Fabia Ursa spoke Nicole’s thought aloud, as if she’d caught it floating in the rain- and wine-soaked air. “She’ll sleep sound tonight, I’m sure,” she said with a small giggle that ended in a hiccup. Under the tight-stretched fabric of her tunic, the baby kicked as if in protest. She laughed with a catch in it, as if the baby had caught a rib, and rubbed her belly. “It will be a while before I can sleep that way again – what with the baby between us now, and, if Mother Isis is kind, it will wake me up in the night, and keep me running from sunup to sunup.”
Nicole had heard Fabia Ursa mention Isis before; but she’d known the name even before that. She’d read a book once with the goddess’ name in the title. Isis, the book had said, was a goddess in Egypt. Carnuntum and Egypt were a long way apart. The Romans might have had only those hideous, squeaking carts to haul goods and people, but ideas seemed to travel on wings.
Fabia Ursa and Sextus Longinius lulus had retreated into a private and connubial world. She was simpering, he was smiling sappily. They gazed fondly into each other’s eyes. He had taken her hand; she rested the other on the swell of her belly. He didn’t seem too dismayed to be denied his wife’s embraces. Probably getting it from one of their slaves, Nicole thought sourly.
While the tinker and his wife shared their little moment and the other two men engrossed themselves in the latest round of Falernian, Julia and Gaius Calidius Severus came bounding down the stairs. They looked indecently pleased with themselves.
Yes, that was the word. Indecent. Nicole fixed Julia with a jaundiced stare. No matter how much wine she’d taken on board, she could not bring herself to approve of Julia’s conduct. Julia wasn’t a slave any longer. She wasn’t property – and she wasn’t a sex object. Women weren’t supposed to think of themselves as nothing but receptacles for men to fill. They certainly weren’t supposed to have as good a time doing it as Julia was. It was not dignified.
Julia aimed in a straight line for her cup of wine, drained it in one long gulp, dropped to a stool and laid her head on the table and fell sound asleep.
They all regarded her in varying degrees of amusement – Nicole’s the least, the men’s the most, and Fabia Ursa’s somewhere in the middle. “I take it back,” said the tinker’s wife. “She’ll sleep sound right now.”
Everyone laughed but Nicole. Julia never even stirred.
Sextus Longinius lulus and Fabia Ursa took their leave not long after. Nicole couldn’t tell which was holding which up. If she’d had to guess, she’d have said the tinker’s wife was propping up her husband.
As if their departure had been a signal, Ofanius Valens wandered off as well. Nicole caught the glance he shot at Julia as he passed her: a strange expression, almost but not quite unreadable, composed of lust and affection, amusement and resentment. She could imagine what he was thinking. Iwasn’t enough for you, was I? Well, next time we’ll see what you think!
Not, thought Nicole with sodden determination, that he was going to get a next time. She’d have that talk with Julia. Tomorrow. After the hangover that was coming. Yes.
Gaius Calidius Severus had been sipping his wine slowly, as if waiting for Ofanius Valens to leave first. It was a kind of possessiveness, Nicole supposed. This is my territory, it said. If he’d been a dog, he’d probably have lifted his leg at a spot between Ofanius Valens and Julia.
Once his rival was gone, he seemed to decide that Julia didn’t need further staking out. He finished off his wine, pulled his cloak up over his head, and headed for the door. Just as he passed it, his father called out, “Don’t fall into a vat of piss till I get back! I won’t be but a minute.” Gaius laughed and ducked out into the rain.
Which left Julia, sound asleep, and Nicole, too wide awake, and Titus Calidius Severus. As if to punctuate the moment, Julia let out a snore that was almost a bleat. Nicole wished she would wake up. Upstairs she heard the voices, not too loud, of Lucius and Aurelia playing. The children were being very good, extraordinarily good. Nicole wished they would have a fight and come down to tattle on each other. She didn’t want to be alone, or as close to alone as made no difference, with Titus Calidius Severus.
He wanted to be alone with her. He’d made sure he would be, staying behind after everyone else had left. It was just as much a statement as the timing of his son’s departure.
Nicole looked around for a blunt instrument in case he got out of hand. She didn’t have to look far. The Romans didn’t have soft plastics. Everything they made was pottery or metal or wood. She had only to choose her weapon.
But the fuller and dyer didn’t look as if he planned to do anything too reprehensible. He sat on the stool, peering from his empty cup to Nicole and back again. “I miss you, Umma,” he said. “I still haven’t figured out what I did to get you upset with me, but I miss you. I want you to know that.”
“I do know,” she said. She wasn’t just saying it to fill the silence. His approach, if it was an approach, was honestly civilized – more civilized than anything she’d got in Los Angeles after Frank dumped her. Frank hadn’t exactly been the soul of gentility, either, come to that. She hadn’t known a man could be.
This man was civilized enough to make her feel downright guilty. Till Nicole muscled herself, thanks to Liber and Libera, into Umma’s body, Calidius Severus and Umma had had what they probably thought was a good solid relationship. So what did that make her? A homewrecker?
She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help being Nicole and not Umma; being a twentieth-century lawyer and not a second-century tavernkeeper.
He was waiting for her to go on. That was civilized, too: a kind of instinctive politeness, a courtesy so well trained as to be automatic. She sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “The past few weeks… everything’s been so confused. Half the time I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”
“You haven’t been yourself,” Calidius Severus agreed. It wasn’t the first time Nicole had heard that in Carnuntum. The people who said it didn’t know how right they were – and Lord, was she glad of that. The fuller and dyer shrugged and got to his feet. “Well, I won’t trouble you anymore about it now. I thought there might be something you wanted to say that you didn’t want to say in front of people, if you know what I mean.”
“It’s nothing like that,” she said in dull embarrassment. “I told you it was nothing like that when we were walking back from the market square.”
In three quick steps, and before she quite realized it, he was standing beside her. She suppressed the flinch, she hoped, before he could have seen it. She hadn’t known he could move so fast, or with such unexpected strength.
But he didn’t touch her. He didn’t do that. “What is it, then?” he demanded. His voice was as firmly under control as his body was, and as rigid with tension.
He must have realized that he wasn’t going to get an answer. He shrugged again – he had a whole repertoire of shrugs, a shrug for every occasion – and leaned forward. Before she could pull away, before she was even sure of what he was going to do, he kissed her. It was gentle, no force; just the brush of his lips, with a faint tickle of beard and mustache. “Take care of yourself, Umma,” he said. “I do love you, you know.” Before she could find words to reply, he was gone.
9
Nicole stared at the place where Titus Calidius Severus had been. “Now why did he have to go and say something like that?” she muttered in English. His kiss hadn’t been revolting – on the contrary. That worried her more than if she’d wanted to gag at it. He’d been in the tavern, he and his son, long enough that she’d stopped noticing the reek of stale piss that followed them wherever they went. The rest…