She decided that the Order should build on its core strengths. It was, after all, a community run by women, and now firmly founded on respectable Christian principles. And yet it was an open secret, which she saw no harm in leaking, that they could trace their heritage back to the Vestal Virgins, and to the pagan goddess who had kept Rome inviolate for eight hundred years. There were plenty of traditionalists, even among practicing Christians, who were attracted to such a combination. To reinforce the image she requested that all the members of the Order wear a simple costume she designed, a long and modest white stola marked with a stripe of purple—she had observed how the simple addition of the color purple to a garment reassured these Romans.

It didn’t trouble Regina at all that such a sales pitch, based on Christian morality and pagan purity, required the holding of two contradictory beliefs at once.

As to what they could sell to their traditionalist market, Regina, after some thought, settled on schooling. The education of the Empire’s young had always been a somewhat haphazard process. Only the sons of the rich could expect to enjoy a full education at all three of the traditional levels, primary, grammar, and rhetoric. Girls and lower-class boys often received only the most basic primary education, at which they were taught reading and arithmetic. But in difficult times parents wanted their daughters to be as well equipped as possible to cope with an uncertain future—and that meant giving them an education as good as any boy’s.

And that was what Regina determined the Order would provide. Teachers of rhetoric and grammar would be hired, and an education for female students up to a level equivalent to a boy’s would be provided. During their teaching the students would be housed on the estate, and raised in a properly moral atmosphere. A fee would be charged, of course, but because teachers were shared among many pupils it would be at a much lower cost than if private tutors had to be hired by a single family.

Regina managed to set all this up within three months. After six the first classes were being held. Among the anxious Roman population it had been a great success. By now, the numbers of girls and young women resident here had risen to a hundred, with many more on waiting lists. This had led to a frantic growth in the estate, with buildings being renovated and hastily extended to cope with the new arrivals. And the money was rolling in. She had even begun a scheme whereby through legacies to the Order a family could ensure the education and upbringing not just of daughters but even of granddaughters, in the next generation.