There was not even a hint of a breeze. With sails furled, the corbita lay motionless under the blazing sun. It was noon. The sailors were napping in the hold, and so were Pristinella’s parents, her brother, and their household guards. She and Rosa were the only ones on deck.

“Father is such a softie,” Pristinella scowled. “Any serious man would have set some watchmen on deck to scout the seas. Who knows what might be coming our way.”

“Whoever it is, they will surely make good speed in this weather,” said Rosa. Her lips curled up into a smile but her gaze moved down towards the deck, self-conscious as she was about showing any kind of sauciness.

“Now don’t you get smart! War galleys have rowers remember. And I’m pretty sure the imperator can spare himself a couple of marines. By Jove, if I were a captain of a trireme under the imperator and charged with overtaking some scoundrel to silence him for once and for all, I wouldn’t be thrifty with my men. I’d have them row and row and I’d have the tired ones dropped overboard – just dead weight, right?”

“No use,” Pristinella concluded, while running her finger down the smooth outside of her thigh, as if brushing off some non-existent smudge of dirt. “I shouldn’t allow for any kind of drag on my vessel.”

That last bit made Rosa chuckle, but then she replied: “After a while you’d have no rowers left and you’d never get anywhere. Also: your father’s not a scoundrel and the imperator doesn’t want him dead.”

“Then why did he banish him?”

Pristinella yawned and stretched her long limps. She then relaxed and closed her eyes. They were lying on coils of rope that lay at the starboard side of the ship near the mast. The shadow of that massive trunk of pine wood partly covered Pristinella’s slender body. Only her right leg was well and truly out of the shade, and with her tunica falling between her legs, her thigh was fully exposed to the sun.

Rosa was lying beside her. She covered her eyes with her hand to shield them from the light, allowing herself to look at Pristinella’s leg unhindered.

“It is the imperator who is the scoundrel,” said Rosa, speaking now in a softer voice.

“Why, he’s not been a scoundrel to me!”

Pristinella again elongated her body into a cat stretch. Rosa could see the side of her breast underneath her tunica – they both liked to wear the plainest of tunicas that left their sides exposed and arms bare – and Rosa could not resist poking Pristinella in the soft skin above her hip bone.

“Hey! Now don’t you become a scoundrel yourself!” Pristinella retorted cheerfully, locking eyes with her friend.

In truth, the experience of being banished by the emperor had not been particularly hard on the two young women so far – if not to say it had changed their lives for the better. They had spent the previous six years in Rome, where they had been commanded to stay indoors most of the time, weaving many-coloured rugs and curtains on the loom, bathing in rose-scented baths and wasting time with endless chatter. The hue of bronze that had clouded their skin when they were children, had gradually faded. And life outside of the house had not been much more eventful, for it had consisted mainly of formal dinners, meetings and religious ceremonies, where they had fulfilled their duty of smiling, being polite and seeming neat to all those Roman noblemen, or, to put it more accurately, all that potential wedding material.

Of course, these demands had weighed on Pristinella’s shoulders more so than on Rosa’s, for Rosa was not born of noble Roman blood. She was the daughter of a soldier and a slave girl who had both served Pristinella’s family. Nevertheless, she had been born in the same year as Pristinella, and they had ever been close friends, so that when Rosa’s father died of a snakebite, nobody had moved to send her away, and even though she herself was a free woman, she never considered leaving Pristinella’s side, serving her loyally as a glorified chambermaid.

During their childhoods, however, Rosa did not exactly follow Pristinella about with perfumes, fibulas and combs to scent and tidy her hair, as were a chambermaid’s tasks. Instead, the both of them were living a rather rough and unruly life, as a pair of ordinary ragamuffins. Back then, the whole family – Pristinella’s older brother, Marcus, and Rosa’s twin brother, Quintus, included – was living at the countryside, housed in a luxurious villa with a large estate bound to it. How limitless life had seemed to Pristinella then! In those years, her parents had put hardly any restraints on her or Rosa’s life, and they would roam the hills and wheat fields, wrestle with the boys, climb the olive trees and swim in the pond by the moss-covered statue of Diana.

It all changed one day when they had gone out riding on a donkey. The poor thing got stung by a wasp and broke into a gallop – who would have known donkeys could achieve such speed! The girls had only just managed to hold on: Pristinella by holding its manes into her fist, and Rosa, who was seated behind her, by clasping her arms round Pristinella’s waist. They had both experienced a dull pain in their pelvises, and when they returned home and got off the donkey, using an old, cut-off tree trunk as a step-down, they saw on the furry back of the animal two streaks of red. Their tunicas were likewise painted.

The event had not upset Pristinella’s father and mother, for no broom would protest at an absence of maidenhood – quite the contrary: an intact maidenhood would have been a travesty! Pristinella had merely skipped the ritual deflowering demanded of Roman noble girls – a ritual that had long fallen out of fashion (though its results were still mandatory) and that probably would have taken place in the darkness of her own cubiculum by the instrument of some wooden or marble phallus, and without much further ado.

Nevertheless, not long after the incident with the donkey, her father became unbearably strict, and mother became utterly preoccupied with finding her daughter a man. With that purpose in mind, they moved to the city, and remained there even during the hot months of the summer. In fact, at that time, Pristinella’s father was already fighting a losing battle with a dwindling reputation. It made him anxious and therefore serious, and during those years in Rome he was quite a different man from the easy-going father Pristinella had known during childhood. It was the consequence of his incessant social downfall as well, that no partner could be found for Pristinella, despite her beauty – or perhaps, partly, because of it. For indeed, as Pristinella had grown to adulthood, her body had started to mirror the statue of Diana that had throned over the pond she used to swim in: Pristinella came to stand tall and dignified, and even her facial expression would often appear both graceful and haughty, bearing a great resemblance to the countenance of the aloof, virginal goddess of the hunt, whose gaze was capable of intimidating even the mighty Jupiter.

Indeed, one may wonder, if the emperor had ever been face to face with her, would he still have dared to banish her father? Or might those scowling eyes, flashing from underneath such elegant eyebrows, have made him hesitate?

Pristinella did not know why the emperor had banished her father – he would not answer any of her questions concerning the topic – but really, as the initial shock of the news subsided, she cared less and less about the emperor’s motives. For as soon as the family had packed up and left the city of Rome, her father had started to slip into his old skin again, becoming milder and more carefree by the day. He had been offered a passage to Greece on a luxurious passenger and cargo ship owned by some rich friend of his, and ever since sailing out of the port of Ostia, he had let Pristinella and Rosa roam round on deck, where they could at long last enjoy the spring sun unencumbered again, getting some bronze back into their complexions. They were prohibited only from the part of the hold where the cargo was stocked and the sailors slept – this for “reasons of decency”.

Being so liberated by this supposedly terrible ordeal called banishment, the two young women did not exactly shiver in fear, nor tremble with anger at the mere mention of the emperor. In fact, they had commenced, ever since their ship’s sail had caught the first gust of wind, to playing little games organised round that very word: imperator.

Since they were now all alone on deck, lying close together on the coils of rope, Rosa could not resist putting the first piece forward on the playing board of precisely such a game, saying: “There’s no need for watchmen on deck though. At least not for scouting imperial ships. We needn’t be afraid of the imperator. Pirates would be much worse. Those are vulgar men: they’d sell us into slavery.”

“So would the imperator.”

“I still think we’d be better off with pirates.”

“Why? Do you fancy them?”

“I do not!” Rosa said emphatically.

“Liar! But you’re right. Romans have little imagination. The praetorian guards would only make us into mere household slaves or something. Whereas pirates… Well, assuming they have eyes to see” – Pristinella inspected her gorgeously smooth arms while saying that – “then they would probably get us invested in a rather different kind of slavery.”

“What kind?”

“Oh, you know, unfurling their sails, that kind of thing.”

Rosa giggled. She was built a good bit more plump than Pristinella, with full blushing cheeks and a heavy bosom, that unfailingly heaved up and down whenever she would fall into a fit of girlish laughter. Pristinella liked to incite such fits for that very reason.

“Then again, pirates only have eyes for gold, they say,” Pristinella continued their little game.

“Yes,” affirmed Rosa. “And the imperator has gold aplenty. If he would send ships after us, it wouldn’t be just to capture us.”

“No, it would be to sodomise the bunch of us.”        

They both laughed now, wriggling about on the ropes, surrendering to an inexplicable glee. It was the way their little games usually ended: with the mention of sodomisation as the ultimate imperial punishment. They had heard the word “sodomise” being used several times by friends or maids during their many hours of indoor chattering, but when they had inquired into the meaning of it, they had met with such disbelief of their naivety, that few were willing to explain the verb to them, and the explanations that they had been given were all either contradictory with one another, or so extremely dirty to their ears that they could not take them for the truth. Consequently, they were still quite unsure as to the precise sense of the word, which of course only heightened its attraction.

When their laughter had subsided, they lay in silence for a minute or so: Pristinella on her back, for the most part covered by the shade of the mast, Rosa on her side facing Pristinella, glared upon by the sun, and the both of them holding one hand at their eyebrows to shield their eyes. A smirk then appeared on Pristinella’s face. She turned her head sideways – away from Rosa – and said something so softly that Rosa could not make out the words.

“What?” she asked.

“Mmm. Nothing.”

The smirk playing round her lips, however, told quite a different tale. Rosa leaned in. Pristinella closed her eyes, enjoying the attention. The ropes, heated by the sun, felt pleasantly warm to their skin, and gave off a rather thick smell, a bit like dried-up cow dung, creating the impression that they were lying in a meadow. Indeed, for several moments Rosa completely forgot that she was on a ship, as her whole world was reduced to that smell of sun-dried grass, to the hot glow of the sun on her right cheek, and to Pristinella’s fluffy earlobe that was left exposed by her glistening black hair – and that was right in front of Rosa’s eyes: so close had she now leant in.

“What?” she whispered again, as she trained her eyes towards Pristinella’s leg. The sun reached all the way up to where her tunica covered the innermost part of her thigh, but all the rest of her leg was golden brown under the sun, like a shining bread crust coming out of a water-sprinkled oven.

“I had a thought,” Pristinella said casually. “You want to know what it was?”

Rosa now remained silent, refusing to indulge her friend. But Pristinella refused to speak first as well. Ultimately, Rosa said: “We’re getting such a nice tan.”

Pristinella now turned her brown eyes at Rosa, who was flushed in her neck and bosom because of the sunlight, and Pristinella felt a great urge to squeeze that luscious flesh lying beside her. Smirking, she looked at the mast and said: “I want to fuck the imperator.”

Rosa got one of those bouncy fits of giggling. Seeing her so, Pristinella wriggled about on the coils of rope, and, without thinking about it, grabbed the end of one of them and threaded it through in between her legs. Rosa, in turn, felt her hands instinctively grab one of the coils and she pressed the side of her face into it.

“You can’t,” she said.

“Why by June can I not?”

“He is our enemy.”

“Mmm. But he looks so hot on his coins.”

Now they both laughed, and as her body was shaking, Pristinella found she was pulling the rope ever more tightly between her legs, yanking it upwards, so that she felt it slide in between her ass cheeks.

“What are you doing?” Rosa asked, noticing.

Pristinella did not answer straight away. Finally, she said, suddenly quite detached from their game: “I don’t know how you can stand that sun.”

Rosa, realising that she had asked just about one question to many, had been playing along just a tad too passively, said: “I like how it feels on my skin.”

“Better cover yourself, or you’ll get burned again.”

“I never get burned,” Rosa declared, as she turned over on her back, now covering her eyes with both of her hands and sticking up her right leg, the way Pristinella had been doing. She let her left leg fall open to the side, exposing as much of the inner thigh to the sun as possible.

“Ah, what can I say,” Rosa murmured, as she felt her own heart pounding against the ropes at her back. “Helios all in all has a very pleasant touch, doesn’t he?”

Fully aware that Pristinella was looking, Rosa took hold of the front side of her tunica with her fingers, and started slowly to pull it upwards, feeling the linen glide over her thighs.

“It’s like stepping into a hot bath,” she said. “And slowly lowering yourself, until…”

Her voice faded, as she felt the last bit of the linen glide over her pubic bone, whereby she exposed herself fully to the sun, that immediately glowed hot on her most sensitive flesh.

“Are you crazy?” said Pristinella in a husky voice – now she was acting the innocent. “He can see you, you know? Helios.”

“Maybe I want him to see me.”

“He might come down and – it is believed he does that in Greece.”

“Does what?”

“Come down from the sky with his dazzling spear and stick it –"

The creaking of wood came through: there were people climbing the ladder onto deck. Rosa quickly pulled her tunica down and rearranged herself in a modest position. Pristinella loosened her grip on the rope that was in between her thighs, though she did not take it away from its snug position underneath her lower body.

Three sailors came up from belowdecks with a bucket and some cloths. Apparently, they were intent on washing up under the sky. At first, they did not pay the women any notice: they just dipped their cloths in the bucket and started washing their upper bodies. Soon their naked torsos were wet and glistening in the sunlight, but, though Rosa was watching them with some interest, she felt rather disheartened by the way the two of them were being utterly ignored by these men. She could sense Pristinella feeling the same way.

Only when the sailors were done rubbing their torsos with olive oil, did one of them look in their direction, saying: “You two shouldn’t stay out here lest you get burned the skin righ’ off.”

He had only glanced at them from beneath the shadows of his brows, humbly and unobtrusively, and Rosa realised in a flash that these men were actually afraid of them!

Pristinella, of course, realising it too, spoke to them in a honey-sweet voice as they were descending into the hold again.

“Well then, why don’t you offer us some shade? And wave us some coolness?”

The sailors disappeared from sight without reply – although the last one had his eyes on the two of them for a second or so, before his head too sank beneath the deck.

“The last one looked!” Rosa exclaimed in delight, though softly enough for her words not to be audible below.

“What men!” Pristinella laughed, half admiringly, half condescendingly. “Kalos soma, kakos thumos.”                                                                           

“What does that mean?” asked Rosa, who was unschooled in the Greek language, contrary to Pristinella, who had learned a little bit from her father.

“It means,” answered Pristinella in her honey-sweet voice. “How to put it? It means I liked their muscles, but not their eyes. You see…” Pristinella wriggled about on the ropes and stretched her arms out above her head, holding her wrists together as if they were bound, touching the rail. “If I were tied up like so, I wonder if they’d have had the thumos to look at me then? Or perhaps… perhaps they would have acted like proper men, if you’d still have had your cunt out.”

Now this needed a retort! Such cheekiness! And since she could not produce a witty reply, Rosa made a grab for it. She caught Pristinella’s tunica at the side and yanked it sideways, exposing one perky breast to the air. The purple nipple in the middle of it, hardened immediately.

Pristinella gasped in surprise. Rosa jumped up to her feet and made a run for it, intuitively realising that she had now crossed a line – the line of naughty touch – and that running away like a mischievous child was the only possible response to such a breach of custom. Pristinella jumped up to her feet herself and then started to chase her friend down the length of the corbita.

As they reached the foredeck, Rosa had nowhere to go, and Pristinella pinned her against the rail, quite forcefully so. Rosa faced the sea and felt Pristinella right behind her, felt her hips pushing up against her ass, pressing her belly into the wooden rail.

“Ouch, what are you doing?” Rosa squealed.

Pristinella did not answer. Instead, she moved her hand inside of Rosa’s tunica from the side and seized one of her plump breasts. She then squeezed.

“Now we’re even.”

“I didn’t actually touch you,” Rosa protested weakly – and in vain, for Pristinella only squeezed the more. She had pinned Rosa so effectively, that Rosa was utterly unable to manoeuvre, for Pristinella was thrusting her hips forward, slightly lifting Rosa up against the rail. Consequently, Rosa was floating above the deck, unable to truly put her weight down on her feet.

Feeling her own powerlessness, Rosa submitted with a sigh, and she started to gaze at the sea that stretched out before her. It was more gold than blue, all glamor and glare, it seemed an infinite chest full of a thousand golden coins. Standing before all that wealth, with Pristinella clutching her breast, it suddenly darted into Rosa’s mind that Pristinella was rich, and that, banishment or no, her father still owned slaves and lands and villas. And he had returned to being kind and lenient like in their childhoods, which meant that in Greece they would be allowed to roam round again – and, on top of all that, it was now obvious that they inspired timidity in the hearts of men like those common sailors, men who, in fact, were strong enough to sodomise the both of them if only they had so dared! But they had not and they would not! Oh, thought Rosa, how wonderful it is to be rich, and pretty, and free, and powerful! She felt like shouting all of this at the top of her lungs all over Mare Nostrum – but at that very second Pristinella’s delicate fingers had scissored a nipple and begun to squeeze, and Rosa let out a deep, groaning moan instead.

“You slut!” Pristinella exclaimed, genuinely surprised. She even took a step backwards, releasing Rosa from her hold against the rail, and her hand slipped out of Rosa’s tunica as well.

Rosa turned round. “Don’t you see, Pristin? I mean, look at you! Have you seen those legs of yours?”

Rosa’s voice was drunk with euphoria, she was unable to express her thoughts, and, out of a feeling of overwhelming generosity, she did not know what compliment to pay Pristinella first. She desired to drown her in compliments, smother those lips of her in…

Rosa took a step towards her. If Pristinella had not stood taller than Rosa, their noses would have touched. Pristinella had a smirk on her face and said loftily, as if she were now suddenly addressing a servant: “What are you doing?” – but the hoarseness of her voice, along with a pounding in the base of her throat, betrayed her, and Rosa was undeterred. She whispered: “Did you like touching my tits?”

Pristinella blushed.

“I asked you a question,” Rosa demanded.

“I only touched one of your damned tits.”

“Did you like it?”

Pristinella did not respond – out of pride. But, as they were standing so close, Rosa’s nipples (both of them swollen to the supreme) were touching the underside of Pristinella’s breasts, and the sensation made Pristinella's nipples start to pierce through her own tunica, with the soft linen chafing against that most sensitive skin. Pristinella could smell the scent of Rosa’s sun-warmed hair, and then, intuitively, she wettened her lips with her tongue…

Suddenly though, Rosa got another idea, and, in accordance with her current mood, she blurted it out immediately: “Let’s go below.”

“What?”

“What?” Rosa parroted, mockingly. She was now enjoying the confusion in Pristinella’s eyes; it thrilled her to hear her noble-born friend squeaking “what?” so innocuously and helplessly.

“I mean below.” Rosa then explained herself, for she was serious in her proposition: “They’re all napping right. Father is, mother, Marcus, Quintus, the whole lot. And the sailors… I mean… by Jove, they’re all napping. By Hypnos! We can have a look round. The men! They won’t dare harm us – they won’t dare so much as even look at us! Right? Do you not want to see them? I want to see. Let’s go! Let’s go below.”

During her speech, Rosa saw a glint of excitement spring into Pristinella’s chestnut eyes, reminiscent of how a golden fibula, secured on a brown-woollen cloak, could for an instant catch the light, and twinkle cheerfully at the world – and, as if ignited by that flash, her heart yet again jumped up with joy. Oh, by Venus, even the myriad coins of Mare Nostrum could not compete with one moment’s worth of that glitter!

Rosa grabbed Pristinella’s wrists and squeezed, and then she trailed her along to the hatch. This one, at the front of the ship, was closed, but with mutual effort they soon had it opened, after which they clambered down the ladder. Rosa, feeling so bold as she did, went first. Pristinella came after her – and of course, Rosa could not help peering upwards once or twice, but since there was no light coming from below, and harsh light coming from the sun above, she could see only shadow underneath Pristinella’s tunica, and, as they descended deeper, she saw only a weak reflection of the sunlight gleam on Pristinella’s calves. When they both reached the bottom of the ladder, they stood together at the foot of it holding hands, waiting for their eyes to adapt to the semi-darkness that reigned in the forbidden part of the hold.

Rosa had been right: the men seemed all to have fallen under the spell of Hypnos. Holding hands, Rosa and Pristinella slowly advanced down the aisle that ran between the cargo. Crates holding furniture and straw, oak barrels full of wine, piled sacks containing wheat, and amphoras filled with olive oil were secured with ropes. On top of the crates and barrels and sacks lay sleeping sailors; there were a few lying on the wooden floor as well. Some had their thighs and torsos covered by their tunicas, but most of them had unclasped theirs at the shoulders, baring their torsos and giving the appearance that they were dressed in loin cloths. It was after all quite hot in the hold, Rosa realised, as she felt a bead of sweat form itself next to her ear, and upon thinking this, she immediately saw a naked one. Pristinella squeezed her hand, for she had seen it too. The sailor was lying on top of several piled-up sacks, with his back towards them. They could see the muscle fibres running over his back like strings of rope, ending at his hips and giving way to the powerful curves of his ass. Rosa could not help but stare as they walked past.

It was as if they had descended into the cellar of a sculptor’s workshop, where all the imperfect and unmerchantable statues were stored. For none of the men there seemed at all comely to them; without exception, their faces were plain, but their torsos and legs were nevertheless well developed; even the skinny ones yet appeared scrawny, sinewy, and tough. In a strange way, their unsightly faces only served to emphasise the enigma of their bodies. The light, which came from the hatch behind and the hatch in front of them, lay as a gleaming film on protruding bulbs of muscles, yet often the rest would be half-hidden in shadows. Rosa tried peering into them, while training her eyes over every bit of manly flesh.    

They proceeded down the aisle in almost utter silence: all to be heard was the snoring of the men and, every other second or so, a slight creaking of wood as a consequence of the rocking of the ship, or the movement of a body. Rosa realised suddenly how fragile the two of them were, compared to these hardened giants. She became acutely aware of how lightly they treaded: their footsteps scarcely made a sound. Oh, might it not be better to just make a run for it? Ought they not to get themselves to the other end as quickly as possible, slipping back into the luxurious part of the hold reserved for the family, safe and sound? Rosa began to lose the brazenness that had so pervaded her just minutes ago, when the sun had still been upon her. Was it not possible that these sailors were all pretending sleep, luring these overly curious, green young women right into a trap? Rosa could not help imagining one of them waking up and rising and blocking their passage, alarming the others; and then what would they do? What happens to a pair of butterflies trapped in a room full of bulls? Yet, for all her current trepidation, she kept peering into every shadow, desiring to feast her eyes ever the more, and perhaps to spot –

Pristinella made her halt. She nodded towards the starboard side. Rosa looked, and she saw a broad-shouldered man lying on one of the crates, with his arm propped underneath his head. He had removed his tunica completely, and he was lying with his chest and face towards them – Rosa’s gaze followed his chest into his belly and over his hipbones and there it was: his cock was out, lying curled up on the crate like some end of rope.

Pristinella could not help stating the obvious, savouring the word. “Look,” she whispered, “there’s a cock!”

Rosa’s throat was dry; she merely nodded, and as she did so, the sleeping statue shifted its weight: the wood creaked, and the end of rope that had lain curled up, was pushed over the edge of the crate. It fell. It stretched and elongated, and then swayed there. Rosa felt Pristinella tremble with excitement: she was almost jumping up and down in rhythm with the swaying cause of her elation.

They watched it come to a rest, and then it just hung straight down, only moved ever so slightly by the rocking of the ship, and they now clearly saw how at the end of it there was a shiny knob of sorts, a surface of skin that reflected the light.

Pristinella sighted, and whispered: “Should I dare touch it?”

Rosa squeezed her friend’s hand, clutching it firmly, for she was afraid that Pristinella would actually step up and touch, and then the man would get up in anger and… Then again, she had to admit there was something alluring about that soft-seeming flesh just hanging there so innocuously, so invitingly. Attached as it was to all that hard muscle, it seemed almost in need of help, of care, of a loving hand to put it safely back on the crate again… And as Rosa touched wrists with Pristinella, she felt both their hearts beating wildly.

It took Rosa a moment or two to become aware of it, but then she realised the most curious thing was happening: the piece of rope seemed to have taken notice of them, for the shiny knob at the end of it was slowly being raised upwards, as if a snake were lifting its head. Pristinella grabbed Rosa’s wrist with her free hand and squeezed as the gleaming knob began to point straight at them, like the metal cap on the front end of a battering ram, for indeed, by Jove! the thing was hard and straight as a log now! and by the looks of it just as tough and thick as the muscular frame from which it sprang!

“He’s hard!” Pristinella squealed. “Do you think he’s dreaming? Or – do you think he knows we’re here? Might it be – because of us?”

Rosa did not answer. She had to swallow several times, for she was salivating as if presented with her favourite meal after days of fasting. Watching that cock unfold, she felt a sensation of tremendous turmoil in her lower body, but, for all its pleasantness and warmth, the feeling terrified her. Indeed, the battering ram horrified her, and she stood transfixed and speechless. It seemed to her that this rousing had an explanation more disconcerting than Pristinella’s suggestion that the man might be awake. Far more likely he was dreaming, but, if that were the case, must it not have been some god-send dream that had stirred that body so? Or, even worse, a god may have directly inspired that formerly flaccid flesh to now stand tall.

Rosa, unable to form words, attempted to alarm Pristinella non-verbally, trying to drag her along towards the safe part of the ship. Oh, if this erection were indeed divine, they were truly in grave danger! And yet Pristinella would have none of it: she broke free from Rosa’s grasp and took a long and graceful step towards the sleeper and his cock, making sure her feet did not land on the sailor who was sleeping on the floor in front of the crate, and who was mostly covered in shadow, so that Rosa only saw his body lying there now.

Pristinella moved her hand agonizingly slowly towards the ram, while darting pert glances at Rosa, who felt her legs tremble, and then, as Pristinella stretched out her slender fingers to that log that was pointing straight at Rosa, the latter suddenly noticed something wet dripping down her inner thighs.

“Pristin!” she whispered intensely, unsure of whether she wanted to dissuade, or rather encourage her friend.

Pristinella clearly felt only emboldened by Rosa’s exhortation: she took the cock in the palm of her hand, curled her fingers round it and squeezed. Immediately something shiny appeared at the top of the knob. Rosa heard Pristinella gasp.

“Perhaps it will start spraying seed!” Pristinella whispered.

Rosa’s legs were shaking; she looked round for something to hold on to, but she dared not touch any of the cargo. “Pristin!” she again blurted out. There was no denying it now: her cunt felt hot like the sun was upon it again. She could feel it drip!

Pristinella had started, carefully and slowly, to move her hand up and down the shaft, and Rosa’s eyes were riveted on that polished glans topped off by that bubble of fluid that Pristinella had squeezed out of it, and she felt as though at any moment Pristinella might rub forth some spirit, that would come spurting out of the ram straight towards Rosa, towards the hot part between her legs…

“I want to…” Pristinella said, stopping mid-sentence, for she had started to squat down, bringing her head at equal level to the shaft she was holding, and Rosa could not help begging her: “No, please, don’t!”

But Pristinella was implacable. Her lips approached and touched, and then the white of her teeth flashed in that semi-darkness as she bit softly on that hard-swollen flesh. Yet she was not in a comfortable position to really play with it. Therefore, she began manoeuvring herself in an angle that would allow her to take it in her mouth, and, having found it, she flicked her tongue at the bubble of fluid on top of the glans. Rosa saw the bubble disappear, and she felt her own hand move to her pubic bone, pressing upon it and sliding slowly downwards as she saw Pristinella’s lips part and her mouth open – but at that very moment some sailor behind them let out a very irritated sigh, and they both startled. One long, graceful step made Pristinella join her friend and a couple of seconds later they had tip-toed quietly but quickly to the end of the aisle, where they reached the luxurious quarters of the hold, slipping past the dividing curtain without a sound.

For a moment or two, they both felt the relief wash over them: they were safe; nothing had happened. Well, nothing… They looked smilingly into each other’s eyes as if they were wordlessly agreeing never to forget, but then, before they could talk, Pristinella’s father appeared, trailing his head guardsman and his clerk behind him.

“Did you just come through there?” he bellowed, pointing at the curtain.

Pristinella opened her mouth to speak, but father was furious: he immediately swung his hand at Rosa’s leg, slapping her on the side of her thigh. It was an agonisingly hard slap, for the sound hung about them for a second or so, sounding almost as shrill as a silver plate dropping on a marble floor. It seemed to make the dominus pause and think, for he was calmer (though not any less severe) when he said: “You are not allowed to go in there and the both of you know it. I have been awarding you far too much latitude. From now on you’ll stay in your cabins. You’ve hereby lost yourselves the privilege of roaming round on deck. You especially – what cheek for a chambermaid! You ought to have stopped her.”     

Rosa stood before him looking at her feet, and her eyes had already begun to sting with tears. She felt as if rudely awakened from an all-important dream. How hurtful and embarrassing it was, after all the sensations she had just experienced, to be slapped by her benefactor and employer like she was no more than a naughty child!

Pristinella now spoke up: “You’re right, father. We’re truly sorry indeed.” And with her head humbly declined in a posture of obedience, Pristinella approached her father and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Immediately afterwards she glanced at Rosa, and Rosa, remembering where those lips had been only moments before, felt her humiliation turn to defiance.

“I’m sorry too, dominus,” Rosa said.

The dominus gave her a puzzled look for a moment or two, perhaps sensing an inflection in her voice that was new to him, but before he could decide on an appropriate response, Rosa simply marched past him, onwards to their sleeping quarters. For some reason, the dominus issued no protest.

Perhaps Pristinella is busy pacifying him, Rosa thought, as she declined on the small mattress in her sleeping cabin. It was an almost closet-like wooden frame built into the hull of the corbita. Pristinella’s cabin was right next to hers, separated only by a rather thin wooden plate. Across from them was the domina’s slightly more spacious sleeping cabin, but she herself was elsewhere, presumably weaving or attending to the preparation of dinner. Between the cabins was a narrow way; all together it formed, in the stern of the ship, the cubiculum for the women. Devoid of portholes, it was utterly dark.

Rosa felt too agitated to lie down. On her left ass cheek and thigh, where the dominus had slapped her, the skin now burned her doubly, as a result of both sun and punishment. How aggravating that burning sensation was! She stood up, and then, overwhelmed by a restless need to break free from whatever there was to break free from, she released her ceinture, unclasped the fibula at her right shoulder and also slipped her left shoulder out of her tunica. The linen stuck to her nipples for a moment, and then fell down with a swoosh. Immediately, she felt her nipples pierce forwards in the air. Oh, they felt hard as if they were on the verge of bursting! Before she knew what she was doing, her fingers went to her nipples and squeezed.

By Venus, what sensation ran through her there and then in that darkness! She sat down backwards with a sigh, as a woman who, wearied out by feelings, finally submits to them, withdrawing into the intimacy of her body. She picked up the tunica, folded it thrice with a purpose for it in mind, and then reclined on her matrass again.

There was no turning back: it was as if the ship had started sailing again, shocked into movement by a sudden gust. It was as if she herself were a sail stretched to tension by the swooshing breath of Zephyrus. She took the tunica, that she had folded into a strip, slid it between her legs, and wrenched it upwards, so it felt as though a greedy hand was grabbing her lower body, lifting her up by the cunt – and her cunt responded. She felt the previous wetness return, and the glow of seething heath seemed to penetrate her as far as her belly button. She started rocking her hips back and forth, riding that hand that was grabbing her with all its rapacious lust, only grabbing her the harder for all her wriggling about, only sinking the deeper in between her ass cheeks, not allowing for any escape, smothering her cunt. Soon she was panting, and then suddenly a voice came through the wooden plate from the cabin next to hers. It was Pristinella’s, speaking softly but excitedly.

“Now you want to know how that cock felt?”

Rosa’s mind was a blur, her body in a frenzy. She could muster no more than: “Mmmm.”

“The skin on that thing was so soft and smooth, oh so silky you wouldn’t believe! But nevertheless – hard! Ah June forgive me, for I may be slut in saying so, but I wanted to put it in my mouth so fucking badly!”

“So did I,” Rosa managed to vocalise, unable to stop the rocking of her hips.

There was a sudden silence; Pristinella remained quiet; she had heard! Only Rosa’s rocking back and forth, the slight murmur of the matrass, was audible now, but she simply could not stop, she just could not, and so she, not knowing what to say or do, muttered: “Please.”

Immediately, sounds came from Pristinella’s cabin: wood creaking, clothes rustling – she had undressed!

The knowledge that Pristinella was now as stark naked as she, made Rosa pull on the tunica as tightly as she could, simply ramming it up against her cunt, as Pristinella’s voice sounded again, piercing the darkness.

“I know you wanted a taste of that cock! Don’t think I didn’t see: your eyes were so huge I’d have thought they’d fall out and even in that darkness I could see your nipples hard through your tunica. What do you think would have happened if I had taken it in my mouth? Or if we’d both have?”

“They…” Rosa mumbled. “They’d woken up.”

“If they’d all woken up and caught us sucking a sleeping dick, what do you think would’ve happened?”

Pristinella’s voice was breathless and unsteady – from her cabin came a rocking sound too!

“They would have fucked us.” Rosa let out with a moan.

“Oh… no. By June they wouldn’t have dared. They wouldn’t have dared touch us. No, they would… they would have approached us, as close as they could, surrounding us, and all of them, all of them holding their cocks and then…”

“Yes, yes, then…”

“They’d have told us to undress, threatening us with those big arms and hands. Undress, or else, they’d have said. They’d want to see us, they’d want to see our tits first, and then they’d tell us to loosen our ceintures, or else. And our tunicas would just fall at our feet and they’d see our hips and legs and bellies and fuck… they’d see our cunts. And they’d tell us to bend over so they’d see our pussies beneath our ass cheeks…”

“And they would fuck us.”

“No, they’d better dare not.”

“I’d fuck you. If I’d see that pussy, I’d fuck you.”

“But we’d never undress in the first place. Why! we’re nobles. We’d just have said: fuck you, go take your stupid cocks somewhere else. But then they’d be angry and they’d… they would…”

Now Pristinella moaned. Rosa bit down on her pillow to prevent herself from screaming as Pristinella continued: “They’d just be standing there over us with their cocks out and pointing. And we’d just have to show them something or they’d all go mad and kill us. We’d… We’d show them our tits, we’d have too! Like the hetaerae, we’d be all bare-titted and then they’d close in and then… oh they’d sodomise the fucking Hades out of us!”

Rosa came. She felt as if she was being dragged feet first underneath the bow of the ship at full speed, with all the mass and might of the sea surging up against her cunt – so intensely did her orgasm gulf up in her abdomen and tingle up her spine. Sounds became muted, and remained muted afterwards, as if she were genuinely under water, floating there aimlessly, limp as a wind-torn and soaked through sail.

When she woke up, she felt that the ship was now rocking in earnest again. They were sailing. She quickly dressed – opting for a different tunica – and joined Pristinella on deck. Apparently, the dominus had already expelled his severe mood. Nobody questioned the two young women as they stood on the foredeck at the rail and watched the evening fall over the sea, with a reddened Helios straight ahead, and the golden coins gradually turning to copper.

Pristinella had ordered a servant to bring wine for libation and drink. Declaiming a prayer to Neptune, she poured some of the dark liquid over the rail, staining the bow and spilling it amid the surf below. Yet, after she had taken her first sip, she invoked another divinity, saying: “By Aphrodite, how I look forward to life in Greece.”

Rosa nodded in agreement, and the cool breath of Zephyrus made their tunicas billow round their glowing bodies.