There was blood on the floor, blood pooling as it once had from her father’s body. Regina forced herself to move. She ran to Aetius, and lifted his heavy head onto her lap. “Grandfather! Can you hear me? Oh, Grandfather!”

He tried to speak, coughed, and brought up a great gout of dark blood. “I’m sorry, little one. So sorry.”

“No—”

“Fool. Been a fool, fooling myself. It’s over. The Wall. They’ll leave now, the last of them. No pay, you see, no pay. Cilurnum fell, you know. You saw the fire on the horizon. Cilurnum gone . . .” He coughed again. “Go with Carta.”

“Cartumandua—”

“Go with her. Her people. No place for you here. Tell her I said . . .”

She asked the question that had burned in her young heart for five years. If he died, he could never answer it, she might never know. “Grandfather—where is my mother?”

“Rome,” he gasped. “Her sister is there, Helena. So weak, that one. Wouldn’t even wait for you . . .” He grabbed her shoulder. His palm was slick with blood. “Forget her. Julia doesn’t matter. You’re the family now. Take the matres.”

“No! I won’t go. I won’t leave you.”

He thrashed in his spreading pool of blood, and more crimson fluid gushed from the ripped wound in his chest. “Take them . . .”

She reached out and grabbed the little statues from their shelf in the lararium. At last he seemed to relax. She thought he wanted to say more, but his voice was a gurgle and she could make out no words.

Suddenly something broke in her. She pushed away his head, letting it fall to the floor, and ran to the broken doorway, clutching the statues. She looked back once. His eyes were still open, looking at her. She fled into the night.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Somewhat to my surprise, the head of Saint Bridget’s, the school Gina had attended, was welcoming, initially anyhow. She listened to my tale of the photograph, though she was obviously skeptical about my story of a missing sister.

She had me sit in her office, on an armchair before her big polished desk. Ms. Gisborne was a slim, elegant woman of maybe fifty-five, with severely cut silver-gray hair. Over a business suit she wore a black academic gown lined with blue—the school colors, as I vaguely remembered from my sister’s day. The office was well appointed, with a lush blue carpet, ornate plasterwork around the ceiling, a trophy cabinet, a large painting of the school on the wall opposite big windows, lots of expensive-looking desk furniture. It had the feel of a corporate boardroom; perhaps this sanctum was used to impress prospective parents and the local sponsors that seem essential to the running of any school these days. But an immense and disturbingly detailed Crucified Christ hung from one wall.