“Invaded?” Nicole said, and then, hastily, “Yes, of course.” Odd bits of gossip began to fit together like pieces of evidence. The Marcomanni had conquered Aquileia in Italy, and been driven back from it. She didn’t know where in Italy Aquileia was, but nowhere in Italy was particularly close to the Danube. She shivered a little, though the day was fine and mild. “It must have been quite an invasion.”
“That it was.” To her relief, Calidius didn’t notice the odd phrasing; he was intent on his own thoughts. “Some officers I’ve talked with – educated fellows, you know – say it was the worst since the Cimbri and Teutones came down on us, and that was – what? – almost three hundred years ago”
Longer than the United States has been a country, Nicole thought, and shivered again. On her honeymoon, she’d caught glimpses of the sense of history that filled Europe but was so conspicuously absent from America. She hadn’t expected to find that sense in second-century Carnuntum. After all, this was ancient history, wasn’t it? Not so ancient, evidently, that it didn’t have history of its own. She hadn’t gone back to the beginning of time, as she’d sometimes felt – never more urgently than when her belly griped her. She was stuck somewhere in the middle.
She stayed close to Titus Calidius Severus. He hadn’t been afraid of the Marcomanni or Quadi or whoever they were. He’d been angry at them. From the way he stamped resolutely ahead, he was still angry. But that anger might not all have been aimed at the men he called barbarians: after a while, he said, “Umma, if you tell me what you think I’ve done wrong, I may decide to be sorry for it. If it’s something I ought to be sorry for.”
Nicole couldn’t quite suppress the twitch of a smile at his careful phrasing. He could have been a lawyer, with that kind of mind. “I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong,” she said.
She was glad he was in front of her, so he couldn’t see her wince. Something she hadn’t expected to deal with when she traveled in time: the past life of the body she wore. People made assumptions about her. They expected things of her, things she was supposed to do or think or say, because Umma had always done or thought or said them. Sometimes, as with Lucius and Aurelia, it came in handy. Sometimes…
The fuller and dyer stopped and looked back at her then. Fortunately, she’d managed to pull her face straight. Calidius was nothing if not forthright: “Then why didn’t you want me to come over last night?”
“Because I didn’t feel like it,” she answered, not angrily but without any hesitation, either. If he made a habit of coming on by whenever he felt like a roll in the hay, he was going to have to get himself some new habits.
He grunted. “All right. Can’t expect a woman to know her own mind from one day to the next, I guess.” Before she had a chance to bridle at that, he redeemed himself, at least in part, by adding, “Women likely say the same about men. I’ve known enough who’d give you cause to, anyhow.”
If he was in the habit of mocking everyone impartially, she could deal with that. All the cops she’d ever known, in Indiana and California alike, were the most cynical people on the face of the earth. Maybe soldiers were the same way. Because of that, and because she felt, for a moment, as if she could almost like him, she said, “Besides, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. I was sick last night.”
“Belly, I’ll bet.” Calidius grunted again, apparently a noise that indicated his brains were working. “Julia told me you and the kids were drinking water all day yesterday. What got into you, Umma? One of your new ideas? Water’s handy if you haven’t got anything else, but if you do, forget it. Kids all right?”
“Not too bad, “ Nicole answered. The amphora of Falernian he was carrying for her was glazed. God only knew what was in the glaze, but she could make a pretty fair guess that lead was part of it. But he wouldn’t believe lead was poisonous. Even if he did, so what? If lead killed you, it killed you a little bit at a time. Drinking the water, she’d discovered, was liable to be lethal in a hurry.
“That’s good,” he said. “I’m glad they’re all right. They’re pretty fair kids, they are.”
His stock jumped several points in Nicole’s book. She’d gone out only a couple of times after Frank broke up with her. She might have done it more often if so many men, on learning she had children, hadn’t reacted as if they were a dangerous and possibly contagious disease. Istill don’t want to go to bed with him. she thought. She didn’t want to go to bed with anyone.
She started down the street away from the market, back toward the tavern, but Titus Calidius Severus held up a hand. “Wait. You still haven’t told me what you’re angry at.”
Nicole gritted her teeth. He was losing points again, and fast. “I did tell you, Calidius: I’m not angry at you. I will be, though, if you keep pushing at me like this.”
“There – you did it again,” he said.
And there it was again: the prickle of alarm. What have I done? What’s wrong?
Thank God, finally – he went on in a growing heat, spelling it out in terms even a time-traveler from West Hills could understand: “How can I help thinking you’re mad at me when you haven’t called me by my praenomen since day before yesterday? If you can’t be that familiar with someone who knows you’ve got a little mole halfway down from your navel, what in Ahriman’s name is a praenomen good for? “
Nicole bit her tongue. Good God! He knew her body – no, knew this body – better than she did. How had she managed to miss a mole in that spot?
Because, she told herself with tight-drawn patience, she’d been too busy overdosing on her new reality – and freaking at the shaved parts south of the mole. But if she did start calling him Titus, would he take it as a signal and assume she was open for business again? She’d been formally polite, and he’d taken it for displeasure. If she didn’t go back to the intimate use, he’d be convinced she really was mad at him. Except she wasn’t. Except probably she was, because he was a man and she was a woman and it was all too clear that relations between the sexes were no easier to figure here than they’d been in Los Angeles.
She couldn’t take all day making up her mind, not with him standing there studying her. Finally, with an exhalation that wasn’t quite a sigh, she said, “I’m sorry, Titus. I just haven’t been myself the last couple of days.” And you don’t know how true that is. But, instead of the truth, she opted for the simple, the rational, and the practicaclass="underline" “Too much to do, not enough time to do it.”
“Well, that’s so twelve months a year, and an extra day on leap year,” Calidius answered. He too hesitated, as if looking for something else – he couldn’t remember what – that needed saying. Then, as if he’d found it, he grinned. “And I won’t chuck you under the chin anymore, either. I really didn’t know you didn’t like it.”
He was trying. She could say that much for him. Of course, he had an ulterior motive. What male didn’t, in whatever century she found herself in? Nicole nodded, but said simply, “Let’s get on back.”
Titus Calidius Severus started walking. She followed again, with one pause to set down the leg of lamb and scratch her head. No Head and Shoulders, she thought with more sadness than she’d ever expected to feel. No Selsun Blue. No Denorex. Still, there was a bright side. No idiotic commercials for them, either.
They passed the two graffiti about Lydia, in reverse order this time. Pointing to the one and then, a bit farther along, to the other, Nicole said, “Put those two together and they’re pretty funny.”