The trees are heavy with blossom. Sabina watches, fascinated, as the drifts fall in white and pink around her, catching in her hair, her gown, her smile. Around them the world is all noise: soldiers clank and cook and laugh, the horses call and stomp at flies, centurions bark, legates gloom. This forest of blossom is quiet, though, in the crimson spill of dusk, and Sabina watches Geminia now as the girl's eyes close fleetingly.

"It'll be desert soon," remarks Sabina, her voice soft. "No trees or blossom or cool air." She looks about mournfully. "All this will be a distant dream."

"You think?" murmurs Geminia, languorously.

Sabina's eyes light happily. "What do you think, Geminia Mater?"

"I think we'll find riches there that we cannot even imagine." Her tone is steady, sure, her eyes brightly hazy. "I've been reading some books on Alexander's campaign to the east – "

"The histories Trajan aims to rewrite?" Sabina bites back her smile.

"What general doesn't want to outrun and outfight Alexander?" says Geminia, more to herself than Sabina. The girl's eyes and voice cloud wistfully. "The best of men, the best of warriors – he'll never be outlived."

"Caesar tried, didn't he?" says Sabina.

"He tried." The two women look to each other, eyes bright with curiosity, bodies tense with anticipation that talking and learning always beckons. "I don't think he succeeded, do you?"

"No," replies Sabina after a moment. "No, I suppose he did not."

Geminia looks down as she stirs the fallen blossom with her fingertips. "Do you think Trajan will succeed, Bina?"

"Maybe," murmurs Sabina. "There's been no emperor like him." She glances at Geminia's pretty face, at her furrowed brow. "Don't frown like that, my heart. Hadrian would hate your face so marred."

"I sometimes think Hadrian sees me as an Athenian statue, some great work of art." Her frown remains; she crushes a handful of blossom. "But never as a person."

Sabina's smile grows but little. She looks off to the sunset dappled beyond the drifts of blossom, the boughs of trees. Her eyes change, though she tries hard to hide them. Tears, Geminia realises, Sabina is crying . . . almost unthinkable. But the great eyes are damp and when she blinks her eyelashes sweep up spiked with diamonds.

"The night I found out about you I didn't know what to think." Sabina's voice rises thin, hesitant for the first time Geminia's ever heard. "Hadrian and I had sat down to dine. Simple supper. No fine wine wasted when we were alone. The slaves went silently and I looked at him." She sighs. "So serene and handsome, our husband, isn't he? So immaculate and poised . . . I asked him about the singer he'd kept for a year. Thought it would be some pretty boy from the provinces, some sculptor or artist, even. But it was you . . . you, Geminia Mater." Sabina's eyes lift suddenly and flood Geminia's. "Was I angry? Was I sad? I can't even remember. Relieved, perhaps, that he knew how to love a woman . . . but now? Joy." She smiles widely. "Sheer joy."

Geminia sits closer now and leans her head onto Sabina's shoulder.

"I've been a mother to you," murmurs Sabina. "A sister, an aunt, a teacher and tutor – "

"A friend," says Geminia, her voice soft. "You have been the dearest and most trusted friend to me."

"We must hold fast to each other now," Sabina whispers. "Bad days are ahead."

"Aren't they always?"

Their eyes meet; a collective sigh, a smile.

"Always, Geminia. Always."