Fighting Fit by Annie Dalton Read Free Book Online Page B

oil was scraped off with a little gadget called a “strigil”. After that you went through warm pools and sweltering steam rooms and icy plunge pools, until every last speck of dirt had been extracted from your pores. By the time you floated back on to the street, you were so clean you could hardly speak!
    I watched dreamily as half-naked girls and women wandered to and fro between the steam rooms and the plunge pool. The humid air was full of soothing scents, jasmine, rose and sandalwood oils, perfumed creams and Roman shampoo. The sounds were soothing too. The whoosh of steam, the swoosh and bubble of water, the murmur of voices.
    I felt safe in this scented female world. Safe enough to risk a teeny little snooze…
    My eyes flew open in terror! I’d felt someone brush past. A pale blue robe was disappearing around the corner. Aurelia’s jewellery! I panicked. But to my huge relief, my mistress’s possessions seemed undisturbed.
    It was mid-afternoon by the time we went back out on to the street. After the languid atmosphere of the baths, the heat and noise outside seemed tremendous. A new temple was going up across the road and the air was thick with dust. Armies of sweating slaves wearing unbelievably filthy rags, wrestled massive blocks of stone into place, as an overseer bellowed instructions.
    While we looked around for our litter bearers, a guy tried to get us to buy a carpet. “For such pretty ladies, very special price.”
    Another guy was trying to sell us a jar of rejuvenating oil!
    “Cheeky thing!” I fumed. “I’ll rejuvenate him if he tries that again!”
    “Do you know where they get that stuff?” Aurelia grinned. From the glint in her eye, I knew this was going to be gross. “It comes from the gladiator schools. The masseurs save all the dirty oil they scrape off the gladiators and sell it on!”
    I stared at her, open-mouthed. “Who in the world would buy dirty massage oil?”
    “Deluded old women, mainly,” she said giggling. “They believe gladiator sweat will keep them eternally young!”
    “Euw,” I said faintly. “Bottled gladiator sweat! That is so icky!!”
    We eventually spotted our bearers squatting by the roadside. They’d been waiting patiently for us in the broiling heat for hours. Most upper-class Romans didn’t even register a bearer as a human being. But Aurelia was not like most Romans. “They look half-starved,” she said in a low voice. “Give them a few denarii to buy food, Mella. We’ll wait here.”
    While we were waiting, I spotted a poster advertising the next day’s Games. I was startled to see a girl gladiator amongst the attractions. So girls really do fight in the arena I thought wistfully. This gladiatrix, as girl gladiators were called, was known as Star. Someone had added a drawing of her in a tiny leather skirt and boots, wielding a short curved sword. Her face was hidden behind a spooky metal mask.
    “Have you heard about this girl?” I asked Aurelia.
    I turned in time to see her furtively examining a scrap of papyrus. I just glimpsed a childish drawing of a fish and what might have been a street name, then she hurriedly slipped it inside her stola, looking flustered. “Did you say something, Mella?” she said in an innocent voice.
    Don’t say Aurelia’s got a new love interest already, I thought. She’s only been in Rome a couple of weeks! How did that happen?
    It turned out that my mistress knew all about the gladiator girl. She’d got the local gossip from her masseuse at the baths. Star herself had only arrived in Rome a few weeks ago, but she was already a bit of a celeb.
    “You’d have to be really special to be a girl gladiator,” I sighed enviously. I couldn’t imagine that kind of courage.
    Aurelia shook her head. “Gladiatrix are really just novelty acts. Like dwarves and exotic beasts. No-one takes them seriously as fighters.”
    “They’re taking this one seriously,” I pointed out. “It says here she’s mastered three