Faustina and the Barbarians by John McKeown

far as possible off the main road, it became apparent that my four female companions, though distressed at the destruction of Calleva, in many ways saw their present homeless condition as a liberation.
    “That lazy oaf of a husband of mine—phaaa!” Aquilina, the lady closest in age to me, and whose presence of mind had saved our skins, spat into the bush. “I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again. Useless fucker, good for nothing but ale and spinning yarns about his exploits as a Captain in the Legion Valeria Victrix. Him, he couldn’t lead a donkey to hay.”
    We all laughed.
    “And useless in the sack to boot. Bellona! I haven’t had a good piece of man-meat between my legs for years.”
    We laughed appreciatively again. Alexis and Botilda, the wives of an ex-legionary and a shopkeeper respectively, felt the same way. Caelestis, the youngest, only smiled as we trudged through the edge of the forest; she was unmarried, and without, apparently, even a boyfriend. There was no one she missed at Calleva she insisted, particularly not her father and mother who fought like cat and dog, or the brother who treated her like a slave.  
      I told the girls about Comminilingus, without going into too much detail, though by the looks on their faces they were putting two and two together in combinations as various as our sex-life had been. But what of my divine Briton? I had hoped against hope that there would’ve been some message from him left at my villa, where I and the girls had quickly stopped off   to gather what supplies we could for our journey, but, there was nothing. I would have to start acclimatising myself to the fact that he’d probably been killed defending Calleva, and was no more than ash blowing on the breeze at our backs, sweeping us toward Londinium. But I couldn’t bring myself to think of him in the Elysian Fields just yet.
    That night the breeze became a cold easterly wind but luckily most of it blew over our heads as we bedded down in a tree-enclosed gully deep in masses of last years dead leaves. We wrapped ourselves in the bedding I’d snatched from the villa and piled the leaves on top of ourselves for extra insulation, and were quite snug. The others dropped off quickly, apart from Caelestis, who I could hear shifting restlessly close by.  
    “Can’t sleep, Caeli?”  
    “No, I’m cold.”
    “Take my blanket and give me yours, mine is thicker.”
    “No Faustina, you’re much too kind, and too important not to be comfortable.”
    “Nonsense, what’s important about me?”
    “Well, you’re a lady.”
    “You perhaps wouldn’t say that if you knew me.”
    She laughed her delightful musical laugh.
    “I think I’d like you even more.”
    Silence. The wind disturbed the drying autumn leaves for miles, the stars stood cold in a clearing of the clouds above.
    “If you like me, accept my judgement. Here, change blankets.”
    “I couldn’t.”
    “Confound it, girl. You can’t lie there freezing. Get under here with me then.”
    She could do this alright, and quickly.
    “No wonder you’re cold, you’re only half-dressed!”
    She was wearing only a thin woollen tunica, which, I’d noticed when we’d stopped to wash in a stream, was full of holes.
    I could feel her skin through the holes now, prickled with gooseflesh, her large, pale, beautifully full breasts straining the worn fabric as she pressed against me. I wrapped my blanket around us and her long, firm legs curled tightly around me. Her breath was hot and fluttery against my neck.  
    Sometimes things happen naturally. People, bodies, flow together, regardless of sex or station; it was doubly natural under the circumstances—we could be captured and ravaged and killed by the Saxons that very morning—and so doubly wrong to resist whatever comfort we could give each other. In the event, we gave each other a considerable amount, and the necessity of not waking our companions added a delicious piquancy to our shared