The Roman legal system is very important, as it was the basis of all subsequent European systems which recognised torture as part of their procedure, and the rules attained a refinement beyond anything attempted in Greece.
Torture under Roman law was used both in civil and in criminal trials, but in the former only upon slaves, freed-men or infamous persons. With respect to crimes, during the Republic torture was applied only to slaves, but with the Empire it was extended to a free man, if he was an accused, but not if he were merely a witness. However, anyone, whatever his rank, was liable to torture for treason and sorcery. A wife could be tortured if accused of poisoning her husband, but only after her slaves had been tortured.
By the Roman law certain persons were exempt from torture: priests, children under fourteen years of age, and pregnant women.
Slaves could always be tortured either as accused or as witnesses for their master, but only in certain cases against their master. On the same principle a freed-man could not be tortured against his patron.
The amount and variety of torture were at the discretion of the judge, but it was to be inflicted so as not to injure life or limb; and torture was to be employed only when the evidence had advanced so that nothing but the confession was wanting to complete it. Repetition of the torture could be ordered only in the case of inconsistent depositions, though there was no limiting the number of repetitions.
Torture was carried out by the tortores before the quaesitor, who asked the questions and drew up an account of the information obtained. Roman ladies often hired the tortores to perform upon their domestic slaves.
The principal forms of torture were the equuleus (rack), the plumbatae (scourges to the ends of which were fastened leaden balls), the ungulae (barbed hooks or tongs on which were spikes; these were used by the early Germans who knew them as when a master for some small offense compelled his and the fidiculae (compressing the arm with a cord).
The capital punishments included crucifixion, burning alive, decapitation, mutilation and exposure to wild beasts in the arena, while parricides were sewed up in sacks with venomous serpents and cast into the sea or river.
Burial alive was the fate reserved for Vestal Virgins who violated their vows of chastity. An interesting case of this is mentioned by Seneca, the sole fault of the Vestal Virgin being that she wrote, "Felices Nuptae!
Moriare ni nubere dulce est." (Hail, happy bride! I would I were dead or wedded.) The tortures of the Roman consul Regulus by the Carthaginians were ended by his being enclosed in a barrel, studded inside with spikes and nails, in which he was rolled down a hill.
Another form of punishment in Rome was the furca (or gallows), an instrument which consisted of a forked piece of timber. This punishment was of three kinds. The first was only ignominious, e.g., when a master for some small offence compelled his slave to carry a furca on his shoulder about the city. The second was penal, e.g., when the victim was led about the circus, or elsewhere, with a furca about his neck, being whipped all the way. The third was capital, and in this case the accused had his head fastened to the furca while he was whipped to death.
Such were the punishments employed in Rome up to the Christian era; and it was not till the death of Christ that torture received the impetus which kept it going for so many years. Before the death of Christ torture had been used only as a punishment for a crime, or for the persuasion of an unwilling witness. It had been a legal remedy carried out within legal limits, and it had not been used, except by tyrants such as the Syrian Antiochus, as a means to alter opinions. The more steadfastly, however, the early Christians maintained their opinions, the more terrible did the methods of torture become, and the more illegal and unrighteous their application. Planted on a barbaric foundation, they slowly grew in ingenuity till they reached the height of cruelty at the time of the Holy Inquisition.
From the time of Christ until torture was embodied by Justinian (483-565) in his Code (from which nearly all legal systems in Europe sprang) the instruments with which torture was inflicted increased steadily in barbarity and number. The early persecutions of the Christians fill some of the most terrible pages in history.
The equuleus (rack) was one of the earliest Roman forms of torture and its use was continued until torture was abolished. An interesting case in Roman history was the infliction of the rack on Julietta, a Lyconian, who was seized at Tarsus and brought before Alexander, the governor, to whom she admitted being a Christian. Her son, Cyricus, was taken from her and she was put on the rack and stretched with great severity.
The governor, hearing Cyricus crying to get to his mother, noticed his great beauty and took him up on his knee, endeavoring to pacify him. Nothing, however, could quiet Cyricus and, at length, he lisped out the words in imitation of his mother, "I am a Christian." On hearing this the governor hurled the child down in front of its mother and dashed its brains out. The mother watched the whole transaction from the rack. To complete Julietta's execution, she had boiling pitch poured over her feet, her sides were torn with hooks and she was finally beheaded.
The first Christian persecutions began under Nero and ended with Vespasian; thousands of Christians suffered the most terrible deaths. The crucifix, the whip, the rack, the cauldron of boiling oil, the red-hot grid, the hoop of steel, the pincers, scraping with shells and flaying alive came into general operation. Special victims suffered by being impaled on sharp stakes thrust through the body lengthwise, torn by wild beasts in the circus, or sewn in the skins of animals and hunted to death by dogs. Others again supplemented the deficient lighting system by having their clothes smeared with combustible materials, being tied to posts, and set alight to blaze as torches.
Saturnus, bishop of Toulouse, had his feet fastened to the tail of a bull, which was then driven down the steps of the temple, by which means the bishop's brains were dashed out. A Christian priest of Abitina, of the same name, after the worst tortures (scourging, tearing his flesh with hooks, burning with hot irons, etc.) was stoned to death. Calepodius had a mill-stone tied about his neck and was thrown into the Tiber. Marcus, Bishop of Arethusa, was hung in a basket in the heat of the sun at Alexandria, smeared with honey, and stung to death by wasps.
According to Magentius Rabanus-Maurus: "Some slain with the sword; some burnt with fire; some scourged with whips; some stabbed with forks; some fastened to the cross; some drowned in the sea; some flayed alive; some had their tongues cut out; some were stoned to death; some killed with cold; some starved with hunger; some had their hands cut off, or were otherwise dismembered, and so left naked to the contempt of the world."
Indeed, life in Imperial Rome was a stimulating experience. If you managed to live through it...
-"John Swain
CHAPTER ONE
It was the era of Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar, in the year of our Lord 21. Tiberius-"the lewd old man who was to live to his 79th year and under whose rule the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews, Jesus Christ, would be scourged and crucified by imperial edict of the Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
The Libyan campaign had begun, and the Roman legions of Maximus Cartullian had routed those dreaded black armies across the sun-scorched sands. Even now Tiberius awaited word by a mounted envoy from the bloody desert where a mighty Roman victory had just been won at cruel cost.
General Cartullian was a favorite of the perverse and cunning Emperor. He had but recently come to favor, as a tribune of the legion which had been besieged at the fort of Peripax on the border of Numidia. There, his heroism had become legendary. Sword in hand and without full armor save for his breastplate, he had slain the ox-like Numidian war chief Atarax and brought back his head on a spear to march under Hadrian's Arch of Triumph and before the excited, rapidly aging Tiberius. The Divine Emperor was, at sixty-two, virtually toothless, with a circular fringe of sparse white hair, his neck addled and wrinkled, his eyes seemingly vacuous. Those who dared believe that Caesar was decrepit and senile found to their sorrow how terribly in error they were. For the vengeance of Tiberius could be cunning and diabolical, and because the hideous lusts which he had had as a boy had not yet fled from his withered body, his tortures could be unspeakably vile...
There were those in Rome who did not hold with the megalomania of the Divine Tiberius. And there were plots against his life. At the time of the Ides of March, his imperial litter had been carried to the Forum, where he was preparing to address the Senate to command their vote for the imposition of higher taxes so that the legions might be swelled and achieve greater conquests. Without warning, a gaunt man in a dirty, tattered toga, such as a senator himself might wear, had darted out of an alley, dagger in hand, and made his way toward the Emperor. But the wily Tiberius, who lolled amid scented pillows and nibbled on biscuits dipped in honey which a Numidian slavegirl preferred him as she walked alongside the entourage, had observed this threat and had barked an order to his praetorian of guards, Licius Vintius, a sturdy young man in his late twenties who had distinguished himself with valorous deeds and gained the laurel direct from the hand of the Divine Emperor: "Take him alive, it is a plot, we must learn the names of his accomplices!" Regrettably, Licius's attention had been diverted by his glittering-eyed observance of the superb black slavegirl who was naked except for loincloth, sandals and a short tunic which scarcely concealed her full jutting, widely spaced breasts. And that in-attentiveness cost him his life. Before he could whirl and draw his short sword to confront the assailant, the gaunt assassin had lunged at him and plunged the point of the sharp dagger into his armpit. But even as Licius reeled back and collapsed on the dusty street which was to be his deathbed, Boreas Trubidium, a soldier in the Imperial Guard, struck at the assassin's neck with the flat of his blade, stunning the man. And two other centurions hauled the stunned attacker to his feet and forced him to his knees before the litter, which had stopped.
"Your name?" the Divine Tiberius coldly demanded, fixing the rogue with an amethyst lorgnette held to his watery blue eyes.
"I will tell you nothing, monster, pervert, de-spoiler of helpless women, slayer of innocent families!" the assailant cried.
Tiberius, as the infamous Nero before him, squinted through the amethyst eyeglass and a cruel smile twisted his thin, ascetic lips. "Let him be put in the dungeons of the Circus Maximus, that he may hear the roaring of the wild beasts to stimulate his memory," he directed. "Put him to the rack and the irons, but do not let him die. We must learn what other jackals have aided him in this attempt to kill the Divinity of Rome!" For two long weeks the assailant had lingered in the foulest, deepest dungeon well beneath the arena where festival games and bloody spectacles took place. Tiberius preferred this locale to the far smaller, private amphitheatre which he had had constructed at the rear of his palace at a cost of several million sesterces, for it flattered his enormous ego to be seen by thousands of his loyal citizens of Rome.
The most skillful of the torturers, Metellus, was given full charge of the prisoner with the Emperor's order to prolong his life and to extract the last minutiae of evidence against him and all other conspirators in this newest attempt against the life of Caesar. First the man was stripped naked and bathed in oil, so that the deceiving luxury and the pliancy of his skin and muscles would make him the more sensitive to torture. Then he was stretched out upon the rack. It was a simple device, and it was Metellus' own special adaptation of this ancient apparatus which brought such torturing traction to the limbs of agonized victims yet without killing them, if the executioner's hand should be skilled. Contrary to the usual usage in other provinces and countries like Phoenicia and Byzantium, the rack of Metellus added ingenuity to cruelty with an economy of means that delighted the Divine Tiberius, who often visited these dungeons to divert his jaded and bored disposition.
Imagine a cell about a dozen feet in length and as wide, with low dark stone ceiling and no windows through which light could pass. Imagine then in its center an upright metal post whose top had been cut to a spear-point, the very tip as sharp as a needle. Imagine a culprit being placed in the air just above this point, and suspended entirely by leather cuffs fixed to wrists and ankles, cuffs which were in turn circled half a dozen times by stout leather thongs through which heavy cords had been passed. Metal rings set in the stone walls, two on each side, served as fulcrum points; the cords from the wrist cuff were drawn through one set of rings and downwards to the floor where they met on the wheel of a small metal windlass. Similarly, the cords attached to the ankle cuffs went through a similar set of rings and in turn to their own windlass. Thus the torturer might designate a stretching of the upper portion of the body or of the lower or of both at his choice, depending on the strength and musculature of the victim. And on occasion, when the racking was suspended, when the culprit seemed near to confession, these cords could be slacked just enough to let the naked back of the victim bear down upon the atrociously keen spike-head of the upright pole beneath him.
But the rogue proved hardier then even Metellus had expected. Two sessions over the rack left bleeding gouges along the victim's spine, and twice he fainted and had to be restored with a sponge of bitter hysop rubbed in his nostrils and against his mouth. Then, taking a thin knotted cord, Metellus himself began to lash the naked sufferer over the in-sides of his thighs, finally applying his full strength to flagellating the penis and testicles. And this ingenious method at last extracted the information which the Divine Tiberius had demanded.
In his agony, the rogue shrilled, "I am named Lysander Bertifox, and I alone did this deed!" But when this news was relayed to the aging Caesar, he merely smiled and shook his head: "Not so. Let Metellus use his ingenuity, which I expect of him and command him to display. It is too well thought out to have been conceived the moment our litter turned down the Street of Jupiter, where the crowd had thinned.
No, not one man would have known this, but several. I wish to know their names before the week is out!" Once again Lysander Bertifox was racked, this time face down. Ingeniously, Metellus took long thin metal skewers and pierced them through the fellow's nipples, attaching light weights to each. Again, taking a long jeweled pin, such as the noble matrons of Rome were wont to use either in their hair or as a decoration thrust through the lapel of a costly silk tunic, he squatted under the culprit and jabbed Lysander's testicles and penis repeatedly, but at sporadic interval so that the poor wretch would not know when to steel himself for the torture. But it was only when, commanding his two assistants to wrench open the sinewy, lean buttocks of the assassin and cruelly pricking the anus with the sharp tip of the pin, that Metellus was able at last to open those recalcitrant lips and force from the stubborn Lysander the desired names. And when he heard the first, even he blanched. For it was the name of the beautiful Julia, wife of the Pro-Consul of Heralceum. Julia, at thirty-seven, still one of the most beautiful women in all Italy, and her two daughters Gratia, the fair one, fifteen, with golden hair and innocent, sweet face; and Rhea, seventeen, auburn-haired, slim and regal, as queenly in her way as her own beautiful black-haired mother.
To make certain that Lysander had not lied to save himself torment, Metellus craftily promised him freedom. "You shall be cloaked and taken to the border of Rome, fellow," he said roughly in his hoarse deep voice, stroking his shaggy beard and forcing an amiable smirk to his thick cruel lips. "You shall be given gold and your life if you will vow by Jupiter, greatest of the gods, that the names you have just spoken are those of the true conspirators. But are there others?"
"N-"no... I am weak, give me wine. I will swear the oath. It is the truth. They paid me well to assassinate the monster Tiberius."
"But why? All know the wife of the Pro-Consul, whose loyalty to Rome has never till now been questioned. Why should this superb and aristocratic woman wish the death of him who made her husband Pro-Consul?" Metellus pursued.
"Wine first, I am weak, I am in pain," Lysander groaned. Metellus made an impatient gesture, and a Thracian slave, a young blond man in his early twenties, wearing the pelt of a leopard and rude sandals, crouched beside the racked victim. Holding a wooden bowl with strong cheap red wine in it in his left hand, he seized the sweaty and disheveled hair of the wretch in his right hand and dragged Lysander's face up so that he might press the bowl to the man's teeth-marked and bleeding lips.
"Quickly, or we resume," Mettelus warned. "Why did you name Julia, wife of Romulus Verticux, the illustrious Pro-Consul?"
"Because Tiberius sought to sully the virtue of my mistress Julia," groaned the tortured, naked rogue. Then a long spasm seized his body and his head dangled. Metellus disgustedly felt for his heart, but there was no spark of life.
"He's done for. Throw this carrion to the jackals. They will not have Christians to feast upon until next week," he ordered the Thracian. "I must myself go to the Divinity to tell him of this. And you, Ciro, forget what you have heard, or you may replace Lysander on my rack!"
CHAPTER TWO
The hot June sun beat down upon the shouting throngs who surged around the wooden dais of the slave dealer Mericus, on the Street of Gladiators, but a mile away from the grim Mamartine Prison. This afternoon Mericus, a fat, bald, coarse man in his early fifties, his cheeks painted like a whore's, his double chin trembling with excitement, had rare merchandise for the slave mart. By order of the divine Tiberius, as he loudly informed the gaggling spectators, it had been given unto him to sell a true barbarian princess and her two hand-maidens. She was a princess of the Visigoths, which nation had thrice been defeated by Roman legions, long before the aging Emperor had come to the throne, but a hot-blooded chief named Orox had sent a defy to the Divinity himself by having a Roman captain of Centurions whom he had himself captured conveyed to the Imperial City in a wooden cage, with a yoke about his neck, his back bleeding from the scourge, and an obscene inscription written in vile Latin on his belly by livid characters designed with a red-hot poker. That defy had marked Tiberius as an idiot, not fit to consort with female hyenas, and had warned him not to send his legions again into the land of the Visigoths.
Tiberius had turned purple with rage at this infamous treatment of a Roman officer and at the insult to his own lineage. He sent two legions to meet Orox in battle, and the Visigoth prince had been captured, brought to Rome in chains, and in the arena, stripped naked, his neck thrust into a wooden yoke, he himself was scourged till he was nearly flayed alive. Then a dozen baboons were loosed upon him, and they tore him to bits.
Of the more than six hundred male and female captives who fell prisoner to the conquering Roman legions, the beautiful Princess Aurelia, twenty-one and betrothed to Orox, was found in her royal tent with two lovely handmaidens. Still fuming over the vile insult which Orox when living had inflicted upon him, Tiberius refused to recognize the rank of this princess, but ordered that she be delivered to Mericus (to whom the Divinity owed certain favors, for the slave dealer had on occasion procured tempting young boys and girls scarcely out of puberty for the lecherous old Emperor).
When the news of Tiberius's decision was communicated to Aurelia, she turned on the centurion who had brought it with an implacable fury as befitted her rank. "It is unjust and unworthy," she stormed. "I am Aurelia, daughter of King Bodomir, to whom a dozen tribes, from the Thuringians to the Germanicums, bend the knee and pay tribute! I demand that you take me before this insolent and stupid old man who will not grant decent treatment for the daughter of a king, even though he be a defeated one!" Her two handmaidens gasped at her temerity, being somewhat more practical than their regal mistress. As captives of mighty Rome, they well knew what they might look forward to: the whip, the metal collar that marked degrading servitude, and, if they were fortunate, a master who would deign to bed with them himself and then find studding mates for them from among his own slave retinue.
They did not, of course, communicate their private feelings to Aurelia, for back in the land of the Visigoths they had felt not only the lash of her tongue, but also the knotted cords and the leather-strap which sometimes she herself had wielded upon their naked bottoms and backs.
The centurion whose face Aurelia had so angrily slapped went directly back to the Emperor of Rome and, kneeling before Tiberius, related how this barbarian princess had received the Imperial degree.
Tiberius chuckled, putting a finger to his chin, and his eyes grew evil with dark brooding malevolence. "So the Visigoth spitfire said that of me, eh, Lepidus? For that she shall be humiliated. I had thought to tell Mericus to hold a private sale for the most discriminating patricians of all Rome, so that she might enjoy the indulgence of an aristocratic master who would show her off to guests and friends from the Senate. But I see that this baggage needs a curb upon her tongue and her temper; needs a master, aye, and a mistress too, who will not spare to put the lash about her white shoulders if she forgets her place.
"You will go back to Mericus and order him to expose her and her handmaidens upon the open dais and before the populace. And then you will go to the villa of Glaucus Lycidas and tell him that it is my wish that he and his charming consort Domitia attend the sale of this impertinent wench and her two attendants two days hence. Tell him also that it is my hope that he will acquire this trio of barbarian beauties to grace his villa and to gild the charms of his exquisite spouse. Yes, I think this will resolve Domitia to spur her niggardly and miserly husband to open his purse of sesterces and bring these wenches to the villa. And if I mistake not, Domitia will punish this princess in my stead, for I have heard that she is jealous to a fault even of the lowliest slave whose beauty dares rival her own, and I have also heard that fat, bald old Glaucus fancies himself a lion among the does and has a lecherous eye for a shapely ankle or a bare white arm. Verily, if this be so, he will lust for our Visigoth princess and his wife will make him suffer for it-"as well as the princess herself. Go quickly now, Lepidus, and you shall have a gold piece and a flagon of Falarian wine as your reward once you have delivered this message to old Mericus!"
And thus it was that, frowning with contempt for the jostling, loud-voiced commoners about her, the lady Domitia, reclining in her litter borne by four strong young Thracian slaves, attended on this hot June afternoon the slave sale on the Street of Gladiators...
* * *
Mericus, with that cunning adroitness born out of years of dealing with scheming clients, powerful and influential men who could readily destroy him if he offended them, had saved Aurelia and her handmaidens Forella and Cundemere for the very last. It had been the decree of Tiberius that he might retain half of the price paid for the three barbarian women, a generous gesture and one which, Mericus well knew, was the Emperor's way of saying that now his debt was paid in full. Well, what would you? He had counted on rather more, for this Visigoth princess was a fine, spirited woman, fit for a Persian lord or a decadent Phoenician merchant with perverted tastes, but it was far better to have the favor of Caesar and to sacrifice a few hundred sesterces than to he in fear at night and wonder when a javelin might pierce his throat and still forever his thirst for good Falarian wine.
Slaves, when they were sold openly before the public in this way, were shackled, blindfolded and gagged and placed in a series of individual stalls behind the dais, each stall being covered by a curtain. The wealthier and more renowned the slave dealer, the more elaborate the presentation. And Mericus had gone to great expense and pains to make this spectacle worthy of his own reputation, as well as to placate the Divine Tiberius should the latter have sent secret agents into the throng to spy upon the proceedings.
He wore a white linen toga and sandals, to proclaim his favor with the Emperor; only patricians or those designated by Caesar himself might wear that dignified garment, and he had given his female attendant Livia orders to dress the three barbarian women in a special way and to pile the hair of these delightful creatures high above their head as was the fashion of the moment in Rome, with silver combs thrust into them as adornment. The stola was a dress rarely worn by slaves, which itself was mockery enough for the Princess Aurelia; it rose to her throat though it was sleeveless, and fell to her ankles, being caught about her slim waist with a gold cord. Her feet were to be shod in gold-painted slippers.
Livia had reported to him that the young Visigoth princess was disdainful of such attire, preferring her own rude costume of purple tunic and short black silk skirt that descended only to her knees, her legs being sheathed in a warrior's heavy footgear with silver plates bound about her calves with thin strong rawhide thongs. He had sent Livia back to Aurelia with the threat that Caesar had given him the power to use the lash on her if she did not comply with his orders, which came from the Divinity; so grudgingly Aurelia had listened to the frantic pleas of her handmaidens and donned the stola which was worthy of the most august matrons in all Rome... and which further emphasized her terrible downfall from her exalted status of royal princess of the Visigoths to the humble estate of a slave. A slave who could be bought by a woman or a man, bought even by the master or mistress of a lupanar (the lowliest of the Roman brothels), liable to the lash and to torture, to mutilation and to death if it pleased the owner. A slave had no right to speak or to act, or to leave the estate of his or her owner unless it was at the bidding of the master. Tiberius, well acquainted with the irritability of the Lady Domitia, pulled at his chin and reflected aloud to his centurion Lepidus, "I think the day will come when our insolent barbarian princess will wish she had been brought to Rome, scourged through the streets and put to death in the arena rather than to undergo the humiliation to which only a tyrannical virago like Domitia will subject her."
The cunning ability of Mericus to play upon his audience's lusts and greeds and innermost perversities had brought rather better returns than he had originally expected. He had sold one fair-haired boy of about fourteen, from Gaul, not as a field hand but as a body-slave to an aging Senator-"(actually, the sale had been effected by an intermediary, the Senator's freed-man and steward, so that the already precarious reputation of the old rogue would not be further jeopardized); and obviously the boy would become the sweet plaything of that corrupt old man who, incapable of covering a lusty wench, needs must rely on the painted, effeminate dawdlings and dalliances of boys scarcely out of puberty. That sale had procured more than sixty sesterces above what he had privately speculated the boy would bring. Then, to his own surprise-" though really by now nothing could surprise the fat slave dealer because in this day and age of Imperial Rome the scope of human lust was growing more and more complex and ingenious-"he had sold for a handsome profit a pregnant slave girl, of about twenty-six years of age, a Thracian with a tumbled mane of dark blonde hair falling to her hips. She had been in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and so he had had the novel idea of presenting her with only a short tunic that fitted her from neck to waist, and sandals and a loincloth such as the Abyssinian women wore, a kind of circling cord with a cupping pouch of rough black cloth fitting over the vulva.
Her face bowed and covered with her hands, as tears of shame flowed down her face, the Thracian captive had stood there upon the dais, and the sight of her swollen body had inflamed the lustful zeal of older male buyers of female flesh like Borbax and Castollux, both licentious, wealthy merchants from the Capitoline Hill district of Rome. The two men had bid heatedly against each other, and the Thracian girl had gone to Borbax for a price twice that which Mericus had believed he would gain for the transaction. Borbax meant to enjoy the slut in the Greek manner, with was through the rectum, and he might also regale himself even by possessing the unfortunate wench in the normal way despite her gross belly; or again he might command her to use her lips and tongue upon his organ while he applied the flagellum between the quivering cheeks of her naked bottom. Yes, a dealer who was perceptive to the fashion of lust at the moment could swell his coffers with much gold and silver if he could take advantage of his knowledge; and Mericus prided himself that no dealer in Rome knew more than he as to what inflamed the loins of not only men but also women. For often he would have veiled and elegantly gowned matrons visit his stalls in the late afternoon when there would be no other traffic or clientele, and they would bribe him to spend a pleasant hour in one of the cells in which perhaps a powerfully built, blond Pict lay chained and naked, or again to dally with a delicate and wistful-faced virgin with the olive skin and glossy black hair of a Persian or Mede.
Mericus cleared his throat now, and he cracked his leather whip in the air to command attention. The curtains had been drawn away from all the stalls but three, behind which waited Aurelia and her two handmaidens. He gave a sign to Livia and to Ursus, the giant deaf-mute whose life he had claimed from Tiberius when Ursus, about to die in the arena for fratricide, had made Mericus believe that he could use the thews and sinews of such a giant to protect himself against those who might try to abduct his human merchandise for their own profit. Tiberius who at that point had still owed Mericus a favor which this afternoon would be paid in full, had grudgingly spared the life of Ursus, but had had his tongue torn out and his eardrums pierced with hot awls so that he could neither speak nor hear sedition.
As for Livia, she was a coarsely handsome wench from Alexandria, about thirty, whom Mericus had met about a dozen years ago in a lupanar and who had pleased him when he coupled with her by showing him such tricks as to that time no woman had perpetrated for his pleasure. He had bought her from the owner of the brothel, and that very night had trussed her up by the thumbs to a tall post planted in the floor beside his wide low bed. Then, stripping her naked, he had flogged her carefully and scientifically from neck to heels with a thin leather strap whose tip tapered like an arrowhead and was notched to inflict additional pain. This was by way of friendly warning to her to give her best in his service, or else sterner punishments would await her body. That night had been a revelation of lustful pleasure for the fat slave dealer; and in the years which had ensued, Livia had proved not only a competent mistress but a keen and shrewd judge of the human merchandise which daily passed into the stalls of her master. She could detect false pregnancies-"often captives pleaded that they were with child to save themselves the degradation of ascending the dais to be sold; she could see, where not even a physician could not always quickly detect, some muscular flaw or bodily defect in a seemingly strong male slave, and she had saved Mericus many a sesterce. Now she was his stewardess, and she was also a freed-woman, no longer wearing the collar of servitude. Her function at such public sales was to bring forth the captive, while Ursus, merely by the sight of his brawny physique (he wore only a loin cloth and sandals) and the short-handled whip which he brandished in his right hand, was there to crush incipient revolt.
Mericus looked around the throng, espied the litter of Domitia and bowed low in her direction. The haughty lady curtly inclined her head and waved her fan, a sign that she was over-impatient to see this supposedly choice merchandise of which her husband had been apprised and of which, needless to say, he had fawningly informed her. For her lecherous and unfaithful husband, almost impotent by now as a result of violent dissipations, still fancied himself as a masterful lover among slave wenches. Insatiably, he was present at almost every sale where there were comely females presented upon the auction block, hoping that perhaps this one or that one would restore to him the fire that had once burned so furiously in his loins. And Domitia, contemptuously knowing her husband's fallibility and despising him for it, found perverse pleasure very often in aiding him to purchase just such a slave, only gradually to take possession of the unfortunate girl herself and to punish her cruelly for any pretext whatsoever, usually that of trying to captivate the master. Domitia was indeed the real master at the villa at the top of the hill of Appius.
Livia approached the third stall and drew back the curtain, and the crowd surged forward, gaping and exclaiming in admiration over the delicious beauty of the slave thus presented. It was Cundemere. She was nineteen, a buxom beauty, with fair golden curls that tumbled to the valley of her sumptuous breasts. Her skin was pink as a newborn babe's, smooth and velvety, and she was naked except for a ridiculously short tunic with sleeves halfway to the elbow and whose hem descended to her belly-button. She wore gold-painted shoes, and a red ribbon was tied in her golden hair. The dark golden fleece thickening her plump mount of Venus hid the soft pink lips of her virgin orifice, for Cundemere was daughter to one of the first families in the tribe of Orox, herself betrothed to Dagobert, a handsome young brawny chieftain who had been slain in the battle against the legions of Tiberius. Her fair blue eyes were swollen with weeping for her lost lover and with her desolate knowledge that this afternoon her virginity would be bartered on this auction block to some loathsome master. Worst of all, since she was of noble stock herself, she agonized over the mortifying exposure of her private parts to all these glittering eyes. The affront was overwhelming; before the Emperor or perhaps before her sovereign lord Orox, indeed, her nudity, though fearfully embarrassing to so gentle a virgin, would have been the easier to bear-"but not before commoners and the enemies of her people, these Roman dogs whose soldiers had slain her beloved Dagobert.
Around her neck, Cundemere wore the brass collar that marked her slavery, and there were similar brass bands fixed round her slender wrists. Her cheeks of her voluptuously naked pink-sheened bottom undulated as Livia, seizing her by an elbow, hustled her out to the dais where Ursus stood towering above her, brandishing his whip.
Mericus turned to harangue the spectators: "Look, Romans, upon the fairness of this captive of the Visigoths! She is servant to the haughty princess whom you shah soon see displayed before you, and she is an aristocrat among her own barbarian people. What am I bid for this luscious wench, whose juicy thighs and breasts will entertain some ardent master of a jaded evening? Turn her!" Livia's thighs were plump and succulent "-"now, look upon those buttocks, ripe and rounded, satiny-soft to the touch-"" here the fat, crafty slave dealer extended left thumb and forefinger and applied a stealthy pinch to Cundemere's left bottomcheek.
The Visigoth girl uttered a shriek of furious indignation and twisted round, only to expose the thick fleece of her cunt to the hilarious spectators. But as she twisted her self free of Livia's grasp, her eyes blazing and her cheeks scarlet at the affront, Ursus uncoiled his short leather whip and caught her across the ripe rondures of her bosom, the fragile tunic being useless to shield against the biting kiss of that expertly placed lash.
A new shriek of torment sounded as Cundemere clutched at her heaving breast, and sank down on her knees, weeping bitterly. She was definitively conquered, and the little scene had, greatly to the delight of Mericus, caused a murmur of excitement and avarice to run through the audience that crowded around the dais. He was rubbing his hands in anticipation of the bids, which he now demanded in stentorian tones: "Now, you have seen that this wench has spirit and fire! She will not lie there passively when you try to force your way into her barbarian temple, Ah, no! What am I bid for this jewel of young slaves? She has seen but nineteen summers, she is a virgin and has never been bred. Who will give me twenty sesterces?" Domitia in her litter languidly lifted her jewelled hand, and Mericus bowed low. "I have twenty. Who will give me thirty?"
"I!" cried a thin, pock-marked man who had crowded up into the front row of spectators.
"And I, forty," called a bearded man in a white toga with a purple stripe around the middle which denoted that he had once been an honored equite.
"The Lady Domitia bids fifty," Mericus called, again bowing low as he saw the haughty patrician matron lift her hand.
He turned back to Livia, giving her a sign, and his freed-woman, whispering a threat of the lash for poor Cundemere, forced the half-nude captive to turn her bottom to the spectators, then to bend over while Livia patter her round ripe naked thighs and then salaciously, gripping the soft tender folds at the inner curves of those luscious bottomcheeks, yawned them apart to expose the dainty crinkly pink rosette of Cundemere's virgin asshole.
The guffaws, the salacious exhortations, the lustful comments and speculative predictions as to Cundemere's amatory talents drowned out the unfortunate young woman's shriek of shame; but when she tried to straighten, Livia hissed, "If you dare move, bitch, I'll have Ursus thrust heated pins into that tender bung of yours, after you've had it striped a bit with the lash! Behave yourself, and keep bent down until I tell you it's time to show! your pudendum to your customers!" Dying of shame, poor Cundemere abandoned herself, her bubbies dangling pendant like fruits from the vine, in this shamefully obscene position which exposed not only the tender and shadowy cleft of her nether aperture but also allowed the avid spectators to glimpse the plump pink labia of her virgin cunt peeping through the dark gold ringlets which so delightfully framed that sweet oasis.
She was sold at last for eighty sesterces to the Lady Domitia. Ursus, after Livia had made the weeping girl rise, wound a rawhide thong round her forearms just beyond her elbows, tied a cord around the brass collar which circled her pink throat, and led her by that cord towards the litter, where at the Lady Domitia's order, her elderly and malicious steward Licias rolled the end of the cord round his right wrist to symbolize formal possession. Beside him, Vespasius, the treasurer of the villa, now untied the cord and opened his bag of sesterces which he had brought with him to the sale at his mistress's order, and marched up to the dais to count out for Mericus the eighty golden coins.
Many of the spectators who had longed to buy Cundemere cast envious glances back at the litter where the unfortunate half-naked golden-haired captive cowered, covering her tear stained, swollen face with her hands, and clenching her thighs together to hide the furry nook of her virginity.
CHAPTER THREE
Mericus decided to treat the spectators to wine, a gesture which was calculated to win the good humor and their favor for the future. He knew well that his next two slaves would be bought also by the Lady Domitia, and Lepidus had also intimated to him that should the Lady Domitia pay too much for these three captives, he himself was to make good the difference should she complain of the price. Now he had no wish to lose the favor of Tiberius, but he was also a profit-minded man with a practical eye to the future. Therefore he had Livia and her fifteen-year-old Greek slave Niobe, a slim sweet-faced black-haired girl who had already won his secret admiration (and whose maiden flower between those tempting thighs he meant very soon to take) pass through the throng with bowls of wine, and he had bidden them also to announce that on the very next afternoon he would have new slaves for sale who might be even more tempting than today's lot.
The grumbling was turned to cheers for his bounty, and Mericus beamed, knowing well that what he might lose momentarily he would gain upon the morrow.
It was now the turn of Forella, the other handmaiden to the Visigoth princess and a virgin of twenty, to be shown and offered to the bids of the avid spectators.
Livia moved toward the stall and whisked aside the curtain to display Forella. The spectators gasped at the imaginative exposure to which Mericus had subjected this lovely young girl. Forella was tall and willowy, her jet black hair and creamy skin making her a delightful contrast to the golden-haired Cundemere and a further foil for the beauty of the princess whom she served.
Forella's face was oval, with high-placed cheekbones, a prim and dainty mouth, delicately winged aquiline nose, and a firm, almost obstinate little chin. Her eyes were dark brown, and they flashed with shame and indignation at the lascivious way in which she was being shown to this goggling audience, for she was of a far more spirited temperament than her companion Cundemere, whose blue eyes were already blurred with tears as she stood beside the litter of the Lady Domitia. Mericus had had the idea of showing off this barbarian brunette female naked to the waist, and with her dark coral pointed nipples tinted purple. A gauzy skirt of red silk fixed at her waist with a tight cinchbelt made of extremely thin and supple and oiled leather; the skirt descended to her ankles, but it was split at the left side almost to the hipbone, so that when she turned about, it would reveal the creamy nakedness of her magnificent long legs and perhaps too show the thick black triangular vista of her virgin mount of Venus. For the handmaidens of Princess Aurelia were as virginal as their indomitable mistress.
All the buyers crowded forward toward the dais to feast their eyes on the swelling turrets of Forella's creamy, dark-tipped breasts. Nor might Forella shield those chaste globes with her hands, for Livia had hissed to her, "Dare cover yourself, barbarian wench, and Ursus will tear your fingers away with his whip!" She was too proud to cry, so she compressed her lips and stared out beyond the throng whose clamoring obscenities and lewd exhortations she heard as in a dreadful nightmare from which, despite her pleas to all the gods by whom the Visigoths swore, knew only too well she would not be delivered. Because of this stoicism and her regal bearing, the bidding began much higher than it had for her companion Cundemere. And again it was the languid Domitia who won the beautiful brunette for her household with a bid of one hundred and five sesterces.
But the sale was not accomplished until poor crimson faced Forella had been obliged to unfasten the cinchbelt and let her skirt fall about her ankles... and this in turn was enforced by the whip of Ursus. At that, it took three vigorous cuts across her bottom and finally one over her naked bosom to break her indignant courage and at last to stand with head bowed, her hands covering her contorted, tear-stained face, while shouts of lustful acclaim rose from the multitude around the dais at the vision of Forella's thickly furred, prominent mount of love and the sleek, broadly oval cheeks of her creamy bottom, separated by a widening ambery-shadowy groove that promised all sorts of lascivious delights.
And so, she too, with the collar of servitude about her neck, and similar bands fixed to her wrists and ankles, was led to the litter of Domitia, there to be tethered on the other side at the back, across from the golden-haired Cundemere.
And now it was the turn of Aurelia herself; and Mericus, well knowing the excited speculation of the throng, prolonged the moment of display until the very last, when angry cries rose to remind him that the Roman populace was fickle and could as readily forget its favor to him as it could fear Mm. With a sign, he made Livia draw aside the curtain, and then there was a moment of silence as all eyes fixed on that magnificent barbarian princess.
Her coppery hair had been piled in the fashionable upsweep, with a silver comb thrust through it. She wore the magnificent stola which cloaked her from throat to ankles, and whose gold cord limned the supple grace of her slim waist. Her skin was tawny and impeccably smooth, without blemish. About that patrician throat, the collar of her slavery made a rude note of decor. But the way she drew herself up, arms folded across her magnificent breasts, her eyes flashing scorn and contempt for those who shouted and gestured at her, evinced the aristocratic temperament and bearing of a true princess, even though of a conquered nation.
Mericus himself approached beside the red-haired captive and began to expatiate on her virtues, her breeding and quality. "She is twenty-two years of age, my dear friends," he intoned, "and is equally virgin like her handmaidens, since she was betrothed to that insolent Orox who, as you know, received the price of his insult to our glorious Emperor in the arena but a few days ago. She is the daughter of a barbarian king, and I should not deem it amiss if the bids for such a beauty should begin at two hundred and fifty sesterces!"
"Come, Mericus," called a bony, bald wine merchant who had long been one of the slave dealer's clients, "you do not expect us, surely, to pay so much for what we cannot see. And we have only your word that she is virgin. Strip us this haughty wench and let your girl make the test of her maidenhood before we open our purses!"
The Princess Aurelia understood Latin well enough to comprehend what indignity was being propounded, and, stamping her dainty foot, she cried out, "No man shall see me naked save my betrothed, and I demand the right of my rank to be treated for what I am!"
"You are a slave, my girl," Mericus smilingly retorted as he turned to her and with his fat hand caressed the back of her neck and shoulders, "and slaves who wag their tongues and annoy their masters in Rome are treated according to their true rank, which is to say with the whip! Take care I do not have you scourged on your naked bottom for your insolence!"
But he saw the Lady Domitia, reclining in her litter, slowly shake her head and hold up her hand in sign that she did not wish Aurelia chastised in a public place. Inclining his head to the will of the beautiful, haughty and fabulously wealthy matron, Mericus turned to the merchant and mockingly countered, "Go, now, Etrius, even were I to have her stripped, you could not pay the price and you know it well! Content yourself with Scythian or Copt maidens at a dozen sesterces each, but do not interfere with your betters who have the wherewithal to buy such a prize!" And seeing that those on each side of the angrily flushing merchant ridiculed him, Mericus now demanded bids from those who could appreciate such beauty and haughtiness and spirit.
The price of three hundred sesterces was paid by Lady Domitia to acquire the Visigoth princess. Ursus approached and bound a rawhide thong around the slim wrists of the fuming Aurelia, and then led her towards the litter of her new mistress. At the matron's sign, the deaf-mute tethered the red-haired captive's bound wrists to a metal peg at the top of the litter, so that Aurelia was compelled to walk along beside her reclining mistress, and to the latter's right so that Domitia might contemplate her new possession.
There was much grumbling from the spectators that the sale of these three barbarian women had been arranged in advance. To halt such detrimental charges, though they were true enough, to be sure, the fat Mericus reached into his bag of tricks again and announced an immediate lottery. Each person who was present would receive a wooden disc with a number imprinted upon it, and then Niobe would plunge her hand into a bowl and draw forth three similar discs from the pile of duplicated counters. The three lucky winners would that night receive free entertainment at the lupanar of Tragus, a distant cousin of the fat slave dealer, who occasionally purchased the girls for his brothel from Mericus. And this announcement brought forth cheers and loud praises for the worthiness of the estimable Mericus, who shrugged deprecatingly to indicate that he was only the humble servant of his clients and wished but to please them.
Mentally, even as he beamed and bowed his head to the plaudits of the crowd, Mericus was calculating his profits. He would doubtless have to pay back to the treasurer of the Lady Domitia at least a hundred sesterces, but all the rest of the price for the three beauties would fill his coffers. It was a handsome present from the Divine Tiberius, and it had the added value of showing his current as well as future clients that he was in high regard in the Imperial court to be able to present upon his auction dais no less than a captive princess and her two serving maids. That sort of spectacle would be bound to draw him new crowds and win him new customers in the days ahead. Yes, he was well content with life.
But Cundemere, Forella and Princess Aurelia, walking bound to the litter of their new mistress through the dusty streets of Rome on the way to her villa, had only anguish in their hearts. And perhaps most of all the haughty Visigoth princess dreaded the moment when she should step across the threshold of the villa of this woman who owned her, for she had already recognized in the overbearing and cruelly beautiful features of the Lady Domitia a gloating hatred and a sensual anticipation that could only bode her ill.
CHAPTER FOUR
The journey to the villa at the top of the hill of Appius was an arduous one, being nearly two miles from the Street of Gladiators. And the hot sun beat down upon the three new slaves of the Lady Domitia, wife of the lecherous old Glaucus Lycidas. Bound by their wrists to the litter of their new mistress, Forella, Cundemere and the Princess Aurelia were compelled to move with it as four strong Thracian slaves of the patrician matron bore their feared and despotic mistress along the crowded streets. For the beautiful Visigoth princess, it was a kind of processional to dishonor and shame, for the news had spread throughout Rome that she and her two handmaidens had been sold by Mericus this day. Descriptions of her stunning beauty and her intrepid courage were known to the citizens, so that on this route which marked her passage from nobility to servitude, there were many who cried out and pointed at her as she marched wearily beside that litter. And as she did, the mocking eyes of Domitia often rested upon the spirited red-haired young woman who might no longer be regarded with homage but instead could be sent to the room of the steward Pendaricus to be flogged or put to the torture, who was no higher in that villa than poor little Kyria, a charming blonde child hardly out of puberty and in her thirteenth year, who toiled as a scullery maid under the tyrannical rule of fat Martha, the cook. Like Kyria, the Princess Aurelia would henceforth wear the metal collar which infamously branded her as the lowliest of creatures in all Rome: a slave.
But at least the barbarian princess was protected in her virginal modesty by wearing a stola, while poor Forella and Cundemere were compelled to march along in the lewd costumes in which they had been presented to their eventual owner-"Cundemere in her tunic which left her naked from the navel to her heels, and Forella naked to the waist and in that gauzy skirt split at one side almost to her hip to expose the creamy nudity of her beautiful long calf and thigh. And the obscene appraisals made by the spectators along the route to the villa made both handmaidens-"who understood sufficient Latin-"sob and blush with the deepest shame at being not only forced to leave the service of their princess who had always treated them as her equals and instead to enter upon a life of base servitude, but also to have their virginal flesh revealed to the rudest commoners.
The haughty wife of the lecherous old aristocrat took pleasure in observing the demeanor of her prized slave. What a tidbit for the amusement of her guests it would be to announce to them that a veritable princess was serving them with the amphora of water or wine, kneeling before them to offer the tray of humming birds' tongues. Her pink tongue moistened the comers of her sensual mouth as she foresaw the humiliation she would pile upon Aurelia. Domitia smiled gloatingly to herself at the images which rose in her febrile, scheming brain. What, she wondered, would a princess think if she were led into the punishment chamber, her wrists bound to a marble column, her tunic stripped away so that she cringed naked, and was then sentenced to taste the lash inflicted by a male steward who himself was only a slave? How far could she goad this spirited wench into provoking her into inflicting chastisement?
But most of all, the imperious Domitia was rapturous in acquiring her new slaves because she believed that they would at once engage the lecherous attention of her elderly husband and thus give her more time to devote to her young lover Vercetirix. She closed her eyes and sighed ardently at the thought of that stalwart young man. The son of a former Pro-Consul of Rome, Vercetirix was in his mid-twenties, blonde, sturdy, with a smiling face and pleasant blue eyes. And, ah, Zeus, how he could make love to her! In his arms, she could forget for a time the insolence and the coldness of her bearing when in the presence of that old fool who had married her. She could become as lustful as any whore out of a lupanar, the moment Vercetirix touched her belly or her sweet inner thighs. Yes, it had been a decided stroke of happy fate that old Tiberius had intimated he wished her and her husband to acquire this Visigoth bitch and her two sluts of serving maids. There would be more time now for trysts with Vercetirix. And there would also be delightful distractions, when she was bored and away from her lover, in humiliating and shaming Aurelia until the latter would rebel... and rebellious slaves were mercilessly punished in Rome.
Domitia was sensually excited, and it was easy to see why the handsome young patrician Vercetirix was passionately in love with her. She was about five feet seven inches in height, with dark brown hair upswept and with a gold comb thrust into it as adornment. Her face was an oval, with a high forehead, aquiline nose with delicate, thin wings, and a small supercilious mouth with the upper lip more prominent than its red mate.
Her chin was perhaps a trifle too pointed for perfection, but Vercetirix; had already penned the most delightful verses to her beauty... and when she dropped her stola and tunic and stood naked before him, she could tell from the glitter of his eyes what he thought of her body. She put a hand now to her bosom, caressing it, imagining that Vercetirix was lying beside her now in the litter fondling her in that sweet inflammatory prelude before topping her. She did not much mind being treated so unceremoniously by so virile a lover. She would couple with him like the lowliest trollop in those brothels down by the Mamartine Prison, the lowest of the lupanars. He roused the fire of Vulcan in her loins.
Her breasts were like pears, small but magnificently sculptured, set widely apart. Her belly was smooth and sleek with a dainty narrow and deep navel. Her mount was prominent and thickly furred with dark brown ringlets which completely hid the lips of love. Her thighs were long and gracefully sleek, her calves sinuous, and her skin a fine aristocratic white with delicate blue veins showing along the calves and the forearms. She glanced again at Aurelia, observing with satisfaction the set lips, the lowered eyes of the princess who trudged beside the fitter. How she yearned to take a whip to that impudent slut and make her grovel before her... she would have Aurelia be her personal maid, combing her hair, bathing her. There would be slops and buckets and tirades to greet inept service-"for how could one expect a princess to know the amenities of servitude?
And then let just one sullen look appear on that pretty face, and Pendaricus would receive a note which she would make Aurelia bear to him sentencing her to fifteen or twenty stripes with the strap or the silken whip.
Oh, she wouldn't mar that fine skin, because it would be delightful td keep a princess constantly in terror of the lash. And Pendaricus was a master of it, knowing how to cause pain without breaking the most sensitive skin. She would have the girl flogged so often that the mere arching of her eyebrows would make Aurelia cringe on her knees before her. She would make Aurelia her faithful tool, a go-between to aid her in her secret love affair with Vercetirix.
She smiled again at the wearied barbarian captive, but Aurelia did not see that smile for her own grief.
Desolately, Aurelia was wondering what fate had in store for her, now that she had reached the very nadir of humiliation... cast down from the pedestal of nobility into the mire of infamous servitude.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Lady Domitia had descended from her litter and gone directly to her magnificent boudoir. On a marble bench posed before an ornate table of cedar-wood inlaid with onyx and with a mirror rising in a broad rectangle so that when she stood at her full height it would reflect her, she seated herself, after she had let two young slave girls draw the stola from her voluptuous body and leave her in a gauzy silken tunic which took her from the valley of her bosom to mid-thigh. Beyond, in the center of the room, was a sunken bath and she now bade the young Grecian girls who attended her to let warm water be drawn into it from silver taps which were shaped in the figurines of the laughing god Pan, and to scent the water with myrrh and a few drops of attar of roses. She watched with languid air as the charming young girls, neither of them yet twenty and clad in gauzy white silk tunics through which one might perceive the dainty rosebud tips of their firm breasts and the soft, downy curls of their Venus-fleece, hastened to obey, and assumed graceful poses in descending the steps of the bath, bending to the taps, and then kneeling to pour from the flasks of myrrh and attar of roses into the clear water. Herself a sensualist, the Lady Domitia could savor feminine beauty perhaps even more astutely than a man, and indeed when she was jaded, she would call one of these Grecian nymphs to lie with her on her couch and to caress and kiss and tongue her until her body throbbed with the music of passion like a lyre.
When they finished their task, they came to kneel before her and to bow their heads to the marble floor before her. It pleased her to have such homage, but she bethought herself of greater homage and more agonizing reverence yet in store for her from her newest acquisitions.
"Have Pendaricus bring in Cundemere and Forella," she commanded. "Philomena, say unto him that he is to bring the black strap."
Philomena, the younger of the Grecia slaves, with sweet heart-shaped face, sky-blue eyes that had the warmth of lapis lazuli in their cerulean depths, and the breasts of a young Phyrene, shivered and stared at her mistress with anguished gaze. The Lady Domitia leaned to the slave girl and tilted up the latter's chin with her right forefinger, drinking in the slave's expression with a cruel gustatory joy: "How now, Philomena," she purred, "why do you tremble? Do you believe that you have merited the lash?"
"Oh, no, dear mistress," the Grecian slave girl faltered, her beautiful bosom falling and rising more quickly as the dominatress's eyes narrowed and fixed her with a compelling look. "It is only that it grieves me to see any slave wh-whipped."
"Why, what a tender heart you have indeed, my girl," the aristocratic noblewoman cynically laughed, "a tender heart, aye, and a tender bottom, too, I warrant. Can it be that you do not recall that but three weeks hence from this very day your own lovely bottom felt the strap of Pendaricus, when you stumbled and smashed a vase containing two spikenards of frankincense?" Under that piercing look, that provocative question, Philomena's sweet face turned crimson and her eyes were suddenly downcast and her heart full of fear.
"Hush, girl," Lady Domitia resumed, "I have forgiven you that. Four bottom paid the score and you will not be so clumsy in the future, will you?"
The speechless slave girl shook her head, trembling violently as she crouched, sweet and terrified captive, before this vaunted imperatrix. No, she would not forget Pendaricus; for having spilled the precious fragrance, she had been sentenced to thirty strokes with the black strap, visiting her round, soft, pink-sheened bottom viciously, and then the Lady Domitia had taken the strap from the hands of her overseer of slaves-"for such title did gray-haired, fat and ill-tempered Pendaricus bear in this household-"and had had the man untie Philomena from the marble column and then turn her so that her angrily streaked bare bottom pressed against the stone and her bosom and loins faced the biting kisses of that deadly strap. And then the Lady Domitia had applied a dozen cuts over Philomena's bound and shuddering tits and finished the punishment with three fiendishly stinging flicks of the strap up between the girl's straining thighs, prolonging each hellish kiss of the lash by a full minute. No, Philomena would not soon forget her clumsiness.
"Go, then, and quickly. I wish my two new slaves to be introduced to Roman discipline," she commanded, "and tell Helena to go back to her quarters. You will remain with Pendaricus and the two new barbarian slaves, for I wish you to teach them how a well trained slave is devoted to her mistress. You are devoted to me, are you not, my charming Philomena?"
Her hand had left the girl's chin and now roamed over Philomena's swelling tits, squeezing here, pinching there, brushing the fabric like an evanescent caress over the nipples. Philomena, forced to remain on her knees, dared not take her eyes from the mistress's face and forced a smile to her soft red lips so that the Lady Domitia would behold her humble gratitude for this mark of favor. Yet all she could think of was that dreadful black strap and the fat overseer who often, when he dealt out punishment in private to the slave girls, was known to force his loathsome attentions on them. Yes, only a week ago the weeping Penelope, a year younger than she herself, had related to her how the master, the noble Glaucus Lycidas, had found Penelope slothful in bringing him and his guests a ewer of wine and, despite her humble supplications, had bade her report to Pendaricus for fifteen strokes of the strap. And after they had been inflicted, and while she was still bound to the post with her arms high above her head so that she had to stand on tiptoe-"the old devil would have his revenge when it came your turn at the post, by tying you in such a way which in itself was torturing ordeal apart from the lash-"she had been forced, under pain of another fifteen strokes, to buy her freedom from the lash by kneeling with her head under his toga to suck his phallus. In this household, not a girl slave but did not dread Pendaricus as much as the Lady Domitia. One did not dare report what Pendaricus had done, for that would be to incur his wrath in the future.
"You have my leave to go, child," the Lady Domitia's cold, haughty voice broke in on Philomena's distracted thoughts. "I want you to set a good example for these barbarian wenches, you understand? I am going to test your courage, my pretty one."
"Th-thank you, m-mistress," Philomena quavered as she rose at last from her knees.
The bath would wait, the matron decided. She wished distraction now. That old fat fool of a husband of hers, Glaucus, would doubtless try to have her new slave girls brought to his chamber this night. But she would forestall him, and she would warn Florella and Cundemere that inasmuch as she had bought them, they must be loyal first to her and then to the master. It would be useful to have handmaidens like this to aid her in her secret trysts with Vercetirix. By the gods, how she yearned for that handsome devil of a man between her naked thighs this instant. Yet, alas, he was in Gaul on a mission for his father and would not return for another fortnight. Well, there would be distraction enough with her three new slaves, and especially with Aurelia... It would be amusing to see how a princess royal, barbarian though she might be, would take her first whipping.
Would it be better to have her flogged with Pendaricus while other slaves watched, or would she suffer more if the lash were laid on by her own mistress, Lady Domitia amusedly asked herself. At any rate, she now proposed to treat herself to a delicious half hour or so.
CHAPTER SIX
The fat Pendaricus, overseer of the atrium, grinned with anticipation as he bowed low to the Lady Domitia, who reclined on her couch and received his homage with a brief nod. Behind him came the trembling Philomena, and Forella and Cundemere were beside her, each wonderingly eyeing the other in the hope of learning what this unexpected summons could mean. The charming young Grecian slave could well have told the two Visigoth captives that when the overseer was called into the chamber of the mistress and bidden to bring the strap, the matter would be a serious one and hardly to their liking. But what troubled the slave the most was that the Lady Domitia had announced that she was to set a good example for her two new companions in servitude, and this declaration terrified the gentle Grecian girl.
"I am at the command of my mistress," Pendaricus announced in unctuous tone as again he bowed low to the regal, beautiful matron on the couch.
"You know my custom well, Pendaricus, of acquainting new slaves to my household with the manner of discipline which is given here, do you not?"
"But of course, my lady."
"I think it well, particularly with two barbarians who are likely to be undisciplined and uncouth to our Roman ways, that a provisionary whipping be inflicted so that they may know from the very outset what is expected of them and what will befall them if they do not obey."
"An admirable precept, my lady."
"I thank you for your opinion, good Pendaricus. Approach, Forella and Cundemere!" Forella and Cundemere were clad in long white tunics, without sleeves, descending to the ankles, yet at the left side the cloth had been cut so that one could see the bare calf, the shapely knee and at least half of the naked thigh. The pure white hue of these tunics enhanced the beauty of these captives, so different in temperament as they were of hair-" and skin-tint and personality as well.
The Lady Domitia smiled cruelly as her eyes rested on the two barbarian slave girls for a long moment which naturally augmented their own suspense. Then she commanded, "Forella, Cundemere, come closer and kneel before me."
The two young beauties reluctantly came forward and knelt down. Forella bit her lips as the insolent gaze of her new mistress crossed hers, and she lowered her eyes. A mocking smile curved the arrogant mouth of the Roman matron. She foresaw a most amusing diversion on this otherwise dreary day. "I have summoned you here, slaves," she began, "because it is my custom to acquaint all new slaves with the rules of this house.
To be sure, you owe allegiance to my noble husband, Glaucus Lycidas, aristocrat of Rome. Yet you owe more to me because I have bought you for my own personal retinue. What commands I give you will take precedence over those of my husband, unless, to be sure, you find yourself in his presence and he commands you to do this or that errand or duty. But if there are requests which involve you in the carrying of messages back and forth, or should my husband seek to enjoy your persons, you will humbly beg his indulgence to consult me on the matter. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes," Forella said in a low voice.
The small supercilious mouth of the Lady Domitia compressed with rancor. "Yes what, you impertinent baggage?" she snapped. "A slave addresses her owner as master or mistress. You will not again forget that, Forella, or you will make the acquaintance of my overseer Pendaricus with painful regularity. Now let me hear your answer again."
A shiver of mute rebellion ran through the lovely body of the Visigoth captive as she murmured, "Yes, mistress."
"Ah, that's better! And you, Cundemere, do you understand what I have just said?" The more timid golden-haired slave immediately stammered, "Y-yes, m-mistress, I understand."
"It is well that you do. Do not forget what I have told both of you. And now to more immediate matters. In order to impress upon each new slave the lowliness of her station in this household, my custom is to inflict upon her a mild flogging, not out of punitive wish, but to instill in her the spirit of humility and an acceptance from the outset of her life here of her duties and the awareness of what she risks in shirking them. Have no fear, it will be only a very light whipping. But it will teach you respect not only for myself but for the powers of Pendaricus, my diligent overseer. Yet I wish to show you, before you are required to yield of good will to this penance which I shah exact of you, how bravely and graciously a slave who has been long in my household endures the moderate and brief discomfort of such a whipping; nay, looks upon it as a mark of favor from her mistress, because she knows that her mistress is attentive to her well being and because she knows that even the most diligent and dutiful slave must sometimes require punishment." Cundemere sent her companion Forella an anguished glance, not fully comprehending this casuistic and overbearing speech. But Philomena began at once to tremble, understanding only too well what her implacable and sadistic mistress meant, and she took a deep breath to steel her courage. She knew quite well that if she did not give a good accounting of herself before Forella and Cundemere, the Lady Domitia would subject her to far more than a strapping.
"Pendaricus, you have brought the black strap?" the dominatress now inquired.
The obsequious steward now came forward and deferentially inclined his head. "Here it is, my lady." In his right hand, he gripped a short wooden stock, round and of about six inches in length, to which was affixed a black leather thong some two feet in length, an inch wide and not quite a quarter of an inch thick. It was oiled, supple and viciously flexible. And the Last three inches had been cut down the middle to form a double, cruelly stinging flap. An expert with the whip, Pendaricus displayed extraordinary virtuosity with such an instrument; by means of a simple flick of the wrist, he could impart to the quivering flesh of his victim the biting sting of those two small split ends of the strap, or, again, make the solid flat band dance or cling to the trembling contours in varying degrees of severity, depending on the gravity of her offense and his mistress's wrath.
The lovely Philomena tried valiantly not to look at the instrument with which she was to be served, but she could not suppress a shudder of apprehension as the Lady Domitia, in silky tones and unctuous manner, now addressed her: "My charming Philomena, the time has now come for you to display your fortitude and to show these barbarian wenches the mettle of a trusted slave of our household. Are you ready, pretty one?"
"Yes, mistress," Philomena replied with just the faintest tremor to her sweet voice.
The autocratic matron leaned back on her couch, her eyes glittering with an unholy glow as she observed the Grecian slave girl now stoop and draw her tunic over her head and shoulders, then dutifully drape it over a marble bench nearby. She was naked in sandals, and her body was a statue of pink, warm marble, the lovely round breasts swelling with emotion, their gentle rose buds stiffening. Her figure was that of an amphora modeled by one of the artisans of her county, with swellingly rounded but classically proportioned hips; round, sweetly curved thighs and calves, vying with the slim waist to enchant the eye of the beholder. But Forella and Cundemere, who had followed Philomena's courageous self-preparation for the whipping with a kind of fascinated incredulity, now uttered a simultaneous gasp. For the lips of Philomena's delicious pussy were pink and bare; her pubic hair had been entirely depilated.
The Roman matron, observing with cynical amusement the startled wonder of her two new slaves, felt it incumbent upon herself to explain this phenomenon: "It is obvious that you barbarian girls know nothing of the customs or the culture of Rome," she dryly remarked. "A slave in a Roman household, know you then, belongs body and soul to master or mistress. Just so, the removal of private hair symbolizes this servile status, so that there shall be no secrets of the slave's body not known to her owner. When you leave here, you will both be depilated as Philomena has been. And let us proceed with the display of stoicism and humility.
Pendaricus!"
"My lady?"
"I think a baker's dozen of stripes should suffice. Moderately hard. Try to make her cry if you can."
"Very good, my lady." At this order, the lecherous face of the fat overseer twisted with vicious joy as his eyes devoured the delightfully rounded haunches and thighs, the warm pink satiny skin of the naked Grecian slave girl.
Philomena was apparently accustomed to the perverse discipline of this household, for without being told, she now bent slightly forward and placed her hands on her knees, parting her legs slightly so as to be balanced solidly on both feet. Nonetheless, Forella and Cundemere, who were kneeling well to her left and about ten paces from her, could not help seeing the exquisite and salacious soft pink fig of her hairless cunt which this straddling position proffered.
"A little lower, Philomena," the Roman matron ordered, her voice vibrant with her own mounting sensual expectancy. Philomena promptly bowed her head still lower, so that her beautiful round firm tits swayed in their pendant droop toward the marble floor, parted her legs a few inches more and took firmer grip of her dimpled bare knees, which jutted out her buttocks tightly and impudently... as well as accentuated the offering of her dainty Venus-orifice. Also, the pose allowed the overseer to delectate over the most secret intimacy of all, the shadowy groove which bisected the girl's quivering bare buttocks.
Clearing his throat importantly, the fat overseer moved to Philomena's left, took a firmer grip on the wooden handle of the strap, shook out the thong in the air so that its pliant black gleaming band danced and whirred about, and then slowly lifted his right arm, his eyes fixed on the Lady Domitia's face as he awaited her sign.
The autocratic matron smiled as she studied the faces of the Visigoth captives. They had turned to watch, as she intended them to, and it was obvious that they were both suitably impressed. She felt a flicker of lustful excitement stir in her loins; their own reactions when it came time for their initiatory flogging would be the more delicious for her as a consequence of what they were about to witness.
And while poor Philomena remained in that obscenely offered position, the skin of her behind prickling with goosepimples under the atrocious brunt of the suspense which always attacks the spirit as well as the flesh before the first lash falls, Lady Domitia added a sadistic fillip meant not only for poor Philomena but also for the two new slaves: "I am sure, my dear Philomena, that you will not disgrace me by leaving position or by crying out. But I am good, I permit you to weep silently."
"Th-thank you, mistress," the Grecian girl stammered. Her dangling round bare tits swelled vehemently as she drew a long shuddering breath to renew her stoic attitude under the uplifted black leather strap. And now that the moment was at hand, Lady Domitia forsook her languid indolence. She sat upright on her couch, her lithe legs swinging to the floor, and she leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands cupping her chin, her eyes narrowing and intent upon the quivering pink-sheened rotundities thrust out to meet the kisses of the upraised strap. Then she nodded.
Pendaricus stepped forward, swinging the strap out straight toward the girl's naked posterior. The flat surface of the band made crisp and noisy impact with the tops of Philomena's rounded hips. A faintly stifled gasp was heard, and the muscles of Philomena's thighs flexed violently under the biting shock of the blow. As Pendaricus drew back the implement and readied himself for the second lash, a bright pink stripe appeared imprinted on the living canvas of Philomena's buttocks, evidence that the blow had been "moderately severe" indeed.
Forella and Cundemere unconsciously and instinctively clasped hands as, still on their knees, their eyes round with horror, they watched this unmerited chastisement of their lovely Grecian companion in misery.
Pendaricus understood his mistress perfectly, and he was grateful to her for this mark of favor; it was her wont, he knew, on many an occasion to wield the lash herself, for she derived great pleasure from the task.
But now, to his own lustful gratification, he would have not only the flogging of Philomena to see to, but also the initiation of the two new slave girls into the torment of the lash. He had stared greedily at them ever since they had been brought from the stalls of Mericus, and he could hardly wait until they were consigned under his charge, so that he might coerce them into permitting him certain erotic liberties if they wished to curry his favor and escape really serious punishment when, as was certain to happen, they would be condemned to his flagellatory care. Tonight, when all the servants were asleep and the master and the mistress had safely retired, he knew, Philomena would come to his chamber and pay her own debt to him. He would not lay on the strap too hard now, but the little Greek bitch would know that she had been well thrashed all the same. Yet she would still come to him submissively and never dare tell the Lady Domitia that she had done so, or he would flay the skin off her bottom.
He was not unique in this vicious blackmailing treatment of female salves. In this epoch of Roman history, the existence of any slave was precarious at best, for he or she had no rights and no possible court of appeal in the event of injustice. A slave could be whipped or tortured or put to death with impunity on the sole charge of his or her owner. A slave might have no personal possessions, no rights to marry to beget children-"only by the order of master or mistress, and then any issue from such unions would themselves become slaves at birth.
And a slave's testimony might be taken in court only under torture. Small wonder, then, that those men and women who served in the aristocratic and noble households in the Roman Empire under Tiberius were ready to barter their bodies with the overseers to gain some remission of the cruel penalties which were meted out for the slightest infraction.
Hence Pendaricus was virtually a tyrannical master in his own right, and within the atrium which was his charge and chief concern all those members of this household bowed their heads and lowered their eyes in his presence. The only risk he would run in amusing himself on the sly with one of the charming female slaves would be that of getting her with child, but the wily overseer could call upon the skill of the midwife Demetria, also a Greek and still handsome and desirable though in her mid-forties, who toiled in the kitchen and whom years ago he had compelled to be his plaything and his accomplice...
Even as he prepared to apply the second stroke against Philomena's quivering and flinching bare bottom, Pendaricus recalled with lubricious pleasure that evening a decade ago when the haughty Demetria (who had deemed herself immune to the lash because her pompous master and the Lady Domitia's husband, had promised to spare her from the whip if she became his concubine) forgot her discretion and dared to talk back to her mistress after a reprimand over a fancied slight in the serving of the evening meal. The Lady Domitia had given her a note to take to him, calling for twenty strokes with a thin birch rod, well laid on.
Demetria had appeared before him, pale and trembling, biting her lower lip almost to the blood, but still haughty and her head high. He had grinned at her and chucked her under the chin, and said, "Eh, my pretty, you never thought you would see this day, I warrant. Well, there's no help for it, so you take off your tunic and come over here to the wall that I may bind you." She had gasped with shame, "Do not bind me, for the love of Zeus, I have never before been so wretchedly treated." And he had said to her, with a cruel little smile, "If I but carry back those words of yours just now to the mistress, be assured that she will double the strokes and perhaps have you sold to old Hera, who runs the lupanar for sailors down by the Gate of Ossia." And at this Demetria had shuddered and bowed her head, knowing that she dared not hope for mercy. How he had savored her dying humiliation at having to remove her own tunic and be naked for him, she, a buxom, strong-limbed woman of three and thirty summers. She had been a widow when she had been captured after a skirmish of rebellious Greek soldiers against a smaller Roman force sent to put down the uprising. She had been sold at auction and Glaucus Lycidas had at once purchased her because he had been smitten with the splendid saliency of her rounded hips and the full, olive-skinned columns of her sturdy thighs. The old fool had always sought to cuckold his wife, thinking that she did not know it, but the Lady Domitia was much too clever for him and took great delight in thwarting his clandestine romances.
Pendaricus had taken a thong and bound Demetria's wrists to a peg in the wall, forcing her to stand on tiptoe, while he procured the birch rod out of a bucket at one end of the wall. Shaking out the salty drops, he had slowly approached, making it whistle in the air, and she had stared at him with a fascinated terror, pressing those magnificent breasts of hers against the stone wall, her eyes mad with fright as he came closer.
He had given her twenty strokes, all on that juicy backside of hers, till crisscrossing slashes drew blood from the fine warm olive skin and trickled slowly down her shaking thighs. Her shrieks and pleas had deafened him with their clamor, yet at the same time excited him furiously. When it was over, he had moved to the wall, stroking her neck, his other hand gliding down her bare side and hip, till it came to insinuate toward the front of her sweat-drenched body and to rub the bare fleshy coral lips of her appetizing cunt. "How you do carry on, Demetria," he had jested, "your voice is as shrill as the magpie over the Appian Way! What if I were now to girdle you with a bouquet of freshly plucked nettles whose blossoms would cover this dainty tidbit which my fingers now encounter?"
Hysterical with terror, Demetria had implored her executioner to spare her that diabolical torment. And he had promised her that he would, for a price. Directly upon his freeing her from the peg, she was required to knell down and to take his cock in her soft mouth and suck him till his vital juices burst forth. And then that night, after all were asleep, she had been bidden to come to his chamber ready to complete her homage to him in return for this leniency. What a fuck he had given her that night! How she had wriggled and groaned and sobbed while he was thrusting it into her tight warm sheath, digging his fingers into her swollen, striped buttocks, making her buck and weave and wriggle like a girl of only fourteen summers who first feels the dig of a lusty male sphere in her dainty quim!
And since that night, there had been none more humbly subservient to Pendaricus than Demetria in the entire household. Yes, by the gods, he would rather be steward and overseer than master. For the joys which came to him by stealth and cunning were far more exciting than those which a master could compel on the spot.
His mind enfevered by the images which had leaped into it from his recollections, Pendaricus now sent the strap whistling across Philomena's velvety bare bottom, the flat of the bank crashing sonorously over the base of both huddling globes. Taken by surprise at this variation in the flogging, for he had attacked an especially sensitive region of her posterior, the lovely Grecian slave girl could not hold back a gasping "Aaah!" nor control the convulsive twist of her bare bottom from one side to the other, her thighs and calves shaking with spasmodic tremors which visited her stiffened muscles.
Gentle Cundemere crooked her arm over her face, bowed her head, and began to sob softly.
"Slave, I command you to watch! Do not dare to hide your eyes again, or Pendaricus will fill them with burning tears, I promise you." the Lady Domitia harshly interposed. Then, to the quivering bent-over naked girl, she mockingly directed: "You are surely not going to disappoint me, Philomena, and let these barbarian wenches see that a gentle little whipping with the strap is too much for you?"
"Oh no, mistress, oh no! I-I am ready," Philomena stammered, her voice choking with pent-up sobs.
She seemed to plunge her head even lower down now, and to take a firmer grip of her quivering knees with her slim little fingers, while her naked bottom thrust out almost entreatingly for the kisses of the strap. The lovely rounded, tightly proffered buttocks were framed, as it were, by the bright crimson weals at top and base, while the rest of that magnificent posterior still retained its unblemished pink, smooth sheen.
The third and fourth lashes, applied with only a short pause between each, made the black leather band cling both times to the ripest curves of the summits of Philomena's naked behind. Grinding her teeth, closing her eyes, the Grecian slave girl stoically endured the scalding heat of the lashes, but again she could not suppress the convulsive twisting of her rounded hips under the strap. However, as she did not cry out, her mistress did not chide her for that reaction... indeed, it was one that sensually gratified the sadistic matron.
Domitia's bosom rose and fell now with quickened tempo, her lips were moist, her nostrils quiveringly dilated and shrank as a perverse and lascivious excitement pervaded her.
The pauses were longer between the fifth and sixth strokes, each of which was applied to the lower summits. Now six angry bright crimson bars stigmatized the impeccable pink smoothness of that lovely naked posterior, and Philomena was hard put to it to retain her abject, bent-over pose. Dull groans exuded between her clenched lips, and her eyes were blinded with tears. So were the gentle Cundemere's, who huddled closer to Forella. Her beautiful mistress, the Princess Aurelia, had never put her handmaidens to the lash. And what she saw only made the desolate and terrifying realization of her new status that much more agonizing to bear.
Pendaricus paused a long moment paused a long moment before administering the seventh lash, which he applied vertically and straight down the outer edge of the Grecian girl's right hip. This time, the two little split ends of the black leather strap nipped the tender flesh at the small of Philomena's back, and the excruciating pain made her stagger, but she instantly regained her footing, though not without two sobbing groans. The flesh of her buttocks seemed to crawl and to twitch uncontrollably now. The marks left by these last two strokes were also brighter and angrier, standing out against the six horizontal weals left by the strap. Now, artistically, Pendaricus added the eight and ninth strokes down the outer side of the left hip. These were both given quickly, without pause, but Philomena raised her head each time, her eyes staring and exorbitant, her mouth open and a shuddering groan escaping her clenched but chattering teeth. Her slim fingers twisted frantically over her dimpled bare rounded knees as she fought for strength to endure the last four lashes.
The tenth attacked her diagonally, from the top of her right hip down to leap across the shadowy groove separating her naked bottomcheeks, and this drew a pathetic little "Ohh, mistress, mistress!" and a convulsive twisting of the lovely bare hips. Also, her knees bent several times inconvulsive weakening to the aggravated stress of all her muscles during this atrociously prolonged ordeal.
"I hear you, Philomena," the Lady Domitia replied with a mocking sweetness to her tone, "Do you wish to speak, would you have me bid Pendaricus hold his arm?"
"Oh, n-no, mistress!" Philomena tearfully gasped. Once again she seemed to bend down still more, till her tits swayed and wiggled like ripe fruits of the vine ready for plucking, and her thighs tensed as she again griped her knees with all her strength to support the finale of her thrashing.
Stepping to the right, Pendaricus laid the strap diagonally again, from the middle of her left hip down across both buttocks, the two split ends nipping the tender waist. A shrill cry, instantly choked off, was heard; Philomena almost straightened, glancing back at Pendaricus with tear-glazed eyes, then resumed her position.
At once the twelfth lash swept ferociously, wrapping around both bottomcheeks at their ripest curves.
"Aaah, oh, oh, mistress, mistress!" Philomena sobbed aloud, her hips jerking and twisting as if to shake off the fiery pain which seemed to magnify throughout her inflamed, shuddering bare bottomcheeks. Then, after a pause of nearly a full minute, during which the unfortunate naked Grecian slave girl squirmed and sighed and trembled, Pendaricus ended the whipping by lowering the strap to the floor, then leaping it up to bite along the exquisitely sensitive interstice between Philomena's buttocks. The slave girl straightened uttering a shrill "Ohh, ohh!" and frantically rushed one slim hand back to rub the injured region.
Lady Domitia frowned. "I had expected greater courage from you, my girl," she coldly remarked.
"However, you have, I think, given a fair account of yourself to your new companions from which I trust they will profit. You may retire, Philomena."
The softly weeping Grecian girl now came forward to kneel down before the matron, to lift the Lady Domitia's foot to her lips and press a fervent and humble kiss of homage upon it. Then, rising, she retrieved her tunic, doffed it, and left the chamber.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The arrogant Roman matron considered the two beautiful young barbarian women still kneeling before her, and her dainty pink tongue moistened her sensuous lips, for by this time her carnal senses were aroused. If only her lover were here beside her, to cup her breasts with those strong fingers of his and to thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth. If only they could be together now on this very couch, watching these two barbarian sluts squirming under the lash, their fine soft skins striped and burning, hearing the sounds of their sobs and supplications while she and Vercetirix played the two-backed beast.
She had taught him, early in their secret liaison, this perverse stimulus of watching a slave girl under the lash or enduring torture. At first he had been repelled at the thought, and professed that their love was strong enough to need no such artificial stimulants. But one afternoon, when her stupid old husband bad been on a visit to Heraclium and they had been making love here in this very room, yes, on this very couch, the other Grecian slave who had been purchased at the same time as Philomena, the soft-spoken, timid, blonde Helena, had by error come into the chamber with a flask of perfume for the mistress's bath. Helena had not known that orders had been given that no slave should enter, and Philomena had not seen Helena in time to tell her of Lady Domitia's edict.
The startled Grecian slave had come upon her mistress and Vercetirix just as the latter had removed her stola and, kneeling on the floor, had begun to kiss her bare leg from the knee upwards to the thicket of dark brown hair which covered her mount of Venus. Lady Domitia smiled to herself now, remembering how embarrassed and then how furious he had been at this intrusion. She had almost been grateful to Helena for having blundered in and thus, furnished her a pretext to teach her lover that watching a slave girl given the lash could whet his passion mightily. So she had summoned Pendaricus and had had Helena bound to a marble column just opposite the bench on which she and her lover reclined. Naked, the slender body of the Grecian slave girl made the eyes of her lover widen with appreciation-"and she had detested Helena for having roused in her lover that lust which she wished him to appease with her. She had ordered twenty-five lashes with a thin switch, distributed equally over Helena's buttocks and thighs. The girl had a fine pale white skin, which had marked beautifully under the very first cuts of the switch. And how she had wriggled and screamed, and how the tears had flown down her contorted cheeks as she had turned back to implore pardon, swearing that she had not meant to offend her mistress. And finally, when at her sign, Pendaricus had leaped the switch up between Helena's straining thighs to attack the girl's cunt, Vercetirix had uttered a groan of lust and had flung himself upon his aristocratic mistress and taken her roughly and crudely just as if she had been a harlot in one of the lupinars. Oh sweet Hercules, how thrilling it had been for them both that memorable afternoon!
That was why she now sighed with nostalgic regret because now she had these two tempting young bitches to flog till they wept and pleaded, and yet no means of assuaging her impatient ardors. Unless, to be sure, she could induce one or the other of them to procure for her those exquisite and forbidden caresses which sweet Bilitis bestowed upon the priestess Sappho on the mystic Nile of Lesbos...
Choosing her words with care and relishing them as she spoke them, the Lady Domitia addressed the two Visigoth beauties: "And now that you have seen the fortitude of my Grecian slave, I hope that you will set an example to make me think more highly of barbarians. I know them to be merciless in battle in their treachery and cunning, but I know nothing of their ability to withstand pain." Forella clenched her teeth to keep from denouncing this arrogant and unjust insult to her people, but the gentle Cundemere plucked at her tunic to caution her against revolt. Their mistress perceived this furtive gesture and her cruel smile deepened. She therefore resumed: "You will both rise now and remove your tunics. Then you will kneel down facing each other and holding hands... now, you will embrace each other with your arms so that neither of you will try to evade Pendaricus's strokes. He will apply the strap to you turn by turn, and I trust that you will show yourselves to be as valiant as Philomena." Cundemere blushed hotly and her eyes filled with sudden tears. As a virgin, the thought of exposing her naked body to a man, even in the presence of this autocratic matron who was now her owner, shocked and outraged her sensitivities. But she was wise enough to comprehend that argument or resistance would be the height of folly; unworldly though she might be and cloistered at the court where her former mistress Princess Aurelia reigned, she nonetheless instinctively read in the narrowed and glowing eyes of the woman who leaned forward on the couch to peer at her all the sadistic menace implicit in that look, in that smile on those moist and nervously twitching lips. But for Forella, the affront to her maidenhood was even more atrocious, and she could not hold back her impulsive plea: "Mistress, it is by chance that we are slaves, though we have never ourselves lifted a hand against mighty Rome. My friend Cundemere is as gently bred as I, and so, though we know we are your slaves, since we have not offended thus far in the rules of this household, will you not grant us the mercy of having us punished-"if so we must be-"by one of our own tender sex rather than by your steward?"
"You dare speak so to me, Forella?" the Lady Domitia hissed, a look of malicious joy dawning on her sensual face. "Well, my girl, I will answer you at once. You lie when you say you have not offended the rules of this household, for you have just so done in daring to question the authority of your mistress and owner. In any other household in Rome, you impertinent vixen, you would be strung up by your thumbs and given the rods until your blood flowed down your heels! But I am lenient, perhaps much too lenient for my own good-"am I not, Pendaricus?"
"Oh most assuredly, noble lady," the fat overseer fawningly replied.
"And he should know me well, you impertinent jade, for he dispenses punishments in my household. But since both of you barbarians, uncultured and uncouth to our ways, I myself will undertake to fashion you into useful servants, though it may well cost you the skin off your backsides. And now to answer your audacious query, Forella-"in Rome, a slave has no place save to serve, humbly and obediently and swiftly-"mark you well that! Nor has a slave the right to modesty or free speech or any of those graces which are the rightful due of the freed-man and the aristocrat. Your naked body cannot, therefore, shame you, because as a slave you have no right to experience such a feeling. And Pendaricus inflicts punishment upon that body with impersonal and correct justice, that is all. Now that you understand me, rise and prepare yourself for the strap!"
Realizing the hopelessness of further argument, the slim Forella rose from her knees and, her face scarlet with the very shame which Lady Domitia had denied her the right to experience, drew up the hem of her tunic and slowly lofted it over her head and shoulders, then let it drop to the floor. Cundemere, down whose soft pink cheeks great tears had begun to rivulet, followed her example, and at once clapped both hands over the dark golden curls of her virgin cunt.
Pendaricus sucked in his breath with avid sensual delight. By Mercury, what exciting bitches these two barbarians were! His eyes swept Forella's long sleek creamy legs, the spacious and resilient ovals of her quivering bottom, the contrast of her jet-black hair which made her warm white skin that much more enticing.
And the luscious rounded haunches and thighs of the younger Cundemere suggested to him a veritable regalia day for the whip. By all the gods, it would not be long before he would teach these barbarian sluts to fear him and to obey his slightest whim!
"Now kneel and face each other, and then link each other with your arms," the matron commanded, her voice sibilant with voluptuous domination.
Slowly both naked captives obeyed. Florella's blushes deepened as she felt Cundemere's round, full, velvety-soft tits pressing against her own taut, lovely naked bosom, felt the quaking surge of Cundemere's round sweet thighs against her own. She clasped her fingers together around her companion's waist and whispered, "Courage, my dear one, don't let that heartless woman see how we suffer and are shamed in our virginity by the presence of that disgusting brute of an overseer!" Yet all the same the lovely Visigoth brunette was enervated and distressed by the troubling emotions which now swept her as she knelt thus with her body merging against her companion's nakedness. She could not but help feel the rasping friction of Cundemere's furry mount against her own, and each sobbing breath which the golden-haired captive took made Florella conscious of the swelling and thrusting play of those round tits which so exquisitely caressed her own quivering naked breasts.
"How many, my lady?" Pendaricus deferentially asked as he brandished the gleaming black leather strap and made the two split ends dance in the air like striking serpents.
"Till I am satisfied with their humility," was the terrible answer. Cundemere's blue eyes widened with anguish at those words, and then she shuddered and clung all the more tightly to her brunette companion.
"Very good, my lady." The fat steward slowly approached the kneeling naked girls, eager to show his dexterity and his skill to his perverse mistress. As he stood, Cundemere was to his right, and it was her bottom which the strap first visited suddenly and without warning as the black leather band clacked across the lower summits of her plump bottomglobes. The young girl started convulsively, uttered a stifled groan, and pressed herself tightly against her companion, in the instinctive and age-old impulse of the virgin who seeks to hide the exposure of her most intimate parts from the eyes of the male. Her mossy plump cunt pressed as ardently against Forella's black-fleeced lovecore as if both beauties were bent upon the practice of those devious arts so dearly cherished on the isle of Lesbos.
A bright pink streak marred the smooth perfection of her naked skin where the strap had kissed. But now, without a pause, crossing his right arm over to the left, Pendaricus applied a backhanded cut of the black leather band over the tops of Forella's svelte hips, making the older handmaiden of the Princess Aurelia start and quiver, her eyes widening under the stinging pain, though she kept back any sound of discomfort by dint of compressing her soft lips and closing her eyes. But her enclasped fingers tensed and jerked against Cundemere's bare back as proof that she had not been impervious to the lash.
Lady Domitia watched with gleaming eyes this novel and entertaining instigation. She discerned that the strap left a brighter, lewder mark upon Forella's creamy skin than it had on her companion's. She saw also that the brunette was more sensitive, being more mature, and hence would suffer more mentally as well as physically. And she felt her own thighs warm and languorous with the advent of sensual yearning evoked by the flagellation.
Slowly the overseer lifted the black strap, his beady eyes contemplating the flinching round globes of Cundemere's bare bottom, selecting the place to inflict the most torment, the most shame. Then swiftly he brought the instrument noisily across the base of her huddling nether rotundities, just at the mouth-watering curve where the thighs meet the swell of the posterior. From long experience, he knew it to be one of the most sensitive regions of a woman's anatomy. And Cundemere proved his salacious astuteness by uttering a strangled "Aaahh!" as she convulsively jerked forward under the biting kiss of the black leather implement.
Her naked titties flattened against Florella's, and her head tilted up as her blue eyes dilated and filled with blinding tears. Instantly, with a dexterous backhanded stroke, Pendaricus sent the thong whistling over the upper summits of Florella's spacious bottomovals, imprinting a vivid crimson stripe over the creamy flesh. His eyes glittered to behold the slim brunette's spasmodic stiffening under the blow, the contraction of her gluteal muscles and those of the thighs as well, as her eyes widened and her nostrils flickered and shrank, though she again suppressed any outcry.
From her place on the couch, the Lady Domitia could enjoy the spectacle of the torment of her two new slaves; they knelt facing each other and turned in profile to her, but she could readily perceive their quivering bottoms and flexing thighs. Florella had locked her fingers in a vise-like grip against Cundemere's pliant waist, and now whispered to the golden-haired girl, "Be brave, dear, we mustn't let this brute have the satisfaction of making us beg for mercy. Pretend we're back home and that our dear Princess Aurelia is punishing us for our faults... then we can better endure this unjust cruelty. For if we had been braver, perhaps we might have taken her from the Romans who sought to capture her. Now she is one of us, doomed to this same brutality and misery!"
Even as she spoke, Pendaricus had administered the third lash just below the ripest swelling curves of Cundemere's bare bottom. The crisp crash of the leather against bare flesh was obscenely exciting both to the overseer and to his haughty aristocratic mistress. For him, as for the Lady Domitia, all the nuances of sound and sight inflamed their secret perversities... the sight of the reddening marks in bare female flesh, the spasmodic tensioning of muscles, the huddling of bodies, the frantic and apprehensive glances of the victims as they saw the whip upraised for the next lash, the sobs and tears and cries... all these whetted the carnal senses of the Roman matron and her steward, but for different purposes. For Lady Domitia, this double flogging was a compensation for the absence of her young lover; for Pendaricus, it was a foretaste of the fleshy pleasure he would exact from the two new slaves if they wished a certain immunity from future punishment.
This time, however, he made Florella wait for her third lash and then deliberately walked round her and placed himself at her left so that he could encompass the full target of those ample bottomovals which flinched and tremored restlessly as the naked brunette closed her eyes and tried to obliterate the sight of his smirking, fat face and the awareness of how his eyes were feasting on her virginal nakedness.
The lash took Florella almost exactly where it had previously fallen, deepening the vivid flaming color imparted to that warm creamy skin, aggravating the already tender and throbbing hurt which the strap had just imparted. Florella's head rose again, her mouth twisting to hold back the cry of pain that surged in her throat.
Her slim thin fingers jerked at Cundemere's waist as she arched her body forward, rubbing her pussyhairs against Cundemere's.
He paused a moment, and then, remaining where he was, applied the fourth lash to Florella's upper buttocks, still not using the stinging split ends until toward the end of the flogging. At once he regaled Cundemere with a backhanded cut over her lower bottomsummits. And the golden-haired captive squirmed on her knees and sobbed aloud, "Aaahh, ohh, please, please!"
"To be sure it does please me, you Visigoth slut," Lady Domitia spitefully hissed. "And already I see that you are not nearly so brave as the Grecian slave. You will both beg me humbly to relent before Pendaricus hangs up the black leather strap, I promise you. Go on, steward, and let me see those impudent bottoms blazing with good Roman welts!"
"Gladly, my lady," Pendaricus laughingly replied. Remaining where he was, he dealt Florella a furious whistling, smacking blow of the strap which caught her round the hips and made the split ends flick in towards her tender waist. She could not help uttering a stifled groan, nor grinding herself against the warm naked body of her companion in suffering. Her eyes were exorbitant, glazed and sparkling with tears which had already begun to creep down her flushed cheeks. She felt Cundemere's soft hands press hard against her waist as if to solace her, and her own hands desperately drew the golden-haired virgin more tightly against her in her own need for compassionate strengthening.
A backhanded lash, after a short pause, imparted the fifth bright pink stripe over Cundemere's ripe bottomsummits, drawing another sobbing cry of "Ohh, it hurts, ohh, I have done nothing, I will be good!" The words enchanted the patrician dominatress: they were those of a little child for whom a first instigation is an intolerable ordeal and who desperately yearns for remission of it.
Slowly the overseer crossed back to take his stance at Cundemere's right as he had at the outset of the flogging. The golden-haired handmaiden of Princess Aurelia glanced back over her shoulder and then caught her breath in a tearful sob at the knowledge that she was now to bear the brunt of the strap. And almost instantly it visited the lower curves of her bottomcheeks with an angry "Thwack!" A few seconds later the strap swept in a backhanded blow diagonally over Florella's spacious bottomovals which convulsively clenched together as her body started under the burning kiss of the strap.
The Roman matron had artfully and surreptitiously slid her right hand under the hem of her gauzy silken tunic. As it sheathed her only to mid-thigh, her fingers did not have too long a journey to the mossy niche of her moistening and quivering cunt. She felt herself sexually excited by this ingenious fustigation, save that she wished her lover might be wielding the strap instead of the obese lecherous steward.
As for Pendaricus, he paused longer now, wanting to break the spirit of both these barbarian handmaidens, savoring the shuddering urgencies which made their naked bodies press more intimately, more lewdly, together, observing how their fingers interlocked and shifted and twisted, the knuckles whitening as they strove to give each other what pitifully scant solace they could. Cundemere's face was bathed in tears now, but Florella's was very pale, though streaked here and there with occasional tears, and the brunette's eyes were supremely dilated and brilliant with this humid anguish. He moved back a step or two so he might observe the salacious pressing of their breasts together, and then he bestowed the seventh swipe of the black leather band across the tops of Cundemere's rounded pinksheened hips.
"Ohh, Oh it hurts me so, oh have mercy, mistress, I will obey you!" the Cundemere wailed as she turned her tear stained and contorted face toward the Lady Domitia.
Reclining now on her side, propping herself up with her left elbow, the aristocratic patrician woman gloatingly watched, and her right forefinger had gently and slyly begun to tickle the twitching pink lips of her Venus-slit. Her bosom rose and fell more quickly, and a flush of passion had suffused her cheeks.
Now it was Florella's turn to taste the strap which, dealt backhanded, again visited the lower summits of her jouncy bottom. A stifled groan, a convulsive shifting on her bare knees, announced the painful anguish of that cut, as her belly ground spasmodically against Cundemere's. Once again the steward paused dangling the strap to the floor, studying both his victims with practised eye. He realized that the brunette sought to defy him and to remain courageous throughout the flogging, whereas her younger companion was almost entirely dominated by her terror of the lash and the flaming pangs which burned in her already well-striped round bottom.
He therefore crossed over again to take his place at Florella's left and to draw back the strap very slowly to give the helpless captive the excruciating torment of suspense which would deteriorate her morale. She caught her breath again, glanced nervously around to him, her lips very tight and compressed, her nostrils shrinking and flaring, then turned her face back to Cundemere and closed her eyes. Her hands rose a little on the smooth pink twitching back of the golden-haired handmaiden, and her firm jetting tits swelled voluminously as they pressed in what seemed an amorous kiss against the round loveglobes of her companion.
Pendaricus now gave both victims a brief suspense-ridden respite by moving slowly in a circle round them, ogling their naked kneeling and embracing bodies, feasting his glinting eyes on the creamy and pink skins merged into this suggestive tableau. His purpose, to be sure, was to inspire mounting anguish in their hearts by thus informing them that their ordeal was far from over; moreover, observing that Florella was plainly the more courageous of the two, he determined to demoralize her and make her as cringing and subservient as he knew Cundemere would soon become under the biting kisses of the black leather strap.
Suddenly now and without the slightest warning, he whirled and swept the strap horizontally over Florella's left side and hip, the two split ends nipping against the inner curve of her right buttock. Taken by surprise, the naked brunette jerked feverishly, her head falling back and her eyes uplifted towards the ceiling in a piteous plea for strength to withstand her martyrdom. A suppressed raucous groan emerged from between her chattering teeth, and her arms convulsively hugged the naked Cundemere slave who faced her. With hardly a pause, the overseer applied the strap once more, this time straight across the lower curves of Florella's naked bottomglobes, letting the two flaps whisk round to bite the tender hip and even to touch the edge of Cundemere's rounded haunch. A louder groan was heard, the brunette closed her eyes and hugged Cundemere with all her strength, pressing her mouth against the crook of that soft pink shoulder where it joined the lovely round neck. There was an exquisite perversity to this gesture, as if naked Florella sought to appease her own suffering by wooing the golden-haired captive in the Sapphic manner. The Lady Domitia's forefinger had now stealthily probed between the labia of her vulva, and was gradually and lingeringly rimming that inner circle of moist pink loveflesh. Her eyes shone and her nostrils twitched and shrank to betray her sensually roused ardors.
Now, lest Cundemere believe he had forgotten her, Pendaricus moved swiftly round the straining kneeling naked bodies, till he was once again at her left, and sent the strap whistling through the air to clack angrily and noisily over the base of her squirming bare bottom. A piteous scream of pain tore from her mouth, as her face twisted over her shoulder to implore pardon from the fat gray-haired executioner. Her entwining fingers twisted frenziedly, her nails digging into the brunette's deeply hallowed spine, as the burning waves of torment besieged her jerking and clenching bottomcheeks, already so vividly striped that most of the smooth pink skin was now marred by the ugly darkening bands left by the strap.
With hardly a moment's delay, he backhanded the strap over the tops of Florella's thighs, so that the two split ends nicked toward her left hip. He chuckled softly as he watched the slim naked older girl convulsively swerve her hips, heard her stifled moaning cry and watched her svelte creamy body grind spasmodically against her companion's. The eyes of the dominatress were humid, dilated and glazed with lust as she gradually drew herself to her own erotic fulfillment. She was imagining that her finger was the massive rigid penis of Vercetirix and that at this very moment he was coupling with her as they both savored the fustigation of the naked barbarian slaves.
The steward now paused and glanced at his mistress for further orders; almost angrily she nodded her head, halting the play of her finger deep inside her cunt. Her face was flushed and her bosom swelled fiercely as all her nerves twitched in tumescence. He understood by that nod that she had ordered him to lash both naked girls until they should, coerced by the relentless pain, attempt consolation each of the other by the tribadistic friction so cherished by the priestesses of Lesbos.
Once more the strap whirled overhead, and swept down to smack with a sonorous vehemence over the upper summits of Cundemere's naked, wriggling bottom. A frantic scream of intolerable anguish was wrested from the golden-haired slave girl; "Aiii! Oh, Ohh, mistress, mistress, have pity now, in the name of mercy!" But his orders from the Lady Domitia did not include pardon or respite now, for he had seen many a similar scene enacted in the luxurious chamber of the aristocratic Roman matron, had too often seen her ply her finger against her womanhood, not to know what she burningly desired. And so the strap assailed Forella's shoulders now as a mild variant from the insistent and repetitive thrashing of her bottom. It was painful, but the brunette was able to sustain it by grinding her teeth and closing her eyes, tightening her hold round Cundemere's back till her own breasts flattened with a lascivious urgency against Cundemere's heaving bosom.
Now he moved directly behind and to Florella's left, and this time inflicted two quick, sharp, stinging lashes, using the split ends of the strap rather than the broad flat surface of the band; the flaps stung the jouncy summit of Forella's right buttock each time, and he had the delicious satisfaction of hearing her call out huskily, "Aahh, it's too much, oh have mercy now, I will obey!" and of seeing her loins grind and twist back and forth against Cundemere's.
The Lady Domitia raised her left hand in a peremptory gesture. The steward nodded, drew a long breath, and then mercilessly applied the strap across the base of Cundemere's bottom, only to retrieve it and backhand it over the same area of Florella's writhing, spacious bottomovals. Then once again it whistled down to thwack over the upper summits of the Cundemere's wriggling and lunging behind, only to equalize matters with a new backhanded lash which kissed the inner curves of Florella's buttocks just below the chinkbone.
Instantaneous wails and cries rewarded his dexterity. And to his great delight, and surely that of his mistress, he watched the two naked kneeling girls at last cast aside all restraint and seek the solace which he had predicted they would yearn for. Their tits mashing together, their bellies scraping and rasping, their furry manes rubbing and grinding, Florella and Cundemere merged their panting mouths, while the strap now fell diagonally over the lower curves of Cundemere's vividly striped bare backside and then let Forella taste its heated fury over the tops of her shaking creamy thighs.
Now he began to move around in a circle, flicking the strap here and there so that the two split ends nipped and kissed the shoulders, the thighs, the backs of the two agonizedly straining, naked captives. Unable to endure the pain, Cundemere pressed her mouth against Forella's, who pantingly returned the kiss, her soft slim fingers trying to soothe Cundemere's jerking, squirming, satiny hips. But a stinging flick or two from the strap's ends against her fingers made her jerk away her hands and once more clasp them round the golden-haired girl's waist. Now her own bottom vibrated and shook from side to side as the strap clung diagonally over her huddling nether globes. And in her abominable suffering Forella thrust her tongue between Cundemere's panting lips, while she insistently rubbed her black pussymane against the dark golden curls of her companion's lovecore.
The hot waves caused by the lash in their sensitive nervous systems had now wakened their own latent sensualities, just as Pendaricus had known it would do. He continued to move around them, flicking first one and then the other, while their mouths desperately fused together, their tongues rapiering, their bodies shaking as they continued to kneel and to embrace each other. The lady Domitia leaned forward, her forefinger returned to the stealthy task of plying her hardening clitoris with deft delicate touches. Now the two naked Visigoth slave girls were hardly conscious of that whistling, smacking strap; instead, their mouths sealed together, their tongues in rapacious duel, each girl began to rub her cunt against her companion's, quickening her friction and her jerky, squirmy movements as again and again the strap came down on their trembling sweating agony-ridden bodies.
A final pair of furious lashes over the plumpest curves of Cundemere's streaked backside and then an equally severe pair of stripes over Forella's, made both girls accelerate the tempo of their own self-consolation. Moaning and weeping, groaning and gasping, Forella and Cundemere now shamelessly sought assuagement, oblivious to the eyes of their mistress and the steward; they rubbed and ground themselves together, their tongue-kisses inflaming their innately ardent passion. And as the strap came down for the last time first over the tops of Cundemere's hips, and then over the base of Forella's blazing bottom, they exhaled a wailing simultaneous cry as their bodies jerked and quaked in Lesbian fulfillment.
The steward lowered the whip to the floor. His mistress writhed and trembled as she neared the brink of appeasement. A last rubbing caress of her forefinger, a last arching of her pelvis basin, as her eyes fixed on the streaked and shuddering naked bodies before her, and haughty Domitia felt the tides upon her, felt her body heave and wrench with the violent turbulence of orgasm.
She made a languid sign with her left hand, and Pendaricus stopped the flogging. It was high time. The delicate skins of both naked barbarian girls were almost purple with welts over their squirming bottoms. And yet they remained oblivious to this, caught up in the whirlpool of passionate fulfillment, each by the other.
The sound of their groans and whimperings filled the room with a lasciviously delicious music for the dominatress who had devised this cruel and unjust "initiation" into her personal retinue.
Finally she ordered, "You will take these slaves, Pendaricus, and see that they are depilated at once. Then for the night, lock them up in a dungeon with their former mistress, the Princess Aurelia." Her lips formed an ugly, anticipatory smile. "I do not doubt that when we summon Aurelia to our presence tomorrow, they will have informed her fully of the severity and justice of Roman rule!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
If the Lady Domitia had made a devoted henchman out of Pendaricus, her elderly satyr of a husband, Glaucus Lycidas, had equally found himself a willing tool and panderer in the freed-man Brutus.
Brutus had won his freedom two years ago by routing a drunken roisterer who had broken into the garden of the villa where the elderly roue had been disporting himself with one of the young kitchen slaves, and who, sword in hand, had rushed upon Glaucus Lycidas. Brutus had been summoned to bring a jug of Falerian wine to kindle the old lecher's impotent passion at the very moment of intrusion. Thinking quickly, he had flung the wine in the drunkard's face, disarmed him, and marched the man out into the street with his own sword prodding his bottom. A vigorous kick had then propelled the unwanted intruder onto his face in the dust.
Enormously grateful, the husband of the Lady Domitia had then and there manumitted Brutus and sworn him to secrecy concerning this escapade with the wench. For he well knew that his wife bribed many of the slaves-"or compelled them by threats of cruel punishment-"to spy on him and to report his erotic pranks away from her bed.
For that matter, she had rarely shared it, and for the past twelve months had forsaken him altogether, being enamoured of her blond lover Vercetirix. Glaucus Lycidas was scrawny, of medium height, with rather stooped shoulders and nearly bald pate circling the top of which was a kind of laurel wreath of gray hair, with a beak of a nose and think ascetic lips. His watery gray-blue eyes were rheumy, and his voice an unpleasant croak. The beautiful Domitia had married him for his wealth, his political influence and this magnificent villa, but she had early in the marriage given him to understand that their union did not presuppose unbridled license for his conjugal rights. For the very start of that marriage, indeed, and having been a willful, headstrong girl much pampered by her doting parents, she had already learned the exquisite rapture of subjecting helpless younger female slaves to the lash and torment. Her sadistic hunger was often thus allayed though she at times indulgently permitted her husband to share these scenes with her. Tauntingly she would then summon one of the punished culprits to her couch to allay the girl's tears and suffering, leaving poor Glaucus Lycidas to appease his own feverish lusts as best he could.
Brutus understood and sympathized with his master. He was a powerfully built man with hairy chest, coarse features, the squinting, suspicious eyes of a man who has seen every form of evil and does not fear it but rather expects it, and he had just turned forty. His bulbous nose had been smashed in a tavern brawl in his youth and he had lost several teeth in the same altercation. But he had a dynamic animal magnetism which made him passionately sought after by many of the household wenches, even fat Martha, the cook, cooing like a dove whenever he appeared in her view.
As a rich young wastrel, Glaucus Lycidas had spent a great deal of his youth and his inheritance in the bordellos and the lupanars of Rome. There he had undoubtedly dissipated much of his potency, so that now he was possible for him to achieve fruition with a wench only by compelling her to perform lewd and unnatural acts, or under the lust of seeing her naked body striped by the lash or writhing under torture.
He was in his own bedchamber at the other end of the villa, grumbling now because Brutus had just brought him the news that his wife had closeted herself with the two new barbarian girls as well as the Grecian girl Philomena.
"That she-devil!" Glaucus Lycidas groaned, lifting his eyes to the marble ceiling high above him. "May all the spirits of the Styx haunt my dreams if I know why I made that vicious hellcat my wife. She does not share my couch, she takes delight in mocking me by denying me the master's right with a new slave. Is that not so, good Brutus?"
"It is the very heart of the truth, my master," Brutus ingratiatingly responded as he inclined his head. He had observed that his old satyr of a master was put in far better humor by being dealt with as if he himself were still a slave and not a freed-man; and he found it greatly to his profitable advantage to treat Glaucus Lycidas with the utmost deference, for on many an occasion when he had aided his master in subjugating a pretty slave girl by forcing her to perform acts of obeisance with lips and tongue and fingers on the dwindled phallus of Glaucus Lycidas, he was rewarded by being granted the rest of the night with the wench.
"You know how it grieves me, Brutus," Glaucus Lycidas whined, "to be thwarted at every turn by that bold vixen Domitia. Was it not by the order of the Divinity himself that I was allowed to purchase these handmaidens of that barbarian princess, as well as the princess herself, and I daresay I cannot even summon that girl-"what's her name?"
"The Princess Aurelia, my lord," Brutus hastened to interpose.
"Yes, yes. That Aurelia. I suppose that if I sent you to bring her to me, we would find that Domitia had locked her away and made other plans for her. Eh, Brutus?"
"It is a lamentable fact that you are not always master in your own villa, my good lord," was the answer that Glaucus Lycidas was smilingly eager to hear. He nodded his head, and with a smug smile remarked, "But our time will come, eh, Brutus? Yet this afternoon I feel myself in need of amusement. What could you suggest?"
"There is the charming Kyria, that kitchen maid whom you once cast admiring eyes upon, my master," Brutus slyly suggested.
"Ah, yes. I remember the little bitch. Perhaps after the lesson she had, she will be more amenable to reason. Go fetch her, and bring me a thin switch, a very short and light one. She is not much more than a child, though it is true she has delightful white thighs and budding titties. Hurry, Brutus!" Bowing low, the freed-man left the chamber and went to the kitchen to inquire of fat Martha where he might find Kyria.
Fortunately for that unhappy child, Martha had sent her to the butcher's stall only a quarter of an hour before, and Brutus deemed that his master was, in his present mood, too impatient to wait upon her return. But he chanced to espy a lovely supple-limbed girl kneeling with her back to him and industriously scouring the stone floor of the kitchen.
"And what slave is this?" he demanded of the simpering, fat cook.
Rolling her eyes, she murmured, "Why, good Brutus, that is the little Nicias. She has been with us a year, but do not tell me that a man of your powers would amuse himself with such a fledging, when you have here for the asking a wench who is eager and skilled in satisfying the needs of such a worthy bedmate as you!"
"Come, now, good Martha," he chuckled, slapping her on her opulent behind, "it is not my eye that roves in search of such tender quail, but rather the master's. I will take her from you by his authority in place of Kyria."
"Alas, poor child," Martha's sluttish mood at once changed to one of material compassion, "it was an evil hour that sent her to me to do scullery work this afternoon. Why does your master not content himself with the new slaves, those barbarians who, I warrant, ought to be chained lest they slash all our throats at night while we lie in sleep."
"You know full well why, good Martha," the rogue replied, chucking her under her double chin until she giggled like a very schoolgirl. "The Lady Domitia has other plans for them."
"That is true enough, good Brutus," the cook responded, shaking her head. "Oh, I fear that one day there will be a rift between those two, and then we will all be sent to the stalls of Mericus, to be sold to new masters and mistresses."
"Have no fear, good Martha. The banquets that you concoct will win you your choice of masters in all Rome. Why, now that I am freed-man, I myself would buy you." She nudged him in the ribs with an elbow and burst into braying laughter and rubbed her fat hip lasciviously against his, like a cat in heat.
"But now you will not have to spend a single sesterce to own me, dear Brutus. I would gladly be yours and groan sweetly on the couch under your manly dagger though you were to stab me with it till the cock crows at dawn on the hill of Romulus."
"Aye, my cock is a fierce dagger and it stabs lustily," Brutus sniggered as he continued to watch the entrancing movements of Nicias's backside under her short peplum. By Zeus, she was comely, and those long thighs and the wide crease between the jouncy gloves of her backside were beginning to make his own weapon stir in search of action. What a tender young partridge the little bitch was, and what he would not give to ram his weapon into either of her clefts, just as she knelt now. But it was essential to retain the good will and humor of the fat cook, so again he patted her bottom and murmured, "We shall see, we shall see, good Martha. I am not a man who stabs quickly and then runs off. I wish a willing partner who will vie with me until we are both spent with spending, drained and emptied of our vital juices. So let us wait upon a night which the Fates shah weave for us, that we may enjoy each other to the fullest measure."
"I burn with longing for that happy night, dear Brutus," Martha purred, giving him a clap on the back which nearly pitched him forward over the stool. He gave her an uneasy laugh and nodded. Then casually he remarked, "Well, my master waits me, though I am loath to leave such a delicious and appetizing wench as yourself, good Martha. I will take Nicias with me."
"Take her, and let the master's will be obeyed, but do not forget who would gladly satisfy your every need, my Brutus," was her answer.
Brutus studied the shapely hindquarters of the young girl for another moment, then exclaimed impatiently, "Nicias, quickly, rise and follow me. The master sends for you this moment!" With a startled cry the young girl rose, her eyes very wide and fearful. As Martha had intimated, she had thus far escaped the attentions of Glaucus Lycidas and his perverse partner, Domitia. But she, alas, was destined to make up for that lack of attention this very afternoon.
Nicias was fourteen, with black hair in a little topknot at the back of her neck which left her charming ears bare, as well as her high forehead. Her face was a pure oval, the skin of a pale, milky tint which was bewitching. Her young breasts were boldly erect, firm young pears with the tips prodding against the thin stuff of her sleeveless short tunic. Her calves and thighs were long and sinuous, and her buttocks rounded and rather widely spaced apart. The dainty pink slit of her cunt was virtually as hairless as a babe's, for she had been depilated only a few weeks before at the order of the Lady Domitia, who had planned to lock herself up with Nicias and discover all the slave girl's capabilities.
Her eyes were hazel, very expressive and closely set together, on either side of a very dainty, slightly uptilted nose. Her mouth was small and petulant with a ripe lower lip, and her firm little chin had two adorable dimples which came and went whenever she smiled.
Brutus seized her by the wrist and, briskly nodding to Martha, led the girl out into the garden. The fierce heat of the sun which had so attacked the helpless barbarian captives on the dais of Mericus had abated, and now the afternoon was pleasantly warm but not oppressively so. This section of the garden was shut off by a chest-high stone wall, and it formed the amorous retreat of Domitia's elderly husband. It connected directly with his bedchamber, and beside a luxuriously draped couch by the statue of Pompeii, there was a low, flat stone bench where, according to his whim, Glaucus Lycidas could enjoy the sight of young slave girls being tormented for his increased pleasure...
Nicias, as she had risen, had sent a frightened look at the freed-man and a questioning one to fat Martha, who had chided her, "Quickly, girl, quickly! You mustn't keep the master waiting, or he'll have Pendaricus give you the strap on that saucy bottom of yours! Go with Brutus, that's a good girl!" And as the tall, pretty, teenaged slave, lowering her eyes, had docilely moved toward Brutus, Martha had whispered to him, "Try to be gentle with the poor thing. She's an orphan, and her older sister's been sent to one of the worst lupanars to work off her debt as a slave."
It was true. Nicias' mother and father had both died of fever from the River Tiber some two years before.
They had been freed and were themselves citizens, but they had left large debts to merchants, and under the Law their property could be seized and sold to satisfy those debts. If those proceeds did not nullify what was charged against their estate, then their kind, even their daughters, could be sold into slavery to satisfy the judgment. That was how Nicias had come to the household of the lecherous Glaucus Lycidas. And her sister, Thora, nineteen and a magnificent, full-blown beauty, had volunteered to pay off the remaining debt by working for a seamstress, who constantly upbraided the girl's efforts to please and frequently had her given the scourge of knotted cords on her ample naked bottom, till finally she had discharged Thora. The creditors had thereupon seized the unfortunate orphan and sold her to one of the lowest brothels in the district of Ossia, where she still labored to take on all comers, without hope of redemption unless perhaps some wealthy freed-man should wander in there by mistake and, smitten by her beauty, try to buy her from the harridan who ran the house...
Brutus was conscious of a tingling in his loins as he strode masterfully toward the garden where his old master awaited him, followed by the slave girl, her head bowed, arms at her sides.
The scrawny patrician lolled on his couch and since the weather was warm, wore only a short white linen toga under which he was naked. His feet were bare, and there was a flask of perfume on the stone path below the bench. It was the duty of a slave to anoint her master's or mistress's feet throughout the day, and as Nicias came out into this walled section of the garden adjacent to the bedchamber of her elderly master, she perceived the flask and at once sank down to her knees with a generous, gracious gesture, hoping that by showing herself ready to obey and to serve, she might escape punishment. Naively she believed that she had been summoned to his presence to be chided for her faults which, according to fat Martha, were numerous though trivial. And since Martha had used her often in the scullery, both Glaucus Lycidas and Domitia had ignored her presence in the household. This, therefore, in a sense was her true initiation into the corrupt decadence of a noble Roman villa, the first time she would learn that her status as a slave made her a plaything and a puppet, a toy of flesh to be enjoyed ruthlessly and then cast aside.
Glaucus Lycidas frowned as his freed-man and pandere entered, for he had remembered Kyria and perceived that this tall, black-haired girl was not she. He was about to complain when Nicias knelt down and, lifting the flask, poured from it carefully into one cupped palm, then began to rub his feet, pressing the perfumed essence well into the wrinkled toes and into the arch of the instep and into the heel.
The sensation was pleasant. Glaucus Lycidas looked down at the bowed head of the young slave girl, then questioningly regarded his henchman. Brutus made haste to explain: "Kyria was on an errand for Martha, my master, so I took the liberty of summoning Nicias. I trust you will find her to your taste."
"Why, as to that, it is too early to tell," the old man grinned. "She has a gentle touch, and by the gods, perhaps she has other gentle attributes as well. That's enough, girl. Stand up, that I may look at you." Nicias stood up obediently, but she could not help blushing divinely as the rheumy eyes of her master scanned her delectably supple, nubile body. A perverse note of ingenuous immaturity, certain to sharpen the carnal appetites of the old lecher, was borne out by the costume she wore. The peplum, a short, full flounce attached to the tunic at the waist and covering the hips to mid-thigh made her look precisely like a girl just out of puberty. But it left her calves and lower thighs exquisitely bare, and her pale, milky skin with the elegant tracery of delicate blue veins at the curve of knee and ankle caught Glaucus Lycidas' eye. He stroked his chin pensively as his eyes moved to the tightly clinging tunic which shaped out the sleek young belly with that evasive hollow below signifying the core of her appetizing virginity. Then his gaze considered her breasts, small, insolently uptilting pears whose firming buds prodded the stuff of the tunic in a kind of impertinent invitation. Her slim neck, her long, shapely arms, and the charming, wistful features of the girl began to incite him to growing lust. Let Pluto drag Domitia away in his grim chariot with the black horses of Hades breathing fire from their nostrils, but if he could not enjoy his own new slaves, those three barbarian sluts, then by Jupiter the All-Powerful, this tasty little bitch would serve in their stead!
"So you are Nicias," he crooned, reaching for one of her hands and fondling it between his bony ones.
"Why, yes, m-master," the girl quavered.
"It is strange that I have not noticed you before, my pretty one. To think of that beauty wasted in the kitchen! Brutus, we must find her some duties less irksome."
"Very well, my master."
"And now, girl, you know that I am your master, do you not? And that you must do your best to please me, no matter what I order?" the husband of Domitia slaveringly inquired.
Nicias' milky cheek flamed as, lowering her eyes, she faltered, "Oh, yes, m-master."
"You have been well taught, my pretty one. I wish to see more of you. So my first order to you, slave, is to take off that tunic. The peplum will serve to hide your modesty for the time, at any rate." With this he uttered a salacious chuckle and Brutus, knowing precisely how far he dared go with his master, permitted himself only a ribald little smile and said nothing.
Nicias hesitated, fearfully glancing at the freed-man. She was not only a pure virgin, but not even her own parents or her sister had ever seen her nude.
"Come, girl," Brutus decided to be his master's ally now, "it is rank disobedience to keep your master waiting. You have heard his order. Take off the tunic at once. Do you wish to be whipped?"
"Oh, no, master," Nicias gasped, her eyes widening with apprehension. She had thus far escaped the lash of Pendaricus... she would not escape it this time, even if her service were as faultless as the Olympian gods.
And yet she hesitated. She bit her lower lip, stared pleadingly at Glaucus Lycidas, unable to speak, yet sending him the most eloquent and heartrending appeal from those lovely eyes. She could not know that her very naivete was precisely the cantharide which would draw the old satyr to a commendable potency in her conquest.
"What kind of behavior of this for a slave?" Glaucus Lycidas frowned.
"My lord," Brutus quickly interposed, "it is the first time she has been in your presence. Can you not see that she is awed by so handsome and noble a master? Give her a moment to recover herself, and you will have naught to complain of, I promise it."
"Well, you may be right, good Brutus," the mollified old man grumbled, "but perhaps she is a courtesan who has secretly learned the wiles of augmenting my desire by this play of chastity."
"I have it on good authority that she is untouched, my master."
"But she should know that it is an honor for a slave to give up her virginity to her master," Glaucus Lycidas petulantly countered. Then, sternly regarding the trembling young girl before him, he irascibly insisted: "But enough of this nonsense, girl! I will have Brutus rip the tunic from you if you do not at once remove it of your own accord."
Two great tears glistened in the dilated eyes of the young Nicias. She drew a deep, shuddering breath and then drew the tunic up slowly, exposing the white, soft skin of her midriff. Galucus Lycidas leaned forward, his eyes glistening with covetous lust.
"Go on, go on," he prompted.
Once again poor Nicias hesitated, but she remembered fat Martha's exhortation and she knew how Kyria, younger than she, had been whipped, and others too with whom she had talked since her coming to the villa of the Lady Domitia. Her parents had loved her and Thora, and almost never raised their hands against their daughters; but the thought of being tied and beaten by that fat, gray-haired steward whom all the girls dreaded and abominated overcame at last her instinctive modesty. Closing her eyes, with a stifled sob, she at last drew the tunic over her head and shoulders and laid it carefully over a tall marble stool. She was naked except for the peplum and her sandals. Glaucus Lycidas uttered a gasp of lustful admiration as her bosom came into provocative view, fulfilling all the promise made under the tight-clinging tunic.
The aureola were small, of a pale coral, the nipples dainty little buds which one could tell had never been stiffened by the intoxicating rapture of coupling. The dainty navel was shallow and wide, the jewel in a pale, milky goblet. Now, standing half naked in the short, flouncy skirt, she lowered her eyes, her cheeks and even her forehead vividly red with the blushes of outraged modesty.
The promise of that nubile beauty shaped out by the clinging tunic was more than fulfilled; the eyes of both men flamed with rut at the sight of those proud little pears with their dainty coral aureola just showing the tiny granulations of that erogenous flesh, and in those haloing narrow centers the exquisite crinkly tips of the nipples. Adding to the piquancy of the budding young girl's tempting beauty were the downy black sprigs of bodyhair in her suavely dimpled armpits.
"Kneel down before me, girl," Glaucus Lycidas' voice was hoarse with his quickening desire. "Let me look upon you. It is the first time, after all, that I have seen my new slave Nicias. Now, my pretty one, lift your face up to me and clasp your wrists behind your back-"just so! A morsel for the gods, eh, Brutus?"
"She is blessed by Venus, young though she is, my master," the freed-man replied.
"Well, that we have not yet seen," Glaucus Lycidas sniggered with a bawdy wink at his henchman. "So, Nicias, let your peplum fall, then do you rise as Venus Aphrodite herself out of the waves at Mycene!"
"Oh, yes, sir-"I beg of you humbly, let me keep it about me," Nicias unexpectedly quavered, drawing her hands from behind her slim, deliciously hollowed, supple back to clasp them up in prayer to the scrawny old husband of Domitia. "Not naked, master? No man has ever seen me so. I humbly implore you to let me keep my peplum."
"Why, this is a disobedient child here," Glaucus Lycidas growled, glancing over at Brutus for collaboration, "and one that has felt no stripes since she took up the metal collar of slavery." For about the neck of even this charming slave, this child just out of puberty, there clung the yoke of dominating slavery, just as it clung about the neck of the Princess Aurelia.
"Send for Pendaricus and bid him bring his scourge of knotted cords," Glaucus Lycidas exclaimed.
Nicias uttered a groan of terror: "Oh no, master, don't have me whipped! Please, I want to be obedient. I know that I must, but spare me this! Take pity on my youth and my modesty, and I will serve you faithfully and humbly!"
A man of compassion would surely have heeded so dignified and unexpectedly mature a plea from this charming child, but Glaucus Lycidas, still rankling under the taunting usurpation of his new purchases this afternoon by his imperious wife, was not inclined toward clemency.
"You will obey me, or Pendaricus will teach you to do so at the cost of your tender skin, my pretty one," he growled, sitting up and reaching down to dig the fingers of his left hand into the glossy black topknot. His watery eyes fixed hers with a cruel and gloating stare. "The peplum, girl, or the whip! Choose!" With a sob, the unfortunate young girl fumbled at the fastening of the flouncy skirt and at last it fell about her knees. Glaucus Lycidas uttered another gasp of delight. The sweet belly gave way to the gracious curve of the abdomen, all of a milky white purity. Then, shielded only by a nascent black silky down not sufficient to cover the outer lips, there appeared the mound of Venus, the grotto of Aphrodite, the virgin cunt of the exquisite naked Nicias.
Discerning where his eyes were fixed now on the most intimate part of her young body, the sensitive young girl burst into tears and covered her face with her hands, her firm little tits jiggling with the convulsive tremors that ran through her slim young nakedness. But Glaucus Lycidas found her only the more appetizing for that; his bony fingers fondled them, and between thumbs and forefingers he plucked out the rosy nipplebuds from their virgin circles, till he felt them throb and firm with the wakening of her healthy young being. Aghast at his audacity and yet not daring to strike away his hands, the poor girl covered her face instead and bowed her head to give vent to disconsolate tears. Kneeling as she did in homage to him, he felt the flickering of passion in his scrawny loins. His breath quickened and, cupping one of her bubbies with his left hand, he slid his right down her belly until his forefinger touched the dainty pink lips of Nicias' virgin quim.
But while she had endured the odium of stripping naked before these two men and had submitted agonizedly to the fondling of her titties, this obscene and possessive caress at the most intimate core of her being revolted the young slave girl.
"Oh, no! Don't do that to me! It's wicked! Oh, let me go!" she cried, and then she committed the unpardonable crime of a slave toward a master: she seized his offending hand and flung it away from her quivering loins and frantically rose to her feet, protecting herself now like the most timorous of virgins, her left hand clapped over her mount, her right arm crooked over her beautiful firm titties, tears streaming down her lovely, flushed cheeks.
Stupefied by this rebellion, just at the moment when he was indulging his libidinous tastes for dalliance which would gradually lead him to that potency for which he yearned, Glaucus Lycidas uttered a cry of rage.
"To the bench with this insufferable little bitch! We are going to teach her manners in this household, Brutus.
You shall help me with her. Bind her on her back to begin with. She is so skittish about showing herself, we shall make it easier for her to gratify her master's wishes!" With greedy alacrity the freed-man rudely seized Nicias by the shoulders and pushed her toward the stone bench. Glaucus Lycidas himself designed to grasp the girl by the hips, if only to betoken his physical possession of this beautiful young slave. As for poor Nicias, she uttered a cry of terror and began to babble futile supplications.
"Oh, no-"please don't punish me-"oh, please no, master, forgive me! This is the first time-"I couldn't help it, truly I couldn't-"I've never been naked before-"oh, have pity on me, please, master! Oh, what are you going to do to me?"
In a trice she found herself stretched on her back on the cold stone bench, and silken scarves bound her ankles and her wrists to the heavy legs of the bench. Her arms were thus drawn down, out and below her head, which had the effect of arching up the sweet, small, firm pears of her titties, and the bench was wide enough so that the fettering of her legs served to distend just slightly the delicate pink labia of her virgin quim.
This done, Brutus procured a small cushion from his master's place and, grasping the slim neck of the victim, lifted her up sufficiently to shove the cushion under her head so it would be pillowed, and, should she fight the torture, so she would not risk a severe bump, on the stone. Without an order from his former master, Brutus hastened in to the bedchamber of Glaucus Lycidas to procure what appeared to be the instrument? case of a physician, but its contents were hardly curative so far as the unfortunate naked Nicias was concerned. As he brought it out, the rheumy eyes of the patrician glistened with an unholy light, and his thin lips curved with a lustful smile of anticipation.
"You are a true companion and friend, Brutus," he exclaimed. "Let us acquaint Nicias with the penalty for folly and disobedience."
"Do you wish to begin with her, my master, or shall I?" Brutus respectfully asked.
"Amuse me while I take my ease upon this pleasant couch. It is good to rest in the sun of late afternoon here amid the flowers and the birds and to see this pretty wench before me." Opening the case, Brutus squatted beside the bench and smiled greedily at the frightened girl, who had raised her head to stare with anguished apprehension at his movements. He took out a pliant, light cane, stylus-thick, perhaps eighteen inches in length. Making it dance and swish in the air before Nicias' fascinated eyes, he applied it sharply to her right hip with a crisp little spatt. The naked girl uttered a faint little cry of pain and surprise, and began to breathe quickly, her eyes very wide and glazed with tears. Her toes curled, long and beautifully shaped, and her ankles jerked against the scarves which so tightly bound her to the bench.
As for Glaucus Lycidas, his narrow, glittering eyes fixed on the panting titties and then on the lightly mossed aperture of her maidenhood, and his tongue began to wet his dry lips in a kind of erotic anticipation.
Again the cane flicked down to sting the bare, milky hip, then again over the inner left thigh near the groin.
Poor Nicias tried to hold her breath, but she could not help staring at the devilish little implement which inflicted such a painful sting on her helpless, naked body. Now the cane bit against her other hip, then against the upper right thigh, and now directly over the belly, leaping to the navel. Nicias tilted back her head and emitted a sobbing "Oh please, please have mercy. I didn't mean to disobey, master!" Her lips were trembling violently, and the agitated rise and fall of her young titties demonstrated her abject fright. She was not conscious of the subtle gradations of pain which could be inflicted by this and the other instruments in the diabolical case; her first sensation was of degradation and shame to be stretched like this and tied, all naked to the eyes of the two men who beheld her.
Lingeringly, knowing his master's penchant full well by now, Brutus continued to apply quick little flicks with the cane which bit into Nicias' tender thighs, her shoulders, her belly, and then each hip and thigh in turn.
Bright pink wells instantly sprang up where the cane kissed the milky skin. After perhaps twenty such stinging little flicks, the naked victim was dissolved in tears. Her nails had begun to dig into her sweating palms and her toes were restlessly twisting in enervation.
Glaucus Lycidas breathed hoarsely now and licked his lips ever more frequently as the voluptuous flagellation continued. It was not so much to inflict overpowering pain as to inflict upon Nicias the crushing annihilation of her will, the degrading realization that her body was no longer hers to shield or to own and that what she suffered was solely for the depraved pleasure and the carnal appetite of her master.
At last he finished with the cane, and replacing it in the case, Brutus brought out a tiny three-thonged whip.
The whip was no longer than the cane, and each thong was about three-quarters of an inch long and about half again as thick. It was a fixed to a short ivory stock which Brutus gripped with the consummate ease of a man who knows his trade. Indeed, his secret hope was that one day, in recognition of his valorous services, Glaucus Lycidas would appoint him overseer of all slaves in the place of Pendicarus.
Nicias was weeping bitterly now, her face turned to one side, as Brutus straightened, the little three-thonged whip firmly gripped in his right hand. He raised it slowly, then whisked it almost delicately over the girl's naked left tittie, the tips stinging the aureole and the delicate crinkly bud of the nipple.
"Ohhh-"n-no-"not there-"oh, please-"" the girl's voice was feverish and tremulous. She lifted her head, she jerked at her wrists and ankles, and she stared at the malevolent little instrument with agony in her lovely eyes. Tears had bathed her milky cheeks, which were now red both with the blushes of affronted modesty and the congestion of her suffering. Her nostrils had begun to dilate and shrink spasmodically, and the cords of her velvety-soft, milky inner thighs fluidly rippled as a still pond will ripple to a gust of summer breeze.
The three-thonged whip darted down again, to inflict its infamous kiss upon her right tittie. Nicias arched like an indolent cat who stretches herself, her hubbies thrusting up, her eyes rolling in their sockets as her head fell back and her lips opened again in a silent plea: "Oh please, not there! Oh, dear master, forgive your slave! I shan't disobey again, I swear I shan't! Please have him stop!" But there was no word from Glaucus Lycidas save the hoarse rasping of his quickened breath, for his face was congested with the feverish animation of the lust that bubbled up in him and had begun to make his dormant cock slowly swell with the promise of full manhood. Indeed, at this moment, if the Emperor himself had offered him a thousand golden sesterces to relinquish this lovely young slave, he would have refused. His eyes devoured the faint pink streaks on the lovely milky globes of her young titties, moved down to savor the darkening little welts left by the caning. Under his toga, Glaucus Lycidas felt his cock throb with an animation he had not known in many a night, and it was a feeling too ecstatic to be hurried.
The whip descended again. Again to the left breast, and twice more there, around the sides to pattern that lovely pear-firm goblet of milky flesh with the traceries of its kisses. Nicias sobbed and arched and weaved her hips agonizedly against the stone bench, trying to escape, but she was tied too firmly to succeed. Now Brutus directed the little martinet against her right tittie, applying four little light flicks that made the tips of the thongs sting against the aureole and the nipple and the tender lower curve of the adorable love-globe.
Sobbing wails, babbled pleas for mercy attested now to the girl's suffering. One could see rivulets of body-sweat glistening along her flanks, between her breasts, matting the soft, curly down in her dimpled armpits.
Now, to vary the procedure, Brutus moved a little and applied the three-thonged whip to the sweet belly, letting the tips of the lashes sting that tender oasis. Nicias uttered a short shrill scream: "Oh, don't-"" and tugged madly at her bonds, her tear stained face turning futilely toward the elderly satyr whose burning eyes watched the progression of her martyrdom.
She was too new, too young in slavery, to know that all her pleas would only whet the appetites of Glaucus Lycidas. He did not consider the fate of the unhappy girl in the least brutal. Indeed, for her crime of lese-majeste he could well have sentenced her to be flogged to the blood by his steward, and even his own critical young spouse Domitia would not have intervened to save Nicias if she had known the girl's revolt.
Now the whip returned to each breast in turn, drawing new sobbing cries and doleful supplications, then it again attacked the belly, and after a long pause Brutus raised it calculatingly and brought it down against the softly mossed crest of Nicias' virgin cunt.
Her naked body arched up from its bonds, her head falling back and her eyes wild with unspeakable pain and shame and despair, as she uttered a piercing cry of torment: "Eeeeyeeeowww!!"
"Perhaps that will teach you, girl," Glaucus lifted his voice at last, shuddering with lust, "that it is better to allow your master to touch that tender spot than to offer it to the lash. Do you not agree now, girl?" Before the sobbing, trembling Nicias could answer, Brutus diabolically applied another flick of the three-thonged whip directly into that virgin gape.
"Owwooohhh!! Oh, yes, master-"oh, please, spare me any more-"and-"and I'll try to please you! I have to learn what you want, and-"oh, please be kind to me-"please let me off!"
"Wait a bit, Brutus," Glaucus Lycidas panted as he rose. "Well, now, pretty one, if I pardon you, will you obey me without question, no matter what I tell you to do?" To quicken the girl's answer, he made a faint nod to Brutus, who immediately darted the hellish little whip for the third time against the dainty cuntlips of the tethered naked virgin.
"Aiiiii! Ooooohhhuuuu!! Yes, yes, Oh, I implore you, not that again! I will be good, I will be very good, master!"
For answer Glaucus Lycidas hoisted up the hem of his toga to bare his scraggly legs and the half-erect protuberance of his penis, the elongated meatus of which throbbed and glistened with a prelubricatory emission caused by witnessing the ordeal of the naked Nicias. Straddling the bench and crouching over her, the lecherous old aristocrat lowered himself until the tip of his cock dangled inches from the tear-wet lips of the aghast young slave girl.
"Then I command you to suck and kiss me, Nicias," he raucously gasped. "Well, will you obey me, girl, or shall I have Brutus continue with your punishment?"
A grimace of revulsion appeared on that tear-ravaged, lovely face. The girl's eyes widened exorbitantly and then she gasped as her throat was choked by the involuntary spasms of retching nausea, "Ugh-"oh, no, I can't, oh, I just can't, not that -"oh, have mercy!"
"So this is your obedience, is it? You stubborn little slut!" Glaucus Lycidas thundered. "Well, my girl, I shall be patient. I shall remain here waiting for you to perform your act of obedience, and Brutus will continue till you are of a mind to do my bidding! Try the little wheel, Brutus."
"At once, Master," the freed-man chuckled. Putting the three-thonged whip back into the case, he drew out next a little metal wheel with a wooden handle. All around the metal circle were tiny sharp teeth, not sharp enough to break tender skin unless heavily, insistently applied. Gently now he approached the straddled quaking thighs of the naked girl, turned the handle gently, and at once as the teeth scraped Nicias' left inner thigh; the girl's face twisted to one side in agony, her nails dug into her palms and she gasped out, "Oh, no-"it hurts me-" please, please-"oh, let me be-"" The other thigh now had its taste of the hellish device, and again Nicias wept and pleaded for mercy. All this while, his hands still clutching the up-rucked toga, Glaucus Lycidas stared down into her tortured face, his cock stiffening more and more, readied to her mouth when she came to the moment of surrender. Now Brutus moved to the other end of the bench and, kneeling, applied the teeth of the wheel against the sweating, tender, downy armpit. A scream of pain was torn from the naked culprit, and Brutus moved to the other ram-pit to turn the wheel again so that the teeth would again dig the tender flesh, and another strident cry rang out in the lovely garden.
Now Brutus moved again to the middle of the bench and squatted down. Carefully he held the wheel just over the mossy cleft between Nicias' straddled, milky thighs and turned it an inch... another inch... another...
"Ahhrrr-"oh, pity, in the name of all the gods-"not there, I cannot bear it-"have mercy, master-"I'll do it, only make him stop-"oooh, please, no more-"oh, not there any more-"I'll do it-""
"Hold your hand, Brutus. Let us test the sincerity of this wicked little vixen," Glaucus gasped. He lowered his loins until the tip of his cock rubbed against that trembling, soft, wet mouth.
"I am waiting, Nicias," he intoned, his voice thick and hoarse with rut.
The naked young brunette could endure no more. Closing her eyes, she opened her mouth, and Glaucus thrust down the stiff, throbbing spearhead. Her lips closed, and she began to suck, grimacing and retching, but her terror of having her ordeal continued made her conquer even those instinctive reactions of abysmal repugnance.
Glaucus Lycidas groaned with rutting pleasure at the touch of her lips, the feel of that moist, virgin cavern of her mouth around his aching tool.
And then he felt himself virile as he had not been in many a moon, and he pulled his stiff, glistening ramrod out of Nicias' shuddering mouth and moved down along the bench until his stiff organ was poised inches from the pink gape of her virgin quim.
Brutus discreetly moved to one side to give his master total access of the sobbing, naked captive, but his own cock was throbbing with frustrated desire, for the sight of Nicias' painridden, squirming body under his skillfully applied torments had roused Mm too to an ungovernable pitch.
"Now, you little bitch, now," the Roman aristocrat panted triumphantly as he felt his cockhead press apart the outer lips of Nicias' maiden core. The girl caught her breath and twisted her face desperately to one side to obliterate the sight of his vicious, lust-warped visage.
His hands slid under her buttocks, his fingers squeezing the milky, naked cheeks, as he pressed himself homeward till he felt the resilient obstruction of her hymen.
Drawing himself back and taking a long breath, Glaucus Lycidas thrust his cock viciously against the barrier to his carnal gratification. With a shriek, Nicias twisted her body to one side and tried to evade him, but the harpoon was too well placed. He felt it tear through the membrane of her maidenhood and come to root in the innermost depths of that tender young cunthole.
Then he began to fuck the weeping, hysterical young girl with savage and rapid thrusts, his hands squeezing and pinching her panting tits, his lips fused to the hollow of her throat where the pulse of her life hammered wildly in her martyrdom.
He had forgotten the three barbarian slaves; the cruel torment of this young slave had roused him to a feverish erotic pitch, stimulated his gross appetites and now he wished only to wallow in her young body and to learn its every secret.
Her buttocks tightened under his gouging fingers, as her face restlessly turned from side to side. Her choking cries for pardon and for mercy went unheeded. Off in a corner, Brutus was stealthily masturbating himself as he watched the scene unfold.
The laceration had been atrociously painful for the poor girl. As her master continued to fuck her with accelerated digs, the blood began to ooze from her thighs and down the white stone bench to which she was bound. Her eyes rolled wildly, glassy and supremely dilated. The face of her master was almost purple with lust as he approached climax. And then he uttered a hoarse bellow of joy and sank over her, crushing her beneath his weight, as his cock poured forth its tumultuous libation as tribute to the womanly adequacy of this young slave who was scarcely out of childhood but who was now degradingly and tyrannically made into a woman.
CHAPTER NINE
The Emperor Tiberius had at last decided to proceed against the conspirators who had sent Lysander Bertifox to assassinate him. Under the ingenious tortures administered by Metellus, the brutal and lecherous jailer of the Mamartine Prison, that wretched man had died in agony after having named Julia, the wife of the Pro-Consul of Heraclium, as being the only one who had plotted against Imperial Caesar.
Under Roman law, it was customary, when an accusation was made against a noble family, to arrest first the slaves of that household and then to interrogate them under torture. No evidence whatsoever could be accepted by a tribunal unless torture were employed in drawing forth the answers. It was held that, to gain his or her remission from punishment or perhaps to bargain for freedom, a slave would glibly and falsely bear witness against a master or a mistress; and for that very reason, all the devices of exquisitely prolonged and overpowering torture were utilized to draw forth the truth from the very soul of the witness.
Moreover, the Emperor hesitated at placing direct charges of murderous treason against the beautiful Julia, who was one of the most popular women in the Imperial retinue when she and her distinguished husband paid their homage to the Divine Tiberius by leaving their villa at Heraclium and journeying to Rome to attend the gladiatorial games or such ceremonial events as the Feast of the Lupercalia. And Tiberius himself coveted the magnificent Julia for, though three years away from her fortieth summer, her physical charms still had the power to rouse lust in his devious mind as well as in his aging and corrupt flesh.
Her young daughters Gratia and Rhea had also stirred his base passions. Yet he knew well that to accuse openly the wife of the noble Pro-Consul, who was the hero of the populace, could not be done until he had incontrovertible proof of her guilt. Once that had been established, then not even her fondest admirer could save her from the fate of a traitoress... nor her daughters, either. And again, pursuant to the stern Roman law (the Codex Romulus), even if Julia were convicted and condemned, her daughters, being virgin, could not be put to death until they had been first deflowered. In the febrile and wily brain of Tiberius, he had already foreseen in this law the possibility of a most exquisite diversion to gratify his inordinate lust. A decade ago, during his own reign, the handsome noblewoman, Lydia Scaurus, daughter of the elderly Senator Martius Scaurus, had been brought to trial after two of her slaves, examined under torture, had testified that she had sought to poison her middle-aged husband in order to wed her secret lover. The evidence had been damning, for one of the soldiers who had come to arrest the beautiful young matron had discovered a vial of poison artfully concealed in the kitchen. And the weeping cock, who had been a co-conspiratress with her mistress, confessed that it had been the very same which had meted out the fatal dose.
What sport Tiberius had had that afternoon in the Circus Maximus! He had begun with the cook, herself an appetizing morsel of femininity, though thirty-four. She had been buxom with fine tawny skin and a mane of dark brown hair descending to her opulent hips. She had been placed on a dais in the center of the arena, stripped naked and bound kneeling on all fours with her plump thighs exaggeratedly spread. One of the prison torturers had then applied a vigorous flogging over her buttocks and thighs with the flagellum, composed of a heavy wooden stock handle and half a dozen tapering leather bands with knots along their tips. She had been whipped to the blood, and then, after the torturer's assistant had doused her bleeding bottom and legs with hysop and vinegar, the torturer had lowered the flagellum and sent it up six agonizing times between her shaking, straddled thighs to attack the plump pink lips of her cunt, protected by a thick bush of dark brown hair. That pubic mane, alas, had provided little protection for the poor woman once the savage knots leaped against her gaping amorous fissure. Then a donkey had been let out and the torturer and his assistant had placed it with its front legs on either side of the unfortunate naked victim on the dais, its lower legs a foot below. Its enormous penis had then been fondled with a silken cloth to bring it into monstrous erection, and then the torturer's assistant had guided the gleaming red projectile toward the bushy nook of the shrieking woman. As the animal had been especially trained for just such spectacles, it brayed eagerly and jerked its loins forward, distending the vaginal sheath of the condemned cook, whose shrieks and pleas for mercy could be heard throughout the entire arena. Then the animal had performed coitus upon the crouching naked cook, who had died from its savage ploughing.
And then a silence had fallen over the arena as the noble Lydia Scaurus had been brought forth, her wrists bound behind her back, by two centurions. Her black hair had been piled into an enormous topknot, and she had been garbed in a white bejeweled stola as a mocking symbol of her rank. She was barefooted and naked under the stola. But her sentence had not yet been read to her, a refinement of the cruel and lecherous Tiberius.
She had been led before the Imperial box to face her Emperor who was her judge. He had pronounced the verdict of her guilt as a poisoner and proclaimed that death was to be her lot for her crime. Lydia had believed that she would be handed over to the executioner who would behead her, and she had composed herself, though very pale and trembling as she faced Tiberius.
But when the centurions had led her before four wooden stakes fixed in the ground and turned her over to the torturer and his assistant, she had uttered a piercing cry and tried to run. Laughingly, the torturer's assistant had seized her by the topknot, and, cuffing her noble bottom with the flat of his hand as one would rebuke a naughty child, had forced her back to her doom. The spectators had been agog with lustful excitement at this punishment of a noblewoman... did it not evidence the Divine justice of their Caesar, by showing them that not even a patrician could escape punishment for a heinous crime?
The stola was ripped from her quivering body, and a chorus of admiring cries and gasps had risen from the populace at the sight of such mouthwatering patrician loveliness. For Lydia had been tall and svelte, long of thigh and supple of haunch, her breasts two magnificent ripe hard thrusting pears set closely together on her milky and rosy-flecked chest, and the coppery-red hair of her head matched that which flourished in a thick curly triangle at the apex of her long chiseled thighs.
The two centurions had aided the torturer and his assistant to hoist the now shrieking and wildly pleading young woman aloft and to place her between the four stakes. Her wrists and ankles were fettered to them so that she was positioned like a living hammock, her face to the earth and about three feet from it.
First the centurions had made sport of her by taking their short swords and, using the flat of the blades, stationing themselves one on each side of her lithe naked hips, and applying lusty smacks, each taking charge of a compact, resilient bare buttock. Roars of laughter greeted this mock-chastisement, and Lydia's face was purple with her dying shame as she pleaded to be put to death as befitted her patrician rank. But after a dozen such stinging smacks of the steel upon each of her bottomglobes, she began to cry out in distress, and the angrily flaming skin of her behind when the centurions at last ceased their sport, betold the exacerbation of this preliminary portion of her sentence.
The centurions then left the arena, and the torturer and his aide took up slim switches and began to attack her dangling, jiggling naked breasts with satanic flicks that bit against the tender sides and the aureola and the dainty buds of her nipples. Her lungings and twistings in the air excited the spectators, some of whom coupled openly with their wives or sweethearts upon the stone benches from which they viewed this diverting spectacle. Then the two men whipped her calves and thighs until they were bleeding. Her body was rubbed with hysop and vinegar and she was given a cup of wine to fortify her for the rest of her ordeal.
Then the torturer himself, a burly, hairy man with bulging thews, doffed his loincloth and stepped between her hugely straddled naked legs, his massive penis turgid with ruttish ardor. Digging his stubby fingers into the angrily reddened cheeks of Lydia Scaurus' bottom, he yawned them apart to expose the dainty crinkly pink rosette of her hitherto virgin anus. Comprehending at last the foul degradation about to be wreaked upon her, the naked red-haired young matron had implored Tiberius himself for the clemency of a swift and merciful death. But the Emperor, leaning forward, his face florid with lustful joy, had been deaf to her hysterical supplications and had turned down his thumb to the torturer, a sign that the sentence was to be carried out to the fullest degree as he had initially ordered it.
With a brutal laugh, the man had moved forward till the tip of his heavy, swollen spear had rubbed against the delicate tissues of Lydia's bottomhole; in her frenzy and horror and shame, the naked patrician beauty had exerted all the force of her sphincter muscles to close that secret, shameful orifice of her voluptuous body, but in vain. He had inserted the tip inside the ring of muscles, and her head had lifted as her mouth yawned to emit a clamorous shriek of supreme agony and mortification. Pitilessly, then, the rogue had edged himself into that tight, reluctantly yielding channel, sheathing himself to the testicles inside her tortured, ravaged, monstrously distended rectum. And then he had begun to sodomize her while his aide, who had removed his loincloth to await his own turn with the condemned noblewoman, took up the switch and, squatting, amused himself by flicking poor Lydia's belly and cunt and breasts with vicious little cuts that added to her unspeakable torment.
When the torturer had ejaculated his bubbling seed deep within her bowels, he had drawn himself out, his organ stained with blood and the sticky substance which lined her ravaged rectal sheath. Then his aide, a younger man whose organ was perhaps not so thick but even more elongated, replaced him between the straining naked thighs of the frantic, hysterically shrieking culprit. Once again her buttocks had been gaped open and the torturer's assistant had bottomfucked her even more vigorously and longer.
By now the spectators in the amphitheater were in an uproar of sexual frenzy. Chaste women who had never before cast so much as a flirtatious eye upon another man but their own rightful mates flung themselves into the arms of strangers, their mouths moist and quivering with rapacious desire, their tongues digging into alien mouths, suffering rude hands to creep under their stolas and peplums to fondle the moist twitching oases of their cunts.
Then the torturer and his aide had quitted the arena, and the shuddering body of the naked Lydia Scaurus was left to jerk and twist from the four stakes which had become the altar of her atonement for her murderous deeds, and, half-conscious, she had heard the odious and salacious epithets hurled at her on every side as she hung there praying for death to end her misery and shame.
At the other side of the arena opposite her, a door opened, and she slowly raised her head at the new excited roar of the crowd. The two men who had so brutally sullied her now drew in a wooden cage in which a giant orangutan crouched, jerking at the bars, his beady yellow eyes savage with fury. They drew the cage toward the horrified naked matron, then behind her, while she babbled incoherent supplications, cringing with loathing and terror at the sight of the monstrous ape.
The door to the cage had been made to slide upwards; the two torturers bound ropes to the door's top ridge and harried to vault the low row of the amphitheater to be safe from the beast. Looking up to the Imperial box, they watched Tiberius raise his hand, and they jerked at the ropes which lifted the door. A cry of wild excitement drowned out poor Lydia Scaurus' shriek as the ape waddled out of the cage and, seeing the naked body of the woman straddled in the air before him, approached it. Mad with fear, the red-haired matron turned her face over her shoulder, and her eyes bulged from their sockets to behold the orangutan swaying as it crouched between her thighs. When she felt its hands, grotesquely like a man's, rasp over her bottom and thighs, then her belly, her screams were piteous and harrowing. But this ape had been specially trained to couple with female criminals, a practice which had begun under the mad Nero and had continued with crafty Vespasian. And before the eyes of the incredulous throngs, the ape had crouched over Lydia Scaurus' writhing body, its strong arms griping round her belly, while its huge fiery-red penis sought the way into her quaking cunt. As she jerked and twisted her hips in a mad frenzy of nearly insane terror, the spectators rained down slanderous insults and exhortations to her: "Do not play the coy virgin with your new lover, wicked harlot!
Grant Mm the favors you did Caius! Ah, is he not better equipped than your Caius to plow your furrow, you murderous bitch?"
When Lydia Scarus had felt the ape's organ thrust deep into her vagina, she tugged at her wrists and ankles so madly that blood oozed from under the cords, and her head flung up, her teeth chattering, her eyes revulsing, as she endured the frightful reaming of her tender sheath.
And when the ape had copulated with her, as she hung nearly unconscious with the brutal violation and laceration of her womb, blood dripping to the earth from between her hugely straddled thighs, the torturer called out a command which had been taught the terrible ape, and it had tightened its arms around the ribcages of the condemned woman and crushed her to death...
* * *
Tiberius relived that gory, brutal scene again as he gave an order to Lepidus, the centurion whom he had commissioned to investigate the plot against his life. "What news have you of my Pro-Consul, good Lepidus?"
"Divinity, at your own orders, as you Well know, he has been sent to make inspection of our forts in Gaul."
"It is well. We shall therefore have time to interrogate his slaves. And if, as I well believe, the Lady Julia stands accused of sending that wretch against me with his dagger, then her husband will not return in time to prevent my justice from being done."
"That is a certainty, Divinity. But he himself, is he not loyal?"
"By the gods, I cannot even be sure of this, if so well bred and gracious a woman as Julia would dare plot with a scoundrel to take the life of her Emperor," Tiberius angrily retorted. "But tell me, good Lepidus, what do you know of the Pro-Consul's wife? Is it certain that she is chaste and faithful to her husband?"
"I have sent, at your command, Divinity, men dressed as merchants to Heraclium, who have mingled with the people and made inquiry of the noble Julia," the centurion replied. "They praise her to the skies. They call her chaste as the Vestal Virgins themselves. She has but one confidant among the opposite sex, the Tribune Marcus Vicunus."
"His name is well known to me. His family has served Rome loyally and well. Is he not commander of the garrison at Heraclium?"
"Yes, Divinity," the centurion replied. "When his mother died, and whilst his father was wounded serving in the war against the Vandals, the parents of the noble Julia took him into their house and cared for him, and Julia, then a young maiden, befriended him. But their friendship, from what my men report, is not tinged with lust, Divinity."
Tiberius nursed his scrawny chin as his beady eyes narrowed. He pondered a moment, then exclaimed, "This Marcus Vicunus now comes clearly to my mind. Was he not the hero on whom the Vestal Priestess herself bestowed the laurel wreath for his valor in the battle of Tribidinum?"
"The very same, Divinity."
"I like this not. The populace is a fickle beast. It will take a man and exalt him into a hero because of some slight sword skill in the arena or perhaps some easy victory on the battlefield. It will make him more popular even than the Emperor of all Rome, and thus he becomes a danger to my throne. For even if the slaves accuse the noble Julia, this young man whose courage has won favor with the citizens even in the provinces, might champion her and cause muttering among my subjects that I seek to persecute a helpless and innocent woman.
I tell you, Lepidus, even if this Julia were the Holy Vestal herself, the priestess who guides the serenity of Rome, she shall perish in the arena like the commonest and lowliest of criminals if I learn that it was her brain that conceived the ignoble plot of assassination against me. Go you then to Heraclium, Lepidus, and you and your men shall deliver her slaves to the Mamartine Prison there to be put to interrogation under the law. And do you yourself find some pretext to draw the Tribune Marcus Vicunus into forgetting his boyhood affection for this patrician traitress."
"He is a handsome young man not yet thirty, O Divinity," the centurion quickly replied, "not yet wed but lusty. Yet to his soldiers he is a paragon, who takes his duty like the lowliest foot soldier in the legions, and his men would die for him."
"Therein lies even more danger for me if I affront him by unjustly bringing Julia to trial." Tiberius responded with a scowl. "The history of Rome has examples of uprisings against the Caesars, as you yourself well know. Those who command the legions can oft be stronger than Caesar himself, though the gods should favor him. See to it that our valorous and virile Tribune is given some diversion. I have it! Summon him to Rome by my own edict, and let a villa in the hills of Corium be readied for him and handsome slave girls to wait upon him. We shall find some enticing consort for this hero so that in her arms on the soft couch of passion, he will forget the noble Julia."
CHAPTER TEN
Torches, thrust into metal brackets on the dank stone walls of the lower level of the grim Mamartine Prison, cast a macabre glow on the torture chamber. It was at the north end of the edifice, as wide as the dining chamber of a Senator, and reached by a narrow door to which only Metellus and his principal aide, Berbex, had the key.
For the sake of convenience, those who were sentenced to interrogation under torture, such as slaves or criminals, were quartered in the rat-and-insect-infested dungeons along this subterranean level of the prison.
And this afternoon, just two days after the floggings of Cundemere and Forella and the martyrdom of young virginal Nicias at the villa of the Lady Domitia, three female slaves from the household of the Pro-Consul of Heraclium languished in these foul, nauseous dungeons.
The centurion Lepidus, faithful to his Emperor's orders, had left by chariot for Heraclium the moment after he had quitted Tiberius and arrived the next morning. Knowing that the Pro-Consul himself was still in Gaul, he conferred with his two spies, Bucelus and Gedo, whose mission it had been to ask among the people of Heraclium how the beautiful Julia was loved or hated, and for what reasons. She would be, Gedo and Bucelus reported, absent from the villa at the noon hour, as for the past several days it was known that she went to confer with the Tribune Marcus Vicunus at the garrison of that city on a matter of which nothing was known.
Lepidus, who was ambitious for promotion and realized that it would be swift if he could deliver unto Tiberius the guilty conspirator, be it man or woman, was a man of unprepossessing mien. At thirty, he was stocky, with a cruel, hard face and suspicious eyes, and bore many scars from battles with his legion. Tiberius, with his quixotic whims for sudden friendships as well as for sudden rejections of those who had once claimed to be held in his favor, had seen Lepidus behead with his short sword an angry zealot who had shouted in the streets, while the litter of Tiberius was passing, "Death to the debaucher of Rome!" Touched by this mark of deepest loyalty, he had summoned the rough soldier to his inner chamber and thereupon promoted him to the rank of centurion-"which meant the command of a hundred footsoldiers-"and had given him a simple task to execute. So well had Lepidus acquitted himself that he was now, for all intents and purposes, the arch-spy of the Emperor on all delicate matters which touched the heart of the Empire.
Lepidus himself had been rebuffed in love some five years past by a sweet, quiet girl who was the daughter of his innkeeper. Of lowly birth, though free, Lepidus could not dream of mating with a patrician woman in those days, though now he assuredly could under the aegis of Tiberius, who had even publicly praised him for his deeds. Milite, the delicate, soft-spoken girl whom he had lusted for and whom, he knew, would never lie with him unless it were in legalized union, had refused his awkward and impetuous offer of marriage. She had, she told him, loved another. She had wed that other man, to his fury.
When lust swelled the loins of this coarse centurion, he betook himself to the lupanars and paid in silver dinars for the appeasement of his passions. But now that he had come upon high estate within the Empire, he dreamed but of one thing: to have as bride some aristocratic, sensitive, blue-blooded beauty who needs must spread her thighs for him on the conjugal couch and endure all his salacious fantasies. In many ways he was as cruel as Tiberius, though more direct and far less subtle than the man who was to be succeeded by the half-mad Caligula.
It was for that reason that he wished to execute his duties in Heraclium with the utmost skill, that it might redound to his utmost credit in the eyes of Caesar. He had seen Julia once at the marketplace, accompanied by her maidslaves, and though she had been clad in a simple stola and with her face veiled, the clinging folds of the garment had made his penis jerk with ferocious yearning; a woman such as this, gently bred, aristocrat and pampered, a woman who had had the plaudits of the citizens all these years, would enchant him as his concubine and wife. However, he well knew that if Julia were found guilty of the charge of plotting the assassination of his imperial master, not even his favor with Tiberius would spare her life.
He had dispatched Bucelus and Geda to Julia's villa shortly after the noon hour and seized three slaves. He instructed his men, who were rogues in their mid-thirties and capable of slitting a throat without scruple or qualm so long as they were paid for their endeavors, to select the most toothsome of the females. He wished himself to interrogate them in the torture chamber of the Mamartine prison. And his men followed his orders with an eye for beauty that was surprising, considering their own uncouth and vicious natures. These three captives now awaited the terrible moment of giving testimony. Not a slave in all Rome but knew there was only one way in which her she could give evidence in a civil or criminal case: under the onus of agony.
Scanning the implements which could be put to use against tender, helpless flesh to force truth from unwilling lips, Metellus was prepared to take this testimony. There was the famous rack he himself had devised, with the sharp spike rising up from the floor so that the victim, suspended in the air, drawn over it, needs must arch up her back with fearful stress of musculature to escape the deadly scrape of the pointed tip.
There were braziers, glowing in the fearful gloom, which obscured this grim chamber which not even the torturers could brighten. In the braziers, branding irons, tongs and pincers were heating till they would glow red-hot. There was the ingenious spiked footstool and the "Boots of Hercules," facetiously named because these boots were nothing more than metal sheaths fixed in the floor and which, once strapped around the calves of a naked wench, compressed hundreds of tiny little pinpoints into her tender skin so that she could not move her legs without wounding them agonizingly. She would sit upon the stool, her naked bottom pressing down on similar spikes, no longer than half the length of a pin, her wrists would be tied behind her back and then Metallus or Berbex would lift out one of the branding irons or perhaps a pair of pincers and bring it toward one of her panting, naked breasts. Invariably the sight of this fiendish smoking implement destroyed the stubbornest will.
Since he bore the orders of Tiberius, which he had already shown to the dour Metallus, Lepidus had assigned to himself the delicious pleasure of directing what torture and how much of it should be inflicted on each slave to be interrogated. He knew the Roman law as well as the Emperor himself: first, torture must be applied and the question asked, the answer faithfully recorded by a scribe. To ask a question with only the threat of torture and to receive an answer was not held by the tribunals of the magistrates to be as demonstrably convincing as regards evidence. While it was well known that fear would unlock stubborn tongues, it was equally known that pain once inflicted would urge the reluctant mind to quick humility and hence to quicker response.
"We will start with the youngest slave," Lepidus said. Berbex, who had just taken a swig from a jug of cheap red wine from Samos, chuckled lewdly: "You are a man of experience, it is seen, Centurion Lepidus!
From the kitten one progresses to the cat, and one learns of all the dirty business in alleys as one goes on, eh?
We will try not to spoil her too much for you. I myself have not ploughed the furrow of a dainty girl like that in more days than I care to remember."
"We must have the truth first, before we have our pleasure, Berbex," Lepidus chuckled with a knowing wink. "This is business for the Emperor, and not even I may have enjoyment of these slaves till I have wrested from them the guilty secrets they hide."
"Have no fear, Centurion, we will make them eager to tell you all they know," Metellus laughed.
Berbex, who wore only a short, coarse linen peplum to conceal his maleness and whose suety and heavily muscled body glistened with sweat in the glow of the torches, nodded his bald head and went out of the torture chamber. A few minutes later he shoved the door open and pushed in a weeping young girl, whose beauty at once made Lepidus tremble with an unholy lust. He had always believed that it took an older woman to drain the juices from his testicles, a woman wise in the ways of coupling and of the soft play of lips and tongue and fingers. Even at the lupinars he had hesitated at purchasing the services of the charming dancers from Nikos and Corybanthis, girls from twelve to fourteen who, it was reputed, could give good account of themselves on the palette or the couch of lust. They seemed too frail, too dainty, too artificial, to satisfy his coarse passions; but this girl made him think that he might well have been wrong in his appraisal.
lone was a Grecian slave, one of the favorites of the Lady Julia herself, gently treated and never once given the whip-"for the household of the villa at Heraclium was one of clemency and indulgence and kindness.
Even the old steward, Livius, could not remember when he had last been told to use the ferula or the flagellum, even on the most surly male slave.
lone was fifteen, of medium height, and her beautiful dark brown hair fell in a long cascade nearly to her hips. She wore a plain white tunic around the waist of which was tied a gold cord, and her exquisitely chiseled bare feet were shod in sandals. Her face was round and sweet, her forehead pure and high, her brows expressive and thick, and her limpid dark brown eyes were now glazed with tears. Her mouth was a sweet rosebud, red and soft and moist and full, almost the mouth of a woman or of a hetirae, and it was trembling pitifully. Her body, too, was almost that of a woman, and even Metallus, hardened as he was to putting female slaves to the torture, stared at her with greedy eyes and felt a surging of lust under his own peplum.
Berbex had grasped the girl by her rounded, dimpled shoulders, his eyes lecherously studying the soft curves of her neck, the rondures of her lovely plump, saucy bottom which the tunic adhered to so adoringly.
"Here we are, my pretty," he said roughly as he forced her down the three stone steps to the floor of the torture chamber. "Now, do you see what is in this room, girl? It is meant for you, so you must speak the truth-""
"With your permission, good Berbex," Lepidus said irritably, "I will fulfill the function of the Emperor here. It is I who shall question this slave. First, let her be stripped naked!"
"Oh, my lord, what are you going to do to me? What have I done?" lone sobbed as she sank down on her knees and, clasping her soft little hands, stared at the stern emissary of the Emperor with agonized gaze.
"You are here, girl, to give evidence against your mistress, the Lady Julia, wife of the Pro-consul of Heraclium," Lepidus replied in a cold, cutting voice. "You are a slave, are you not? I do not see a metal collar about your neck."
"No, L-Lord," the lovely dark-brown haired girl quavered, "no slave in the household of my mistress wears the collar. But we serve her gladly, for she is kind and good-""
"And other things as well, which we shall learn from your lips, girl," Lepidus interrupted harshly. "Rise and remove your tunic, and be quick about it. Or else Berbex, who brought you here, will tear it from your body."
"Oh, please, but I have done nothing, I swear I have done nothing," lone sobbed. "What are you going to do to me? I know nothing!"
"That is a guilty remark in itself, wench," Lepidus bent down to her and sneered, savoring the way she cringed back on her knees, her eyes widening with terror. "Berbex, this modest little dove will not shed her feathers willingly."
"I will shed them for her," the fat, bald assistant torturer guffawed. Bending toward the girl, his fat, strong fingers gripped the neck of the tunic and ripped it from her shuddering body. Ione uttered a cry of shame and fright, at once clapping one hand over her most secret part, her other hand hovering over her panting young bosom.
The eyes of the three men glittered with avid lust at the sight of that charming nudity. Ione's soft skin was a pale, milky hue, but the voluptuous young curves of her body augured indescribable delights. Kneeling as she was, and cringing in her shame, she unknowingly proffered the appetizing curves of her delicious young bottom to their gloating eyes; plump, round, tightly spaced cheeks divided by a gradually broadening shadowy cleft, and lovely long, elegantly curving thighs which rose from saucily turned, firm, milky calves.
To see her thus on her knees with hands covering her bosom and loins, with her mantle of thick dark brown hair falling to her waist was to experience intoxicating rut. And here in the bowels of the grim prison, no one would concern himself about the modesty or the virginity of a slave, unless, to be sure, that slave were of noble birth or blood, such as the Lady Julia. The two torturers, as well as Lepidus, were well aware of this, and they knew that while they might not touch or sully or couple with the exalted beauty of the wife of the Pro-Consul, even if she were pronounced guilty of the crime with which she had been charged, they could find adequate solace and consolation with subjecting these three helpless slaves to their unbridled rut.
"How shall we begin, Centurion?" Metellus' voice was hoarse with concupiscence.
"I should like to see her whipped a little," Lepidus calmly rejoined. "Painfully, but not enough to mar this tender skin. By Jupiter, how white it is, like asses' milk!"
"Oh, my lord, why are you going to wh-whip me?" Ione sobbed, fixing the emissary of Tiberius with a poignant, tearful gaze. "I swear by Zeus, father of all the gods, that I am innocent, that my dear mistress has done nothing wrong! She is too good, too kind. She helps the poor and bears no ill will against any one."
"Except the Emperor," Lepidus dryly countered.
"Let her be strung up by the thumbs and put the stretching rod between her legs so that the whip may caress her more tender parts if it is so desired!"
Metellus now advanced to give aid to his companion, and the two torturers seized the weeping, pleading, naked girl and dragged her, despite her prayers and heartrending entreaties, to the center of the dungeon from whose ceiling, down through a pulley wheel fixed into the stone, a pair of strong cords had been lowered.
While Metellus forced the girl to stand with her naked bottom against his loins, his hands gripping her elbows and drawing them back, Berbex made the cords fast around her dainty thumbs. When this was done, Metellus released her, but not without cupping her splendidly round, firm, naked titties and letting his hands slip down the smooth gloss of her naked belly and down to the silky growth between her rounded, huddling thighs.
Tears ran down her flushed cheeks as she stared beseechingly at the Centurion, evidently thinking this was some terrible nightmare from which she would soon waken, frantic with shame at having displayed her young nakedness before three men whose avid gaze had already warned her, virgin though she was and of tender years, of their ignoble hunger for her tasty flesh.
Going to the wall, Berbex new drew upon another rope which operated the pulley rope, and lone with a fearful cry announced the tautening of her body and then the infernal traction upon her tender thumbs which hoisted her until her sandaled feet convulsively flailed the air above the damp stone floor of the torture chamber.
All the magnificent contours of her milky-white nakedness were immediately cast into a stark and provocative relief; the soft sides were tautened and one saw the rib cage, the tensing jounciness of the haunches, and the tightening curves of Ione's buttocks, the spasmingly trembling thighs whose muscles rippled violently under the soft, satiny skin, and the splendid breasts whose fine, smooth skin was stretched, as were the softly downed nests of her armpits. Her head tilted back so that the luxurious mane of dark brown tresses floated in the air, just below her quivering waist, and lone wept like a child to implore mercy from her torturers.
"Aim-"ahhhh-"ohhh, it hurts me, oh, my thumbs! Let me down! I swear to you by the great Zeus that I have done nothing, nothing at all, to be punished this way! Oh, send for my mistress, Lady Julia! She will tell you I am a good girl!"
"A stupid girl, I warrant," Berbex growled as he squatted down to pick up a heavy round wooden rod three feet long and to each end of which was affixed a metal gyve. Moving to the girl's dangling feet, he gripped her left ankle with his left hand, sprang open the lock of the gyve at one end of the rod, and clamped it around the slim right ankle. Then it was a simple matter to grasp her left ankle in his other hand and drag it out, while poor lone uttered frantic cry upon cry in her terror, glancing over her shuddering naked shoulders to see what he was doing, while he sprang open the metal bracket at the other end of the rod and affixed it securely around the other limb.
When he straightened, lone was presented in the most licentious way, the rod between her ankles forcing her thighs fully a yard apart and thus revealing all her maiden secrets. One could see the rims of her cuntlips, pink and quivering in their innocence, and even the shadowy promise of the groove of her behind seemed more distended now.
The atrocious stress upon her muscles, since her body hung by all its weight from her thumbs, fully accentuated all the splendor of her young body. For a long moment the emissary of the Emperor and the two torturers considered the suspended body of lone with unwavering gaze.
Lepidus now drew up a wooden footstool and seated himself upon it facing the weeping girl and to her left.
He stared upwards slowly, feasting his eyes on the dimpled knees, the sweet, round, milky thighs at whose peak appeared the soft, silky frame work of pubic hair which garlanded her virgin cunt. Then the goblet of the belly and then the exuberant rounds of her lovely, full bosom.
It was all he could do to restrain himself from falling upon her and ravishing her then and there.
But he was playing for far higher stakes than a succulent young girl, and so, making his voice as cold and harsh as he could and trying to conceal the throbbing tones of lust that surged within him, he demanded, "Now, girl, how long have you been a slave to the Lady Julia?" Berbex had taken from a panoply of flagellatory instruments set upon hooks in a stone wall off to the rear a soft but wide strap, its handle end of double thickness, about two feet long, two inches wide, with the end cut into a kind of rounded arc. Whimpering, lone turned her head slowly to see the bald, fat, half-naked rogue approach, the strap in his right hand. Lepidus angrily repeated: "Answer the question, girl! How long have you been a slave to her?"
"I-"I was born to her household, my L-lord," the poor girl stammered tearfully, trying again to look over her shoulder to see where Berbex was placing himself. "My mother was a slave to hers, and she gave me birth in that same house. Oh, let me go, I can tell you nothing!" Lepidus caught the eye of the grinning Berbex and nodded. The strap swung up slowly, then crashed down over the milky bottom-"globes. Ione uttered a piercing scream and lunged forward, but the effort was a new torture because of the traction of her tender thumbs. Her head flung back, her eyes dilating and blinded with tears: "I have told the truth-"I have told the truth-"don't whip me-"oh, please my lord!"
"And you are how old, little bitch?" the ugly centurion demanded.
"F-fifteen, my l-l-lord."
"Well, girl, if you have been with the Lady Julia all your life, you must know all about her, and you will tell us everything, do you understand?" Again Lepidus caught the eye of the fat torturer and he nodded. Again the strap danced over the ripely rounded curves of Ione's buttocks.
"Aaahrrr!! Oh, yes, my lord, I'll tell everything! But there's nothing to tell, I swear by Zeus, there's nothing! She has done nothing wrong, nor have I. Oh, my lord, have mercy on me, my arms will break, they'll tear from their sockets-""
"What does it matter if they do? You are a slave, and we want the truth and nothing else from you. This little whipping is only a beginning, lone. Conceal nothing from us, or fire and the rack shall loosen your tongue," Lepidus threatened. "Now, listen carefully and think before you speak. This is important to the Emperor himself. Do you know the name of a man who called himself Lysander Bertifox?"
"Oh, no, my lord! I have never heard it till this moment!" For the third time, the strap in Berbex's hand slashed over the tender, ripe young milky bottom, this time across the tops of the lovely rounded hips, and lone lunged forward with a scream of pain, arching her torso in agonized suffering, her soft nipples stiffening under the stress of all the traction that made her tender thumbs ache so maddeningly and horribly.
"Have you seen your mistress in secret consultation with any man who is not known to you?" Lepidus ruthlessly continued.
Once again the strap thwacked angrily on tender, milky flesh, wedding itself to the base of Ione's ripe young bottomglobes.
"Aiii! Oh, mercy, it hurts so, oh, my thumbs-"I can't bear the pain-"no, no, my lord, never-"my mistress has done nothing wrong, my lord!"
"But she goes to visit the Tribune Marcus Vicunus, does she not? His name is known to you?"
"Yes, yes, my lord," lone sobbed pitifully. "She has known him for years, when he was a boy and she but a young girl. There is no harm in their meeting, all the slaves know this, as does my lord the Pro-Consul."
"Have you ever heard her speak about the Emperor?"
Hardly had Lepidus posed this question when Berbex sent the strap whistling across the small of Ione's delicately hollowed back, a crushing and bruising blow whose shock further exacerbated the atrocious tractioning of her naked young body.
"Oooohhhhoouuuu!! Mercy-"oh, mercy, my lord-"I am suffering so!"
"You are a tender little pullet, bitch, and you have not yet been plucked. Look, do you think we are here to give you a few stripes of the strap and send you off with a scolding?" Lepidus growled. He had not taken his eyes off the soft delicate lips of Ione's virgin cunt nor the flexing columns of her straddled thighs. He felt his cock turgid with longing, and his forehead was beaded with sweat as he stared hungrily at her loins. "You will speak. Whatever she has said in your presence of the noble, the divine Tiberius, that you will acquaint me with at once, or I shall have Berbex take red-hot pincers to your calves and the hollows of your knees! Speak, simpering little bitch!"
As if to punctuate this dire threat, the fat, bald torturer applied his strap brutally, with the full strength of his burly arm, right down the middle of Ione's quivering, splotched bottomcheeks. The arced end of the strap twacked ferociously against the girl's chinkbone, the edges of the band clinging salaciously over the pouting inner edges of both nether globes.
"Owwweeeyahhhrrr!!! No more, my lord, in the name of Zeus I implore mercy! Let me off-"oh, my how it hurts-"oh, my lord, my lord, she has never spoken of the Emperor that I have heard, I swear it on my life!"
"Then it is your life that will be taken from you, slut, unless you speak with less of a forked tongue," Lepidus growled as he rose from the stool. Applying thumb and forefinger to the delicate coral buds of Ione's nipples, he stared up at her tearbathed face and, grinning evilly, slowly tightened his grip of those sensitive points.
"Oh, don't-"aaaaahhh-"oh lord Zeus, deliver me-"oh, I cannot bear it-"please-"please, my lord -"aaiii-"mercy, mercy, I shall die-"oh, how it hurts me-"please let go-"oh, how it hurts me-"oh, my lord, please let go of me!" lone screamed.
"Give me the strap, Berbex," Lepidus said in a voice that trembled with lust. The fat torturer shrugged with a grimace of reluctance, then handed the implement to the centurion.
"I've hardly damaged her, Centurion," he whined, "only a few little red marks that will be gone by morning. Why, she's hardly touched."
"Now listen to me well, lone," Lepidus hissed as he held the handle of the strap in his right hand, grasped the end in his left and held it up before the tractioned, naked sufferer. "I am tired of your lying and your evasions. You are not dealing alone with me, bitch, but with the Divinity, the immortal Tiberius! I have but to tell him of your obstinacy and he will send you to the beasts, to be torn apart by the claws of the lions or the tigers, or to be bound on the back of a wild aurochs! Or perhaps he will have you crucified head downwards, lone, with metal spikes driven through your wrists and ankles. And then he will have archers send whistling arrows between your thighs to torment you until at last you beg for death! You have not yet begun to taste the justice of Tiberius. Now, you are warned-"speak, girl! What treasonous words did the Lady Julia utter against the Divine Tiberius?"
Drawing back his right arm, he dealt lone a fearful blow across her breasts, flattening the coral buds with the savage blow of the leather band. The girl's body wrenched and lunged frenziedly, while a mad, harrowing scream burst from her young throat: "Ooouuuuu!!! Ahhh-"oh, my lord, I cannot tell you more because there is nothing to tell! Oh, let me down, please let me down, it hurts me everywhere-"my thumbs, my b-bosom-"mercy, mercy, in the name of Zeus the Omnipotent!"
"Berbex, give me the silver pincers which you use to spur gentle matrons to be more garrulous," Lepidus salaciously chuckled.
The fat, bald torturer came to his side with alacrity, licking his fat lips as he stared up at the sweat-glistening, stretched, straddled, naked body of the unfortunate young girl. He handed Lepidus an exquisitely crafted pair of tweezers such as a woman of high fashion might use to pluck out offending hairs from her body or her brows. In return, Lepidus gave him back the strap and murmured something into the ear of the brutal torturer of the Mamartine Prison, who nodded eagerly and chuckled, then took his place behind the shuddering, whimpering sufferer.
Lepidus stared up into the tortured face of the young slave, ran his calloused left palm over her soft, agony-sweating belly, and then approached the tweezers towards the downy curls which framed her virgin cunt.
"Your mistress is much too gentle with you indeed, lone," he muttered, "she has not even depilated you as is the custom with all slaves. Let me perform this tender service in her stead." With this the centurion seized a sprig of soft, silky pussy-hairs, tensed the jaws of the little device and yanked savagely.
"Aiiiieeeee!! Oh, don't my lord, not there! Oh, for the love of Zeus on Olympus, not there! Have mercy-"" the naked young girl shrilled as her body lunged and twisted violently, the pulley-wheel creaking its protest.
The cords about the tender thumbs had dug into the soft flesh, and those soft, sweet joints were swollen and darkened by the stoppage of the circulation of her maiden blood. Her thighs strove furiously to clench, but the bracketed rod which fixed between her slim ankles presented this protective maneuver. He took hold of yet another curl of pussyhair and insisted, "Answer, bitch, what has the Lady Julia spoken in your presence on the subject of her Emperor?"
He raised his left hand and promptly Berbex regaled the weeping girl with a sonorous smack of the leather strap across the middle of her tender back, the arced end whisking around to smite against the side of her right breast. Again a piteous, high-pitched scream tore through the torture chamber as lone jerked and twisted herself about madly in her inhuman suffering, and Lepidus at that moment brutally yanked at the tweezers to tear out the intimate virgin hair of the miserable slave girl. Again and again he repeated this diabolical torment, to which Berbex added the burning, bruising blows of the strap over thighs and back, until she was nearly fainting, hysterical, babbling plaints and pleas for mercy, avowing that the Lady Julia had not once been disloyal to the Divinity.
But after a pause, Lepidus cruelly approached the tweezer to the twitching, pink lips of the tender slit, and, taking up a fold of the coral loveflesh which had never known man, lightly compressed the jaws. Ione's voluptuous naked young body stiffened, her feverish, dilated, bloodshot eyes lowered to see the obscene and fiendish placement of that infernal little device, and then she shrieked, "Oh, nooooo!! Not that, my lord! Oh, in the name of mercy, pardon, pardon, I shall die, I can bear no more! Do not do that to me, my lord!" Smiling, he stared into her contorted, agonized face and slowly tightened the silver jaws. The girl's body jerked and almost leaped from the ropes which sank deep into the flesh of her numbed, aching thumbs, her head bowed and then flung back in unspeakable agony as she screamed: "Oh, stop, I will tell-"I will tell-"have mercy and I will tell!"
"Speak quickly, then!" he hissed as he eased the pressure of the silver jaws.
"She-"said once, and I swear by Zeus that that is all I ever heard her speak-"that-"that T-Ti-berius was a silly old f-f-fool. I swear that was all. But she said it with a smile, and she meant no harm. Oh, my lord, have mercy on us both!"
"That is a good beginning," Lepidus said with a cruel grin, "for a patrician who calls the Divinity of the Empire a silly old fool may wish next to be rid of him. We shall have the next salve in presently, Berbex. But first, let us amuse ourselves a bit with this little bitch. Tiberius will pronounce sentence on her in due time, have no fear."
"I will let her down to the floor, Centurion," Berbex panted, but it was Metellus who, whipping off his peplum and baring his massive, angrily swollen prick, was first to the wall to lower the pulley rope so at last Ione's bare feet rested on the dank stone floor. The emissary of Tiberius deliberately stripped naked now, and gripped poor lone by the naked hips as he prodded her twitching and inflamed virgin cunthole with his swollen meatus. Metellus, meanwhile, had gone behind the unfortunate victim, his rough, brutal hands caressing her dimpled shoulders and slim, smoothly hollowed back till at last his fingers luxuriated in the jouncy hillocks of her angrily splotched, soft bottomcheeks. With a brusque and brutal movement, he distended both cheeks to expose the dainty pink fissure of her maiden anus, and with a grunt of satisfaction gouged the head of his cock against that delicate inlet. Ione screamed wildly as she turned her head back to contemplate the chief torturer's savagely flushed face, then twisted her head back to the centurion whose hands now cupped her titties as his prick pressed adamantly against the outer labia of her cunt.
Berbex, impatiently waiting his turn, smacked his lips with evil joy at the scene of this lovely lightskinned young slave compressed between her two ravishers. Ione's shrill shriek announced the rending of her maidenhead as Lepidus, with a hoarse shout, forced entrance into the maiden slit and, meeting the barrier, burst through it with a single mighty lunge of his spear. It was echoed by yet another shout as the unfortunate girl felt Metellus lunge his mighty weapon past the sphincter muscles which guarded so vigilantly the hitherto unprofaned sheath between the saucy, round, milky cheeks of her bare bottom. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, and her mouth gaped now in a constant cry as both men began to fuck her with savage and rapid thrusts, till it seemed to the half-fainting young sufferer that she could feel both their organs coalescing and meeting within a single concourse of her tender flesh.
When they at last had shot their essence into her channels and withdrawn, leaving her sagging in her bonds, though still conscious, bald, fat Berbex sought to revive her that she might give good account of herself to his own rutting mettle. Seizing the strap, he dealt her a few cruel slashes across her naked bubbies and belly, and then, falling upon her with a hoarse yell of greedy delight, sank his fat fingers into the trembling, splotched cheeks of her bottom as he pressed his prick into that bleeding gape which brief moments before had been so chaste and unprofaned.
When they had finished with her, they untied the cords which had encrusted into the flesh of her thumbs, and covering her body with a coarse robe, had one of the prison guards carry her back to her cell where she would await the judgement of Tiberius.
* * *
After refreshing themselves with swigs from a jug of the wine of Samos and restoring their garments about their persons, Berbex, Metellus and Lepidus prepared to interrogate the second of the three slaves taken from the household of the Lady Julia, the respected wife of the Pro-Consul of Heraclium. And the choice of Lepidus fell upon the fiery red-haired Drusilla, who was the slave of the bath of both lord and lady of the villa, and whose beauty was even more dazzling and fulfilled than that of the unfortunate fledgling they had just voraciously enjoyed.
Drusilla was twenty-three years of age, svelte and tall, with sensitive oval face in which a trace of insolence and pride appeared; she, like all the other slaves of that household, had never known the lash or cruel words, and she fancied her post in the household as being infinitely superior to that of many other slaves such as lone. Alas, she was to be severely disabused of that notion!
What they did not know was that Drusilla abominated the caresses of the male, and her tenderest confidant and lover, Myceta, was, by the ironic whim of the gods, the third of the slaves seized and abducted from that ill-destined household.
Berbex led her in with a mock gentility, and the unfortunate beauty, suspecting nothing, started with surprise and alarm when she saw the instruments of torture, the smoking braziers, the panoply of whips and straps and scourges, the rack and all the other infernal instruments of torment.
Lepidus was even more direct with her, since she was more mature. No sooner than Berbex led her in than he curtly commanded, "Remove your tunic, slave, and prepare yourself for interrogation."
"But I do not understand, good master," Drusilla's voice was sweet and honeyed. "Why do you threaten me? What have I done?"
"You are the slave of the Lady Julia, are you not?"
"But of course. I am the attendant of the bath of my master and my mistress. I have had that honor for three years. I am loyal to them."
"Perhaps too loyal," Berbex licked his lips as he studied the body of Drusilla molding her tunic.
"What do you mean by that?" the red-haired beauty turned on him with widening eyes. The sight of his hairy naked fat chest and shoulders, the bulging biceps of his arms, the piggish look of his features, began at last to register their terrifying imprint on her consciousness.
"Your mistress, girl, is suspected of plotting to assassinate the Emperor," Lepidus informed her, "and to this end we need your testimony. You will speak the truth, or you will suffer horribly, I promise you. Strip her, Berbex."
"Nothing could give me more pleasure," Berbex laughed as he reached for her clothing.
Drusilla uttered a cry and turned, but much too late. In a trice her tunic was rent apart and fluttered to her feet, leaving her naked. Shrinking, both hands clapped against her extremely furry lovebush, the fiery beauty turned crimson as she saw the eyes of the men gazing on her nakedness.
Her buttocks were long ovals, sinuously set together with a widening cleft which led to both her amorous orifices. Her calves were highset, the knee-hollows dimpled. Her breasts were uptilting, generously firm and closely spaced gourds, larger and riper by far than the juiciest pears that grow in the valley of the Etranium.
Her belly was sleek, dimpled widely but not deeply by a kiss-nook of exquisite delicacy, and she was virgin to man... but not to the perverse aggression of her sweet lover Myceta, who had employed the artificial phallus so dear to the dwellers of Lesbos that they might know what pleasures man could bring without suffering man's brutality.
"I-"I know nothing-"I swear I know nothing-"" she babbled, beginning to sweat in her fear as they formed a circle around her. "My mistress is devoted to the Emperor, she could not be guilty of treason."
"This long-legged wench," Lepidus deliberated, "seems to tower over us, good Berbex. We should at least be courteous to so fair a damsel. Let her wear the Boots of Hercules and rest upon the stool." Duped into believing for a moment that the men believed her and would not harm her, but still keeping both hands frantically clutched over her pussy-fur, Drusilla allowed Berbex to take her by the elbow and steer her toward the stool and the spiked boots. But when she saw the horrid surface of the stool, she uttered a shriek and tried to flee. It took all three men to subdue her, to grasp her by the elbows (Metellus with his arms clasped about her belly) then to force her over to the stool and thrust her down upon it, then to force her feet into the spiked boot and fasten the brackets at the outside which tightened those infernal coverings. Instantly she felt the prick of a thousand tiny pinpointed sharp darts in her bare calves and ankles, and she shrieked and tried to rise, for her tender bottom was assailed by her convulsive spasms once the spikes of the torture-boots dug into her soft calves and feet.
Squatting beside her, Berbex took a wide leather strap affixed to the under side of the stool and drew it over her thighs where he buckled it at the other end beneath her, thus compelling her to sit on the torturing surface of the stool. Trying to arch herself off the myriad spikes that probed for her bottom and her loins, sweat and tears dripping down her contorted face, Drusilla feverishly pleaded for mercy and swore she would tell whatever she could.
Lepidus picked up the strap which Berbex had cast aside after he had ravished poor lone. Facing her, he drew it back and calmly demanded, "Now speak quickly and truthfully, Drusilla. Have you ever heard your lady speak ill of our divine Emperor?"
At the end of the question, he slashed the strap against the summits of her gourd-like titties. Drusilla's body jerked and a scream tore from her, but in her reaction, her naked tender bottom felt the gouging, prickling, stabbing points which lined the surface of the stool.
"Eeeyyyyoueeeeeehhh!!! Let me go-"I will tell you everything, I swear I will! It hurts too much! Ahhrr, oh, my legs, my poor bottom!"
"As soon as you have told us everything, we will release you from your resting place," Lepidus laughed as he drew back the strap and let her horrified, tear-glazed eyes fix upon it with almost frenzied apprehension.
He pursued, "Have you ever heard the name of Lysander Bertifox? Have you ever seen the Lady Julia closet herself with a strange man?"
"Oh, no, not that name, but in the bath two weeks ago as I was soaping my lady, she asked me if I thought Rome wouldn't be happier under a lesser tyrant."
"Mark that well, Berbex," Lepidus snapped at the crumb joyously. "From calling him a fool to wishing to be rid of him-"it is but an easy step, and the next is to draw the dagger which would cut him down perfidiously. Now then, Drusilla," he went on as he turned back to the weeping, naked redhead, "What else did you hear your mistress say about the Divine Tiberius?" Once again the strap flailed out to curl around her titties with an angry snap. "Eeeeeeeeeowwww! Have mercy-"not there-"oh, have mercy and let me go! I swear that is all I ever heard my mistress speak about the Emperor," Drusilla wailed.
"You have done well, Drusilla. Release her now, Berbex. Tie her down upon that bench and we will reward her for the promptness of her reply," the Centurion replied.
Swiftly and greedily Berbex and Mercellus undid the strap that held poor Drusilla to her stool, undid the straps and brackets that clenched the sheaths around her trembling calves. Scores of tiny blood-flecks decorated her legs where the spikes had kissed so cruelly. Then they lifted her agony-sweating naked body from the stool as she stumbled between them in her suffering, her magnificent bottom splotched with countless tiny, angry red pricks which had begun to turn blue. They flung her down upon the bench with her arms dragged beyond her head, and swiftly attached wrists and ankles. Then Metellus doffed his peplum to reveal the swollen weapon of his massive cock.
At that abhorrent sight, the beautiful young red-haired slave raised her head, her eyes bulging, her splendid titties heaving, and uttered a hoarse cry: "Ohhh, not that, not that-"oh, kill me instead-"for the love of Jupiter, don't touch me, I can't bear it-"oh, put me to any other torture, but not that!" Berbex, who squatted at one side of the bench, approached a stubby forefinger towards the dark red thicket of the unfortunate young woman's cunt. Her eyes fixed on it with revulsion and she tried to twist her loins away. But with a snigger, the fat bald torturer obscenely imbedded his finger as far as it would go, and then exclaimed, "By the balls of Hercules, this bitch is no virgin," while Drusilla, twisting her face to one side, groaned," Oh, in mercy, kill me, kill me, quickly!"
"I mark her loathing of us, good Berbex," the centurion chuckled, "and I will wager ten gold sesterces I know the reason why she does rebuke us for our manly lusts. Have you not heard of the tender games of those wenches who dwelt upon the isle of Lesbos and forswore all men? Yet they coveted that pleasure-giver which we alone have between our thighs, and so they fashioned simulacra of wood and even metal, tying these false phalli between their thighs so they could play the game of the two-backed beast even as doth man with maid." He had guessed Drusilla's secret better than he knew, and the naked redhead writhed in her bonds futilely pleading with them not to harm her in that loathsome way. But Lepidus, baring his own virile cock, knelt down on the bench between her thighs, and sinking his fingers into her hips, taunted her for a long moment by prodding her furry cunthole with the tip of his prong till, tiring of the game and overcome by his rut for her sumptuous charms, he drove himself in her to his balls; then, stretching out over her, he fucked her brutally, his left hand squeezing one of her titties, his right hand slipping under her behind to insert a forefinger into the tender orifice of her asshole.
Drusilla screamed and moaned and arched and wriggled frantically under his profanation of her two amorous chasm. "By the gods," Berbex swore when the centurion had at last risen from the bench to leave Drusilla weeping bitterly, "such an unnatural slut should learn to pay more homage to a man, do you not agree, good Lepidus?"
"With all my heart!"
"Nay, but I would mean, with all my cock, rather," Berbex guffawed. At his whispered suggestion, Lepidus chuckled, then, seizing the silver tweezers, began to yank out sprigs of the dark red pussyhair while the fat bald torturer, inserting his thumbs in the comers of Drusilla's mouth, stretched them and commanded, "Open your mouth, bitch, and stick out your tongue and lick my proper weapon, which will serve you better than a poor thing made of wood or metal!"
Drusilla retched and groaned at this order, but the infernal twinges of pain which the tweezers continued to inflict on her soft luxuriant pubis finally overcame her abhorrence; her delicate long pink tongue which had so often adored the tender love-cleft of her sweet comrade Myceta at last emerged and tremblingly began to rasp against Berbex's surging prick. And when the rogue could endure no more of such sweet Tantalus-torment, he bade Lepidus desist and then, replacing the centurion between Drusilla's writhing thighs, he fucked her with savage brutality which made her body jerk and arch and clatter on the wooden bench of martyrdom.
Then it was the turn of Metellus who, emulating his colleague, forced her to open her mouth and tongue his cock, and then he too ravaged her.
"Now for the third and last of the slaves," Lepidus decreed.
"At once, Centurion, but shall I first take this bitch back to her cell?" Berbex demanded.
"No, for this last wench, Myceta, is a handsome, mature baggage, and the sight of Drusilla here will loosen her tongue the more quickly when she sees how we punish stubbornness," the centurion decided.
And so again the door of the torture chamber swung open to admit a new victim, and Berbex, laughing uproariously, dragged in by the wrist the horrified and sobbing thirty-year-old Myceta. At the sight of her lover Drusilla stretched out on the bench, Myceta nearly fainted with horror, for Lepidus, again taking up the tweezers, salaciously prodded the thick red bush of the sobbing, distraught and brutally ravished Drusilla.
"It seems that the two of you share tender regard for each other," the centurion chuckled. "Ah, I have it-"perchance both of you have enjoyed the forbidden rites of Sappho in the dead of night when your mistress and master lie in slumber... that is why you nearly swoon, Myceta."
"Ohh, ohh! Myceta groaned, unable to speak. Her hair, the hue of newly mown hay, was done in an imposing chignon; her body was buxom, but her skin was soft and pink like a young girl's and her enormous blue eyes were filled with tears. In a trice, she was seized by Metellus and Berbex, and, despite her frantic sobbing pleas, was stripped naked and fixed in the whipping pillory. On a rectangular dais raised a foot or two off the stone floor, there stood an upright beam to which a headboard of a pillory was affixed. The upper half-"for this headboard was sectioned-"was opened and lifted, and poor Myceta's neck and wrists were forced into the holes, then the board was lowered and locked. Berbex exclaimed aloud over the opulence and splendor of the victim's bottom and thighs; "Ah, here's a bottom that fairly begs for the whip," he gloated, "look at those plump round cheeks with such smooth soft pink skin, and that brown cleft between them trying to hide from my gaze, the modest slut! I'll make your backside yawn it open, my beauty, never fear!" And all three men once again felt the pangs of lust as they circled the weeping woman, admiring the pendant rounds of her full ripe bosom, the moss of her belly, the thick forest of her cunthairs. Metellus went to a bucket in whose vinegar-and-hysop-steeping contents a thick birch rod was soaking, seized it, shook out the drops, then advanced toward the dais, and, patting the shrinking round full bottom with the rod, directed, "Bitch, if you don't want to be sent to the arena and have the lions claw that juicy backside of yours, you'll answer when Centurion Lepidus questions you. Go on, good Lepidus, she's ready for the question!"
"Speak, Myceta! Have you ever heard the Lady Julia invoke the Fates to end the life of the Divine Caesar, or herself swear to do the deed?" the centurion hissed.
Before Myceta could answer, Metullus delivered a whistling, thudding blow of the bulky birch across the plumpest curves of the woman's naked behind.
"Ahhhh, have mercy, oh, I know nothing, I swear it on the gods," Mycetus wailed. "My mistress is the soul of goodness, she would not;-"ohh-"ahrrr-" aiiiii-"Mercy-"ahrr-"ohh, I cannot bear it, you are cutting me to ribbons, oh, noble lord, I swear I speak the truth! Pity!" For at the centurion's impatient sign, Metellus had slashed the rod five fierce and rapid times over her bottom, concentrating the strokes over the summits of Myceta's enticingly opulent naked bottom. The woman plunged, kicked, twisted and writhed, and her fine pink skin was vividly splotched with the angry striations of the stinging withes.
Now, moving round to the front of the pillory, the chief torturer playfully tapped each of her dangling ripe breasts with the ends of the withes while the unhappy slave tearfully implored mercy; then, without warning, he applied a furious stroke that made her left tit dance in the air and which tore an inhuman scream from her gaping mouth while her love-companion Drusilla called out hysterically, "Ohh, in the name of pity, spare her, spare her, she is innocent!"
Another equally savage cut against the other pendant bosomglobe drew a frenzied shriek from Myceta, and a babbled avowal: "Wait-"wait-"no more, I-"I'll try-"oh, mercy, spare me the awful rod-"I'll speak-""
"Speak swiftly, for I lose my patience," Lepidus snapped. Approaching the moaning, weeping, squirming naked captive, he set the silver tweezers to her left nipple and cruelly tightened the sharp little jaws.
A prolonged, animal-like yell, that of a beast in mortal agony, tore from her: "Eeeee-"ahrrr-" ouuuuuu-"aiiiii-"I will tell, I will tell, yes, yes, I'll tell, only in the name of Jupiter the Merciful, no more!
My-"my noble m-"mistress-"she-"she has no l-"love for C-"Caesar-"ohh, let me go, I am dying with the pain, ohh pity!"
"You see, good friends?" the centurion chuckled as he opened the tweezers and revealed the darkened, turgid, agonized lovebud he had so viciously martyrized, "This vaunted noblewoman, this highly esteemed patrician, avowed that she wished to be rid of Tiberius. Now we shall find out how the deed was to be done.
Speak of it, Myceta, or by all the shades in the darkest limbo of Hades, I will have Berbex rip your bottom to shreds and Metellus lash your slit with a little copper ship that will forever after make you insensitive to the naughty pleasures you and Drusilla dote so dearly upon! Speak!"
"I-"oh, I heard it only once, and-"and I do not think it reason, my lord-"oh gods, that I must speak thus-"she said once, when I was serving wine to her guests, that if only Tiberius had as much goodness and humanity in his heart as he has the love of power, all Rome would be a paradise." Lepidus now took up the other nipple between the tweezers, and, smiling sadistically at the frantic naked woman, slowly tightened them. Her maddened shriek responded, as she tried to jerk free her wrists and neck from the pillory yokes: "Aiiueeeeouuuuuahrrr! Ohh merrrrcy, merrcy, my lord, I swear by the eternal gods, she would not kill even a spider, she is too gentle!"
"You've heard, Berbex and Metellus," Lepidus purred as he left Mycetus to writhe and moan at the whipping pillory and moved to confer with the torturers. "Already the testimony of lone and Drusilla is enough to condemn the Lady Julia for treason. Even if the Divine Tiberius thinks her insults not calumnious enough to earn her death, he will cry out for punishment. And you, good friends, will have the joy of inflicting sweetly shameful and deliciously tormenting chastisement on this patrician bitch... yes, the Lady Julia shall know the whip and the rack, at least, if not the sword!"
"I am not so sure," Berbex scratched his bald head, "that we have heard overmuch of treason this day."
"Fool, would you lose your pleasures with a patrician?" Lepidus tempted him. "Think of it, and you too, Metellus! Imagine stripping naked the proud wife of the Pro-Consul of Heraclium... seeing her as her husband alone may behold her... her proud fine skin shrinking at the sight of your lash, her eyes filling with humble, pleading tears as you stretch her body on the torture bench, your fingers roaming over her titties, her cunt, her bottom. When have you, working here despised and neglected in the black bowels of the prison, ever had your joy of such a haughty beauty, immune till now from the punishments you visit upon a common whore?"
"Aye, it is to be considered," Metellus' eyes narrowed.
"Then we must make certain Myceta does not retract her confession," the cunning centurion proposed. And again he whispered to the two torturers, who laughed greedily and nodded. Then the three of them freed Myceta from the pillory and dragged her to a bench but a few feet from the one on which Drusilla lay.
Attaching her by wrists and ankles, the torturers watched as Lepidus seized a branding iron and, crouching over the horrified and whimpering naked woman, showed her the red-hot tip. "Listen well, bitch! If you dare take back a word of what you've said just now, the iron will trace patterns of agony on your fat bottom and titties. Your tongue will be torn out and long skewers will be thrust deep into your belly and thighs!"
"Ohh noo-"oh my noble lords, pardon, pardon!"
"Then you will say before us, that you heard your mistress say to her guests that if Rome could have a new Caesar, it would be a time for rejoicing!" Lepidus hissed as he approached the fiery iron towards Myceta's swelling breasts.
Myceta wildly nodded: "Yes, yes, my lord, I'll say it, it's just as you've told me, oh don't burn me, mercy, noble lord, have pity," Myceta babbled.
"See that you do not forget it, then, bitch," he growled. Thrusting back the iron into the brazier, he stretched himself over Myceta's shuddering body, and dug his cock into her tender cunt. The weeping slave turned her agonized face towards Drusilla, who wept in compassion for the shame she knew her lover was enduring, a shame she herself had just been forced to endure.
And when Lepidus had his turn with the buxom naked victim, Metullus replaced him between her shuddering thighs, and then Berbex.
Thus it was that the ambition of a man rebuffed in honest passion years ago and warped by that rebuff, was to strike against the happiness and reputation of one of the most beautiful, intelligent and goodhearted women in all the Empire...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At the very hour during which lone, Drusilla and Myceta were suffering their agonies in the bowels of the Mamartine Prison, the beautiful matron Julia reclined on her couch and listened anxiously to the words of the Tribune Marcus Vicunus.
He was twenty-eight, six feet tall, with handsome, smiling face, clear blue eyes, polished as a courtier, and yet a valiant soldier whose men adored him for his fairness and honesty. He could wield a sword as well as any foot-soldier or centurion in the legion which he commanded at Heraclium, and he never asked more of any man than he could do himself. Of noble birth and himself wealthy upon the death of his father and the subsequent demise of his beautiful, austere mother, Marcus Vicunus had been one of those dedicated men who believed that their destiny was inextricably entwined with that of Imperial Rome, and so he had become a soldier. He bad risen quickly to the rank of centurion, promoted on the very battlefield where he had slain his first enemy, and then his success had been inevitable. However much the old Emperor Tiberius might indulge in political machinations, he was shrewd enough to realize that the strength and the tenure of his rule lay with the legions. He had followed the career of the young tribune with interest, and Marcus Vicunus had only a few months before spent a week as a guest at the Emperor's summer villa in Brindisium. Of the tribune's unswerving loyalty, Tiberius had not the slightest doubt. But what he did not know was that his own emissary Lepidus, who hated his own lowly birth and was ambitious beyond his station, had long and secretly hated the handsome young Marcus Vicunus.
It went back to about the time when Lepidus had been rebuffed by the daughter of his innkeeper. A week after that rejection, the centurion had espied the girl conversing with a handsome tall young man of high rank in the legion. He had drawn the false conclusion that Marcus and the woman that he had wished to make his wife were sweethearts and that was why she had denied his own suit. It had been but a chance meeting, and what had happened was that the girl's true lover had been wrongly imprisoned on the charge of a greedy moneylender who saw a chance to make a double profit. Marcus, with his nobility of character, had assured the girl that he would personally investigate the charge. A few days later, the girl's lover had been released and Marcus had, in a generous gesture, given him a dowry of gold sesterces so that he might wed that same lovely girl who had implored the generous tribune's aid there in the dusty road.
And so that chance meeting between a tavern girl and one of the heroic young tribunes of Rome had already affected the course of many lives. Lepidus still believed that Marcus had made that girl his mistress, and he had vowed an undying hatred for the popular young military leader of Heraclium. Now that he had risen to favor himself, and having learned that Marcus was a dear friend from boyhood of the Lady Julia, he had seen a golden chance to bring down the tribune from his pedestal and at the same time to humble and to shame and to degrade one of the most beloved women in the Empire.
Why had the dying Lysander Bertifox, in his death throes, muttered the name of Julia as the one who had perpetrated the plot to assassinate Tiberius? That too was the irony of the three Fates who spin and draw out and cut the thread of human destiny. Lysander had fallen enamoured of Julia. An itinerant mendicant and laborer who supported himself by his wits, he had one day stopped at the villa in Heraclium asking for food and gold. Julia's kindness had brought her to the kitchen, and she had seen this man and ordered her steward to tend to his wants. And he had lusted for her, because he could never have so beautiful and noble a mate.
Six months before his attempted assassination of the Emperor, Lysander Bertifox had been flogged by the lictor on the charge of vagrancy and rude speech against the majesty of the Empire. In his shame and fury, the man had vowed vengeance, and it had been he alone who had rushed out of the crowd with a dagger aimed at the heart of lecherous old Tiberius.
Then, put to the torture, knowing he would die, in his spiteful and warped mind, he had tried one last terrible ploy-"that of naming Julia, whom he had met only once and for whom he had lusted ever since, as she who had devised the murderous deed whose instrument he was to have been!
Of such coincidences and calamities is destiny made...
* * *
"My good friend, my dear Marcus," Julia said gently, "I am worried over the absence of my husband in Gaul. I've had no word from him in many weeks. And strange things are happening which disturb me, yet I do not wish to cause my husband needless concern. Three of my slaves are missing from the villa. And my old steward told me that a man who said he had the decree from the Emperor entered here with two men to seize them, on what orders or for what reason I know not."
"I will make inquiry at the Imperial court, my lady," Marcus said as he rose and came to bow low and take Julia's slim hand and bring it to his lips. "You know that I will always be your friend, ready to stand by you in time of need. Just as you and your parents did when mine were lost to me."
"You are indeed a faithful and a good friend, Marcus." Julia smiled teasingly as she added: "But why it is that some woman has not yet conquered and domesticated you, I cannot understand."
"Perhaps it is because no woman nearly approaches your beauty and your thoughtfulness and your gentleness, my lady," he answered gallantly, "And now I must go. I will leave the garrison in command of Silla Maximus, capable and loyal to me as a friend in arms. I will set forth this very day for Rome and will learn what has been done with your slaves and what is brewing. But think, Julia, does not your husband have some enemies who would tear him down from his high estate?"
"I know nothing of these, dear Marcus. I suppose that everywhere those who are happy and blessed by the gods are hated and envied by some poor disgruntled souls."
"Have you ever yourself expressed any words that might be construed as unfavorable to the Emperor? Be truthful with me, Julia."
"Oh, I may have joked about him, he's such a scrawny old man, and sometimes so silly. And there are times when I think he is spiteful and cruel as a woman where he should be wise and just."
"And I agree, but such words are treason if they sound to the wrong ears and are then misshaped and brought in turn to the ears of Caesar. I begin to see, Julia, why these slaves of yours were seized. Do you not know the law that when there is treason or a crime against the Empire, the slaves of a suspect are taken to the prison and they are questioned under torture?"
"How horrible! But who, who, Marcus, would believe that my husband or I are anything but loyal to Tiberius?"
"Only those who envy and hate you, my lady. Now I must go."
* * *
Bucelus and Gedo, the two spies who were the agents for the centurion Lepidus, had gone to the garrison at Herculium to convey the warm regard of the Imperial Divinity to his beloved tribune and to invite the latter to Rome, where a villa would be at his disposal and entertainment worthy of so valiant a commander of the legion. But Marcus had, on the day of their visit to the garrison, ridden off to inspect the small outlying posts along the border between Herculium and Vindex. And the two spies had taken the slaves from Julia's household and gone back to Rome, leaving a message with Marcus's friend Silla who had been second in command.
So the tribune Marcus Vicunus was journeying to Rome of his own volition. There he was to find the plot which sought to involve him and his beautiful friend Julia, whom he respected from boyhood and for whom he had only the most lofty sentiments-"but not those of passion. There too, he was to meet the barbarian princess and save her from a cruel death in the arena and thereby find his own happiness!
The gods on Mount Olympus were having their own grim jest about these mortals upon whom they looked down with amusement and scorn. It pleased them to think that one who had been exalted could be cast down, because if it were meant that she had the true patrician quality which would enable her to survive disaster, she could conquer adversity. And that was why they sent Fate in the form of a scorpion to lodge in the boot of the Lady Julia's husband in Gaul so that he died, leaving her and her daughters Rhea and Gratia entirely at the mercy of the cunning, vicious and unscrupulous Lepidus.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The sadistic Domitia, like a true voluptuary, had put off the moment of confrontation with her coveted new acquisition, the Visigoth princess, Aurelia. But, just as she had planned, Cundemere and Forella, the former handmaidens of this beautiful red-haired barbarian noblewoman of royal degree, had tearfully informed the latter how the new mistress had made them strip naked and kneel down and, embracing each other, endure the whip from the lecherous steward Pendaricus. A cold fury had taken possession of Princess Aurelia. She no longer wore jewels, but instead a simple white tunic and around her throat the metal collar of servitude. Yet she was more regal and insolently defiant than she had been back in the days of her betrothal to that great warrior who had defied mighty Tiberius himself.
"My poor darlings," she had consoled them, "dry your tears and let us meet our misfortune bravely. I vow the day will come when that detestable creature will pay dearly for having so maltreated your beautiful bodies.
As for myself, since I now know how cunning and cruel she is, I will not defy her, for as a Roman slave I am subject even to being put to death if I disobey their laws-"and yet they call us barbarians!"
"But what shall we do, dear Princess?" golden-haired Cundemere wept.
"We shall submit," was the unexpected answer from the beautiful princess of the tawny skin and the voluptuous body. "This household is not a happy one, this I know already from what the other slaves have told me. The old fool of a husband, Glaucus Lycidas, does not sleep with Lady Domitia, and yet she has a young lover whom she flatters and with whom she openly cuckolds her husband. Were she in our land and found so guilty, her ears would be cropped, her bottom would be flayed, and then she would be sewn into the skin of a bear with the severed phallus of her lover thrust into her whoring sex and left for the vultures!" If the Lady Domitia could have heard this bloodthirsty pronouncement, assuredly Aurelia would have tasted the lash for the first time in her regal young life of twenty-one years. But such was not the will of the gods.
For the imperious Domitia waited until word came to her that her blonde young lover Vercetrix had returned to Rome. And it was late on the evening of the second day of his return to Rome that he tethered his horse to an oak tree at the crook of the road which led to the villa, and then crept in darkness to the side entrance, carefully skirting the enclosed part of the garden where it was known that old Glaucus Lycidas was wont to amuse himself with some of his young slave girls and his freed-man Brutus.
Glaucus had, the fat cook Martha reported to the haughty mistress, had his supper served to him in his chambers and then gone early to sleep, complaining of a pain in his belly. The beautiful Domitia had put on her gauziest stola in which to welcome Vercetirix, and her quivering naked flesh burned for cohesion after her long denial.
She had the lovely Philomena tend her, and had commanded the charming Grecian girl to attend her and her lover, clad only in a short red peplum, which cloaked the young girl's loins and left her naked to the waist.
The lovely Grecian slave, whose courage and fealty Domitia had tested by having the girl submit willingly to a flogging by Pendaricus in the full sight of Cundemere and Florella-"before she had sentenced them to a "welcome whipping" administered by the same steward-"was scarlet with blushes when she saw the eyes of the handsome blonde young nobleman fix on her swelling young breasts and lave the curves of her supple young thighs with lascivious desire. But she knew better than to show the least chagrin at such admiration, and she also knew the danger of rousing such admiration, for Domitia could be fiendishly jealous and vindictive. However, she served wine, then crouched at the foot of the couch on which the two lovers reclined, singing plaintive Grecian songs as she accompanied herself on the lyre. Soon she saw Vercetirix's hand creep under the hem of Domitia's stola and find its way to the temple of Venus. Then there were moans and sobs and passionate whispers, and soon stola and toga slithered to the floor in a rumpled heap and the naked bodies of the two lovers entwined.
Domitia kissed Vercetirix on the mouth, then hissed, "Wait, beloved, I shall have a treat in store for you.
Philomena!"
"Yes, mistress?"
"You may leave us now. But send in Aurelia in exactly half an hour. And you will have her wear only a peplum. If yours fits, lend it to her. Go quickly now, and do not forget, if you wish to escape a visit to Pendaricus!"
Philomena was only too happy to kiss her mistress's feet, then the extended hand of Vercetirix -"and she did this obeisance without daring to raise her eyes and boldly stare at the naked embracing bodies of her mistress and the hitter's lover-"and to take flight. At least her bottom was spared the lash, for the young nobleman had become as avidly enamoured of watching the slaves being whipped as the Lady Domitia.
She went to seek out Aurelia, but as luck would have it, fat Martha had fallen on the stone floor of the kitchen and hurt her elbow and Aurelia was aiding her to her chamber and binding a hot compress on the bruise. Distraught, Philomena sought out Forella and Cundemere, who could give no inkling as to where their former mistress had gone.
Then, again as the irony of fate decreed it, there suddenly came down the hall of the atrium the freed-man Brutus. His master had wakened, demanded wine and then urged that one of Domitia's Grecian slave girls be brought to him.
Now Domitia did not much care when she was occupied with her own amours whether her elderly husband amused himself with one of her slave girls, with the exception of Philomena. There was an excellent reason for this; Philomena was the only slave whom she trusted not to tattle about her illicit and outrageously unfaithful conduct with Vercetirix. But Brutus had drunk a little too much wine along with his master, and he was of no mood to brook refusal. So when he saw Philomena in that red peplum with her delicious titties bare and jingling as she hurried down the hall, he called after her, "Ho, girl, to me, the master summons you!" Her heart nearly stopped beating as she turned and espied the crafty freed-man. She was between Scylla and Charybdis: if she refused an order from her master, he was within his rights to have her punished by Pendaricus, and she might even run the double danger of additional punishment from Domitia for not, after all, remembering her lowly status of slavery.
Brutus caught up with her, and grasping her by the wrist, his eyes devouring her shrinking half-nakedness, ordered, "Come instantly! My lord commands a wench to amuse him." Philomena tried to stammer that she was under order of the Lady Domitia but Brutus jerked her wrist roughly and snarled, "You are now under my orders, you little bitch, so mind your manners or I'll tell old Glaucus Lycidus that you wouldn't come, then you'll see what your bottom will get!"
Tearfully, Philomena bowed her head and submissively accompanied the freed-man to the chamber of the master which gave vent out into the garden with its enclosed walls to form a charming trysting-place. He had singularly revived after his initial complaint of a bellyache, and the wine he had drunk inflamed him into wishing a new session such as he had enjoyed with Nicias. When his eyes fell on the blushing face and the beautiful naked torso of the shrinking Philomena, he clapped Brutus on the back and bawled, "By all the Gods, you shall have ten gold sesterces for this night's work, Brutus. Now then, pretty bitch, off with that peplum and come near before your master and pay your tribute to him!" Philomena discovered to her horror that this "tribute" meant simply plunging her head under her master's loose linen toga and applying her mouth industriously to his cock. She had let down her peplum reluctantly enough to be naked, virgin that she was, but when this order was given her, it was an experience that not even her cruel mistress had commanded of her; and so, on her knees, shrinking back, her eyes very wide, she had tearfully begged him not to make her do "such a f-filthy thing!" That remark cost her dearly, but her very presence was to cost Aurelia still more.
The angry old lecher had Brutus bind her down on the bench, blindfold her, and then himself seizing a laurel switch which he broke of! from a nearby bush, ordered Brutus to gag her while he thrashed her. "When you are ready to do as your master commands," he told the terrified naked girl, "you may raise up your head and nod it three times."
It took only about twenty biting lashes from the switch which angrily streaked poor little Philomena's thighs and backside to force the unhappy girl to sacrifice all her virginal modesty and to make the gesture. But she was not released from the bench. The blindfold removed, Brutus grinningly plunged his fingers into her tumbled hair and yanked up her contorted, tearbathed face while Glaucus Lycidas, lurching from too much wine, stood with straddled legs before her, his toga hoisted up, and his dwindled cock proffered to her trembling mouth. A few more yanks of her hair at last induced the Grecian slave girl to suck the old man's organ, which she had to do till he finally ejaculated with bellows of joy into her mouth. Then, in a spirit of drunken camaraderie, he invited Brutus to sodomize the Grecian bitch, to use his own words, since "she comes from a land where such homage is held sacred!"
Once again Philomena was gagged-"this time by the master's hand, which she had the audacity to bite in her intolerable suffering-"while Brutus, clambering upon the bench, and yawning open her striped, saucy bottomcheeks, buggered her violently and dry. Biting the master's hand won her an extra supplement of punishment, as might have been expected; this time, she was ordered to suck the cock of the freed-man while her master resumed with the laurel switch. And this time, one may add, Philomena hastily acquitted herself of her task in order to end the blazing and burning torture of her violently striped and welted young posterior...
* * *
Cundemere was fearful that her former mistress might be cruelly punished, for Philomena had told the golden-haired handmaiden that Domitia had wished Aurelia to present herself within the bedchamber in exactly half an hour, and now the time had long since elapsed.
To tell the truth, the beautiful Domitia had momentarily forgotten her edict to Philomena concerning Aurelia. Vercetirix had proved an insatiable lover, and she had, after all, several weeks of abstinence to make up for. After they had enjoyed their first furious coupling, she it was who lovingly bathed his body in the sunken tub, and he hers, where they gamboled like two playful puppies, and then emerged, dried and perfumed, to return to their amorous couch. To her great delight, Vercetirix on a caprice suddenly knelt before her, seized her knees and pushed them back towards her pear-shaped breasts, then bowed his head and began to flick his tongue over her gaping pink slit. "Aahhh, oh by the gods, you make me burn with ecstasy-" oh Vercetirix, what happy joy-"oh, deeper my lover, deeper, thrust it into me as if it were your manly rod!" she groaned.
And after she had had a furious climax, she insisted on serving her lover as he had served her, and so, crouching over him, bending her proud head, her sensuous lips and quaffed the nectar of his vital sap.
Once again they had repaired to the bath, there to oil and anoint and perfume their bodies and to refresh themselves for new tourneys in the lists of love.
As they reclined for a languorous moment, his head upon her gently swelling naked bosom, Domitia languidly remarked, "Oh, what would I not give to have you as my mate, my wonderful handsome blonde Roman, instead of the scrawny, puking excuse for a man whose name I bear!"
"And what would I not give to have you as my bride, beautiful Domitia, you who are more talented that the most gifted courtesan of the Empire," he gallantly murmured as he put his mouth to one of her nipples and began to playfully nibble at it. She clenched at his head and her face contorted in a spasm of passionate delight. "He is old, and there must be ways of helping him to reach the Styx, my darling," she said at last, her eyes dreamy and reflective.
"You mean you would have him killed, Domitia?" he looked at her, eyes widening with horrified surprise.
This young nobleman found it dashing and exciting to have an illicit affair with one of the most beautiful matrons in Rome, but if the truth be known, he had no desire to wed with her. She served him as might just such a courtesan as he had mentioned, save that it cost him nothing. And the delights she had taught him of savoring the cries of agony and the pleas of mercy and the sight of the lovely naked bodies squirming and twisting and bending under the whistling lash had made him grateful enough to take new joy and zest in life -"but not at the cost of marrying this shrewish beauty whose mood he well knew could change in an instant.
He was young and rich, and he had no need of a wife, and his parents had not yet importuned him to give them grandchildren.
"Yes, I would have him killed," Domitia raised herself up on one elbow, staring fiercely at him as she repeated in a louder voice, "and if I were a man, I would drive home the dagger myself! Will you not, my beloved, rid me of him and then I shall be all yours, and this villa and all its treasures-"and all the lovely slave girls we still have to flog and to torture when it pleases us, dear Vercetrix!" A sudden gasp made both of them turn. Cundemere had at last found Aurelia emerging from Martha's quarters and in her fright had urged Aurelia to hurry to the chamber of Domitia. But she had said nothing of wearing only a peplum, so Aurelia had come in the gauzy white tunic which reached her knees, the metal collar of servitude on her neck, and her feet bare.
"You eavesdropping bitch!" Domitia shrilled as she sat up, heedless of her nakedness. "How dare you enter unsummoned, unbidden? You, a barbarian slave bitch, to intrude upon your betters!"
"Cundemere told me that Philomena sought me, mistress," Aurelia bowed her head and hoped that the storm would rage over it, "but she told me nothing of what time I should attend you, mistress! And I did call out from the door, but no one answered."
"Filthy barbarian liar! Eavesdropping bitch! So now you have heard what I think of my husband, have you? Well, my girl, it's a secret you'll dare tell no one else or I shall have you sent to the arena to be torn by the beasts, do you hear?"
Aurelia, despite her own regal background, could not help trembling with fear as her eyes beheld the contorted, livid face of the beautiful Domitia and heard those terrifying words. "I have heard nothing, mistress, and I am not in the habit of relaying that which I have heard others say to anyone else, my word of honor," she tried to mollify her mistress.
"Summon Pendaricus! Bid him bring a brazier and iron, yes, and the flagellum of knotted cords," Domitia hissed at her.
Aurelia's eyes widened and her face paled. Vercetirix contemplated her, he too heedless of his male nakedness. He found this coppery-haired barbarian beauty with her tawny skin and her sensitive face and magnificent bosom and thighs a mouthwatering morsel. "You best do as your mistress bids you, my pretty," he chuckled, "I should hate to see that fine skin of yours torn to pieces and then blotched with the branding iron! Quickly, and be off, and perhaps your mistress will count that in your favor when you hear your sentence!"
Aurelia turned, shuddering and biting her lips, but she was a princess of the blood even though it be of the barbarian kingdom, and she would endure what she must as stoically as she had been taught to do by her royal parents. She left the chamber, and Vercetirix at once turned to his naked mistress, "Do you think we need fear that bitch?" he muttered.
"We, darling? Then you will aid me in ridding me of that wretched mate of mine?" she moved closer to him, one hand feeling for his limpened cock, the other stroking his blond head.
"We will talk of it another time," he said diplomatically. He had no intention of becoming involved in a murder for passion, because there were other fish in the sea. Like that barbarian bitch, for instance. Or the charming Philomena, for another. Yet there was no need of making Domitia furious with him and flying off into a fit of tantrums which would deprive his cock of its enjoyment. And there was no gainsaying that he had wrongfully met a slut who could drain him of his gism in so many exciting ways as this one.
Domitia drew on a short tunic, so gauzy that the aureola and nipples could be seen as dusky shadows through the thin fabric, and Vercetirix drew on a robe. Pendaricus, he knew, was an ally of Domitia, because the fat steward knew it to be to his own lecherous profit, since he would have full authority over delicious slave girls sent to him for punishment. Indeed, on one visit to this household when the cantankerous Glaucus was off in the country, he had had a little conversation with Pendaricus and learned how the steward used his authority in coercive fashion to make such slave girls as he lusted for come willingly to his chambers. "You see, master, it's all in getting respect," the steward had told him. "Now, take Thirza. She's a fine healthy bitch -"you've seen her, master, with long black hair down to her hips, and big round titties and fine full sturdy thighs-"but she's scared to death of a little whipping. So, let the lady Domitia chide her for some fault and send her to me for punishment, I tell her, Thirza, now you may suit yourself. It wasn't I who incurred the mistress's wrath, you know. She wants me to give you fifteen lashes, is it? Well, she didn't say with what now, did she? I can use this cane, do you wee it, it will leave nasty dark painful ridges in your backside which you'll have for a week. Or I can use simply my hand gently-" like this.' You see, master? And you know yourself what Thirza will choose. Well, if she wishes only fifteen good smacks with my hand, she need but come to my bed that night and pay me back for not using the cane or the flagellum. It's all in knowing how, and understanding a woman's needs and fears, master."
* * *
"You sent for me, mistress? The fat steward inclined his head before the lady Domitia. The Princess Aurelia stood behind him, hands clasped tightly, grinding her teeth to summon up all her courage. For Pendaricus had chuckled when she reported to him, and he had had a slave boy, naked but for a loincloth, bring in the brazier and a short branding iron on which appeared the letter D for "Domitia." He had said to Aurelia, "Well, my pretty barbarian, you've started famously in this household, not only the whip but also the iron. What must you have done, I wonder? Maybe said no to that fine lover of hers when he wanted to fuck you? That wasn't very wise, my girl. I'm afraid I shall have to hurt you a good deal. But maybe there are ways-"if you'll be very good to me tonight." And Aurelia had stiffened and her eyes had flashed as she had retorted, "I will take my punishment from my mistress, but not from you. Let that be understood."
"Oh, a hoity-toity lady of Rome already, are you?" he had gloatingly laughed. "We'll see, my pretty, when the flagellum's knots begin to bite that pretty backside of yours, or perhaps those titties! Did you know that the mistress sometimes likes to have a slave girl whipped on the titties and between her legs, especially when she's got that blond cocksmith with her? It works him up, you might say, to see a bitch like you suffering. And oh how you'll suffer for what you just said to me, you barbarian slut!"...
Domitia rose from the couch, letting her steward feast his eyes if the fat fool would on what he could see of the fur of her pussy and the nipple of her breasts through the thin gauzy tunic. She approached the beautiful Aurelia and slapped her viciously across the cheek. "Take off your tunic, and be quick about it," she snapped.
The Visigoth princess obeyed, though what it cost her one could only guess in pride and outraged modesty to have two men and this hostile, alien woman regard her virginal nakedness.
But that very courage seemed to infuriate the dominatress. "Pendaricus," she willed to confront the steward, "Fix her against that marble column. Bind her wrists as tightly as you can to draw her arms around it.
Let her hug the marble as she might a lover, perhaps it will teach her not to eavesdrop when her mistress entertains a real man! Yes, Aurelia, you barbarian slut, a man who could out-fuck and outduel all your Visigoth leaders!" She took great relish in using these obscene words before her new slave, and it also gave her a fillip of sensual pleasure before her virile lover. "I wish her to taste the flagellum five and twenty times, Pendaricus. Slowly, and lay it on well. Apply it to that insolent bottom and the thighs entirely. After that, you will brand her on the left shoulderblade to teach her that she is my slave and that she will do my bidding and not come when she pleases to my chamber."
"I hear and obey, my lady," the steward obsequiously murmured. He then turned to Aurelia and took her by the arm. She went with him submissively to the column, while Vercetirix stood to watch, feeling his cock harden again with desire at the sight of that magnificent tawny-sheened body. Yes, it was truly that of a princess, barbarian or not. And there was a nobility and sensitivity in her face which his mistress did not have, would never have. All of a sudden, he found himself lusting for Aurelia, wondering how he could buy her or possess her.
But Aurelia had no mind for this. Her entire world was now the quivering and twitching flesh which pressed against the cold marble column as Pendaricus roughly pushed her against it and bade her circle it with her arms as far as they could, till she felt her fine proud breasts flatten against the obdurate substance. Then he was taking silken cords and binding them round her wrists as tightly as he could till she felt herself thrust cruelly against the unyielding marble.
To the slave boy he made a gesture, and the Thycian lad promptly thrust a short branding iron into the smoking brazier.
From his belt, Pendaricus wrested the handle of the flagellum. It was made of an ivory stock about six inches long, to which were attached waxed strong cords, to the number of nine, each about two feet long and arrayed along the last six inches with sturdy knots. Planting himself at Aurelia's left, measuring the distance, and taking his time as his eyes devoured the lovely Patrician hollow of the spine, the thrust of her bare bottom, the staunch yet lithe and supple columns of her naked thighs, he at last drew back his arm and sent the knotted cords whistling viciously through the air to cling all over the right buttock of the naked Barbarian princess.
Aurelia jerked convulsively, for never in her life had she felt such scalding agony; a princess, never had she been flogged or even slapped by her royal parents. Her head fell back, and her eyes lifted to the ceiling.
"One," Domitia hissed eagerly, hands on hips, "now she's had a taste of what it's like! How does it feel, Princess Aurelia? Help your lover, grind your pussy against the marble and appease your longing when the scourge of Pendaricus grows too painful to bear!"
Aurelia closed her eyes and ground her teeth. Now that she was aware of the pain, she summoned all her strength to withstand it.
It was an atrocious ordeal, nonetheless. Pendaricus, out of his own vengeful pique at her disdainful refusal of his sexual favors to remit the fullest pain of the flogging, laid on with a grunt at every stroke, making the knots bite home against first one bottomcheek, then the other, then at times slashing at both thighs.
Sometimes, lowering the whip, he swept it up so that the knots furiously spatted against the swelling undercurves at the base of Aurelia's naked behind.
Ugly empurpling blotches soon began to spread over that fine tawny skin. A sweat of agony ran down from Aurelia's armpits. She had managed to suppress all but muffled groans and choking sobs, but her entire body vibrated against the marble and its coolness and hardness alone seemed to sustain her. Her nipples ached from her convulsive lunging against the column each time the scourge attacked her tender flesh. She found herself counting in a haze of pain and agony, exhorting herself not to cry out, to die rather than that... seventeen... eighteen... nineteen...
And then suddenly it was over, and she sagged, half fainting, feeling blood trickle down her thighs and calves. Pendaricus indeed had spared her nothing. But her ordeal was not yet done.
"And now the iron," she vaguely heard Domitia's voice exclaim, throbbing with sensual malice and triumph.
She blinked her eyes, drowned with tears, and tried to straighten, but she did not have the strength.
Suddenly she felt a hand in her hair, yanking back her head, and through the blue of tears and the fog of pain, she saw the leering face of Pendaricus, and the red-hot end of the iron with its sinister "D" glowing like all the fires of Hades.
And then suddenly there was the indescribably frightful burning sensation and the smell of her own flesh, acrid and nauseating, and the wave of fiery agony assailed her, and she slumped against the marble column, mercifully unconscious...
When she came to, she found herself on another couch in the same chamber, with Domitia bending over her. "That's better," the mistress murmured. "Now, Aurelia, do you remember what you heard when you crept unbidden into my chamber?"
"I h-heard nothing, m-mistress."
"Good. See that you remember nothing, then. Give her some wine, Pendaricus. These barbarian girls have no guts. A few lashes and a tiny burn which scarcely marks the naked skin, and she nearly dies on us. Drink it down, you bitch, and then back to your quarters. You will tell Forella and Cundemere to come aid my lover and me in the bath, and at once! And tell them that if they skulk or show sorrowful faces because of what I have done to you, I shall have Pendaricus do the same to them-"you understand me?"
"Why, yes, m-mistress."
She managed to slip some of the Flammarian; wine which Pendaricus held to her lips in a little wooden cup, and then sat up. She was still naked, and she saw that Vercetirix was naked too, his prick in massive erection, and that he was standing beside Domitia whose tunic he had lofted to her breasts and he was fondling them. And they were both laughing at her and mocking her, and she wanted to die. But no, she wanted to live and be avenged. And she would, by all the gods, be they Visigoth or Roman, let them come to her aid and pit this aristocratic viper into the dust and let her know for the first time what it was to be crushed and sullied...
Pendaricus had helped her on with her new tunic, which the slave boy had hastened to procure. It was green, and it did not quite come to her knees, and it was very thin, but it was a blessing over her inflamed and tortured bottom, over the still throbbing hurt in her back. He had helped her with it, and his hands had stealthily cupped her breasts, caressed her belly, even insinuated a finger down into the mossy nook between her thighs. She had been too weak to fend him off, but she had given him such a withering look that it made him scowl. He helped her to the door, then saying aloud for the benefit of the mistress, "Now quickly back to your quarters, girl, and tell your little friends to hurry unless they want the same thing! I shan't put away the flagellum or the iron until they've come, just tell them that!" She found herself hobbling, and she hated herself for it, because she knew that Pendaricus was standing in the doorway gloatingly looking after her. But she was too miserable to care at the moment. She found Forella and Cundemere anxiously awaiting her return, and they began to weep when they took off the tunic and saw what had been done to her. "No tears, and no time for consoling me, you two!" she had said, her voice still full of authority for them. "Go quickly to Domitia, and attend her. And not a word, do you understand?"
"But you must surely go to the physician, dear Princess," Cundemere sobbed.
"I shall. Now hurry."
Forella and Cundemere hastened to attend their mistress, and Aurelia slowly went down the hall in search of the physician, Chilo, an old and gentle Greek who was something of a philosopher. Little Philomena had told her that after her whipping before her mistress Chilo had bathed and salved her hurts and told her, "Woman was meant to suffer upon this earth, but one cannot wound the soul if it is courageous. And the pain of the flesh will pass, little one, be of good soul, and you will not feel it so much. And those who inflict it upon you will perhaps have more tortured souls than you when the gods so dispose."
* * *
Philomena had been sent back to her cubicle, led off by the fat cook, Martha, whom Brutus had cajoled into caring for the unfortunate young girl. She was nearly fainting from the cruel flogging and the violations of both cunt and asshole, and Martha was horrified at the state in which the master had left the Grecian beauty. But the lust of Glaucus Lycidus was not yet appeased. "I have no doubt that Domitia enjoys her blond Roman nobleman," he snarled, his eyes bloodshot and squinting at Brutus. "Well, I will pretend not to notice it. But my husbandly honor must be avenged. And I feel like a new man this day. Go find me another wench."
"But, master... "
"Do as I say, or I will sell you into the gladiatorial school and your fat belly will be pierced by many swords and you will not glut yourself at my table or with my wenches," the old reprobate snarled.
So Brutus, with a shrug, consoling himself with the thought that he was still the most fortunate of the freed man to have such a considerate master who would share a prize like Philomena with him, went out along the hallway in search of new prey. And he saw the Princess Aurelia coming back from her visit to the old physician, walking with less troubled step, her brow still feverish and her eyes misty with the tears of her agony.
He seized her by the wrist and ordered her to follow him. In vain Aurelia had tried to tell him that she had just come from the physician who had salved the hurts of a flogging and branding at the hands of Domitia.
But at last she followed, miserably resigned to this hell which was life as a Roman slave, for the Gods knew that she did not wish to affront a master who might do to her even more terrible things than that vicious and venomous viper had already done.
"Master," Brutus happily exclaimed, "I have brought you the new barbarian slave, a real princess, Master!"
"You have done magnificently, my Brutus! So," Glaucus Lycidus sat heavily down upon the bench and leered at the shrinking redhead. "Off with your tunic, girl. It's high time you knew who your master was in this house."
"I beg of you, master, my mistress has already punished me and I am, I fear, in no condition to give you pleasure," Aurelia deferentially responded.
"I will be the judge of that, you Visigoth bitch! Rip off her tunic for me, there's a good man, Brutus!" The freed-man laughingly approached Aurelia, who tried to strike at him, but in vain. In a thrice, she found herself naked again, and again under the eyes of two lecherous men. But it was Brutus who saw her hurts: "By all the gods," he breathed, "Domitia has indeed served this wench well. Look at her back and bottom, master!" He seized Aurelia by the breasts, and brutally squeezing them, made her turn to display her back to the astounded and quickly sobering elderly reprobate.
"What desecration of such beauty," Glaucus Lycidus croaked. "Why were you punished thus, girl? I would not have had you branded, not I! That hellcat who is my wife, she alone would think of such a thing. What could you have done to so offend her?"
"I-I may not tell you, my master," Aurelia quavered. For she knew the deadly secret; she had heard Domitia exclaim aloud that she wished Glaucus Lycidus dead and wished that she herself were a man to do the deed. And she dared not confess this, for the peace of her own soul if for nothing more.
"You will speak, girl, or you will regret. Hurt or not, I shall hurt you more if you do not obey me. Why were you punished?"
"I-I offended the Lady Domitia."
"I've no doubt you did, from the state of your backside and that brand on your back, you stubborn barbarian bitch!" Glaucus Lycidus growled, "but I want to know why and how. Quickly, or I'll call Pendaricus again."
But even this threat, though it made poor Aurelia almost faint with horror, could not loosen her tongue.
"I know a way," he craftily said at last, "and perhaps it will pay my wife back for her treachery and for cuckolding me, Brutus. You will bring me parchment and pen, and I will write a note to my friend, Metellus at the Mamartine Prison. Then you will take the note and this bitch to him at once. She is to be locked up in the dungeon. And she is to be given a taste of torture until she is ready to speak. For harboring a plot against her master-"as I have no doubt is being planned now by that hellcat of a wife of mine-"is as treasonable a crime as murder or as an offense against the Emperor himself. Take her off with you, Brutus." And thus it was done. And thus the three Fates who spin the cloth of life and of destiny sat high upon the clouds over Mount Olympus and drew a barbarian princess to share a terrible fate with a noblewoman who was unjustly accused... and yet by that very reunion, altered the lives of many which could have been altered in no other way.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With the news of the death of Lady Julia's noble husband, the treacherous Lepidus waited no longer to strike. A scribe had written down the testimony given by Julia's three slaves, lone, Drusilla and Myceta, and the centurion had taken that parchment to Tiberius himself. And by Imperial decree, the wife of the dead Pro-Consul of Heraclium was ordered, together with her daughters, to the terrible dungeons of the Mamartine Prison, there to await her trial.
Lepidus had been told by his faithful agents Bucelus and Gedo that the noble tribune Marcus Vicunus had left Heraclium and was on his way to Rome. Lepidus swore violently at this news. It had been his secret hope to lure the handsome and heroic young favorite of the multitude to a costly villa, there to ply him with food and wine and to summon for him alluring dancing girls and even a costly courtesan to distract him. And then the rest would be easy: either Gedo or Bucelus would creep into the villa when all were asleep and dispatch Marcus to the Styx with a dagger thrust. And who could say why he had been slain and who could trace it back to the emissary of the Divinity himself? If that could have been done, then the Lady Julia and her two daughters, Rhea and Gratia, would become the prizes for Lepidus to cozen from Tiberius. For now he had altered his opinion; he did not wish Julia to die, but he wished her to be humbled, perhaps to be scourged and then banished from Rome in disgrace. Then, with no one to protect or champion her, he would offer her marriage and force her to accept because she was a proscribed exile. If she wed him, then he knew that he could talk the old Emperor into granting her pardon so long as she remained the wife of a faithful Roman citizen and a man who had served the Emperor so well.
And best of all, the lustful Lepidus told himself, he could taste the charms of her two fledgling daughters whenever he wished. It would be a kind of seraglio. There would be no need for him ever again to frequent the lupanars beside the Tiber, marked by their green boughs over the doorway-" the universally known sign of a bordello. He would never again have to humble himself and to pay for some slut to he with him and to fondle him. No, he would be master in his own household, in the rich villa at Heraclium, and that proud bitch Julia for whom he had lusted because she represented the purest and the most exalted type of patrician womanhood which had always been denied his lowly state, would crawl to him on her knees to escape the lash.
But all these plans were spoiled when that accursed Marcus Vicunus had, of his own volition, gone off to Rome, perhaps to have audience with Tiberius himself, and that was dangerous indeed. For the tribune was such a national hero that Tiberius could not but lend credence to the tribune's avowal that Julia was as guiltless of any plot to assassinate Caesar as she was of infidelity to her dead husband.
Traveling swiftly by horseback, Lepidus reached Rome, but not ahead of the tribune, who had already had audience with the Divinity. And so, when the ambitious centurion came into the presence of the Imperial ruler who wore the purple, he found to his dismay that Marcus Vicunus had already asserted the innocence of the Lady Julia and had demanded that she be absolved of any connection in this plot.
"But, Divinity," Lepidus fawned, as he sank to his knees to bow his head before the crafty old Emperor, "I bring with me the recorded testimony of three slaves from the Lady Julia's household, all accusing her of vile insults to your person and to your regime. Under torture, they all stoutly denied knowing the dog who flung himself at you with a dagger, but at least the scribe who wrote down their words will stand here with me and accuse, as I accuse, the Lady Julia of insolence and even blasphemy to your Divinity. Such abusive and disloyal utterances cannot go unpunished!"
Tiberius nursed his chin and squinted. He was now not so certain as he had been that the dog who had died in the torture dungeon of Metellus could have had any connection with the fastidious, beautiful and dignified Julia. The tribune who had ardently defended her only yesterday-"Tiberius had been ailing and had not been able to grant Marcus Vicunus an audience on the afternoon he had returned to Rome-"had spoken so glowingly of Julia's virtues, of her kindness and her innate mercy and goodness that Tiberius was even fearful to bring such a woman to public trial. His rule had been long and honorable, true enough, but now that he was old there were those who hated him and those who censured his licentious pleasures. They would be quick to howl for a successor to wear the purple if he were to attack one of the great families of the Roman Empire without sufficient proof. And he was also shrewd enough to see through the fawning and obsequious eagerness with which the centurion served him-"Lepidus was motivated by powerful and as yet unknown desires which would lead him to urge such a trial.
"Let me see this testimony of yours," he finally decided. Lepidus bowed and ascended the marble steps to the throne of Tiberius, who extended a bony hand and took the parchment, unrolled it and held it close to his squinting eyes. He frowned and cleared his throat, then went on reading. At length he looked up: "This is flimsy evidence at best, centurion. There is no word here of a plot to kill me, no proof that the Lady Julia was in any way associated with that madman who died on the rack."
"But does Your Divinity not realize that in summoning this great lady to trial, you proclaim to the lowliest of your citizens that Roman justice will not spare even the lordly patrician if treason and Use majeste are their crimes?" Lepidus eagerly declared. "Moreover, it is not necessary to bring the woman to public trial. She is even now in the Mamartine Prison, with her daughters. And the torturers are skillful, they need not cause permanent harm, but to so sensitive and proud a beauty, even a touch of lash may quicken the mind to recall that which it would fain forget."
And then he added, knowing the sensual lechery of his royal master, "And besides, Divinity, there are the charming daughters, for whom good discipline would be a useful lesson, lest they become, in their maturity, traitoresses themselves and dare to sully the name of Caesar with impious slander. If the Lady Julia were your own Empress, Divinity., would you not punish her for calling you a silly old fool?" He had scored, and the rogue knew it. He saw Tiberius grimace with anger, saw the squinty eyes narrow and burn with an evil light, saw the hand that clutched the parchment crumple it as the bony fingers viciously clenched.
"Give me leave, oh Caesar," he went on silkily, "to chastise only a little this haughty aristocrat who thinks her blue-blooded estate renders her immune from the anger of mighty Caesar. Let her see her young girls chastised like naughty children, and perhaps she will recant and throw herself upon your royal mercy, and then because Caesar is just, it will be known throughout the Empire that he has spared the lives of a brood of possible traitors because they have acknowledged their faults and humbly implored his pardon." Tiberius rose from the marble throne. "You are eloquent, centurion, and there is a certain wisdom in what you say. These girls are dainty morsels, are they?"
"Your Divinity has only to visit the torture chamber in disguise to see for himself," the crafty centurion purred, and once again he smiled to himself to see the nicker of lust that burned in Caesar's narrowed eyes...
* * *
Julia and her daughters Gratia and Rhea had been lodged in the largest and perhaps most comfortable dungeon along that terrible level beneath the ground, but farthest from the grim torture chamber in which her three slaves had been interrogated. Good food and even wine had been brought to her and her daughters because of her noble rank and also at the order of Lepidus, who intended to use this seeming kindness as but another demonstration of his devotion and secret admiration for the magnificently beautiful matron. As he left the Imperial chambers and made his way to the prison, the centurion rubbed his hands gleefully. Things were working out even better than he had planned. Even if his old enemy Marcus Vicunus had had the ear of the Emperor first, it had availed him very little. Had not Tiberius given him, Lepidus, a decree bidding him secretly to put Julia and her daughters to the mild question? This meant that no blood was to be shed, nor any of the subjects permanently maimed in the application of torment. Yet this did not exclude the application of the lash-"for Metellus and Berbex could wield a ferula or a flagellum so adroitly that the flesh would burn and throb with agony and yet the skin would nowhere be cut. And then there were the pincers and the tongs, and even a mild stretching on the rack was feasible so long as no limbs were broken or dislocated. And they would be naked when they received the "mild question."
Meanwhile Marcus Vicunus, rankling under his failure to obtain from Tiberius an order for the release of Julia and her daughters, determined to go himself to the Mamartine Prison and demand audience with the prisoners. His rank of tribune gave him access without question, unless Imperial decree itself should be set against him, and this he knew was not the case. He arrived at the grim prison not long after the centurion had left Metellus and Berbex with their instructions; on the morrow, Julia and her daughters Rhea and Gratia were to be taken into the torture chamber. It would be at noon, and, he had intimated to the torturers, an illustrious visitor would watch the spectacle, incognito. By this, of course, he referred to Tiberius. Sentence would then be passed after the "mild question" had been applied, and it would be passed also upon the three slaves who had already been interrogated. Drucilla, Myceta and lovely young lone had been locked into the same dank, windowless dungeon, given bread and water by sullen guards who would not answer their tearful pleas to learn their ultimate fate. Lepidus intended, now that he had seen all three slaves stripped and tortured and then himself had ravished them, to purchase lone for his own household and to arrange with the torturers to sell Drucilla and Myceta to a bordello and split the price with the two cruel rogues. Tiberius would not concern himself over the disposition of lowly slaves, he knew.
It would not be long, he thought as he mounted his horse and rode off to his house along the Street of Persephone in the southwest section of Rome, before he would dwell in a luxurious villa... perhaps even the one from which the Lady Julia had been brought. What joys he foresaw, wedded to the beautiful matron, ruling her by the lash and by the threat of denouncing her to Caesar if, as an exile pardoned only because of her marriage to him, she did not do his bidding, and the two charming young bitches she had spawned would be ordered to his bed and he would teach them all the tricks of the lupanar... no, their mother would, and at his command! And the charming young lone would furnish him delightful diversions when he wearied of the mother and her spawn. So it was in rare good humor that the centurion Lepidus rode proudly on his horse, sneering at the common people who trudged along the streets, believing himself to be favorite of the gods and surely of the Divinity that was Caesar...
Marcus Vicunus made his way down the long narrow stone steps which led to the torture chamber and the rows of dungeons in which specially isolated criminals and prisoners sentenced to interrogation were quartered. He had no stomach for this kind of thing, but he recognized the desperate situation which Lady Julia and her two young daughters faced. Old Tiberius had hemmed and hawed and not really said anything, except that he wished himself to have a private audience with the wife of the dead Pro-Consul to determine for himself her loyalty to the Empire. That could very well mean torture, for the Emperor was corrupt and sadistic, and the prospect of watching a beautiful patrician woman stripped naked by the torturers, handled and degraded as if she were the lowliest of whores arrested in some brothel brawl, was certainly not one which the lecherous Tiberius would miss.
Still and all, much could be achieved by bribery and also by using his own well established position as a military hero to all Rome with Lady Julia's grim and cruel jailers. The guard at the entrance to the prison recognized his rank and saluted him smartly with his sword, Marcus returning the salute and continuing with calm face and military attitude which did not betray the turmoil of his innermost feelings.
He knew that he was far younger than Julia, and that the affection he had for her was simply that of a young boy who had grown up with a young woman and had found in her the epitome of all that was beautiful and gracious and worthy of respect in the opposite sex. She was truly a patrician and she did not have, like so many other patrician women, the inherent decadence which let her take lovers or torture her handmaidens to inflame her jaded senses. Now that her husband was dead, he asked himself seriously whether it would not be judicious to propose marriage so that she would be under his protection. Often, in cases where a widow or an errant wife was charged with treasonable speech or behavior, under Roman law who bore at least the rank of a tribune or that of a consul or a praetor, could ask a boon of the Emperor by agreeing to wed the woman and be responsible for her. Except in cases of actual conspiracy to overthrow the throne or murder, such requests were usually granted. So that was his trump card in the event that Tiberius would not relent and free Julia of the charge which had been placed against her name.
As he reached the lower level, another guard challenged him, but, recognizing the tribune's rank from his uniform and the silver loop around the hilt of his short sword, smartly saluted. "I seek Metellus and Berbex," Marcus Vicunus demanded.
"Noble tribune, they have gone to one of the dungeons to bring forth a wench for punishment at the order of her master," the soldier replied.
Marcus Vicunus exalted a sigh of relief. They had not yet begun with the Lady Julia and her two daughters, then. "Thank you, soldier. I shall go in search of them," he replied.
He grimaced as the stench of the dampness and of human agony-sweat and naked flesh, compounded into an almost overpowering aura, reached his nostrils there in the stygian darkness of the subterranean level. Only torches which blazed from their brackets on the heavy stone walls furnished light, for it was always dread night here in this part of the terrible Mamartine Prison.
As he started down the long narrow gloomy passageway, he heard the voice of Berbex gloatingly and insinuatingly raised: "Come, my beauty, you can understand how eager we are to welcome you to our humble quarters. It isn't every day we get to entertain a real princess, even if she is a barbarian!" He stopped, his hand on his sword hilt, and then he saw Metellus and Berbex drag between them, each of the torturers holding the captive by a wrist, the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen in all his life.
Her coppery hair was unbound and disheveled, falling in a luxurious and glowing cascade to her supple waist.
Her head was held high, her face proud and exquisite in its tense beauty, but her body dazzled him with its voluptuous young arrogance. She had been clad in only the filmiest of tunics, sleeveless, low cut to the valley of those thrusting goblets which formed her swelling virginal bosom. The hem of the garment ended at the lower thigh, and her beautiful bare legs were tawny-sheened, the muscles of her sinuous calves flexing with a nervous sensitivity that bespoke a mercurial, vital temperament.
As they neared him, the two torturers halted, their eyes wide with surprise, for unbidden visitors to this section of the prison were rare indeed. "Ho, fellow, what do you seek?" Metellus bawled.
"I am the tribune Marcus Vicunus, and I seek the Lady Julia of Heraclium."
"A thousand pardons, tribune," Metellus obsequiously replied as he inclined his head, "but I fear I can do nothing for you with that one. This afternoon, by order of the Emperor, she and her whelps are to be put to the mild question."
He shuddered and ground his teeth with baffled rage to hear this mocking statement, for the two brutish men who would execute that "mild question" would defame and degrade and sully the dignity and the chastity of the superb noblewoman. And to think of her young budding daughters being forced to bare their bodies, scarcely out of puberty, before such evil, salacious eyes was well nigh unbearable. Yet he knew himself to be powerless; as he had feared, old Tiberius wished to gratify his lascivious fancies and provide himself with the unusual treat of seeing a true patrician, a blue-blooded aristocratic matron and her daughters, shamed like any common female criminal sent to the arena.
"What do you do with this one?" he inquired.
"Now that's another matter, Tribune," Berbex chuckled and winked, "this one's a slave, mind you, to the Lady Domitia. She must have spited the old husband, for he was the one that sent her to us. We're not going to treat her too harshly, and if you like, Tribune," again he gave Marcus Vicunus an obscene wink, "for a few sesterces, we'll let you spend a pleasant hour with the bitch in a private cell, above ground, of course, and for another coin or two there will be the best wine and a warm blanket."
"Who are you, girl?" Marcus Vicunus wonderingly demanded.
The beautiful Princess Aurelia straightened, and coldly replied, "I am Aurelia, of the land of the Visigoths, and an unwilling slave to Rome."
"Yes, now I remember. It was your betrothed whom Tiberius put to death so shamefully in the arena. It was a sad end for a brave men." He dared say no more before these henchmen of the Emperor, who might well denounce him for treason. But as a soldier himself, he had never believed that a defeated leader, even though he be barbarian, should be put to death like a mad dog or a hardened murderer.
Aurelia stared at him, and the compressed, defiant tension left her face. "Thank you, Tribune," she said softly. "I have no reason to love Romans, but you at least seem to have kinder sentiments than the rest of your people."
"That's the girl, be nice to the tribune," Berbex encouraged with another wink at Marcus Vicunus. "After we've finished with you, my pretty, he may console you for being so polite. Now come along, we've other work to do, and if you don't make too much of a fuss, we won't flog you too hard. After all, if a noble tribune like the heroic Marcus Vicunus wants to do you the honor of fucking you, the least we can do is leave you with half a skin instead of none, ha ha ha!" the bald fat rogue burst into jeeringly obscene laughter at his own quip.
"Metellus, you knew me well," Marcus Vicunus appealed to the head torturer. "Will gold remit the punishment of this girl? What has she done to merit being sent here instead of to a whipping house? One rarely sends a slave to the Mamartine Prison unless the offense is really grave."
"Don't ask me, noble Tribune, I am simply a man who does his duty as it is bidden him," Metellus deferentially replied. "All I know is that the freed-man of old Glaucus Lycidias brought the wench here with orders that she be locked up in a dungeon and then given a good thrashing and shown the little toys we use on naughtier girls of her sort. Just a warning, I should judge, tribune. As Berbex says, we'll try not to mark her too badly for you."
Aurelia shuddered and closed her eyes. The pain of her scourging and the branding was still too indelibly imprinted in her sensitive and proud spirit to be able to face another flogging with cool imperviousness.
"A moment before you take her to the torture chamber, good Metellus," the handsome young tribune pleaded. Then, addressing the beautiful red-haired captive, he said gently, "I am the tribune Marcus Vicunus, and my rank and my station in the Empire enable me to intercede on your behalf. I abhor cruelty and injustice, whether they be inflicted on one who is not a Roman as on a Roman citizen. Therefore I entreat you to tell me truthfully how you come here to the Mamartine Prison."
"Sir, you are kind and compassionate, and I thank you. But I, who was a princess, am now a lowly slave in a Roman household, and if I were to speak the truth, I should betray both master and mistress and perhaps set one against the other."
"You talk like a princess indeed. If you were only a slave, you would think only of saving your own lovely skin," he smilingly remarked. "But I have the power to soften the lashes these fellows will inflict, and I would not see such beauty marred. Come, quickly, the truth, girl!"
"You'd best talk, my pretty," Metellus urged, his coarse face smirking with new interest. It wasn't everyday one found a noble Tribune begging to have a luscious bitch like this spared a sound thrashing. And knowing that the tribune was smitten with the wench would make the stripping of her and the flogging of her all the more enjoyable. "Speak, girl, mayhap you'll catch his fancy and he may even buy you. That's done on occasion here in Rome, and wouldn't you rather be a slave to the handsome and famous man like Marcus Vicunus than have to put up with that silly old Glaucus Lycidias who, as everybody knows except perhaps himself, the old goat, is being nicely cuckolded by his young vixen of a wife?" Princess Aurelia started and glanced at the torturer. She hadn't dreamed that all Rome knew of the breach between the old man and the Lady Domitia. Indeed, this put a new light on the matter. She took a deep breath and then, fixing Marcus Vicunus with her beautiful eyes, she said, "If a jailer in this prison knows what is happening in that household to which an unhappy destiny consigned me, then I will tell you the truth, Tribune.
My mistress had sent for me, but I was with the cook who had hurt herself and I was tending to her hurts and so did not learn of her order. And when finally I was found by a maiden who once served me back in the land of the Visigoths and was not then a slave, I hastened to the Lady Domitia, only to find her with a young man and to hear her say that she wished she were of his sex that she might put an end to her husband's life. And because she accused me of eavesdropping, she had her steward flog and brand me."
"What horror!" the young tribune ejaculated.
"Then," the beautiful Aurelia went on, "after I had been brought back to consciousness and was going back to my quarters, the freed-man Brutus-""
"The very same one who brought the wench here," Berbex eagerly interrupted, absorbed in this little drama which so entertainingly varied the cruel business of administering torture.
"And he summoned me directly to his master," Aurelia went on. "I was to-to entertain him."
"Aye, and would I were your master, wench, for you are toothsome enough to entertain me full well all the night long," fat, bald Berbex lecherously interposed.
Aurelia, though she winced at the words of the torturer, nonetheless composed herself and finished: "And when I would not do that which he demanded, pleading that I had just been cruelly punished and could not afford him joy such as he required, he grew irate with me and had me stripped and then he saw the marks of the scourge and of the branding iron. And then he did demand of me to know why I had been so treated, but I would not tell him. And that was why, in his rage, because I was disobedient and obstinate, he said, I was taken here. And that is the truth, tribune."
"I believe you, lovely Aurelia," Marcus Vicunus breathed. Then turning to Metellus, he urged, "I do not ask you to shirk your duty, for that would not be just as to the orders you have been given and your responsibility to perform them. But I ask you to show clemency and I will pay you well. And then I will seek to buy the girl and free her."
Metellus shook his head. "I can spare the wench the force of the lash, Tribune," he responded, "but of course you know I have no right to sell her to you. And I doubt that her mistress could consent to such a thing, nor the master either. They're at each other's throat, it's well enough know, though I'd no idea until now that the Lady Domitia wished so violent an end to her marriage. You will have to go to them, Tribune, and see if you can persuade them."
The handsome young tribune took out a heavy purse and dropped into the hand of Metellus ten golden coins. "Then do at least what you can do in your office and be gentle."
"Aye, and with right good will, noble Tribune," the chief torturer beamed, examining the gold pieces in his heavy hand and thrusting them into a fold of his tunic. "What's more, I'll let you watch Tribune, to see that I keep my part of the bargain. And then, if you like, and you've already paid well enough to win it, Berbex here will bring you and the wench to a comfortable and private room where you may console her all you like. Now that's being as generous as I can be, noble tribune."
Aurelia shivered and then blushed. The thought of being given to this handsome young Roman as a concubine was, she discovered to her own secret consternation, not nearly so terrifying as the thought of having to return to that hateful household and to service that old wretch who had had her sent here.
Warm-blooded and ardent by nature, having hoped to wed the heroic rebel leader who had flouted mighty Rome, beautiful Aurelia was endowed by her own physical urges and her maturity to seek a proper mate.
They led her gently into the torture chamber, and the tribune followed. "Come now, my pretty, take off your tunic and let the tribune see what he's getting," Berbex chuckled. "We'll treat you like a patrician, won't we, Metellus? We'll let you take it off yourself instead of ripping it from you. Now don't keep the noble tribune waiting too long, or he may decide to look elsewhere for his pleasures." Aurelia's face was crimson as she turned away from Marcus Vicunus. Then, with a deep breath, she stooped and caught up the hem of her tunic and slowly raised it over those sculptured tawny thighs, that magnificent bottom, that supple waist, the elegantly hollowed back, the dimpled shoulders and let it fall to the stone floor of the torture chamber. She stood naked and proud, her magnificent red hair tumbling down her lovely back. But it did not hide the ugly purplish blotch left by the branding iron... nor the inflamed blotches imparted by the knotted ends of the cords of the whipping scourge.
Marcus Vicunus caught his breath, in both stunned admiration of such feminine loveliness and in dismay at the sickening stigmata which marred it. The two torturers gaped, themselves coarse though they were and hardened to their duties of marring flesh and bones and beauty with their infernal instruments and cunning skills, and their eyes devoured the supple nakedness of the Princess Aurelia. The thick crisp dark-red bush which triangulated the apex of her lovely quivering thighs now caught Berbex's lascivious gaze, and he clapped his hand to his forehead, exclaiming, "By all the gods of heh, I nearly forgot. Brutus gave orders that the wench was to be made hairless as a new-born babe. But it can be done, noble Tribune, without pain to the wench. Usually, as you know, the hairs are plucked out with pincers. But we can shear her like a sheep." Aurelia uttered a strangled cry of shame and at once clapped her hand over her virgin pussy. The gesture was so feminine, so exquisitely ingenuous, that Marcus Vicunus trembled with the first true lust of his vigorous manhood. He had fallen in love with this barbarian slave girl, this princess who was now condemned to a lashing in the bowels of the Mamartine Prison.
"Must that be done?" Marcus Vicunus demanded.
"I'm afraid it must, noble Tribune," Berbex ingratiatingly replied. "But I'll tell you what, we'll let you do it yourself to the pretty wench."
"Ohh no!" Aurelia breathed, scarlet blushes flooding her down to her lovely throat.
"But first, let's get the matter of the stripes over with, my pretty," Berbex continued as he grasped Aurelia's wrist, more gently than was his wont, and led her towards the low flat wide bench. "Do you stretch yourself upon it, and we will not bind you too tightly. Ah, that's a good girl!" For Aurelia was only too frantically eager to hide her maiden loins from the sight of these three men by flinging herself down upon the whipping bench and docilely stretching out her beautiful tawny arms to the thongs which Berbex now affixed as he knelt down, his beady eyes stealthily fixing on the flattened firm curves of her voluptuous virgin bosom. Metellus meanwhile bound her ankles, and then both torturers straightened, staring at the extended naked body of their lovely royal victim on the whipping bench.
The handsome young tribune had seated himself on a footstool, a constriction in his throat, trembling violently. It was as if the goddess Venus herself had appeared to him and drawn from his mind all thought of his dear friend, the Lady Julia, whom he had sworn to protect with his very life. And it was not only lust, a healthy ardent lust so natural to his vigor and his youth, that motivated him at the sight of Aurelia's preparation for the flogging, but an immense compassion and a yearning to protect her and to cherish her and to give her back that pride of status which had once been hers even though in a land which was the alien enemy of mighty Rome.
Berbex now went to the panoply on the wall and, after much deliberation, took down a ferula, a long thin strap about an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick. Aurelia turned her face and saw the implement, then bit her lips and shuddered violently. Even in clemency, as she now understood the lashes were to be inflicted, the thought of being stripped and bound naked on a whipping bench under the degrading whip of the Romans was anathema to her proud spirit. And yet a subtle and strangely voluptuous emotion had transfigured her as she lay there with eyes closed and steeling herself for the oncoming ordeal. She, proud virgin, who had saved herself for the chief of her nation, found herself trembling like a naughty child about to be chastised by a gentle and loving parent... and yet it was not that either. She knew that Marcus Vicunus was staring at her naked bottom, at her virgin thighs, at her back and shoulders and her hair, that he had surely seen her bosom and her loins, all the secrets which had been cherished for the man who was to have wed her until Caesar had had him so shamefully put to death in the arena. And she found herself wishing that it was he alone with her in this dungeon who was about to administer the whipping and that the two brutal torturers might disappear and leave her with him. It was a singular emotion, one she was not used to or prepared for, and it made her belly quiver as she flattened herself against the harsh wooden bench and waited for the first whistling sound of the infamous ferula.
"Let's say a good baker's dozen, noble Tribune," Berbex proffered with a knowing smirk as he took his place at the left of the whipping bench and studied the extended naked figure to judge his distance and the target. "I can't just dangle the ferula over her delightful backside and call it a flogging, now can I? But I'll try not to break the skin, and just warm her pretty bottom so she'll be hot for your consolation, noble Tribune." With this, raising the strap, he brought it down straight across both tensing bottomcheeks just below the hips. There was a loud smack and Aurelia started, more from the shame of the sound which betokened her degradation than the pain itself. Yet because of the cruel scourging which had truly drawn blood, her tender flesh was acutely sensitized, and even that relatively mild lash made a stifled cry leap to her constricted throat.
Marcus Vicunus bit his lips and trembled. His; eyes fixed on that magnificent bottom, and he put his hand to the hilt of his sword as he glared at Berbex, as if warning the torturer not to exceed the bounds of clemency which he had already bought with his gold.
"I'll make it quick, tribune," Berbex gave him a nod as if reading his mind. And quickly now, two swiftly administered strokes of the strap sent the brown leather band smacking over the base of Aurelia's tensing bottom. Marcus Vicunus watched the magnificently sculptured thighs and calves huddled together, saw the agitated play of the lovely muscles under the tawny, smooth skin, and he felt a violent stirring in his own loins. Now carnal desire had blended with his instinctive passion to save this regal and courageous barbarian girl, so that it was both lust and love which agitated him.
Two more lashes, with hardly a pause between them, visited Aurelia's naked seat, attacking it at the lower summits. The naked woman turned her face to one side, her nostrils dilating, her fingers clenching as her body stiffened under the lashes.
"Only eight more, pretty one," Berbex consoled her as he lowered the ferula and studied the bright pink bands left on that soft skin which still bore the purplish splotches and swellings left by the knotted cords. "It's not hurting too much, is it?"
"N-no," Aurelia murmured in a faint voice, as again she tensed herself to endure the resumption of the lashing.
Metellus now interrupted, "Why not deal the wench a few over her shoulders, Berbex? That sweet rump of hers is badly marked from the steward's thrashing, and you might just draw blood however careful you are."
"Good idea," Berbex chuckled, moving towards the head of the bench and stepping back to give the strap more play. A whistling, smacking impact of leather against bare flesh was again heard in the torture chamber, and Aurelia sucked in her breath and convulsively jerked. It was a new pain, and it took the breath from her, and there was a throbbing burn to her soft shoulders. The bright pink welt stood up on the lovely flesh as the torturer drew back the ferula for the seventh lash. Marcus Vicunus' gaze fixed on it, and he felt his loins harden and turgify. The torturer now inflicted two more quick lashes, noisy but not unbearably painful, just below the girl's shoulders. Aurelia was breathing quickly and feverishly, and the muscles of her bottom were flinching uncontrollably.
"Courage, my pretty, just five left. I'll just touch your bottom up with a couple, and give it to you on the thighs for the rest, how's that?" Berbex confidentially remarked. He moved down now to the middle of the bench and stepped back, lifted the ferula and applied two quick cuts over the very center of Aurelia's naked behind. A stifled cry of pain attested to the anguish, for it was there that the knotted cords had done most of their hellish work. Her body jerked nervously on the bench, as she ground her pussy against the hard wood, and slowly raised her head, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.
Berbex glanced at the tribune, who leaned forward on the stool, one hand still on the hilt of his sword, the other clenched in his lap. He smirked to himself. The noble Tribune was getting excited watching the little bitch get it on the ass. It was a pity he couldn't make it a real thrashing, make this barbarian princess wriggle and jump herself about so you could see the nice thick red bush between those long sweet legs of hers. Then, with a sigh of reluctance, he concluded the ordeal by applying three swift strokes over the tops of Aurelia's quivering thighs.
"There, you see, tribune, I haven't hurt her too much or marked her either. Oh, she'll find it a bit unpleasant to sit down for a bit, but when you console her, I'm sure you know the ways of making a girl do it for you without crushing her bottom down against the floor," he lecherously observed with a belly-shaking guffaw.
Then he swiftly freed Aurelia of the thongs which bound her wrists and ankles and helped her up, taking the opportunity to run his coarse fat hand down her breast and belly and on along the furry mane between her quivering thighs.
Tears ran down Aurelia's flushed cheeks and she bowed her head as she faced Marcus Vicunus.
"I'll take the wench to a nice warm pleasant cell," Metellus offered. "You, Berbex, bring the wine. And a scissors for the noble Tribune so he can divert himself by removing that shaggy fleece of hers. You'll have to do it for us, tribune, and we'll expect it, understand?" Like one hypnotized in a languorous dream whose spell he could not break, Marcus Vicunus slowly nodded as he rose from the footstool. He took off his purple cloak and draped it over Aurelia's shuddering naked body, then put his arm around her waist and led her out of the torture chamber.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They were alone now, the handsome tribune and the beautiful barbarian princess, and Berbex had brought a jug of the costliest Falerian wine. Also, a warm blanket to pose over the rude straw pallet which served most prisoners as bed. He gave Marcus Vicunus a broad wink as he closed the door, adding, "You can have two hours, tribune. But I'm afraid we'll have to disturb you and come for the girl. She's to go back to her master and mistress when you've had your little fun. I envy you with her, Tribune. She's a spirited little bitch, she is." The door clanged to, they heard the bolt shoved home, and then the faintly receding footsteps of the torturer down the gloomy passageway.
"Forgive me for shaming you so, Aurelia," Marcus Vicunus declared. "And do not think that, although I brought you here, it was to have my way with you. I let them think this, that you might have respite after that shameful and unjust ordeal. I would have you tell me how I can serve you. I will gladly buy your freedom from the Lady Domitia and her husband Glaucus Lycidias. I know them both, and their household is a scandalous one which stinks in the nostrils of all Rome. But there is corruption everywhere among the nobility now, and I foresee that it will lead one day to the downfall of the Empire. It may even be," he added with a smile, "that your own nation or perhaps the Vandals or the Huns will conquer us or invade us, and then who shall say who are the true barbarians?"
"I am in your debt, noble Marcus Vicunus. And-and I do not hate you for-for having watched. If it had not been for you, the strap would have drawn blood and I would have, I fear, been a coward under it, for Pendaricus scourged me brutally at the villa," Aurelia faintly confessed, her face averted and flaming with her sweet confusion. The rough woolen cloak scratched her breasts and belly and pussy and thighs, exacerbated her smarting bottom, even made the dully throbbing wound of the brand acutely sensitive again, but she now felt this same singular weakness invade her which she had known when she had doffed her tunic before the handsome young tribune and let him see her naked virginal charms.
"I ask your pardon only for having seen what only a husband should see. And I will do more than this, Aurelia, I will sue to the Lady Domitia and her lord not only for your freedom but also for your hand in marriage."
"You-you would do that?" she asked wonderingly as she turned to regard him, her eyes very wide and humid.
He nodded. "I would do that and not only out of pity. I am a man, Aurelia, and I have been a soldier even when I was a young stripling. I have had no time for women or the soft delights of the amorous couch. But it is time that I wed, and your proud beauty and your bearing and your wit and charm have manifested themselves to me."
"And-and my nakedness too, tribune?" she blushingly teased in a low faltering voice.
"Yes, that too. The gods would damn me as a liar if I were to deny what inflaming passion your unveiled loveliness roused in my breast, Aurelia."
She put her hand upon his shoulder and she stared at him, her eyes clear now, her lips in a tremulous smile.
"You are honest and good and there is no shame in having shown myself to you. But it is I who am shameless, Marcus Vicunus, for I feel now as if I have known you many years and I do not fear you as a man who gazes upon me even unclad. I do not feel like a princess now, Marcus Vicunus."
"By all the gods eternal," he breathed, "can this be?"
She dropped her lovely head then, her long thick lashes veiling those inscrutable, exquisite eyes, but her breath quickened and the sweet swell of her bosom against the coarse robe told him that it was not only the pain and the shame of her whipping that made her falter and tremble so.
"Aurelia!" he murmured ardently. And his mouth sought hers. And then the Princess Aurelia, with a gasp, lifting her face to his, her eyes shining, clung her beautiful arms around his shoulders and pressed herself against him to accept his kiss as the robe opened to bare her magnificent nakedness, so that her bosom and her loins pressed against the breastplates and the short peplum of his military uniform, and she felt the maleness of him against that peplum, and the sweet intoxication of her first awareness of passion made her tremble and sway in his arms.
When that kiss was ended, she looked up at him tremulously as she whispered, "It would be an utter waste not to drink the good wine or to repose ourselves upon that comfortable blanket, Marcus Vicunus. Will you not comfort me as you promised?"
"But I said that only to let them think I would have my way with you, beautiful Aurelia, so that I could take you from their odious presence."
"Do you not desire me, then, even though I am a barbarian and an enemy of your people?" And as she spoke, she slipped her lovely shoulders out of the robe which fell to the stone floor of the cell, and again offered herself Venus-naked to his enraptured gaze.
"Aurelia, Aurelia, sweet divinity!" he hoarsely exclaimed. "But do not mistake gratitude for love, my princess."
"I do not mistake it, Marcus Vicunus. I would I were your slave and that I knew nothing of the land whence I came and where I was of royal blood, that I might show you how I could be devoted and loyal and loving. But since we have only this little time until I must go back to my master and mistress and remember that I still wear the metal collar," she pointed to it with a slim forefinger-""will you not console me as a man with a maid, forgetful that you are Roman and I am Visigoth, that you are tribune and I am former princess who is now the lowliest of slaves?"
He uttered a cry of ecstasy as he tore off the breastplates and tunic, the peplum, and his handsome, vigorous body, that of a young athlete and hero, marked with tiny scars here and there from the battles he had fought for the Empire, appeared before her. The strong fierce turgidity of his manly shaft surged forth in virile erection. She had seen until this moment only the dormant, dwindled, impotent organ of her old master; she had not even seen the spear of her betrothed chieftain and her eyes constated this phenomenon with a virgin's timidity and yet secret delight. How well made he was, how strong and noble, a fitting mate for a princess!
"Marcus, Marcus," she gasped, "take me quickly before I am afraid! I want you, my body burns for you, and it is not only the whip that has made me burn. Be quick, my Marcus, and give me these moments to remember always before I go back to the collar and to the lash and to humility which rankles me so." His hands sought her breasts, lovingly fondling and squeezing them, as his mouth bent to hers, and then to the sweet hollow of her throat. She clung to him, eager now out of her very apprehension for this momentous union. And as she felt the tip of his strong hard young cock in the bush of her pussy, she felt her thighs give way beneath her and she breathed, "Oh, take me to the blanket, before I swoon, my Marcus!" And then, there on that coarse blanket flung over a straw pallet in a dungeon cell in the grim Mamartine Prison, the handsome tribune and the barbarian princess merged. Intuitively, the royal virgin locked her legs and arms over the sturdy body of her first lover, Roman and enemy though he was, and cried out with anguished ecstasy as she felt his weapon pierce the seal of her chastity and furrow to the depths of her tight young regal cunt.
The moments sped as doves on the wing, and the whip, the rack and the sword were forgotten for this time-stopping encounter...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Marcus had himself taken the lovely Aurelia back to the villa, after he had, amid many blushes and soft sighs and kisses, taken the scissors which Berbex had given him to remove the thicket of virgin lovehair which nestled between those tawny, supple, ardently muscled thighs whose grip and sweet brunt he had borne as in a battle. Indeed, his flesh was marked by the scoring of her nails and teeth, for she had fought like a true barbarian under his weight and his reaming might which had drawn her to peak upon peak of nameless rapture.
When he came to the villa, he demanded audience with the Lady Domitia, and because of his rank and his fame, was ushered directly into her chambers.
In spiteful humor, since Vercetirix had left her with the promise that he would not be able to return for another week since he must pay his respect to his parents and be their honored guest at a feast they were preparing for him, the Lady Domitia had sent for Penelope, a tall, serious-faced slave girl of seventeen, in order to vent her furious spleen upon a helpless victim. Indeed, when Marcus Vicunus led Aurelia beside him into her chamber, she was in the act of haranguing the weeping girl, who knelt with bowed head and clasped hands before her couch and beside whom the lecherous Pendaricus stood, a smug look of anticipation on his ugly face was he fingered the knotted cords of the very scourge which had flailed and stigmatized the beautiful bottom of the Princess Aurelia.
"Why, welcome, noble Marcus," the Lady Domitia laughed huskily, "you are just in time to witness the punishment of this clumsy girl who snarled my hair with the silver comb this morning. Ah, I see you have brought me back my little barbarian from the Mamartine Prison, tribune! It was good of you, but you should not have wasted your important time upon such a wicked little baggage."
"My audience with you, Lady Domitia, will be brief. And I should ask that we be alone. I do not know what this young girl has done, but let me ask as a boon of your hospitality that you pardon her." Lady Domitia leaned back on her couch, and through heavy-lidded eyes contemplated the handsome military hero. A flicker of lust surged in her bosom. Vercetirix was becoming too possessive and too casual at the same time. It was time she changed lovers. Besides, he would not help her with the disposal of her old fool of a husband. But this virile handsome man might well, if she could make him enamored of her. And so she spoke with a coy smile on her lips and a honeyed voice which sought to be huskily seductive and alluring: "Why, gladly, tribune. Penelope, I pardon you. Try to be more careful in the future, that's a dear. And you, Pendaricus, may go, and take Aurelia back to her quarters and set her to work."
"No, Lady Domitia, that is not the boon I seek," the tribune interposed. "But send away your steward, for what I have to say to you concerns only your ears unless you wish my words to come to those of Caesar himself."
The sadistic young matron paled at this meaningful speech, and made an abrupt gesture to Pendaricus, who fawningly bowed and hastened out of the chamber, followed by the gratefully reprieved Penelope.
"What portent do you bring me, then, tribune?" she demanded arrogantly. "And why do you take such an interest in the barbarian wench. Can it be that you wish to he with her, Marcus Vicunus?"
"I have already lain with her, Lady Domitia, and she is my intended bride."
"Now this is amusing, by all the gods!" The cruel beauty tilted back her head and uttered a peal of silvery laughter. "And doubtless you wed her in the dungeons of the prison, I warrant. For an hour, of course. You, the noble Marcus Vicunus, Tribune of Rome, to wed such a slut?"
"I ask that you grant me the right to buy her and set her free so that the proper legal ceremonies of our union may be arranged," he said soberly.
"I will not give you this rebellious slave bitch," she hissed. "I mean to have her flogged and to work in the scullery on her hands and knees, naked, so that she will always be ready for the lash! She has offended my husband, for his freed-man Brutus has so told me. Was she well whipped in the Mamartine Prison?"
"She was well whipped and unjustly so by Pendaricus, your steward. And this because she overheard you avow such murderous intent as would send you before Caesar himself as a creature unworthy of her patrician rank," was Marcus Vicunus' indignant retort.
His words had a miraculous effect upon the beautiful sadist. She put her hand to her mouth and recoiled on the couch, her eyes enormous and terrified. "No, no," she breathed, "it was said in jest. I swear it was said in jest."
He shrugged disdainfully. "As to that, I bid you examine your own conscience. But if you wish Aurelia to forget what she heard and by no fault of hers-"and even if there were fault, she has been more than punished for it-"you will sell her to me here and now. Or would you have me go to your husband and tell him what it was Aurelia heard and why, truly, she was flogged and branded as if she had raised her hand against you or her master?"
"I-I will sell her to you. No, I-I will give her to you, Tribune," Lady Domitia stammered, hoarsely. "Take her and be gone. I ask you only to keep her tongue silent if, as you say, you mean to wed her and make of her a Roman citizen, that barbarian traitoress!"
"The word traitoress falls strangely from your lips, noble Lady Domitia," he said with marked sarcasm.
"But I will not accept such a gift. I will remit to you by my own treasurer before the day is ended the exact sum which you paid the dealer Mericus for Aurelia. And you need have no fear that she will compromise you.
She wishes to forget the treachery and the injustice that she has already learned in this part of corrupt and patrician Rome which you exemplify, Domitia."
"You use harsh words, Marcus Vicunus," the Lady Domitia said plaintively.
"Not without cause, which you know full well," he retorted.
Before his accusing gaze, the Lady Domitia bit her lips and lowered her eyes.
"And one last thing," the handsome young tribune added. "As wedding presents to my wife intended, I wish to give her back her handmaidens Forella and Cundemere. I will buy these two from you at the price you paid for them, and I will add sesterces enough to give you a profit for the brief time you have had them in your household."
"Take them too, then, Tribune, and go in peace. But do not leave in such anger at me, for I have done nothing to offend you. Come, am I not fair to look upon?" she sought a last essay.
Marcus Vicunus stared at the Lady Domitia and then slowly shook his head. "I give thanks unto the gods immortal that I am not your husband, Lady Domitia," he said succinctly. "For if I were, I should be compelled to approach you daily with a whip in hand to teach you less arrogance and more submission, less cruelty and more understanding of the pain you so unthinkingly cause others who are innocent. I shall not again come to this villa, of that you may be certain. And I myself will tell Caesar how graciously you transferred the deeds of ownership of these three slaves to me. I bid you farewell, my lady." And thus it was that the Princess Aurelia regained her freedom and at the same time found the man who could console her for the loss of her Visigoth prince and chieftain...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the torture chamber of the Mamartine Prison, centurion Lepidus could hardly conceal his excitement. A comfortable chair had been procured and placed in an obscure comer of the dungeon, and in it sat a lean figure, wearing a red cloak, a mask over his face. His eyes were narrowed and glittering as they peered toward the center of the torchlit chamber where Berbex and Metellus were preparing to apply the "mild question" to the beautiful Lady Julia and her daughters, Rhea and Gratia.
The proud and beautiful Julia had tried in vain to comfort her weeping young girls who had never before known the ignominy of a prison dungeon and could not understand the reason for their languishing in it. And then when the door had been flung open and the two brutal torturers had appeared, each naked to the waist, smirking with anticipatory pleasure, Julia had recoiled against the wall, an arm around each of her sobbing, trembling girls, stammering, "What-what do you want of us? Oh in the name of Jupiter the Ah Powerful, send word to the Emperor that an innocent woman and her helpless young girls are being wrongly imprisoned!"
"That's not for me to do, my lady," Metellus roughly replied as he and Berbex had entered the dungeon and seized each of the girls, "you best come along quietly. We're not going to hurt you too much, so tell these brats to stop their squalling. More than likely, 't'will only be a whipping. But you're to be questioned, orders from the Emperor himself."
And so the matron in her magnificent stola had gone tremblingly along, trying her best to comfort the sobbing young girls, but when they had crossed the threshold of that grim chamber in which so many victims had agonized and shrieked for mercy and found none, even the indomitable Lady Julia had quailed before the sight of the glowing brazier, the rack, the panoply of whips, the benches, the spiked footstool with the terrible "Boots of Hercules," and all those other devices intended for the interrogation of prisoners and of slaves.
Tiberius himself, preserving his royal incognito, crouched in the chair, licking his dry thin lips, avidly watching the spectacle.
"It is customary under Roman law," Lepidus intoned, with a glance toward his disguised Emperor, "to begin the interrogation of those suspected of treason with their offspring, for in their supposed innocence of youth they may have unwittingly overheard or remembered conversations which when repeated take on a more sinister significance. We shall therefore commence with the girls. Metellus!"
"In the name of justice and humanity," the beautiful Lady Julia cried, an arm circling the waist of each sobbing and terrified daughter, "if you must pick someone to torture, let it be myself. Even the Emperor himself could not be so cruel as to subject these gently bred children to these terrible instruments! I am mature, I am mistress of my own speech and thought, let it be I who shall bear the brunt of the interrogation!" But Lepidus had made a sign, and Berbex seized the Lady Julia and dragged her toward the wall from which, dangling from a solid metal ring fixed into the stone, a short chain provided a metal gyve. This he swiftly locked round her right wrist, and then he and Metellus seized Rhea and Gratia who at once began to scream and to beg for mercy, avowing that neither of them had ever uttered a word against mighty Rome and its Caesar.
Before Lady Julia's consternated eyes, and as she watched with contorted face and tears streaming down her cheeks, the lovely girls were stripped naked by the two torturers. With wild cries of shame and terror, they fell on their knees and clutched each other around the waist, looking back at their mother, forming the most exquisite and exciting tableau of nubile young beauty which this grim chamber had ever witnessed.
The two torturers paid no heed to the sobs and tears and lamentations of the naked young captives, nor to the mother's agonized petitions to take their place. Instead, they lowered pulley ropes and now each half-naked burly rogue bent to his chosen charge, seized her wrist and lofted her to her feet. Metellus took charge of Rhea, while Berbex grasped the wrists of gentle Gratia. In a trice, the ropes were fixed round the slim wrists, the pulleys hoisted, and the naked bodies of those two delicious adolescents dangled just off the ground, their bare toes clawing the air to find purchase.
In this pose, their charming nakedness was breathtakingly accentuated, with all the musculature in play.
The masked figure in the corner leaned forward even more excitedly on his chair, uttering a dry cough which hid the feverish impatience in his lusting heart to witness the martyrdom of these beautiful young girls.
"I will conduct the questioning," Lepidus coldly declared as he stepped forward to face the trembling and weeping captives dangling by their wrists. The flickering torches sent weird shadows and picturesque patterns on the pale creamy skin of Rhea, on the pale pink flesh of lovely young Gratia.
"Now then, Rhea and Gratia, you are going to be whipped. How severely it will be will depend upon the truthfulness of your answers to my questions."
"Oh Mother, Mother, don't let them, oh, it will hurt, oh how my wrists ache, oh please don't have me whipped, Mother!" golden-haired Gratia wailed as she turned her tear stained face back to the beautiful matron handcuffed to the stone wall of the chamber.
Berbex had taken down a thin ferula, a strap only an inch in width and about two feet long, but cut at the last four inches to form tapering "fingers" which would sting and made noisy impact on bare female flesh. He placed himself at the left of Gratia, contemplating the magnificent and lewd choreography of her plump satiny bottom as the frightened girl tensed all her muscles and tried to arch herself away from the deadly strap.
Metellus selected from the panoply on the wall a light flexible cane, about two feet in length, no thicker than his little finger, and placed himself at Rhea's right, since there was only about two feet of distance between their dangling naked bodies. As he patted her shrinking bottomovals with the rod, Rhea uttered a woebegone cry and looked back over her shoulder, then tried to arch her naked body forward, providing Lepidus as well as the masked Emperor with the bewitching sight of her thrusting mount framed by its dark auburn curls.
"Now then, each of you," Lepidus said importantly, "pay attention! Did ever in your presence your mother, the Lady Julia, speak of the Emperor Tiberius in contempt or scorn or at any time avow a hatred for him?" As he finished his question, he raised his right hand, and instantly both torturers applied their instruments. The strap cracked sonorously over the plump middle of Gratia's chubby bottomcheeks; the cane spatted with a sensual impact diagonally and from left to right over the huddling bottomovals of the lovely Rhea.
Simultaneously, two wailing cries were torn from the victims, and their bodies jerked and twisted.
"Monster, coward!" shrieked the Lady Julia, beside herself with agony at the sight of her daughters' martyrdom. "Take me instead, take me! Criminals, brutes, to torture innocent helpless girls! Is this Roman justice!"
"Take care, woman," Lepidus looked at her scornfully, "your turn is next. Take care you do not blaspheme against the Divinity. These walls have ears."
"Aye, let them hear, then," sobbed the beautiful aristocratic matron, "for even the Emperor could not be so heartless as to watch innocent young girls being brutally stripped and flogged to speak words they have never heard! Yes, I have insulted the Divine Tiberius, but only because I wish him to be the true Caesar and to eliminate his faults. If that be treason, then it is I who should taste the lash and the rack and the iron, not my daughters!"
"You have not answered, you two," Lepidus ignored the matron's heartfelt plea. "Speak! Let them feel the lash again!"
And at the same moment, the ferula and the cane bit home over the naked bottoms of the two lovely sisters, drawing fresh cries and poignant tears and supplications as again their naked tractioned bodies lunged and squirmed. The two torturers greedily stared at the angry bright pink marks left by the strap and the cane, compelling the reactions of each girl, and under their loincloths their organs stiffened with rutting desire.
Julia, her hair disheveled and falling over one cheek, her eloquent brown eyes blinded with tears, her full soft generous mouth trembling convulsively, her magnificent round closely set bosom rising and falling with her maternal agony, jerked again at the handcuff which chained her to that ring in the wall. "Take me, take me!" she cried again.
"You insolent brats," Lepidus growled, "this is not a parental spanking! Though you are to have only the mild question, by your silence and obstinacy you will earn something far more severe! You will be flogged to the blood unless you speak! Now answer the question!"
And upon his sign, for the third time, the ferula and the cane bit home against those tender virgin bottoms.
"Perhaps they should see their mother interrogated," came the reedy voice from the masked and robed figure in the corner.
The centurion turned and inclined his head. "An excellent suggestion. Berbex, Metellus, let the Lady Julia be prepared for questioning!"
The two torturers, dropping their implements, came forward to the wall to unshackle the beautiful matron.
Seizing her by the wrists, they dragged her to the long, wide bench on which beautiful Princess Aurelia had suffered her own ordeal. Ripping the stola from her as if she were a common whore to be flogged for libidinousness, they forced her down upon the bench and bound her wrists and ankles with the thongs, stretching her tautly, fixing the thongs so that they bit painfully into the tender wrists of the mature victim.
Berbex, with a sadistic grin, shoved the disheveled cascade of brown hair down over the matron's face to tumble upon the damp stone floor, so that she should have no protection from the lashing. She did not fight her fettering, and she closed her eyes and waited. The two torturers moved to the wall again, and each took down a flagellum, that deadly scourge with nine corded thongs, knotted along the ends. Berbex planted himself at the left of the naked matron and at the foot of the bench, while Metellus took his stance at her right and beside her shoulder, so that both might commandeer her entire naked body.
"Oh Mother, Mother, don't hurt Mother!" Gratia wailed.
"Punish me instead, don't hurt her," Rhea sobbed.
"Now then, Lady Julia," Lepidus crouched to the head of the bench, his burning eyes fixed on the beautiful, stoically tauted features of the matron, "confess that it was you who commissioned Lysander Bertifox to seek the death of Tiberius with his dagger!" He nodded to the torturers. The scourges fell with an ugly whistling hiss through the air and then a Thucck!
as the knots along the cords bit into the buttocks, the thighs, and the lower back of the mature victim. Lady Julia uttered a stifled groan and raised her head, her eyes wide with the sudden piercing agony of the lash, whose stigmatizing and mortifying shame she had never known until this terrible moment.
And then suddenly the door of the torture chamber was flung open and the young tribune entered, with drawn sword. "Hold your hands, you dogs!" he cried.
Lepidus uttered a vile oath. "Seize that traitor," he cried to the torturers.
"Let them try if they dare," Marcus Vicunus retorted. "Now I see it all. Are you not the Centurion Lepidus?"
"Of course you would know me," the Emperor's emissary sneered, "you, who stole the girl that I would wed with your handsome looks and your cozening words!"
"You are a lying dog and a traitor yourself. Yes, I recall it all now. And you have thought all these years that I took your woman from you, and this is why you have plotted vengeance to shame and martyrize this noble woman and her two innocent young girls, because you knew that I revered her and respected her as the very flower of all that is aristocratic and good in mighty Rome."
"Words, words," Lepidus sneered. "Do you dare brook the wrath of Caesar by interrupting Roman justice?"
"A dog's treachery is what I interrupt and nothing more," Marcus Vicunus replied. "Listen, Lepidus, the truth is that this woman Milite, whom you claim was to be your bride, despised you. And the man she would have wed had been unjustly imprisoned, and she appealed to me because of my rank to aid him, which I did.
And so all this time you have gone on believing that I made her my mistress. Poor fool, you have but to search in the village of Cesarium, and there you will find her with three happy children and her husband. She will bear witness to Tiberius of your deception and your guile. Would the gods might bring the Emperor himself, whose name you use in vain, to this dungeon to learn the truth!"
"The gods have brought the Emperor," the reedy voice announced. The man in the chair in the dark corner of the dungeon rose now, drawing off his robe, dropping the mask.
Berbex and Metellus, awed by the sight of the Imperial purple toga, dropped to their knees and bowed their heads.
"Is this the Truth, tribune Marcus Vicunus?" Tiberius severely demanded.
"I swear it on my life and honor, Caesar," the young tribune placed his sword across his breast and bowed his head. "I will bring this woman before you to make her deposition, and you will see that Lepidus falsely accused the Lady Julia for his own avaricious lust."
"Lepidus, if this is true, you have done me no great service, and you have shamed me before this noble woman and her girls who deserve better of me after the service her lamented husband has rendered the Empire," Tiberius gave the centurion a cruel long look before which Lepidus quailed.
Then, striding to the center of the torture chamber, he curtly commanded, "Release the girls and the mother, have their hurts attended to, and send them back to their villa in my own litter. By Jupiter, can I trust no man in Rome to be loyal?"
"You can trust me, Divinity," said Marcus Vicunus as he straightened and stared coolly at the old Emperor.
Tiberius chuckled dryly. "You will bring the woman you speak of, tribune, to my court on the morrow.
And you, Lepidus, will attend me at that same time. If the tribune speaks the truth, I do not doubt that you shall feel the lash yourself and then you shall be banished. Give me your arm, tribune. At least you have courage and strength and honesty and you do not fear me. Good."
* * *
A week had passed since the scene in the torture chamber. Lepidus had been scourged, bound to a marble pillar in front of the palace of Tiberius, stripped naked and left bleeding by the torturers' whips. Then, hooted at by the crowd, given a tattered robe and sandals, he had been escorted seated backwards on a mule to the boundaries of the Eternal City and told to take the road that would lead him away forever.
In memory of the deeds which the late Pro-Consul of Heraclium had done for the Empire, Tiberius ordained that the Lady Julia and her daughters and all their ancestors should never pay one sesterce of taxes.
And he sent a costly gift to the beautiful matron with that decree to which he had added in his own cramped and crabbed hand, a note imploring her forgiveness as a woman who had been traduced by an ignoble man who in turn had corrupted an Emperor...
And in his new villa high upon the Appian Hill, a present from a grateful Emperor, Marcus Vicunus spent his wedding night with beautiful Aurelia. And to his intoxicated delight, the lovely handmaidens, Forella and Cundemere, naked and wearing _garlands of myrtle and roses about their throats and bosoms, attended him in the bedchamber, bathed him and toweled him, then led him to the great bed on which his naked bride, the barbarian Princess Aurelia, awaited him with open arms and readied thighs.
And he sank into her warm chasm, felt her arms and legs wrap around him and hold him sweet marital prisoner, Aurelia murmured playfully, "My husband, accept from me the gift of my handmaidens. It is our barbarian custom. Will you once forget that you are a Roman, my lord, and accept my gift which those naughty girls have told me they are eager to have you take?" History does not record the answer of Marcus Vicunus. But we may well guess what it was!
