The Singing Sword cc-2

by Jack Whyte

  It was only on closer association with her that her unattractive elements became apparent, and it may be that many of those affected me alone; there were many men who seemed oblivious to her faults, focusing only on the sweet honey distilled between her thighs. She had, for one thing, a discordant voice. As long as she spoke quietly, it was not too difficult to listen to, but when she became animated, Cylla's voice developed a shrillness, a shrewish quality, that was most unpleasant. Unpleasant, too, was her attitude in dealing with or discussing people, events and topics that were not directly concerned with benefit to her. She could be, and was, more often than not, waspish, disparaging, disagreeable and condemnatory on everything she turned her tongue to, whether or not she knew what she was talking about. Cylla invariably declaimed her viewpoints, assuming an authority that was seldom justifiable. In short, her personality was markedly obnoxious, and I preferred to keep my distance from her.

  Domitius, on the other hand, was literally besotted with his wife. He worshipped the ground she trod, and his worship could never allow him to consider that she might be less than perfect. He was a devout Christian, absolutely devoid of malice or mistrust, and his charity was endless. He was fully aware of his wife's vanity, her exclusive preoccupation with herself and her appearance and her outrageous expenditures to maintain all of these. None of this perturbed him. He laughed at all of it and considered himself blessed in being able to provide for all of her needs. Fortunately for Cylla, he also accepted as a part of life and happiness that his wife had to spend at least one week out of three taking the waters of the baths at Aquae Sulis. From time to time, to Cylla's great but unspoken annoyance, he would accompany her. Most of the time, however, Domitius was content to remain at home, running his estates, pursuing his own particular pastimes and leaving his beloved wife to her own reasonably discreet pleasures.

  It was in the springtime of my third year at the Villa Britannicus, when we were taking the first cautious, exploratory steps towards establishing our Colony, that Domitius Titens visited my forge one day and became enthusiastically caught up in what I was doing.

  He came by, originally, to discuss some family matter with Caius, and visited me in my smithy purely out of courtesy, to pass the time of day. He asked me what I was working on and I showed him, and then he asked more and more questions, showing genuine interest. I responded with enthusiasm, as any craftsman will, and the unforeseen result was that I acquired, in the space of one brief afternoon, a wealthy, dedicated apprentice who laughed at the soot on his snowy robes.

  I have often wondered since how things would have differed in our Colony had I merely responded pleasantly that day and pleaded pressure of work to avoid his questions and be rid of him. But of course, recrimination is fruitless.

  In any event, Dom had his own smithy set up and operating on his villa in a matter of months. It is not important that he never did become a good smith — it was strictly a pastime for him; what is important is that he gained years of great pleasure from the craft, he and I became close friends, and I started to spend time at his home, thereby falling into the bizarre, grotesque pattern of activities that was Cylla's game.

  I think of it always as Cylla's game, even though I was as active a player as she in many respects. I can recollect with accuracy how the overt moves of the game developed, but the preliminary manoeuvres, and the evaluations that accompanied them, were Cylla's alone; I was totally unaware of them. From the outset, long before I knew there was a game, I was adamant that Cylla would never isolate me; there would always be someone nearby, someone within hearing distance. Cylla accepted this basic rule very quickly, and accepted also the corollary that I had not yet recognized: that no matter who might be around us, there would always be intervals, no matter how brief, when she and I would be together unobserved. It was on that acceptance that she built her strategy, and on that premise she moved her pieces with mounting authority, learning quickly what I would tolerate from her and what I would not. As things transpired, there was nothing, under the strict rules of the game, that I would not tolerate.

  Cylla set out to make herself attractive to me — personally, intimately, hospitably attractive. And, in spite of my obvious disapproval of her, she was successful. There is no need to describe most of the things she did; they are contained in the armoury of every woman who takes aim at a man, and every adult is familiar with them. But Cylla handled these weapons with extra subtlety, sharpening them into instruments of incredible potency, and eventually stabbing deeply and accurately with them at the most outlandish times and with outrageous effrontery. Anyone watching would have said that she ignored me completely most of the time, yet when she did address me she was invariably pleasant, courteous and hospitable. Never a glimpse of the shrew for Publius Varrus! No one could ever have suspected that any bond, or any attraction, existed between the two of us.

  Without contradicting what I have just said, I should mention that Luceiia had some short-lived suspicions in the beginning, right at the outset, before the charade had developed and before I had identified what Cylla was doing. It seemed to her, as a woman and my wife, that Cylla's conversion, in regard to me, from sexual predator to charming friend was too complete, and she remarked upon it to me one night when she and I were dining alone. She spoke merely out of perplexity and was not being in any way accusatory, and my response was terse, dismissive and absolutely truthful: "She knows I don't like her." Luceiia accepted that and never mentioned the matter again, for which I came to be extremely grateful.

  And so Cylla disarmed me, almost to the point where I considered relaxing my vigilance. I started to feel more comfortable around her. I began to relax, to accept that she would not be offensive or put me out of countenance — she was one of the few people at that time in whose company I was still aware of my crippled leg. That awareness faded eventually, however, in the light of her consistent, considerate treatment of me and her ongoing deference. I began to feel at ease in her presence. She soon sensed that, and put her next move into effect. Slowly, and only very gradually, over a number of months, she brought touch into play. Not between us, except on one fleeting occasion. Cylla never touched me, nor I her, except for that one time. But she touched herself, and for my eyes alone, knowing that I was watching.

  The first time she surprised me with an overt gesture, my reaction was to tell myself it was unintentional, that I had merely seen something not meant to be seen. Dom had brought me to the villa to show me a piece of work he had in progress, and he went straight to a curtained closet built beneath the sweep of the main staircase to rummage for the thing. Cylla had been crossing the vestibule towards the stairs as we came in. She smiled pleasantly, spoke a word or two without stopping and began to go upstairs. I stood in the hallway, waiting for Dom.

  Cylla always dressed magnificently, and was celebrated for it. Her clothing was designed to drape in such a way as to conceal, yet sharply emphasize, the shape of her: her breasts, her flat belly, her thighs, hips and buttocks and the long, clean length of her legs. The stairway was brightly lit by a glazed, translucent skylight and Cylla paused about eight stairs up to call to Dom, reminding him that they were having guests that afternoon. She had paused with her right foot on the stair two steps above her left one, leaning forward and to her left to call down to Dom, who was almost directly beneath her feet. I noticed how the soft folds of her robe draped over her raised thigh, outlining it clearly and clinging to the limb. She continued to lean forward slightly, her head cocked to hear Dom's response, paying no attention to me at all, but as she stood, poised there for the space of several heartbeats, her right hand dropped to her thigh and stroked the smooth material of her amber-coloured robe, almost, it seemed to me, unconsciously, except that the stroking movement lasted one heart-stopping instant too long. The abstracted touch became an unmistakable caress; an invitation to look and admire; a lascivious little secret for me to carry away, having seen the incredible intimacy of the way her fingers curled to press t
he material against the soft, full undercurve of her thigh from just above her knee to the junction of her legs. Then Dom answered her and she was moving again, heading upstairs without a glance in my direction. I felt my crotch harden and heard my heart thump in my ears and I had to move quickly to meet Dom, hoping that he would not notice my obvious arousal.

  That was the first clear move in Cylla's game, and it progressed rapidly from there. The second move came soon after. Standing beside Dom, her arms folded as they both looked down at the table on which I had spread the parchment I had brought to show him, she scratched idly with one thumbnail at her breast, bringing an amazingly large nipple into turgid prominence as I stood within arm's length of her. I saw the soft, yielding fullness of the breast and the urgency of that nipple's arousal and yet saw no sign that she was aware of my eyes. Dom, of course, saw nothing.

  On another occasion, we were at a gathering of two dozen people, including Luceiia, in the main reception room of the house. By this time I had come to anticipate that Cylla would find a way, somehow, to do something, and I had even dressed in a long, light over-robe that would effectively conceal, I hoped, any excitement she might bring about. We were waiting for the servants to call us all in to dinner. The celebration was informal and everyone was having an enjoyable time.

  Luceiia was deep in conversation with a group of Dom's elderly relatives who had come up from Sorviodunum and whose presence was the reason for the gathering. I had moved away from them to take a second cup of Dom's excellent Germanic wine from one of the servants when I became aware that Cylla was looking at me. She was sitting on a deep, high-backed couch and had just been in conversation with a couple of young girls who were now making their way across the room towards Dom. As soon as she saw me look her way, she averted her eyes and glanced around the room, and I knew she was looking to see if anyone was watching. As she did so, one of the servants banged loudly on a copper gong and announced that dinner was about to be served. Every head in the room except mine turned towards the source of the voice, and Cylla stood up.

  I wish I could adequately describe how she did it. Her timing was perfect and her movements so deliberate, yet so quick, that I felt as if I had been kicked in the crotch. In less time than it takes to tell, she gripped the front edge of her couch, spread her legs wide so that the folds of her robe fell immediately and graphically between them and thrust her body forward in a long slide before pushing herself erect to stand spread-legged for a moment, her skirts swirling around her ankles. It was the movement of an athlete, but the spreading of her legs and that deliberate slide forward undid me, catching me by surprise as her manoeuvres always did. For an instant there was nothing in my world but the wanton urgency of those parted thighs and that thrusting, female belly, and then awareness crashed back and I looked around guiltily to see if anyone had seen me see it. No one was paying any attention and the entire crowd moved as one body towards the entrance to the triclinium, the main dining room.

  I joined the exodus, my blood on fire, willing the pounding in my head to die down, but before it could I became aware of Cylla, at whom I had not dared look again, standing directly in front of me, too close, among the crowd. I stopped short, preparing to back away from her, but before I could do so, I felt her hand brush against me, locating me, and then the back of her hand pressing firmly against the jut of my phallus. I almost leaped away from her, but Cylla never touched me again, and she ignored me completely for the remainder of that evening. I calmed myself eventually, but lustful images swarmed in my mind for hours afterwards.

  Now Cylla knew beyond doubt that her designs were working. She also knew, with equal certainty, that she could rely on my silence; and she knew, too, that she could count on my complicity in the game that had now begun in earnest.

  I had absolutely no regard for Cylla as a person, and that saddens me now. I considered her to be a thorough slut — everyone did, except Dom — and I really believed, in my arrogance, that she was uncaring of my opinion. She seemed, in fact, to revel in the knowledge of my real dislike of her, perhaps because she knew that I would keep coming back in spite of it. Liking and dislike, it seemed to me, had nothing to do with the game.

  I never did doubt her enjoyment of the game, however; nor, for that matter, did she doubt mine. But Cylla had an advantage over me: she knew that I felt guilt because, for all my arrogant, self-deluding high-mindedness, I was attracted to her wanton behaviour and could not master my lust. She knew that she held my eyes, if no other part of me, clasped tight between her lascivious thighs; she knew and enjoyed the agonizing depth of my guilt; and she revelled in the knowledge that her depravity drove me to purge myself of my frustrated seed by my own hand, since my then perverted sense of honour would not let me willingly take my lust for Cylla home to Luceiia.

  What cowards we men are! Here I am, writing of Cylla's depravity, when it was mine. Eventually, before matters came to a head in a way I could never have visualized, I was existing in a condition that must have approached insanity, and I have often thought, in later years, that the dementia of my lust reduced me, in effect, to the behaviour I might have expected of Claudius Seneca, the man I detested most in all the world.

  For several years, at the outset, we barely exchanged words at all. The entire game was in the playing, with Cylla initiating and me reacting, both wordlessly.

  The end of that stage occurred early one autumn morning, when I had dropped in at their house with some tools for Dom and had been invited to break bread with them. The three of us were seated at a table in their private quarters. We had eaten sparingly and were talking casually of nothing in particular when I saw one of the signs I had come to recognize in Cylla as she prepared to do something reckless and dangerous. When she became excited her eyes glittered. There is no other word I can think of to describe her look on such occasions; her gaze took on an almost luminous intensity, and her eyes teared over, almost as though she were going to weep, except that there was no hint of anything doleful about her. Her eyes filled with dancing highlights, and she exuded an aura of barely hidden gaiety.

  On this occasion, Dom noticed it too. He leaned forward and stroked her cheek in a loving, uxorious caress, and Cylla turned and smiled at him, a smile of utter sweetness, which she then bestowed on me.

  "Publius," said Dom, "is she not radiant? I thank God daily for this treasure He has given me. But she seldom looks this happy, and it must be your presence that pleases her so. I must bring you here more often. Don't you agree, my dear?"

  Cylla did not speak. She merely smiled at me with that radiant, glittering smile and I writhed in discomfort because both her hands were out of sight beneath the table and I knew she was caressing herself.

  I grew red in the face from guilt and fear that Dom might reach out to take her hand, and I moved quickly to stand up and take my leave.

  "No," she said, both hands appearing above the table-top, "You must not leave yet, Publius. Dom has something to show you." Dom's face went blank. "Don't you, my dear?" He blinked, and she continued as though speaking to a small boy. "Your plans for the new tessellated floor?"

  "Ah! Of course, stupid of me." His face went blank again. "Where are they, my dear? Do you know?"

  "Oh, Dom! They are either in your cubiculum or in one of the chests in your bedchamber. Bring them back here and we can spread them on the other table there."

  "Yes, of course. Pardon me, Publius. I won't be long."

  Cylla's hands were back beneath the table and, as Dom left the room, she made a motion which told me she had parted her skirts to free her legs.

  "Look!"

  "No, damnation!" I stood up and walked angrily away from the table, angry at her and at myself. "Cylla, how can you do this to Dom?"

  "To Dom? I am doing nothing to Dom. I'm doing it for you, look!"

  I looked. Her naked legs were spread wide beneath the table.

  "For the love of the sweet Christ! One of these days he's going to catch you!"


  "Perhaps. But not today. I hid those plans too well. We have some time."

  I turned my back on her, fighting to keep down the swelling in my treacherous crotch. I heard her stand up and move towards me until she stood in front of me, the perfect depiction of a decorous, dutiful Roman wife. She moved to the door of the room, looked out into the hallway and then came back to stand between me and the open doorway to the garden, so that her body was clearly outlined through her thin robe against the bright, early-morning sunlight. She stood spread-legged.

  "Look, Publius." In my mind, I always hear her speaking in a sibilant whisper. "That's all you want to do, so look, and lust. Feel yourself grow hard and imagine what you could do inside me, how you would surge with spilling seed if only your iron will would let you." She pulled apart the skirts of her robe, revealing the beauty of her warm, soft, firm flesh, and showing me openly for the first time the breath-taking thick bush of red-gold hair at her centre. I gazed and grew hard, my ears straining for the first sounds of Dom's return. The glittering smile never left her eyes.

  "Much as you might like to, you will never slide your hard smith's phallus into me, will you, Publius? That would be a sin against your wife. But your wife has been your wife for years now. She is beautiful, but she is familiar territory, no?"

  I wanted to tell her not to soil my wife's name with her mouth but, God help me, I could only stare as she dug with one finger deep into her centre, churned it around and withdrew it, extending it to show me how it glistened with her juices.

  "This is the unfamiliar, Publius. The illicit. This moisture that you yearn for is the forbidden fruit that keeps men young." She put the finger deep into her mouth, slowly sucked it clean and then held it out to me again. "This is why you look to me, to Cylla — because I can show you all the earthly delights, all the sinful excesses that wives do not deal in."

  "Show them to your husband," I croaked, my throat swollen tight.