And yes, he had a selection of votive plaques, dedicated to a wide variety of gods and goddesses. None of those on display was inscribed to Liber and Libera.
She quelled the sinking in her stomach. Maybe he had one inside. If not, he could make one. She didn’t have to drift passively through this life. She could take matters into her own hands: manufacture, or have manufactured, her own way home. If she couldn’t change this world, she might still escape it.
She went boldly into the dim space with its odors of stone dust and old sweat, and asked her question in a voice that wasn’t too mushy, she didn’t think. He’d been picking away at a bit of garland on a tombstone, but when she spoke he looked up a little sharply; saw what had to be a heroically swollen face; and blinked once before resorting to a bland expression. “What, Riper and – oh; Liber. Yes, Liber and Libera. There’s one right here – two, actually, now I stop to think. People are right fond of Liber and Libera, likely ‘cause they’re right fond of what they’re god and goddess of.” He winked at her as if he expected her to share the joke, and pulled a pair of plaques from among the many on the wall behind him. “Here you are. Take your pick.”
Neither one was the plaque, the one she’d bought on her honeymoon. One was larger, one was smaller, both were rather cruder work. She eyed them in disappointment. Didn’t magic need a solid link between her now and her then? Preferably the same link?
Still, she thought with robust twentieth-century skepticism, would it be necessary? If she was making her own future, then all that mattered should be that the plaque was like the one she’d used to bring herself here.
Or she could have one made. But, from the look of the shop, he was backed up for weeks; and she couldn’t wait. She wanted out now. “I like the smaller one better,” she said firmly. “What do you want for it?”
“That one?” The stonecutter considered. “Ten sesterces ought to do it.”
Distracted by pain and fogged by wine and poppy juice as she was, Nicole remained astonished. The limestone from which he’d carved the plaque was surely cheap, but he couldn’t set much value on his own labor – either that, or he’d turned out the piece much faster than she would have thought possible. On the other hand, he wasn’t inclined to haggle, and she’d been too badly battered to bargain as hard as she would have otherwise. She paid him eight sesterces and a couple of asses in lieu of a dupondius. got him to throw in a piece of sacking to wrap her purchase in, and carried it home with as much care as if it had been made of glass.
Julia greeted her with a cry of dismay. “Mistress! You’ve got blood all over your tunic.”
Nicole looked down at herself. She hadn’t even noticed. No wonder the stonecutter had looked at her so oddly. He must have thought her husband had belted her a good one – and she was buying off the gods of wine to soften him up the next time he polished off a jar or two or three.
At least she knew a cure for blood on wool. “Cold water,” she said, “that’s what it needs. And wine.”
“Wine?” Julia frowned. “Wine doesn’t do a thing for bloodstains.”
“The wine is for me,” Nicole said. She sat at a table near the bar – nearly falling the last inch or two onto the bench – and uncovered the plaque so that Julia could see it. “I’ll give Liber and Libera a little, too.”
Julia seemed excited all out of proportion to the occasion. It must have been a slow day for Julia, upstairs as well as down. “Let me see!” she said eagerly. She didn’t wait for Nicole to finish making her way through the stools and benches and tables. She negotiated the course with more agility than Nicole could have managed just then, and peered at the low relief. “That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good. We could use a god or two to watch over us. ‘
If they watch over me as well as I’d like, Nicole thought, Iwon’t be here.
The thought was both delicious and – to her amazement – sad. Julia had been to the baths today, and found a clean tunic somewhere, too. She smelled as good as anyone in Carnuntum could. She was warm, standing next to Nicole, and solid, and somehow comforting. Julia, however unwitting, had been absolutely invaluable in showing Nicole how to cope with this world she’d found herself in. They weren’t friends, not exactly; friends were equals. Employer and employee? Somewhat more than that. Allies. Comrades in arms.
Nicole was going to miss Julia. The thought was so astonishing that she almost forgot to keep it to herself. The thudding ache in her jaw saved her. She must have clenched her teeth; she was struck with a sudden, piercing stab of pain. “Wine,” she said again, tightly. Julia gasped a little, as if she’d clean forgotten, and ran to fetch a cup.
Terentianus had told Nicole to rinse her mouth with it. He hadn’t told her it would feel as if she’d drunk gasoline and then thrown in a lighted match. She whimpered. Her eyes filled with tears of pain. Nevertheless, she gulped the stuff down. The second swallow wasn’t quite so bad. The damage was done; pain had gone into overload.
When the cup was almost empty, Nicole wet her forefinger with the dregs and smeared a little on Liber’s mouth, and a little on Libera’s.
Julia shook her head and smiled. “I never saw anybody give them a drink quite that way, Mistress. But I’ll bet they like it.”
“I hope they do,” Nicole said. She hadn’t been thinking before she did it, she’d just done what seemed appropriate. She was lucky. If she’d crossed herself backward, everyone in church would have known she was no Catholic. Here, what she’d done wasn’t wrong, just different. The cult of Liber and Libera, it seemed, didn’t have as many rules as the Christianity in which she’d grown up.
The Christianity they had here – did it have rules, aside from terrorist graffiti and apocalyptic mania? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. And if she did happen to learn the answer, she had every intention of doing it from the twentieth century.
She drank a lot of wine that day. With each cup, she gave the stone god and goddess their share. If the wound got infected after all that, then the germs that did the job would be cutting through the alcohol bath in wetsuit and swim fins.
She drank a double cup, one of the cups she kept for her thirstiest customers, before she went upstairs to bed. Maybe, just maybe, it would dull the pain enough to let her sleep. She was in a fog as it was, drifting as if underwater, bouncing gently off walls and furniture. But the heart of the fog was a red and throbbing pain.
Sleep was as elusive as she’d feared. She couldn’t even toss and turn: it hurt too much. She lay as still as she could on the thin, lumpy mattress, and did her best to ignore the tiny stabs and stings of the vermin that inhabited it. She’d brought the plaque up with her, and propped it on the chest of drawers where she could see it from the bed. Liber and Libera. she prayed, take me back to my own time. Take me back to my own world. I don’t belong here. I was wrong to pray as I prayed. Please, make it right. You granted one prayer of mine. Only grant this one. and I’ll never trouble you again.
She couldn’t tell if she was getting through. The wine couldn’t do what the fever had done, blur the boundaries between the waking world and the world the gods inhabited. All it did was dull her reflexes and slow her mind, and drop her at last into a sodden sleep.
She drifted off in a dream of electric lights and chlorinated water, automobiles and stereos, antibiotics and, oh God, anesthetics, telephones and television, supermarkets and refrigerators, soap and insecticides and inner-spring mattresses. And – yes, yes indeed – equality under the law, whatever it might be in actual practice. If the gods were kind, if she’d worked the – magic? – rightly, she’d wake in a deliciously soft, heavenly clean bed in the century that was, after all she’d done to escape it, the one and only century for her.