Faustina and the Barbarians (5 page)

I was delighted by the place, and still am, Flavia. I’m even thinking of settling here, after I visit you in Constantinople, assuming we can save the island from the Saxons.
 

After refreshing ourselves for a day or two, we left the port of Dubris, and after a tour of the other Saxon Shore forts, which were being refortifed, we rode inland to Calleva Atrebatum. What a surprisingly civilised place this is, or, sadly, was, Flavia. Just like an old Italian town dropped down amid the cool flinty green hills of Britain. It had everything, from a forum, shops, baths, to an arena still used, to the disgust of Monomachus, for gladiatorial combats. And, to the eunuch’s even more intense loathing, temples and shrines to our true Gods and Goddesses. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Mithras. There was a church of course, but not very well attended according to the deacon.
 

The citizenry I found very appealing, friendly, helpful and a little decadent. I was even more disgusted with Honorius for consigning them to the rude hands of the Saxons. But I swore they would not be lost to Rome without a fight.

There was quite a bit of snobbishness, but after all, who is perfect? The Britons of Calleva and the other towns looked down on what they called the ‘Chavi’, the Celts—though the Britons themselves are Celt, or, as they prefer, ‘Romano-Celt’—who, snubbing the civilised delights of the towns, cling to their old tribal ways in the countryside. I encountered many of these Chavi on market days, and, though they swore continously, and dressed rather garishly and embarrassingly, I found them attractive in their unselfconscious directness.
 

But both Chavi and townsfolk looked with hatred and scorn upon the Picts, who have not compromised with Roman Civilisation one whit. A fierce nation who have not altered their habits for centuries, I was told. They traditionally occupied the far north of Britain, beyond the Antonine Wall, but were increasingly making inroads on the settled farmland south of Hadrian’s Wall. I saw one or two captives, and what pride they showed as they were shoved through the marketplace. I was quite stirred by two topless men covered in arcane tattoes and designs.

I was treated more like an Empress than an aristocratic visitor, and such would’ve been the case even without the wretch Monomachus telling everyone I was the great-great-great-grand-daughter of the Emperor Maximian. A luxurious townhouse in the centre, close to the baths, was put at my disposal, along with an even more luxurious villa nestled among the wooded slopes just outside the town.

Here I entertained as lavishly as I could, in between attending meetings with the civic leaders of Calleva and from other places as far afield as Londinium and Isca Silurium. But more of that later. I must tell you how I finally won Comminilingus around to my way of loving.
 

I began by recruiting the prettiest young serving men and women to supply the guests at my dinner parties, and studying Comminilie’s reactions. He was very taken with some of the boys, the taller and fuller figured the better, which boded well for me. But he could also be distracted by some of the girls, I noticed; being particularly drawn to full, tight, rounded, even muscular arses, which again boded well for me, the proud possessor of an astonishing gluteus maximus. He was a restlessly horny specimen, was Comminilingus. But, in truth, it was a small town, and like all small towns there was little to do, ultimately, but screw and gossip and screw again, and, in Calleva Atrebatum’s case, prepare for the depredations of the Saxons. The threat of these Germanic marauders did add piquancy to daily life, and even the pious Christian members of the community could occasionally be found letting their hair down in some back alley. I myself, though not bored, did have the horn quite fiercely. But I was intent on saving it for Comminilingus.

One night, with the early autumn wind blowing around the villa, and Comminilie, the last of my guests, nodding off after the extra strong wine I had kept him liberally supplied with all evening, I slipped onto the couch next to his, and lulled him further with my voice. Old stories, amorous poems, and various musical titbits of rustic scurrility. A smile played upon his handsome face as he sprawled, listening, lapsing in and out of consciousness, and allowing me to admire the long clean lines of his muscular legs stretched out from beneath his toga. Eventually, emboldened, I kept time with my songs by tapping lightly on his calves, gradually working up to his knees; taps becoming caresses en route, to which he responded, sliding down on the couch and offering up more of his long parted legs to my hands.
 

The lamps guttered low, the wind gusted, the slaves were all abed. I got up, leaving him dishevelled and gently panting and went to my bedroom. I came back and locked the doors.
 

I blew out all but one of the lamps and straddled him on the couch, continuing my caresses. His big phallus was hot and hard, as hard as the one I wore, strapped tightly around my waist and over my shoulders. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this intricate artificial cock of, the seller assured me, Persian provenance, have I? Like a real erection it has an outer sheath of skin enclosing a tube of rigid muscle, in this case the muscle is made of layer upon compressed layer of tough but flexible leather enwrapping a long ovoid of obsidian. The outer sheath, when lubricated, can move back and forth very easily, revealing more and more of the cock’s great bulbous head, a lovingly modelled reproduction of the most engorged phallus of your wildest dreams. And more, Flavia—I shall demonstrate its prowess to you one night in Constantinople—it is so constructed that when the outer sheath is in motion it drives the inner tube’s long thick tail end-piece into the cunnus of its wearer, the rim of the whole also being thickly ribbed in the right place to stimulate the wearer’s clitoris. It is indeed a marvel, a masterpiece of mechanics, a cunning ram of pleasure that can be deployed in a host of situations.

Now it was at the service of Comminilingus. Having been steeped in a fragrant oil for hours, its skin was warm and softly pliable to the touch. When he gripped it, with his eyes dreamily closed, a smile of lascivious pleasure beautified his relaxed features, and as he began working it back and forth I felt its rim pressing satisfyingly against my clit, its hard inner phallus pushing simultaneously between my well lubricated lips. I pushed the folds of his toga virilis up his chest and poured out a feast of caresses upon the warm muscular ripples of his shapely masculinity.
 

The rhythm of my caresses and his arching responses gradually enmeshed and our motion increased. As he drove the skin of my phallus down he pushed the tail of that length of sheathed obsidian deeper and deeper within my lips, and harder, more pricklingly—violently—against the ultra-sensitive, tightly bunched nerve ends of my stiffened clitoris. I had to arch myself back significantly to get the full impact of the phallus’ upward curving penetration, and it was rather a strain, though a deeply rewarding one.
 

The lamp was almost out, its flame ravening wildly as it scoured the bowl for the last stains of fuel, and as the flame’s shadow tore in a mad dance around the frescoed walls, Comminilingus pumped the phallus with equal violence. Was he imagining some boyfriend’s cock as he did so? What matter if it brought him such pleasure and me such ecstasy in the process? Never be squeamish about what’s in a man’s head during love-making, Flavia. On these occasions, it’s not their skulls we’re interested in. I was inflamed, full of as much ravening energy as the lamp flame, though mine was building rather than dying—and building rapidly.
 

In the excitement of recalling this scene, I neglected to mention that as Comminilie worked my phallus I was working his great cock as assiduously, elevating him to a pitch of quivering pleasure that seemed to exactly match my own. An expert seismologist of cock tremors, I could tell he was drawing close to eruption, but where would he prefer to fire? It was too late to stop my motion and ask him. Luckily his hungry ballista brought the solution to my notice. He raised himself up on an elbow, and still, with eyes closed—in concentration rather than aversion to my feminity—his cock nudged its way between my legs. There was a pause of surprise at finding my cunnus fully occupied, but the device, though sometimes a trial to get on, is easy to slip off. I did so and... my poor descriptive powers almost fail me in relating the sensation that unwomanned me when the real living and bulging rotundity of his head slid through the lips of my moisture saturated cunnus. I say unwomanned, but stress this was, as always with me, a voluntary procedure. I was half in love with this big cool boy-fancier whose spirit was so in accordance with my own. So, I let all restraint go. And I think the sight of me riding him like some depraved goddess, sucking and clamping him into me up to the balls and beyond, shattered then whatever hesitancy he still harboured about having sex with me. His wildness of release matched my own, and we tipped onto the floor. I wrapped my arms around the squat legs of the biggest heaviest couch for leverage to feel all of his palpitating length surging like an enraged bull up the narrow confines of its stall, seeking for the exit, inside me. His face like a furnace, veins twitching, eyes bulging, gripping the lip of the same couch and driving himself with savage pelvic lunges higher and deeper in, ever thrusting for further space, he came, and the hot torrent of his cum broke everything within me to pieces, sweeping the parts and pulsing splinters away.
 

For the following blissful autumnal weeks we were inseparable. And though I still entertained at the villa, my parties were shortened. When their end finally arrived, we would fall on each other like wild cats, tearing at each other in a frenzy of lust which was only sated after a series of bouts ending with the dawn, though not always then.

Our passion was all-absorbing, all-consuming. So much so that I’m ashamed to say I almost completely neglected the other aspect of my British mission: to help defend the island from the Saxons. I blushed to think what my thrice-fold great-grandfather the Emperor Maximian would think of me. But my blushes flamed into serious self-chastisement when, in late October, before the snows of winter could hinder the speed of their assault, the Saxons were upon us.

The town had no warning. The lookouts were found later with their throats cut, and as for the retired Roman Legionaries who had settled in the town with their British wives and who topped up their pensions by doing patrol duty in the area, most of those were down the pub. It was a disgraceful day for Rome.
 

The attack began with a single flaming arrow landing at the savoury pie stall of the market which, within seconds, was ablaze. More flaming arrows followed bringing wholesale panic in their wake. People dropped everything, shopping, each other, tankards of ale, and fled home. But to no avail. A rain of cold arrows followed the hot ones—cold that is until warmed in the blood of the terrified townsfolk. I’ll say one thing for the Saxons: they know how to build up the suspense before a big entrance. The arrows fell to the sound of brazen horns. Each blast heralding a shower of death. And where an arrow missed its mark, sometimes sheer terror did the trick. Women screamed as though in childbirth, grown men froze, urine running down their bare legs, or squashed themselves, cowering in the alleyways between houses, or under the market stalls. No one was doing anything.

And then I saw Comminilingus, sword drawn, calmly leading a group of white-faced soldiery toward the town senate house, others joining them as they strode through. The town armoury was attached to the senate and doubtless they were heading there to distribute its contents. But, looking around, how many of these quaking citizens were even able to hold a weapon?

I decided to try and whip a little martial spirit into them.

“Citizens! If you call yourselves Romans you must shake off your fear and defend your home as if it were Rome itself. As indeed it is. Rome is wherever Romans live. Come! Follow me to the armoury and let’s give these pig-tailed flaxen-haired oafs of Saxons a taste of Roman steel! Follow me!”

Is that you giggling, Flavia? I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly Julius Caesar or Pompey the Great, but it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. And, it did have some galvanising effect. A few men came to my standard and, I was gratified to see, a few women. We set off immediately to the senate house, leaving an inferno of a market place behind.

We reached it—but there was no sign of Comminilingus within—just as the Saxons started pouring through the wide streets of the town. I’d never seen so much blond hair at once in my life. Blond hair upon which, I later learned, the Saxons lavish as much care as any woman, washing frequently, highlighting, ironing, braiding, and beading. A Saxon warrior is revered as much for the state of his hair as the kill-notches on his sword and shield. That mass of corn-yellow locks flowed and danced through the streets with the violence with which they swung their swords and axes, smashing everything within and out of reach, trampling, kicking, crushing, stamping, cursing, screaming in a frenzy of violence so staggering it would’ve frozen my blood were I not who I was. But as we looked down from the temporary safety of the senate house, I told my trembling companions that they were men, however savage, and would bleed like men if poked with a sword.

The armoury in the cellars of the senate house was broken open—a seriously silly place to keep an armoury, there should’ve been a number of small armouries distributed at regular points around the walls of the town—and when we got back upstairs we certainly needed them. The little senate house stood like a pillared ship in a sea of baying Saxons, who were now flowing up the front steps to the portico and smashing their axes into the barred doors. Others were hurling themselves up the sides, or being thrown up by their laughing companions. Most of them fell back, but as we watched, one got his meaty fists around the base of a pillar and heaved himself up and started kicking at the wooden shutters of the window. I raced down and grabbed the foot as it splintered the wood. I could feel the gratifying shock of surprise, and twisting the ankle savagely hurled him back. I looked down. My appearance was met by a huge collective animal roar. Fired by the sight of a woman, they began surging up. There was only one thing to do: thoroughly lose my temper. Seething with rage at their impertinence, I grabbed a sword off one of the men running back and forth impotently behind me, stepped onto the parapet and began slashing at that mass of thick golden-haired arms and heads. One brute grabbed me by the ankles, but a thrust worthy of a gladiator through the throat put paid to him. How many more I sent to their Valhalla before I felt myself being pulled back inside the senate house I cannot say. I was in a frenzy. My legs were as red as though I’d been wading in a river of blood, my stola splashed with scarlet up to the shoulder fibula.