“Why should you want me along?” I protested when Simon dragged me out of the house. “I’ve mooched off your family the last week.” The week after my Shabbat dinner with Simon’s family, they had left for their modest villa outside the city and had almost forcibly dragged me with them.

“No, no, we’re happy to have you to celebrate.” Simon waved an expansive hand about the villa. A pleasant place, not grand like Senator Norbanus’s summer home in Baiae, but pleasant. Just a big sprawling house where dogs ran in and out and hens scratched in the yard, and all around the vineyards stretched with a smell of dusty grapes. “The hero of Masada is always welcome here!”

“Look here,” I complained, “I’m not the hero of Masada. I’ve never even been there.”

“But you’re the last bloodline from it.” Simon gave my arm a punch. “Your children will be the heirs of Masada, Vix. Proof that Rome can never win.”

“Rome has won.” I pointed to the horizon where the city lights could still be seen every night, to the cultivated fields that spread out all around us. “You live in Rome. Not to mention fighting for Rome for the past twenty-five years.”

“All gone in a heartbeat,” Simon dismissed his time with the Tenth. “This is the real time. Now, I’ll wager you’ve never seen a Tu B’Av celebration—look, there they are!”

“Who?”

A cart came rumbling up to the door, decked in flowers. A slave with a wreath perched rakishly on his head handled the mules, and in the back were a dozen giggling girls in white. The door to the house opened and another trio of girls dashed past us, also in white. I caught sight of Mirah’s neat ankles as the other girls handed her up into the cart with much squealing.

“The unmarried girls dance in the vineyards on Tu B’Av,” Simon explained. “It’s supposed to bring them husbands.”

“Does it?”

“Well, all the men come to watch,” Simon grinned, “so marriages do tend to come out of it.” He ducked ahead to link arms with his two younger brothers as the cart creaked off toward the vineyard. The procession already had the air of a festival, jugs of wine being passed back and forth among the younger men, the girls in the cart giggling under their lashes, the mothers and fathers walking arm in arm with more wreaths perched on their heads. I slouched along behind, liking the smell of the deep red earth under my sandals, the scent of the vines and the grapes all around.