Nice series!
Indeed! Both are married to the cross, which is a very demanding and selfish partner, that never lets go.
In wonder what their crime was.
Here’s an idea that struck my fancy.
When the legions of the Republic destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE (as we view it), the survivors were sold into slavery. The male and female slaves were dispersed to opposite ends of the world, so that no man and woman from Carthage would ever copulate again, and their people would die out.
Given the sheer logistics of scale, a few errors were inevitable.
These two found each other on the estate of a veteran Legionary. The man had participated in the sack of Carthage, and when he was demobilized, he used some of his looted riches to buy slaves to work his farm. He specifically sought out the Carthaginian woman as a domestic and bed slave. He enjoyed the reminder of the first night of the sack of Carthage, when he had power over the whole city and all the women and riches he could find were his for the taking.
The man was a field hand, erroneously categorized as a Lusitania slave from Hispania. In actuality, he was Carthaginian, with enough knowledge of the dialect to fool the busy slave trader who sold him.
They met when the man accidentally uttered a Punic curse when he dropped a load of firewood he was dropping off at the main villa house. She whispered a Carthaginian saying to him, and a romance bloomed. The two took comfort in each other’s company and, eventually each other’s arms. Their fellow slaves arranged a small, secret Punic marriage ceremony for them. A small act of defiance against Rome.
The master found out when he overheard the couple talking together as he was making a late-night walk (his shoulder hurt that night. Throwing pila for so many years in the Legions will do that.
That night, he called the woman to his room and recounted the sack of Carthage as she licked his cock. He told her how he knew that the gods favored him when the first house he entered held only three cowering women. One immediately lunged at him with a stone knife. She was the prettiest of the three and looked to be just at marriageable age. He recalled the horror in her eyes when the flimsy knife snapped and broke against his armor. He took her right there while the other two women shrieked. They probably could have run, but where would they go. The smell of smoke and the screams of women (accompanied by the laughs of men) came from all around the house.
When he had spent himself inside the girl who had attacked him, the legionary plunged his gladius up her shitting hole, up to its hilt, kicked her face-first onto the ground, and proceeded to loot the house, keeping an eye on the two remaining women. At one point, two members of his Century came by to investigate the house. He invited them in to enjoy the women. One of the men clapped him on the shoulder and proclaimed to house to be Lucius’ Brothel.
Lucius’ brothel closed when one of the men, after climaxing in the bigger, slightly older woman, cut her belly open. Furious at the lost income, he threw the two men out and flagged down one of the slave dealers. The merchant lowballed him for the one remaining woman, but the legionary was eager to get to the center of the city, where the real treasure was, and the house was going to start stinking soon. He almost forgot his gladius.
“That money bought you,” the master whispered to his Carthaginian slave girl.
The next day, the master went into the city on his weekly trip to visit his relatives, connections, and maintain relationships with customers and benefactors. He returned with an execution team and a group of curious onlookers.
The Carthaginian slaves found themselves carrying their crosses to the execution site before they even knew they had been found out.