“Here. Take this.” It was Carausias, looming over her. He had brought her one of her precious matres. They, at least, had never abandoned her; she clutched the lumpy little statue to her chest.

The contractions were coming in waves now.

Carta snapped, “Regina, pull back your knees.” Regina reached down and, with a huge effort, hooked her fingers behind her knees and pulled her legs back and apart.

Carta forced a smile. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you plow that wretched field.”

“And who else was to do it? . . . Ow-w! Carta—”

“Yes?”

“You have done this before, haven’t you?”

“What, delivered a baby? Have you plowed a field before?”

With the next contraction the pain became unbelievably intense, as if she were slowly being torn apart.

Carta leaned closer. Even through her own pain Regina saw how pale she was, her white face glistening with oily sweat. “Regina, listen to me. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, child,” Carta said sadly. “No, I don’t think it can. Your father . . . You remember how he died.”

It was an awful image to come wafting through her clouds of pain. “I could hardly forget—”

“It was me.”

“What?”

“I was the one he was unfaithful with. I was the reason he punished himself.”

Regina gasped. “Carta, how could you? You betrayed my mother—”

Carta’s bloodless mouth worked. “He gave me no choice.”

Marina screamed, “I can see its head!”

Carta pulled back to see. “Marina, help me . . .” She reached down to support Regina’s perineum, and cupped her hand around the baby’s head. “The cord is around its neck . . . Uncle, give me that knife. Now, you old fool.” Even through her own pain Regina could feel Carta’s hands trembling as she worked.

When the cord was cut, the baby’s body slid smoothly out, tumbling into Marina’s waiting arms with a last gush of fluid. Marina picked mucus from the baby’s button mouth. Carta stayed with Regina until the afterbirth had emerged, and then she packed her vagina with moss to stem the bleeding.

Regina, despite her weakness and exhaustion, had eyes only for her baby, which had begun to wail thinly. “Let me see . . .”

“It’s a girl,” Marina said, her eyes bright. She had wrapped the baby in a clean bit of blanket, and now she leaned down toward Regina so she could see the round pink face.

Carta said, “I think—I think . . .” And she fell back, slumping to the floor. Regina tried to see, but could not raise her head.

Carausias cried, “Cartumandua! Come, oh come, my little niece, we can’t have this.” He fumbled for a small flask; Regina knew it contained an extract of deadly nightshade, a heart stimulant bought at great expense from Exsuperius. He tried to pour droplets between Carta’s lips, but her face was like a wax mask.