Rosa encouraged Lucia’s friends to come visit her. They came slowly and shyly: Pina the first day, Idina and Angela the second, Rosaria and Rosetta the next. At first they stared at Lucia with wide, curious eyes, as if she hadn’t been among them for weeks—and, in a sense, she hadn’t. They talked to her, feeding her little dribbles of gossip about what had been going on during her “absence.”

It took three days before any of them could touch her without flinching.

But gradually Lucia felt old connections mending, as if she were a bit of broken bone being knitted back into the whole. The change in her mood was astonishing. It was as if the sun had come out from behind clouds.

After a week in the hospital the doctors discharged her. She was sent back to her dormitory, and her work in the scrinium, though the doctors insisted she call back every few days for checks.

She knew she should not reflect on any of this, nor analyze it, but simply accept it. She had to learn again to live in the moment.

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Brica went to work in her father’s bakery.

When she was with Regina, Brica remained withdrawn, sullen, somehow defeated. But away from Regina, Amator reported, she was more open, lively, willing, and she would socialize with the younger workers when the day was done. Amator was no doubt embellishing the truth; Regina was sure he would not miss an opportunity to slide a knife blade of difference between mother and daughter. But she didn’t begrudge her daughter her bit of happiness.

As soon as the money from Amator started to come through, Regina began to search for her mother.

What made that hard was that so much of Rome was so obviously unplanned. The historic core of the city had always been the seven hills, easily defended in the days when Rome had been just one of a number of squabbling communities. The first Forum had been built in the marshy valley that nestled between the hills’ bluff protective shoulders.

But since then, away from the monumental heart, the city had simply grown as it needed to. The streets wandered haphazardly, following the meandering tracks of animals across fields that now lay far beneath the strata of rubbish under her feet, nothing like the arrow-straight highways laid out in the provinces. The only orderly development that had ever been possible was when fire or some other disaster had laid waste to part of the city, giving a rare chance to rebuild. It was whispered that once the Emperor Nero had deliberately started a fire in the central districts to make room for the House of Gold he planned to build for himself.

And yet in this sprawling chaos there were, oddly, patterns.