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“I know very little,” I said. “Her name was Antonia, and apparently, she looked something like me. She left me at the nursery twenty-one years ago, and that’s the last anyone saw of her, as far as I can tell.”

Portia nodded.

AFTER NEARLY AN hour of walking we emerged from the woods into a field where waist-high stalks of late-season wheat swayed in the wind. Beyond the field a large wooden house and several other buildings rose against the blue sky.

Portia stepped gingerly around the tidy furrows. “We grow wheat to make bread, and we tend sheep for wool. We keep chickens and goats. We don’t allow any men on this land.”

We trailed after her, astonished at the industry on display.

THE FARMHOUSE KITCHEN was spacious and busy. A dozen women moved around the warm room, folding, chopping, stirring, tending the fire, laughing, eating. Bundled herbs hung from the ceiling, scenting the air, and clay pots lined the shelves. At the far end, flames danced in a huge clay oven.

I studied each of the women in turn, searching for a flicker of recognition, for something that might remind me of my own face, beyond the similarity I now could easily see among women bred for beauty in Corlivo, but no one stood out.

Portia showed us to a rough wooden bench at the end of a long trestle table. She put her hands on Ismene’s shoulders and called out, “Excuse me, sisters. This is Ismene, who is seeking refuge here, and Anna, who’s looking for information about her mother, a woman called Antonia. The woman might have left Corlivo about twenty years ago. Please welcome them while I find out what I can from the others.” She left the kitchen, and in a moment, I could see her through the window, crossing the field. The scale of the place was beyond anything I had imagined.

“All of you fled Corlivo?” Ismene asked in wonder.

A few of the women looked up from their work and smiled. Several of them had scarred or otherwise disfigured faces.

A pregnant woman folded white cloths into a tidy stack by the window. Her belly curved under her apron. “I remember how I felt when I first arrived,” she said. “I cried with relief.”

“I don’t know how to cook or tend a garden,” Ismene said. “I’m useless.”

The pregnant woman smiled gently. “Of course you’re not useless. Don’t worry. We’ll teach you. My name is Ursula, by the way. Where were you apprenticed?”

“Aeris,” Ismene said.

“I was at Caligine,” I said, “but I left before the bidding was complete.”

“Beautiful Caligine,” Ursula repeated bitterly. “I was there as well, but I left a few weeks before this season’s tirae arrived. I’ll never forget the matron telling me that my baby would be given away to a nursery.” She put her hand protectively across her belly. “But this child won’t endure what we’ve endured.”

I thought back to the matron’s chamber at Casa Caligine, overlooking the vast mountain range. How many sad conversations must that room have held?

“I’ll never forget my bidder,” said an older woman with a jagged scar on her chin. “He wasn’t gentle. But I didn’t run until years later. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I thought, I’m either going to leave here or die trying. Either way, it will be over.” She grinned. “But here I am.”

“We were all raised to think our work was important,” Ismene said with a voice full of emotion. “That it would be fun and glamorous.”

Ursula ran her fingers along the stack of white cloths, counting them. “If it were fun and glamorous, we wouldn’t drink wine day and night to feel as little as possible. At least, that’s how I managed.”

Tears sprang to my eyes unexpectedly. “My best friend used a powder to help her sleep. She took too much and died.”

Ismene turned quickly. “You never told me that.”

“That powder is always in circulation in Corlivo.” Ursula sat down slowly in a nearby chair. “It dulls the senses. Women develop a dependency on it, and no one cares. The matrons just fill those ledgers in, line by line, and pay the tax collector when he comes around.”

I thought of the precise handwriting in the account books in the records room. There was so much I hadn’t understood, even just a few months ago.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” I asked.

Ursula passed me a basket of lentils. “You can shell these.”

Ismene and I began to pull the husks off the little red beans, making a pile of the discarded outer skins on the table. As we worked, we all shared memories of the nurseries in which we had each been raised—different places, but all similar, based on the stories we told—and about our years at the Schola Morum. I told them about Kyra, how we had been friends since childhood. I found myself pouring out my whole story, my desire to see the world, meeting Sebastianus and Klaudia, the books I loved, Clemens Fabius, the tiger. I talked about learning my mother’s name from Flavia, about leaving Corlivo in a carriage, about the executions in the temple in Panpirion.

“Why, you’ve lived a whole life already, and you’ve only been gone from Corlivo a few months,” Ursula exclaimed.

“I’ve spent most of it behind the walls of a villa,” I said. “This is my first real adventure.”

We finished with the lentils and started on a basket of apples.