And now he understood-a little better, anyhow-what his dad said about the uses of hypocrisy. He wondered if he'd ever have the chance to tell Dad so.
Even though Amanda's house had running water, she liked visiting the fountain. People of the female persuasion couldn't go as many places or do as many things in this world as men could. At the baths and at the public fountains, age and wealth and social class didn't matter so much. A woman could say what she pleased, and a lot of women did.
When Amanda went to the fountain on a warm, sticky summer afternoon, she found several women complaining about the soldiers quartered in their houses. “They eat like dragons,” said a plump middle-aged woman in a saffron tunic. “And then they grumble about the cooking! Do they pay a sestertio for what they get? Do they? Not likely!”
Another woman, also plump, nodded. “They lie around snoring till all hours, too. And they don't bathe often enough- or at all.” She held her nose. For good measure, she scratched as if she had fleas.
Amanda wondered how much she'd had to do with soldiers before. Her tunic was saffron yellow, too, which meant she had money. Saffron dye wasn't cheap here. And, in this world, you had to be rich to have enough food to get overweight.
A couple of lines of Kipling from English Lit also ran through Amanda's head.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' “Chuck 'im out, the brute!”
But it's “Savior of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot.
They'd never heard of Kipling in Agrippan Rome. But he understood what made them tick, all right.
“The soldiers aren't so bad,” the slave girl named Maria said in a low voice. “We have some in our house, too, and they don't do anything worse than pat me a little.”
In the home timeline, that would have been bad enough. It struck Maria as a miracle of moderation here. Different worlds, different standards. Amanda had to work to make herself remember that. It wasn't always easy. Of course, next to Maria's being a slave to begin with, how big a deal was it that some soldiers let their hands roam more than they might have? Probably not very.
Maria asked, “How is your mother? I have not seen her for a while.”
“She and Father, uh, left Polisso,” Amanda said. “He took her to a healer in Carnuto who's supposed to be one of the best, this side of Rome or Athens.”
“I hope he will help her,” Maria said gravely. She didn't say anything about Dad and Mom leaving the two Solters children on their own here. By local standards, they were plenty old enough to take care of themselves.
“I got a letter from my father not long ago,” Amanda said. “He says Mother is doing much better.”
“She will do better away from Polisso. I think that's very likely,” Maria said. With a sour smile, Amanda nodded. Maria let out a small, sad sigh. “Having your letters must be nice. You can talk back and forth with Carnuto, and I can't even make myself heard across the street sometimes.”
I can talk back and forth a lot farther than that-or I could if we weren't cut off, Amanda thought. Out loud, she said, “If you want, I could teach you your letters. It isn't very hard. Then you'd be able to read and write, too, at least some. And it's like anything else. The more you do, the easier it gets.”
Maria's jaw dropped. “Could you?” she whispered. “I don't think my owner would mind. I'd be worth more to him if I knew something like that. And”-her eyes widened-“and I'd be able to read the Bible for myself. What could be better than that?”
Not all the books in the New Testament here were the same as they were in the home timeline. The Gospel according to John didn't exist in Agrippan Rome. It was supposed to date from the first half of the second century. By then, history here was different enough from what had happened in Amanda's world that John either hadn't written or had never been born at all. The Acts of the Apostles had the same name, but didn't say all the same things. And some of Paul's epistles went to churches to which he hadn't written in the home timeline. Comparative Bible scholarship across timelines was a field that was just getting off the ground.
It was also a field Maria had never heard of. She never would, either. As far as she knew, hers was the Bible. Amanda said, “Yes, I think you should be able to.” There were two or three translations into classical Latin (none by St. Jerome, who'd never lived here) and several more into neoLatin. Some of those were from the classical Latin, others from the original Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek. Imperial Christians had an official version. Other kinds of Christians had different favorites.
“The Bible. The word of God, in my mouth.“ Maria looked as if she'd just gone to heaven. ”It would be a miracle.“
“No, it wouldn't,” Amanda said. “It's just something you learn how to do, like-like weaving, for instance.”
“But everybody learns how to spin and weave,” Maria said. “You have to, or you don't have any clothes. Reading isn't like that. Plenty of free women-plenty of rich women, even-can't read.”
“It's not hard, honest,” Amanda said. In the home timeline, the only people who could spin or weave were the ones who did it for a hobby and the ones who worked in living-history museums. Almost everybody could read, though. Across the timelines, people first learned what they most needed to know. Back home, that was reading. Here, it was weaving.
Livia Plurabella came up and said, “May I speak to you for a moment, Amanda Soltera?”
“Sure,” Amanda said, and turned away from Maria. The slave dropped her eyes to the cobblestones. When free people spoke with each other, she had to show she knew her place. Amanda asked, “Is something wrong with the razor you bought, my lady?”
“No, no, no.” Impatiently, the banker's wife shook her head. “I just wanted to put a flea in your ear.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda understood the phrase. The older woman wanted to warn her about something. She didn't know what the banker's wife thought she needed warning about.
Livia Plurabella spelled it out: “It's all very well to be polite to a creature like that.” She pointed toward Maria, who still made as if she were paying no attention to her social betters. “It's all very well to be polite, yes. We are by the fountain, after all. The usual rules do slip. If they didn't, we'd never hear anything juicy, would we?” She smiled, but only for a moment. “There is a difference, you know, between being polite and being friendly. That's a bit much, don't you think?“
The most annoying thing was, Livia Plurabella meant well. She was trying to save Amanda from showing bad manners. That meant Amanda couldn't get as angry as she wanted to. Smashing her water jug over the older woman's head would get her talked about, no matter how tempting it was. She said, “Oh, it's all right. I don't think the slave girl minds.”
Livia Plurabella took a deep breath. “Whether she minds isn't the point, dear,” she said sharply. Then she gave Amanda a suspicious look. “Are you making fun of me, young lady?”
“I wouldn't do that for the world,“ Amanda exclaimed.
“Hmm.” The banker's wife didn't seem any happier. “On your head be it,” she said, and stalked away.
On your head be it. No matter how Amanda usually aped the manners of this world, she wasn't really part of it. She didn't feel in her belly that being friendly with a slave was wrong, the way a free woman here would. Livia Plurabella's warning would have horrified a local merchant's daughter. It wouldn't have been necessary in the first place, because a local merchant's daughter would have played by the rules without needing to be warned. If Amanda felt like breaking the rules every once in a while, she would, and that was all there was to it.
She turned back to Maria. “Where were we? Talking about how easy reading is, weren't we?”