Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp

departed, and shortly thereafter reappeared
with a secondhand sword clanking at his side.
     
                "It's the best I could
do for the money," he explained. "The dealer claimed it was Damascus
work, but you can tell that the Damascus marks on the blade are fakes. This
local steel is soft, but I suppose it will have to do. When I had my beautiful
estate in Africa, the finest steel was none too good." He sighed gustily.
     
                Padway examined the sword,
which was a typical sixth-century spatha with a broad single-edged
thirty-inch blade. It was, in fact, much like a Scotch broadsword without the
fancy knuckle-guard. He also noticed that Fritharik Staifan's son, though as
mournful as ever, stood straighter and walked with a more determined stride
when wearing the sword. He must, Padway thought, feel practically naked without
it.
     
                "Can you cook?"
Padway asked Fritharik.
     
                "You hired me as a
bodyguard, not as a housemaid, my lord Martinus. I have my dignity."
     
                "Oh, nonsense, old man.
I've been doing my own cooking, but it takes too much of my time. If I don't
mind, you shouldn't. Now, can you cook?"
     
                Fritharik pulled his
mustache. "Well — yes."
     
                "What, for instance?"
     
                "I can do a steak. I
can fry bacon."
     
                "What else?"
     
                "Nothing else. That is
all I ever had occasion to do. Good red meat is the food for a warrior. I can't
stomach these greens the Italians eat."
     
                Padway sighed. He resigned
himself to living on an unbalanced diet until — well, why not? He could at
least inquire into the costs of domestic help.
     
                Thomasus found a
serving-wench for him who would cook, clean house, and make beds for an
absurdly low wage. The wench was named Julia. She came from Apulia and talked
dialect. She was about twenty, dark, stocky, and gave promise of developing
tremendous heft in later years. She wore a single shapeless garment and padded
about the house on large bare feet. Now and then she cracked a joke too rapidly
for Padway to follow and shook with peals of laughter. She worked hard, but
Padway had to teach her his ideas from the ground up. The first time he
fumigated his house he almost frightened her out of her wits. The smell of
sulphur dioxide sent her racing out the door shrieking that Satanas had come.
     
    -
     
                Padway decided to knock off
on his fifth Sunday in Rome. For almost a month he had been working all day and
most of the night, helping Hannibal to run the still, clean it, and unload
casks of wine; and seeing restaurateurs who had received inquiries from their
customers about this remarkable new drink.
     
                In an economy of scarcity,
he reflected, you didn't have to turn handsprings finding customers, once your
commodity caught on. He was meditating striking Thomasus for a loan to build another
still. This time he'd build a set of rolls and roll his own copper sheeting out
of round stock, instead of trying to patch together this irregular
hand-hammered stuff.
     
                Just now, though, he was
heartily sick of the business. He wanted fun, which to him meant the Ulpian
Library. As he looked in the mirror, he thought he hadn't changed much inside.
He disliked barging in on strangers, and bargaining as much as ever. But
outside none of his former friends would have known him. He had grown a short
reddish beard. This was partly because he had never in his other life shaved
with a guardless razor, and it gave him the jitters to do so; and partly
because he had always secretly coveted a beard, to balance his oversized nose.
     
                He wore another new tunic, a
Byzantine-style thing with ballooning sleeves. The trousers of his tweed suit
gave an