Was the General to have been that lover? Now they would never know.

            The terrible tidings delivered, they waited anxiously for Lucilla to return to the palace. Hour after hour, she did not appear. Eventually, as dusk settled over the great city, they grew frantic. Then the senator returned, his withered face beaded with sweat and his voice tight with shock, bringing the announcement that the Princess was to reside no more inside the Imperial Palace. Instead, as she had been advised, she was to flee that very night.

            Many tearful hugs and goodbyes later, the number of ladies to go with her was settled. Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius, sister of Commodus, was never to return to Rome again.

*          *          *

All around her, Lucilla heard voices…eerie, disembodied, alien sounds that would have frightened her beyond belief, had she not been terrified enough for one lifetime. In sleep – deep, uninterrupted sleep, the kind she had not enjoyed in years – she had hoped to escape the Hades that her world had become. But no such luck.

            Each and every time she closed her eyes, she saw Maximus lying beneath her, his sweet face in the eternal repose of death. She felt his skin beneath her fingertips as she closed his eyes, heard the murmuring voices around her. The feeling of heaviness in her chest, and the profound dizziness that overcomes one's body upon the death of a loved one, when it seems to suspend operation for one brief, merciful moment before the full horror of the event sinks in.

            Each and every time this happened, Lucilla would brace herself. Then she would wake. A nightmare, another nightmare, which had already come true.

            Maximus, my Maximus, and my brother. They killed each other. Did they not think of me? Did I cross either of their minds even once as they prepared to slaughter one another? Did they not love me enough to think of what I would feel? They couldn't have. And yet, she had chosen to forgive them both.

            A cool, damp sensation settled over her forehead, and once more she was back to reality. Opening her eyes, some of her equilibrium was regained at the sight of the maid's face as she bathed Lucilla's forehead in scented water.

            "Oh, Diana," she murmured, her voice crackled with tiredness. "Thank you. You are wonderful."

            My mother taught me never to thank servants. They are below us, my dear. It is the natural order of things; so do not waste your breath. I will do it anyway. These girls are my saviours. Soon I will be dead. Without them I would be dead already.

            "Do not thank me, my lady," Diana replied. "Do you feel better?"

            "No. I am sick. I have been since before we arrived here."

            Diana did not answer. Conversation is difficult when the most pressing subject is the one that will upset everyone. Instead, the girl rose and crossed the small and sparsely furnished room to the window, through which streamed bright, blisteringly hot sunlight. "This will be better, my lady."

            Diana is good at hiding her feelings. This place could be her home, for all she seems to acknowledge that we are so far away from Rome now. She hides how she feels because of me. Because she thinks I will cry, or worse, if she says a thing about what has happened to us.

"Diana?" Lucilla asked, quietly, but even so causing a burning pain in her dry throat. "Do you know where we are?"

The maid stood twisting a rag free of excess water above a bowl. Lucilla watched her face closely. Her lips parted as she prepared to speak, then promptly pressed tightly together as she thought the better of it.

"Please tell me where we are, dear."

I know where we are. I remember the journey clearly enough. I saw the land, the dust, the water. I know that this is Greece. This is where Commodus would put people away who displeased him. Now he is dead, and yet we are still here.

"An island, my lady."

            "Do you know when you will go home?"

            "I will not go home, my lady, without you."

            "Oh, Diana, do not call me that. I am no lady anymore." Through eyes stinging with heat and dust in the air, Lucilla looked around the room. At the misshapen lumps of wood which served as furniture; at the bare clay walls. Below her, she felt the cot that was her bed. No, she was anything but a noble lady anymore. Only a select, uncaring few Rome even knew where she had gone. No one would ever look for her, or even think to.

            Did she even want them to look for her?

            Diana smiled, confusedly. "Pardon me?"

            "Call me Lucilla. From now on." She watched as the girl frowned. "Just say it aloud, so I can hear it."

            "…Lucilla."

            She felt a small satisfaction. Diana was an awkward and anxiously submissive creature, and never in her life as a servant had she uttered one sentence to her mistress without adding "my lady" at the end. Not since the last time Lucilla had seen her husband had she so enjoyed hearing her own name spoken. As she grinned at the nervous girl before her, she felt the pain coursing through her whole body begin to subside a little. Just a little.

            Six weeks on this interminable island, and only a tiny bit closer to communicating with Diana in the way she dearly wanted to.

            "About going home, dear."

            The girl sat down on a low stool opposite the bed, as if the strain of speaking with a princess so freely was too much for her.

            "Yes, my…Lucilla." Tension reverberated in her quiet, childish voice.

            "Do not worry about going back without me. Do not worry about me at all. I am a non-entity now. You still have a life left to lead."

That night, when the heat intensified and hung in the air like a warm, wet blanket, Lucilla dreamt of Lucius. Her little boy, whom she would never see again, no doubt was waiting impatiently in Rome for his mother's return. Visions of all her family scuttled through her weary mind as she slipped in and out of coma-like slumber, particularly of her son. Hot, suppressed tears streamed down her face, as if some damaged inner dam had finally collapsed after so many years.

            She saw her baby, not more than a year old, fretful in her arms on one of the few times she had been allowed to care for him herself. Noble ladies were always 'spared' this duty, but she had revelled in it. The scent of his hair and skin reached her nose and delighted her as if this were not a dream, when she accepted, reluctantly, that it was. Then he was a toddler, dressed as a miniature version of his father. Then growing, then growing some more, so fast, then gone.

            Her father appeared, towering above her, and suddenly she was the child. Kneeling at his feet, she heard his voice, softly commanding respect and inspiring love in his small daughter. She felt his gentle kiss on the top of her head.

            Finally, she felt imagined cool air gusting across her whole body, and a transient sense of comfort overwhelmed her after so long without. Something, somewhere, was telling her to be glad for the life and the love she had been granted. She saw Maximus; her lost one, in this fleeting glance into Elysium.

            You're home.

            Yes, she had forgiven him. And she had forgiven Commodus, for all the evil he had done her, even that which she could never tell anyone of. She also thanked the gods for all the evil had not done her and her son.

As morning approached, she felt her stomach begin to turn, and inwardly she glowed through her pain with a new strength. This was her last hope of happiness before her end. None of her ladies knew that she vomited in the morning, and none of them would find out yet that this new affliction was not a symptom of the illness that would eventually kill her. Save for Diana. Before the girl went home, her mistress had one last request for her.

The island was not merely unbearable for the pregnant princess, in the final days of her valiant and yet doomed life. Diana, former nursemaid to Master Lucius and now carer to his beloved mother, had survived some unbearable events in her twenty short years. Banishment to this place, removal from her friends and family and the life of relative splendour she had led in Rome – all of this she could tolerate.

Then the night that Lucilla, the great lady she had served and loved for a fair fraction of her lifetime, told her she was dying, came around just to teach her a lesson.

            The lady requested that she not tell any of the other girls. Diana knelt before the bed, letting the Princess cradle her head as she wept uncontrollably, begging her not to leave them.

            "Oh, my darling." Such a small, weak voice was ironic coming from such a woman. "I will make sure you will never be alone. You are my chosen one."

            Chosen one? That meant nothing, whatever it was. Diana had no friends to call her own save this angel. Returning to Rome meant nothing if it would not be with her.

            "I have something to give you," Lucilla told her.

            "What?"

            "I'll tell you tomorrow."

She was cleaning the few ragged dresses shared between all of them in a nearby stream, still fighting back more tears and aching to be with the lady again, when Rufina, a fellow maid, came running out to tell Diana that she was needed. The clothes were immediately abandoned, left to languish in the water and the heat.

"I'm going to have a baby, my dear."

Pregnancy had always been a byword for social disgrace to Diana. The little she knew about the subject was more painful than she cared to think of. She merely stared, dumbstruck, as Lucilla smiled serenely. Her auburn hair, once shiny and constantly pinned up neatly in magnificent ornaments, now hung down her back, tangled and clammy with sweat. It didn't affect her beauty in the slightest.

"Do you have any questions?"

"Of course not," Diana answered automatically. She knew better than to question her mistress's honour or good intentions. The child's father, whomever he may be, had to be a good man of high birth. There was no question about it. But what could she possibly want her maid to do about it?

"I will still die," the lady continued, completely unfazed to be predicting her own demise, "but not before the child is born. When it is, you will go home, Diana. With my child. I am giving him to you, to take with you back to Rome."

The months passed curiously quickly. Diana watched her mistress like a hawk, caught in an insufferable mixture of emotions as she noticed the sudden improvements in her health. She began leaving her bed during the day for the first time since soon after their arrival on the island, when the sickness had come. The other ladies were rapturous.

            "She is better! Look at her skin…and she is eating! Oh, I told you she would, didn't I? She always does."

            Diana found herself hating Lucilla for this, but somewhat irrationally. Of course, she was making herself strong again for the baby. But on the other hand, only she knew that it was all temporary – when the baby came, she would be ill again, then leave them. Not to mention the baby, for her to raise. Diana had never been married and had never raised a child. She had cared for the boy Lucius, but not alone.

            Lucilla's belly grew bigger and rounder, until one night, the air much cooler and the sky much darker, the pains began. The infant, a girl, took no time at all for the four maids, including Diana, to deliver.

            The Princess, a mother for the second and final time, fell asleep soon after the birth. She spoke to none of her excited attendants before they went to bathe the squalling baby, simply smiling at Diana, mouthing 'thank you', and turning over. Diana herself tried to keep her mind completely clear, fending off the moment when the realisation – that the baby would soon be hers – dawned on her.

            A few moments later, she returned to Lucilla's bedchamber, the child in her unwilling arms.

            "Lucilla? Wake up and see your daughter. She's…beautiful…" For the first time, Diana gazed into the child's bright, flashing eyes and broad, infectious smile. Quickly, she crossed the room and knelt before the low bed, reaching out a hand to gently shake her mistress back to reality.

            It took several minutes for her to realise that her mistress had joined her father, the emperor, General Maximus and those murdered senators in the hereafter. Leaning over her, crying suddenly and hysterically, Diana saw that she was smiling, her skin still flushed and perfect.

            "Say goodbye to your mother, Julia," the girl sobbed bitterly, repeating the name the sweet lady herself had selected. "You'll never know another human being like her. None of us will."