications.
What is civilization worth when the Marcomanni and Quadi held Carnuntum for months without molesting me in any way, but I was brutally raped by the first Roman legionary I saw during the reconquest of the city?
She said not a word about what the Germans had done to poor Antonina. That wasn't how the game was played.
Finally, she came to the important part: what she wanted the presiding authority—here a Roman Emperor, not a Superior Court judge—to do about the issue at hand.
Unfortunately, I cannot positively identify the soldier who violated me. If I could, I would ask for him to be punished to the limit of the law, and for me to receive compensation both from him and from the government of the Roman Empire, under whose agency he acted. I still deserve the latter compensation, for as an agent of the government of the empire he grossly abused the authority entrusted to him, and used
it to
commit this outrageous crime against me.
Setting it down in writing made her angry all over again. “Bastard,” she muttered under her breath. “Fucking bastard.” She'd welcomed him as a rescuer, and what did she get for it? Thrown down in the dirt. God, if she could make him pay personally for every stroke he'd driven home, she'd do it. But if he didn't have to pay,
somebody
would. She'd make damned certain of that.
When she stepped away from the desk, the Emperor's aide waved her over to where he sat at a table piled with neatly labeled scrolls. “Let's see what you've done,” he said, not quite as if he were talking to a six-year-old child, but close enough. Without a word, she passed him the closely written sheets.
Like every other literate Roman Nicole had seen, he mumbled the words to himself as he read. His eyes swept back
and forth a couple of times before those expressive eyebrows of his made another leap, this one higher than either of the other two. After a bit, he paused and stared at Nicole. Then he went back to his mumbling.
“This is astonishing,” he said when he was finally done. “If I had not seen you write it with my own eyes, Mistress, ah, Umma”—he had to check the papyrus for her name, though she'd given it to him; obviously he was one of those people for whom nothing was real till it was written down—“I would not have believed it. Why, this might almost be a brief prepared by a gentleman of the legal profession. Astonishing,” he said again.
He'd intended his words as high praise. But it wasn't high enough to suit Nicole. “What do you mean, almost?” she demanded.
“Well,” he replied, glad of a chance to get sniffy again, “of course you do not cite the relevant laws and imperial decrees, nor the opinions of the leading jurisconsults, but the reasoning is nonetheless very clear and forceful.”
“Ah,” Nicole said.
Damn.
She
wasn't
a trained lawyer here; she didn't have the citations at her fingertips, nor know where to find them.
She could learn. She was sure of that. She'd learned in the United States, and things were undoubtedly simpler here. But where would she find the time? Most days, at least before the Germans came, she'd had trouble finding time to use the chamber pot. Even if by a miracle she could squeeze a spare hour out of the day, where would she find someone to train her, or books from which to study? The next book of any sort she saw here would be the first.
She'd missed a few words of the aide's reply. He condescended, superciliously, to repeat himself: “I will be certain this comes to the Emperor's attention. It may intrigue him. Let me see.” He glanced again at the statement. “Yes, you have described your place of residence most precisely. Should anything further be required of you, you will be summoned.”
That sounded altogether too much like,
Don't call us;
we'll call you.
“What if I'm not summoned?” Nicole asked.
“The choice is the Emperor's,” the aide replied. “As I say, I will bring this to his notice. Past that, the matter is in his hands. Who could be above the Emperor, to compel him to change his mind?”
“The law could. Justice could,” Nicole said. That was certainly true in the U.S.A., where no one was above the law. Did it also hold in the Roman Empire? If it did, did it hold for Marcus Aurelius?
Maybe not, by the way his administrative assistant's jaw dropped. But the man didn't tell her she was crazy, either. “What a—sophisticated attitude for a tavernkeeper to hold.” His nod had a certain finality to it, an air of dismissal.
Nicole didn't bother to argue. There was a limit to how far anyone could push a bureaucrat. She'd tested his limits and then some. It was the best she could do; the rest was in the hands of the gods.
Julia was waiting at the tavern, fairly dancing with eagerness. She barely let Nicole get in through the door before she started in. “Did you see him? Did you?” She might have been talking about a god, or a god's first cousin.
Nicole almost hated to disappoint her. “No, I didn't. I had to leave a petition with an aide. We'll see if anything comes of it.”
It had better,
she thought. If Marcus Aurelius ignored her case, how much trouble would picketing the town-council building cause? Plenty, she would imagine. She almost smiled at the prospect.
“I hope something does come of it,” Julia said. “I think it will, I really do. He is supposed to be a good man.”
“We'll see,” Nicole said. She wasn't as sure of Marcus Aurelius' goodness as Julia was. He was the Roman Emperor, after all. She'd taken time to find out what exactly that meant. He wasn't a king, not exactly, and it wasn't necessarily hereditary, though it could be. What Marcus Aurelius was, was the chief political figure in a vast, ancient, and sometimes terribly corrupt empire.
Nicole had precious little use for politicians—which, considering the state of politics in late-twentieth-century America,
was hardly surprising. As far as she was concerned, the higher a politician rose, the more lies he had to tell to get there, and the more likely he'd tell even bigger lies once he got to the top.
Julia didn't share Nicole's worries, or her cynicism either. She was already off on another subject. “While you were out,” she said, “a crier came by. There'll be grain in the city in a day or two.”
That caught Nicole's attention. “Oh! That is good news.” Bread, real bread. Cakes. Buns and rolls and … She stopped before she got carried away. “I hope the price isn't too outrageous. Though they probably wouldn't dare to try too much gouging, not with the Emperor right here to see it.”
Before Julia could answer, an odd, rhythmic clanking brought them both to the windows and the open door. This wasn't the sharp clash and clang of swordplay. It was duller, steadier. Down the street toward the eastern gate marched a somber procession of Marcomanni and Quadi—Nicole never had learned to tell the tribes apart—chained together in gangs of ten. Many, many gangs of ten. Roman soldiers herded them onward, some with knotted whips, others with drawn swords.
“They're on their way to the slave markets,” Julia said with vindictive satisfaction. “I hope they all get worked to death in the mines.”
But Nicole was watching the legionaries, not the Germans. Was one of them the man who'd violated her with such callous—practiced? —efficiency? Of itself, her left hand rose to her neck. She'd felt a Roman blade there. Had she given the legionary any trouble, she had no doubt that blade would have drunk her life. In the capture of a city, what was one body more or less?
Her gaze might have gone fearfully from one Roman soldier to another, but more people were watching the Quadi and Marcomanni. Passersby, on the sidewalk jeered the captured barbarians. One of the locals almost echoed Julia: “A short life and a merry one, boys, grubbing for iron or lead!” He laughed, loud and long.
The Germans ignored him. They must have heard a hundred such jeers as they marched through the city. Their heads were down, that had been carried with such casual arrogance. Their broad shoulders were bent, their feet shuffling, not even a hint of their old swagger.
A shriek of raw rage split the afternoon. Nicole jumped half out of her skin. “That's Antonina!” Julia exclaimed. She sprinted for the doorway, with Nicole in close pursuit.
Nicole got there just in time to watch Antonina burst from her own door, dodge a legionary with a move Michael Jordan would have envied, and smash an enormous pot over the head of one of the Germans. Shards flew like shrapnel. The German staggered. Blood poured down his face. Nicole marveled that he didn't fall over dead.
“Mithras, lady, what was that for?” bellowed the legionary Antonina had evaded.
“What do you think?” she shot back. “The day the town fell, he and a gang of his cousins raped me right here in the street.” She tried to kick the prisoner in the crotch, but he twisted away; her foot caught him in the hipbone. She followed him down the street, kicking him and cursing as vilely as she knew how. The guards laughed and clapped and cheered her on.

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