“No, that’s what you do,” Nicole said: the first thing that popped into her head. She laughed. She thought it was funny. But she didn’t have a sense of humor. Nothing was funny to her. Frank had said it often enough. “Dawn makes me laugh,” he’d said after he split. Damned blasted cliche.
Damn: she was sicker than she’d thought.
Julia didn’t seem to think the joke was very funny, and Julia did have a sense of humor. “I don’t mean go to bed with anyone,” she said. Maybe she, like Brigomarus, was making allowances. Maybe she was just feeling literal. “I mean by yourself, to rest.”
“But I can’t rest.” Even through the haze of illness, Nicole knew that. “If I rest, the work won’t get done.” Yes, she sounded like Julius Rufus. She pressed her hand to her own forehead. She was hot. She didn’t think she was as hot as the brewer had been, but her palm was hot, too, so she couldn’t be sure. “I’ve got to go on.”
“What if you fall over?” Julia asked reasonably.
“If I fall over, I probably would have fallen over in bed, too,” Nicole replied. “You can drag me upstairs then.” Maybe I’ll die on the way up. Maybe I’ll take two aspirins and feel better in the morning. No. No aspirins. She remembered – no aspirins. But something… something. “The willow-bark decoction!” she exclaimed, inordinately proud that she’d remembered.
But Julia said, “We haven’t got any more. Poor Fabia Ursa used what we had – and how much good did it do her?”
Nicole hadn’t remembered that. “Go out and buy a new jar.” It had done a little good when she’d been down with the galloping trots. Maybe it would do a little good now. Would that be enough? What could Nicole do but hope?
Julia seemed eager to snatch whatever hope she could find. She scooped coins out of the cash box and left at a lope. After she was gone – quite a while after – Nicole realized she had no idea how much money Julia had scooped up. Well, if her freedwoman had ripped her off, she damn well had, and that was that.
Julia came back fairly quickly with a little jar clutched in her hand. She dumped a handful of money back in the cash box. Either she’d been honest or she was covering her tracks. Nicole rebuked herself as soon as she’d thought that, poured the potion into a cup of wine and honey, and drank it down. It still tasted hideously bitter – yes, like aspirin in the back of her throat. She chopped onions, trying not to chop off any fingers while she was doing it, and waited to see if the medicine would help.
It did – a little. Instead of feeling very hot and disconnected from the world around her, after an hour or so she felt hot and distantly connected to the world around her. She still didn’t feel good, or anything close to it. She snapped and railed at Julia and the children. Every little thing set her off; it was all she could do not to take it out on the customers. Of course she knew why she was so irritable, but she couldn’t help it. The words came out all by themselves, with nothing conscious in them at all.
Toward evening of what had seemed an endless day, Titus Calidius Severus crossed the street and swayed into the tavern. Maybe it was her fever, but he seemed to weave where he stood, like waterweeds in a current. He ordered bread and wine, but before Nicole could reach for the loaf, he grimaced and shook his head. “No, just wine,” he said, setting a dupondius on the bar. “The two-as. I haven’t had any appetite today. “
Nicole realized she’d hardly eaten anything, either. The thought of food, even food as bland as bread, made her stomach cringe. “How are you?” she asked as she brought the fuller and dyer his wine.
He studied her. It took a while; he seemed to have to pause and remember why he was doing it. Finally, he said, “About the same as you are, I expect.” He sighed and shook his head. “Not much point to pretending anymore, is there? We’ve got it, sure as sure.”
“Yes, I think we do,” Nicole said with a kind of relief. She hadn’t known how much effort it took to deny the truth. It was like a load off her back – even with the fear that replaced it, the bone-deep dread of death.
Calidius Severus frowned and stuck a finger in his ear, as if he didn’t think he’d heard right. “What was that?”
“Yes, I think we do,” Nicole repeated. Listening to the words, she realized they were in English. She said them again, this time in Latin.
“Ah.” Calidius face cleared. “I wondered if you couldn’t talk right, or if the fever was doing funny things to my ears. What were those noises you were making? Sounded almost like the grunts the Quadi use for a language.”
“I don’t know – I suppose it must be the fever.” Nicole had never made that kind of slip before. She hoped she never made it again. This time, at least, she had an excuse for it. Next time…
There couldn’t be a next time. There mustn’t be.
“The fever,” Titus Calidius Severus agreed. “And the eyes – I’m like an owl in the daylight.” Nicole nodded. He went on, “Then the rash comes – and then we find out if we live or die.” He tossed back the rest of his wine. “One way or the other, it won’t be too long.”
“No.” Back in Los Angeles, Nicole hadn’t worried about dying young, except for a few brief, dreadful moments on the freeway. She thought she should have been more upset. If she’d felt better, if she’d been more fully a part of the world, she would have been terrified. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have had so much to worry about if she’d felt better.
“Everyone else here well?” the fuller and dyer asked.
“So far,” Nicole said. “And your son?”
“Gaius is fine – so far, as you say,” Calidius Severus answered.
Wearily, blearily, Nicole shook her head. “My brother-in-law died today – Brigomarus brought me the news. By the time it’s over, half the people in town will be dead.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” Calidius Severus said, but before Nicole could feel even a little bit hopeful, he went on, “By what I’ve heard, down in Italy and Greece it’s killing one in four, maybe one in three. “
A fourth to a third of the people in Italy and Greece – dead? From a disease? A pestilence? Nicole thought again of the Black Plague, and of that TV documentary about the horrible things disease had done to the Native Americans. Again, the sickness already in her kept her from knowing the full weight of horror. Even through the fog, it was bad enough.
Titus Calidius Severus finished his wine, got up, and kissed Nicole on the cheek. His lips were warm, but not in a way she liked. “See you tomorrow, “ he said. When he spoke again, she thought he was talking more to himself than to her: “I hope I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The night was bad. Nicole alternately burned with fever and shook with chills. Coughing fits racked her. It was like the worst flu she’d ever had. But no antibiotics here, no painkillers, nothing but willow bark and tincture of time.
Morning came none too soon, and somewhat to her surprise. She was alive. She didn’t feel any worse when she staggered out of bed than she had when she fell into it, which was maybe good, and maybe just delusion.
Titus Calidius Severus was standing in his doorway when she opened up. He seemed as proud as she was, to be on his feet and moving.
The day was gray and nasty and chilly. She was almost glad of the fever that burned inside her. When the chills hit, they’d be all the worse, but meanwhile she didn’t need more than the tunic she’d put on when she got up.
Toward midmorning, the rain came, hard and cold. The wind – a wind with teeth in it – drove it lashing sideways. No mild summer downpour, that. It had a taste of winter. In Indianapolis, the next storm would have brought ice with it. Nicole thought that might be the case here as well.
Even the fever wasn’t enough to keep her warm in that. She put on the thick wool cloak that had lain in the drawer since she’d come to Carnuntum. She put on socks, too. Even with them, she shivered. She would have been cold had she been healthy. Sick as she was, she felt as if she were walking naked through a meat locker in a supermarket.