I remember Titus reminding me disapprovingly of Demetra, waiting for me back in Mog. “She’ll be getting big by now with your child,” he said in an icy voice, “and you didn’t wait even one day to replace her. Do you ever give her a single thought?”

“No,” I said honestly. “And don’t you dare tell Sabina about her either.” I tried to imagine Demetra, perhaps getting rounded in the belly by now as she kneaded never-ending lumps of bread dough and played with her little boy. Demetra with her queenly height and mass of honey-colored hair, so much more beautiful than Sabina with her slight body and little freckled face. I thought of Sabina, thoughtfully sounding out a new word of the strange Dacian language or reviling the optio in rough legionary slang, and I realized how much my beautiful, dutiful Demetra had bored me.

Who had time for guilt? It was summer; I had an emperor to serve and an enemy to kill; I had a long road to tire me by day and a lithe girl to tire me by night. That’s what I remember from those months of the Dacian march, not the broader strokes of policy and strategy. You want a campaign history? Go to Trajan’s column on the Quirinal Hill and read the goddamned friezes, frozen and colorless. The friezes might give you the facts, but they won’t show you how splendid Trajan was, how restless and godlike as he marched on foot beside his cheering men. The friezes won’t tell you the details, the little things that still wake up an old soldier like me in the middle of the night and make him realize that it was the best part of his life.

It was late summer before we reached Sarmizegetusa. That, unfortunately, is where my memory gets very clear.

PLOTINA

A letter from Dear Publius!

Plotina ran her fingers along the raised imprint of the boy’s personal seal. His letters were far more infrequent than her own weekly missives, and of course they had to be. The distance was so great, the roads so unreliable, and after all he was a man of importance now with numberless duties to fill his time. Even the most devoted of sons must choose duty over their mothers. Never let it be said that Pompeia Plotina was a clinging mother. But he still found time to write, and in his own hand too. He knew what satisfaction it gave her to see his firm, perfect script. She had taught him that script herself, guiding his plump boyish fingers on the stylus. “Come along, girls,” she called to her household, who looked up surprised to see their Empress so cheerful. “With such a beautiful day, we will take our work outside.”