“I don’t know,” she said, thoughtful. “All the young men here have known me forever. They know what I’m worth, regardless of what I’m wearing. But it’s a nice custom, anyway.”

Half the girls had let their hair loose, but Mirah wore a white scarf over her head. It suited her, but I still didn’t know what color her hair was.

She straightened, tossing her sandals into the wagon, and smiled up at me. Then she let out a piercing war whoop and dived into the vineyard. The other girls went giggling and squealing after her. Someone behind us began to play at pipes, and the little girls twirled wistfully as they watched their big sisters join hands among the vines and went ducking, dancing, swirling through the grapes. The men came up to watch the dancing with casual jests and intent eyes. “Pretty sight, aren’t they?” Simon said at my elbow.

“Pretty enough. Which one have you got your eye on?”

“Don’t know,” he said, though his eyes followed an olive-skinned girl with a gentle face.

I nudged him. “She’s pretty!”

“Well, I need a wife,” he said, a little self-conscious. “It’s time I started a family. I’m to get my land grant soon—I’m hoping for something in Judaea.” All legionaries who made it through their twenty-five years were rewarded with a packet of land somewhere in the Empire for farming. Though I’m not sure who had the idea that retired soldiers would make good farmers. I didn’t know a plow from a streetlamp, and as far as I knew, neither did Simon.

“So you’ll take your new wife and move to Judaea and spend your days plowing?” I hooted. “You’ve never even seen Judaea!”

“I don’t have to see it to love it,” Simon said intensely, and I let the matter drop.

The girls began whirling back, tossing grapes or flowers to the men who watched them, and I saw mothers nodding approval. A middle-aged man with gray shot through his beard stood watching Mirah greedily—his third wife had just died, I knew—and I felt the sudden urge to pound him. A moment later he staggered and blinked as a cluster of grapes hit him in the chest, and Mirah ducked bright-eyed and innocent-faced back behind the vines.

I managed to catch Mirah’s eye, and her mouth quirked at me. Then she yanked the scarf off her hair and waved it over her head like a banner as she pelted down the vines. Her hair was braided with sloe blossom, and it was a bright chestnut. Like mine.

I didn’t know it before, but Jews got married under canopies. I stood under one myself a month later, when I married Mirah.

TITUS