So we walked around the curving walkway. Lucia, gravid, walked heavily and painfully, her hand on her back. Daniel supported her, holding her arm.
I whispered to Peter, "What do you think?"
He shrugged. "That poor kid looks as if she"s going to pup any minute . . . You think Daniel"s the father?"
"I have no idea," I said truthfully. But somehow I thought it wouldn"t be as simple as that.
Peter chewed a nail, a habit I hadn"t noticed before. "I wasn"t expecting this. This is supposed to be about your sister, and her cult. What are we getting into here?" He had seemed oddly jumpy all day, and his nervousness was getting worse. I had no idea why-but then I knew there was a lot about Peter, not least why he was in Rome in the first place, he wasn"t telling me.
The Colosseum is a big place, and we soon found an out-of-the-way alcove where it looked as if we would be undisturbed. Lucia found a place to sit, on a worn row of steps in the shade. Daniel stood over her protectively. Peter had a couple of bottles of water in his day bag. He gave one to Lucia, and she sipped it gratefully. She was breathing hard, I saw, and sweating heavily.
"So," said Peter. "Tell me how you got in touch with us."
Daniel shrugged. "It wasn"t hard . . . I thought I needed to find somebody outside the Order, and yet with a connection. You see what I mean?"
"Yes," I said. "Somebody else asking awkward questions."
And so, he said, he had hacked into the Order"s email streams looking for likely candidates. "It was difficult-the Order"s traffic is heavily encrypted-but-"
"But you"re a smart little hacker," said Peter unsympathetically.
Daniel"s eyes flashed. "I did what I had to do."
Peter said, "Let"s cut to the chase. She"s your girlfriend, and you got her pregnant. Is that the story?"
"No!" Daniel"s denial was surprisingly hot. "I wouldn"t be so stupid."
I studied Daniel. "How old are you, son?"
He was just seventeen; he looked older. No wonder he was out of his depth.
"If you aren"t the father, how did you get involved with Lucia?"
For the next couple of minutes he gabbled out something of his life story-how he was the son of a diplomat, a student at an expat school in the city-and how his harmless flirtation with a pretty girl he spotted at the Pantheon had led him into deep waters. When he had gotten all this out, he seemed drained, some of his nerve gone. "I was only fooling. I didn"t expect it to turn out like this. But when she asked me for help, I couldn"t refuse, could I?"
"No," I said. "I"m sure you did the right thing."
Since she"d come to him he had been hiding her away, though he wouldn"t say where. From her look, I doubted it was in much comfort. He hadn"t told his parents what he was doing. He had done his best, I thought, and I wondered how well I would have coped with such a situation when I was seventeen.
I asked Lucia her age. I was shocked to find she was only fifteen. She looked too worn out for that.
"All right," said Peter. "Let"s start at the beginning. Lucia-you"re trying to get away from something.
From the Order?"
That took a little translating. "Yes," she said, "from the Order."
"And that"s why you contacted Daniel here."
"There was n.o.body else," she said miserably. "I didn"t want to get him into trouble, but I didn"t know what else to do, and-"
"It"s okay," I said. "Just tell us. Why do you want to leave the Order?"
"Because they took my baby away," she said.
I did a double take. "Your first baby. You"re now pregnant with your second."
"Yes." Lucia"s eyes were downcast, and she rested her hands on her belly.
"Who was the father?"
"His name was Giuliano . . . something. His name doesn"t matter. He was brought in."
"Who by?"
"By thecupola ." I didn"t understand that, and she said, "By Rosa Poole. Your sister."
Peter and I exchanged glances.
Hesitantly I touched her hand. "You can tell us. Were you raped?"
"No." She closed her eyes, shaking her head, almost irritably. "You don"t understand. Daniel asked the same questions. People neverlisten ."
I backed off. "I"m sorry. Just tell us."
"Giuliano was brought in, and he made me pregnant, and I had my baby, and they took her away. And nowthis ." She patted her bulge. "I don"t want to lose this one, too. And I don"t want baby after baby. I don"t wantthis ." Suddenly she was crying, a flood of tears.
We three males all scrambled in our pockets; the comedy routine concluded when Daniel was the first to produce a tissue.
Peter sat back and blew out his cheeks. "Deeper and deeper. So who was the father of this second kid?"
"The same guy," said Daniel. "The same a.s.shole. This Giuliano, whatever."
Peter frowned. "Then how come she doesn"t know his name?"
Daniel took a breath. "Because he only slept with her once."
Peter thought that over, and laughed out loud.
Daniel, hotly embarra.s.sed, said, "You don"t know the half of it, man."
Lucia said desolately, "I told you they wouldn"t believe me." With a tissue clutched to her nose, she looked up at me through water-filled eyes heartbreakingly like my own.
"Let"s all take it easy," I said. "Lucia, you say you don"t want to have baby after baby . . . Is that what they asked you to do? The Order-umm, my sister?"
"Yes. But they neverasked ," she said, with a trace of sulky petulance.
"And why you?" Peter asked.
She looked away. "Because I had grown up."
It took a little probing to establish that she meant that she had begun her periods.
Peter asked, "So it"s some kind of baby factory down there?"
"Peter-"
"George, if you are unscrupulous about it a healthy white kid can bring in a lot of money. The big adoption services in the States-"
"It"s not like that," Lucia said.
"But," Peter said, "every time a girl begins her periods she is made pregnant. Right?"
"No." She was finding this difficult, but there was determination in her face, I saw, a strength. "You just aren"t listening. Not all girls. Just some. Justme . The other girls can"t have babies."
The rule of three mothers,I thought absently, thinking of Regina"s biography. "You mean they aren"t allowed to?"
"No," she said. "Theycan"t ."
Peter thought that over. "They"re neuters?" Again he laughed.
Daniel glared at him. "It"s true, man. I"ve met one of them. A woman called Pina-about twenty-five, I think. Calls herself Lucia"s friend, but she"s no friend; she betrayed her to the other creeps. You should have seen her-no t.i.ts, hips like a ten-year-old boy"s. She"s twenty-five,but she"s prep.u.b.escent ."
It was impossible, of course. Absurd. But now I thought back to my own incursion into the Crypt, and I remembered those ageless people who had cl.u.s.tered around me in the corridors and mezzanines- mostly women and girls, few men, not slim, but with no figures, no busts or hips . . . Rosa, I realized, had been the only woman I saw there who had looked mature. It hadn"t struck me at the time-I suppose I was simply overwhelmed by that dense, dizzying environment, by too much strangeness to notice such a simple thing-and yet, now that I thought back, it was startling.
I looked at Peter. "How could this happen?"
"And why? . . . I"ve no idea," he said uneasily. "But if any of it"s true, I think this means we"re facing more than just some money-grabbing cult here, George."
Lucia cried out, clutched her belly, bent over, and vomited.
Peter and I responded reflexively, jumping back out of the way of that stinking splash. But Daniel had better instincts. He leaned forward to grab her shoulders. "It"s okay. It"s okay . . ."
Peter dug in his pocket for his cell phone.
I said to Daniel, "I don"t know what the h.e.l.l"s going on here. But she"s going to the hospital.Now. "
"No," he said. "The Order-"
"The h.e.l.l with the Order." One-handed, Peter had punched in 113, the code to call an ambulance. "They aren"t the f.u.c.king Illuminati-hey!"
Daniel had s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone out of his hand and terminated the call. "Okay. But at least let"s take her somewherethey might not expect."
Peter made a grab for his phone, but I pushed him back. "Where, Daniel?"
"There"s an American hospital on the Via Emilio Longoni. Thirty minutes out of town."
"Too far," Peter growled.
I held him back. "Let him follow his instincts," I said. "He"s done okay for her so far, hasn"t he?"
Peter was unhappy, but subsided.
By the time Daniel had completed the call, Lucia had done vomiting. We had to help her stand. Peter and I walked at either side of the girl. She draped her arms over our shoulders, and we held her around her waist. When I brushed against her skin, she felt oddly cold, I thought, clammy.
We emerged from the Colosseum entrance into the bright light of midmorning, where the fake gladiators continued to milk the lengthening queues. People stared at us as we limped past. It struck me how helpless we were. We were essentially strangers. Poor Lucia was trapped in the travails of an evidently unwanted pregnancy, and all she had to protect her was a confused, headstrong kid and two screwed-up middle-age blokes-and we weren"t even sure if we should be getting involved in the first place.
Daniel gave Peter his phone back, and he produced a floppy disc from his waist pack. "Here. I knew you wouldn"t believe me." He handed it to Peter.
Peter slipped it into his pocket. "What"s this?"
"About Pina no-t.i.ts. I hacked into hospital records. Lucia told me Pina was in a traffic accident a couple of years ago. Not serious, but she busted her leg, and she ended up in a city hospital for a few hours- long enough for the doctors to notice her, umm, peculiarities. And they ran some tests. The results were weird. But by the time they turned around to figure out more, she"d already gone. Whisked away by the witches from the Crypt." He glared at Peter. "Take a look at the disc. It"s all there."
"Oh, I will."
Daniel walked jerkily, his shoulders set. He was angry and scared. He said, "And if you don"t believethat , wait until we get to the hospital. Wait until the American doctors see her. Then explain to me how Lucia can have gone through a full-term pregnancy inthree months . Explain how she can have got pregnant againwithout having s.e.x ."
Lucia bowed her head, biting her lip.
Peter and I exchanged a glance. I murmured,"Three months?"
"One thing at a time," Peter said, and he rolled his eyes.
We all rode in the ambulance.
The Rome American Hospital turned out to be bright, modern, efficient, the reception area full of light cast from big picture windows. Lucia was taken out of our hands as soon as the ambulance doors opened, and she disappeared into the maw of the hospital.
We were quizzed about our relationship to Lucia. Peter lied with surprising smoothness. I was her uncle, he said, visiting from England-hence the family resemblance. Daniel and Peter were friends of the family. He had already contacted the direct family, who were on their way . . . I thought the nurse looked skeptically at us, and perhaps she was remembering Lucia"s torn and dirty dress. But there was nothing to be done about that now.
I had to produce a credit card to guarantee payment for whatever treatment Lucia was going to need.
"Ulp," I said to Peter. "I wonder if my travel insurance will cover this."
"I kind of doubt it. Are you concerned?"
I said, "That my bank account is about to be flattened?" I watched Daniel roaming around the reception area, restless, helpless, frustrated. "I don"t think I am, no, given the circ.u.mstances."
"Conception without s.e.x.The kid actually said that, didn"t he? And three-month pregnancies. Jesus.
What have we gotten into here?"
I studied him. "What"s wrong with you, Peter? I"ve never seen you so-aggressive."
He snorted, and fixed his invisible gla.s.ses. "We came here looking for your sister, remember. Not forthis ."
"Do you want to back out?"
"Rosa isn"t my sister. Doyou ?"