All characters and persons involved in sexual activities in this story are over the age of 18
5: Roman occupied province of Dacia, Modern day Romania: AD120
Bedelwa Aman Belaye and Helga
Snow was falling once again as Lady Bedelwa Aman Belaye crossed the courtyard of her Father's villa to the bathhouse. She wrapped her large fur cloak around her shoulders tighter against the cold, and cursed the freezing north wind under her breath as she trudged through the swiftly settling drifts. There had never been anything like this foul white powder back home and Lady Bedelwa (Bede to her friends) wasn't used to it. She found that she had to wear three layers of thick woollen tunics just to even consider stepping outside into the frozen barbarian wasteland that she now had to call home.
She and her family had been here less than a month after her Father, the Aksumite Prince, had been invited to rule over a Roman colonia in the newly conquered province of Dacia. After he had accepted, Bede and her entire family had dutifully followed the head of the household across thousands of miles of rugged terrain, heaving grey seas and yet more mountainous tracks to get here. From one far-flung edge of the Empire to another, as her father had said.
It was not just Bede who had had a hard time adjusting. The whole family was finding it difficult to adjust to the colder climate and the strange pale-skinned, hair-covered locals with their unintelligible dialect and customs. Back home in Aksum, the sun shone hot and bright through most of the year, filling their fields with rich harvests of figs, dates, and cassava. Everyone was tall and strong with healthy looking brown tanned skin. Here there were no fields, just endless rolling open grasslands and distant white mountains, the people low and huddled against the cold with sallow looking faces and deceptive pale eyes.
Bede breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped through the doorway into the bathhouse building of her father's villa. The instant heat from the hypocaust under-floor heating warmed her chilled feet and allowed her to throw off the two layers of thick bear hide that she had wrapped around herself. Her teeth chattered still as she began to warm up, as she handed her cloaks to a slave girl who took them meekly from her hands. The young woman was plain and boring looking as far as Bede was concerned. They were plump, almost muscular, and looked like she had slept with a bird nesting in her hair.
The women here were certainly not to Bede's tastes, back home she had been surrounded by a whole court of glamorous and extravagant ladies, all similarly daughters, sisters and wives of the important leaders of Aksum. She had spent most of her two decades of life surrounded by these glamorous creatures, taught how to talk, and to move, and to compliment them, and how to play the subtle, clever games of court life with them.
As she had grown up and learned of such things, she had even learned how to use her own body and the effect that it had on others to great effect. She had quickly become able to recognise the intimate, gentle social cues and lingering suggestive glances of her peers for what they truly meant. She had revelled in such situations, the other women of the court who felt the same way were completely unable to resist her charms, or her body.
And why wouldn't they? Bedelwa Aman Belaye was a young woman in the complete prime of her young life, an unattached, smart, definitely beautiful young woman. Her lovers had been fascinated by the smooth pristine sleekness of her dark brown skin. They had tangled their fingers in her thick, tightly curled hair and licked their tongues over her luscious full lips.
As Bede continued to strip down to bathe, the rest of her body felt the warmth of the air in the bathhouse. She was slender and lithe, built for lounging in the sun-filled glades of the highlands, not huddled against chills in these northern mountains. Her own arms and legs were like saplings in comparison to the thick muscular oaks of some of the women of this province, and her narrow-high boned facial features looked almost sharp and angular in comparison to their rounded ruddiness.
When she had finished undressing, the slave girl that had been assigned to her demurely bowed her head in front of her nakedness, her empty pale eyes downcast, not appreciating the nubile, ebony goddess before her. Bede sighed longingly and simply turned her back on the girl as she stepped down into the hot water of the caldarium. The water steamed lightly in the colder air around it and the heated liquid felt wonderful on Bede's goose-pimpled skin. She could feel the warmth seeping into her and warming her bones, and allowed herself to relax down completely into the built-in seat of the bathing pool until just her head was sitting above the water.
After a short while of sitting and allowing the warm water to soak across her body, Bede sleepily opened her eyes again and looked up at where her slave was still standing. They were wearing the simple plain smocks and woven leather belts that all of the house slaves were given to wear. She looked drab and dull in the clothes, nothing like the colourful, bright dyes of the court slaves' clothes back in Aksum. Looking at the young woman before her, Bede mused that the girl was not unattractive, plain and simple to be sure, but there was a certain rugged prettiness to their pale skin and light blond hair.
'Girl,' she called up to them in her best Latin, 'what is your name?'
The woman glanced up at her nervously before answering her mistress.
'I am Helga, of Ravensburgh Mistress,' she replied, directed at the floor.
'How long have you been part of the estate, girl?'
Nervous look, downcast eyes, answer, 'Nearly three years Mistress, I was brought here after the glorious Emperor Trajian made my tribe's land part of the mighty Empire of Rome.'
Bede snorted and waved a wet hand at the girl to silence her sycophantic pandering. She and her whole family may technically have been Roman citizens, but as her own birthplace lay beyond the borders of the Empire she held little real loyalty to the city of Rome or any who ruled in it.
'And you have been treated well by your masters before my family and me? Bede pressed on, attempting to meet the girl in the eye, but failing on both counts.
'Yes Mistress,' came another meek reply, 'I am happy to be part of and serve the masters of the estate Mistress.'
'Hmm, good,' Bede cast an eye over the young woman before her once again, lingering for just a moment on the long, soft stretches of leg between the bottom of their shifts and the top of their shoes.
'Your clothes girl, I think that you would look so much better without them,' she mused out of the blue. She relished Helga's shocked look, as she met her gaze for just a moment before blushing and looking back down again.
