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“But I know your little friend is sick, and the bids will be coming in, and you must be worried and downhearted.”

I held my breath, waiting for her to continue.

“The truth is that I do remember your mother. She worked here for several years. I knew you were her daughter the moment you arrived. You look very much like her: same honey-colored hair, green eyes. But she was taller, with a different chin and nose.”

“What was her name?” I whispered. “What was she like?”

“Her name was Antonia. Oh, but it was a long time ago, and I don’t remember much. She was sweet and kind, I think. She had a good friend, just like you have with Kyra. A red-haired girl named Hortensia.”

“Flavia, where did she go? Why did she never come to visit me at the nursery, or in all my years at the training school? I’ve never heard anything about her.”

She shook her head. “That, I can’t tell you.”

“How could no one know? Can a woman just disappear?” I could hear the note of desperation in my own voice.

“Women disappear all the time,” she said, “and no one mourns them.”

“She left me a little Goddess figurine. Do you know anything about that?”

The old woman leaned back against the stone wall and shook her head sadly. “Sometimes we have to let the past go. I tell myself that every day.”

I got to my feet and began to pace, still holding the tunic. “It’s not only the past I’m interested in. I care about the future too. How many of us actually pay off our debt? What happens if we don’t?”

She glanced over at the group of boys near the well and shouted, “No horseplay with those boards, you rascals.” She turned back to me. “I’m not the best person to answer these questions. What do I know about it?”

“I’ll bet you know more about it than you let on. As you said, you’ve seen a lot over the years.” I realized I was nearly shaking with agitation.

She watched me placidly. “It’s easy to see a lot when you’re invisible.”

I threw the tunic onto a pile with more force than I intended. “I just want something more than this. Something beyond these walls.”

“By the Goddess, a face worth a hundred solidi and you want something more? You think you have it hard?” She heaved herself up off the crate. “What do you know of hunger? Backbreaking work? Your hands are soft, and your belly is full. Many women would like something more, and they don’t get it.”

She shuffled over to the clothesline to examine some of the damp garments.

I stacked the now-empty baskets quietly, abashed. To my shame, my eyes were damp. “Kyra hasn’t woken up in days, and now the door of the infirmary is shut. I can’t get in.”

Flavia turned with a look of concern on her lined face.

“What would I do without her?” I asked, stifling a sob.

She came back toward me with her arms extended. “Oh, the poor thing. I’m so sorry.” She wrapped me in a warm embrace. I wanted to cry on her shoulder forever, but she pulled back. “Let me show you something.”

She led me past the piles of clothes to a part of the room the torchlight barely reached. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the shadows, but once they did, I could make out a wide ledge cut into the rock. A large statue of the Goddess rested on it, a much bigger version of my own tiny ivory figurine. Several candles with blackened wicks surrounded her feet.

“This is my shrine,” Flavia said. “I light a candle every morning. The old laundress before me did the same, and the woman before her, and so on. Would you like to light one for Kyra? And one for your mother too?”

I picked up the little flint on the ledge, struck it, and lit two of the votives. Small flames leapt, illuminating the worn features of the statue. For just a moment in the flame’s glow, her eyes seemed to have a spark of life in them.

Flavia shuffled away across the floor, chastising her young charges. Water dripped in the well. I watched the tiny lights flicker in a weak draft. I thought of Kyra’s chest rising and falling; of Valentina’s desperate face and wringing hands; of my long-vanished mother, who had been just a Corlivo courtesan like me. I was not even sure what to pray for.

AFTER DINNER THAT evening Clemens Fabius asked me to join him once more in one of the receiving parlors. I took his arm, and we strolled down the stairs: a drop in a stream of guests and courtesans flowing from floor to floor. As we rounded the first landing, Valentina passed us, deep in whispered conversation with a tall, pallid-faced guest. When she saw me arm in arm with the Baro, she froze for a moment and then, with some effort, recovered herself and kept moving up the steps. I felt my face grow hot.

From the moment we entered the small sitting room, Lord Fabius vibrated with energy. He paced back and forth in front of the small fire several times before sitting down abruptly on the edge of a chair.

“Shall we have refreshment, sir?” I asked.

“No, not now.” He tapped his foot rapidly but said nothing more.