Copyright Oggbashan April 2019/January 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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We were struggling to keep the site dry. The rain wasn't heavy but it was continuous, soaking everything not carefully covered. I was outside the heavy duty marquee, checking the guy ropes when Cathy shouted for me.
"Jason! Your wall has more painted plaster!"
I had found another standing Roman wall late yesterday, one of several well-preserved walls that had been buried probably at the start of the 3rd Century AD. We had been excited because the first gentle cleaning of this one had shown that there was a coloured plaster decoration.
There were five of us, four post graduate archaeology students directed by Cathy, the associate professor, who had been frantically doing rescue archaeology in our summer vacation in advance of the new shopping mall. We had been back to working intermittently in term time but had been full time resident on site in the summer. Now we were again. The university had decided that our work was so important that it would count towards our further degrees.
Cathy would have to leave us alone soon. She was pregnant and about six or seven weeks from full term.
The developer was treating us very well. We had Portacabins for eating and for assessing and recording finds. The women had an old large mobile home. I had a smaller one. Cathy went home to her husband Gordon each night. We were being paid above our normal volunteer rates. The price was that we had to work quickly. The deadline was two weeks away, unless the weather gets worse. It was supposed to be autumn, but English weather can be unpredictable.
We were doing brilliantly. During the summer vacation and the first two months of working part-time we had eliminated three-quarters of the site. There had been cellars and foundations of late 18th and early 19th Century houses demolished because of bomb damage during WW2. Their locations were known from large scale Ordnance Survey Maps. We had excavated below the house remains and had found nothing underneath except undisturbed natural soil. The developers could start work on most of the site - if it stopped raining.
Geophysical surveys had shown anomalies close to the known Roman road that was just beyond the site boundary. When we started to work full-time our test trench had revealed walls standing nearly two metres high that had been buried when the road had been raised.
The marquee covered the trench. We had dug drainage ditches to take the rainwater away before we carefully scraped down to uncover the first wall. The plaster was attached to the latest found wall. The first painted design made Cathy, our associate professor, blush. We had found a Roman Brothel. The picture on the walls was obviously there to show the customers the services the prostitutes could provide.
We students were excited. We wanted to see more, the find, to record, and yes, to experiment.
Cathy was fierce, unusually fierce.
"Don't mention this find to ANYONE!" she insisted. "Not even Alan the site manager. I need to think about the impact. I'm serious. Not a word even to friends and family. Keep the marquee closed at all times, even if the weather improves, and cover the painting every night."
We were impressed that Cathy was so dogmatic about the secrecy. It was unlike her to be so direct. We didn't know why, but she was obviously very worried by what we had found. We downloaded the pictures from the camera to the old laptop that would not connect to the internet, made two copies on DVDs and put one in the floor safe in the women's mobile home. The other copy Cathy took home to put in her own safe. We repeated that every day.
We agreed that we would keep the fact that we had discovered a Roman Brothel secret but we could and did discuss them at length between ourselves. Were the scenes feasible sexual encounters? If so, could we replicate them? There was one small problem. We four were three females and one male, me.
Late on the evening of the day when we had exposed the first painting we were in our dining Portacabin. Penny had been searching the internet and had found another version of the painting. She connected her laptop to the projector and displayed it nearly life size.
Rachel hurriedly closed the curtains. We didn't want any passers-by to see us looking at Roman pornography. Penny flicked between shots of our wall and the internet version. The position was almost identical but ours had better definition. Was that the size of the file, or the actual painting?
We gathered next to the screen. In both versions the man was on his back, his shoulders on the raised end of a couch. The woman was astride him in a cowgirl position. Her knees were beside his waist. Both were naked and his right hand, furthest away from our viewpoint, was cupping her left breast.
"Neither of them looks natural," Penny suggested. "Either she should be leaning further forward, or he should be more upright. His arm looks too long."
Rachel agreed with Penny: "That's impossible. He couldn't reach her breast even with his fingertips, and certainly not to cup her breast like that."
"I think her breasts are unrealistically large," Hester said. "I know its pornography, but they didn't have breast implants then."
That led to a heated discussion. Was the pose realistic, or had the artist(s) used too much imagination?
Penny suggested that the only way to decide whether it was possible was to replicate it. The three of them turned on me. Before I knew what I was letting myself in for, I was reclining on a line of stacking chairs while they pulled me around to match the male's position as shown. When they were satisfied with my posture they started arguing about which of them most resembled the woman.
A compromise was reached. Hester, whose build seemed close to the pictured Roman prostitute, would try to match her position on me. Could I reach a tit with my right hand?
Rachel saw a problem. We were all wearing heavy warm clothing, unlike the naked Romans. We would have to remove some clothing at least. I sat up, removed my jacket and sweater while the two volunteer prostitutes stripped. They went further than I did. Both of them reduced to a skimpy bra above the waist. I didn't know where to look with so much attractive cleavage on display. Of course the result was an erection straining at my trousers.
It didn't work. As soon as Hester tried to straddle me, the chairs began to slip.
"We need to move to the mobile home," Rachel said. "Even if we balance the actors carefully it could be dangerous. The fitted couch in the mobile home would be a closer match to that picture."
"But I can't project in the mobile home," Penny complained.
"That doesn't matter," Rachel retorted. "We've seen the large version. The screen on your laptop will be enough to remind us."
The three of us dressed again and clutching umbrellas against the now heavy rain all of us squelched across to the women's mobile home. Soon I was half-naked again but reclining comfortably against the end of the couch.
