The Duke’s Fourth Son

They had just the one chance of looking at each other as the young man’s horse was guided into the central ward of Duke Basile’s strongest and most inaccessible mountain castle in Lublin with the other five hostages in early December. Snow lay heavily on the ground. Jan, the fourth son of Hainrich, the Duke of Kowel, was the one to look away. Although he was the one who had created this predicament, Hainrich, astride a war horse and saddled in the midst of three of his protecting knights, wasn’t the one looking away. The expression on his father’s face told Jan everything he needed to know. His father was angry and felt he was being unfairly shamed. The life of his son and those of the other five nobles, merchants, and a bishop who were being exchanged as surety for Hainrich to ensure the rest of his ransom would be paid were in grave danger. The Duke of Kowel had been taken prisoner in a border skirmish between the forces of Kowel and Basile’s duchy of Holszany, and a high ransom had been demanded for Hainrich’s release.

Six hostages from the citizenry of Kowel had been demanded to be held by Basile upon payment of the last half of the ransom, which Basile had accepted that Hainrich had to return to Kowel to be able to raise. Basile had demanded that one of the hostages be one of Hainrich’s sons. The natural choice was Jan, the duke’s fourth son, who was being prepared to enter the church, having little other value to Hainrich as long as one of his three older sons lived. Given a hearty heir and spare, further sons lost their intrinsic value, barring tragedy.

Jan was eighteen, a beautiful, perfectly formed blond young man who had not been trained to either arms or government. His natural talent had been playing the lute and singing songs in a clear, high voice, which had little value at his father’s tense, meanly financed, and morose court. His father, Hainrich, who gave him little heed in his first seventeen years had nothing to say to him today as the father and his small retinue, basking in their newly acquired freedom, rode out of Lublin Castle, and Jan, guided by the castle priest, Father Slawek, was taken into the castle keep.

The priest, not far into his twenties himself, and only recently having taken up his post in the castle from service in the city’s cathedral and, before that, at the Opole Monastery at some distance away in the duchy, was, nonetheless, sharp-witted and quickly picked up on the weakness of the relationship between the Duke of Kowel—at least on Hainrich’s side—and his youngest son. He could see that the Duke of Kowel’s sacrifice in the hostages he provided was not as great as the Duke of Holszany would want to believe.

As they entered the castle, the youth looked up the sweeping staircase in the reception room, wondering what sort of accommodations the hostages would be given. He knew nothing of the Duke of Holszany—whether his nature was a kind or cruel one—other than that Jan’s father despised the ruler of his neighboring, and richer duchy and that Holszany’s duke had captured his father and held him for ransom—an onerous amount of ransom that would cripple Kowel’s capability of waging war for years, if not decades. The sum was so large that only half had yet been delivered.

All Jan knew was that Holszany’s duke was tall of stature and solidly built, and although he was a handsome, red-headed and bearded man of some thirty-five years, standing there like a strong oak at the top of the stairs into the keep as the hostages arrived and captive neighboring duke departed, he was a man of stern countenance. As soon as Duke Hainrich rode through the postern gate, a glowering Basile turned, and without waiting for the hostages to be taken off their horses, he disappeared into the castle. He had, though, first taken a deeply assessing look at the duke’s son captive he had acquire with the other Kowel hostages.

Duke Basile had his fetishes, and in his realm there was no one to deny him his pleasures.

Jan had also taken an assessing look at the duke, as, although he had not acted on it, he already knew that his interests in life went more to attachment with older men, and especially commanding ones like Basile, than with women. It had been for this reason that he did not shrink away from a life in the church, where, though not biblically supported, men did make attachments with other men in this region of Europe in these medieval times.

Seeing where the youth’s eyes had gone in the reception hall, the priest, Slawek, sighed and murmured in regretful, but, he hoped, encouraging tones that, “No, young sire, not up the stairs. Down the stairs behind them.”

Jan couldn’t help but shudder as he and the other hostages were herded down the stairs into the base rock of the mountain Lublin Castle rose from. They were taken only one level down, though, and the rock-enclosed chamber they were led into wasn’t too much of a dungeon. It was on the side of the mountain sloping down, so there were windows, albeit encased in bars and with nowhere to go other than plunging to one’s death into a raging-current river at the foot of the cliff if anyone managed to get through the bars. The floor, walls, and ceiling were stone, but there was fresh straw on the floor; beds, with rush mattresses and blankets, enough for each of the hostages; a long table, with sturdy chairs enough; and a private alcove with a pissoir and a narrow privy chute opening down the cliffside.

Not all of the hostages were there. The Bishop of Brno, from the chief city of Kowel, had been conducted up when the others were taken down. Obviously, as a prince of the church, he was being accorded better accommodations than the others. The one person Duke Basile could not distain in this transaction was the pope in Rome.

They were left in private, with guards outside the sturdy, locked door; the food was plentiful enough and probably a bit better than the standard fare in the poorer Duchy of Kowel; and water was brought in weekly to fill the stone tub in the corner of the room where the hostages could bathe themselves. When they bathed they were provided clean clothes. At the first change of clothes, though, Jan lost his noble-class distinction from the rest of the hostages. They all were dressed as meanly as the peasants of the fields. Still, the handsome young duke’s son wore his clothes well and stood out from the other, older men.

The conditions were not any worse, other than the confinement, than the hostages were accorded in Kowel, and they were all of the upper classes in their home environments, so they had no reason to complain as long as their confinement was short and Hainrich sent back the rest of the ransom promptly.

The priest, Slawek, visited as soon as the hostages had been settled, pulled young Jan aside, knowing that he was the son of a duke, and asked if there was anything the youth needed that would be permitted by the guards.

“I’m sure your stay here will be short. It need not be unpleasant.” Even as the priest said it, though, it was clear from the tone of his voice that he didn’t fully believe that himself.

Jan was not so sure on the shortness of the stay and he already could see that his lot might be boredom. None of the other hostages spoke much to him. Not only were they deferential because he was their duke’s son, but also it was their duke who had placed them in this position and they were not feeling all that kindly to the ruling house of Kowel.

“We have dice for the others, but I am not much for such games. Would paper and pen be permissible?” Jan asked. “I would wish to assure my mother that I was doing well. And perhaps a lute, if there is one. I do receive comfort from music.”

The priest noticed that the youth hadn’t mentioned writing his father, which was further evidence that the two were not close. “I will see what I can do,” he answered.

When he returned, it was to express regret that the young man would not be permitted paper and pen or any sort of communication with his family until the rest of the ransom was paid. “But I have brought this lute. Perhaps you could play it for me.”

And play it, the young duke’s son did, demonstrating that he was a talented musician—and not only with the lute. He had a clear, sweet voice that went with it. The priest was so impressed that he came back daily. Slawek also was a talented singer, his voice register lower than the young man’s, and much of the time of incarceration in that chamber went more quickly for Jan because of the musical sessions with the young priest.

These conditions lasted for only two weeks, though, at which time guards appeared and roughly moved the hostages down two levels into the true dungeon, where no special amenities were accorded them at all.

Jan need know nothing other than that they were moved into much meaner conditions to confirm what he already, in his gut, knew. His father wasn’t going to pay the rest of the ransom. He must already have ignored a deadline.

When they were hustled out of the chamber down further into the dungeon, Jan was not permitted to take the lute, and Father Slawek was not there to soften the indignity of the rough handling down the stone steps into the cold, damp, and dark bowels of the castle.

* * * *

The precarious fate of the hostages became clear immediately upon being taken down to the dungeon. They weren’t given a chance upon first arrival to survey how much further down the scale of amenities they had sunk because they saw little of the dungeon until their eyes adjusted to the weak flames from a few smoking torches set in the walls. They were all stripped down, hung from the stone walls on chains, and left in the dank darkness long enough to be nearly overcome with fear before any sort of explanation was provided why they were being treated this way.

After an indeterminate time, the dungeon was filled with light as guards came in carrying flaming torches. They were followed by the Duke of Holszany himself, Basile, who was carrying both an expression of anger and a horse whip in his hand. Behind him, walking between two guards, was the Biship of Brno, looking no worse for whatever inconvenience he had experienced.

“Behold the objects of Duke Hainrich’s surety for the now-long-overdue remainder of his ransom pledge, Bishop,” the duke spat out. “I want you to behold and report how the hostages suffer for Hainrich’s failure to fulfill his agreement.”

The guards standing at the sides of the Bishop of Brno then took hold of the clergyman and made him watch as the duke stripped down to breeches, showing off a magnificent, reddish-hair-dusted, muscular torso, went from one hostage to the other, and whipped each man’s writhing bare-flesh back, buttocks, and legs. He worked his own exercise up to where his chest glistened in the torchlight. Putting his bulging biceps to work, he raised welts and blood but whipped with some restraint, which he promised to the bishop was only the beginning. He was perhaps a bit more lenient in whipping Jan, the young eighteen-year-old son of Duke Hainrich, but he was more engaging with his hands on the young man’s flesh than with the others. All in all, the duke seemed to be enjoying this sport—he certainly enjoyed it more than the hostages did.

When he had made the circuit, he turned to the bishop and said, “You will return to Duke Hainrich and attest to what you have seen and convey that conditions will be no better for the hostages until you have returned with the rest of the ransom money. The balance is already overdue. If you have not returned by Epiphany, January 6th of the new year, I will hang one of the hostages every three days. And if I have not received payment by the time the lives of the hostages have been exhausted, I will come get it myself. Hainrich already knows his forces will buckle to mine on the battlefield. That is how he came to owe the ransom.”

With that, he pulled his leather jerkin down over his head and stormed out of the dungeon. At the duke’s signal, the bishop’s guards drew the cleric away as well. The hostages were then let down from where they were hanging from the wall in chains, and, while assessing the effects of the whipping on their bodies, were given the opportunity to see in the light from the additional torches that had been left attached to the walls that, in addition to this chamber being far meaner, damper, and colder than the one they had left, they no longer had fresh straw on the floors, beds to lie in, a sufficient number of blankets to keep them warm, or a separate privy to meet the demands of their bodies. They would also learn in time that meals were neither regular in delivery nor of the quality they had heretofore enjoyed.

Within the hour of their release, servants arrived, under the guidance of Father Slawek. They brought salves and bandages, and the priest supervised them in the tending to the hostages’ wounds. There was nothing that could attend to the indignity they had suffered at Duke Hainrich’s failure to send the rest of the ransom money, however.

Slawek himself attended to Jan, cooing to the young man in soothing tones, and he held the duke’s son close, glided his hands lovingly over the bruised flesh of the beautiful young man, and gave him such comfort and soothing of pain as he could. The effect was to raise the arousal and interest he had in Jan. Jan responded in kind, further arousing the priest.

“I will do what I can for you,” he whispered to Jan. “I’m sure that Duke Basile doesn’t mean what he has threatened to do and that his anger will abate. Christmastide approaches. There will be a big banquet, and I am sure his spirits and thoughts of charity will rise.”

Jan couldn’t be that sure about Duke Basile’s mood and the seriousness of his intentions. What he could be sure of, though, was that his father, Duke Hainrich, didn’t care a fig about the hostages, including his fourth son, and would not be paying the balance of the ransom. This treatment was all too mean for the Bishop of Brno, of course, who had not shared in the severity of the captivity even when it wasn’t all that severe. The church gave the bishop some protection from Basile’s ire. The presence of Duke Hainrich’s own flesh and blood could only elevate that ire toward the young man, though. Jan was sure he’d never see the bishop again any more than he was likely ever to see his father again in this lifetime.

He had no reason to want to see his father again, however.

He did take comfort in Father Slawek’s gentle ministrations, though, and if the touch of Father Slawek’s hands on him was a bit more than medical need required, this did not repel the young man either. He needed all of the goodwill and support he could get in these circumstances and he was attracted to the handsome young priest.

* * * *

Two days later the guards came for Jan. They took him out of the dungeon and up several levels in the castle to a small room that was an improvement over both of the chambers he’d occupied in the castle before. He had no anticipation he’d be staying here, though, until servants appeared with water and a tub and a change of clothes—something more colorful and serviceable, after three weeks belowdecks in the castle, than what he’d been given while he was in the dungeon. When they were done, he once more looked like the son of a duke.

After he was dressed again, Father Slawek came into the room. He was carrying a lute, which he handed to Jan. “Duke Basile is having a banquet on the Eve of Christmas,” Slawek said.

“When is that?” Jan asked. “What day is it now?”

The priest looked a bit confused and then, when he realized that the hostages probably had lost track of time, especially in the dark dungeon without windows, he said, “Tomorrow. The Eve of Christmas is tomorrow.” He continued. “I had told Duke Basile of your talent with the lute and song and he spoke to me of how presentable he found you when he last saw you.” The priest paused here as they both knew that when the duke last saw the eighteen-year-old, Jan was nearly naked, was hanging from a dungeon wall in chains, and the duke was whipping him.

“You are to play the lute and sing at the banquet. I would not suggest refusing to do so. Your lot may improve if you please the duke and his guests. Part of why you will be at the banquet will be to show off the son of a duke Basile has defeated and held captive. He wants to be able to claim to the public that his treatment of the hostages is humane. It will be easier for you if you are there willingly and have a function—entertaining with the lute and song.”

“And afterward?” Jan asked. “Do I come back here afterward or am I thrown back into the dungeon?”

Slawek started to say something but then decided not to. “Who can be sure? I would hope it will be better than the conditions you have been living in. It may depend on how you act at the banquet. You may be able to better your lot. Pay particular attention to trying to please the duke.”

“My father hasn’t sent the rest of the ransom, has he?—and there’s no indication that he will.”

“No, he has not,” the priest said, reluctantly, “there is no hint of that. But perhaps the duke will show mercy to the hostages.”

“But you do not think he will, do you?” Jan whispered.

“I think you should do what you need to do to be the hostage he does not give his anger too,” the priest said. Again, he was about to add something to that, but then he didn’t.

Jan was perplexed. The priest hadn’t answered the question, but, upon reflection later, the young man realized that perhaps he had.

“I will play. I will be happy to play. And thank you for bringing me a lute. Can you stay and sing with me for a time? I will need to practice for the banquet.”

“I would like nothing better to do than that,” Slawek said, trying his best not to reveal that he was smitten with the young man and was determined to do all he could to save him—and that he wanted to be around him. “We must make you as handsome as possible for the banquet and you need to be as agreeable and friendly to the duke and his friends as you can be.”

“Won’t I just be behind a curtain somewhere?”

“No. You will be prominently displayed. You will remind those at the banquet of Duke Basile besting your father but also that he is treating the hostages well. You should not think of that. You should please them all—and especially the duke—as best you can.”

Again, Jan didn’t understand at that point why this would be so important, or why Father Slawek seemed to be sad in discussing it, but he would certainly come to understand why in the days to come.

* * * *

Jan was the butt of jokes aimed at his father when he first entered the banquet hall on Christmas Eve, but there were also favorable comments on the beauty of the eighteen-year-old youth and some bawdy bantering on Duke Basile having kept him hidden away to keep for himself. The young man didn’t understand what they were hinting at at that point, but he made the connection later. The guests at the banquet well knew the preferences of their duke.

Once Jan was positioned on a tabletop near the center of the banquet hall and had started playing his lute and singing his ballads, all were won over. The priest Slawek joined him in song at several points. The music of the evening was meant to be only background sound behind the boisterous talk as the banqueters caroused and for most musicians that evening, that was what it was. But guests paid attention to Jan and demonstrated their approval, some of them bold enough to tell the duke what a lucky man he was.

The banquet was still going but winding down a bit when guards came to take Jan out of the hall. Slawek accompanied the young man up the stairs into the upper reaches of the castle. When they reached the level where the room was located that Jan had been taken to prepare for the banquet, though, they didn’t stop. The guards prodded the young man up another set of stairs. Jan turned a questioning face to the priest, who grimaced.

“You are going to the duke’s rooms tonight, Jan,” he said. “He wishes you to play for him in private to bring in Christmas Day.” Jan assumed he would be playing his lute, which he had been permitted to bring with him, but wasn’t so sure when, trying but failing to smile, the priest added, “You must be very brave. You must do what you have to do not to be returned to the dungeon with the other hostages.”

When the duke came to his chambers not too long after that, he, indeed, wanted Jan to play the lute and sing for him while his attendants helped undress him and put him into a sleeping robe that buttoned down the front. After the attendants departed, and the duke was alone with the young man, though, he revealed what he really wanted done to take him into Christmas Day.

“Continue to play, but disrobe for me and pose on that padded seat,” he commanded.

“Sire?” Jan said.

“Do it and do it now,” the duke barked.

Jan understood fully at that point why he was here. “Sire, I never have—”

“All the more pleasurable for me, then,” the duke said. “Do as I say or it will go badly for you and the other hostages. Your father has not honored his pledge. You hostages are fully at my mercy for whatever I want—and at the moment I want to take pleasure with your body.”

Realizing that he was completely at the duke’s mercy, Jan disrobed fully and reclining a bit on a red-velvet-covered backless stool near the foot of the duke’s massive, canopied bed, the side drapes of which were closed to provide more warmth and complete privacy in the bed. He would have been more panicked if he was not predisposed to lying with men and if the duke weren’t so arousing to him. As if was, he had no choice in the matter, so he decided to let what happened unfold without ineffective resistance. It wasn’t just his well-being at stake here. The other hostages were at risk as well.

As the young man played, the duke sprawled in a chair facing him, drank wine from a flagon, and, with slitted eyes, watched the perfectly formed naked young man play the lute and softly sing ballads. At length, the duke unbuttoned his robe at the crotch, pulled out an erection, and stroked his shaft.

Jan now knew what the men at the banquet were joking about concerning Basile having hidden him away and he also recalled the warning Father Slawek had given him. His own father’s court was not the most pious one, and the young man’s looks and somewhat lower status in the family had made him familiar with flirting and advances from some men of the court—and he had done some fantasizing of his own along those lines, most recently about the handsome young priest, Slawek. So, he wasn’t entirely confused or resistant when Duke Basile stood up from his chair, released the cord around his waist, undid the rest of the buttons on his robe, and shrugged the robe off his shoulders.

The duke, a seasoned warrior, was a tall, heavy, muscular red-haired man, the curly hair present on his body from his shoulder-length hair, mustache, and beard, down from the swirls around his beefy pectorals, and on down into a riot of reddish-blond curls of his pubes from which a thick, angry-red cock projected and two heavy, hair-covered balls descended. He was a medieval-period warrior, so battle scars could be seen on his body, but that gave him a sense of power and adventure—and seeing the man in the altogether took Jan’s breath away.

The man moved as fast as a panther despite his bulk, closing the distance between his chair and the stool faster than Jan could react in any way. The lute skittered off to one side as the man reached and grabbed the young man. Jan’s wrists quickly were bound together with the cord from the robe and he was bent on his belly over the stool, his head and arms hanging over one side, his legs spread and hugging the opposite sides of the stool, and the duke crouched, but briefly, behind the young man, pressing him down on the stool with a strong hand to the small of his back, and the duke tonguing the young man’s anal opening.

“You will yield to me,” the duke barked.

“Yes, sire,” Jan surrendered.

Soon thereafter, Jan was writhing on the stool on his belly, crying out at the violation, as Duke Basile mounted him from behind and on top, worked his thick shaft into the young man’s anal channel, and brutally tore Jan’s anal virginity out of him. There, of course, hadn’t been enough preparation, enough opening and stretching to accommodate the man, but that was how the duke liked it. He was a master, conqueror, and make-the-young-man-suffer dominator. With Basile, it was a military campaign and he needed to conquer. When the man was well saddled, the young man surrendered, lying there, moaning and gurgling, completely collapsed, as the duke rode him hard to an ejaculation.

When the duke had won his initial pleasure of the rival duke’s son, he pulled off him and went back to the table where he’d left the wine. He drank and grinned at the young man, well pleased with the victory he’d won over the son of one of his primary enemies. Jan lay there, completely collapsed, belly down, on the stool, panting, moaning low, and watching the duke with wide-open eyes. Whether the duke cared or not, it had not been a completely unpleasant experience for the young man. Jan had fantasized about going with a man—and with a large, muscular, commanding man such as the duke. It had been painful, but men at his father’s court who had tried to seduce him had told him that it would hurt the first time but that it would become something very pleasant in repeated couplings.

After a few minutes, the duke spoke. “You have two choices now. I can call guards to take you back to the dungeon to be with your friends, or you can have a bit more freedom and stay out of the dungeon. For that choice, you need to rise, go to the bed, part the curtains, enter the bed, wait for me to come to bed, and yield to me more enthusiastically than you have done just now. I will have my sport with you.”

Jan wasn’t quick enough to answer before the duke spoke again, after laughing. “But I did enjoy you, so even if you choose to return to your friends, I will take you into the bed first.”

There wasn’t much of a choice for Jan. With a thought to what Father Slawek had counseled that he need do, but also because of Jan’s own curiosity, he chose the bed, where the duke took him again and again in curtained seclusion, brutally and totally, in various positions, into Christmas morning.

The duke laughed when he approached the bed, because, rather than being coiled in a protective fetal position, Jan was lying on his back, legs bent and spread, waiting for his master in an easily accessible position.

“So, you yield to me willingly now?” the duke growled.

“Yes, sire, I yield to you willingly. Come to bed and be my master of the bed.”

The duke’s fetish was the conquest of deflowering a young virginal man. He had done that, but there were ways to prolong the effect of that. Red velvet cords descended from the four corner posts of the bed. He wasn’t ready yet for the young man to be as willing as he said he was. By trussing the young man up in a spread-eagle, totally bound position, and covering him in cruel taking, ignoring the cries for mercy when they came, the duke could take again as like it was the first time—and he did—repeatedly, until Jan had nothing left to try to protect.

The young man obviously was pleasing and yielding enough for the duke’s Christmas sport, because when morning came, the duke did not send Jan away from his bed. The young man could not have left the bed without help in any case. But, truth be known, after the first couple of layings, Jan was more than willing to take the duke’s cock.

* * * *

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“In what way have you sinned, my son?”

Two days after Christmas, Jan had been freed from Duke Basile’s bed, as the duke had business to attend to. Jan had begged him not to go and not even he was sure at that point whether he did that just to remain in the duke’s good graces. The young man now being permitted to move about the castle in a limited way, Jan had headed straight for the castle chapel. He hadn’t moved very fast, more hobbled, as the duke had been sexually demanding and was built big. He found that Father Slawek was in the confessional.

“I have lain with a man,” Jan confessed.

“Willingly?” the priest asked.

Jan paused before answering. “It’s difficult to say, Father. Not at first, but later I can’t say I minded very much.” But hadn’t he become more enthusiastic about it than that?

“But is this your sin or the man’s sin?”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was the duke, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And he didn’t really give you a choice, did he?”

Again there was a pause. “No, not at first.”

“But after the first time, he didn’t really give you a choice then, either, did he? You were adjusting to what you didn’t really have a choice in.” It seemed important to the priest that Jan had been coerced. “You could not have left his bed or his chamber without his permission. You could not have closed your legs to him. Learning to endure it and not being given a choice in engaging in it are not the same thing.”

“No, I suppose not. No, I had no choice, not really.”

“Was it just that once?”

“I have been in the duke’s bed the last two days—leaving only to eat and relieve myself.”

“But not sleeping all of the time?”

“Not sleeping even most of the time.”

It was the priest’s turn to pause for a few minutes. That was a nonanswer that really was an answer. He knew the duke’s stamina was legendary. “How many times did this sin happen?”

“I lost count. The duke is a virile and vigorous man.”

Father Slawek sighed. “If you had no choice, then it is not your sin.”

“But there was another sin, Father.”

“What was that?”

“I am afraid to say.”

“I cannot absolve it if I am not told what it is.”

“When I lay under the duke . . . when he was inside me . . . and moving his . . .”

“Yes, I understand.”

“When he was seeding me, I was not thinking of him—at least not all of the time.”

“Explain.”

The response came almost in a whisper. “I was thinking that it was you, Father. That you were on top of me, inside me. That it was you putting your seed inside me.”

In the next moment, the door to the confessional opened and Father Slawek was standing there, glaring at Jan.

“I’m sorry, Father . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”

The priest extended his hand. “Come with me,” he said.

His chamber was just off the chapel. There was a bed and a crudely built wooden table with a chair. A chest was against the side wall. They only needed the bed. They embraced and kissed, and they fumbled in helping each other disrobe. Father Slawek’s hands were all over the young man, exploring curves and crevices. He carried Jan over to the bed and lay him down on his back. He grasped Jan’s ankles and spread and raised the young man’s legs, finding that the duke had been so thick and had been there so recently that the young man didn’t need in any preparation.

Jan cried out, “Tak, tak!—Yes, yes!” as the priest penetrated and began to pump, fucking the young man to heaven—creating his own sin.

* * * *

The whimpering and low moaning weren’t all his. Jan was on his back, trying to catch his next breath, because Duke Basile was kneeling between his spread and bent legs on the canopy bed in the duke’s bed chamber and, while grasping the youth’s throat with the iron grip of a warrior’s hand, was vigorously pumping the young man’s ass with his thick shaft.

The duke took his hand away to make a swipe at the other young man beside them who he’d just finished deflowering and who was curled up in a fetal position, facing away from them, sobbing and whimpering. Red velvet cords that had been released from the four corner posts of the bed after the duke had fucked the bound young man’s virginity out of him were still tied to his ankles and wrists.

“Shut up with the blubbering,” the duke commanded. “If you can’t take it without all of the drama, you may leave the bed and be gone.”

The other young man shot out of the bed like he’d been fired by a cannon and hobbled to the door to the corridor, still whimpering and covering his face with his hands. Jan pulled back in the bed, expecting the duke, in anger, to go after the other young man and do something violent, but the duke just laughed and muttered, “He’ll learn. I’ll teach him.”

The youth hadn’t known when he was sent to bring the duke his morning ale why he, a comely youth of eighteen only recently having been spied by the duke among the castle’s kitchen staff, had been chosen to come to the chamber that morning. But of course those who sent him—and the duke, who had summoned him—knew what his duty would be.

“Clean yourself up, control your blubbering, have counsel with your betters on your duties here, and attend to me here tonight,” the duke called after him before directing his attentions to Jan, who he still held pinned under him in the bed—who he was still drilling with his thick, vigorous cock.

It all had meaning for Jan. Between Christmas Eve and until now, days after the New Year, it had been only Jan who the duke had taken to his bed, so the young man had some hope—counseled also by Father Slawek, who Jan met with and went under whenever they could manage it—that the duke would do him no harm. He had become the duke’s catamite—or, at least, had every reason to believe he had become that. All of this calculation was being made in the knowledge that Duke Hainrich, Jan’s father, had done nothing to pay the rest of his ransom or redeem the hostages being held until it was paid.

Finished with Jan, the duke growled and rolled out of bed. “How a cowardly bastard like Hainrich could have sired a sweet youth like you is beyond me,” he muttered, as he clapped his hands for attendants to enter the chamber and attend to him.

“Pardon, Sire?” Jan asked, not knowing where this was coming from.

“Know you what day this is, young man?”

“No, Sire, I do not,” Jan answered, but of course he did. Father Slawek and marked off every single progressing day for him. “I have not been marking the days, Sire,” he lied.

“It be Epiphany, January 6th. The day the ransom was to be paid up or hostages starting to go back to your cowardly father in pine boxes and with their necks stretched. Be sure you are watching the start of the finish, young man—and that you are thinking it is all your bastard of a dishonorable father’s doing.”

“Yes, Sire,” Jan said, head bowed. But he knew it was not all his father’s fault, not all of how the nobility treated with each other—and not that he was lying in the duke’s bed, naked, and with the duke’s seed dribbling down his inner thighs. That part was not Duke Hainrich’s fault.

* * * *

“See, I told you, the duke will go through with the threat.”

Father Slawek and Jan was looking down into the courtyard of Lublin Castle at the gallows that had been set up. The remaining hostages from Kowel other than Jan and the bishop who had been held in the castle dungeon had just been brought up to the courtyard, and one, an elderly merchant, had been pulled from the group and moved toward the scaffold.

“But maybe he won’t go through with it. And maybe, if I can continue to please him in bed, I won’t be included,” Jan said. He couldn’t say it with conviction. Whether or not he still pleased the duke in bed, the duke had shown that morning that his primary fetish of deflowering young men had not passed, and that couldn’t happen with Jan again. The young man knew he couldn’t claim to have any sexual hold over the man other than the duke’s waning lust for him.

“Nay, false hope, I’m afraid,” Slawek said. “Look at that other group of prisoners being held over there, tied to a stake with rope.”

Jan looked over to a group of five men, dressed as farming peasants, and huddled together, quaking. “Who are they?” he asked.

“They are citizens of Kowel—men who had been working the fields near the border with Holszany. Duke Basile has had them captured to watch the executions and, after each hanging, for one of them to be sent back to Duke Hainrich with the body to report that Basile is carrying out his threat until and unless your father sends the rest of the ransom. But I don’t think he will, do you?”

“No, I’m afraid he won’t—even for me,” the young man said, with resignation.

“How many captive peasants do you see, Jan?”

“There are five,” Jan answered.

“And how many hostages are there left, including you?”

“Five. There were six, but the bishop was let free and did not return.”

“So, there is a peasant captive to report on your execution as well, is there not?”

Jan could not answer and would not have even if their discussion had not been interrupted with the duke carrying through with his threat on the lives of the hostages. The first one, the old merchant, was swinging from the gallows, and one of the captive peasants had been pulled out of line to prepare to be dispatched to the Duchy of Kowel.

“All attention is on what is happening down there at this moment,” Father Slawek said in a calming voice, touching the shuddering, presumably doomed fourth son of Duke Hainrich.

“And so?” Jan answered in a small voice.

“And so, you could put this on,” Slawek said, holding forth a monk’s habit, “and we could use the opportunity to slip away together, past where all of the attention is going to. I’ve arranged for the postern gate to be open and for horses to await us.”

“You mean escape? You and me? But to where?”

“I came from the monastery in Opole, but no one here knows that. They all think I came from the cathedral here in the city. Yes, you and me. Together. Come away with me and have a quiet life that doesn’t include the machinations of the noble houses at all.”

“A life with you?”

“Yes, if you wish to be with me. We at Opole are not a pious monastery in that regard.”

And, so, that’s what they did.