by John McKeown
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.
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.
Caeli moaned and squealed most delightfully as it filled and refilled her with increasing energy, swivelling her lovely hips and bending and twisting to enjoy every thrusting sinew, without her misted-over eyes ever leaving me. It was as if, in being fucked, she was fucking me. I became aroused again, and as she writhed upon the Greek, under her Medusa-gaze my clitoris turned to stone. I played with it, my thighs drawn wide, returning her gaze, and the two of us came exquisitely together, the Greek adding his own grunts of ejaculation to our private party.
Two days later, completely rested and reinvigorated by the fleshpots and wineshops of Swinging Londinium I stood before what the city’s senators dubbed ‘a select committee.’ They were an elderly, officious-looking bunch of old duffers, but they quickly perked up their ears—and other dessicated bits of their anatomies—as I paraded before them, my boobs reverberating with the force of my empurpled rhetoric.
For once I was fairly brief, though after fifteen minutes I had them in the palm of my hand, or rather, the warm crevice of my cleavage, and I could’ve waxed lyrical for much longer. But, the girls were keen on another night out and it would be wise to make the most of Old Dinium while we could, so I bounded on to my peroration:
“Whatever you think of these Picts or ‘Painted People’ as they’re somewhat disparagingly known, they cannot be kept out of the civilised Roman lands of Britain for ever. Noble elders, do I need to remind you that Rome was built on inclusiveness? She conquered the world but did not crush it beneath her heel. She gathered all to her bosom.” Here I leaned forward on the lectern and illustrated my points. “She absorbed, she learned, she accepted, she grew in might and sinew. Rome was strong enough to open her arms to all the world, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Portals of the Orient, and she must do so now, or have her light snuffed out eternally.
“Let us try at least to forge an alliance with these Painted tribesmen, after all, are they not as native to these islands as you yourselves? We can benefit by their warlike spirit while they can only benefit by being brought in from their barbaric isolation closer to the bosom of Roman Civilization,”—I leaned low on the lectern again, my bazooms a breath away from spilling out of my mamillare—“Noble Fathers, let me be your ambassador to the Picts, let me convey your desire for an alliance with them against the common Saxon enemy. Fill my mouth with your wise instruction, animate me with the decisive rigour of your purpose, let me be the glorious instrument of your will. Let me convince these Picts!”
There was silence for several moments. I stood, hands on hips, breathing hard, legs akimbo. The last thing on the collective mind of the Noble Fathers, flushed of gill, and athrob of temple, was diplomacy or the fate of Britain. And then a gush of applause splashed over me.
It was a hard but enjoyable ride northward. I had assembled our embassy to the Picts swiftly. All four girls insisted on accompanying me. Botilda was essential as she could act as our translator, but the others were now addicted to adventure and swore they were never going back to servitude with their husbands, or any others who might come along.
We had a military escort of cavalry, each of whom I interviewed personally, ensuring that his martial prowess was up to scratch, and I was not disappointed in a single one of them. They were all young and as keen for adventure as the girls. Yes, the sap was running high, and making sure it didn’t burst its banks and get us all killed en route was no easy task. For the further north we rode, the more dangerous things became. As you know Honorius had withdrawn the last of the legions two years earlier, and though there were plenty of bold British troops stationed in various towns—Eboracum had a particularly feisty contingent—they could hardly equal the discipline of legionaries, and they certainly couldn’t inspire the same dread among the newly restless Chavi, or the Picts, who had never been conquered.
We did what we could to ensure our safe passage, and were flying an ambassadorial pennant prominently. One thing in our favour, something I had to keep repeating to myself as we passed through the sparsely manned and somewhat ramshackle gatehouse at the Wall of Hadrian into what used to be the Roman province of Valentia, was that all, or all the British tribes anyone had heard of, were obliged t
o provide shelter and succour to any strangers traversing their lands. Is this not a more hospitable tradition than anything Italia has to offer? Imagine back-packing through Etruria and knocking on doors for food and drink! I think this noble custom has much to do with the harshness of the British landscape and climate, particularly in the rugged, mountainous north. Though I hasten to add, such succour does not extend to aggressive soldiery, which was why, though we were a tough enough band, I made sure we disposed ourselves in as casual and unaggressive a manner as possible, without losing all sense of discipline.
Word of the nature of our mission spread as we penetrated north. The Pictish leaders were proudly surprised to find themselves the object of appeal by the once mighty Romans, and doubly so as the embassy was headed by a descendent of the mighty Emperor Maximian, co-Emperor to Diocletian, the ‘saviour of Rome.’
But which of the Pictish nations were we aiming at? There was already some squabbling among the different kings, Botilda ascertained, and, apparently, each had sent his own representative to await us at Trinomontium, a former Roman fort, and now the nearest thing the Picts had to a settled town.
The fort is set on a beautiful hill overlooking woodland, which, once cleared by the legionaries, has now rapidly repopulated the slopes. It was dusk when we arrived and the torches and campfires of the assembled Picts wreathed the hill in waving pricks of smoky flaring light. Our cavalrymen were far more apprehensive than we girls were, and I had to constantly reassure them that no harm could come to us as we were now the official guests of the Picts. I must say though, some of the painted warriors certainly played on the fears of our boys, leaping out at them, pulling wild faces, stamping their war-spears fringed with feathers and pointing them at their throats.
