When Nicole thought of slavery, she thought of African-Americans and cotton fields and the Civil War. She vaguely recalled a movie or two about Rome, and something about slaves. Slave revolts? Chariot races? Charlton Heston? Frank would have known, damn him. Frank had a thing for Fifties movie epics. She’d ignored them when he had them on, except to notice that there was a lot of noise and bare skin, and costumes that made her think of a slow night in a Vegas casino. She’d forgotten all that when she prayed to come back to Roman days. She’d never imagined that she’d come back as a slaveowner. No late-twentieth-century minds thought like that.

Neither did they think of traveling back in time at all, not seriously. Not unless they were heavily into fantasy and gaming and all the rest of that unreal nonsense.

This was real enough. So was Julia, sitting there drinking the last of her wine with a little too clearly evident enjoyment.

While Nicole sat speechless, Aurelia held out her cup to Julia and said, “Get me some more wine.” Her eyes flicked to Nicole. She added, “Please.” Her smug little smile was the image of Kimberley’s. Look how good I’m being, it proclaimed to the world, and look what a nasty brat my brother is.

Nicole had always detested that smugness in Kimberley. It didn’t look any better in Aurelia, or do her any more good, either. Nicole snatched the cup from her hand before Julia could take it. She raised it to her nose and sniffed. The odor was unmistakable. “You are giving the children wine?” Her voice was quiet, dangerously so.

Julia understood her. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, as quietly, but without the deadly edge. There was a suggestion of great patience and of indulging a preposterous fancy, but it was too faint to do more than bristle at. “Of course I am, Mistress. I watered the wine half and half, just as I always do. I’d never give it to them neat. You know that, Mistress.”

Nicole didn’t care what excuses she made, nor listen to her beyond that first, damning yes. “You gave them wine,” she said again, incredulous. “What are you trying to do, turn them into – “ She groped in her new Latin vocabulary, hunting for the word that was so clear in English: alcoholics. There wasn’t any such word. The best she could wasn’t quite good enough: “Are you trying to turn them into drunkards?”

“I said,” Julia said with an air of shaky determination, “I watered it exactly as I should, as I was supposed to – as you, Mistress, always told me to – till now.”

She thought she’d done right, Nicole realized. She was so sure of it that she’d even held her ground against her – her owner. Nicole shuddered. Julia, oblivious, went on, “Mistress, by all the gods I don’t know why you’ve taken so against wine today. Are you feeling well? Are you ill? Should I fetch you some poppy juice?”

Poppy juice? Opium? One can of worms at a time. Nicole thought. “I am not ill,” she said with taut-strung patience. “And you are not to give my children wine for breakfast.”

“Then,” said Julia, still defiant, “what am I supposed to give them?”

“Milk, of course,” Nicole answered sharply. Didn’t she know that? Didn’t anybody?

Apparently not. “Milk?” the children and Julia said in chorus, all three; and in the same shocked tone, too. Lucius and Aurelia hacked and gagged and made disgusted faces. You’d have thought she’d just tried to feed them a plate of lima beans.

“Milk?” Aurelia repeated. “It’s slimy!”

“It tastes horrible,” Lucius said. They looked at each other and nodded in perfect, and horrified, agreement. Nicole didn’t think they agreed like that very often.

“It’s expensive,” Julia said, making it sound like a clincher. “And besides, Mistress, you can’t keep it fresh. It’s even worse than fish. You waste what you don’t use, because it’s sure to be sour the next day, especially this time of year. Please pardon me for telling you, but really, Mistress, what in the world makes you want to feed them milk?”

“Because it’s full of – “ Nicole found she couldn’t say calcium in Latin, either, even though it sounded like a Latin word to her. This time, her circumlocution was clumsy: “It helps make bones strong.”

“Barbarians drink milk,” Lucius said, as if that settled everything. “The Marcomanni and the Quadi drink milk.” He stuck out his tongue. Not to be outdone, Aurelia stuck out hers, too.

Some arguments you just couldn’t win. This looked like one of them. Religion, politics, divorce – on some things, people’s minds locked themselves shut and lost the key. If she tried to force it, she’d get into a fight; and that wouldn’t gain her anything.

Sidestep, then. “If you won’t drink milk, will you drink water?” she asked. The children didn’t look happy, but they didn’t screw up their faces and make puking noises, either. Neither did Julia, though her expression was eloquent. Nicole threw an argument at the kids to bolster her case: “I drank water this morning, and it hasn’t hurt me.”

“You did?” Lucius sounded as if she’d just told him – well, as if she’d told him that she’d traveled in time from the twentieth century and she wasn’t his mother at all.

What joy, she thought. A whole family of alcoholics in training, from the baby on up – and their mother is in business selling wine. She’d fix that, maybe not all in a day considering how Julia and the children had reacted to her suggestion that wine maybe wasn’t the best thing for a human to drink, but by Liber and Libera she would show them how a healthy person ought to live. “I certainly did drink water this morning,” she said to Lucius. “Ask Julia if you don’t believe me. She watched me do it. She even fetched the pitcher and poured me a cup. “

Lucius laughed. It was a distinctly and viscerally unpleasant sound, a Beavis-and-Butthead snigger. “Huh! That’s funny, Mother. You can’t believe a slave about anything. Only way they can testify is if you torture them.” He made a horrible face at Julia, a twisted devil-snarl, and jabbed his finger at her, with indescribable boy-type sound effects: hissing and bubbling and an abrupt, blood-curdling shriek.

He was making it up. He had to be. But Julia’s white face and the sudden change in her silence, the way her shoulders went tight and hunched under her sad bag of a tunic, ate away at Nicole’s disbelief.

She’d never taken legal history. It hadn’t been required, and she hadn’t been interested, and she hadn’t had time even if she had been interested. Now, with piercing intensity, she wished that she had.

Legal history she might have missed, but she’d been a parent long enough to know how to shut down a thread of discussion that was going in a dangerous direction. Briskly, she said, “We’re not talking about court right now, young man. Are you saying Julia and I would both lie to you about what I drank? ‘

Lucius shrank suddenly, startling her: flinched into himself, as if he’d expected a slap. “No, Mother,” he said. “I’ll drink water after this, Mother. I promise I will.”

God, what had he expected? That she’d clobber him, just because he’d been obnoxious? What kind of mother had this Umma been? Not just alcoholism – abuse. Her stomach, even as full of breakfast as it was, felt small and tight and cold.

It knotted even tighter when Aurelia hastened to agree with her brother. “I’ll drink water, too,” she said. “I’ll drink it right now. Julia, get me some water!”

Julia glanced at Nicole. Nicole nodded sharply. Julia sighed just audibly, poured Aurelia’s wine into her own cup, and filled Aurelia’s again with water.

Nicole’s triumph, such as it was, was evaporating fast. Julia had just manipulated herself into a double ration of wine. Umma’s children were flat-out terrified, and their fear had given Nicole the victory. What kind of mother raised her children to be afraid of her? Not any kind of mother I am, Nicole resolved grimly. And Julia – tricky bits aside, Julia obeyed her mistress, oh, sure. But she did it with slow sullenness, neither too slow nor too sullen to be caught and punished, but just enough to make her feelings clear.