Free The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits by Mike Ashley (ed)

information, and Zuleika grew impatient to commence with the next obvious step: to pay a call on Ahala, Zanziba’s
lanista
, the man who had turned her away when she tried to see her brother’s corpse. I remained dubious, but made preparations for the journey. Ravenna is a long way from Rome, especially when the traveller suspects in his heart of hearts that at journey’s end lies bitter disappointment.
    Zuleika travelled with me and paid all expenses – sometimes with coins, but more often, I suspected, by exchanging favours with tavern keepers along the way, or by plying her trade with other guests. How she made her living was her business. I minded my own.
    During the day, we rode on horseback. Zuleika was no stranger to horses. One of her brother’s acrobatic tricks had been to stand upright on the back of a cantering horse, and she had learned to do so as well. She offered to show me, but I dissuaded her; if she fell and broke her neck, who would pay my way home?
    She was a good conversationalist, a skill that no doubt contributed to her ability to make a decent living; men pay for pleasure, but come back for good company. To pass the hours, we talked a great deal about Alexandria, where I had lived for a while when I was young. I was amused to hear her impressions of the teeming city and its risible inhabitants. In return, I told her the tale of the Alexandrian cat, whose killer I had discovered, and the terrible revenge exacted by the cat-worshipping mob of the city.
    I was also intrigued by her newcomer’s impressions of Rome and Italy. Her search for Zanziba had taken her to many places and her livelihood had acquainted her with men from all levels of society. She knew both the city and the countryside, and due to the nature of her search she had inadvertently become something of an expert on the state of gladiators.
    “Do you know the strongest impression I have of this land of yours?” she said one day, as we passed a gang of slaves working in a field along the Flaminian Way. “Too many slaves!”
    I shrugged. “There are slaves in Alexandria, too. There are slaves in every city and every country.”
    “Perhaps, but it’s different here. Maybe it’s because the Romans have conquered so many other people, and become so wealthy, and brought in so many slaves from so many places. In Egypt, there are small farmers all along the Nile; they may own slaves, but they also till the earth themselves. Everyone pulls together; in years of a good inundation,everyone eats well, and in years when the Nile runs low, everyone eats less. Here, it seems to me the farmers are all rich men who live in the city, and slaves do every bit of the work, and the free men who should be farmers are all in Rome, crowded into tenements and living off the dole. It doesn’t seem right.”
    “The farms are run well enough, I suppose.”
    “Are they? Then why does Rome import so much grain from Egypt? Look at how these field slaves are treated – how shabbily they’re dressed, how skinny they are, how hard they’re made to work, even under this blistering sun. An Egyptian farmer would be out in the fields alongside his slaves, pushing them to work harder, yes, but also seeing just how hard they do work, and making sure they’re healthy and well-fed so they’re fit to work the next day, too. To an Egyptian, slaves are a valuable investment, and you don’t squander them. Here, there’s a different attitude: work a slave as hard as you can, invest as little as possible in his upkeep, and when you’ve used him up, dispose of him and get another, because slaves are cheap and Rome’s provinces provide an endless supply.”
    As if to illustrate her point, we passed a huddled figure in the gutter alongside the road, a creature so shrivelled and filthy that I could tell neither its age nor its sex – an abandoned slave, kicked out by its master, no doubt. As we passed by, the creature croaked a few unintelligible words and extended a