I am a captive woman from Aquitani, part of what the Romans call Gallia, selected from among hundreds of other captives from my tribe to be offered to the Roman Caesar. My best friend, Velda, taken in the battle we fought together at the river Garonne—a woman I thought our tribe's loveliest—was among those not chosen. That meant shoved out to the waiting soldiers of the Roman legion.
That night, soldiers returned Velda, half dragging and carrying her naked body to the prison compound--the rude hut and fenced area for the women prisoners. (We are still in Gallia.) They shoved her through the open gate as I ran toward her. They had permitted me only a ragged band wrapped around my loins, none for my small pointy breasts, which scarcely quivered as I ran toward Velda.
Released, her legs seemed boneless. She pitched forward onto her face in the dirty straw of the yard. I reached her, knelt, and gently rolled her onto her back. So beautiful... her legs long, belly contoured with muscle, big breasts with deep brown nipples rising and falling as she fought for breath.
She opened her eyes, blinking—large dark eyes now gazing upward unfocused. But she saw me. She shook her head slowly.
"What, Velda?" I asked.
"So many. All day. Again, then again. Big men... pounding... Many dozen. I could not count how many. See?"
The slender long legs as though with great effort parted. Her mount's thick hair was clotted with dried semen. In a kind of disbelief, I reached down and as gently as I could parted her lips. Still, she gave a cry of pain. And then, I saw the inner flesh, bright red, grotesquely swollen so that her slit could not be seen.
Velda said, "They used me... heavy, crushing me, so hard to breathe. And then, stabbing stabbing down there...I had vowed not to beg..." Her head in its nest of long flaxen hair rocked back and forth as in denial.
I could say nothing but "Let me get water." I shot to my feet, running for the hut.
When I returned with the gourd, spilling a little in my haste, and knelt by Velda, she said: "They did not take you... Good, good..."
"But I am skinny, bony...my breasts small..."
"If they come tomorrow... I will not live, not another day. Do not want to live. Eleanor...help me. Help me. Not tomorrow... not again..."
In darkness, as the others slept, I crept over to her, knelt, they stretched beside her. I put my arm over her, hugging her. I touched my lips to hers, drew my fingers through her long hair. I whispered: "When we were girls...how we laughed...we ran. And down at the river...so excited...the men might see us..."
"Yes, I remember."
In the way of our people, I gently shifted Velda's body, rolling her over until she lay prone, her face in the straw. She knew. She did not resist.
And swinging my leg over her waist, I leaned forward, my palms against the back of her head. Then, I heaved myself half up, throwing my weight on my arms, my hands, crushing her face into the straw, holding her. At first, knowing, she did not resist. A minute or two later, the body's automatic panic for air seized her and she struggled wildly. I pushed harder and wept tears that fell on my friend's naked back. Soon, she lay still. I waited, as we know to wait, until my Velda forever was beyond recall.
Again, I shifted her until she lay supine. I leaned forward to kiss the still lips one final time. I untied my own sole rag from around my loins, laid it across her face, covering her lips. And then, I placed her hands on either side of her head and closed each hand around an end of the rag—as though her own hands held the cloth over her mouth.
It was a poor ruse, but I had no other. Perhaps the soldiers, with many girls to drag into the daylight for their pleasure, would shrug or laugh and pass my Velda.
How had I escaped her fate? I am a tall woman, like most women of Gallia, with long legs shaped of the leanest hard muscle, hips narrow, belly and torso stretched and tightly contoured, the hillocks of breasts high on my chest pointed into nipples, long neck, a face too bony for beauty, and braided flaxen hair falling almost to my waist.
I learned soon that among the legion's officers a kind of connoisseur of women represented the tastes of Caesar in captive concubines. And that many laughed when he selected me as one of the "finalists" for presentation to Caesar. As too special to be thrown to the troops.
And so, in days and weeks of daily marches along endless stretches of road from Gallia to Rome, I was "safe," though my loins were wrapped in a rag that only partially hid the riot of untrimmed hair at my belly and my breasts bare. Men—how many? Hundreds cast their eyes upon me, assessing--some grinning, some with lust in their gaze—but I was destined for the palace and not to be touched.
They fed me well, even forced me to eat more, so that even with daily marches, I added flesh. Some nights, the centurion whose taste had singled me out for Caesar came into the hut where the women now were chained together. He would stand before me, frowning, and then reach out to squeeze a breast until my nipple swelled out. And bend sometimes to thrust a dry, abrasive finger far up my cunt. And often, seizing my hair, bend back my head, frowning down at my face.
He was not above corruption. For, one evening, he loosened his girdle and sword and let them drop, so that at the level of my face I was gazing at his manhood, now erect, its head almost purple.
Seizing my hair behind my head, he dragged my face toward him and at the same time thrust his big member toward my lips. How to resist in chains, half-naked, a captive woman now 1000 leagues from home, spared the rape that drove poor Velda to suicide?
I tilted up my face with my lips open. My hands free, I reached to take his jutting penis and guide it to my tongue. My other hand cupped the big hairy sac and fondled it, feeling the shape of each separate soft walnut.
When he came, unnecessarily holding my face crushed to his belly, his whole member down my throat, I gulped hard even as my tongue teased the last drop of cum from him. And then, I my tongue cleaned his fat, hot, slick berry until with remarkable gentleness, he slipped himself from lips.
For a few moments, almost as though tenderly, his fingers played with my nipples, which had become long and stiff. "You like it," he said. And he walked from the hut.
***
I had been marched up to Rome in a long file of chained women walking behind chariots along the broad, paved Appian way. The procession, I guessed, was a mile long with soldiers, tribal men and women captives, wagons of loot, marching legions and striding officers, and leading them the chariots. On either side, crowds—men, women, boy, girls—had come to celebrate the triumph and gaze on us. Now, I had no cover for my nakedness. Nor could I lift my hands to cup my breasts, or lower then to cover my mound, because my wrists were chained at my back. All looked upon our nakedness with faces sometimes grinning, sometimes dull, sometimes covetous. Only occasionally did eyes linger on my breast's my belly's hair, my face; there were so many other naked women. But sometimes a man, woman, or boy would gesture at us, hands on their own chest pantomiming stiff fingers strumming our nipples or hips thrusting at us.
And then, the streets of Rome. Exceeding any dream, any dreams of any girl of the forests of Gallia. Nothing I could have imagined from the reports and tales I had heard, time and again, from those who had seen Rome. Hill upon hill, broad ways and vast plazas, all set in smooth granite and lined with great structures of dazzling white or cream, much stone itself carved with shapes of men and animals and gods.
In the palace of Caesar, high on a hill reached by long marble steps, the women of the tribes and I inhabited a great, high-ceilinged, lushly carpeted hall carpeted with furs. We talked, as our captors surely knew that we would. We wept. We wondered how the Caesar might use us and talked of our women's parts, how we could endure what was to come.
