A detachment of Roman soldiers in their fancy armor came over from the legionary camp and began patrolling the walls and streets of Carnuntum. Every so often, one or two of them would drop into the tavern.
One day when spring was well advanced, a pair of legionaries came rattling and jangling in just as Nicole finished pouring a round of wine for a tableful of Germans. The air was always vaguely tense when the Germans were in the tavern, but Nicole had learned to ignore the tension.
She couldn’t ignore this. The legionaries didn’t say a word except to order the one-as wine. The Germans, drinking Falernian and paying for it in silver as they always did, went on with their low growl of conversation. Neither side acknowledged the other.
Nobody else spoke, or moved much either. Julia, who hadn’t been able to make herself scarce this time, took refuge in scouring plates and cups and bowls. Lucius helped her, or tried; he kept dropping things. The two or three ordinary customers, trapped in the back and unable to escape without running the gauntlet between the soldiers and the barbarians, nursed whatever they were eating and drinking, and did their best to seem inconspicuous.
The Germans finished their wine, belched – a little louder than usual, maybe – and left. A few minutes later, the legionaries did the same.
As soon as the soldiers were out the door, a long sigh ran through the room. Nicole hadn’t known she was holding her breath till she let it out.
“Phew!” Ofanius Valens said for them all. “Another cup of the two-as for me, Umma. That could have been ugly.”
“It was ugly,” Nicole said.
“It could have been uglier,” he said. He took the cup Nicole had filled for him, thanked her, and drank deep.
Nicole was tempted to keep him company. She’d had precious few brawls in the tavern, and nothing worse than a pair of young idiots going at each other with fists and getting pitched into the street. The Calidii Severi, father and son, had played bouncers that day, she remembered. It still hurt to think of Titus, how he was dead and would never walk through that door again.
She remembered, too, how surprised she’d been, not by the fight, but by the fact that it was the first that had escalated that far. She’d come to Carnuntum convinced that drinking equaled drunkenness and that was that. And drunkenness, she’d been just as sure, had meant a fight – her father sending her mother to the ER yet again, where she’d lie as always, claiming she’d run into a door or fallen down the stairs.
In fact, neither of those assumptions had turned out to be universally or even generally true. Most of her customers drank without getting drunk. Of the ones who did go over the edge, more got friendly or talky or sleepy than got belligerent. She’d made a point of sending the nasty drunks on their way, and making it clear that they weren’t to come back. They’d mostly stayed away, too. “Plenty of other places to get a load of wine,” as one of them had informed her before she booted him out.
She’d been running a tavern in small-town Indiana. And the L.A. gang scene had come to town. “If those barbarians had gone at it with those legionaries,” she said, “it wouldn’t have been a tavern brawl. It would have been a war.”
Ofanius Valens finished off his cup of wine and held it up for another. When Nicole had brought it, and scooped up the dupondius he set on the table, he said, “Yes, it would have been a war. It might have started a fire here to match the one that’s been burning farther west.”
Nicole needed a moment to realize that, whereas she’d been using a figure of speech, Ofanius Valens had meant his words literally. “You don’t really think so, do you?” she said. “We’ve stayed at peace all this time. Why should it all blow up in our faces now?”
“We’ve been at peace, and the gods know I’m glad of it, too,” Ofanius Valens said. “But the gods also know I’ve never seen so many Quadi and Marcomanni in town as I have the past month or so. We’d always get a few: they’d cross the river to buy things in the market or drink in the taverns or just to stare at our fancy buildings. The barbarians couldn’t build a bathhouse like ours in a thousand years.”
“Now, though,” Julia said, “now they look like dogs in front of a butcher’s stall.”
A lean and hungry look, Nicole thought. She’d thought it before, about the Romans in this city, with their thin dark faces – and hadn’t Shakespeare written it about a Roman, now that she stopped to think? But it fit these Germans just as well, in a different way.
She’d thought – she’d been sure – she was getting away from war when she fell back through time. She’d thought – she’d been sure of – all sorts of things when she came to Carnuntum. Very few of them had turned out to be true, or anything close to it. She’d hated the late twentieth century while she was living in it. From the perspective of the second century, it looked like the earthly paradise.
Perspective, she thought, is a wonderful thing.
“We have the wall,” she said. And had she ever stopped to think why Carnuntum had a wall? Very basic principle of legal theory: laws existed to prevent people from doing things to harm other people. A wall wasn’t just there to look pretty and provide a nice high place for lovers to walk on fine summer evenings. It was there for a reason: to keep out nasty neighbors.
Everybody here knew that. They knew something else, too – even the children. “We have the wall,” Lucius agreed, “and the legion.” He slapped the hilt of his toy sword. It was thrust in his belt at the precise angle at which the Roman soldiers wore their real ones.
“That’s not a whole legion,” Ofanius Valens said gloomily, “and what there is of it won’t be enough. They’ll defend their camp first and worry about us afterwards. I’d do the same in their sandals.”
“What I want to know,” Julia said with unaccustomed sharpness, “is why the barbarians won’t leave us alone. We haven’t done them any harm.”
My God, Nicole thought, even here and now, the small and the weak came out with the same cry of protest as they had all through the blood-spattered twentieth century. And yet this was the Roman Empire. It was by no means small, and she’d never heard it was weak. “Don’t the Germans know they’re like a dog fighting an elephant?” she demanded.
Ofanius Valens laughed, but the sound was bitter. “They know they’ve had a fine time plundering Roman provinces and then scurrying back across the river into their forest. Now we’re weak from the pestilence – easy pickings, they’ll be thinking.”
“We drove them out of Aquileia.” Nicole remembered that from her very first, panicky trip to the market square. She still didn’t know exactly where Aquileia was, but what did that matter?
Ofanius nodded. “So we did. And I’d be happier if they’d never got down that far.”
“Maybe everything will come out all right here,” Julia said, reaching for Nicole’s optimism – which Nicole was almost ready to call naivete. “Maybe it will, if the gods stay kind.”
“Here’s hoping it does. “ Ofanius Valens lifted his cup, peered into it, and seemed astonished to find it empty. “Have to do something about that,” he said, and fumbled a couple of asses out of the pouch he wore on his belt. Nicole took the cup and filled it yet again.
“Thank you, Umma,” he said when she set it on the table in front of him. He lifted it once more, wobbling a tiny bit – he’d had three cups, after all. “Here’s to peace, prosperity, and the Germans staying on their side of the river.”