Agony and Ecstasy

The injury is from cannon fire, and Abel was lucky not to die - other men did that day, and although he has a stiffness to his side and his right arm has a permanent weakness to it, he knows he should still be grateful to live. It's hard to be grateful with a rumbling belly even though the pain has mostly faded, even though it just throbs and aches now and then instead of being the horrible pain it was a few months ago.

Only a little of the shrapnel had gotten him, cutting into the inside of his arm and hurting some of the muscle there - most of the damage was from a sudden flare of fire.

It's not very visible, but no one will take him on for carpentry or farmwork or smithing or anything else - if he doesn't get any work in the next week or so, it's his intention to go back to the coast, to see if he might work with a sailmaker, or failing that, fish for a while.

He'd thought that with the summer festival, with all the people travelling through the city for the market, he'd be able to pick up work with someone, somewhere, but there's been no such luck - at the very least, people have been free with their charity, and the nights have been warm enough to sleep outside.

"You there, boy," says a voice in the market, and Abel turns to look at the approaching figure. He's a monk, tall and thin, wearing dark brown robes and a straw hat to keep the sun from his face - as he moves, his skirts sway, and Abel is reminded of the way jellyfish move in the water as he stands there, frozen. "Mr Tee tells me you're in search of employment."

"Yes, sir," says Abel, and he stiffens for a second, feeling the urge to try to hide his arm, or to disguise it, somehow. "I'm, um," he says hesitantly, "I'm not a Papist."

"I couldn't care less," the monk says in a very smooth, rich voice. There's a slight crackle in it, the sort that some old men get, and altogether it's very nice. "Keep your mouth shut, young man."

The monk takes him by the chin, his hand slightly cool, and tips his face up so that he can gaze into Abel's face, look at his eyes, at his cheeks. He turns Abel's face one way, apparently peering into one of his ears, and then turns him the other. His gaze drops from Abel's ear to the burn scars visible on his neck, and then he hooks a finger under Abel's shirt collar, pulling it down so that he can see the scarring better.

Abel's skin is on fire, blushing so hard all of a sudden he actually feels dizzy, but he lets the monk examine him, doesn't resist or pull away or say anything. It's not dissimilar to the way the surgeon had examined him several times over the course of his healing, or the other ways he's been examined onboard his ship in the past few years.

One must submit to such things, sometimes, if one wishes to find work.

"Extend your hand," orders the monk, and Abel hesitates for a second, but then puts out his good arm, and the monk presses and touches over the length of his arm, putting pressure on his upper arm, his elbow, his wrist, then his palm, pushing out each of his fingers. It feels... Nice, in a way.

It's strange - he's been aboard ships for most of his life, and he's used to being in close contact with other men. Being on land during his recovery, during his time begging and searching for work, he's never felt quite so distant from other men, quite so untouched.

"And the other," the monk instructs him.

Abel puts out his other hand, this one trembling, and the monk tugs it to further extend. Abel hisses in pain as the monk puts the same pressure on his upper arm, although he's gentler as he presses on the inside of his elbow again, his wrist, his palm. He lets out an embarrassing half-whine as the monk slides his thumb hard up the inside of his forearm, does something that makes his nerves jangle and then relax, warm relief radiating out from him.

"Mm, yes," decides the monk. "We'll take you."

"But I'm not a—"

"Do you want room, board, and raiment, or not?"

Abel's stomach is aching, and he feels dizzy and exhausted, utterly overwrought - it's a warm day, and he'd been about to go and sit down. He nods, and the monk taps his fingers to the side of Abel's face, a gentle smack that makes his body jump, and a sort of thrill run through him.

"Brother Andrew, take this boy to the cart, will you?" the monk calls over one of his shoulders, and one of the monks who isn't packing their wares back onto the cart comes over from the group of monks. "Feed him something - some bread and honey. A little wine, too, but water it down."

"Yes, Abbot Thomas," says Andrew, and Abel feels his jaw drop. Except for wearing a larger crucifix, the abbot doesn't look any different to the regular monks, and he suddenly wonders if he was meant to be doing something else, saying something else.

Before he can say thank you - before he can say anything - Brother Andrew has taken him under the good elbow, and is leading him over to the cart.

They feed him, and he's so grateful he could cry.

* * *

The monastery is some hours' coach ride from the city proper, is settled amidst beautiful meadows of flowers, and others that are lined with vines on wooden frames, fields and fields of them. The stone abbey rests in the midst of it all, and Abel stares out over the beautiful fields as the cart comes into the front square.

He wonders if they're going to have him tend to the grapes, or help with the bees to harvest honey or brew mead, or if they'll have him help with the horses, or—

Something.

In the end, he isn't assigned any significant labours at all.

Abel is brought to a cell of his own apart from the monk's dormitories, where most of the monks sleep in rows with little separation between them except for wooden screens - his cell adjoins the abbot's personal chapel at the base of his tower, and is the most private lodging in the whole building, but for the abbot's own quarters.

Inside is a bed beside a stained-glass window depicting the angel Michael, a dresser, a table. He's never had so large a lodging all to himself, not in the whole of his life - he's slept in rows with other sailors, in hammocks or on the floor; he's shared a room with his mother and sisters; he's slept out of doors, but often where other beggars were sleeping, too.

"You are free to move about the abbey's grounds as you please," Abbot Thomas tells him the first evening after having him strip down so that he can examine him more carefully.

The other monks had told him on the cart that Abbot Thomas had written some texts on physicking, and he had an extensive garden of herbs from which he brewed and created different tinctures and cures, and that he sometimes brought people to the abbey to recover after illnesses.

"What work will I do?" asks Abel as the abbot turns him to one side and carefully examines the burns that cover the majority of his side, some of them curving down about one of his hips. They don't hurt anymore, really, except for the skin not stretching as much anymore so he feels stiff if he moves wrong - they were fairly shallow burns, the surgeon had told him.

"You may aid the brothers in spot tasks as they invite you," the abbot tells him, but doesn't look at his face, his fingers pressing on the burns to test the flesh, his ribs, his side. "They will be instructed as to your limitations - you will not be asked nor expected to lift or carry anything for any length of time, nor to climb. As much as my brothers will be made aware of your injury, I would still advise you to refuse any task beyond your capabilities to the best of your awareness. If I find you are overtaxing yourself, you will be confined to your lodgings until I decree otherwise."

Abel grunts as the abbot presses with careful, delicate fingers on the upper part of his arm, where the flesh had been torn into by flying shards from the shattered mast - the flesh is rough and ragged, although they'd taken all the shards out, and he didn't have to get it amputated or anything.

"Flex your fingers," the abbot orders.

Abel can still clench his hand into a fist on the other side - with his bad arm, he can curl his fingers in an inch or so, but can no longer grip with them, and while he can hook some things over his forearm and hold them in his elbow, he can only do that with very light things. He can't tense his arm all that much better than he can his fingers.

"Do you think you can cure it?" asks Abel.

"No," the abbot says, thumbing back and forth over his wrist. "You may see marginal improvement over time, but this arm will never have the strength it used to, nor ever match again its counterpart."

"Then, why am I here?"

"You are in no position to question the charity you are given, boy," says the abbot mildly, and turns away from him. "There are fresh clothes for you on the bed. Dress yourself and bring your old clothes in to be laundered."

Abel nods obediently, and watches the abbot leave, ascending the stairs up to his office. Over his personal chapel, which is on the ground floor of the tower, the abbot has his own library with a laboratory wherein he prepares his medicines and reads books and answers letters, and over that, his personal quarters.

He takes his meals with the monks, breakfast and supper, and he works primarily in the vegetable garden - they teach him how to hoe the ground and prune back different plants, how to attend the herbs and the flowers, how they kill pests.

Every day, Abbot Thomas takes a moment to examine him - he doesn't make Abel strip off again, but he tests the muscle in his arms sometimes. He gives him medicinal teas, sometimes presses on his sore and aching muscles when he's been working out of doors and orders him to take a rest day or two. He gives him a balm to apply to his burns, and it does help with the stiffness, but—

Most of their conversations are about food.

He comments approvingly each week when Abel is gaining weight, and he comments on the things Abel chooses to eat at the table - tells him to eat more meat or fish on the days when they have it, to eat more potatoes and vegetables, almost always to eat more bread and more butter and more cheese.

The meals at the monastery table are a great deal richer than anything he ever ate as a sailor except for at celebrations, and in the first few weeks he's nervous to appear greedy, to eat too much.

When he mumbles this, Abbot Thomas looks at him very severely, and says, "Eat until you are full. Full. Do you understand?" and he's so stern about it that Abel is for a second really quite terrified, but he takes it to heart.

He feels almost as though he's being fattened for the table.

* * *

The monks are polite to him, but not extremely sociable. He sees the brisk manner some of them are with the animals, not unkind to them but not being very affectionate, either - he wonders if they see him like that, as like one of the animals, to be butchered at some point, not to be gotten attached to.

He wonders if the abbot has done this before, if that's really what's to happen to him, if he's to be butchered, eaten.

He's only four-and-twenty, has never known the touch of a woman, even. He's touched himself, of course, and he knows that a lot of the sailors he's worked with go and spend their wages in the company of dockside doxies.

His quarters feel incredibly quiet at night, without the sound of another person's breathing, without the sound of anyone rolling over in their bed, or footsteps as someone goes to piss.

Abel supposes that's one thing he wouldn't hear here among the monks - the sound of another man's breathing in the dark, the audible tightening of his chest and sometimes his quiet, bitten back moans and grunts, the slight swing of his hammock and the creak of it as he touches himself.

Sometimes that's gotten Abel hard, a sort of sympathetic reaction, like when some of the older sailors have told bawdy stories, but getting touched by one of the port doxies had never really occurred to him. They're not that expensive, and a lot of them seem to be quite nice women, really, but... No, it's not for him.

They pinched his cheeks sometimes when he was out with the crew, laughed at him, said that he was cute or that he was handsome, offered him a discount. That was before the cannot shot had caught that scatter of gunpowder and burned him - it didn't burn his face, but just that they could see it on his neck put them off, even if his arm didn't.

They could still see it. People can still see it, see the stiff way he moves, the way he can't move his arm quite the way he used to - it's quite the relief, being amongst the monks, where none of them seem to think anything of it, and being away from the regular people.

It's not the same as being on a ship, but although he's not one of them and can't follow all their Latin prayers or all the worship they do, there's something of a natural camaraderie in their isolation from the rest of society, a sort of bond they share for being here, for being part of a crew.

* * *

He's been at the abbey six months when Abbot Thomas enters his room one morning and instructs him crisply, "Clothes off."

Abel obeys.

He's still thinking, somehow, that this is maybe a precursor to being devoured, to being eaten, that all this is preparing him for the abattoir, but he obeys regardless, because what would he be, if not obedient?

Abbot Thomas' gaze feels like it's burning on his skin, burns him almost hotter than the fire did, hungrily taking him in as he puts aside his clothes and folds them - the abbot scolds him, if he doesn't fold his clothes neatly. It's a little easier than it was before - maybe his hand has strengthened a little bit in the intervening time, but mostly, he's just gotten better at using it, he thinks.

Abel isn't at home with all this religion lark, even after all his months here in the monastery. His mother had always said they had better things to be getting on with than nonsense like that, and while he'd learned to mumble the same prayers the other sailors did, he'd never really taken in the words.

He can't help but wonder if Christ felt quite as naked as he does now, stripped of his robes in the run-up to being nailed up on that cross.

The abbot looks down at him, his lips shifted into the slightest of thin smiles. He doesn't smile often. Abbot Thomas is quite a cold, severe man, and comprised of severe angles in his jaw and his narrow, pointy chin, his slightly broader but still pointy nose, his cold eyes. He's very stern with the other monks as much as he is with Abel, and he's a keen accountant on top of his physicking - this monastery is very well-regarded by the church, the brothers say, because of how much money they bring in and how efficient it is.

Perhaps that's why the abbot can get away with eating a sailor now and then.

The abbot doesn't eat him right away. He gestures with one slim-fingered hand when Abel stands before him, naked, and asks, "Does that still work?"

"What?" he asks, looking down at himself.

"Your member."

"Oh," says Abel, and feels himself flush. Suddenly, he feels hot all over, and his cock threatens to stand up.

There's no reason for all that, for it to push itself to erection just because someone mentioned it and had a look down at it, least of all a man and a monk, but before he can try to think of something dreadful or hide his cock with his hands, the abbot puts his hand out and grips him by the shaft.

He's never felt someone else's hand on his prick before - sometimes the whores at the docks will grab a sailor by the crotch, but none of them ever did that to him. It makes his body surge, makes his whole body feel like it's singing, and he chokes and tips his head forward.

The abbot's robe smells of juniper berries and honey, and his body is so much hotter than Abel would have imagined - his hand is a little bit cold as it wraps tightly around Abel's prick and squeezes as it pulls. Abel lets out such a wail that Abbot Thomas slaps his other hand over his mouth, his fingernails digging slightly into his cheek. For some reason the stinging pain makes his cock throb, and he arches his back into more of the abbot's touch.

"Sss— Sir, sir, what are you, ah, fuck—"

"You really are a piece of fruit still fresh on the vine, aren't you?" asks the abbot in dry tones as he pulls the hand on his mouth away, crowding him back onto his cot and pushing Abel down.

Abel's head spins as he watches him pull his robe off over his head and hang it over the screen.

He's never even conceived of this - people have referred to it obliquely, to sodomy, to men who fuck other men, but it's always been said in the same breath as referencing men who fuck animals. How could such a thing be anything but rape?

How could it feel so sublime?

He's touched himself and it's felt good, but it's nothing compared to Abbot Thomas' hand on his prick, the other sliding over his thigh. His whole body is trembling, his prick so hard he feels it might well burst.

"Abbot Thomas—"

"Tell me, young man, am I going to have to gag you?" the abbot asks softly, his eyebrow raising. "I'm about to put your member in my mouth. Will you scream?"

Oh, God. The abbot is about to him after all, and start... there!?

"I can try not to," Abel squeaks.

The abbot looks sceptical, but bows his head, mouth open.

Abel squeezes his eyes tightly shut, can't bear to look.

Abbot Thomas' tongue swipes up the length of his cock from base to tip, and Abel turns his head and muffles his scream into the bundled blanket he uses as a pillow, bracing his bad arm on the bed as best he can and spreading his legs wide.

It feels incredible. It feels unbelievable. The swipe of Thomas' tongue, hot and wet and easily sliding over his skin, is so much better than his hand, and there is such pleasure concentrated in the sensation that his whole body is taut like a stayline.

He's heard stories of cannibalism in his time at sea - some peoples who do it as a matter of course, and some men more that are driven to cannibalism as a matter of desperation, stranded in the icy tundra or lost at sea with naught to feed on but each other.

Why does anybody resist, if to be devoured comes with such ecstasy? Does Christ feel pleasure like this when the monks eat pieces of his flesh in holy Communion?

Abbot Thomas suddenly takes Abel's cock into his throat like some sort of sword swallower, and the sailor spends.

"Sorry," he whimpers, soaked with sweat and squirming. "Sorry, sorry—"

Thomas doesn't seem to care whether Abel is sorry or not - he swallows around Abel's hard prick as it pulses, his bollocks drawn up tight as if someone had pulled the string on their purse, and the tightening of Thomas' prick makes him quiver.

His hands are still slightly cool but warmed by their contact with Abel's thighs, one touching smooth flesh and the other touching where the skin is scarred by bits of burnt splinter and powder marring, the tips of his fingers digging in.

Thomas swallows around him through the whole of Abel's orgasm, and it seems to go on forever, starts exploding behind his eyes, his whole body throbbing, heart pounding hard enough that Abel can hear its beat in his ears.

He draws back and looks up at Abel, and Abel stares breathlessly into Abbot Thomas' piercing eyes, which are black, or at least, a brown so dark it might as well be black, like charcoal for the fire.

"Sweet," says the abbot softly, and wipes his lip with his thumb.

For the first time, Abel looks at the abbot's body, at the flesh normally obscures beneath the loose fabric of his heavy robe - he still wears a crucifix around his neck, this one smaller and on a lighter chain, not quite so large as the big wooden thing he wears.