The Singing Sword

III

There is a beast in every man who breathes, a beast that is born in him and lives within him all his life, in a constant struggle for dominance over what he would prefer to think of as his "better self." I say that with complete conviction because I have had to come to terms with my own personal beast, and it now lies dormant inside me; dormant, but far from dead. It stirs, occasionally, reminding me of its presence, of its poison.

My beast's chains are strong — as strong as I, a maker of iron chains, could make them. I know to my own cost, nevertheless, that they are frighteningly fragile.

I have not always known such things, for it is not in my nature to dwell for any length of time on matters I cannot pick up and either bend or straighten with a hammer. I learned of the reality of man's inner beast only when I was a man full-grown myself, and I learned of it from my friend Bishop Alaric, after he and I had seen at first hand the depredations of one sad man's beast, which had caused him to run amok among his friends and neighbours, crippling and maiming before he could be overpowered. Alaric said at the time that the man, whom we both knew, had been "possessed by the beast." Hearing these words from Alaric, a man of God, I assumed he meant the beast, the Devil, and I said so. Alaric, however, quickly brought me to order on my misunderstanding.

It is too easy, he told me, with that simplicity of speech I so admired in him, to blame all our human griefs and ills on Lucifer. In doing so, he said, we can evade responsibility for our own actions, whereas the fault, in truth, is attributable to a lesser, more human beast that alternates constantly between lying dormant or raging savagely within each of us, male and female. The degree to which each of us subjugates our personal beast dictates the goodness, or the greatness, we achieve in this life.

This was a new notion for me, a disturbing, discomforting idea with which, I must confess, I did not rush to wrestle. But at that time I had not yet truly encountered my own beast and, try as I would, the closest I could come to seeing it then, or even sensing its presence within me, was in my own cold enjoyment of the kill, in war. I knew what that did to me — the feral enjoyment of battle and the sick revulsion that followed. But that was no beast, I reasoned; it was mere guilt.

Many years later, under the threat of rain, late on a cloudy summer afternoon that was dark with flies and heavy with omens, I was to recall that occasion, and that discussion, very clearly, as I gazed, horror-stricken, at the signs of the victory of one more man's beast and recognized fully the hideous visage of my own.

Approaching this episode again has placed demands on me that are new and worrisome, because I must now write about the beast in man, and of the beast in me. I fear and loathe the task, but my course is clear: I may not deal in other people's faults unless I first lay bare, in full confession and acknowledgement, my own gross flaws. And so I must deal here with my friend Domitius Titens, and with the treachery I dealt him for his friendship.

Domitius Titens was our neighbour, the great-great-grandson, like Caius Britannicus, of one of the original villa builders in the region that we developed as our Colony. He was also my friend and an avid student of ironcraft. He would never have made a weapons-smith, but he learned quickly the artistic sleight of hand required to twist wrought iron into lovely, strong and decorative shapes.

He had been in the legions at the same time as Cay and me, and most of his soldiering had been done in the eastern marches of the Empire. He had served for years in Asia Minor and had ended up in Constantinople, at the Imperial Court, where he met and wed his red-haired consort, Cylla, bringing her back to his huge estates in Britain when his tour of duty ended.

Cylla Titens was, for a very long time, a part of my life that I could never bring myself to come to grips with. In the beginning, I thought of her as "Scylla," and imagined her to possess all the attributes of that mythological monster. She made my life a misery over a period of years, but I could never hold her wholly to blame for it. The fault was mine; Cylla was merely herself. Whatever power, for good or evil, she ever held over me she possessed only because I gave it to her, and it was that gift that rendered me incapable of dealing with her satisfactorily. She exercised a dark power with the dedication of a despot, and I was never able to break her hold.

Cylla and I never lay with each other. Never. Had I lain even once with Cylla Titens, I would have forfeited my wife and my honour, in my own mind, forever. I can state with certainty that Luceiia would have forgiven me had I strayed, because she told me so and I know she spoke the truth. But I could never have forgiven myself for such an atrocity.

Cylla Titens was everything I mistrusted and disliked in a woman, all smoothly disguised in the shape of what every normal man admires.

Cylla fascinated me. She was beautiful, with that headlong, dedicated devotion to her own beauty that left no room in her life for anyone or anything else of importance. Her body was her temple, and she worked long and hard to keep it long and hard. Beauty was life's blood to Cylla, and she was entirely taken up with protecting it. She never sat or walked in the sun, because she believed it dried and wrinkled her skin. And there was never any mention of Cylla and children in the same breath. Her self was the only thing she was true to, and she was determinedly dedicated to that.

I knew how faithless Cylla was; I had reason to. And she knew I thought her a shameless wanton. She never made any attempt to qualify the accuracy or the validity of my opinion. She did not feel she needed to. I lusted after her and she encouraged my lust, deliberately baiting the beast in me, drawing it ever closer to the surface with my own tacit consent.

There is a perversity in me that enjoyed the experience thoroughly, tormenting though it was, and the memory of some occasions that we shared can still choke me with desire from time to time, even though almost twenty years have gone by since I last saw her. The woman was temptation personified, and every blandishment she offered contained a challenge, I thought, to my ultimate moral strength. That, at least, is what I used to tell myself. In my arrogance, I deluded myself that I was ultimately invulnerable to her attractions, but there was always the chance that I would succumb.

Our perverse relationship was a secret between the two of us — guilty on my part, blatant and sexually self-stimulating on Cylla's. Between the two of us there were no pretences. Cylla's motivations were hers alone, as was the undeniable satisfaction she derived from the entire situation. My own were equally private. We never discussed them, save in the broadest, coarsest terms, in whatever space of time each particular set of circumstances permitted. We would talk then, mostly in whispers, and Cylla would act — perform, I suppose, would be the most appropriate word. I did nothing on these occasions but look and react in tense self-containment that was sometimes agonizing. We conducted our association with these constraints because they were within my control, and they were within my control because I dictated the opening rules of what was to become an elaborate and long-extended game.

It began when we first met, my first night in the Villa Britannicus, when I had just met and fallen in love with Luceiia. Cylla climbed into my bed that night and woke me from an erotic dream. Had Luceiia not come to my immediate rescue, knowing Cylla and what she was likely to do, I would have had Cylla Titens there and then, uncaring who she was. But nothing happened. Luceiia nipped that blossom before it could even bud, and I did not see Cylla again for almost a year.

When we did meet again, it was at a gathering of friends, a thanksgiving celebration for a full harvest.

Again Cylla let me know, without words, that she considered me a potential and soon-to-be-possessed bed-mate. I avoided her designs on that occasion, and for a long time afterward, by the simple expedient of never permitting myself to be alone with her. And so we continued for another year and more, with the four of us, Luceiia and myself and Cylla and her husband Domitius, whom she called Dom, reunited at least five times at similar gatherings.

Let it be understood here that Cylla Titens was, as I have already said, more than simply attractive. She was wondrous to behold from a distance and she radiated an aura of sexual availability that every man in every gathering was aware of and responded to, with the singular exception of Domitius, her husband.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Look!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her eyebrow went high, but neither in scorn, nor in derision. "He has no interest." I said nothing, and she smiled. "You do not believe me, do you? But why should I lie? What would I gain by it? Would it make you think me less wanton? Nothing could do that, could it? But that wantonness is what brings you here, so I accept your disapproval. Do you like this?" She ran her fingers through the bush of red-gold hair.

"Do that again," I whispered, almost choking.

"What? This?" She did it again, lingering long with that probing finger buried deep inside her before withdrawing it and offering it to me to taste. As I shook my head in refusal, I heard Dom returning. I watched her suck her finger clean again, knowing exactly how that hot mouth would feel around me, and then Dom walked back into the room, his head already bowed over the document he held unrolled between his hands. Cylla casually moved away from the revealing light of the doorway and I bent over the plans Dom laid out on the table, seeing nothing but the image of Cylla's mouth sucking on her finger.

That image, and the memory of her red-gold pubis stayed with me for days.

The ultimate move in the game, its final stage of depravity, happened in the late spring of the year of the raid in which I was wounded, mere weeks after Caius told me of the amazing and impossible report that Claudius Seneca had been seen in Rome. Cylla arrived at the entrance to my smithy one morning and asked if she might speak with me alone. This was unprecedented. She had never approached me so openly before. I quaked with apprehension as I stepped outside into the bright sunlight to speak with her, but she put my mind at ease immediately by handing me a package of drawings, the design for a smelting oven I had lent to Dom some time earlier and which he had promised to return that day.

"Dom asked me to return these to you. He has gone into Aquae Sulis."

I blinked at her, my eyes still smarting from the bright sunlight. "Aquae Sulis? Why didn't you go with him? You usually do, don't you?"

"Yes, but not this time. I have no need." I looked closely at her, but there was no glitter in her eyes. I relaxed, but she went on.

"Publius, I have a suggestion to make. I know you have no wish to go beyond looking. You enjoy looking. We both know that. Now I would like you to look in a different way. Would you like that? I think you would."

I felt myself frowning and stepped further from the doorway of the smithy, leading her by the elbow around the corner into a narrow, brick-paved passageway between some storehouses. When I felt sure we were far enough removed from the door to avoid being overheard, I asked, keeping my voice low, "Cylla, what are you talking about? What could be different? What more is there to look at? I know you as well as any man could know you, using only his eyes. How can you improve on that?"

"Cylla."

"What?"

"Cylla. My name. You said it. You never use it."

"No, I never do, do I?"

"Use it again, now."

She smiled, but it was a strange smile. Had I not known her so well, I might have thought it was an uncertain smile, almost tremulous. I said nothing, and she went on.

"We are here in your domain, Publius, and not playing the game."

"So?" I was confused, unable to understand what she was saying.

"So, after — what? — seven years of not saying my name, would you please me on this summer day by calling me by my name again? Just once more?"

I was surprised and, in consequence, more cruel than I care to remember. "Humph!" I grunted, feeling uncomfortable at this departure from the norm. "We were speaking of looking, Cylla....Well, Cylla, I have watched you make love to yourself in every way, with everything from vegetables to the finest beeswax candles. What more is there to see?"

She gazed at me in silence for long moments and I tried to divine what she was thinking from the strange expression on her face, but then she laughed her old laugh and her eyes began to shine.

"Do I hear censure, Publius? Disgust? Come now, you love all of it. Cylla, your wanton Cylla, thrills you and excites you more than she disgusts you, does she not? No," she answered her own question, her voice becoming lighter with mockery. "No, perhaps not more than she disgusts you, but much more violently, far more pleasurably. I've seen you grow hard in spite of your disgust and your dislike of what you think of as your weakness, Publius, and I've watched you spill by hand the seed you would never give to me in any other way. But there is more."

"How? How can there be? What more?"

"Come to my house today and see."

"No. Not while Dom is away."

She gazed at me again. "I wonder if you will ever see what a fool you are in this, Publius. You will not betray your friend in his absence. You prefer to wait until he is nearby."

"That's enough, Cylla! Enough!"

She paused, then nodded. "Very well, then we shall choose another venue. Out of doors. In the woods."

"No! Against the rules. Not alone." I was growling through my temptation.

"I will not be alone. You will."

"What? What d'you mean?"

"What I said. I will be accompanied."

"My God, you're mad! Accompanied by whom? And what makes you think I would ever consider such a thing?"

"By a man. A lovely, stripling boy who cannot hear or speak, but lacks in nothing else."

"You are mad!"

She laughed again. "Mad? How? Because I invite you to watch? But I love having you watch me at my games, Publius! No one watches me better or more intently, more ravenously than you do. I truly thought you might enjoy watching someone else take for himself the pleasures you deny yourself. There would be no danger of discovery. You could watch and remain unseen! Think of it, Publius. The boy is deaf. He will not hear you approach to stand among the bushes, and he will make no sound, and I will bind his eyes so he is blind to all but the pleasures I will shower upon him for your pleasure." She paused, watching me closely, and when I said nothing she continued. "He is but a boy, Publius, though he performs like a stallion. He will be an instrument of pleasure, no more than that — a silent, unseeing, Unhearing instrument, manipulable as any of the others I have used in the past. Except that he will use me as a mare, and I will use him to exhaustion. Think, Publius. He will not see you there. But I will. And you will finally see me used as the slut I am in your eyes — ravaged and ridden, stretched and clutched, sweating and writhing, kneeling over a living, piercing phallus, impaling myself as I look over his head, watching you watching me, both of us wishing it were you in me." Her voice softened. "No broken rules, Publius, no departures from the game. It will still be only you and I. But I shall cover his eyes tightly when it is done, because I want you, Publius Varrus, to watch a man's seed seeping from the body of your playmate at least once. Think of it, Publius. For your eyes and for your lusts alone, and none to know of it save I."

"Sweet Christ!"

She cut me short. "No preaching, Publius! I will be there, with the boy, by the third hour after noon. You know the standing stone at the south-east corner of our land. A pathway leads into the woods from there. Count your steps and keep them short as mine. A hundred and twenty paces from the edge of the forest there, you will see a holly tree on the left of the path. Directly behind that tree, some forty paces further off the path, there is a clearing with a mossy bank fit for the bedding of a god. Don't be afraid of making noise. Remember, the boy is deaf and mute. I will be listening for your approach, but I will not wait for long. With a naked youth and a long, strong phallus nearby, I find I grow wet very quickly and must scratch my itch." She paused and leaned closer to me, sniffing deeply. "You are grimy and sooty and sweaty and smelly. I like that. The juice is trickling from me, down my thigh, right now. I want to lean, or sit somewhere and do things for us. Is there a place nearby?"

"No, for the love of God!"

"No. For the love of lust. What about your smithy? It looks dark."

"Are you mad? Equus is in there, and a dozen other people."

"What's that place?" She nodded towards a door.

"Nothing. A storeroom."

"Show me."

"No! Cylla, for the — "

"Then I shall look myself."

She walked forward and pulled the door open. The room was tiny, with barely enough space for a man to enter and reach the shelves that lined the interior. She stepped inside and turned to face me, pulling the bottom of her beautiful, light-blue gown up over her long, clean-muscled legs. I groaned in despair and excitement. This time she was really going to go too far, but I had already seen the glistening evidence of her arousal on the inner surface of her thighs; she had not been exaggerating. Her fingers were already busy and her knees began to give way as her back slid down the shelf-lined wall. In the dimness of the hut's interior her eyes looked glazed, so intense was her excitement. She reached out one hand to me, wet with her body's fluid. I had never known any woman who could get so wet so quickly. I glanced from side to side in fear, but there was no one to be seen. And then Cylla began to moan, deep in her throat, something I had never known her do before.

"Stop that!" I hissed.

"I can't," she moaned. "It's being here, so close to your place. Step closer. Let me smell the smoke on you."

Terrified of being discovered, but completely incapable of resisting, I stepped closer and she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply and then whimpering in her throat as she gained release. I knelt down on one knee, no longer caring who might happen by. "Show me! Show me how wet you are."

"How wet do you want me?"

"As wet as you can be."

She stuck her tongue between her lips and smiled, and then squatted lower and squirted a strong jet of urine to splatter on the floor of the hut. As I gazed in utter fascination, she straightened up slowly, clutching her skirts high around her waist and simply allowing the stream of urine to run down her legs and soak her sandals.

"Is that wet enough for you? You see? There are still new things to look at. Give me your hand." I shook my head. "Then give me something, a cloth."

I straightened up and handed her the kerchief I wore around my neck, and she dried her thighs, rubbing the cloth thoroughly in the wetness of her crotch before handing it back to me. I raised it to my face and sniffed it. She stepped from the hut.

"Your turn. You need to do it. I'll watch. If anyone comes, I'll warn you and you can take something down from a shelf for me." Her eyes were fixed on my crotch. "Do it, Publius. Now!"

I did, and it took only seconds with her hungry eyes on me and the vision of what I had just watched her do. When it was over she nodded.

"The third hour. But no sooner. It would not please you to meet us on the path by accident. I will be listening for you. Remember: forty paces behind the holly tree."

Then she turned and was gone, leaving me to attempt to reconstruct my day and to struggle against the temptation she had dangled in front of me for that afternoon.