Brica briskly stamped out the little fire, and the two of them walked out of the belt of forest and into the sunshine. They looked down the broad breast of hillside at the farmstead’s three roundhouses, and beyond that to the valley where the silver-gray thread of the river glistened like a dropped necklace. But they turned away and began to walk along the crest of the hill, making for the ruined villa. Brica was always busy, always alert. She would run away to inspect a trap, or pick a handful of berries from a cane, or dig mushroom flesh from a fallen tree trunk. She was like fire, Regina thought, filled with a blazing energy Regina herself couldn’t even envy anymore.

“So,” she said carefully, “have you seen Bran again?”

“Not for a few days.” But Brica turned away, her smoky eyes dancing. Bran was a boy, a little younger than Brica herself, from a farmstead a couple of hills away. He was the grandson of old Exsuperius, in fact, their first grumpy, grudging neighbor, now long dead. Brica said, “He isn’t a bad sort, you know, Mother.”

“Not a bad sort behind a plow, no, but he can read no better than you could at the age of five. And as for his Latin—”

Brica sighed. “Oh, Mother—nobody reads. What use is it? A papyrus scroll won’t plow a field, or tend the birth of a calf—”

“Maybe not now. But when things—”

“—get back to normal, yes, yes. You know, there are girls five years younger than me who have husbands and children.”

“You aren’t those girls,” Regina snapped.

“You don’t think Bran is good enough for me.”

“I never said that.”

Brica slipped her hand into her mother’s. “The only reason he’s learning to read at all is to please you.”

Regina was surprised. “It is?”

“Doesn’t that show how he cares about me—even about you?”

“Perhaps.” Regina shook her head. “You must make your own decisions, I suppose. I made many foolish choices—but if I had not, I wouldn’t have you. I just want you to be sure what you want. And in the meantime be careful.”

Brica snorted. “Mother, I go to Marina every month.”

Regina knew that Brica was talking about the herbal teas Marina made up as a contraceptive treatment. Marina had, over the years, become something of an expert on remedies gathered from the forests and fields; in the absence of a doctor such wisdom was the best anybody could do.

“Well, you know what I think of potions like that,” Regina snapped. “If Bran really did care about you he would use a condom. There’s no tea that’s as effective as a pig’s bladder.”

Brica flushed red, but she was suppressing a laugh. “Mother, please!”

“And another thing . . .”

Bickering, laughing, gossiping, they made their way along the broken ridge.