Ever Rest at Evernew

"I don't right think he'll last the night, Massa. Land, I don't know what's taken' away the cream of our young men on this plantation."

"Leave me with him, Elvie. I'll see if I can give him some peace."

He watched until the woman had left the hut and then went over and silently shot home the bolt on the door. Returning to the pallet that took up much of the leaning, rough-wood cabin and was perched on a dirt floor, he looked down at the young darky who had once been so handsome, so robust, so giving and willing. He pulled the blanket away from the now withered, wasted body of the young man, naked save for the scrap of a loin cloth, the ebony slave still showing hints of the fine specimen he'd been just months before.

Some sort of wasting affliction.

He knelt down beside the young man and took the young slave's torso up into his arms, tenderly handling the now-thin body, stroking the chest and running his fingers around the navel on the flat belly.

"Can you hear me, Samuel?" he whispered in a low, soothing voice, his mouth close to the young man's ear.

"Yas, Massa," came the weak reply.

"I've come to give you rest, to smooth your journey home."

"Yas, Massa, thank you, Massa," the whimpered response.

He reached down with his free hand and loosened the knot of the loin cloth, pulling it away from the young man's privates. The cock lay long and limp against the slave's thigh, but it showed signs of life—greater signs than elsewhere in the young slave's body—as he encased it in a hand and coaxed it to stiff. He nuzzled Samuel's neck with his lips and ran his teeth down the side of the throat. Samuel rewarded him with a weak, but deep moan and the greater stiffening of his cock.

The master fumbled with the buttons on his own breeches, releasing his hardening cock. He coaxed Samuel's upper leg up and on top of his thigh, pulling Samuel's buttocks into position.

Samuel gave a low moan. "Yas, Massa. Please, Massa. Take Samuel to heaven, Massa."

"I am going to give you release now, Samuel," he whispered in the darky's ear.

"Yas, Massa," came the distant reply.

Samuel whimpered and gave a little jerk of his body, as the cock slowly pressed at his anus, invaded the channel, and began a slow, throbbing rhythm of penetration, short withdrawal, deeper penetration, short withdrawal, deeper penetration.

Samuel sighed and moaned, his own cock stiffening under the stroking hand of the master.

His face was turned toward that of his master, and his mouth was being pressed open by an insistent tongue for a deep kiss.

The stroking inside Samuel's passage picked up with intensity, and the young slave groaned from deep inside his collapsing body.

Then his mouth was free of the kiss and the lips were moving back to his throat. His head was being tilted away from the lover's searching lips, stretching Samuel's neck, exposing the barely throbbing vein there.

The slicing of the teeth into his throat was no more than a pin prick to Samuel now, and the sensation of the sucking of his blood through the embedded teeth came into sync with the now slow-pumping of the cock inside his channel as well as the stroking of his own cock encased in the master's hand.

"Massa, Massa, Massa. Take me, Lord," Samuel murmured. "Take Samuel on to paradise."

As Samuel gave his seed in a weak release, a stronger ejaculation creamed his channel deep, one last slurp at the throat was sounded, and Samuel's eyes rolled up into his head.

After gently laying Samuel back down on the pallet, rebuttoning his own fly, readjusting Samuel's loin cloth, and covering the young slave's fading body with the blanket, Philip DuCarde rose, looked around the cabin to see that all was in order, silently shot open the bolt of the door, and, a new spring in his step, emerged from the hut.

"He is resting now, Elvie," he said to the old slave woman sitting on a wooden bench across the path running in front of slave row. "He is at peace. But I am afraid that you are right—that Samuel will not last the night."

* * * *

Looking down on the orchestra level at Natchez' Institute Hall from the shadow of the box I was in, I was surprised at the turnout. The hall, construction having been completed the previous year, 1853, was the pride of Natchez, the only performance hall of its size and splendor on the Mississippi River between Memphis and New Orleans. The building, on South Pearl Street, almost on the banks of the Mississippi, had been designed for opera, and an opera was what had brought me, and so many others, out this evening.

I had come out of curiosity. Others apparently had come to observe who was and was not there. Institute Hall had quickly become the center of society in Natchez. I doubted that many had come because of the opera being performed, financed by an anonymous donor. I had made it my business to try to find out who had commissioned this, as my parishioners would expect me to. But I hadn't been able to find who had brought the controversial 1828 Heinrich Marschner opera Der Vampyr to the American south.

I tuned my ears into the gasps of discovery early in Act One as those in the orchestra section below learned of the content of the opera. I let my eyes wander around the hall and then drew back a bit into the shadows of my box as I saw, directly across from me in another box, the visage of the man who must be Philip DuCarde.

The DuCardes had been a prominent family in the area, owning various plantations on the eastern bank of the Mississippi both north and south of Natchez. Philippe DuCarde, a widower, though, had left suddenly and mysteriously some eighteen years earlier under conditions that were buried in the hazy gossip and legend of the areas. Something about questionable behavior and an uprising in society. I mainly was attentive to the stories behind this because my father had been a close associate of the DuCardes and had existed under something of a cloud in the city for some time after Philippe's departure. My father was too prominent in the town, though, to suffer for long—and suffer he did, from some sort of wasting disease after that, and died some eight years later when I was barely eleven.

I hadn't withdrawn into the box soon enough, as I saw that the younger DuCarde was staring intently at me and turned to his companion—a friend of mine named John Purnell, a young lawyer in the town—and gestured toward me. I was slightly disturbed to see John with him, but I was more disturbed by the aspect of John. I had not seen him in the last couple of months. In that time, he had been taken with some sort of sickness. He was pale and seemed listless. I marked the need to talk with him afterward. We were too close for me not to give him whatever help and solace I could in this condition. It occurred to me that he had not been to confession since the last time we were together—which was an occasion that begged for confession—by both of us.

As the curtain was being drawn for the first interval, an usher appeared at the back of my box and delivered to me, in a white-gloved hand, a note. "If you please, Father Hamilton," the usher whispered, "Mr. Philip DuCarde wishes to meet with you in reception room B during the interval." The note said essentially the same thing. I looked over to the other box as the lights came up in the hall and the hubbub of excited twittering crescendoed in the hall below. DuCarde's box was empty.

When I was ushered into reception room B, the attendant set the lock from the inside of the door, withdrew, and clicked the door shut. I was alone with Philip DuCarde, who was leaning his buttocks back on the top edge of a lounge chair, with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes boring into me.

I thought of them immediately as boring, possessing eyes. They were in stark contrast to the rest of his visage. They were pale blue and compelling. Otherwise, he was a dark young man, not much older than I was, a product of the Cajun strain of families settled all up and down the lower Mississippi. His hair was dark and wavy, his face sharp-featured. He was of medium height, but his body was muscular, finely proportioned. His dress was elegant, more the style of European capitals than Natchez, a pioneer town still, despite its pretensions of culture and refinement, acquired via King Cotton wealth.

He was smiling knowingly at me, the line of his mouth slightly cruel, his teeth gleaming white and somewhat wolf-like, but not, in any way, subtracting from his attracting looks. I immediately was put on my guard. I had seen him with John Purnell, who knew me as no one else in Natchez did. I felt at a disadvantage—almost hunted, although I had no idea—at least not yet—why I should feel that way—other than the slightly canine aspect of the man's visage. I worried what John may have told him about me.

I also have to admit that I felt aroused. This younger DuCarde was a man of sensual beauty, with an aura of danger about him that I couldn't help but feel compelling.

"Is this Father Hamilton I see before me?" he asked. His voice was a smooth baritone, giving me the sensation of caressing my eardrums. All of the vibes he was exuding were dangerous to who I was supposed to be, rather than the paths I sometimes took. Everything about him was strongly male, overtly sexual.

"Yes, and I believe you are Philip DuCarde, master of Evernew on the Mississippi. I know your family was prominent here in years past and that several plantations along the river have remained in your hands. I, of course, along with many others, I'm sure, welcome you back into the parish. I hope to see you at mass."

"Our families were very close at one time, I understand," he said. And, yes, I did notice that he didn't respond to the invitation to appear at the mass.

"Yes, our fathers were close friends," I answered. "I barely knew your father before he departed." As I said that, though, my memory was stirred and I almost gasped at the realization that Philip DuCarde was the spitting image of my admittedly hazy image of his father. My mind probably was just rectifying the two, I reasoned.

"Extremely close friends, Yes," he said as he languidly pushed himself off the chair back he had been leaning on and came very close to me. "Intimate friends." His hand came up and touched my cheek. For some reason I didn't back away from him. "I believe your father was ill when we moved away. I do hope he recovered."

"Somewhat," I answered. "It was some sort of disease of lethargy. Somewhat like the mosquito-borne malaria so prevalent around here. But then not quite like that in symptoms. He recovered a bit but never completely."

"That's sad, I liked him immensely," DuCarde said, with a sigh that came across as not quite genuine. I didn't get the impression that he cared much how my father had died. "I am hoping that you and I can be very close friends too—intimate friends. You know, you look so much like your father did."

He wouldn't have been any older than I was when his family left Natchez. How could he know that I looked like my father? But then, I'd had the same thought about his father. Strange, though, that I couldn't surface a memory of Philip from that time.

The touch of his fingers was burning into my cheek. I have no idea why I permitted him that intimacy. But then, after what he next said, I had no choice.

"The intimacy between Philippe and your father was no different from what John has told me about your visits with him to the male brothels of New Orleans. I believe he said you are partial to muscular darkies."

That was it, then. John Purnell had told him of our visits together to New Orleans—of our escapes from our roles in Natchez and giving in to our natural proclivities.

"You are a beautiful young man, Ham," he said, backing me up to the wall beside the door out to the corridor. "I wish for the same sort of intimacy with you that was shared with your father. The same that John says you share with the dominating prostitutes in the male brothels of New Orleans. Can you have such an intimacy with me, Hamilton? Can you open your thighs for me and let me in? I find the prospect arousing. I've never fucked a priest before."

He had me backed up against the wall, pressing my body with his, one of his hands cupping my basket, the other cupping my chin, stretching my neck up, and, after possessing my mouth fully with his, running his tongue down the side of my throat, over the vein I felt throbbing there.

I have no idea why I didn't resist him. But, of course, I knew why. I had wanted him since I'd first seen him from across the theater.

"You are hardening nicely, Ham. You will spread your legs for me, won't you?"

"Yes," I answered, lost to him, both because of what he now held over me, thanks to John Purnell, but also because of the sheer magnetism of the man himself. His hand found my balls within the material of my tight breeches and he squeezed, causing my eyes to water. His teeth were sliding down the vein in my neck.

The bell rang for the audience to reform for the next act of Der Vampyr. DuCarde released me and gave a low laugh. "I want to drive you out to Evernew after the opera. To my home. To my bed. I want you to open your thighs for me there."

"Yes," was all the response I could give.

During the next interval, I descended to the lobby. I wanted to find John Purnell. I did so, but so shocking did he look—suffering from some form a malaria, I wagered, something that was draining him quickly—that he spoke before I had a chance to.

"I didn't tell DuCarde anything, Ham," he said. "He already knew—from sources in New Orleans. He demanded that I arrange an introduction with you. I'm his lawyer—and, as you can guess, a captive to his knowledge. He wants you to come out to Evernew. Something about witnessing papers or something. Perhaps a will. Nothing I am putting together for him, though. I'm sorry, Ham. I didn't tell him."

I would have spoken, to assure him it didn't matter because I was lost to Philip from the first moment I'd seen him, but DuCarde was there, nearby, now. The theatergoers were shrinking away from him, as if recognizing there was some strong force in their presence, as he moved toward us. I couldn't face standing here, in the lobby, chatting nonsense with him and John, the other theatergoers watching us, as I fantasized about him moving his hand up my thigh and to my privates, turning me, and covering me close from behind . . . penetrating me.

I couldn't fault John. And John obviously didn't know the full import of DuCarde's interest in me. I couldn't take standing here in a crowd with DuCarde, being both drawn to and repelled by him. Such was the magnetism of the man that I would have spread my legs for him right there in the reception room, if he had demanded it of me. I fled up the stairs to the side of the theater my box was in before DuCarde reached us.

I would be standing there, dutifully, on South Pearl Street, waiting for DuCarde's carriage to appear after the opera, even though my own lodgings at St. Mary Basilica rectory were but a short walk away on South Union Street. I would be standing there, knowing what I was moving toward—both fearful and melting in anticipation. Trapped by the threat of what the man knew but afraid that I would have gone with him even without the threat.

* * * *

It was happening much sooner than I anticipated. We were still within the city, moving toward the river road and thus on toward Evernew, when DuCarde was covering me on the seat of the closed carriage. I was sideways on the bench seat, one knee on the seat and the foot of other leg on the floor of the carriage, leveraging on the sole of my boot to meet his thrusts with answering thrusts of my own.

My breeches and undergarment were on the floor of the carriage, as was my clerical collar, which twinkled at me in the reflection of the passing light outside the carriage windows reflecting on the pure white of the collar—reminding me of how far I was going astray. I was hanging onto a side strap by the carriage window for dear life, as DuCarde covered me from above, both feet buried in the bench seat, plowing my nether channel deep with his cock.

My black shirt was pulled down to my shoulder on the side facing the front of the carriage, and my neck was stretched toward the back of the seat, pulled there by DuCarde's hand cupping my chin. His tongue was running across the bulging vein of my neck. I felt the scrape of his teeth there, and I moaned. His cock was deep inside me, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.

The carriage gave a lurch and we suddenly were tumbling onto the floor and toward the right, as the carriage turned over on its side.

Quickly redressing, DuCarde and I both climbed up and out of the door that had once been at the side of the carriage and now was on top. We weren't yet out of the city, and people were gathering around. I recognized some of them. Some were from my parish.

"It's the wheel, Massa," the grizzled carriage driver said, as he stood beside the turned carriage. He'd managed to free the horses pulling the carriage in time so that they didn't go down as well. "The wheel done give way. I has sent George to the nearest stable for another carriage." George was the slave boy footman for the carriage.

Once of my parishioners came up to me. "Do you need assistance, Father Hamilton?" he asked. "My carriage is just back there. I can take you to the rectory, if you wish."

"Yes, please, and thank you, Francis," I said, turning an eye of both apology and fright toward Philip DuCarde. He had moved too far too fast. I needed a breather, some space, a little time to think this out.

DuCarde just smiled and said, "Another time then."

"Yes," I murmured. "Another time."

"I have unlimited time—and patience," he said as I turned to follow Francis Martin to his carriage.

* * * *

Philip crept in through the back door of John Purnell's townhouse on Orange Avenue. The rest of the family was at evening mass at St. Mary Basilica. But John was home, upstairs, in bed, too weak to attend mass.

He moved silently up the stairs and to John's bedroom. Purnell was lying on his back in the heavy four-poster bed, breathing shallowly, his eyes gazing up into the canopy of the bed, not really focusing on anything. He flinched at the sound of DuCarde entering the room, but he didn't look down. He was barely moving at all, as if it would take all of the strength he had to turn his head.

"It is I, Philip, come to give you rest."

"Philip?" Purnell whispered. "Ah, Philip."

"You wish me to put you to peace, don't you?" DuCarde asked in the low, smooth, soothing baritone of his seeking voice.

"Yes, oh yes," Purnell answered, his voice quiet, resigned.

Philip walked to the bed and looked down at Purnell. He reached over Purnell's legs, grasped the hem of his night breeches, and pulled them off, leaving Purnell naked. His body was once robust; now it was thin, close to emaciation. He was a handsome young man still, though.

DuCarde carefully stripped off his own clothes, folded them, and laid them on a chair within reach. He placed his hands on Purnell's legs as he whispered, "Look at me, John."

With effort, Purnell looked down the length of his body and took in the magnificent naked body standing at the foot of his bed. DuCarde was in full erection.

"Do you want me to give you my peace, John? Say it. This is the reckoning time."

"Yes, Philip, oh yes. Take me away. Fuck me to paradise." Purnell now too was hardening.

DuCarde came up onto the bed, slowly, deliberately raising and spreading Purnell's emaciated legs as he moved up between them.

Purnell gasped and gave a little jerk as DuCarde pressed the bulb of his cock at Purnell's entrance, moved inside, and then pressed in to the hilt. He held Purnell's legs, bent, against his sides while he established a slow rhythm of the fuck.