Tug in King Arthur's Court

So, we went the full Roman route. That didn't mean togas, but I packed one anyhow. The basic outfit for Roman citizens was a pair of fine wool breeches that came down to just below the knee a heavy tunic and a voluminous fur trimmed wool cloak, with a hood.

I had on a substantial pair of their military boots, with the hobnails, and all the jewelry and leather accessories of a member of the Equestrian class. I couldn't pull off noble in my wildest dreams.

Maria was wearing the classic stola and palla combination that you see on every picture of Roman women. Her cloak was hooded and made from Atlantean material that looked like seal skin but was weather proof and served as a form of body armor. All the materials were of excellent quality denoting Patrician rank.

Since she's Atlantean aristocracy, my wife can do noble with the best of them. She was also wearing enough gold to stock a small temple. That reinforced her status.

We needed to transport a lot of gear, which was packed in a huge brass bound leather chest. It was the same arrangement that we used the last time. The chest was initially mounted on a set of bicycle wheels that would make it easier to pull to some place where we could hire help to move it. Then we could discard the wheels.

We limited the changes of outfit, since we knew we could live off the land. It was still extremely civilized in the areas under Roman control. We had been inoculated against anything that we might conceivably catch, and we brought along a few modern conveniences like an emergency medical kit and drugs and some solar powered devices like flashlights and Maria's time compression pods. We'd need those to communicate with New Atlantis.

I also brought along a Glock and a dozen of their 15 round magazines. I hadn't brought a gun back to Victorian times because they would recognize it. But, nobody in that time would know what a gun was, and it might come in handy.

Maria was perfectly capable of protecting both of us. But there might be times when we were separated, and I am the sort of fellow who ALWAYS brings a gun to a knife fight.

I'm usually a little nervous before we get dropped into another time. My first trip was to Victorian London, which was close enough to our own era that the general sense of things was recognizable. But this was Fifth Century Roman Britain, and I knew the culture shock would be devastating.

I could understand the situation intellectually. But, I found out the first time I visited another time that you can't really envisage the environment; the alien noises, smells and even the natural things, like the sounds of a time almost two thousand years removed from your experience.

Maria was used to all that. She had lived for eight months in Third Century BC Greece and she had made some other forays into the past that she said she was willing to tell me about, since we have no secrets.

Still, I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around her dalliance with Alexander. So, I really didn't want to know about any of her other adventures.

Maria is stunning, and her extreme beauty is something that the Atlanteans regularly employed to manipulate great men.

She is the most vibrant, interesting, and steadfast companion a guy could ever ask for. So, she didn't have to fuck all of them to get her point across, for instance, Maria was the one who convinced Pope Gregory XI to move back to Rome, ending the Avignon Papacy.

Nonetheless, most guys would rather NOT go over the details of their wife's dating history. Especially if those dates were with titans of history. It just raises too much self-doubt.

I can see in her heart that Maria adores me. That is one of the benefits of our psychic bond, But, seriously??!! How can a former nerd compete with historical figures like Charlemagne, or Ben Franklin, both of whom Maria "dated?"

So, my wife was totally relaxed standing there. It was like we were going for a walk. I was weak in the knees with dread. But I didn't want to let her down. So, I just stood there in the bowels of the Poseidon, with my OWN bowels in an uproar, waiting for Carlos to pull the trigger.

Just before he did, I heard a loving voice say in my head, "I hope you know that I love you even more, because you are so brave and loyal." It almost made the trip worthwhile.

Then there was that well-remembered moment of disorientation and I was standing in the sand of a coliseum outside the walls of the Roman Fortress of Isca Silurum.

The coliseum was a perfect place to land. Your arrival resembles falling into that time, and a roof would interrupt your fall. There is also an inevitable flash-bang on arrival. So, the Atlanteans wanted to mask that by dropping us into a place with high walls.

I had seen pictures of the amphitheater in the Twenty First Century. It is imposing as a ruin. Fully operational, in the year 483, it was an unbelievable sight. There was seating for thousands.

It was well after dark, which was the point of the drop. We didn't want to arrive at a time when people would be around to witness our arrival. Of course, any witnesses in those more superstitious times would have probably attributed our sudden appearance to a divine event, not time-travel. It was just that we didn't want the publicity.

I had one of our little solar flashlights in a hidden pocket of my cloak. Maria lit the way as I struggled to wheel the huge trunk across the sand to the exit on the town side.

It was backbreaking. We had not anticipated that we would be pulling it through deep sand. We should have thought of that since, the amphitheater was the place where the gladiatorial events took place and the sand was there to soak up the blood.

I finally made it to the exit, with my tongue dragging across the ground, only to encounter the steps that led up and out of the stadium. I said with all the sarcasm I could muster, "Great!"

With Maria pulling and me pushing we finally wrestled the trunk out of the coliseum and onto the surrounding flagstones. The Fortress walls were dark and intimidating in the distance.

Merchants and the people who had formerly served in the Legion had created a substantial village around the Fortress.

I had expected narrow medieval lanes between half-timbered buildings. But what I saw was a wide cobblestone street fronted by tidy rows of stone buildings.

In many respects, the village looked like a modern town in that part of England. It included the occasional street light, which was unexpected. I learned later that the wealthy kept the lights burning in front of their houses to scare away the riff-raff.

They were just big oil lamps tended by slaves. But the effect wasn't much different than it was in Victorian times with the gas lights. In fact, the area we were walking into seemed cleaner and more modern than the parts of London we had walked through thirteen centuries later.

It was puzzling. Rome had fallen to the Visigoths ten years earlier. But it seemed like Roman civilization was still alive and well here in Isca Silurum.

Legio II Augusta had been based at that fortress. They had been there since Claudius invaded the place in 76 AD. So, at that point in time, the area around Isca Silurum had been under continuous Roman control for over 400 years. Just for the sake of perspective, that is almost 150 years LONGER than the US has existed as a Nation. So, everybody in the surrounding town was pretty-well settled into the Roman way of life.

In fact, this might be early-times of what historians would come to call the "Dark Ages." But it seemed that nobody had informed the residents that they were living in a time of chaos and ignorance.

The walls of the fortress were substantial, the coliseum was impressive and the town itself seemed like a thriving Roman city. The atmosphere was like you've seen in all those Hollywood toga and sandal epics. In fact, the place even had a substantial public bath house. So, it was easy to see why the natives still considered themselves Roman.

I checked my watch. It was Atlantean. It told the correct local time no matter WHEN you were. I wasn't worried about what the natives would think. I knew that they would see something on my wrist as a bauble.

The watch said it was just past midnight. Most of the locals were in bed, which was part of our plan. But, there were still raucous voices emanating from a building at the end of the street. That was obviously the town tavern.

I turned and looked in the direction of the river. A collection of huge buildings blocked my vie. Those were probably warehouses.

That sight reminded me that Isca Silurum was one of three permanent Legionary forts in Roman Britain. It was built where it was, to project Roman power into what we now call Wales. The other two fortresses were at Chester and York, basically forming a semi-circle frontier of protection around the heart of Roman occupied lands to the south and east.

From the early 600s on, the natives started calling Isca Silurum "Caerleon." That means, "Camp of the Legions." But Caerleon has another pronunciation, "Camelot."

Yes folks, we were in the legendary city of King Arthur.

Maria took one of her time dilation pods, scribbled something and then held it aloft. The pod disappeared with a melodramatic flash. That always leads the locals to think "supernatural."

The pods travel through time like an old fashioned pneumatic tube. Maria says that all the energy necessary to do that is sucked into the wormhole, so she doesn't feel the flash. She had just sent the news that we had arrived safe and were awaiting Merlin's contact.

We had been told to spend the night at the Three Vines. That was the tavern at the end of the street. We wheeled our big trunk down the cobblestones to that destination and walked inside.

The thing that stuck me about the place was that it was brightly lit and there was no stink. It was full of all types of people; talking, laughing and drinking. If you could ignore the oil smell from the lamps, it was no different than a bar on Duvall street.

We had spent almost two months in Victorian England and I came away with a strong impression of how unsanitary Victorian life was; at least for people who couldn't afford servants.

But, in fifth Century Britain, a lot of Roman life was based around the "baths." That was probably the reason why the tavern was so exceptionally clean, as were the clientele.

I have Maria's psychic gift of language. So, Maria and I can communicate with anybody. Their language is automatically translated into colloquial American speech in my mind and vice-versa for Maria; while, in fact, her real language is so melodious it almost sounds like she is singing and I can't understand a word.

Of course, my mental powers are nowhere near as powerful as hers. So, although I can speak any language, I sound foreign when I'm doing it. Maria's psychic ability is so prodigious, that she sounds like she was born local. Hence, she is the one who does the negotiating in strange situations.

I watched her talking to the landlord. We had a huge bag of authentic Roman gold coins in our trunk. It's easy to gather real currency when you can travel to the time that it was used in.

So, we could have bought the tavern if we had wanted to. But, we didn't know how long we were going to stay, and we didn't want to attract attention. Thus, Maria was being extra flirtatious, just to get the landlord into the right frame of mind.

She was wearing an authentic stola and palla combination that was basically a long tunic draped over her fabulous body and then covered by ten feet of woolen cloth, which she had wrapped around her like a shawl.

The shawl was there for modesty. But Roman women could arrange it in ways that would let any male know that the goods were first class.

In Maria's case those goods were not something often seen by mere mortals. Having the twins had expanded her already large perfectly formed boobs into mountains and her lithe, supple body was as slim, shapely and solid as ever.

In many respects though, Maria's finest assets were peeping out of the slits on the side of her stola. She was showing the manager her perfectly formed legs. Her thighs are a little longer than average. So, it looks like they belong to a Greek goddess, which, in fact, she actually is.

The manager appeared to have been a former soldier; big, burly and dangerous looking. Maria had him mesmerized. I knew that she had the mental power to actually knock the guy out. But she was playing the damsel in distress and he was eating it up. Finally, she turned and motioned me over.

She said smiling prettily at the landlord and flirtatiously placing one hand on his arm, "Titus has agreed to let us use the rooms that the Legate stayed in when he was at the Fort.

We need to pay him in advance and perhaps we can give him something for being such a lamb." She gave him another kittenish glance and the big galoot simpered like a teenager. Bribery with a lot of sex appeal works in any century.

I pulled out the leather purse with the gold Aureus's in it and counted out four, and then I counted out four more. The landlord decided that he liked us a lot. He said, "Thanks mate! Where are you from? Your accent isn't Roman?"

I said, "America." Thank God he didn't ask me where THAT was. He probably thought I'd said Armorica, which was just across the channel in Brittany.

He got a couple of his slaves to carry the trunk up to our room. Yes, slavery was still alive and well in the Fifth Century.

I'm from blue-collar origins. So, I had a hard time being waited on by actual slaves. Maria, being nobility, had no problem ordering the bought help around. So, I left all the arranging of our luggage to her.

The room itself was large and solid, much nicer than the one that we had stayed in 1,300 years later, in Victorian England.

It had been the Legate's room and it had all the luxuries; aromatic cedar beams, smooth wood floor with expensive rugs, there was even glass in the windows. The plaster walls were richly decorated with murals and frescos of satyrs, maidens and leaping fawns. The symbolism was a little over the top.

It was a perfect illustration of Rome's power and extensive reach. The beams had come from the Middle East and the rugs from even further east.

It was a shame to think that this sophisticated, cosmopolitan civilization would soon, disappear; and not reappear for another twelve centuries. All that would be left in the time in-between would be the desolation of the Dark Ages and then Medieval England.

We quickly settled in. We had brought a vast fortune in coinage, just in case. Having that much cash on hand would normally be a problem. But Maria wrapped the money in one of her invisibility cloaks.

She had to be careful doing that, because the people back then would have called it a "spell" and we all knew what happened to women who got caught casting those things. With her mental powers, Maria could have held an entire Legion at-bay. But it would have spoiled our mission.

We were both tired. So, Maria began to undress. Watching that happen was like watching a particularly spectacular sunset, it's a sight that you'll never get tired of seeing. Maria has none of the body-issues that plague most women. That's partly because she has a stunning body. But, it's mainly because the Atlanteans glorify the human form.

Alright, technically my wife isn't human. But there is no way to tell the difference. Both Atlanteans and their arch enemy, the Athenians, have the ideal human physique.

It begs the question, "Where did we get our ideas about physical perfection from?" Atlanteans were demi-gods to early humans. So, we might not be directly related. But, we probably got our attitudes from them.

My wife removed all of her period clothing and began to wander around the room stowing things; her nude body was a study in sculptural detail.

Maria's body hasn't changed one iota in the eleven years that have passed since I met her. Her legs are exceptionally long and well-shaped; full and muscled rather than thin.

But, it is her hip structure that is so special. The right word to describe her hips is, "tight." She has birthed twins. But her hips are still perfectly shaped: taut, and powerful. The muscle rippling underneath that soft skin is like spring steel; and her buns are a couple of little cannonballs.

Her waist is narrow, and rock hard, as is her belly. Then there are those big meaty boobs, which are mounted high on her chest. They used to be nice and round. But with two kids they have become massive.

I gazed at them with the rapt awe of the first white man who encountered the Himalayas. They are THAT impressive.

Maria turned toward me with one eyebrow cocked and a challenging look and said, "Should we celebrate our arrival like the last time?"

Our first trip was into Victorian England, in pursuit of Jack the Ripper. We had arrived just like we did this time, next to a remote coaching inn where we could get our feet under us for the coming journey. There is nothing like being dropped into an alien culture to make you want reassurance. So, we made passionate love.

Maria is very vocal and she got wild enough that night that the residents of the inn thought I was killing her. Given that the Ripper was loose in the area, that almost led to an embarrassing exposure. Thank God I'd locked the door.

Maria was clearly hinting that round two was in the offing.

I whipped my tunic over my head without hesitation and dropped the thonglike undergarment that all Roman-men wore. In the meantime, my wife had reclined languorously on the bed, one hip jutting and her big glorious tits draped across her arm. She was panting with anticipation.

I lay down next to her and took her in my arms. Her upper body is a paradox. She has really big tits, which leaves you with the impression that she is larger on top then she is from the waist down. But even though she is a strong and well-built woman, her upper body is almost fragile relative to her powerful hips and legs.

We have always had an intense physical attraction. I honestly don't know why. I am reasonably good-looking guy. But I'm no movie star, whereas Maria could be.

I suppose our passionate sex has more to do with the fact that Maria is a very erotic female, while still being a one-man woman. Monogamy is the bedrock of her personal belief system and since I'm the lucky guy, I am the recipient of her boundless enthusiasm.

I know that we'll slow down when we get older, Perhaps 500 years from now. But, we love each other a lot; and that's one more thing that makes my life wonderful.

She grabbed the back of my head with both hands and dragged me down to one of her patented steamy kisses. I don't know whether its her Atlantean physiology, or just something unique to Maria. But she burns hotter than the average female. It might be a matter of a couple of degrees. But she is literally hot; on both ends of her body.

I crushed those massive boobs between us and she moaned loudly into my mouth. WE dueled tongues for a while, with Maria becoming increasingly agitated. Once she passes the point of no return there is no stopping her, and she was rapidly getting to the boil.

She turned abruptly in my arms. Our sweat slicked bodies made that easier. This was one of our favorite positions. It gave me unfettered access to her body. She fumbled between us and then inserted me into what felt like boiling velvet. She moaned loudly with the sensation.

I had one giant boob in my left hand and my right hand was making its way down her flat abdomen, past her jutting hipbones to the place where her little man in the boat was docked. It was very slick and wet in there. The well-remembered hormonal smell of my utterly aroused wife was driving me nuts.