Maximus stood up and waited while I rose and slipped from my seat with my eyes firmly on the wooden planks of the deck. I was in some kind of shock, embarrassed beyond belief- for me, for Terry, for Maximus and for Bou. I just couldn't meet anyone's eyes.  My desire to throttle Jeff was also frighteningly uppermost in my mind.

There was a sort of repressed anticipation amongst the others, amusement and sympathy - but it was charged with excitement. I suppose the proximity we had all been in to each other for the past days was bound to come to boiling point. We had intimate sexual history with almost all the members of the opposite sex on board and the added combination of alcohol, dancing and skimpy or non- existent clothing was bound to lead to a few overheated interludes. I had already dallied with a few...least said about that the better... But Maximus and I had barely exchanged more than a nod.

Don't misunderstand me. We were not hiding from each other and fully intended to see each other at an appropriate time, invitation issued, logged on the calendar...follow the rules this time. But it was too soon, too public, and I did not wish to be the source of the evening's amused gossip. Although I knew I would be. As we moved away and the bottle was being spun again, I found myself locking eyes with Terry. I flinched slightly but he shook his head and smiled. There was no attempt to give permission or make any comment in his expression- he was just saying 'this has nothing to do with me.' It was complete acceptance and I loved him all the more for it - did he not know that that made it harder?

After the way that Hando had dragged Ann away, the withdrawal of Maximus and I must have looked somewhat different. I walked ahead of him a couple of paces and we made our way down towards the cabins. As soon as we were out of sight, we heard the sounds of their laughter and the clink of glasses and Jeff announce the next couple followed by a raucous cheer and much hilarity. I felt his hand suddenly touch my arm and pull me back to rest against the wall of the narrow corridor. He leaned in close against me.

We looked at each other in silence.

"You do not have to. Whatever you wish. You know that..."

I smiled and stroked his face. "And what of your feelings? Perhaps this is not your wish?"

He looked away and frowned. I know that look. It means I have asked the question that he doesn't want to answer. And he probably won't.

"My feelings are immaterial. I am a man. It is different for me."

"It is not. I am not a trophy won on the field of battle. Don't bullshit me. This is no easier for you than it is for me."

"What do you want to do?"

"Your Gods have chosen this - some might say. Coincidence? Chance? I don't know if I really believe those things anymore than in a divine hand. All I know is that from now until morning I am with you. We can be lovers or not. Whatever we do, the others will presume we did make love. Our partners will spend the night with someone else. We will presume they did the deed."

"That is not an answer. It is a statement of fact."

"Then here is another... I cannot look at you without desire." I stared defiantly into his eyes, heard his sharp intake of breathe.

"Honesty becomes you. Nor I you."

"Then it is settled. But not in my room or in yours. Find a neutral ground. I want no reminders of others to taint this occasion."

We wandered through a corridor of cabins that were unoccupied, heard the low burr of a male voice and the laugh of a female; Hando and Ann were wasting no time. I looked at Maximus and he grimaced slightly. This was not how either of us had envisaged our next meeting and a part of me felt angry and cheated that it had transpired this way. And another part of me was wondering where Terry was right now. I am so glad that I had left before I had to learn who would lie with him tonight. I wished that he, too, had been spared the knowledge.

He opened a door and we entered a cabin much like the others, well furnished and comfortable, empty of signs of occupancy. I sat down on the edge of the bed, while Maximus locked the door. I watched him closely, drank in his image. He was casually dressed in loose khakis, a white linen shirt worn hanging down; his feet were bare- he rarely wears shoes when he can discard them; they constrict him too much.

As he turned he caught my open gaze, smiled a half smile and went to the fridge. There he found a bottle of white wine and picked up a corkscrew to open it, fixing me in his sights, in his uncompromising stare, that is so hard to read but so difficult to evade.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

He pursed his lips and shrugged slightly. "Would you like a glass of wine?"

I sighed. "Hardly going to tax your brain for long. Maximus! This is me! Talk to me! What are you thinking of?"

He looked down, pulled the cork and turned to fill two glasses. "A passing fancy; something that was on my mind. Nothing. Really." He spun round and brought me a glass. We clinked and I took a sip, patting the bed beside me for him to take a seat.

"On your mind? Worries?" I asked. He sat down purposefully

"No, not worries. Uma, do not start to pick at the sore! You will make it bleed. When will you learn that curiosity is both a valuable and a dangerous trait?"

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It is a saying, an adage...a dictum of our time. It refers to the dangers of curiosity. You know how a little kitten investigates everything, climbs into places and gets trapped?"

He laughed. "How appropriate. That is exactly what you are- like a curious kitten tottering on the brink of danger and suddenly plucking yourself away."

"A cat has nine lives."

"Then you must be careful- for you cannot have many left!"

At that we both laughed and the atmosphere eased. "If you must know, cattula mea, I was thinking of that silly song you sang the other night when you so pointedly ignored me and played up to other men."

I gasped at his arrogance. "What? Do you think I will single you out all the time for special treatment? Before your wife and the rest, who are so curious about our relationship? I gave no man special attention, save the one who deserved it. Don't be petulant with me, it won't work." I was annoyed now.

He looked away and I saw him clench and unclench his fist. He does that when he is uncomfortable, when words fail him - instinctively he grasps for the physical of which he has such control. "I did not mean that how it sounded. It was unworthy. I apologise. I meant I wished that you had singled me out but I know why you did not."

Although he is an honourable man, he does not find it easy to climb down and I know this was an act of humility for him. "Thank you for that. The song - why were you thinking of it? Did you disapprove that I was so...coarse and bawdy? It would not have done in your time for a woman like me to dance before men. Did it make you squirm?"

"Yes, I squirmed - but for the same reason as did every other man in the room." We looked at each other and I found myself blushing, although I did not know why. "I realized something about you as you skipped and played around that deck. I understood your magic. You have a child's soul in a woman's body. Few adults retain that curiosity and playfulness, that lack of self-awareness, that instinctiveness. Even your temper is like an angry child having a tantrum. It is an intriguing part of your mystique. Coupled with your intellect, it is rare. Add to that your beauty and you are indeed a bewitching creature."

I sat stunned by his eloquent statement and rather amazed. Should I be angry or complimented? I was unsure. "I'm not sure I want men to think of me as a child. I know I dressed as one - but it was a joke. You know, making out that men perve on schoolgirls- a sort of clichéd fantasy..."

"I would not consider a schoolgirl a child - not one of the age you were portraying. You miss my meaning."

Suddenly intrigued, I spun round to sit cross-legged on the bed. "That's a very telling comment, Maximus! You don't think a fifteen-year old girl is a child? Well, not physically, maybe - but Max- comments like that can get you a jail sentence today!"

He rubbed his head, and exhaled, "I wasn't making a lecherous comment. That is another matter. I was saying you have the innocence of a child. In some ways, you are like a virgin, despite your obvious sexual knowledge. I think you have a way of making men feel that they are unique when they are with you and that the moments you spend intimately could never quite be repeated with any other man."

I hunched my shoulders. "Well, of course they couldn't! Each human being is different and the inter-reaction is particular from one to the other. Isn't that obvious?"

"Perhaps - I told you it was a passing fancy. Take no notice of me, the sun has addled my brains!"

"The sex more like!" I giggled and he smiled and nodded. "Maximus, can I ask you a personal question? How old was your first wife when you married her?"

He frowned and shifted a little in his place, I saw him blink rapidly a few times, another habit he has that shows his unease. So many little traits that have built up in him over the years of learning how to repress his natural emotional nature. "Fifteen."

I whistled. "And you?"

"Twenty five."

There was a silence in the room. "I know it was your way but...surely she must have been afraid? Girls of fifteen today are knowledgeable and experienced and yet they are considered too young for a man of that age. I cannot imagine what it was like for her. Did she cry? Was she scared of you? Did you hurt her?"

Maximus looked at me, bewildered. He took a deep breath and rubbed his beard in thought. "No. She wasn't afraid of me, nor was she hurt. Do you really think I would not be gentle with my wife on her wedding night?"

I threw myself back on the bed and groaned. "I didn't mean it like that! But she must have known so little! Until the night before - she was a child! She would have rarely left the house! It must have been a trauma for her to be swept away by a man she hardly knew and then taken to his bed..."

"She was not naïve! Don't you understand that children grew up with a knowledge that would be deemed unacceptable today! Rooms were rarely private- mostly covered by a mere cloth or curtain, slaves rutted in their quarters in full view, whores conducted their business against walls in streets. Nakedness was everywhere - even the art on our walls often contained explicit and perhaps even, by your standards, perverted sexuality....Women, girls, were raised to be wives and mothers. My wife had been looking forward to that day for years so that she, too, could claim her position in society. A girl longed to join the adult world and her peers who were already there. Virginity was not a ...a matter of purity, it was a matter of worth. She was as eager to know me as I was to touch her. Can you understand that?"

"But she hardly knew you!"

"I had known her a year- that was the length of our official betrothal, although we were promised for years before that. I had seen her off and on since she was a little child and visited her several times in the year of our marriage..."

I burst out laughing. "Well, I guess you didn't fuck on the first date...sorry, tasteless...it will always be a mystery to a modern woman how that feels. Although it has a certain erotic quality about it. With the right young man, that is."

A silence fell on the room for a while and I lay back wondering if he was thinking of that night so long ago. Suddenly he said, "She stood in the room, her long hair loosened, and dropped her gown to stand naked before me. My experience with ladies was woefully inadequate. I had only known whores..."

"But Lucilla..." I interrupted.

"...I did not know Lucilla until after I was married. I thought you knew that?" I shook my head, stunned. "I had an affair with her in Germania. It almost destroyed my career. It was ill-advised."

"She loved you."

"Perhaps. It is a ..." he shook his head and pursed his lips... "It is of no consequence. It's not something I am proud of."

"Do you think that Lucius was your son?"

"No. I do not think. I know. He was."

"Jesus! Bloody hell! Fuck me swinging!"

Maximus threw back his head and laughed. "You are ... I was making a very serious revelation there, Uma...you have a singular way of spoiling my best lines..."

We both laughed. "I'm sorry...I was just so gob-smacked! Well...well...well...quite a subtext there... But I interrupted. What you said about your wife - it was very beautiful...I wasn't laughing at you."

"I know. I just remembered her that night and realized that I had not thought about her in...a very long time."

"Eighteen hundred years or so, Max, you've a remarkable memory!" We smiled again.

"The ship is quiet for now. They must all be abed with their partners...and we talk of the past!" Maximus observed, standing up to pour more wine. I dimmed the cabin lights until only the low lamp above the bed head still shone and then moved quietly to the middle of the room. I heard the chink of glass and the glug of the wine filling up and I spoke very softly, watching as he froze and straightened up.

"Welcome, my Lord. Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia..." The words of a Roman wedding ceremony.

Slowly he turned on his heel until he faced me. His face was in shadow but I could still make out the light contrast of his eyes; they burned into me. I was wearing a simple voile dress, loose and billowing - I dropped it to the floor and stood in silence while he observed me.

"You are beautiful, my lady, and I honour you. Take the gift of my body as my pledge to protect and serve you all my days." Maximus stepped forward and came to me, his hand lightly brushing my face, his head tilted to one side. Now in the pool of light cast by the lamp, I realized that his eyes were dreamy and far away. He was remembering.

Gently his hands reached out and unclasped the hook of my bra and slipped it from my arms. "I would look at your breasts. I would wish to worship them." He knelt down and kissed each one tenderly, caressing and cupping in his large roughened hands. I was not a fifteen - year old virgin but it still moved me. Any woman would have fallen at this young man's feet to feel like this.

"You are not afraid? Do not worry; I will not hurt you. I want to touch you, that is all."

His hands traversed my body, palms flat and lightly skimming, following my planes and curves, down my back and around my buttocks, up my legs and massaging my belly in a sensuous motion that alerted every pheromone I had. This was discovery but it was possession, too. His woman. Untouched. Known only to him. What a concept that must have been to a young man who had only lain with whores!

His fingers lingered on the lace of my panties- he eased them down my legs. I was beginning to shiver, not from the cold, but from anticipation. My head felt light and woozy at his proximity and touch. When he lowered his head and placed a chaste kiss upon my naked mound, it felt like the most erotic of acts.

"You are hairless." He commented in a husky whisper.

"It was...nothing...just a game..."

"It was a fashion. Her women would have done it. It was thought to imply purity."

He ran his thumb down the bare flesh, skimming the exposed tip of my vulva; the sensation sheared through me, the speed of light.

"You shiver, you are cold. Come...let me warm you with my body."

He stood and pressed me to him, a warm embrace, so sweet and loving, unthreatening and kind. And then he raised my chin and pressed his lips upon mine in a close-mouthed kiss before sweeping me up into his arms and placing me on the bed.

"I will blow out the candle before I undress. The sight of me might frighten you."

"No! My lord, reveal yourself! I have no fear of you." He smiled and nodded; had she said that to him? I watched as he unfastened the buttons of his shirt and pulled it off, slowly but without any attempt to beguile - just purposefully uncovering his body, which he had promised to bring as his offering to his wife.  He paused before unzipping his pants and letting them fall. As usual, he was nude beneath and I whimpered a little at his naked magnificence, the broad muscular frame, criss-crossed with scars.

"See! Just a man. Like any other."

I shook my head. "Like no other, my Lord. For I only have one master."

With a slight incline of his head, his face serious and thoughtful, a furrow of concentration on his brow, he stood before her. I imagined the scene. She would be shy but curious, infatuated already with this handsome officer who had won her hand, worried about the events to come, aware that it might be painful or rough if he did not take care. Maximus would have been equally nervous, afraid that he would do something to frighten her, wanting so much to do this right and begin their married life auspiciously, with the act achieved, the sheets stained red for the witnesses, her coy hand in his on the morrow when he led her out before the family, now a woman.

I reached out a hand and touched his chest, swept down and, as if asking for his permission, I met his eyes; he nodded and smiled, before I stroked his cock. It was already semi-erect and my touch caused it to bob forward; I jumped back, aware of how she would be both fascinated and startled by its behaviour. The size would worry her, just as his impressive body would intimidate a small and slender girl. But she would be aroused, this I knew instinctively. Her natural sexuality would cry out in the presence of such a mate - she in the first hormonal charge of girlhood, he in the prime of his virility.

"Touch it...feel it...it is your plaything, madam, and the instrument of our pleasure. Through this we will forge a family and our immortality. You will come to know it as you know your own body." He spoke softly but there was an authority in his words; he was the teacher, she the eager pupil.

I followed his command and he sank to his knees on the bed while I explored him, trying to picture how this would be if I had never seen a naked man before. He smiled down on me as I played and examined him, running my fingers along his length, squeezing gently and hefting his balls in my other hand. His hand reached out and caught mine, closing it round his swollen shaft and demonstrating how he wished me to tend to it.

Gently removing my hands, he laid me back and rolled in beside me, lying on his side and whispering soft words, hushing me, calming my fears, his hand on my cheek, a loving touch.

From then he applied himself to the art of love, like a painter working on a canvas, bringing life and colour to my tender virgin flesh. I watched him, as she must have done, kissing me from my forehead to my toes, every part of me worshipped and acknowledged as he familiarized himself with his woman's body. It was intensely erotic but uniquely pure. I knew it was an experience that a modern woman could not really know, would not really want, would never understand...but I began to realize its power.

The power of a woman who, as the Romans would have said, was univira - for one man alone. Equality was an undreamed of concept in a world where men could be used to bait the bloodlust of a violent mob - it cannot be regarded as significant. But women have always been women and they knew that their power lay in the weapon they could yield over men: their femininity, that mysterious key to immortality that men both adore and fear.

Maximus and I played no sex games. We did not drive each other to great, wild outbursts of frenzied release. That night, he loved me so slow and tenderly that when he came to enter me...little bit by little bit...it felt like the most natural place for him to rest. Rocking slowly, lips upon mine, hands caressing my breasts as I arched beneath him and offered my gift, we performed a ritual of bonding and joining, we 'knew' each other and our bodies made promises for the future.

I came with a whimper, gasping into his neck; he shuddered and sighed, pleasure and contentment, a promise fulfilled. It was a beautiful moment and I smiled for joy at the understanding of how she must have loved him from that moment on, her brave and virile husband, fair of face and strong of body, who lay in her arms, moaning like a lost boy who had just found his way home.

He did not speak for a long time; I was afraid to break the magic of the moment with chatter. My body had been the portal for him to rediscover the younger man that he had once been and return to a memory that he had all but forgotten. Perhaps when he thinks of her again, he will not be seeing the hideous last sight his eyes had of her tortured corpse, but the warmer joy of happier times.

It seemed to me he was asleep, but I should have realized that he was not. Maximus would not simply turn away from me without a comment. I saw his eyes glitter in the soft shadow and he suddenly turned, to lie resting on his elbow. "Thank you, Uma.  I thought I was there. I almost felt her...she is...was... nothing like you...but my mind was convinced. I am sorry that another woman was before my eyes; it shames both you and me."

I shook my head, my eyes smiling at his concern. "It was a privilege to take you there. I am the one who is honoured by your tenderness. Something has changed, hasn't it? You and me...something has altered...can you feel it?"

He nodded solemnly. "We are at peace. The demons are gone. We no longer need to hide inside each other."

"Tonight was a new beginning for us. Maximus, my Maximus...you are so special to me...I will always keep you close to my heart. But we will never need to ask that question of ourselves again... 'What if?' Because now we know what we are and what we want from life."

"Will you see me again?" He asked gruffly, fingers paying with a chain around my neck.

"Would you wish to?" I replied, stroking his cheek, the soft flesh exposed for the first time.

"I would. If you send for me, I will come...if you need me, I will be there for you...and for him. I want you to know that...as he was there for me when I needed him."

"You need not wait to be invited. If you want me, then ask for me. I will never refuse to see you again."

"That is a great privilege."

"It is the least that I can give you."

He pulled me down for a deep kiss; I nestled in the crook of his arm and we talked of many things...until we fell asleep, rocked by the gentle ocean and held in safe embrace.

Morning came, light pouring into the cabin. I woke, a little confused, startled when I saw with whom I slept, but then settled to watch him as he lay deep in slumber, relaxed and at peace.

I blew on his face; he woke in an instant. His smile lit up the day, as the dawn had the brightened the cabin. We touched and loved, a sleepy loose morning love, showered together and then dressed.

Formality descended upon us with the donning of our public face. At the door, Maximus stopped and pulled me back to rest his lips against my forehead. "There is something of you that is always mine...your innocence. I shall keep it safe."

I wanted to reply and tell him all the things he meant to me but my voice broke and nothing but a sob came out. He smiled and said... "I know. You showed me all I needed to know last night. My keeper of the flame...the little spirit dancing at my hearth. Until we meet again. Vale."

I watched him go; he made his way up on deck where I had already heard others congregating for breakfast. But I could not share the morning yet. I needed time alone and the refuge of my own cabin - and my own hearth.