All this time, Nicole had lived in this world, and still she didn’t know the most basic things: how people thought, how they felt, how they reacted to trauma. She was in a country so foreign that she just barely began to understand a small part of it, and even of that she wasn’t completely certain.
Her reflections brought her down one passage and then another, till she found herself in a largeish room that faced west. The last of the sun, with the help of several lamps much larger and more ornate than her own, lit the chamber amazingly well, even without electricity. Even so, she couldn’t see much of what was in it against the glare: only that there was a man standing by one of the windows, a black outline against the sunset light.
One of her guides had pushed in ahead of her – officiously, she thought. “Sir,” he said, “here is the woman.”
“Of course,” said the shadow by the window. The aide backed out of the room, as smooth as if on wheels, and ushered Nicole in with a sharp flick of the hand.
She found her heart was beating hard and her palms were clammy. What in the world was she supposed to do or say in front of the Emperor of the Romans? What if she committed some hideous faux pas? What would he do then? Throw her out on her ear? Fling her into jail? Shout “Off with her head!”?
The shadow moved away from the window, coming clearer little by little, till finally she had a good view of his face. That reassured her, a little. He looked both older and tireder than he did on his coins. And he looked more like a college professor – a philosopher, as Titus Calidius Severus would have said; she had to put down the stab of loss at the memory, as sharp now as it had ever been, and there was no time for it here, dammit -
Oh, damn, she thought, groping for the train of her reflection. More like a college professor than a politician. Yes. Maybe that was a good sign.
He peered at her – no eyeglasses or contacts here. “You would be the tavernkeeper Umma?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicole answered, using the same form of address as the aide had. If that wasn’t fancy enough to suit the Emperor, no doubt he’d let her know.
But he only said, “Come in, then, and we shall go from eggs to apples, as the proverb puts it.” His Latin was even more astringently pure than that spoken by his servitors. When Nicole spoke, she often dropped a final m or s. as someone speaking casual English might say workin’ for working. Everybody in Carnuntum talked that way. Marcus Aurelius didn’t. In his mouth, every verb form, every noun ending, was perfectly distinct.
“Thank you, sir,” she said to him in her rough country accent, and went where he beckoned her, to a beautiful wooden table with an inlaid top, set near enough to the window to catch the light, but not so near as to dazzle the eyes. She took the chair that had been set on the far side. An army of guards didn’t leap out of the walls to haul her off to the dungeon. Boldly, she ventured to add, “And thank you for hearing my petition.”
Marcus Aurelius smiled as he took the chair across from her. “You are welcome,” he replied. “That petition is one of the most intriguing documents to have come before me in some time. Had Alexander not seen you write it with his own eyes, he would have thought it the work of someone of much higher station in life. Most intriguing.”
“All I did was set out what happened to me and what I’d like you to do about it,” Nicole said. There was no way she wanted Marcus Aurelius to ask too many questions about how she’d learned to write like that. She had no good answers for him, and nothing he was likely to believe.
He wasn’t going to let it go. She should have known he wouldn’t. “The reasoning is as forceful and direct as if a skilled advocate had composed it. I do not agree with all your conclusions, not by any means, but you argue them well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Nicole was saved by the dinner bell, in a manner of speaking: just then a servant – or more likely a slave – brought in a jar of wine and the first course. It did include eggs, eggs hard-boiled and seasoned with olive oil and pepper. They rested on lettuce also oiled and peppered – and vinegared as well. It could have been a salad from a trendy bistro in L.A., where the cuisine was nouvelle and the decor minimalist.
“If you were expecting some sybaritic feast, I fear you will be disappointed,” Marcus Aurelius said, almost as if in true apology. “My tastes are far from ornate.”
“This is wonderful.” Nicole had to work not to talk with her mouth full. “We didn’t have much of anything to eat while the Marcomanni and Quadi held Carnuntum.”
“A sufficiency of material needs is good. An excess is bad,” Marcus Aurelius said. His tone had changed, taken on almost a singsong note, as if he were declaiming on a stage. “These eggs come from the same orifice as a hen’s droppings. Wine is but the juice of a bunch of grapes, my purple toga dyed with the blood of a shellfish. None of these things deserves any affection beyond the ordinary.”
That sounded very noble – till Nicole looked down at her own best tunic, of shabby linen streakily dyed with woad. Marcus Aurelius might choose austerity, but he had a choice. When Nicole went hungry, there’d been nothing voluntary about it. She hadn’t had any choice when the legionary raped her, either.
She pointed out that last, not too sarcastically, she hoped. Evidently not. Marcus Aurelius nodded. “I understand as much,” he said. “Your petition made it very plain. If you could identify the soldier who violated you, he would be liable to severe punishment. The legions exist to protect the Roman commonwealth, not to pain and distress those living under that commonwealth.”
“I certainly hope so,” Nicole said. “That’s why the government should be liable for what he did to me.”
Before Marcus Aurelius could answer, the servant brought in a new jar of wine and a heavy silver platter piled with pieces of chicken roasted with garlic and herbs. Not even the Roman Emperor had heard of a fork: Marcus Aurelius ate with his fingers, as Nicole did herself. He was neater than she was, and more obviously practiced. “The food pleases you?” he inquired.
“Very much, thank you,” Nicole answered, “even if it is only dead flesh.”
He started slightly, and stared. She wondered if she’d get into trouble for having the nerve to put a sardonic twist on what he said. To hell with it, she thought, and instructed herself to stop worrying. She never would have got an audience with the Emperor if she hadn’t had a fat dose of chutzpah.
“Anything would taste good now,” she added. “As I said, we haven’t had much to eat since the Germans came.”
To her astonishment, Marcus Aurelius lowered his eyes as if in shame. “You may justly reproach me for that,” he said. “Had I been able to best the barbarians before they broke into Carnuntum, I would gladly have done so. But I had neither the strength nor the ability to prevent them.”
That he felt he deserved blame for his failure was perfectly, even painfully, obvious. That he was also very, very able was just as obvious. In the late twentieth century, such a politician would have been a prodigy of nature – and very likely would have found it impossible to get elected to office.
But nobody had elected Marcus Aurelius to anything. He was Emperor of the Romans. He held that office for life. Rulers of that sort were out of fashion in her time, and with good reason. Without the need to keep the people happy enough to keep on voting for them, rulers could do whatever they pleased. Even if they bought votes and forced their election, in the end they fell, and often bloodily.
And yet, without the need to pander to the electorate, rulers might also be as good as they chose. They didn’t have to slip and slither and slide around every issue, to make sure the voters kept on voting them back into office. Nor did they have to back off from unpopular positions, if those positions were right, for fear of being voted out. They could do whatever needed doing, and do it to the best of their ability.