Regina felt a twinge of guilt. Why did it have to be like this? Why did she have to inflict so much pain on her children?... "Because it is for the best," she muttered. "Even if they cannot see it."
The group broke up, avoiding Regina. Only Ambrosius was left watching her, his eyes wide.
• • •
Later, in her office, they drank watered wine. Ambrosius was cautious, watchful.
She smiled, tired. "You think I am a mad old woman."
"I understand nothing of what I have seen here," he said honestly. "Would you really turn her out if she got pregnant?"
"Agrippina has spent almost all her life in the Crypt. What lies outside, the disorder, the chaos — even the weather — rightly terrifies her. But it would be for the best."
"She is your granddaughter," he said hotly. "How can you say such an exile would be the best for her?"
"Not for her," Regina said. "The best for those who follow. The best for the Order... It is hard for me to understand, too," she said bluntly. "I follow my instincts — make my decisions — and then try to understand why I do what I do, where is the rightness.
"But consider this." She poured a glass of wine. "We are safe in here, and we are bound by family ties. In fact we are so crammed in that it is only family ties that keep us from murdering each other. But with time family ties weaken. How can I keep that from happening?
"Imagine this wine is the blood of my daughter — blood that is mine, mixed with that of a buffoon called Amator — he does not matter. Brica gives birth." She poured some of the wine into a second glass, and mixed it with water. "Here is Agrippina — half the blood of Brica, half of her father — and so only a quarter mine. But if Agrippina were to have a child — " She poured the mixture into another glass, diluting it further. "Agrippina's blood is mixed with the father's, and so is only an eighth mine." She sat back and sighed. "My granddaughter's blood is closer to mine than is my great-granddaughter's. And so I want more granddaughters. Do you see?"
"Yes, but I don't—"
"We can't leave this Crypt," she snapped. "We have no arms, no warriors to protect us. And though we are expanding our space, our numbers expand faster. We can't support too many babies at once — we don't have the room. Now — " She pushed forward the glasses. "Suppose I have to choose between a baby of Agrippina's, or another baby of Brica's. Brica's baby would be closer to my blood, which would bind us more tightly together — and, if Agrippina were to support her mother, might actually have a better chance of living to adulthood. Which should I choose?"
He nodded slowly. "Yes, I see your logic — sisters matter more than daughters — it is better for Agrippina to support more sisters than to have her own children. But it is an insane logic, Regina."
"Insane?"
"It is better for you, perhaps, if you accept this hot logic of the blood, even better for your Order — but not for Agrippina."
She shrugged. "If Agrippina doesn't accept it, she can leave."
He said gently, "You are like no woman I ever encountered. Like no mother, certainly. And yet you endure; I can't deny that." He strode and began pacing around the room, fingering the hilt of the dagger at his belt. "But I must get out of here," he said. "The airlessness — the closeness — forgive me, madam."
She smiled, and rose to show him out.
Chapter 31
The changes in her body seemed to come terribly quickly. She passed water almost hourly. Her breasts swelled and became sensitive. She tried to maintain her normal life — her classes, her after-hours work in the scrinium — but if she had stuck out from the crowd before, now it was by a mile.
She sat with Pina in a refectory. "Before they ignored me. Now they stare the whole time."
Pina grinned. "They're just responding to you. A very basic human reaction. You glow, Lucia. You can't help it."
"Do you think they envy me?" She looked at her friend. "Do you?"
Pina's expression became complex. "I don't know. I will never have what you have. I can't imagine how it feels."
"A part of you wants it, though," Lucia said bluntly. "A part of you wants to be a mother, as all women were mothers, in primitive times."
"But what we have here is better. Sisters matter more than daughters."
"Of course," Lucia said mechanically. "But I'll tell you what, if anybody does envy me, they can watch me throwing up in the mornings."
Pina laughed. "Well, you can't go on working in the scrinium."
"No. I distract everybody."
"Shall I speak to Rosa? You ought to continue your schooling. But perhaps they will find you an apartment down with the matres."
"Wonderful. Order my false teeth and smelly cardigan now..."
• • •
The day after that, her morning nausea was worse than ever. Soon she felt so exhausted that she had to give up her classes as well as her work.
By the sixth week, as Pina had suggested, she was moved to a small room on the third story, in the deep downbelow.
It was dark, the walls coated with rich flocked wallpaper and the floor thickly carpeted, and it was cluttered with ancient-looking furniture. It was an old lady's room, she thought miserably. But she had it to herself, and though she often missed the presence of others, the susurrus of hundreds of girls breathing all around her in the night, it was a haven of peace.
Her body's changes proceeded at their own frightening pace, and the weight in her belly grew daily. From the eighth week a doctor attended her twice a day. She was called Patrizia; she might have been forty, but she was slim, composed, ageless.
Patrizia pressed Lucia's gums, which had become spongy. "Good," she said. "That's normal. The effect of pregnancy hormones."
"My heart is rattling," Lucia said. "Though I feel sleepy all the time, it keeps me awake."
"It's having to work twice as hard. Your uterus needs twice as much blood as usual, your kidneys a quarter more—"
"I am always breathless. I pant — puff, puff, puff."
"The fetus is pressing on your diaphragm. You are breathing more rapidly and more deeply to increase your supply of oxygen."
"I can feel my ribs spreading. My hips are so sore I can barely walk. I get pins and needles in my hands and cramps in my feet. I either have constipation or diarrhea. I am a martyr to piles. My veins make my legs look like blue cheese—"
Patrizia laughed. "All this is normal!"
"Yesterday I felt the baby kick."
Patrizia, for once, hesitated. "Perhaps you did."
"But this is my eighth week. I am still in my first trimester!"
Patrizia looked down on her. "Somebody has been reading too much."
"Actually, I have been looking up the Internet from my cell phone." And from that she had learned the startling fact that among contadino women a pregnancy would last nine months, and you would not expect to have more than one child a year...
"There is nothing for you to learn on the Internet. Child, we have been delivering babies here for the best part of two thousand years — our way, and successfully." She placed her hand on Lucia's forehead. "You must trust us."
But after that conversation Patrizia took her cell phone away.
In the weeks that followed, the changes in her body only seemed to accelerate. She was subject to many more tests, some of them conducted with very modern equipment. She had a chorion biopsy, and a fetoscopy, and an alpha-fetoprotein test, and amniocentesis. Her baby was imaged with ultrasound. She was astonished at its size and development.
And then — just thirteen weeks after her sole intercourse with Giuliano — she went into labor.
• • •
Everything was a blur. She found herself squatting, naked, in a darkened room. Pina was behind her, supporting her under her armpits. Pina spoke to her, but she couldn't hear what she said. There was little pain, for electrodes taped to her flesh were passing currents through her back.
Patrizia was here, working competently, calmly, and quickly. An
d she was surrounded by women — Rosa, other doctors and nurses, even some of the matres, a great huddle of femaleness, touching her, stroking her belly and shoulders, kissing her softly, their lips tasting sweet, somehow reassuring.
In the last moments there was a sense of calm, she thought. It was oddly like a church. People spoke softly, if they spoke at all, and every eye was on her. She was the center of everything, for once in her life, the whole Order following the rhythms of her own body.
But it is only thirteen weeks, she thought, deep in her mind. Thirteen weeks!
The labor was as rapid as the rest of the pregnancy. When the baby crowned, she felt a burning sensation around her vagina, and then only numbness.
They showed her the baby briefly. It was a girl, a little crimson mass, but, Patrizia assured her, strong and healthy. Lucia held her, just for a moment.
Then Patrizia gently took the baby back. The nurses wrapped the child in blankets, and receded out of sight. Patrizia pressed an infuser at Lucia's neck, and the world slipped away.
Chapter 32
As she grew older, in the smoky, unchanging warmth of the Crypt, time flowed smoothly for Regina, despite her careful calendar keeping and record making. Still, she often thought back to the day of her last meeting with Ambrosius Aurelianus, and of her treatment of Agrippina. Her actions that day had had significant consequences — that day, at least, had become memorable.
Three years after that day, Julia, the younger sister of Agrippina, reached the time for her own menarche — and yet no blood flowed. It was not until her eighteenth year, in fact, four years older than her sister, that her bleeding finally began, and even then it was fitful. Julia was a cheerful, competent girl, more confident in fact than her older sister, but it had been as if her body itself had been frightened by the treatment Agrippina had received from Regina, and had wished to postpone the same as long as possible.
Regina welcomed this strange development — even though it scared her a little to think that such strange powers might exist in the world, in her.
Some time after that, she heard of another consequence of that fateful day.
Artorius had mounted his last campaign. Thanks to the treachery of his "ally" the imperial prefect Arvandus, he had finally been defeated, by the Visigoth king Euric. He retreated to the kingdom of the Burgundians, after which nothing more was heard of him. He certainly never returned to Britain; he was probably dead.
Perhaps if she had stayed at his side, Regina wondered, her cunning might have kept him alive a little longer. But any money she had given Artorius, any support, would merely have been frittered away on one more campaign, one more battle, until death finally caught up with him.
Ambrosius Aurelianus went on to greater glories, though. After Artorius, his own leadership qualities emerged, and his defeat of the Saxons at the battle of Mount Badon granted the British a respite. It was a feat that won Ambrosius the nickname last of the Romans.
But more Saxons arrived to reinforce their petty coastal kingdoms. They pushed farther west and north, and the British, expelled from their homes, succumbed or fled, just as Artorius had long foreseen. And in the wake of the Saxons, Roman Britain was erased, down to the foundations. The despairing British were left with nothing but legends of how Artorius was not dead, but sleeping, his mighty sword Chalybs at his side.
• • •
There came a day when Brica's womb dried.
"But I am content," Regina said to Leda, her half sister. They were sitting in the peristylium, the strange underground garden of the Crypt, where the mushrooms seemed to glow like lanterns. The three most senior women of the inner family were here: Regina herself, Leda, and Venus, granddaughter of Regina's aunt Helena. "Brica has given me eight grandchildren — three boys, who have already started their apprenticeships in the world beyond, and five fine and beautiful workers for the Order. Nobody could do more."
"Yes, Regina."
"We are healthy stock — and our lives are long, in the shelter of the Crypt."
It was true. It was six years after the visit of Ambrosius Aurelianus. Regina was now in her seventies, and Brica herself was over fifty. Even at Rome's height, few people had lived beyond forty, fewer still past fifty; and in the current times of turmoil, with rampant disease, poor supplies of food and water, and assaults from barbarians, that average was dropping steadily. But not in the Crypt.
"And, as we live long, we stay fertile. But I am concerned for Brica herself." Now that she was barren, Brica seemed exhausted, worn out by the relentless demands of childbirth; she drifted around the Crypt purposelessly. "We must make her comfortable, reassure her..."
"But," Venus said delicately, "there is the question of the nursery."
Regina said vaguely, "The nursery?"
"The youngest child is already three," said Leda. "We need more babies. We must maintain — " She gestured.
"A flow." Regina opened her gummy mouth and cackled. "Like the great sewers. We need to push babies in at one end of the system, to ensure a nice smooth flow of effluent at the other."
"Not quite the way I would have put it," said Venus. Since being elected to the Council she had grown in confidence, and had developed a dry wit. "But, yes, you're right." She added delicately, "We need to decide on a — replacement — for Brica."
Leda nodded.
Of course they were right; this was the logic of how they had been running the Order, already for more than twenty years.
It was the slow unfolding of the instinctive vision Regina had always held in her head. Space would always be limited here. If all the female members of the family proved as fecund as Brica, there would soon be no room left. So, just as Regina had ordered with Agrippina, only a handful of women were encouraged to have children at any one time. Their siblings and growing daughters were expected to assist these central mothers to bear more young, to raise more sisters, even at the expense of families of their own. They should stay childless through the use of contraceptives, or abstinence — or best of all by simply delaying their menarche through the mysterious workings of their bodies, as had happened to Brica's second daughter Julia, and a number of other girls since.
Rationing births in this way kept the numbers down, and ensured that the blood was not diluted, that the family bonds stayed as tight as possible. It worked. And if this kept up, Regina saw clearly, then in a few generations there would be nobody here but family, a great mesh of sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, a core locked together by insoluble bonds of blood and ancestry, able to cope with the inevitably cramped conditions of the Crypt.
But the system threw up dilemmas, such as now. Brica's fecund days were over, and a new mother must be found.
"I suggest Agrippina," Leda said. "Brica's first daughter," she went on to note, in case Regina needed reminding. "She has been patient since — "
"Since the day I ruined her life?" Regina cackled again. "I hear the mutterings."
"Six years," Venus said, "of coping with one little sister after another. Perhaps it is her turn."
"No," said Regina thoughtfully. "Let it be Julia." Agrippina's younger sister.
Leda frowned. "Agrippina will be disappointed."
Regina shrugged. "That's not the point. Think about it. Let Agrippina be the first of the Order to go through an entire life devoted not to the selfish demands of her own body, not to her own daughters, but selflessly to her sisters. An entire life. She will be a model for others, an inspiration for generations to come. She will be honored."
Leda and Venus exchanged a glance. Regina knew they didn't always understand her edicts. But then Regina didn't always understand them herself.
"All right." Venus stood up. She was heavily pregnant herself, again, and she winced as she hauled herself to her feet. "But, Regina, you can tell Agrippina—"
A messenger ran into the peristylium, flushed and excited, interrupting the women. Regina had been summoned to the imperial palace.
• • •<
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When she took herself out of Council meetings and the like and just walked around the growing Crypt, it sometimes startled Regina to realize there were already thousands of people involved in the Order, in one way or another.
She thought of the Order as like the bulb of a fine fat spring onion. At its heart was the family: the descendants of the sisters Julia and Helena, now both long dead, and their descendants, including Leda, Venus, Regina herself, and Brica and her children. Aside from them, at any one time there were hundreds of students living either in the Crypt itself, or in the buildings the Order maintained overground. Beyond that there were workers with peripheral connections to the Order: for example, the peripatetic teachers and orators, the miners who tunneled steadily underground, even bankers and lawyers who managed the Order's income and investments. And then there was a more diffuse outer circle of those who simply contributed to the Order, in cash or in kind: the families of students paying their fees, former students gratefully contributing through gifts or legacies to the establishment that had educated them so well.
But in all this, the safety of the central family was paramount. That had been Regina's goal when she had sacrificed her relationship with Brica to get her out of Britain and bring her here, and that was her goal now.
She was satisfied with what she had done so far. But of course everything was temporary. The Order didn't have to last forever — just long enough to shelter the family until things got back to normal. And she was becoming convinced that, yes, she had stumbled on a system that would work to achieve that goal.
Her own end could not be far away. She knew that from the dreadful weakness she felt in the morning, her unfortunate habit of coughing up blood — and the disturbing sensation of a hard, immovable mass in her belly, like a giant turd that would not pass out of her system. It was just like the illness that had taken Cartumandua, she remembered. She did not fear her own death. All she feared was that the system might not be completed before she was gone. What had she missed? That was the question she asked herself every day. What had she missed?...
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