Authors: Judith Tarr
Household Gods (8 page)
After a moment, she walked over to the window. The light
that came through was as strange as everything else. It wasn't the harsh, uncompromising desert glare of Los Angeles, or the gray-gold wash of morning in Indiana. It was softer, moister than either. It reminded her of something. But where? When? The memory wouldn't click.
that came through was as strange as everything else. It wasn't the harsh, uncompromising desert glare of Los Angeles, or the gray-gold wash of morning in Indiana. It was softer, moister than either. It reminded her of something. But where? When? The memory wouldn't click.
She looked out, east, toward the strongest of the light. She couldn't see the sun. Most of her horizon was the wall of another building across a narrow, muddy alley. It was as tall as the one she stood in, two stories, more or less. If she craned down the alley she could see what must be the front of it, where it shrank to a single story. The first floor of each building was stone, with whitewashed plaster above. The red tile roof on the building across the alley made her think of California houses, the ones she called pink palaces, by Taco Bell out of a Spanish hacienda.
She leaned out the window to, peer northâleftâup the alley. It opened on another street that ran perpendicular to it. Some of the buildings along it and across the other, wider street were of stone and plasterwork like the one she was in. One or two had front porches supported by stone columns. Others were built of wood, with thatched roofs.
Picturesque
, she thought, as if she were a tourist and could relish the quaint and the twee. But even as she thought the word, she discarded it. There was nothing cute or touristy about the muscular stench assaulting her nostrils. She was getting used to it, enough at least not to gag and choke, but it never came close to disappearing.
Picturesque
, she thought, as if she were a tourist and could relish the quaint and the twee. But even as she thought the word, she discarded it. There was nothing cute or touristy about the muscular stench assaulting her nostrils. She was getting used to it, enough at least not to gag and choke, but it never came close to disappearing.
The alley was amazingly narrow; she could almost touch the house on the other side. The street beyond it was broader but equally unpaved, and no wider than a California alley. It didn't look as if two cars could slip past each other in it. Not that she saw any try. There were no cars parked on it, either, the way there surely would have been anywhere in the Los Angeles area.
The thought slipped away before she grasped it. She didn't see any cars. She didn't hear any, either. A mournful cry close by nearly startled her out of her skin. It sounded like a train whistle crossed on a car horn and mismated with a
flat trumpet. A human voice growled in the wake of it: “Come on, curse you!” The sound brayed out again. A sharp whack cut it short. The man snarled, “There, that'll shift you, you dirty bugger.”
flat trumpet. A human voice growled in the wake of it: “Come on, curse you!” The sound brayed out again. A sharp whack cut it short. The man snarled, “There, that'll shift you, you dirty bugger.”
Nicole gasped. Automatically, as if in her own bedroom, she looked around for the telephone book, to find the number of the SPCA. No phone book. No phone. God, what if there was no SPCA?
She leaned out the window again, half sagging on the rough wood of the sill. Her knees weren't so steady as they might be. Two figures came down the street, the man who had spoken and the thing that had made that braying sound: a small gray long-eared donkey.
The man looked as strange as everything else in this world, dream, hallucination, whatever it was. He wore a belted tunic of undyed wool, a little shorter than hers, with a hood shrugged down over his back. In one hand he held a rough rope knotted to the donkey's halter, in the other a stout stick, no doubt the weapon with which he'd abused the poor beast. The donkey tottered along under a massive load, four huge clay pots strapped to its back with a complicated set of leather lashings. The pots all together stood higher than the donkey, and looked hideously heavy.
The man caught her eye and waved without letting go of the stick, a bit of bravado that made her think of Tony Gallagher. “Good morning to you, Umma,” he called. His smile showed a couple of missing teeth. The molar in Nicole's mouth twinged in sympathy. “Looks like a nice day, doesn't it?”
“Yes, I think so,” she answeredâand ducked back into the room in astonished confusion. He'd spoken to herâand to the donkey, for that matterâin a language she'd never heard before. And she, worse, had answered in the same tongue.
If she let it, that other language came to her lips as readily as English. When she thought
What in God's name is going on?
it came out as
Qui in nomin' Dei fit?
It sounded something like the Spanish that made sizable parts of Los Angeles
seem a foreign country, but that wasn't quite right, either.
What in God's name is going on?
it came out as
Qui in nomin' Dei fit?
It sounded something like the Spanish that made sizable parts of Los Angeles
seem a foreign country, but that wasn't quite right, either.
When her mind groped for the name of the language, she felt a shift and a click, a sensation somewhat like opening a program that someone had installed on her computer's hard drive without bothering to tell her. Frank would do a thing like that. But did Frank know Latin?
“Sed non possum latine loqui,
” she protested, and stopped. She wanted to scream, or to giggle crazily. Could you say
But I can't speak Latin
in Latin? Of course you could. She'd just done it.
” she protested, and stopped. She wanted to scream, or to giggle crazily. Could you say
But I can't speak Latin
in Latin? Of course you could. She'd just done it.
As if opening that one file had opened another cross-referenced to it, her memory came clearer than it had since she awakened in this strange place, in this body that wasn't hers. She remembered the wish she'd made just before she went to bed in West Hills, California. Or maybe it had been a prayer, to Liber and Libera, the gods with the names that to her had always meant both freedom and sympathy. To go back to their time. To live in their world.
“I don't believe it,” she said, deliberately making herself speak English. Odd, came the fugitive thought, that the language hadn't vanished with all the rest of her, subsumed in strangeness.
She didn't believe it. But she'd felt the gods' kisses on her palmâcould feel them now, like the memory of a static shock. She looked down at the rough, callused, workworn hand and the arm it sprang from. That was not the hand that had felt the touch of those stony lips, or that small and doubled snap of divine energy.
Once more Nicole turned to the window, half hoping that it would look down on something she knew. The street was still there, the house next door, but the man and the donkey were gone. Other people had taken their place, a morning rush of people. Rush hour inâwhere? Ancient Rome? Most of them wore tunics and kept their heads down. A few men strutted along importantly in what looked like enormous beach towels wrapped around their bodies and tucked over one shoulder. Togas, those had to be togas.
Something creaked and squeakedâthe axle of a cart, she
saw as it trundled past. The wheels, solid slabs of wood without spokes, sent up a cloud of dust. So did the hooves of the oxen drawing the cart. One of the oxen lifted its tail and dropped a trail of steaming green dung down the middle of the alley. No one came rushing out with a pooper-scooper. The cart creaked down the street and groaned round a corner and out of sight.
saw as it trundled past. The wheels, solid slabs of wood without spokes, sent up a cloud of dust. So did the hooves of the oxen drawing the cart. One of the oxen lifted its tail and dropped a trail of steaming green dung down the middle of the alley. No one came rushing out with a pooper-scooper. The cart creaked down the street and groaned round a corner and out of sight.
Once more she looked up, straining to see northward. More buildings, a gray stone wall, and beyond them a blue curve of hills. Those hills ⦠she knew them. She remembered â¦
“The hills on the other side of the Danube,” she whispered, not noticing or caring whether in English or Latin. She remembered those hills. They hadn't been so thickly forested when she saw them, but she'd promised herself never to forget their shape, the way they rose and swelled under the soft blue-gray sky. She hugged herself. She was cold and warm, both at once: awed, astonished, terrified, overjoyed.
“Carnuntum!” In Latin, with this body's accent, it had a sweeter, stronger rhythm than she'd known before, and a lilt to it like the refrain of a song. “I'm in Carnuntum! This is the Roman Empire, and I'm in Carnuntum, and the year isâthe year isâ”
That, she didn't know. It hadn't been uploaded, or installed, or whatever the word was. As if her brain had hit a bad sector, the lawyerly part of her clicked awake, looked around, and said a flat, No. And, when the rest of her tried to argue with it:
This isn't real. This isn't Carnuntum. You're hallucinating.
This isn't real. This isn't Carnuntum. You're hallucinating.
Really, counselor?
the rest of her asked a little too sweetly, the same tone she'd taken in court more than once, just before she moved in for the kill.
So it's not Carnuntum, and this isn't the Roman Empire. How do I know enough about either of them to hallucinate anything this elaborate?
the rest of her asked a little too sweetly, the same tone she'd taken in court more than once, just before she moved in for the kill.
So it's not Carnuntum, and this isn't the Roman Empire. How do I know enough about either of them to hallucinate anything this elaborate?
The lawyer-self couldn't answer that. Nicole turned in the room, all the way around, from window back to window again. After awe, fear, hysteria, panic, disbelief, all the wild mishmash of shock and realization, she settled on the best
of all, the one she should have had from the first: dizzy, singing joy.
of all, the one she should have had from the first: dizzy, singing joy.
“Thank you,” she said in a voice almost too full for sound. Then, louder: “Thank you, god and goddess! Thank you!” She danced across the room in a country-western step that wouldn't be invented forâhow long?
She paused before she spun right out of the window, and forced some small calm. Soâwhat did she know? The Roman Empire had gone on for a long time, then declined and fallen. The label on Liber and Libera's plaque, which she'd read often enough to have memorized it, said it dated from the second century A.D. She could reasonably suppose that that was the time she'd come back to, at least till she had a chance to ask. If that was when she was, the Achy-Breaky Shuffle wouldn't be born for another eighteen hundred years.
Good thing, too, probably.
Still whirling with delight in her discovery, she pulled open a top drawer of the chest. She hesitated an instant, with a completely silly attack of guiltâthis wasn't her room, after all. These weren't her clothes.
This wasn't her body, either, but she was using it. She had to cover it somehow.
The drawer she opened held three or four loincloths like the one that clung clammily to her hips and buttocks. She pulled it off with a hiss of relief and put on a clean one.
Under the loincloths on the drawer lay a small and carefully made wooden box. It was not too heavy, not too light, longer than it was wide, about half as deep as the breadth of her hand. She lifted it out and set it on top of the chest. It wasn't locked or latched. Its lid yielded easily to the pressure of her fingers.
A scent of dust and old wood wafted out of the box as she opened it, overlaid with a strong, musky perfume. A small pot lay inside the box. When she opened it, she found it half full of white powder. Two more, smaller yet, held a greasy salve the color ofâ“Sunset Blush,” Nicole said in English. She used Touch of Dawn herself. Sunset Blush was for serious occasions and for old beauties with fading eyesight,
who thought its strong carmine red could trick people into thinking they were young again.
who thought its strong carmine red could trick people into thinking they were young again.
Nicole knew what this box was, then. A makeup set. Jumbled in with the pots were a wooden comb with very fine teeth; a pair of tweezers of bronze or tarnished brass; a thin and pointed piece of the same metal, about as long as her little finger, that might have been a toothpick; and another implement that looked like nothing so much as a coke spoon. She didn't think the Romans had known about cocaine. Maybe it was the Romans' answer to a Q-tip: not stylish, except perhaps in a campy way, but practical. Did they even have cotton here? she wondered. And what did they use for paring nails, if they didn't have nail scissors or clippers?
She was losing herself in detail again. She had to stop doing that. She had to accept, to absorb. She had to be part of this world.
She contemplated the makeup jars, the implements, the block of what must be eyelinerâkohl?âand the little brushes, and thought of her makeup kit at homeâat what used to be home. She drew a shuddering breath. She couldn't be either stylish or practical, not by the standards of this place and time. Not till she could see other women, could know how they did it. That meant going out. That meant appearing in front of people, talking to them as she'd talked to the drover. Her hands were cold, the palms damp. The gods' kisses itched and stung.
Shakily, she returned the jars and implements to the makeup box. She'd paid no particular attention to the square of polished bronze that she'd found on the bottom, except to take it out and see if something else lay underneath. As she went to put it back in, she caught her hand's reflection in it, and the reflection of the box's lid, and realized, with a little shock of recognition, what the thing was for.
“Speculu'!”
she said, then repeated herself in English: “A mirror!” She snatched it out. Her hand was shaking almost too hard to hold the mirror, but she stilled it with a strong effort of will, and stared avidly at the face reflected in the bronze. It wasn't clear, not like the silvered mirrors she remembered,
but dark and faintly blurry. Still, it was enough for the purpose. It bore out what her hands had told her: whoever this was, it wasn't Nicole Gunther-Perrin, West Hills, California, USA.
she said, then repeated herself in English: “A mirror!” She snatched it out. Her hand was shaking almost too hard to hold the mirror, but she stilled it with a strong effort of will, and stared avidly at the face reflected in the bronze. It wasn't clear, not like the silvered mirrors she remembered,
but dark and faintly blurry. Still, it was enough for the purpose. It bore out what her hands had told her: whoever this was, it wasn't Nicole Gunther-Perrin, West Hills, California, USA.
This faceâlong, strong-nosed, strong-chinnedâlooked to be about the same age as the one she'd left behind. The eyes were dark, as she'd more than half expected. When she smiled, the broken tooth was visible, but it wasn't as bad as it had felt. A corner out of an incisor, that was all. It didn't disfigure her. It made her look rather interesting.
Not bad, she thought, deliberately striving for objectivityâlike a lawyer, think clearly, see all the angles, don't involve the self if at all possible. This body she wore was no great beauty, but neither would it make people look away in the street. She considered it with some satisfaction. Beauty would have been too much. This was a good-looking woman, attractive without being too much so, and those cheekbones were everything she'd ever dreamed of when she was growing up. Herâotherâface hadn't had any to speak of.
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