Chapter 10

 

A failed escape

 

The details of the contest had been agreed - it would be on 24 August in the Amphitheatre and, like many contests involving women, it would be held at night by the light of torches and braziers. Arria Sulla said the final 'special' rules would be announced on the day, and although Fronto was curious he was not concerned. A few days before the set date, Arria Sulla decided to take Caristia to the Temple of Isis so that the priests could bless her, as she did not want to run the risk that her contestant would be, in any way, under prepared.

Arria Sulla led Caristia into the small enclosed courtyard of the torch-lit temple. The priests stood huddled around the altar with the crowd of worshippers silently crammed together around them. Caristia squinted to see in the shimmering red hues cast by the burning torches, and saw something hanging above the altar. As they got closer she saw it was a young woman crouched in a small cage made from shiny metal bars. It was barely big enough for her to get into and her knees where thrust up beneath her chin. Her eyes were covered with a tight bound mask which extended down over her mouth, leaving only a hole around her nostrils. Her wrists were secured by silver manacles and her ankles chained so tightly that even if she was free she would not have been able to move them at all. The cage swung slowly on a plaid rope and, as it was caught by the red light of the torches, Caristia saw the angry red stripes that covered the girl's naked bottom.

The priests moved back as Arria Sulla approached. Innocenti was lying at their feet. She too was bound, her wrists tied behind her back with leather thongs and her ankles and knees bound with thin rope. She lay on her side, her knees slightly bent and her head craned back. Her hair had been plaited in two pigtails, each turned back on themselves and tied up with thin red cords, the looped ends sticking out slightly and at the same level as the lobes of her ears. She looked frail and elfin, abandoned and pitiful. Her dark eyes flickered as she caught sight of Arria Sulla. She opened her mouth slightly and licked out her tongue as if she had been waiting only for this moment, as if she had been trained to respond like this only to the approaching footsteps of her mistress. Arria Sulla stretched her foot out towards the captive girl and Innocenti licked it, slowly and with earnest passion, running the tip of her tongue upwards from between her mistress's toes to her slender ankle, and then back again.

'Good,' said Arria Sulla, smiling as she stretched out the other foot for Innocenti to lick. 'Good. Now, secure her; I have another who needs your attention.' Arria Sulla's two Nubian's lifted Innocenti away, but as they pulled her over to the temple entrance she kept her tongue against her mistress's foot for as long as she could. The Nubians held her while girls untied her wrists and secured them in front of her with leather thongs, pulling them as tight as they could, making her wince. They fixed a round wooden bar across her mouth and bound it securely behind her head. They left the thongs around her knees and ankles but checked they were tight. The Nubians lifted her up to a metal bar fixed between the main colonnades of the entrance and dropped the bindings at her wrists over a large hook attached to it. They left her hanging there, her feet clear of the ground, desperate and alone. Her body stretched under its own weight, accentuating her slender lines, her flat stomach and her narrow hips. Her breasts were flattened against her chest and the arch of her lower ribs tightened against her smooth skin. Caristia saw tears in the corners of her eyes as she bit into the wooden bar wedged firmly between her teeth.

The tallest of the priests stepped forward.

'Madam Sulla, state your request. The order of our lady Isis is at your service.'

'I want this slave blessed. She is to enter the ring and I want her to be guarded by Isis herself. You must make sure Queen Isis will be watching over her so she can secure victory for me.'

The priest looked at Caristia and smiled as, into the red glow of the torchlight, Fronto appeared with Drusus in attendance.

'Madam!' exclaimed Fronto as he bowed low with a flourish. 'I catch you at your prayers. You are indeed a devout follower of our Queen Isis. Come, we will worship together. Perhaps I can say a prayer for your little slave.'

'Yes, and I can say one for yours,' she responded curtly.

'Madam, you are too kind,' he mocked, taking her arm and leading her towards the altar. 'Look,' he said pointing to the girl trapped in the small cage high above their heads. 'Another one seeking a blessing. I hope your simple pleas work for your little gladiator. They will indeed need to bring about a miracle.'

'I think some prayers will suffice, sir. I do not demand miracles, nor do I need them.'

'Madam, you are so gentle to those that live only to obey you. But may I ask, has your kindness worked with your other little slave?' He poked Innocenti with a silver embossed cane. 'It would seem not, or presumably I would not find her like this.'

Arria Sulla scowled at Innocenti hanging on the iron bar with the wooden stave in her mouth. 'Priest,' she said, hardly able to contain her annoyance with Fronto. 'Priest!' She pointed at the girl in the cage. 'Would this be a proper blessing for my slave?'

'Yes indeed. It would madam.'

'Then arrange it!' she said, glancing sideways to make sure Fronto was watching. 'Caristia! Stand over there and wait. At attention!'

Caristia stepped aside and stood with her hands by her sides as some of the worshippers began lowering the cage. Men pressed around her, touching her, feeling her breasts and slipping their fingers between her thighs. She stood as still as possible, not allowing their pinching fingers to distract from her instructions, but their probing made it almost impossible. She screwed up her eyes, trying to concentrate. Suddenly she felt the warmth of someone's mouth against the side of her face, then she heard softly spoken words in her ear. It was Drusus. 'My sweet, sweet Caristia,' he said softly. 'I cannot bear to see you suffering like this.'

Just the sound of his voice set her heart racing. She stiffened her arms by her sides, afraid in case Arria Sulla would see her quaking with excitement. 'Drusus,' she whispered, hardly opening her mouth, 'is that really you?'

'My sweet,' he replied, pressing his lips against her cheek. 'I must be quick. I do not know how long my master will stay. He is obsessed with his new possession. Bec, she is called, a vicious gladiator who no one can control. Everyone fears her. I feel pity for whoever she faces in the ring.'

Caristia bit her lip, frightened by his words, as if suddenly a fresh certainty had been added to her existing fear.

'It is me,' she said with a trembling voice. 'I am to face this tigress.'

Drusus looked at her blankly, stunned.

'This cannot be true,' he said falteringly. 'You are not a gladiator. You cannot be matched with this animal they say is from hell. Sweet Caristia, tell me this is not true.'

'But it is, my sweet,' she said, still standing to attention and looking forward obediently. 'The date has been arranged. We will meet at night by torchlight in the Amphitheatre. I fear I will die. How can it be otherwise? You have just told me my opponent is indomitable.'

'Then...' he hesitated as Arria Sulla's slaves approached. Caristia pushed her hands down stiffly by her sides, hoping her mistress had not seen her talking. 'Then,' he said, starting to speak quickly, 'we must find a way to be together. Caristia, we must...'

Before he could say any more the Nubians yanked him away, throwing him down and kicking him viciously. His head rocked to the side as one foot clubbed him squarely on the temple and he curled up in agony as another jabbed into his stomach.

Caristia looked down at him, ignoring the hands that were still pawing her, and tried to smile, but she did not know whether he saw her before she felt herself lifted and carried towards the now empty cage.

The one end was its door and they forced her down onto her knees in front of it. Hands pressed on her back so that her head was level with the top of the opening. The cage, constructed from heavy iron bars, was about knee high, the same width and a little longer in length. Caristia looked into it with fear; she could not believe there was enough room for anyone to get inside. A hand slapped her bottom, it felt almost playful - light, isolated, unmotivated - but when it landed again, and then again, she realised it was filled with painful purpose. She winced as her bottom burned with the harsh contact, then as it got harder she was prodded with something sharp and forced to crawl forward into the iron prison she was bowed before.

Her head dipped beneath the bar that formed the top of the entrance, all the time her bottom feeling the spanking that came in strong, rhythmic slaps. The spanking and the sharp prodding drove her forward, crawling, her elbows bent, her hands on the floor in front of her face. At the end a middle bar was fashioned into a circle. She knew that was where she must put her head and, before she even thought her knees had gained entry, her head was poking through the hole. The spanking continued, driving her still forward, squeezing her within the bars of the cage, cramming her tightly inside as she was crushed tighter into the confining prison of iron.

With her head through the hole and her shoulders pressed against the bars, the door was pushed together behind her. She felt a bar beneath her bottom pressing against the backs of her thighs as they squeezed the door shut behind her. She sensed her bottom was still exposed, poking out, captive and available to anyone, and she felt her hips pressed against the bars at the sides like an encompassing girdle of iron. She could not turn her head and she strained her eyes sideways to see what was happening: Men gathered around, reached into the cage and pulled her arms back, first leading them out over a central bar at the top of the cage, then pushing them back in again so that her weight was thrown onto her neck. They clamped a heavy shackle on each of her wrists and attached them to the bars at the side. She strained her back and lifted her head slightly, but the effort was too great and she dropped back onto the metal circle around her neck.

Caristia saw the shadow of the timber tripod that she'd seen when suffering on the altar. Its gaunt shape frightened her as it was contorted in the torchlight into the shape of a horny talon. The braided rope dangled menacingly from the apex of the tripod and the pulley block swung heavily at its end. When she heard a metallic thud close to her back, and saw the swinging shadow tighten as if it was in pain, she knew what was going to happen. Men leant back and hauled the rope through the pulley and the cage tipped sideways as it was yanked off the ground. Caristia gasped and tightened her eyes as it began to sway. She saw Innocenti still hanging from the metal rail, her eyes wide and her mouth clamped around the wooden bar in her mouth. One of the priests was standing behind her beating her buttocks with a long cane. Innocenti twisted on her bonds and the red stripes the cane was laying on her skin looked like fiery brands in the torchlight. The cage began to spin and Caristia lost sight of the suffering girl, but she imagined her stifled screams locked behind the wooden stave in her mouth.

Caristia was giddy by the time the cage hit the pulley block and was brought abruptly to a halt. She knew it had stopped but her dizziness meant the torches spun around her as if they were being carried around the temple enclosure by runners. She hung above the altar, staring down with her head fixed in the hole at the front of the cage and her bottom exposed at the back. She tried to move but the weight of her body against the opening around her neck and the way her arms had been tied made it impossible. She felt something against her buttocks, a touch of something thin like the long nail of a lover. It was a cane. As it was drawn across her skin she felt it touch the exposed flesh of her sex, which was squashed between the inviting indentation where the tops of her thighs met the lower part of her upturned buttocks. The cane was lifted, repositioned and pulled across her skin again, and this time it tugged slightly on the soft flesh of her labia. It was the lightest touch, but it was enough to lift the flesh slightly and expose the merest glimpse of the inner pinkness, and the glancing coolness that it brought, the sensation of her opening flesh, heralded a sliver of moistness to the freshly exposed surface.

The altar was still spinning below her face when the cane bit for the first time. She knew what was going to happen when it was lifted away from her skin, she knew it would come back hard, but when it landed on her bottom she was not prepared for the pain it brought. It was so sharp, so intense, that for the first few moments after it struck she did nothing. Her senses were mesmerized, then as the cutting pain penetrated she felt the full effect of its piercing impact. Her whole body tightened, her knees pressed harder against the side bars, her back lifted against the top and her buttocks tightened, but nothing absorbed the pain. She screwed up her face, tightening her eyes, but her confinement held in the pain and allowed her no relief. She did not feel the cane lifted away; the stinging shock remained even when it did not touch her, but when it came down again she felt its impact. The sting cut into her labia, burning, setting them on fire, but as she tightened against it again and prepared for the next she knew that when it landed her flesh would be more receptive to it, more punished by it.

Each blow increased the pain and with each strike her labia swelled, exposed for more punishment. She looked down at the altar and as the speed of the cane built to a crescendo, she felt her orgasm bursting within her captive body. A convulsing climax tore through her, forcing her even tighter against the bars, shaking her imprisoned body at its core and when finally, like an erupting volcano it exploded within her, she screamed in a blubbering shriek that filled the temple enclosure and continued until she had no breath left to feed it.

The cage was pulled forward at an angle on the rope and held there so that her face was above the centre of the altar. Her ears filled with the beating of her heart and she panted as excitement ran through her in ripples of confused exhilaration. She felt hands on her bottom, opening her cheeks wide, then she felt something against her anus, something cool and unforgiving. A rod, made from rolled leather and covered with closely napped suede, was attached with leather thongs to the rear bar of the cage and its rounded end placed against her exposed anus. The shaft was heavily ribbed, as thick as the thickest cock and half as long again. She felt her anus tighten as the leather rod's blunt end pushed against the tight muscular ring. For a moment the cage slipped slightly backwards and she felt the increased pressure as the tip began to prise open her anus, but just as it was penetrating her and her mouth dropped open, the cage was pulled back again and the pressure was relieved.

One of the priests mounted the altar and stood with his hips immediately in front of her face. His embroidered gold robe flowed loosely around him and flashed with the redness of the flickering torches. He opened the front and showed his naked, shaved body. His skin was oiled and glistened as if covered with a layer of precious metal. His cock hung loosely between his heavy balls and, when he cradled them, it bent over the front edge of his hand. Caristia gaped at him as he lifted his flaccid cock towards her and placed its bulbous end against her wet lips. She allowed it inside, feeling its heat, letting the glans rest on her tongue. She closed her lips around it and felt the pliable shaft beating with expectation. She sucked it and felt the hardening surface swelling. She sucked again, holding the shaft firmly in her encircling lips, and felt it lengthening as the glans enlarged and pressed further back on her tongue. She licked its underside and felt the veins beneath the silky skin throbbing, and as she moved her tongue around the rim of the glans she felt it push past and touch the back of her throat. It made her gag and she pulled back, slipping her mouth back along the shaft towards its end. The moment she pulled back she felt the pressure of the leather rod against her anus and realised the cage was no longer supported at an angle on the rope by anything other than her grasp on the priest's cock. Frantically she sucked it, drawing herself along its length until again it rested against the back of her throat and the pressure on her anus was eased.

But as she held it tightly between her lips she felt it hardening more, and with each pulsating throb it lengthened so that, unless she took it in deeper, it allowed the cage to fall back and the end of the rod to penetrate her anus. She sucked the priest's cock, gripping it with her lips as it thickened and lengthened, and still she dropped back against the unforgiving rod of leather. She felt her anus opening to it, encircling it tightly as it pushed against her and she sucked harder. She held it there for as long as she could, keeping the rod only at the entrance to her rectum, but suddenly she let the priest's cock slip back, gripping behind the flange of his glans with her tight lips. The cage fell back instantly and the rigid rod entered her deeply, filling her, stuffing her with its length and bulk. Quickly she sucked the cock in again and the rod in her rectum came out, but only slightly, only enough to feel a couple of its heavy ribs squeezing past the muscular ring that held it. She sucked desperately on the cock, but as it poured its hot semen into her she could not keep it in. When she released it again she could not even keep the helmet between her lips, and the rod buried its full length past her stretched anus as the cock ejaculated across her face.

The priest stepped aside and another took his place. Caristia managed to suck his cock in deeply and the rod slowly pulled out, rib by rib, until it was only just inside her bottom, but she could not keep it out for long. Each swallow, each suck, each tightening of her cheeks made her slide along the length of the leather implement, allowing it to ease itself slightly out. But each pause, each tightening pull of her flesh against the velvety leather made her ache for her own climax, made her body throb for a blissful conclusion. She did not have to wait many moments beyond the first longing. She felt it building inside her constrained body, at first unable to burst free then, when it started and she could not move with it, could not liberate it with a convulsion, a jerk, a frantic display of abandon, she simply let the cock in her mouth go free. As her face was again covered in hot semen, the penetration in her rectum was full and complete and the flames of her orgasm burned throughout her whole unmoving body.

They pulled the rod from her, easing it out over each of its ribs, then released the shackles from the bars and drew her out of the cage. She did not want to come out at first and twisted her head so she was jammed tightly, but they held the flesh of her labia, pinching it and gripped her hips, and poked her breasts with sticks until finally she was free. The priest in the gold robe sat on a carved throne by the altar and ordered the men to lift her and place her across his knee. She felt her nipples between their fingers as they did, and although they were already firm and prominent she felt them throbbing as they hardened even more under the rough handling. The shackles on her wrists hung down heavily, her arms felt stiff from being bent back over the bars of the cage and when, finally, she was held face down above his knees, she sighed with the anticipation of relief. He opened his robe so that she lay against his naked flesh and, as she was draped across the tops of his thighs, bent at the hips with her feet just touching the ground, she felt the heat of his cock against her narrow waist.

'Now bless her with the pain of your hand, priest!' shouted Arria Sulla as she stood closely in front of Caristia's head. 'I want to see her buttocks glowing with your consecration.'

Caristia looked up and saw that Arria Sulla's dress was undone down the front and her naked body beneath was fully exposed. Caristia watched her hand run down her flat stomach, then as it slowed, she watched her mistress's fingers probe between her trimmed pubic hair. She parted it and with two fingers opened the soft folds of her cunt, then she circled the clitoris and teased it out. As Caristia watched her mistress's exposed slit so closely, she felt a building heat in the swollen flesh of her own sex. It was as if her mistress was massaging her, as if she was exciting her throbbing clitoris.

The priest circled his hand across Caristia's bottom, dragging his finger around, tracing her buttocks then running a fingertip between the valley that separated them. He opened her legs slightly, pressing lightly between the tops of her thighs until the shape of her shaved sex was revealed. He ran his finger along its centre and her outer labia parted in a moist pink line of expectant, satiny softness.

'Get on with it!' shouted Arria Sulla, half closing her eyes and biting her lip to try and hold on to her excitement as she ran her fingers deeper into her wetness.

The priest's circling hand drew away from Caristia's bottom and there was a momentary pause, a silent gap of nothingness, as though the universe was hesitating on the brink of something unknown. Everything was silent and Caristia's mind, although seeing Arria Sulla's moist flesh in front of her eyes, plugged the gap with images of freedom, of sunlight, of Drusus, then as the lull was interrupted the fantasies disappeared and her head was filled with the blazing fires of pain.

His hand spanked hard, not stopping after it had struck but continuing until her buttocks had absorbed all its momentum. Arria Sulla leant back and squeezed her fingers around her clitoris, as if the blow on Caristia's bottom had filled her with energy, with an expectation that could only be discharged by her own pulsating flesh. It rose to her touch, a hardened nipple of joy, poking between the glistening spread of her moist labia. Caristia wanted to lick and touch, to taste, to suck. The priest's hand came down again, harder, and Caristia threw her head back in agony. Arria Sulla opened her legs more and pushed her hips forward, Caristia's nostrils filling with the musky scent of her mistress, and she inhaled deeply as the priest's hand came down again.

Arria Sulla moved closer to her suffering slave, opening her legs wide, spreading her lower lips, pressing her hips forward so that the soft flesh squeezed between her fingers, and the erect clitoris touched Caristia's lips. Caristia opened her mouth and let her tongue reach out. She tasted the moisture, and like the scent of rain on a summer's day, it filled her body with its soft fragrance. Another spanking blow made her gasp but she did not move her face; she was like a bee drinking nectar and she opened her mouth wider and let her tongue reach inside the moist petals. She tasted the inner wetness, stronger against her probing tongue. Then when the hand struck again on her stinging buttocks she sucked, drinking in the wetness, allowing it to run on her tongue and trickle down her parched throat.

Caristia craned her neck back as Arria Sulla bent forward, resting her hands in the small of Caristia's back and abandoning her cunt to her slave's ravenous mouth. Caristia lapped at it, pressing her nose against her mistress's clitoris, inhaling its fragrance, absorbing its moisture as she delved her tongue as deep into the silky flesh as she could. Arria Sulla watched the hand beating her slave's bottom, she scrutinised the increasing redness covering the pale skin, then as her cunt sent shockwaves into her hips and up into her chest, she dropped her face forward between Caristia's buttocks and drove her tongue into the girl's anus. Caristia gasped, the sudden cessation of the spanking and her mistress's wriggling tongue shocking her, filling her and setting her on fire. She lifted her buttocks to get all she could, opening them wide, allowing Arria Sulla's tongue to go deep, but as the tip probed she felt her orgasm overcoming her. She tightened and the tension pulled her back. She could barely reach Arria Sulla's cunt any more but it did not matter. All she could feel was her mistress's tongue, its searching tip and the heat and the fire of passion as her orgasm, like a storm of flames, ran through her shaking body.

 

Caristia crouched, exhausted on the cold mosaic floor. She sat up slowly, putting her weight alternately on each buttock to try and ease the pain which still stung her. She stretched out her legs to alleviate their stiffness, leant back against a massive column and dropped her hands onto her thighs. Drusus, barely visible in the shadows where he had been hiding, reached around the column and touched her shoulder. She could tell it was him straight away, but still she jumped.

'Caristia,' he whispered urgently, 'I will not let you suffer any more. We will escape together. I have heard that south of here, across an ocean, there is a vast desert where Arabs hold their women in great esteem and would take us in and treat us like themselves. We would no longer be slaves. Caristia! We would be free.'

'When, my sweet,' she said shakily. 'When can we go?'

'Now!' he said emphatically as he took her arm, pulled her to her feet and dragged her behind the column.

'But what about Innocenti?' she said, looking at the girl still trussed up, hanging from the metal rail with the wooden bar jammed between her teeth. 'We cannot leave her like that.'

'Then quickly,' he said, aware of the procession of worshippers coming closer and aware of the light of their torches exposing them to the danger of discovery.

Caristia strained up, but could not reach the leather thongs that held Innocenti on the metal bar. Drusus lifted her, holding her waist, and she managed to unbind Innocenti's wrists. The girl fell limply into her arms, as if she was asleep, unable to move, as if she had lost her will to carry on. She looked up at Caristia and a faint smile crossed her pale lips.

'Innocenti! Innocenti! Wake up. We can escape. Innocenti!' But Caristia's appeals were lost as the worshippers saw her and pulled the half conscious girl out of her grasp.

Innocenti's expression, only slowly waking to the possibility of freedom, suddenly dropped. The look of anticipation was stolen from her as she closed her eyes, submitted to the darkness that foreshadowed what would now befall her. She dropped to the floor and a heavy ring was clipped to her collar and a shackle to her wrist. Caristia stared down at her, crumpled and lying on her side, her hands flat together, tucked beneath her head as if in prayer. The curve of her narrow hips ran in a sweeping valley to the summit of her shoulders, then descended again to the elegant slope of her neck, its line broken only by the encircling collar. One knee covered the other and her legs were slightly bent so that the shape of her bottom was fully exposed. At the base of her flat stomach, where the darkness of shadow took over, there was nothing to be seen of her perfectly shaped sex, but the phantom image of it, hidden in shade, was as exciting to Caristia's eyes as the sight of it itself.

Drusus reached out to Caristia, hoping there was still time, that they could still avoid capture, but it was too late; attempting to rescue Innocenti had been their downfall. Caristia shrank back against the enveloping crowd but Drusus was held and pulled before an enraged Fronto.

'Take my ungrateful slave to the Gymnasium,' he shouted as he dispensed his summary justice. 'Put him in chains and leave him for tomorrow's sun. Give him no water and let him burn.'

Caristia stared after him as he was dragged away. He glanced back, his face filled with anguish, but he should not have turned and was whipped across the back by one of Fronto's more obedient slaves, and made to march forward to his punishment. As he disappeared, flinching under the pain of the merciless whip, he took with him any hope Caristia had left.