Judith Tarr - Household Gods

Olive oil was a fat, but God knew it was better than butter. This body didn’t look as if it needed to worry much about its weight. Even so, a lifetime of habit persuaded Nicole to push the bowl of oil away and investigate the cup. Again she sniffed. Again her eyebrows rose, but this time they rose higher. Wine? At breakfast? What was she supposed to be, an alcoholic?

Dammit, she needed to know her employee’s name. Rather than sing out Yo! or You there! she coughed. That did it: the young woman looked up from the two trays she was filling as she’d filled Nicole’s. Her eyes were wide, her face a mask of apprehension. All her emotions seemed to be broad, cartoonish, as if she were playing a role, and not too well, either.

Those emotions were real. Nicole would have been willing to bet on that. They were just… exaggerated. For effect? Or because she’d never learned to tone them down? “Is something wrong, Mistress? “ she asked anxiously.

“Yes,” Nicole said, and the woman’s face went white. Terror? Good Lord, Nicole thought. Umma must have been a raving tartar. She smoothed her voice as much as she could, though she couldn’t rid it of all the disapproval. That was too deeply ingrained, for too long, in Nicole’s other — future — life. “I don’t think I’ll be having wine this morning. Would you bring me some water instead?”

“Water?” The other woman’s eyebrows flew up almost to her hairline.

She was as astonished as if Nicole had asked for — well, wine. Or Scotch. Or creamed angleworms on toast. “Mistress, are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Nicole hadn’t meant to snap so hard. She hadn’t meant to crush the servant — just to shake her loose from her incredulity and set her to fetching the water. The young woman looked as if she expected to be fired without a reference. More gently, as gently as she could, Nicole said, “I may stop drinking wine altogether. Water’s more healthy, don’t you think?”

“Healthy?” The servant’s eyebrows went up even higher this time. She was easy to reassure, at least; soften the tone even a little and she forgot she’d ever been snapped at.

Or else she really was too incredulous to watch her step around an employer she so evidently feared. Nicole had to be acting completely and shockingly out of character.

“Healthy?” she repeated. “Water? Mistress, your customers won’t think so, if you try to tell them such a thing.”

“What do you mean?” Nicole said.

Her employee stared at her. She had, she realized, just asked her first truly stupid question here in Carnuntum. The young woman retreated to the long stone counter, as if it represented some kind of refuge. Something in the way she walked, and in the things she’d said, made Nicole see it suddenly for what it was. It wasn’t a counter. It was a bar.

Not caring for an instant what the other woman might think, she hurried over to it and lifted the wooden lids she’d ignored before. Under each of them rested an amphora with a bronze dipper. The strong alcoholic smell of wine floated up to her nose.

Umma wasn’t running a restaurant. She was running a tavern. Nicole startled herself with the intensity of her revulsion and anger. How many men of Carnuntum would stagger home drunk to abuse their spouses and children because of this place? Any one of them could have been her father: face red with drink and rage, mouth open wide as he bellowed at his wife, hand swinging up to hit whatever, or whomever, got in its way.

“I will not,” she said tightly, “sell — this — “

The employee didn’t understand. “Mistress, most of it’s not Falernian, but it’s all the best we can get for the price. Why, you said — “

Nicole cut her off. She had to understand. It was very, very important that she understand. “I will not sell wine. “

Her expression must have been alarming. The young woman started to babble again. “Mistress, are you ill? Have you lost your senses? You know we have to sell wine. If you don’t, nobody will come here. We’ll all go hungry.”

“I could serve — “ Nicole started to say coffee, only to discover that the Latin she’d acquired had no word for it. She used the English instead.

“Coffee?” The young woman’s accent did strange things to the vowels. “I don’t know what that is, Mistress. Where would you get it? How would you serve it?”

Nicole started to answer, but stopped. Blue Mountain coffee came from Jamaica, Kalossi Celebes from Indonesia, Kona from Hawaii, good old unexciting Yuban from Colombia. She didn’t know much about Roman history, but she was pretty sure those weren’t places the Romans had ever heard of.

Her employee seemed absolutely convinced she couldn’t make a go of a restaurant that didn’t serve wine. Nicole had no way of knowing whether she was right, not on her first morning in Carnuntum.

This was the only guide she had, the only hope of getting through without being labeled insane or worse. She’d seen it in movies, how the alien landed on earth with a head full of data but missing a few of the most important. He was always found out, and then he had to suffer. Did the Romans have police? Government agencies? Whatever they’d call the CIA?

She had to fit in, at least at first. She had to act normal, or people would ask too many questions, questions she couldn’t answer. “Very well,” she said grudgingly. “We’ll keep on serving wine. For now. But,” she went on, and that was firm, “I will drink water.”

The servant sighed deeply, the kind of sigh that said, You may be crazy, but you’re still the boss. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, meekly enough, and poured her a cup from a pitcher on the bar.

Because the cup was earthenware and not glass, Nicole couldn’t admire its crystal clarity as she would have liked. But when she sipped, she let out a sigh of pleasure. Now this was water, water as it ought to taste. What came out of the tap in Los Angeles was as full of chlorine as a swimming pool, and full of God only knew what all other chemicals. None of those pollutants here — just good, pure H 2O.

“See?” Nicole set down the empty cup. “This is what’s good for you.”

“Yes, Mistress.” The young woman sounded even more resigned, and even more dubious, than she had before.

A clatter from upstairs distracted them both from what might have been an uncomfortable pause. The servant smiled. “Here come the children, Mistress. They were sleepy today, weren’t they?”

“Weren’t they?” Nicole echoed. Her employee, fortunately, didn’t seem to notice how hollow her voice sounded. How in the world was she going to convince — how many? — children she’d never seen before that she was their mother? She had no idea what to do or say — no time to think, either, before they were on her.

IT went, thank God, better than she’d dared hope. It still wasn’t easy, not for her, but the kids, like the servant, seemed prepared to take her on faith. Why not? She looked like their mother. She sounded like their mother. Who else could she be?

By now she took in data as automatically, and almost as effortlessly, as she had when she was studying for the bar exam. As she had then, she shut out emotions that wouldn’t immediately serve her purposes, simply recorded them and filed them away to deal with later.

She had — Umma had — two children: a son named Lucius, who looked about eight years old, and a daughter called Aurelia, a couple of years younger. Aurelia reminded Nicole of Kimberley. It wasn’t just that they were near enough the same age, and it certainly wasn’t that they looked alike — Aurelia, naturally enough, looked like a smaller version of Umma. But the way she carried herself, the turn of her head when she looked at her mother, the prim little purse of her mouth, were all strikingly like Kimberley.