Faustina and the Barbarians (6 page)

“Mistress Faustina, save your energy, you will need it. Come.” It was one of the women who’d followed me from the market. She was around my age, a strong-looking handsome buxom specimen, and she was right. The door of the senate house burst inward in an explosion of fragments and in poured the ravening Saxons.
 

She obviously knew the senate house well. Amid screams and the clashing of swords we dashed through the circular seating to the last row and jumped behind it. She pulled open a low door, which blended cunningly with the wall and ushered me in.

“Wait!”

She pushed three more women through after me, and after pulling it to, we raced down steps to the cellar, and paused there, panting, listening to the rumble of slaughter above us. But where now?

Our clear-thinking guide bent low between a couple of large casks and pulled open another door, a very small one—lucky none of us were carrying any excess weight—and began pushing us through. It was a long, low tunnel leading straight into a spur of dense woodland that had been left uncleared during the development of the town.
 

We emerged, grubby with soil and clay, and made our way up through the trees to the hills overlooking the town. Or I should say the ex-town, for it was lost, everything burned, smashed, toppled. We watched in silence, the screams of our townsfolk coming to us through the crackling and whipping of flames.
 

None of my companions wept. Like me, they were consumed with anger, and a hunger to avenge this wanton orgy of murder and destruction. Although the Saxons did me one favour in ridding me of that pestilential eunuch Monomachus.

It was agreed among us that our best, safest bet was to head for Londinium, the city on the Tamesis that eclipsed all other Roman towns in importance and prestige. It also had, as Caelestis, of whom I shall say more in a moment, approvingly pointed out, a reputation as the most immoral, sybaritic city in all of Brittania. The rest of us agreed that, as it was the most fortified city in Britain, it was doubtless also the safest. A place where I could consult with the British authorities and the others could wait for the current Saxon tide to retreat before returning to what was left of Calleva, or settle elsewhere with their families, assuming they could be found.

As we travelled north on foot, keeping as far as possible off the main road, it became apparent that my four female companions, though distressed at the destruction of Calleva, in many ways saw their present homeless condition as a liberation.

“That lazy oaf of a husband of mine—phaaa!” Aquilina, the lady closest in age to me, and whose presence of mind had saved our skins, spat into the bush. “I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again. Useless fucker, good for nothing but ale and spinning yarns about his exploits as a Captain in the Legion Valeria Victrix. Him, he couldn’t lead a donkey to hay.”

We all laughed.

“And useless in the sack to boot. Bellona! I haven’t had a good piece of man-meat between my legs for years.”

We laughed appreciatively again. Alexis and Botilda, the wives of an ex-legionary and a shopkeeper respectively, felt the same way. Caelestis, the youngest, only smiled as we trudged through the edge of the forest; she was unmarried, and without, apparently, even a boyfriend. There was no one she missed at Calleva she insisted, particularly not her father and mother who fought like cat and dog, or the brother who treated her like a slave.
 

 
I told the girls about Comminilingus, without going into too much detail, though by the looks on their faces they were putting two and two together in combinations as various as our sex-life had been. But what of my divine Briton? I had hoped against hope that there would’ve been some message from him left at my villa, where I and the girls had quickly stopped off
 
to gather what supplies we could for our journey, but, there was nothing. I would have to start acclimatising myself to the fact that he’d probably been killed defending Calleva, and was no more than ash blowing on the breeze at our backs, sweeping us toward Londinium. But I couldn’t bring myself to think of him in the Elysian Fields just yet.

That night the breeze became a cold easterly wind but luckily most of it blew over our heads as we bedded down in a tree-enclosed gully deep in masses of last years dead leaves. We wrapped ourselves in the bedding I’d snatched from the villa and piled the leaves on top of ourselves for extra insulation, and were quite snug. The others dropped off quickly, apart from Caelestis, who I could hear shifting restlessly close by.
 

“Can’t sleep, Caeli?”
 

“No, I’m cold.”

“Take my blanket and give me yours, mine is thicker.”

“No Faustina, you’re much too kind, and too important not to be comfortable.”

“Nonsense, what’s important about me?”

“Well, you’re a lady.”

“You perhaps wouldn’t say that if you knew me.”

She laughed her delightful musical laugh.

“I think I’d like you even more.”

Silence. The wind disturbed the drying autumn leaves for miles, the stars stood cold in a clearing of the clouds above.

“If you like me, accept my judgement. Here, change blankets.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Confound it, girl. You can’t lie there freezing. Get under here with me then.”

She could do this alright, and quickly.

“No wonder you’re cold, you’re only half-dressed!”

She was wearing only a thin woollen tunica, which, I’d noticed when we’d stopped to wash in a stream, was full of holes.

I could feel her skin through the holes now, prickled with gooseflesh, her large, pale, beautifully full breasts straining the worn fabric as she pressed against me. I wrapped my blanket around us and her long, firm legs curled tightly around me. Her breath was hot and fluttery against my neck.
 

Sometimes things happen naturally. People, bodies, flow together, regardless of sex or station; it was doubly natural under the circumstances—we could be captured and ravaged and killed by the Saxons that very morning—and so doubly wrong to resist whatever comfort we could give each other. In the event, we gave each other a considerable amount, and the necessity of not waking our companions added a delicious piquancy to our shared delight.

I fondled those big breasts admiringly, rolling and squeezing the nipples until they felt, in the hot darkness, like little stuck-out tongues, which I duly sucked and teased into lengthier expression with my own. I was spurred on in this by Caelestis’ long fingers, that had boldly found my cunnie’s lips and with expert application, by sliding penetration interspersed with deep brushing with the side of her hand, flooded them with moisture. I had to pull the blanket tight over us to stifle the groans which rose up tremulously from her work and threatened to spill out into the night air.
 

I transferred my attention to Caeli’s cunnus, a lovely fresh tight one, that greeted my fingers with all the eager energy of youth. So tight was she, initially, that I could get only two fingers within her, but such was the copiousness of her moisture that these slid inside to a mutually satisfying depth. Eventually, I brought a third to join the first two, and with my thumb pressing and caressing her clitoris and, thrusting into her with all my weight, I brought her to the brink of orgasm.

Good girl that she was, she hadn’t neglected my cunnus, and her fingers drew me closer and closer, until I was right behind her on the very precipice of bliss. I thrust deeply into her once more, my whole hand gripping her wet slippery sex, and clamped my mouth fiercely onto hers to smother the cry that broke from her and kept breaking as our bodies, enwrapped, heaved and juddered in the severity of a joint fulfillment.
 

If our companions had heard anything, they didn’t betray their suspicions the following morning. We broke camp quickly and continued our journey. There were no signs of Saxons, and, with Aquilina’s eagle-eye in our rear and Alexis walking cautiously ahead, we took to the road to make as much speed as we could. I had a fascinating conversation with Botilda who, it turned out was half Pictish, and though officially a slave since her early teens—her right ear was clipped—her marriage to a centurion had given her a respectable enough status in Calleva. But it was when she spoke of her tribe in the north, which she’d managed to keep in contact with, that she gave me a bold idea—the only kind I tend to have, admittedly.

“My people are afraid of the Saxons, too. Even though they hate the Romans—and all the British are counted as Romans by them—they fear for the future, for they know the Saxons will not stop until all of Britannia is theirs. And ‘the Saxons’ includes whole other, though similarly savage peoples, the Angles, the Jutes, all straining at the bit to get here.”

If the Picts were native Britons, as of course they were, why shouldn’t the rest of the native British, however Romanised, form an alliance with them and drive the Saxons out?

I resolved that as soon as we got to Londinium I would try with my utmost persuasiveness to convince whoever was really in charge to try my idea.

We arrived unscathed, though filthy as tramps, in Londinium two days later and, as you’d expect, headed straight for the baths. We were spoiled for choice. Londinium is a charming, cultivated, eminently civilised place, and, as Caelestis had pointed out, the possessor of a red-light district that would not disgrace the ancient burrows of Rome’s Suburra. Londinium is a thriving port, and men from all parts of the Empire and beyond, arrive continually, some on business, some to sell their fleshy wares as sex-workers. My dear, it’s quite brazen, and lawful—as long as taxes are paid—and the ladies of the town often take themselves to the Riverside district to pick themselves out a choice cock to ease the stresses of a hard afternoon’s shopping. The men, most of them young and very beautiful, though there’re plenty to satisfy anyone with a taste for maturer flesh, sit almost completely naked in the windows and doorways of little taverns and pensions. All it takes is a nod and one is escorted genteelly in and fucked in whatever position one requires.
 

It was here that myself and Caelestis, Botilda, Alexis, and horniest of the lot, Aquilina, resorted to after reconstructing ourselves at the baths—all at my eager expense. Caelestis suggested a tavern first, but the others had little patience for sitting down at table. They wanted to sit down on some living meat.

After a few wines in a bar in the edge of the Riverside district, we began eagerly wandering. Goodness me Flavia, we’d barely gone a few yards before we were all as wet as the wine; Botilda and Aquilina’s faces flushed and sweating with the plethora of choice.
 

There were men of every type, race, and degree of physical beauty. Big dark-skinned Africans with bulging packages, lithe, sleek-limbed Syrians, great long-haired barrel-chested Gauls with glittering mischievous green eyes; there were even a few tall, proud looking men from India, the great turbans on their heads dwarfed by the gaily coloured turbans that thrust outward at us from between their legs.

“Lugh, Lord of Light! I fancy unravelling that," said Botilda, stopping abruptly in front of a young dewy-eyed Indian, and promptly pushed her way through the beaded curtain.

“I don’t have the patience to unravel anything. I’m burning up.” Aquilina fanned herself desperately as we laughed. We walked on.

“That’s the one.” Aquilina stood beneath a great blond beast of a man slouched against the embrasure of his window, his knob, stretching the thin white material of a pair of brief gladiator’s knickers, pressed against the glass like the sucking mouth of a hungry goldfish against the glass of an aquarium.

Alexis was next to go. Two Africans stood oiling each other in a tall window further down the alley to the delight of a group of watching women.

“Aphrodite’s Arse! Look at that,” she hissed. “Can I have both of them, do you think?”

“Go and find out. It’s doubtless double the price. Here, take this.” I forced another bag of denarii into her reluctant hand and pushed her through the enraptured group around the door. Britain’s administrative links with Rome may have been severed, but her bankers remained closely linked to the capital and I had no problem withdrawing ample funds from Londinium's banks for our pleasure and comfort.
 

“And what about you, Caeli? Does anything tickle your fancy?”

“I’ve had little experience with men, though I am excited. But, what I’d really like is… well... if we could... share a man together?” She then squeezed my hand tightly.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Caeli, and I’m sure we can find a gentleman ready to accommodate us.”

We did indeed. A big Greek in his early forties who used to be a wrestler and still had a most powerful grip.
 

Caeli said she wanted to watch first, and the Greek and I put on quite a show for her. He bent me over a stiff-backed chair and, with muscled legs firmly planted, drove his wirey ballista high up inside me with such controlled fury that the chair and I were driven hopping around the room. I could hear Caeli giggling through the blood pounding in my ears, and when myself and the chair paused to face her during one of our circuits, I could see that, apart from the understandable amusement, she was also highly excited.

The wrestler and I adopted a less perambulatory position, with me on his narrow palette-bed and him on top, standard but very fulfilling, particularly with that grip of his. He pulled me up into his thrusts by my arse cheeks with one hand while the other squeezed each breast up alternately until the elongated reddened papillis could be teased to lengthier extension in his mouth.

I allowed myself to come quicker than usual lest there be nothing left for Caeli, who sat watching, her right hand buried between her legs. I needn’t have feared. Our Greek spurted a league of his Greek Fire, and immediately withdrew, still cockily hard, and approached Caeli. Holding his big, gleaming, slightly dripping punctum, he made Caeli a bow and proceeded to pull her onto the chair. She acquiesced with a smile at me, and continued the smiling by turning in the wrestler’s lap to face me. He pulled up her short skirt and her eyes never left mine as the great Greek ram pushed up through her already amply lubricated cunnus and began its offensive operations.