Nicole got there just in time to watch Antonina burst from her own door, dodge a legionary with a move Michael Jordan would have envied, and smash an enormous pot over the head of one of the Germans. Shards flew like shrapnel. The German staggered. Blood poured down his face. Nicole marveled that he didn’t fall over dead.
“Mithras, lady, what was that for?” bellowed the legionary Antonina had evaded.
“What do you think?” she shot back. “The day the town fell, he and a gang of his cousins raped me right here in the street.” She tried to kick the prisoner in the crotch, but he twisted away; her foot caught him in the hipbone. She followed him down the street, kicking him and cursing as vilely as she knew how. The guards laughed and clapped and cheered her on.
Nicole was astonished at the bolt of jealousy that pierced her. Antonina had at least a measure of revenge for what had happened to her. She had closure. When she finally left off trying to maim the barbarian who’d raped her, she walked back toward her house with her shoulders straight and her head high. She had, at last, put the nightmare behind her.
And what have I got? Nicole’s laughter had a bitter edge. Closure? She laughed again. How was she supposed to avenge herself on the Roman legionary who’d forced himself on her and into her? She couldn’t identify him five minutes after he shot his seed into her. She’d never recognize him now. He was – a man. That had been an advantage in the United States. It wasn’t just an advantage here. It was everything.
Her gaze flicked to Liber and Libera, sitting serenely in their plaque behind the bar. They’d given her exactly what she’d thought she wanted. What a cruel gift it had turned out to be.
And now they would not send her home. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they just didn’t care. Maybe they were laughing at her, just as Frank must have done when he started his affair with Dawn.
She looked back toward Antonina’s house. Her sour-tempered neighbor was getting on with things – and she couldn’t. That would take a miracle. She’d already had one; that must be her quota. It was more than most people ever got.
At last, the parade ended. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Marcomanni and Quadi had shambled past her doorway. Nicole kept an eye out for Antonina, in case she emerged to smash more crockery over the head of an astonished German, but that door stayed shut, and Antonina stayed within.
As the last straggling prisoner shuffled out of sight, pricked on by a sword in his backside, Julia stretched and wriggled and sighed. “It’s so good to be back inside the empire again.”
“Why?” Nicole asked bleakly. “Do you feel so much safer with the heroic legionaries to protect you?”
Julia nodded automatically. Then memory struck: she bit her lip.
Nicole didn’t tax her with it. Nicole’s problem was Nicole’s own. She did her best to get on with the rest of the day, to do what she would normally have done: look after the tavern, rustle up meals, make sure the three of them were fed. Once the grain came in, if the price was low enough, she could open the tavern again. That would be good. That would take her mind off – things.
Sometimes, for a few minutes at a stretch, she actually managed to forget. Then something – a shadow, a voice in the street, the clank of armor as a soldier strutted past – would bring back memory: reeling, falling, scale mail pressed to her body, hard hand ripping at her drawers. Then she would start to shake. Almost, she wished he’d cut her throat when he was done. Then she wouldn’t have to relive it, over and over again.
The sun sank in the northwest, throwing a long shaft of sunlight into the tavern’s doorway. The interior brightened then, as much as it ever could. But her gloom was pitch-black. No mere sunlight could begin to pierce it.
Shadows in the doorway made her look up; made her tense, too, involuntarily, braced for fight or flight. Even in silhouette, she could tell that the men she saw were strangers: they wore togas, as few of her customers ever had. “Mistress Umma, the tavernkeeper?” one of them asked in Latin more elegant than that commonly spoken in Carnuntum.
“Yes,” she said after a pause. Then: “Who are you?”
He didn’t deign to answer that. He stood just on the threshold, though it meant he had to raise his voice slightly to converse with Nicole by the bar. There was no way, his attitude said, he was going farther in. Even as far as he’d gone, he’d need a good, long stint in the baths to wash off the stink of commoner.
That rankled. And never mind that Nicole had felt remarkably much like it when she first came to Carnuntum. He wasn’t too savory, either, by American standards. Not without soap or deodorant.
He sniffed loudly. In that Latin equivalent of an Oxford accent, he declaimed – said was too mild a word: “The Emperor has received your plea. I am instructed to invite you to supper with him, to discuss the matter.”
He didn’t ask if she’d come. That would have given her too much choice in the matter.
Just for that, she was tempted to be too busy. But the Emperor wasn’t necessarily responsible for the rudeness of his staff – and he was the Emperor. If she tried to play power games with him, she would lose. She didn’t have the faintest hope of winning.
“Yes, of course I’ll come,” Nicole said. Her own words sounded harsh and unlovely in her ears, like raw down-home Indiana next to the most mellifluous Oxbridge.
Julia was staring as if her eyes would fall out of her head. Nicole wondered if there was a single thought behind them, or any emotion but awe.
She didn’t have time for awe. “Wait here while I change my tunic,” she said.
Marcus Aurelius’ messengers looked, just then, as flummoxed as Julia. Nicole smiled at them, nodded, and went serenely upstairs. Not till she was out of their sight did she leap into a run, rip into the bedroom, tear off her ratty old tunic with the grease-stains on the front, and pull on her best one. If she could have showered and done her hair, she would have. She made what order she could with fingers and comb, which wasn’t much, and stopped to breathe. No matter what she did, the Roman Emperor was going to know what kind of life she led. Her best tunic probably wouldn’t be good enough for a slave in his household.
So let him see, and let him ponder it if he could. She was an honest businesswoman, a solid if by no means wealthy citizen. She had just as much right as anyone else, to justice under the law.
She firmed her chin and squared her shoulders and marched back downstairs. A sneaking niggle of doubt evaporated: the Emperor’s messengers were still there, arms folded, feet tapping, all too obviously displeased by what they must regard as her insolence.
Too bad for them. “Let’s go,” she said briskly.
As they walked toward the town-council building, the aide who’d done the talking kept right on doing it. “The Emperor would have you know that he means no insult by supping with you seated rather than reclining. It is his own usual practice: one of his many austerities.”
Nicole raised an eyebrow. “Really? Thank you, then. I’m glad to know what to expect.”
She was, in fact, relieved. She’d never eaten while lying down, and she hadn’t the faintest idea how to do it without slopping dinner all over herself. Certainly nobody in her social circle did any such thing. It must be the height of high fashion.
Stolid legionaries stood guard outside the town hall. They might have been the same who’d stood there this morning, or they might not. There was no way to tell. In the manner of sentries even in her own time, they kept their eyes fixed straight again as Nicole passed through the gate. Her gaze flicked from one side to the other. Was one of them the man who had assaulted her? How would she ever know?
She’d never look at a Roman legionary in armor again without wondering, Is that it? Is he the one?
For that matter, how many of them had done to other women in Carnuntum what that one had done to her? Had any other victims come forward? Would women in this time actually do any such thing?