It wasn’t such a beautiful day, really—autumn in Rome, blustery and gray. And the gardens were not at their best, the lilies looking a trifle draggled and the roses in the brown and clothy stage. She would have to speak to the gardeners about that. But later. Plotina swept her dark-purple silks over the dry grass, choosing a little grotto where a marble bench invited the viewer to sit for a moment beside a softly trickling fountain, and gazed over the vista of the Imperial gardens dropping below. Her women settled gamely around her—slaves with baskets of sewing, freedwomen with her correspondence, little girls waiting to run her errands. “Silence, if you please,” Plotina called, and was pleased to see that they had already settled to their work in utter quiet. She had them well trained, but slaves, like dogs, needed constant reinforcement. Without her sharp eye, they would dawdle and gossip over their sewing like hens scratching in the dirt. One last glance over her obedient household, and Plotina settled on her bench and opened the letter.

Yes, the dear boy was well. Working very hard, of course—he was too modest to say as much, but she knew the legion must be thriving under his leadership. Trajan, disappointingly, was still proving cool.

I can see you frown from clear across the Empire, Dear Publius wrote, but I’m afraid I have been reduced to getting drunk with the Emperor and his officers in the evenings. You will disapprove, and certainly I have no love for unmixed wine and war stories, but it appears the only way to converse with Trajan in ease.

Plotina did frown, but not at her Dear Publius. Trajan, such a far-sighted man in so many ways, but so blind about his own family. And still getting drunk and swapping dirty jokes with his men, as if he were a boy! Thank the gods Hadrian had gotten over that stage at a suitable age.

Your Imperial husband works hard, Hadrian continued, and is to be emulated in all things. No detail of the march escapes him, but he still makes time to consider matters in Rome. You know how enthusiastically he took up that alimenta scheme proposed by Vibia Sabina.

Another frown. Plotina still could not believe that Sabina had taken herself along on the Dacian campaign. A Roman woman, marching with an army? What notions had gotten into the girl’s empty head, to give her such an idea? Dear Publius had not been pleased, though of course he was too charitable to criticize. Plotina did it for him, in her own letters. She understood.

“Daughters-in-law,” she said to the plump Ethiopian woman whom she trusted with the Imperial household’s fine sewing. “So troublesome, don’t you agree?”