• • •
She had no idea why the Emperor wanted to see her, but she could scarcely refuse him. So, on the appointed day, she walked alone across the city.
Rome had decayed visibly, even in the time she had lived here.
Many of the aqueducts and sewers were in urgent need of repair. The public granaries were closed. Many monuments and statues had been looted and violated — indeed, people stole stone from them either for building projects of their own, or simply to burn the marble for lime. The drainage of some of the fields beyond the city walls had failed, and they were degenerating into swamps. Sometimes you would see dead cattle drifting down the swollen waters of the Tiber, and starvation and disease routinely stalked the poorer parts of the city. Many of the rich had fled to the comparative comfort of Constantinople; many of the poor had died.
Regina was dismayed, but she had seen it all before. It was Verulamium or Durnovaria writ large. But still the Forum and the markets swarmed; even now it was a great city. And this was Rome; even now she was sure its mighty lungs of concrete and marble still swelled, and the city would recover.
And as Regina approached the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill, even seventeen years after arriving in the city, she was awed.
Itself three centuries old, the palace had been the residence of emperors since Domitian. It sprawled across the whole central portion of the Palatine, a complex of buildings several stories high, roofed by red tiles and coated in decorative stones of many colors. The imperial residence itself was said to be the size of a large villa, with baths, libraries, and several temples — even a private sports stadium — and yet it was lost in the greater maze of buildings. The palace was like a small town in itself, a sink toward which the resources of a continentwide Empire had once flowed.
She was met by a retainer in the Via Sacra, to the northeastern side of the complex. She held her head up, ignoring the nagging pain inside, determined to show no weakness. She was led through two great arches, dedicated to the memories of the emperors Titus and Domitian, and found herself in a large paved area. It was the Domus Flavia that was her destination, the wing of the palace where official work was done.
The Domus Flavia was built onto a large platform set on top of the hill. It consisted of several rooms set around a huge peristylium. The walls and floors were decorated with mosaics and imported stones; the colors were bright yellow, crimson, and blue, the lines of the rectangular patterns sharp. There was much business being done here, she saw; men walked this way and that, arguing earnestly, bearing heaps of papyrus scrolls or wax tablets. Despite the bustle, as with much of Rome there was a sense of shrinkage, of emptiness, as if these busy men were smaller than their ancestors. She wondered how it must have been two or three hundred years ago when this building really had been the hub of the whole world.
A fountain set in the center of the peristylium was dry, its bowl mildewed, evidently long out of action. It made her think of her own long-lost childhood home; the fountain had never worked there, either.
"Madam. I am Gratian." The man who greeted her was tall, his hair white as British snow, with a thin, strong-nosed, elegant face. He was actually wearing a toga, a sight rarely seen nowadays. Gratian walked her toward one of the great buildings. It was a throne room; he called it the Aula Regia. "We will sit in the shade, over wine..."
Gratian was a senator, a close adviser to the Emperor — and a close relation. He was one of the cabal of rich and powerful men who actually controlled the imperial administration: though the Emperor Romulus Augustus bore two of the mightiest names in all Rome's long history, he was but a boy.
If the complex as a whole was impressive, the throne room was startling. The walls and floor were covered with a veneer of patterned marble, gray, orange, brown, green. The walls were fronted by columns, and in twelve niches stood colossal statues carved of night-black basalt. The room was covered by a vaulted concrete roof, and was oddly chill even in the heat of the day. The floor was warm, though, evidently heated by a hypocaust. At one end of the room was an apse where the Emperor received embassies and gave audiences. Today it was empty.
Gratian led her to a series of couches set in a semicircle, where they sat.
"If I am meant to be impressed," she said, "I am."
Gratian actually winked at her. "It's an old trick and not a subtle one. Rome herself has always been the emperors' most potent weapon. Do you know the history of the palace? The Emperor Domitian made his great platform on top of the Palatine by leveling earlier buildings, or filling them in with concrete. It is as if this mighty complex has used whole palaces as mere foundations!..." His talk was smooth and practiced.
"Perhaps," she said. "But this is power projected from the past, not the present."
He was apparently surprised at this sally. "But power even so."
A girl brought them wine — from Africa, Gratian said — and olives, bread, and fruit. She took a little of the wine, but watered it heavily; wine seemed to go to her head these days, perhaps because her blood was drawn by the thing in her belly.
"I take it," she said dryly, "that Romulus Augustus will not be receiving me today."
"He is the Emperor, and a god, but also a boy," Gratian said gently. "And today he is with his teacher of rhetoric. Are you disappointed?"
She smiled. "Is he?"
That made him laugh. "Madam, you have a spirit rarely seen in these difficult times. You have made a success of your life — and you have made your Order rather wealthy in the process." He waved a hand. "Our records are almost as good as yours are reputed to be," he said dryly. "Your Order contributes a great deal to the city — far more than most, in these times of declining civic sentiment. The Emperor understands, and he wants me to transmit his gratitude.
"But, madam," he went on, "we face a grave problem. The Germans are in Italy again. Their leader is a man called Odoacer: not a brute as some of these fellows are, but resourceful and uncompromising."
"Where are your legions?"
"We are overcommitted elsewhere. And tax revenues have been declining — well, for decades. It is not so easy to raise, equip, and pay an army as it once was..." He began a dismal litany of military commitments, triumphs, and setbacks, and the complexities and difficulties of the taxation system. What it amounted to was that Gratian was trying to raise a ransom from Rome's richer citizens and foundations: a bribe to make Odoacer go away, with minimal loss of blood.
And suddenly she saw what this thin, elegant man wanted of her. Sitting in this grand, ancient room, surrounded by the trappings of imperial power, she felt as if the whole world were swiveling around her.
So it has come to this, she thought with gathering dismay. That an emperor should come to me for help: me, helpless little Regina.
She had always believed that one day things would get back to normal — that the security she had perceived in her childhood would return. In the Order she had found a place of safety, even if they were "huddling in a hole in the ground," in the unkind words of Ambrosius, a place where they could wait out the storm, until it was safe to emerge into the light again. But Rome wasn't going to recover — she saw this clearly for the first time in her life. The fall had gone too far. "Normal" times would never come back.
She felt angry. The Emperor himself and his incompetent predecessors had betrayed her — as had her mother, Amator, Artorius in turn. And she felt afraid, as she hadn't even when the Vandals were raging within the walls of Rome. The future held only darkness. And all she had was the Order, which would have to preserve her family, her blood, not just through an uncertain hiatus, but — perhaps — forever.
I must go home, she thought. I have much work to do, and little time left.
She stood up, interrupting Gratian's monologue.
He seemed bewildered by her abruptness. "Madam, you haven't given me an answer."
"Bring him here," she said.
"Who?"
"Your German. Odoacer. Bring him here to
the palace. Show him the marbles and tapestries, the statues and mosaics. Impress him with Rome's past as you have me, and perhaps he will spare the present. You're good at it — the act."
He looked at her angrily. "You're unnecessarily cruel, madam. I have my job to do. And that job is to preserve Rome from bloodshed, perhaps ruin. Is that ignoble?"
She felt a stabbing pain in her stomach — as if the thing in her belly had rolled and kicked, like a monstrous fetus. But by a monumental effort of self-discipline, she kept her posture upright, her face clear. She would not show weakness before this creature of a boy-Emperor.
She walked out of the palace without regret, and hurried home. But the pain followed her, a shadow in the brightness of the day.
Chapter 33
After the birth, Lucia recovered quickly.
She understood what she was going through. She worked through her postnatal exercises for her abdomen and waist and pelvis. Her uterus was returning to its normal size. Her postpartum discharges did not trouble her and were soon dwindling. Like everything about the pregnancy, her recovery seemed remarkably rapid.
But she was not allowed to see the baby again.
Lucia tried to immerse herself in the workings of the Order once more, to forget as she was supposed to. But her anger grew, as did an indefinable ache in her belly, a sense of loss.
• • •
Rosa worked in a small office on the Crypt's top story. She had a role in the management of the larger corporate clients of the scrinium.
Lucia stood before her desk, and waited until Rosa looked up and acknowledged her.
"Why can't I see my baby?"
Rosa sighed. She stood, came around her desk and had Lucia sit with her in two upright chairs before a low coffee table. "Lucia, must we go through all this again? You have to trust those around you. It is a basic principle of how we live. You know that."
Perhaps, Lucia thought. But it was also a basic principle that they should not have conversations like this. You weren't supposed to talk about the Order at all; ideally you wouldn't even be aware of it. Rosa had her own flaws, she saw. Perhaps it was inevitable that Rosa, who was once a contadino, had a broader perspective than the rest, whether she liked it or not. She said none of this aloud.
She insisted, "I want to see my baby. I don't even know what name you have given her."
"So?... I think we're talking about your needs, not the baby's. Aren't we, Lucia? You grew up in nurseries and crèches. Did you know your mother?"
"No—"
"And did that harm you?"
Lucia said defiantly, "Perhaps it did. How can I know?"
"Can you be so selfish as to blight your baby's life?"
Rosa's calm composure enraged Lucia. "Why didn't you tell me that my pregnancy would only last thirteen weeks instead of thirty-eight?"
"Is that what the Internet says a pregnancy ought to be? Lucia, there are twenty-seven mamme-nonne, who must among them produce a hundred babies a year — three or four each and every year... If you hadn't filled your head with nonsense from the outside, you would have expected a thirteen-week pregnancy, because that's the way we do things here. And whether you knew what was going on or not — Lucia, there was nothing to fear. It is what your body is designed for, you know." Rosa leaned closer and touched her hand. "Let her go, Lucia. You are one of the mamme now. In a sense you are already the mother of us all."
Lucia tried not to draw back. We always touch, she thought with a faint sense of distaste, we are always so close we can smell each other. "And this will be my life? Morning sickness and labor rooms forever?"
Rosa laughed. "It needn't be so bad. Here." She went to her desk, opened a drawer, and produced a cell phone.
Lucia studied the phone. It had gone dead. "It is my cell. Patrizia took it."
"Have it back. Use it as you like. Look at the Internet, if you want. Would you like to go outside again? There's no reason why not. I can talk to Pina—"
"I thought you didn't trust me."
"You mustn't turn this into some personal conflict between the two of us, Lucia. I am not your monitor. I am merely reacting to how you behave, in the best interests of the Order, which is all any of us do.
"Lucia, things are different now, for girls like you. You saw the pictures in Maria Ludovica's apartment — scenes like the Sack of Rome. Once a girl growing up in the Crypt had no realistic choice but to stay here. The world outside, chaotic and uncontrolled, was simply too dangerous. Now things have changed." She pointed to Lucia's phone. "Outside is a bright and superficially attractive world. Technology has liberated people in a way that could not have been imagined a couple of centuries ago. People are free to travel wherever they want, to speak to whoever they want, at any time, to call up any information they like.
"And all this penetrates even the Crypt. It is all shallow, of course." She snapped her fingers. "The great information highways could break down tomorrow, just as the Roman aqueducts once fell into ruin. But the world outside looks attractive. That's my point. You feel you have a choice, about whether to stay on in the Crypt, or seek some new life outside. But the truth is, you have no choice. Perhaps you must see that for yourself."
No choice because I'm different , Lucia thought. I would never find a place outside the Crypt. And besides, there is something that will hold me here forever. "I can't leave, because of my child. That's why you're letting me go outside, isn't it? Because you know I'll have to come back. Because you have my baby."
A look of uncertainty crossed Rosa's face. "There is no you and we — this conversation has been inappropriate. We should forget it."
"Yes," said Lucia.
"Take your phone. Go out, have a good time while you can. I don't think we'll need to talk again." Rosa stood; the meeting was evidently over.
• • •
As it turned out, Rosa was right, unsurprisingly. Despite her new freedom Lucia felt very reluctant to leave the Crypt. It would have felt like an abandonment of the baby that was even now yelling its lungs out in one of the Crypt's huge nurseries, even if she never saw it again. She returned to her studies, and considered going back to work in the scrinium. She would go back outside sometime in the future, she decided. Not yet.
Two months after the birth, though, she detected yet more changes in her body. Changes unexpected, and unwelcome. She went to Patrizia again. The strange truth was quickly confirmed.
She knew the time had come to go out. If not now, then never. She still had Daniel's business card. It wasn't that she'd consciously kept it, not exactly, but it was there nonetheless. It took her only a moment to find it.
Chapter 34
In the last days they gathered around her bed, faces drifting in the candlelit gloom.
Here were Leda, Venus, Julia, pretty Aemilia, even Agrippina. Oval faces, strong noses, eyes like cool stone, eyes so like hers, as if she were surrounded by fragments of herself. And there beyond them, silent witnesses to her death as her life, were the three matres, her lifelong companions, the last relic of her childhood home.
She was still concerned about the Crypt, the Order. Even as the illness rose around her like a bloody tide, she thought and calculated, worrying obsessively that there might be something she had overlooked, some flaw she had failed to spot. If the Order was to survive indefinitely, it had to be perfect — for, like a tiny crack in a marble fascia, enough time would inevitably expose the slightest defect.
When a coherent thought coalesced in her mind, she would summon one of the women, and insist she record her sayings.
Thus: "Three," she whispered.
"Three, Regina?" Venus murmured. "Three what?"
"Three mothers. Like the matres. At any time, three mothers, three wombs. Or if the Order grows, three times three, or... Three mothers. That is all. For the rest, sisters matter more than daughters — that is the rule."
"Yes—"
"When a womb dries, another must come forward."
"We need rules. A
procedure for the succession."
"No." Regina grasped Venus's arm with bony fingers. "No rules, save the rule of three. Let them come forward, and make their own rules, their own contest."
"There will be conflict. Every woman wants daughters."
"Then let them fight. The strongest will prevail. The Order will be stronger for it..."
The blood must be preserved, kept pure, for the blood was the past, and the past was better than the future. Sisters matter more than daughters. Let them remember that; let them obey it, and the rest would follow.
And: "Ignorance is strength."
This time Leda was with her. "I don't understand, dear."
"We cannot survive. We old ones cannot run the Order forever. But the Order must be immortal. This is not a little empire and it never must be so. There must be no leader to fall, no traitor to betray us. The seniors must step back into the shadows, the Council must abdicate whatever powers it can. The Order itself must sustain its own existence. Let no one question. Let no one know more than she needs to perform her tasks. That way, if one fails, another can replace her, and the Order will go on. The Order, emerging from us all, will prevail. Ignorance is strength."
Leda still didn't understand. But in the corridors of her failing mind, Regina saw it clearly.
To survive into the future you needed a system: that was the one indisputable lesson she had learned since arriving in Rome. The Romans had had a genius for organizations that functioned effectively for generations, despite political instability and corruption and all the other failings of humanity. Though the army was shamelessly used by pretenders to the throne and other adventurers for their own ends, it had always remained a military force of unparalleled effectiveness; and even though senators and others would misuse the legal system for their own ends, throughout the Empire, normal and competent processes of justice had served enormous numbers of people in every aspect of their daily lives. Even the city itself had sustained its own identity, its own organization, across a thousand years of unplanned growth, forty or fifty generations of people, for the city, too, was a system.
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