“Ah, Caesar’s victory games,” Calidius Severus said, nodding. “They always put on a good show for those. They bring in beasts people don’t see every day, not just the same old boring bulls and bears.” Absurdly, Nicole thought of Wall Street, and wondered if Rome had, after all, had a stock market. The fuller and dyer went on, “Why, a few years ago, they even had a tiger. Do you remember what a mean-looking bastard he was?”
“Now that you remind me of it, yes,” Nicole said, to be safe. No way she was letting him know that her memory of Carnuntum stopped cold less than two months before.
“They may not be able to manage anything that fancy this time, not with that pestilence down in the south and the war tearing up everything off to the west, but it still should be one of the best shows of the year.” Titus Calidius Severus hesitated, then took the plunge: “Would you like to see it with me?”
A date, Nicole thought. I’ve just been asked out on a date. Who says this place hasn’t got any culture? The fuller and dyer’s voice didn’t have anything of and then you’ll put out for me in it, either. She’d heard more than enough of that since Frank walked out. She’d given up on men as a species then, after so many of them had proved that all a man wanted was one thing.
But Calidius Severus didn’t seem to want just that. There was no way to tell for sure, not yet, and she’d been burned so badly that she wasn’t going to believe it till she saw it — but she got the distinct feeling nonetheless that even if she kept on saying no to him, he wouldn’t stop being her friend.
That was the most refreshing discovery she’d made in years. She nodded in his expectant silence, and said, “Yes, I would like that. I’ll even pay Julia a little something extra to keep the kids from killing each other. “
“If you hadn’t set her free, you wouldn’t have to worry about that,” he said. But he shrugged, and let go a sudden and amazingly charming smile. When he smiled, snaggle teeth and all, he was almost handsome. No, Nicole thought; clean up his teeth, wash and deodorize him, and he’d cut a nice swath through the bored wives’ set in West Hills. Those Latin looks of his weren’t bad — weren’t bad at all.
Fortunately, he couldn’t read her mind, or she’d have been well and truly embarrassed. “Well,” he said, “she’s a freedwoman and that’s that. You make your arrangements with her, and I’ll be by sometime in the morning, to make sure we get good seats.”
Nicole nodded, but he didn’t give her time to say anything more before he turned to Lucius. “Meanwhile, you, let’s go get that mud off, and I’ll have a bath, too, while we’re at it. Won’t do me a bit of harm.”
“I should say not,” Lucius said with rudeness that would have won him a swat from Nicole if he’d been close enough. “I might be muddy, but you stink. “
Titus Calidius Severus didn’t seem offended. He certainly didn’t clobber the little brat. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a judicious air. “There’s enough shit mixed in with the mud to give stale piss a run for its money, don’t you think?” He ruffled the boy’s hair, though Lucius ducked and spluttered and protested. “And I don’t get piss up here, either.”
Nicole swallowed bile. She’d watched her fair share of animals dropping dung in the middle of the street — and pissing in it, too. Somehow, that hadn’t quite impressed itself on her in connection with Lucius. Mud, so far as she’d ever known it, was nothing but wet dirt. In Carnuntum, it was a lot more than that. It was wet, shitty dirt, full of tetanus and lockjaw — or were they the same thing? — and who knew what else. Christ, what was Lucius liable to come down with, now he’d had his wallow?
No doubt she’d find out, and quickly enough, too. For the time being, she focused on the thing that Calidius Severus’ gesture reminded her of, the most urgent thing. “Please, make sure you get rid of as many lice and nits as you can. Will you do that for me?”
“I’ll do my best,” Calidius said, scratching his own head vigorously, as if she’d put him in mind of the colonies thriving there. “Not that you can ever get rid of all of them, but it never hurts to put them down as much as you can.”
Nicole nodded tightly. Her jaw had set, grinding her teeth together — nothing she intended, and not much she could do about it, either. The broken tooth in back twinged worse than usual. She ignored it. Once or twice, after a trip to the baths and washing lots of bedding — to the dismay of Julia, who’d done most of the work — she’d thought she was rid of her lice, once even for three whole days. But they came back. They always came back. It didn’t matter how — whether she’d missed a few, whether a customer had brought a new batch into the tavern, whatever. There just was no getting rid of them.
Titus Calidius Severus and Lucius headed off for the baths. The boy walked easily beside the man, chattering at a great rate, more than he ever did with Nicole or Julia. They looked, she thought, like son and father.
That thought brought her up short for a moment, stopping her on a stepping stone before she recovered herself and went on across the street. Were they father and son? Calidius and Umma had not exactly had a platonic friendship before Nicole arrived to disrupt it.
She shook her head. No. In all the gossip she’d overheard or been regaled with, she’d never heard the slightest suggestion that Umma had been getting it on the side with her neighbor while her husband was still alive. And he hadn’t died that long ago, from things that Fabia Ursa had said: three or four years at most. Both Lucius and Aurelia were older than that.
Damn, what had the man’s name been? The clerk in the town hall had told her, but it had slipped right out of her head. So far she hadn’t needed it, but the way her luck ran, eventually she was going to. She just had to pray that the rest of her luck held, and someone said his name before she had to come up with it.
She glowered at the graffito on the tavern’s wall. If she took a brush to it, she’d probably get rid of the whitewash, too. She’d have to buy more whitewash, then, and paint over it. She glowered more darkly. Another couple of sesterces thrown away. Maybe she’d leave it up, at least until the beast shows were done. It might, she told herself, even draw a couple of customers into the tavern.
Aurelia erupted through the front door, spotted Nicole, and said, “Eep!” She ducked back in even faster than she’d come out. Nicole laughed. She knew what that meant. Aurelia had been all set to play in the mud, like her brother before her. Foiled, Nicole thought wickedly.
She went inside with more decorum. The warm rich smell of baking bread fought and almost overwhelmed the city stink. Julia was over at the counter, grinding flour for the next batch.
As Nicole went to spell her at the mill, a man’s voice spoke behind her. “Mistress Umma?”
Nicole turned, trying not to seem too startled. The newcomer was a dapper little man, and a total stranger. He knew her, however, or thought he did. Little by little, she was getting used to that. It didn’t drive her to panic much anymore, not the way it had at first.
Then again, maybe Umma hadn’t known him. He blinked and peered at her as if he might be a bit nearsighted. “My name is Julius Rufus,” he said. He was carrying a small wooden keg, which he set on one of the tables. “I hear you’ve been in the mood to try new things lately.”
Her heart leaped from a standstill into a pounding gallop. “What? What about it?” Damn — were people all over Carnuntum gossiping about the new and highly eccentric Umma? Old Umma used to be sharp, you bet, but lately she’s gone soft in the head. God — that could get dangerous. Somebody might even -
But Julius Rufus said, “I’ll tell you what about it,” and her heartbeat slowed to a fast canter. Safe, she was safe. This was a salesman, or she wasn’t a Hoosier of Hoosier born. As if to reassure her even further, he went on in a fast patter that had to be as old as the hills, “I know this tavern has always served nothing but wine — good wine, too, everybody agrees on that. Still and all, if you’ve taken it into your head to try things you haven’t tried before, how about this delicious barley brew here? It’s my very own, brewed up of the finest ingredients, according to an ancient recipe that’s come down through my family since the first Pyramid was a pup.”