She had given birth, fists clenched, several minutes earlier, flat on her back like a peasant. An inexperienced midwife, who had never before attended on a birth unsupervised, Marcia knew that very few deliveries would be as uncomplicated as this, yet for all the ease of the birth, things seemed set to change. The girl sensed trouble and the manner of her summons to attend this lady provided little reassurance. She had been dragged from the Lupercalian celebrations, so pertinent to her trade, with the promise of a rich reward if she came at once.

Since the baby came quickly there had been little time to spare for curiosity. The woman had fought with enormous will power to hold her cries as the child emerged from her womb, her voice never rising above the labour moans that she had emitted with increasing frequency. Marcia had been forbidden to slap the baby’s feet and the exhausted mother had waved away her attempt to bring the child to life with a sip of wine. Once the cord was cut the woman immediately suckled the infant, which fed greedily and silently, leaving Marcia to wonder anew at the strange circumstances surrounding the whole affair. It would be something to tell her friends, since she had never heard of a child being born in silence. Then with a slight shock, Marcia realised that she could tell no one; before being admitted to this barren bedchamber she had sworn the most frightful oaths to the Goddess Juno, never to reveal anything about this event.

Oaths or not, nothing could abate her curiosity. There were strange things to ponder, not least the fact that Marcia’s attempt to summon the slave, so that the husband who had administered these oaths could be told, had been abruptly halted; she found herself ordered by a violent gesture from the mother to remain still. The whole affair was a deliberate mystery and the person paying her fee, pacing to and fro next door, wanted it kept that way.