Faustina and the Barbarians

by John McKeown

Our happiness in that sun-kissed grove was short lived. Somehow Athalaric’s alliance with Flaccus was discovered, though our Brunhild was not the whistleblower. In a savage flash of revolt, Athalaric was executed. Roderic and Ricimer managed to flee, and I, now legitimate war booty, was brought bound hand and foot before the new Chief, a horrible, pox-faced runt of a Goth with rotten teeth. And worse, he was Christian.

  I was given a choice before this halitosis-soaked tribunal. I could either be given a head start before being hunted down by the Chief and his men or handed over to his elite personal bodyguard. The word ‘bodyguard’ immediately aroused my interest.

  “Pusillanimous wretch!” I rose to my full height, stretching my bonds with out-thrust breasts.

  “You dare address a descendent of the Emperor Maximian without kneeling? On your knees, vassal.”

  This unexpected reprimand took the grin off the wretch’s face in an instant.

  “Faustina Maxima laughs at your threats, pig. Do you think the might of Eternal Rome rests only in Her armies? Bring on your ‘bodyguards’, as many as have the spunk to confront me, and I shall show you what one Roman woman can do.” You could’ve heard a hairpin drop in that tent, let me tell you. I can’t say I felt as fearless as I spoke, but I certainly wasn’t about to be hunted through the woods like a slave or a dog. How could I explain it at my next cocktail party?

  The Chief was obviously afraid of losing face in front of his new retainers and, ruffling up his wrinkles like an old rooster, addressed me,

  “If you are still standing and breathing after one hour with my men I will consider letting you live… as my slave, Roman whore.”

  “I spit on your mercy, cur. Enough. Bring on your men.”

  The tent was cleared and eight of the tallest, most muscled, most gorgeous specimens of Gothic manhood filed in, stark naked. I looked each in the eyes. One or two might cause me some difficulty, but they were all men, and, being men, already intimidated by Faustina Maxima.

  “Let the games begin,” I mocked.

  A slave stripped off my bonds and the shreds of my dress. I faced them, hands on hips, breasts like shield-bosses, and beckoned them with a crooked finger.

  They circled me, eyeing my exposed treasures, becoming hard. Suddenly, one had me from behind and was inserting a thick cock into my cunnus. I fell to working it immediately. There are certain moves, a kind of pyrrhic pelvic-vaginal dance, which I had studied and which can get the cum out of a man’s cock very rapidly. Coupled with a stream of verbal instigations, I’ve reduced hundreds of men to a state of non-plussed premature ejaculation. None of my warriors were quite ready for this. Crooning Ovid, and some of our lesser erotic poets, while simultaneously enveloping that first punctum in increasingly tight loops of raking rhythm, I brought it to spasm. He shot and fell back, with a bemused look on his face. The next one thrust precipitately into my anus, while another got me to my knees and pushed a great vein-engorged bulla into my mouth. This enabled me to get a balance of work rhythms that complemented each other. I sucked and blew hard and fast, in tandem with the masticating contractions of my sphincter. This was hard work, but as with all work, the secret is to enjoy it. Fortunately, I bore my warriors no ill-will; to disobey the Chief meant instant death. And thankfully, they were beautiful specimens. These thoughts spurred me to new efforts, and within seconds my arse and mouth were sticky with cum. Immediately, another began to blunder his punctum into my vacated mouth. I grabbed it, turned him around, and wanking the bemused warrior, and squeezing his balls hard, I pulled him toward the Chief, who was sitting jacking himself off, and fired its contents into his lap. The spent cocks had recharged themselves, but at the end of the hour I was proudly standing, as the bodyguards lay panting, one or two beatifically, soaked in sweat.

  Suddenly, the back of the tent was rent asunder and in flew Roderic and Ricimer! They grabbed the Chief and, throwing a cloak over me, hustled us out to their waiting horses.

  The Chief sobbed for mercy as we paused in the woods close to Flaccus’ headquarters.

  “Stifle your sobs, Christian. I am merciful to my slaves, whose grateful ranks you have now joined.”

  The boys became decorated army auxiliaries, and I saw them often, secretly, before we finally lost touch.

  My darling, the Gods be praised. Flaccus is dead! His brains dashed out after falling off a cliff in pursuit of the goat herder’s son. I’m free. I am leaving this accursed rock.

  I shall be with you in Rome.

  Chapter Two

  To: Flavia Maxima, Constantinople

  From: Faustina Maxima, Aldenburgensis, September 411

  My darling Flavia, wing-footed Mercury speed this letter to you full of a mother-in-law’s most ardent blessings. I’d been back in Rome almost five months and I still couldn’t get used to the fact that you were not there. I read and reread the letter you left me, along with the keys to your house. Thank you so much for those, my dear. I really didn’t relish the idea of house hunting in the summer months in Rome.

  You are right in your suspicions—they confirm me in my feeling that you are shaking off that pernicious naivety of yours and, belatedly, growing up—my son had you removed to Constantinople less out of concern to keep you safe from the lustful Goths than to protect you from what he calls my ‘pagan immorality’. But I have no doubt that you will soon be free of him. Yes! You must accept that private dinner invitation from Symmachus. I knew his father, a beautiful man who spawned a beautiful son. And I have no doubt that Symmachus is as discrete and gentlemanly as his father was. He will make a perfect lover. And, though I see your pretty features pout, I will repeat again, make the most of your youth for it flies quickly. But to business… I have much to tell you before my departure for Britain. That fog-shrouded rain-swept island where the sun never shines? Yes, a thousand times yes, for it’s home to one of the most splendid men I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet: the Count Comminilingus. And though I love Rome with all my soul, I shan’t be sorry to leave it, for a while at least—and do I not carry the best of Rome within me, wherever I wander?—for it’s become a dreadful bore of a place. All of the best pagan temples torn down or converted into churches. Bishops and priests thick as buzzing flies in dispute over the latest theological turd. The best of the bathhouses closed because of ‘immoral behaviour’—as if we went to the baths for anything else. And half of the bars and taverns of my youth converted into shops selling over-priced trinkets for gullible tourists. Apart from all this what really galled me—for I’ll tell you in a moment what I did about it—was the continual moaning about how Rome was finished simply because a few hundred Goths had gotten in and carted off a few wagonloads of gold and silverplate. It was through the lazy perfidy of our Emperor Honorius—was ever a son less like his bold martial father Theodosius the Great?—that Alaric the Gothic leader, who really only wanted to settle in one of our most modest provinces and become Roman, was practically compelled, as a matter of honour, to encamp beneath the walls of Rome. And as you may know by now, the Goths would never have gotten in had not a group of disaffected plebeians opened the Salarian Gate to them.

  Sneaking treachery of this kind has always infuriated me, and I swore to avenge the Gods and the divine Emperors by doing something about it, and rousing the senate and people of Rome to shake off their self-pity and face up to the conditions of our chaotic modern age.

  I decided to track down the slaves responsible and have their heads—and I don’t mean the ones between their cur-like shoulders.

  I was pleased to find that the name of Faustina Maxima still had much influence in Rome, particularly among the upper classes, though it was not they who could help me much in my detective work. No, it was the mob, the plebs alone who could help me. And though, these days, they hardly care who runs the City and the Empire, a Gothic puppet Emperor like the ill-advised Attalus or the useless Honorius, as long as they get enough food and wine and entertainment, they hate traitors as much as I do.

  It
was among the populace in the quarter around the Salarian Gate that I deployed a group of well-paid spies who would receive a bonus for any information leading me to the betrayers of our Eternal City.

  It was only a matter of weeks before I had a shortlist of the most likely candidates. Three in particular seemed to have gone from being butchers and barmen to rich slave-owning businessmen virtually overnight. A real ‘tunica to toga’ story almost unheard of among the lower orders.

  And then, one excessively hot early evening I was brought confirmation that it was indeed a Felix Quislincus, Caecilius Gallus, and Rufinius Lucanus who were responsible for admitting the Goths. After careful preparation, and making myself look as plebeian as it is possible for me, with my fiercely blue blood, to look, I headed for the address of Quislincus, in the Alta Semita district.

  I was admitted into the brand new and ostentatiously tasteless inner courtyard of Quislincus’ house and told he wasn’t at home. But he was nearby, in the Gardens of Sallust. An antoninianus in the slave’s palm bought me agreement to be guided to him immediately.

  The ornamental gardens were packed with people vainly trying to escape the evening’s unabated heat. While the plebs swatted away the flies with cheap straw hats, the rich lay with their fat arses ensconced behind screens and silk tents, being fanned by slaves. It was behind one of these all-encompassing screens that the traitor and his two confederates, along with a fourth who looked suspiciously like a senator, were enjoying their picnic.

  The comestibles had all been finished and the men lay sprawled with golden goblets slopping with what smelled like a delicious Apianum, their couches arranged around what was, despite my unwillingness to be distracted from the job in hand, a most arousing entertainment.

  A beautiful young slave girl, the tips of her golden hair brushing the roundels of a tight plump little arse, was groaning atop a huge African slave in the seated scissors position. Have you tried this one yet, Flavia? If not, I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

  Straddling your man, on his back, with his knees drawn up, like this fine big negro, with one leg to the side of his hip and the other between his muscled ebony pins, gives a girl the utmost control as to the depth and angle of penetration, not forgetting the fine-tuning of clitoral stimulation this position allows.

  That pretty slave girl was certainly a past mistress at the scissors, and it was only the dildo which she bit down upon that prevented her letting loose a flood of groans and curses that would’ve brought the park wardens running.

  I tried not to look, but it was difficult. The African was a real beauty, a mass of muscle playing beneath his fine black skin, oiled with aromatic sweat, like a man-shaped harp, as he drove his great black punctum up through the flooded folds of cunnus with each scouring grind of the girl’s slim body. Holy Aphrodite, it was an effort not to look. As I stood, waiting for the attention of the wine and sun-flushed Quislincus, the motion of the completely self-absorbed slaves imparted a slick wetness to my pussy. I had to be careful, there was something in there I would shortly need and I couldn’t afford to get over-excited.

  The girl started to come, and as she did so, Caecilius could restrain himself no longer, and freeing a lengthy but rather narrow-gauge cock from the folds of his toga, started to toss himself in concert, grabbing hold of the girl’s hair and curling it tightly round his fist.

  “Why not save it, Caecilius? You may need it in a moment.” Quislincus drawled, eyeing me suddenly.

  “I can’t,” he grunted.

  “Anyway... plenty...” His cock began erupting, shooting strings of cum into the girl’s fine golden hair. “Where this came from.”

  His final spasm coincided with the girl sinking exhausted upon the African, and his final gout flew past her head to lace the African’s face. The African did not look pleased.

  “What is it you want, my dear?” Quislincus and the others turned their full attention to me, bloodshot eyes dilated.

  “I am a poor woman of the same district as you, Master. My children are starving, their father was killed when the Goths broke in”—a giggle or two from those hyenas here—“and I was told I could approach you for a small loan, if you would be so gracious, Master.”

  The stinking dog liked the ‘Master’ bit.

  “A loan, you say? Perhaps. But what could you offer in return?” More saliva-rattling giggles and laughter.

  “Maybe I could serve you in some way?” I loosened the neck fastening of the short cloak I was wearing with a show of nervousness.

  “Well, let me have a closer look at you. Take that thing off.” I undid it. I wore a very short thin tunica high on my thighs and plungingly low cut over my breasts.

  “And the rest. Keep going.” The pig waved a porcine finger at me. I undid the belt and pulled the tunica over my head. The breath of the five men, including the African, who was staring at me from his elbowed position on the ground, could be heard drawing sharply in, and remaining there.

  I am now almost forty-one years of age, Flavia, and yet my body remains as fresh, as upstanding, as outthrusting as a twenty-year old’s. I say this with only a modicum of exaggeration. I brought my hands to my hips and filled my lungs with the dry air that five pairs of male lungs now struggled to grasp. I parted my legs, feeling the fire beads, dangerously moistened within. I’d have to move quickly.

  “I am willing to give you a taste of my services right now, Master Quislincus.”

  “Indeed.” Quislincus eyed my thong-guarded pussy—where his death lay—dry-mouthed.

  “And your illustrious friends.” Hands slipped beneath togas as the four sat up erect.

  The slave was still staring at me, his hands unable to hide the thickening coils of the python between his legs.

  “Who is first? Yes, I will begin with you Master Quislincus.” I came close to the gawping bag of bearded slime and lifted up his toga. He was hard. All the better.

  I bent forward over it, and tugged at my thong. Out popped the three balls of Greek Fire mixed with tinder. A quick rub of them together ignited them to flame and I flung them in Quislincus’ face. He screamed. But the scream became a blood-curdling howl as the knife I had whipped out from between the back of my arse cheeks sliced his cock clean from his body. Next to him, Caecilius sat suitably frozen in terror. I yanked his toga up and repeated the procedure. The senatorial character had torn through the folds of the tent and gone. Rufinius tried to get away but the African tripped him and I castrated him as he lay screaming on the floor.

  I could hear alarmed voices outside. I’d been a little too slow. I slipped my clothes back on and poked my head through the tent.

  “Sorry for the noise, ladies and gentlemen. Just disciplining my slaves. They seem to think today’s a holiday.” This provoked ripples of reassured laughter. I closed the flap, tore the bloodied togas off the three men, draped the unstained one over the African’s shoulders, and throwing a rope around my captives, boldly marched out, dragging them behind me. To the sound of patrician applause.

  “That’ll teach the uppity bastards!”

  I got my captives home without arousing too much inquisitiveness, and in the dead of that night, I chained Quislincus, Caecilius, and Rufinius to the pillars outside the Senate House, with their castrated cocks in their mouths and a sign across their shivering hairy bellies: ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Beware Treason.’

  I do hope you are not balking at the savagery of this act, Flavia. Remember, these men, by opening the Salarian Gate, were responsible for the deaths of Roman citizens, many of them women and children. They were lucky I did not kill them.

  As it is, they will live, to find jobs as eunuchs. There are an increasing number of vacancies for the cockless ones, particularly in the East.

  I was rather tired after the day’s vengeful exertions, but, as I lay amidst my muslin curtains I was unable to sleep. You can perhaps guess why. The African slave, who spoke shockingly perfect Greek and Latin—I’d ascertained that he’d been educa
ted by a commendably humanistic master, a Greek scholar, in Corinth—stood before me, his lustrously black skin glinting in the darkness behind my closed eyelids.

  I had put him in downstairs with the house-slaves, and doubtless he was sleeping. But I could not. My blood, fired by the sight of him that evening with the lovely slave girl, swirled restlessly round and round my sweating body. Repeated self-gratification would not quell it. It only made it more firey. I got out of bed, wiped myself down with a cloth, and donning a loose palla, went downstairs.

  As I stood, dabbling my fingers in the pool in the garden, I could hear Mannus, my head house-slave, snoring fit to shake the foundations of the house. Who could sleep through that? Certainly not Numidius, who suddenly appeared on the other side of the pool, a cautious smile breaking the darkness of his face like an upturned crescent Moon.

  I smiled back, my eyes coming to rest on the great pack that bulged within the brief loincloth low around his waist. As I watched, it grew, shifting like some animal struggling in a sack.

  “Can I give my Mistress Faustina anything to help her sleep?” A shy young man, but not a little bold.

  “Mistress? No, I’m not your Mistress.”

  I enjoyed seeing his smile wilt a little, and then spring up and open wide when I told him my plan.

  “You will be your own master. I will pay you to tutor my house-slaves, and give you a little something with which you can open a school to tutor the less fortunate children of the area. What do you say?”

  “Mistress.” He came round to me and threw himself at my feet. “Mistress.”

  “No, no, no, Numidius.” I pulled him up.

  “No, I... I just like saying the word… Faustina.”

  Our mouths locked together and we kissed passionately, the breath leaving my body with the sheer fierceness of it, stars bursting before my eyes. My legs would not hold me up, but before I sank, his great hands were cradling me by the buttocks. With a mere flick of his great oar-lock wrists he pulled me up against him, and wrapping my legs around him tightly, he walked me to the big palm tree. In those few paces his cock was as stiff, as wide, as tally arching as its trunk, and pushing deep inside me.