The next few hours were a confusion of grief and pain. She remembered hearing Gaius swear he would have the Gaulish girl flayed, and Licinius trying to calm him. Something was wrong with Secunda…She tried to get up and go to her, but her women kept pushing her back down. And then the ache in her belly would begin again. In her more lucid moments Julia knew this was wrong. She was familiar with the pangs of labor, but she was barely six months along. Gods, if you have any mercy, make it stop. You took my daughter—don’t let me lose my son!
It was nearly dawn when she convulsed and felt a last hot gush of blood between her thighs. Lydia bent over her, swearing softly. Julia felt the pressure as the woman jammed more cloths between her legs to stop the bleeding. But for a moment she had glimpsed something else, something small and purplish that did not move.
“My son.” Her whisper was a thread of sound. “Let me hold him, please!”
Weeping, Lydia brought something wrapped in a bloody cloth and laid it in the curve of her arm. The face had been wiped clean, and she could see the tiny, perfect features, like the petals of a blighted rose.
She was still holding him when they finally let Gaius in to see her.
“The gods hate me,” she whispered, tears sliding from her eyes.
He knelt beside the bed, lifted the damp hair from her brow and kissed her with more tenderness than she expected. For a moment he looked down at the stillborn child, and then, gently, he drew a fold of cloth across its face and lifted it. She made a convulsive movement to stop him, but she could barely move. For a moment he stood with the child in his arms, like any father about to acknowledge his new-born son, then handed the still form to Lydia to take away.
Julia turned her face into the pillow, sobbing. “Let me die! I have failed, let me die!”
“That’s not true, my poor darling. You still have three little girls who need you. You must not weep so.”
“My baby, my little boy is dead!”
“Hush, my love.” Gaius tried to soothe her, looking at his father-in-law, who had come into the room behind him, in appeal. “We are not yet old, my dear. If the gods will it, we may yet have many children—”
Licinius bent down to kiss her as well. “And if you have no son, my dear child, what of that? You have been a better child to me than many sons, that I vow to you.”
“You must think of our living children now,” said Gaius.
Julia felt despair well up in her. “You never paid any attention to Secunda. Why should you care about the others now? You only care that I have lost your son.”
“No,” Gaius said very quietly, “I do not need you to give me a son. You must sleep now.” He got to his feet, looking down at her. “Sleep heals many griefs, and in the morning you will feel differently.”
But Julia, remembering the delicately carved features of her little boy, did not really hear.
As the slow weeks of Julia’s recovery wore on, Gaius found that he was saddened more by her grief than any feelings of his own. He had been away from home when Secunda was born, and had no great attachment to her. Nor could he bring himself to grieve overmuch for one of four girls.
Yet when he thought of the son they had lost, he could not help thinking about his son by Eilan. In Roman society, adoption of a healthy boy from another family was a traditional solution. If Julia had no male children, and after a consultation with the physician that began to seem improbable, she was less likely to object if he claimed Eilan’s son. And he was fond of his daughters, although he felt no such bond as he had to his first-born boy.
But there was time and enough for that once Julia had her health again. Hoping it would at least distract her from her grief, he agreed to take Julia on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Mother Goddess near Venta, but the journey did little to help her recover her health and spirits, and when he offered to move the family back to Londinium, she did not want to go.