Amara hears his footsteps thump down the stairs as she bends down to pick up their howling daughter. She undoes her tunic at the shoulder and latches Rufina onto her breast, feeling the tug of the baby’s hunger. Rufina is squirming in the swaddling, and so she unbinds her, feeling the warmth of her daughter’s body against her own. Amara strokes her baby’s head, soft with dark, downy hair, and feels her heart split open. The thought of allowing a stranger to feed and comfort her child, leaving nothing but emptiness in her arms, is a torment unlike anything Amara has ever known.

The milk soothes the baby, and after her feed, Rufina sprawls contentedly across her mother’s chest. Not wanting to disturb Rufina by weeping, Amara lays her on the bed and curls around the small body, biting into her own clenched hand to stop herself from making a noise. Rufina gurgles, waving her tiny fists and kicking her feet, oblivious to her mother’s distress. Amara watches the baby’s movements, pressing down on the darkness in her own heart, allowing the blankness to creep in, knowing from long, bitter experience that the only way to survive is to bury the pain, and to keep walking, wherever Fortune leads. She moves closer, so that her child’s perfect face is a breath away from her own. “You will never have your mother’s life,” she whispers, placing a finger near her daughter’s hand, so that the tiny fingers curl around it. “You will never have your father’s life.” Amara kisses Rufina’s forehead. “You will be free.”

48

“The women who have avenged”

—Herculaneum graffiti

Livia’s prediction of finding a suitable wet nurse in a fortnight proves overly optimistic, but only by a week. Of those twenty-one days, Amara’s last in Pompeii, Demetrius is present for the first five, and it is this that drives the wedge still deeper between her and Philos. The scent of lavender lingers in their home, and when she and Philos look at each other, there is no escaping their shared knowledge of what she is doing each day, no way to deny the secrets she kept from him. Philos moves into the small storage room off the kitchen, to sleep on the floor beside Britannica.

His politeness toward Amara, his scrupulous discussions about how she would like him to raise Rufina, feel even colder than his anger. There is only one moment when his self-control falters, when he tries to thank Amara for the sacrifice she is making for their child, but when she responds with tears of her own, swearing that she will always love him, begging him to believe her, Philos gets up and leaves the room.