Nubian woman. Even greater than the contrast of her dark flesh next to the paleness of those around her was the marked contrast of her expression. Submerged in a sea of faces that leered, gaped, and howled with bloodlust, she was silent and stricken, wearing a look of shock and dismay.

The Gaul played cat-and-mouse with his prey. He stepped back, allowing the Nubian to stagger forward, gasping for breath, then struck him full-force again with his shield, knocking him against the wall. Over and over, the Gaul struck the Nubian, knocking the breath out of him each time, until the man was barely able to stand. The Gaul delivered one last body-blow with his shield, and the Nu-bian, recoiling from the wall, fell forward onto his face.

Casting aside his shield, the Gaul grabbed hold of the Nubian's ankle and dragged him toward the center of the arena. The Nubian thrashed ineffectively, seemingly unable to catch a breath. To judge from the intermittent red trail he left in the sand, he was bleeding from some part of his body, perhaps from his mouth.

"Ha!" said one of the men behind me. "Who's the fish out of water now?"

The Gaul reached the center of the ring. Releasing the Nubian's ankle, he held up his fists and performed a victory strut in a circle around him. The crowd gasped at the man's audacity. The Thracian had behaved with the same careless bravado, and had very nearly paid for it with his life.

But the Nubian was in no condition to take advantage of any miscalculation by his opponent. At one point, he stirred and tried to raise himself on his arms, and the crowd let out a cry; but his arms failed him and he fell back again, flat on his chest. The Gaul stood over him and looked to the spectators for judgment.

The reaction from the stands was mixed. People rose to their feet. "Spare him!" cried some. "Send him to Hades!" cried others. The magistrate in charge turned his head this way and that, looking distinctly uncomfortable at the lack of consensus. Whichever course he chose, some in the crowd would be disappointed. At last he gave a sign to the waiting gladiator, and I was not surprised that he did the predictable thing. Mercy to a defeated fighter had already been granted once that day; mercy was the exception, not the rule. The crowd had come expecting to see bloodshed and death, and those who wanted to see the Nubian killed had more reason to see their expectation gratified than did those who preferred the novelty of allowing him to live. The magistrate raised his fist in the air.

There were cries of triumph in the stands, and groans of disappointment. Some cheered the magistrate, others booed. But to all this commotion I was largely deaf, for my eyes were on the Nubian woman directly across from me. Her body stiffened and her face froze in a grimace as the Gaul raised his sword for the death blow; I had the impression that she was struggling to contain herself, to exhibit dignity despite the despair that was overwhelming her. But as the sword descended, she lost all composure. She clutched her hair. She opened her mouth. The sound of her scream was drowned in the roar of the crowd as the Nubian convulsed on the sand, blood spurting like a fountain around the sword thrust between his shoulder blades.

For an instant, the Nubian woman's gaze met mine. I was drawn into the depths of her grief as surely as if I tumbled into a well. Cicero gripped my arm. "Steady, Gordianus," he said. I turned toward him. His face was pale but his tone was smug; at last, it seemed to say, he had found someone more squeamish at the sight of death than himself.

When I looked back, the woman had vanished.

With their palm fronds held aloft, the victors paraded once more around the arena. The magistrate invoked the memory of Sextus

Thorius and uttered a closing prayer to the gods. The spectators filed out of the amphitheater.

"Did you notice her?" I asked Cicero.

"Who, that hyperventilating young woman next to me?"

"No, the Nubian across from us."

"A Nubian female?"

"I don't think she showed up until the final bout. I think she was alone."

"That seems unlikely."

"Perhaps she's related somehow to the Nubian gladiator."

He shrugged. "I didn't notice her. How observant you are, Gordianus! You and your endless curiosity. But what did you think of the games?" I started to answer, but Cicero gave me no chance. "Do you know," he said, "I actually rather enjoyed myself, far more than I ex-pected to. A most instructive afternoon, and the audience seemed quite uplifted by the whole experience. But it seems to me a mistake on the part of the organizers, simply as a matter of presentation, not to show us the faces of the gladiators at some point, either at the be-ginning or the end. Their individual helmets project a certain per-sonality, to be sure, like masks in the theater. Or do you think that's the point, to keep them anonymous and abstract? If we could see into their eyes, we might make a more emotional connection- they'd become humans beings first, and gladiators second, and that would interfere with the pure symbolism of their role in the funeral games. It would thwart the religious intent…" Safe once more from the very real bloodshed of the arena, Cicero nattered on, falling into his role of aloof lecturer.

We arrived at Cicero's lodgings, where he continued to pontifi-cate to his host, a rich Etrurian yokel who seemed quite overwhelmed to have such a famous advocate from Rome sleeping under his roof. After a parsimonious meal, I excused myself as quickly as I could and went to bed. I could not help thinking that the lice at the inn had been more congenial, and the cook more generous.

I fell asleep thinking of the Nubian woman, haunted by my final image of her-her fists tearing at her hair, her mouth opened to scream.

The next day I made my way back to Rome. I proceeded to forget about the funeral of Sextus Thorius, the games, and the Nubian woman. The month of Junius passed into Quinctilis.

Then, one day, as Rome sweltered through the hottest summer I could remember, Eco came to me in my garden to announce a visitor.

"A woman?" I said, watching his hands shape curves in the air.

Eco nodded. Rather young, he went on to say, in the elaborate system of gestures we had devised between us, with skin the color of night.

I raised an eyebrow. "A Nubian?"

Eco nodded.

"Show her in."

My memory did not do justice to her beauty. As before, her hair was done up with ribbons and she was attired in pale blue and bur-nished copper. Probably the outfit was the best she possessed. She had worn it to attend the funeral games; now she wore it for me. I was flattered.

She studied me for a long moment, a quizzical expression on her face. "I've seen you somewhere before," she finally said.

"Yes. In Saturnia, at the funeral games for Sextus Thorius."

She sucked in a breath. "I remember now. You sat across from me. You weren't like the rest-laughing, joking, screaming for blood. When Zanziba was killed, you saw the suffering on my face, and I could tell that you… " Her voice trailed off. She lowered her eyes. "How strange, the paths upon which the gods lead us! When I asked around the Subura for a man who might be able to help me, yours was the name people gave me, but I never imagined that I'd seen you before-and in that place of all places, on that day of all accursed days!"

"You know who 1 am, then?"

"Gordianus. They call you the Finder."

"Yes. And you?"

"My name is Zuleika."

"Not a Roman name."

"I had a Roman name once. A man who was my master gave it to me. But Zuleika is the name I was born with, and Zuleika is the name I'll die with."

"I take it you shed your slave name when you shed your former master. You're a freedwoman, then?"

"Yes."

"Let's sit here in the garden. My son will bring us wine to drink."