“We don’t have to name the baby after Trajan,” I conceded. “You’re the one pushing him out, so I reckon you can be the one to name him.” Maybe that would soften her up for the inevitable fight about the brit ceremony. I was all for tradition; Mirah and I kept Shabbat at the end of every week when I wasn’t away fighting, and I said the prayers with her for a half a dozen more religious festivals throughout the year. But ancient ceremony or no, nobody was getting anywhere near my son’s groin with a knife when he was only eight days old.

Little Dinah abandoned her wooden horse and came crawling over, latching onto my sandal. I leaned down and lifted her up with one hand, balancing her on Mirah’s stomach. “Feel that, little girl? That’s your brother kicking.”

“He’s trying to kick his way out,” Mirah complained happily. “Thank God this baby will be born in a bed.”

As things turned out, it wasn’t.

After the Saturnalia celebrations, I hauled my men up for drills. I bellowed at Boil for a while for letting the century get rusty just because we were wintered up, and then I let everyone pair off and go through their paces while I tossed Antinous my gladius. “Let’s see if you’re as rusty as the men,” I said. “Drill number five.”

“Been practicing,” he assured me, and I stood back with folded arms and watched him swing through the patterns. His wide brown eyes were narrowed in concentration as he swung the sword. Too heavy a weapon for a boy his age, but he’d grow into it. I’d been even younger when my father started training me. Antinous was nine now, still pretty-faced, but he fought his good looks as hard as he could. He nurtured his scrapes devotedly, hoping they’d turn into scars, and he’d stolen my dagger so he could shear his curly hair down to a half inch. “Let’s see them call me a girl now,” he’d said, showing me his ragged scalp.

“I must say, he’s gotten tougher,” Mirah approved. “He used to wilt like a plucked flower when the other children teased him for looking so pretty. Now he just starts swinging.”

“You don’t mind mopping up his bloody noses and scraped knees?”

“Of course not. It’s a hard world; every boy should know how to defend himself. Especially one who looks like that.”

But Antinous didn’t really look much like a girl anymore. He was a skinny, scrappy, scabby-kneed little soldier who swung my sword like a veteran. “Again, twice as slow,” I called out. “You’re already fast, now we build your stamina—”