Aemilia had left her to it just before dark. Nicole had served the midwife a cup of the two-as wine for the road, as it were, and seen her on her way to a well-deserved rest. “And that’s if nobody takes it into her head to pop tonight, “ Aemilia had said as she headed for the door.
Nicole recalled only too vividly how frazzled she’d been after Kimberley and Justin were born. She hoped Longinius lulus and Fabia Honorata and the wet nurse were giving the poor woman some help. Nicole would look in on her, she thought fuzzily. In the morning.
She woke with the memory clear in her head, and no sound coming from next door. As soon as she’d got the tavern going and set Julia in charge of it again, she went next door to see how Fabia Ursa was doing. She found Fabia Honorata there already, and Longinius lulus fixing the dented pot against which the image of Isis had leaned. With each stroke of the hammer, he winced. He must have the headache from hell, and well earned, too.
The baby lay asleep in his cradle, swaddled like a mummy. Fabia Ursa sat on a stool nearby. Nicole was shocked at the sight of her. She knew what a woman was supposed to look like just after she’d given birth: as if a truck had run over her. Fabia Ursa looked worse than that. Her eyes had a hectic glow that raised Nicole’s hackles. “Are you all right?” she asked sharply.
Fabia Ursa didn’t respond. It was her sister who said, “You see it, too, don’t you, Umma? I’m afraid she’s got the fever.”
Nicole couldn’t see that either Fabia Ursa or her husband had heard a word that either of them said. She crossed the room and laid her hand on Fabia Ursa’s forehead. If the woman wasn’t running a temp close to 102, Nicole would have been astonished. Aloud and in some frustration she said, “She’s awfully warm.”
“She’s burning up,” Fabia Honorata said. Worry made her tactless, or else she didn’t think her sister could hear.
Nicole recalled how often Aemilia had slid her hands inside Fabia Ursa, how much pushing and prodding the midwife had done, and how few pains she’d taken to keep her hands clean. If Fabia Ursa had an infection, what could anybody in Carnuntum do about it? There were no antibiotics here. Aspirin? The willow-bark decoction was the closest thing to it, but it wouldn’t do anything about the actual cause of the fever. Bed rest and hope for the best, Nicole thought. The thought made her uneasy. She hadn’t ever known anybody who’d died in childbirth, but she’d heard enough about the mortality rate before the advent of antisepsis. Puerperal fever was nothing to take lightly.
“Is there something we can – “ Nicole began, without much hope, but she had to ask.
Fabia Ursa interrupted her. “I’ll be all right,” she said.
She didn’t sound all right. She didn’t merely sound exhausted, either. She sounded sick, with the same whining, dragging quality to her voice that Nicole’s kids had when they were coming down with something. It reminded her so vividly of Kimberley that last day in West Hills, her heart contracted. If she could be back there, right now – if she could be right there, with all the troubles she’d had, and the stink of vomit, and every other delight of that awful day – oh, God, what she wouldn’t give to have it all back again.
She’d never wanted it so much. At first she’d been too elated. Later she’d been too busy surviving. Now…
Now she couldn’t indulge herself. “I have some willow bark,” she said with a tinge of desperation. “Wait here; I’ll go get it.” As if they could do anything but wait. They didn’t say so. Both Sextus Longinius lulus and Fabia Honorata nodded gratefully. Fabia Ursa sat mute, sunk again in that frightening lethargy.
Julia frowned when Nicole asked for the decoction. “Fabia Ursa?” she asked. Nicole nodded. “That’s not good,” Julia said. “Fever after you have a baby – that can kill you.”
“I know,” Nicole said irritably. She didn’t, not down in her bones where real belief was, but she’d seen Fabia Ursa. That was a very sick woman. Sick, she thought, as a dog.
Julia fetched the willow-bark decoction from its storage place, moving quickly, but not nearly quickly enough for Nicole’s peace of mind. She snatched the jar with scant thanks and hurried back to the tinker’s shop.
Fabia Ursa had gone upstairs – a good sign, maybe, if she could travel that far: now wasn’t it? Sextus Longinius lulus took the painfully inadequate jar with gratitude that made Nicole want to burst into tears. “Thank you, Umma,” he said. “You’re a good neighbor.”
Nicole started to brush him off, but caught herself. He needed to be grateful more than she needed to be comfortable about it. “I’ll bring you a loaf of bread every day,” she said, “and food your wife might like. All you’ll have to worry about is getting her well.”
She’d done it now: he looked ready to fall at her feet. “You are the best of neighbors,” he said. “The gods blessed me and my family when they set us next to you.”
Nicole mumbled something and fled. It was cowardly, and she really should have gone upstairs with him to make sure Fabia Ursa took the medicine, but she’d had all she could stand.
It wasn’t cowardice, she told herself, not really, that kept her away all the rest of that day and all the next. There was the marketing, there was the laundry, there was a flood of customers that ran her flat out from dawn to dusk. It was two days before she could scrape out enough time to get away. She had managed to send food over, once by Lucius and a time or two by Julia. She’d kept her promise in that much.
She found the tinker’s shop deserted. The same pot he’d been mending before, or another just like it, lay forgotten on the workbench. As she stood hesitating in the doorway, a man’s voice floated down the stairs: “ – warm fomentations on the belly, an enema of warm olive oil, and gruel for nourishment. If she should show improvement, thin, sour wine would be best. “
A doctor, Nicole realized. A few moments later he trod briskly down the stairs. He looked like his voice: thin, intense, and profoundly preoccupied. He was younger than she would have guessed. His brows were drawn together. He did not look either pleased or hopeful. With a curt nod in her general direction, he left in a quite unmistakable hurry. To his next patient? Nicole wondered.
None of what he’d told Longinius lulus sounded unreasonable, though Nicole wouldn’t have wanted an enema if she felt like hell. But they were all things she would have done for the flu in L.A. They weren’t much good for anything more serious.
He was trying to make Fabia Ursa as comfortable as he could, because he couldn’t make her well. Nobody could do that, except Fabia Ursa herself. And that included Nicole.
She wavered, debating the good sense of going up to see if there was anything after all that she could do. But in the end she didn’t go. She left the loaf of Julia’s fresh-made bread and a bowl of stewed pears on the counter, and retreated to the tavern.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. The night again was broken by the baby’s crying, quickly suppressed: the wet nurse was doing her job, Nicole had to suppose.
Fabia Honorata was downstairs in the shop when Nicole went over the next morning, sitting on the tinker’s bench, looking as if she hadn’t sat down or rested in days. She looked up as Nicole came in, and managed a greeting, but not a smile.
Nicole asked the question she had to ask. “Fabia Ursa?”
“Not good,” Fabia Honorata said, too exhausted for anything resembling dramatics. “She doesn’t recognize any of us. She thrashes in the bed. The fever burns her like fire. Pray to whoever you think will hear you. I’d even pray to the Christians’ blustering fool of a god if I thought it would do any good.”