“No, I’m not all right,” Nicole said, “but I’m not sick, either, if that’s what you mean.”
Julia didn’t look too greatly reassured. Nicole didn’t have any reassurance to give her. All she had had drained away when she looked into Julius Rums’ face, and saw that he was dead.
If anyone had asked her afterwards, she couldn’t have said how she got through the day. When sunset came at long last, and business slowed and then mercifully stopped, she did something that she’d have been horrified to contemplate, back in West Hills. But in this place and time, it was the only reasonable or rational thing to do. She got quietly and systematically drunk.
14
Hard times through the whole city. When Nicole had said that to Gaius Calidius Severus, she’d had only an intellectual understanding of what it meant. Over the next month or two, as summer passed into autumn, as sunlight softened and morning mists from the Danube began filling the streets of Carnuntum with fog, she felt the meaning of hard times in her belly as well as her head.
In the early days of the pestilence, hardly an hour seemed to go by without the shrieking and moaning of professional mourners, as funeral processions made their somber way out of the city and toward the burial ground. After a while, however, the sounds of formal lamentation, almost as formal as the Mass, began to diminish.
Ofanius Valens explained that to Nicole when he stopped by for breakfast one morning. “From what I hear,” he said, “so many of the mourners are dead, the rest can’t come close to keeping up with all the funerals.”
“That’s horrible,” Nicole said.
“It’s not good,” he conceded, taking an unenthusiastic mouthful of bread and oil. “My family’s been lucky so far, the gods be praised. I’ve only got one cousin down with it, and she doesn’t look like dying. If you make it through the rash, they say, you’re likely to get better, and she’s done that. Half her hair fell out, and she’s peeling like the worst case of sunburn you ever saw, but she’s still with us. How about your kin, Umma?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t heard a word.” And she wouldn’t have much cared if she had, she thought but didn’t add. Whatever Umma thought of her relatives, Nicole had no earthly use for any of them.
Ofanius Valens looked shocked. Everyone in Carnuntum was shocked when someone failed to keep minutest track of anything that had to do with family. But, after a moment, his face cleared. “That’s right.” He nodded as he reminded himself. “You had that squabble with them after you manumitted Julia. Still haven’t made it up, eh?”
Nicole shook her head. “I’m the bad apple in the barrel, as far as they’re concerned.” She straightened. ‘‘They can think whatever they please, for all of me. I’ll get along just fine.”
“You certainly seem to be getting along.” Ofanius Valens spoke with no small wonder. “I’ve known other people who fought with their families. Most of them act like fish hauled out of the Ister” — by which he meant the Danube. He imitated a fish out of water with such popeyed aplomb, Nicole couldn’t help laughing.
Julia laughed, too. So did Lucius, who’d come downstairs while Ofanius Valens was eating. Nicole said, “It’s good to hear people laughing. Not much of that sound in the city these days. “
“Not much reason for it these days,” Ofanius Valens said. “Let’s see what we can do about it.” He aimed his dead-fish stare at Lucius, who broke up in giggles.
Julia started to laugh again. It was like a yawn: contagious. Nicole caught herself just as Julia’s eye caught hers. Their laughter died. They’d been startled into it the first time. They couldn’t invoke it with conscious effort. Lucky Lucius, to be so young and so untroubled.
“Off I go,” Ofanius Valens said. “The gods grant you all good health.” He made one more fish-face at Lucius, who crowed with delight, nodded to Nicole, and blew Julia a kiss. She blew one back. Whistling a jaunty tune, he went on his way.
“He’s a nice man,” Lucius said.
“He is nice,” Julia said with the hint of a sigh. She meant something — several different somethings — other than what Lucius did. Nicole gave her a sharp look, which she ignored. Julia thought with her body first and her mind definitely second.
Business that morning was brisk. Asses, dupondii, sesterces, even a couple of silver denarii clanked into the cash box. Nicole was pleased, but not so pleased as she might have been. Every time somebody coughed, every time somebody sneezed, she jumped. People had been coughing and sneezing in the tavern ever since she’d come to Carnuntum, and no doubt for many years before that. Now she wondered if each cough and sneeze meant a case of pestilence brewing — and if viruses were flying her way, or toward her children, or toward Julia.
A little before noon, Brigomarus came into the tavern. “Uncle Brigo!” Lucius and Aurelia cried out in delight. Nicole, on the other hand, was somewhat less than delighted to see Umma’s brother. By the way he stood, as if he was only there under duress, and by his cold nod, he wasn’t delighted to see her, either.
“How are you?” he asked politely enough, and then the question that seemed more important in Carnuntum than any other: “Have you been well?”
Nicole could answer that, if only to meet politeness with politeness. “Yes, all of us here have been fine, thank heaven,” she said. “And you?”
“I’m as you see. If I’d caught this horror of a disease, I wouldn’t be up and about.” Brigomarus took a deep breath, nerving himself for what he had to say next. “Mother is down with it. I don’t know what her chances are. If I had to guess, I’d say they weren’t good. She still has her wits about her, and she wants to see you. Ila didn’t even want to let you know, but I said I would do it. Just because you wronged the family doesn’t mean we have any business wronging you.”
“I had every right to do what I did, and I was right to do it,” Nicole said stiffly.
“You’re — “ Umma’s brother checked himself. “Never mind. I didn’t come here to start the quarrel over again. Will you come see Mother or not?” To hell with you if you don’t, his tone and posture plainly said.
A deathbed visit to Atpomara, Umma’s disagreeable mother, was about the last thing Nicole wanted. Visiting anybody who was likely to give her the pestilence didn’t rank high on her list, either. But, things being as they were, she didn’t see that she had a choice. She was wearing Umma’s body. She had to take on at least the bare minimum of Umma’s obligations. “I’ll come,” she said.
“Well, good.” Brigomarus sounded pleasantly surprised, as if he’d made the call expecting to be turned down flat. “Let’s go, then.”
“Aren’t you going to stay and play, Uncle Brigo?” Aurelia asked plaintively.
“I can’t,” he told her with more gentleness than Nicole might have expected. “Your grandmother is sick, and she wants to see your mother.”
“Is she going to die?” Lucius asked. In California, a child would have asked the question in tones of disbelief. Lucius merely sounded curious. He knew people died. In Carnuntum, nobody could help knowing it.
“That’s in the hands of the gods,” Brigomarus said. “She wants to see your mother. We have to go.”
The children didn’t beg to go with them, which Nicole found somewhat odd. She’d thought Lucius might, at least. But he stood with his sister and watched them go. They were both unusually quiet, unusually wide-eyed. They’d seen too much death, she thought. They didn’t need to see any more.
Nicole followed Umma’s brother out of the tavern. He strode along for a while with his head down, until they both had to wait as a funeral procession went past. Whoever the deceased was, he’d been important; most of the mourners wore togas, not tunics. Instead of lying on a bier, the corpse was carried in a sedan chair, so that he surveyed the city with his unseeing eyes. A dozen musicians brought up the rear of the procession, making a tremendous racket.