Gunpowder Empire

Washing dishes was another pain. You couldn't get anything clean, not the way it would have been back home. Scrubbing a bowl with a rag in cold water without soap would have frustrated a saint. Going back to the home timeline for most of the year had let Amanda forget how tough things were here. The first evening reminded her in a hurry.

After the sun went down, the only lights in the main part of the house were olive-oil lamps and candles. The traders couldn't show anything different from what other people in Polisso had. Trouble was, those lamps and candles didn't give off a whole lot of light. Shadows lurked in corners. They reared when flames flickered. And, when a lamp ran dry or a candle burned out, they would swoop.

Amanda found herself yawning. You didn't get sleepy right after sundown back home. Electric lights held night at bay. Not these feeble lamps. Here, night was night, the time to lie quiet. Like somebody out of a fairy tale, Amanda carried a candle to bed. It gave just enough light so she didn't trip and break her neck, but not a dollar's worth more.

She yawned again when she got to the bedroom. The bed, she remembered, was all right. Leather lashings attached to the frame weren't as good as a box spring, but they weren't bad. The mattress was stuffed with wool. It got lumpy, but you could sleep on it. The blanket was wool, too. No one here knew about sheets. The pillow, now, the pillow was full of goose down. That would have cost a pile of benjamins back home.

Before Amanda went to sleep, she rubbed on insect repellent. It came in a little pottery jar, so it looked like a local medicine. Unlike local medicines, it really worked. Bedbugs and fleas and mosquitoes were bad enough. Lice… Amanda shuddered and slathered on more repellent. She'd found out the hard way why lousy meant what it did.

She blew out the candle. The darkness that had been hovering poured down on her. She could hardly tell the difference between having her eyes open and closed. She didn't keep them open very long anyway. Sleep hit her over the head like a rock.

Next thing she knew, the new day's first sunlight was trickling in through the shutters. That wasn't what woke her, though. The new day's first wagon was clattering past outside. A second one followed, and a third, and a fourth. Like a lot of towns in Agrippan Rome, Polisso had a law against wheeled traffic at night. That let people sleep. But as soon as it got light…

She'd slept in her tunic. On a hot night, she would have slept nude. Nude and regular clothes were the only choices you had here. Nobody'd thought of pajamas or nightgowns or anything of the sort.

For breakfast, Amanda ate leftover porridge from the night before. It had sat in the pot all night. Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old wasn't a nursery rhyme here. It was a way of life. No refrigerators in Agrippan Rome. No ice at all in summertime. (No ice cream, either. She sighed. Thinking of food could make her homesick like nothing else.)

No one had finished eating before somebody knocked on the door. Jeremy said something rude in English.

“Try that in neoLatin,” Dad said. The knock came again. It was louder and more insistent. He muttered a few words that might have been neoLatin-or might not, too. “People go to bed with the sun here. They wake up with the sun, and they're ready to do business.”

Bang! Bang! Bang! Whoever was out there sounded ready to break down the door.

Amanda rose from her stool. “I'll get it,” she said. “I'm almost done here.”

When she opened the door, the man outside was reaching for the knocker to pound some more. He dropped his hand. He also gave back a step in surprise. People in Polisso often did the first time they saw Amanda. She was five or six centimeters taller than this fellow, for instance.

“Bono diurno.” she said sweetly. “What can I do for you, sir?”

He didn't return her good day. Instead, still staring, he blurted, “You're not Marco Petro!” A moment later, he added, “You're not even part of his family,” which made a little more sense.

“No, sir,” she agreed, still polite. The man was olive-ski

Hearing it a second time seemed to make him notice her as a person, not just a phenomenon. He said, “I am here to do business. Let me see your father.” Then he paused and asked in a small voice, “Is he nine feet tall?”

The Roman foot was a little shorter than the one the USA had used till it went metric. Even so, nobody in the world was nine Roman feet tall. Amanda didn't like the rest of what the local had said, either. “You can do business with me, sir. What do you need? An hour-reckoner? A razor? A knife with many tools? One of the special mirrors we sell?”

“You… do business?” the man asked. In Polisso, women didn't, except those on their own or too poor not to. Amanda didn't fit either of those categories. He could see that much. Under his breath, he said, “Well, you are an Amazon in size- why not in ma

Amanda pretended not to hear that. If she didn't hear it, she didn't have to decide whether it was compliment or insult. She said, “Please come in,” and then, as he walked past her, “Whose man of affairs are you?”

He stopped and gave her a fu

“By the way you dress. By the way you talk. If you were a merchant on your own, you would have a different way of speaking. If you were a noble, your tunic would have more embroidery.” It would be of finer wool, too, but Amanda didn't mention that.

“Well, girl, you are right,” the local said. He tried to get some of his own back with that faintly scornful girl and with the way he went on: “I am Lucio Claudio, called Fusco. I have the honor to serve the most illustrious Gaio Fulvio, called Magno-and he is great indeed.“

Amanda knew who Gaio Fulvio was. He had probably the largest estate of any noble who lived in Polisso. He'd dealt with Crosstime Traffic traders before, but never with the Solters family. “We are pleased to have the most illustrious Gaio Fulvio for a customer,” she said. “I ask you again, what would he like?”

“An hour-reckoner,” Lucio Claudio answered. “He has seen those that other men in the city have. They are more convenient than water clocks. He can carry one with him, and he does not have to keep a slave boy filling and emptying basins.”

“True,” Amanda said gravely. So it was. A lot of nobles in Polisso had figured out the same thing years before. Some still hadn't, though. If their grandfathers hadn't had watches, they didn't want them, either. Things changed slowly in Agrippan Rome. That made people want to think they didn't change at all. But things always changed, whether people wanted them to or not.

She led Gaio Fulvio's man to the room where the trade goods were on display. His eyes went from one big pocket watch to another. Before he spoke or pointed, she told herself she knew which one he'd choose. When he said, “That one,” she almost hugged herself with glee. She'd hit it right on the money.

He'd picked the biggest, gaudiest watch the merchants carried. To Amanda, it looked like a bright blue enamel turnip with gilding splashed here and there. The back had a gilded relief of Cupid shooting an arrow into Paris as he gazed at Helen of Troy. It couldn't have been more tasteless if it tried for a week.

But it was popular as could be in Polisso. People here liked things that were big and bright and overdecorated. They admired them. Two hundred years before Amanda's time, the Victorians in her world had been the same way.