But things had smoothed over since that rocky introduction, and now Antinous was humming over my helmet with a polishing cloth as Mirah sang in the kitchen and I went rummaging for a needle to mend the torn liner in my helmet. “Where’s the thread?” I called.

“Sewing things are in the basket by the chair,” Mirah said without looking up. “You know that.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m used to it.” My sandals now lived beneath the bed, just as my whetstones and polishing cloths lived beside the pile of sewing and my dirty tunics went to a woven basket at the bedside rather than to the floor. “I can’t find anything anymore,” I’d complained the first week of living together in Antioch.

“You’ll learn,” said Mirah briskly. “Now, that frieze around the wall has to go.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s got dancing girls in it.”

“They aren’t naked or anything.”

“They’re people. You don’t have pictures or carvings of people in a house,” she explained, “only things, like vines and flowers and urns.”

“Why not people?”

“God doesn’t like images graven in his own likeness. One step from that,” she said darkly, “to worshipping idols, Vercingetorix of Masada.”

“Don’t call me that!” I winced.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “You’re Masada’s last son.”

“And does the last son of Masada have to paint out the frieze?”

“He does if he wants any peace. Not to mention dinner.”

I painted over the images the next day. Philip, who had a talent for sketching when he wasn’t playing dice, drew some rather nice grapevines with urns and draped ribbons, and Mirah kissed him on both cheeks and stuffed him with roast goose. “You’re an ugly lout, Vix,” complained Philip, who had accepted my promotion far more gracefully than Julius. “So why do you always get such good women?”

“I’m lucky,” I said, and meant it. Half the other centurions had wives, but most of them were either stout or pockmarked, and all of them nagged in voices like the trumpets that called us to formation. Mirah with her light step and lively glances and the neat blue scarf over her hair put them all to shame. She liked Antioch; she liked the legion; she’d liked the journey from Rome, and what hardships there were—spiders, tedious hours of travel, strange Antiochene customs—she attacked with a torrent of muttered curses and a cheerful rolling up of sleeves. “Take that, spiders,” she’d say with relish, wielding her broom till the dust flew. “Take that, sand!”

“She’s looking forward to the march in spring?” Boil said unbelievingly.

“So she says.” I couldn’t help sounding smug.

“But centurions’ wives aren’t supposed to come along.”