While they ate their ice cream, they watched a young woman in Lycra jogging gear sitting near them, earnestly peering into the tiny screen of her cell phone. She had a dog with her, a big, aged, slow- moving Labrador. He meandered happily through the dappled shade. But when he walked behind a set of railings he couldn’t figure out his way back, and peered through the bars at his owner, whining theatrically. His owner retrieved him, comforting him with strokes and tugging at his collar. But then, as she returned to her earnest texting, the dog would wander off into his conceptual prison and begin his whining once more, making Lucia and Pina laugh.
Lucia renewed the sunblock cream on her face, hands, and arms. It had been less than an hour since her last application, but even in the weak December afternoon sunlight her skin prickled. Pina, however -
cradling her phone in one hand — took off her sunglasses, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the dipping sun. It was unusual for a woman of the Order to have a skin able to tan. Lucia wondered how it would feel to relax, to enjoy the sunlight on her face, without the need to block it out.
Pina’s face showed no signs of aging, no wrinkles or lines. Her skin might have belonged to a seventeen- year-old. This would baffle the contadino males, she knew; she had heard young men whistle, or mutter, “Ciao, bella,” or “Bella figura,” after sisters of the Order old enough to be their mothers, and yet looking younger than they were. It was strange, Lucia supposed. But she had never thought about it before. There was much about life in the Order she hadn’t questioned, hadn’t even noticed, until the last few disruptive weeks. Perhaps it wasn’t the outsiders who were strange, but the Order. After all, she thought, there are very many more of them than us. Perhaps she had become a kind of outsider herself, and was learning to look back at the Order through the eyes of a contadino -
“Excuse me.”
She turned, peering into the sun. Pina snapped her sunglasses into place like a mask.
A man was standing before them — a young man, half silhouetted in the sun. He wore a blue Italy soccer shirt and jeans that looked as if they had been faded by time, not design. He carried a bundle of books under his arm. He was slim, and not tall, no taller than Lucia was. He had red hair, and his face had a weakish chin and a rounded profile, a smooth curve that proceeded from his long nose to his brow — which was high, she saw, and covered in freckles. He was young, perhaps not yet eighteen …
She was staring. She recognized him, of course. She dropped her gaze, hot.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just—”
Pina snapped, “Who are you?”
“My name is Daniel Stannard. I’m a student. I attend an expat college in the Trastevere. I’m studying for my bachelor’s degree. My father is American …” He had an accent, a slightly singsong American intonation to his Italian.
Pina smiled. “Why should we care, Daniel Stannard? Have you a habit of bothering girls in the park?”
“No — no. It’s just—” He turned to Lucia. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
Pina laughed. “That’s your best line?”
Lucia said, “Hush, Pina.”
Daniel said, “I mean it. At the Pantheon — about a week ago, I think. I remember seeing you — I’m sure it was you — in the colonnade …”
“I was there,” Lucia said.
Daniel hesitated. “I kept wondering if I’d see you again.” He turned to Pina defiantly. “Yes, I know it’s corny, but it’s the truth.”
Pina tried to stay stern, but she laughed. She muffled it with her hand.
Tentatively Daniel sat on the bench, next to Lucia. “So — you’re sisters, right?”
“We’re related, yes,” said Pina.
“The lady you were with last week — who was that, your mother?”
“An aunt,” said Pina.
“Kind of,” Lucia said, and she was rewarded with a glare from Pina.
Pina said, “And you say you’re a student?”
“Of politics, yes. My father’s a diplomat here, with the American embassy. He’s been stationed here for six years. He brought over the family to continue our schooling. I arrived age eleven …”
And so you are seventeen, Lucia thought. “Your language is good,” she said.
“Thank you … My school was international, but most of the classes were in Italian. What do you do?”
“She’s still at school,” Pina snapped. “After that, the family business.”
He shrugged. “Which is?”
“Genealogy. Record keeping. It’s complicated.”
Complicated, yes, thought Lucia. Complicated like a web in which I’m tangled. And even the little you have just been told about me isn’t true. For I am lined up for a new destiny — not genealogy or record keeping — something dark and heavy.
She looked at Daniel. He had large, slightly watery blue eyes and a small upturned mouth that looked full of laughter. He has already become at ease in two separate countries, she thought, while I have spent my life in a hole in the ground. She had never thought of it that way before, but it was true. Suddenly she longed to have this boy’s freedom.
In a silent moment of communication, she felt her inchoate emotions, of confusion and frustration, pulse through her body, and surely into her face, her eyes. Help me, she thought. Help me.
His blue eyes widened with surprise and dismay.
“We have to go,” Pina said hurriedly. She got to her feet and grabbed Lucia’s arm, pulling her upright. Before she knew what was happening Lucia was marched off along the circular path around the lake, toward one of the roads that cut through the park. As she walked Pina started texting urgently.
Daniel, startled, grabbed his books and clambered to his feet. “Your sister is kind of ferocious,” he said, stumbling after Lucia.
“She’s not my sister.”
“Let me see you again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Just to talk.”
“I can’t.”
“The Piazza Navona,” he said. “Tomorrow at three.” Pina’s pace had picked up almost to a run, and Daniel stopped chasing them.
Lucia looked back.
“I’ll be there every day,” he called. “At three, every day. Come when you can.”
When they reached the Piazza le Flaminio, outside the park, a car was waiting for them.
Pina bundled Lucia inside. “Lucia, what were you thinking? He’s a contadino. What did you want with him?”
“Something. Nothing,” said Lucia defiantly. “I just wanted to talk to him. Aren’t I supposed to be learning about outsiders?”
Pina leaned toward her. “You aren’t,” she said heavily, “supposed to be inviting them into your knickers.”
“But I wasn’t — I didn’t mean—”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I don’t know.” Lucia buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Pina, I’m confused. Don’t tell, Pina. Don’t tell!”
Chapter 22
Early the next spring Artorius traveled to Londinium. He asked Regina to travel with him. She in turn insisted that Brica accompany her.
At first Brica resisted the trip, even daring to refuse bluntly, for Regina’s opposition to her liaison with Galba was now obvious. With patience and pressure Regina won her over. But the journey to the east along the old roads, with the two of them riding side by side in an open chariot just behind Artorius and his party, was silent and sullen.