The labor was as rapid as the rest of the pregnancy. When the baby crowned, she felt a burning sensation around her vagina, and then only numbness.

They showed her the baby briefly. It was a girl, a little crimson mass, but, Patrizia assured her, strong and healthy. Lucia held her, just for a moment.

Then Patrizia gently took the baby back. The nurses wrapped the child in blankets, and receded out of sight. Patrizia pressed an infuser at Lucia’s neck, and the world slipped away.

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

As she grew older, in the smoky, unchanging warmth of the Crypt, time flowed smoothly for Regina, despite her careful calendar keeping and record making. Still, she often thought back to the day of her last meeting with Ambrosius Aurelianus, and of her treatment of Agrippina. Her actions that day had had significant consequences—that day, at least, had become memorable.

Three years after that day, Julia, the younger sister of Agrippina, reached the time for her own menarche—and yet no blood flowed. It was not until her eighteenth year, in fact, four years older than her sister, that her bleeding finally began, and even then it was fitful. Julia was a cheerful, competent girl, more confident in fact than her older sister, but it had been as if her body itself had been frightened by the treatment Agrippina had received from Regina, and had wished to postpone the same as long as possible.

Regina welcomed this strange development—even though it scared her a little to think that such strange powers might exist in the world, in her.

Some time after that, she heard of another consequence of that fateful day.

Artorius had mounted his last campaign. Thanks to the treachery of his “ally” the imperial prefect Arvandus, he had finally been defeated, by the Visigoth king Euric. He retreated to the kingdom of the Burgundians, after which nothing more was heard of him. He certainly never returned to Britain; he was probably dead.

Perhaps if she had stayed at his side, Regina wondered, her cunning might have kept him alive a little longer. But any money she had given Artorius, any support, would merely have been frittered away on one more campaign, one more battle, until death finally caught up with him.

Ambrosius Aurelianus went on to greater glories, though. After Artorius, his own leadership qualities emerged, and his defeat of the Saxons at the battle of Mount Badon granted the British a respite. It was a feat that won Ambrosius the nickname last of the Romans.

But more Saxons arrived to reinforce their petty coastal kingdoms. They pushed farther west and north, and the British, expelled from their homes, succumbed or fled, just as Artorius had long foreseen. And in the wake of the Saxons, Roman Britain was erased, down to the foundations. The despairing British were left with nothing but legends of how Artorius was not dead, but sleeping, his mighty sword Chalybs at his side.