That night I tossed and turned. At last Bethesda rolled toward me. "Can't you sleep, husband?"
The moonlight picked out glints of silver in her undone hair but left her eyes in shadow. "I'm thinking about the girl who came to visit me today." I had told her Aemilia's story over dinner.
"Very sad," said Bethesda.
"Yes. I was wondering… I don't know much about how it's done."
"What?"
"How a baby is gotten rid of."
Bethesda sighed in the darkness. "It's one of those things most men don't care to know much about. There are several ways. Sometimes a willow wand…"
"Willow?"
"With the bark stripped off. It needs to be thin and flexible to reach into the uterus."
I nodded.
"Or the girl may take poison."
"Poison?"
"Something strong enough to kill the child and expel it from her body. You brew a strong tea, using roots and herbs and fungi. Rue, nightshade, ergot…"
"But isn't that likely to kill the mother as well?"
"Sometimes that happens. I saw the girl on her way out. She looked rather frail to me." Bethesda sighed wearily and rolled away.
I stared at the ceiling. Aemilia believed that the killer of Numerius was equally responsible for the destruction of her unborn child. If Aemilia died, aborting the baby, would Numerius's killer then be responsible for three deaths?
I wondered, did men like Caesar in the cold, dark hours of the night ever ponder such chains of responsibility? To kill a man on the battlefield Caesar would consider an honorable act. But what of the man's widow and child left to starve, or the parents who die of grief, or the lover who kills himself in despair, or the whole villages that perish to famine and disease in the wake of war? How many such chains of suffering and death radiated from every battlefield in Gaul? How many such casualties would there be in Italy now that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon?
I tossed and turned, unable to sleep.