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“My own adventure was less thrilling and far shorter,” Ursula said. “I was bid to a much older man. It was over quickly enough, and I never saw him again. There were a few others who came and went, and then I found a patron, a wine merchant from the capital. One day my blood didn’t come. The medicus confirmed I was with child. I was told to withdraw from the house for a while, have the baby, and then return to work. I couldn’t bear the thought, so I ran. I made my way here, but it wasn’t an easy journey. I was sick the whole way.”

“How did you even know this place existed?” I asked.

She shook her head. “There’s a closely guarded flow of knowledge in Corlivo. Let’s leave it at that.”

“All right,” I conceded. “Here’s another question: How do you think you conceived a child while taking the infusion?”

“I think the matrons manipulate it,” she said. “Sometimes it has one set of ingredients, and sometimes another.”

I considered this for a minute. “And they never tell you?”

“Corlivo courtesans have to come from somewhere, and they must have the right look.” Ursula tossed a long, coiled apple peel into a basket on the floor. “Every time I thought about what would happen if my child was a girl, the sort of life she would live, I found I couldn’t bear it.”

“What if your child had been a boy?” I asked. “What happens to boy children?”

Portia came in through the kitchen door just as I asked this question. I looked at her eagerly, expecting some news, but she just dragged a chair over to the table and said, “I have a theory about the boy children. I believe they’re sent out of Corlivo. They don’t stay in the mountains.”

“Where do they go?” I asked.

She shrugged.

I thought of the children I had seen clinging to their mother’s skirts in the brothel in Panpirion. What had happened to them? Nothing good. One generation of sorrow giving birth to the next, like one generation of Corlivo courtesans producing another, stretching back centuries, all the way back to—

I turned to Ismene. “Did Casa Aeris have a shrine to the Goddess?”

She furrowed her brow. “No, I never saw anything like that. Why?”

Portia, who had just picked up an apple, put it down again. “We have a shrine to the Goddess here, outside in a little grove. We tend it and make offerings every season.”

I put down my own half-peeled apple. “Can I see it?”

“Of course. Wait here a moment, and I’ll take you.”

A FEW MINUTES later, Portia led me through the kitchen and out a back door. We passed the garden, climbed over a gap in a stone wall, and entered the woods. After only a few yards we emerged into a small clearing. In the center stood a life-sized statue of the Goddess. Her arms were lifted over her head, cradling the crescent moon. The carved gray stone had been worn by years and weather, and her features had become slightly indistinct. She had been standing in that spot for a very long time.

Portia touched the statue’s arm reverently. “We decorate her with flowers in the spring and summer, with fruits in the autumn, and with evergreen boughs in the winter.”

I, too, ran my hand along the cold stone arm. “This statue looks ancient.”

She bent and picked some fallen leaves out of the pile of fruit at the statue’s feet. “I think it is. From what I understand, it has been tended here for generations.”

I let my arm fall to my side. I could wait no longer. “Portia, is there any news of my mother? Is she here?”

She looked at me sadly. “No. There’s no one here with that name or description. However, I mentioned you to another woman here, and she wants to talk to you. She should be right behind us.”

At that moment, there was a rustling in the trees. An older woman strode energetically into the clearing. She wore a blue apron tied around her thick waist. Her long red hair was streaked with gray, but she had an intense quality and a youthful gleam.

Portia nudged me forward.

I looked at the unfamiliar face in confusion.

The woman gazed back at me. “By the Goddess herself, you look just like her. I’m Hortensia. I knew your mother well.”

xxvi

PORTIA EXCUSED HERSELF, AND HORTENSIA AND I SAT together on a little bench in a corner of the grove. The trees, the grass, the birds, and the chattering of the small animals all seemed to fade away, and only Hortensia and I existed in an otherwise silent world.

“When I heard your name and description, and the information you were seeking,” she said, “I thought, could this be Antonia’s child? But such a coincidence seemed so unlikely.”