Mussu's Necklace

Less than a half hour later, Cudjo appeared at the woman's door.

"What was that gunshot I heard?" asked the woman, standing squarely in the door frame, which she filled with her considerable bulk.

"We brought fresh slaves in today, Obah," he answered. "One of the new field slaves broke away. He was shot. Another one, a young male, has escaped too, though. Have you seen any sign of a small, beautiful African male around here?"

Obah stood solidly in the doorway, looking her son in the eye, taking her time answering him. "A young mail? Is it small men you are after again? Hawa will not want to hear of this."

"My business is my business, old woman. Have you seen a young man running in the trees or have you not?" he asked, gruffly.

Looking down at the ground and moving to the side of the doorway, Obah merely pointed to the one-room interior of the cabin. Cudjo walked past his mother and to the back of the room to where Mussu was cowering. He lifted Mussu up to his feet, once more worked the knot holding his skirt together. As the skirt puddled to the beaten-earth floor, he picked the young man up; laid him on his back on Obah's Spanish moss-padded bed; undid and dropped his breeches; and lay on top of Mussu, between his thighs.

Mussu gave the watching old woman a pleading look, but there was no protection to be had from that quarter. Cudjo placed the bulb of his shaft in position, palmed the small of the young slave's back, pulled Mussu's passage onto the shaft, and plowed him hard and deep, finishing what he had begun in the stockade.

Resigned, this time Mussu was more responsive and, eventually, lost, clutching the bulge of the black buck's shoulders in his hands, tightening and releasing his grip to the rhythm of Cudjo's thrusts. He pressed the black bull's hips tightly between his knees and rocked with the thrusts, moving his hips, taking the demands of the hard cock deep. His pants became heavier and quicker; he groaned and cried out in Kroi with words Cudjo understood and that egged him on; his little body went into spasms. Cudjo was staying with him as no other man had, filling him and working him as no other man did. Mussu trembled and begged and rocked his hips against the thrusting shaft.

He collapsed under the demanding power of the ebony giant, and lay there, his face turned to watching the old woman watching Cudjo fuck him and fuck him and fuck him, his senses focused on the power and thickness of the shaft working inside him, on the involuntary rocking of his hips to the beat of taking, and on his betraying passage walls, the muscles of which rippled over the plowing cock. He tensed and released, spouting his own cum up Cudjo's hard belly as the virile giant continued thrusting, thrusting, thrusting to his own prodigious seeding deep in the moaning young man's passage.

Obah stood by and watched her son breed the newly arrived slave. Having ejaculated, Cudjo held on top of Mussu, holding the young man close captive under him until, within minutes, the black buck went hard again and resumed fucking the young man. Knowing now that there was no rescue from the man's mother, Mussu turned his face to the tabby wall and picked out the shells in the lime-based plaster with his eyes until the grunting man was finished with him the second time.

But Cudjo wasn't finished with Mussu. When he rose off the bed, he pulled the ivory necklace off Mussu's neck, smiled at his mother, and gave the old woman the necklace. Mussu immediately felt the loss of the necklace. He felt all of the strength and sense of self-worth melt from him and despair, hopelessness, and helplessness flowed in. It didn't help that he had succumbed to the power and magnificence of the man who breeded him so expertly and satisfyingly.

Yes, satisfyingly. Mussu no longer could deny what he was, what he wanted from another man. He was Cudjo's now to do whatever he wanted with Mussu.

Cudjo picked the now-docile, completely defeated Mussu up in his arms and walked out of his mother's cabin. He didn't take the young man back to the stockade, though. He walked along the beachline to another cabin, almost identical to his mother's. This cabin also had a primitive bed in it, wider than the one in Obah's cabin. It also had leg irons attached to the wall by a chain, which he attached to one of Mussu's ankles. In the coming days, Mussu would find that he could reach any place in the cabin, but the chain would not allow him to leave the hut.

Cudjo then lay Mussu on his back on the bed and moved his hands over the small, young man's body, taking time for the first time to explore every curve and crevice of the young man, until Mussu groaned with a need of his own in spite of himself. Cudjo lay, naked, between the young slave's thighs, covered him again, and, young, virile, strong of stamina, moved on and inside him once more. Mussu was fully the man's now, resigned to having the big buck inside him whenever it pleased Cudjo to do so. In the ensuing days, enough that Mussu lost count of them, Cudjo covered him again and again, every day. The black buck was a young, fit, virile man and Mussu was a beauty. Within days, the young man became resigned to his fate. He could not deny that he was a desirable young man, if it was a man that he would have to lay with. He started receiving Cudjo as a wife would her husband. Obah came to Cudjo's hut each day and cooked for them, clucking her lips at the young man in the man's bed and fingering her new necklace.

Mussu's surrender did not mean that he forgot Quoy or what they had had together that Cudjo did not give him. Cudjo gave him affection and a big cock; he didn't give the young man any taste of freedom. Obah gave Mussu nothing but food and, occasionally, clean coverings on the bed.

Quoy had given Mussu choice and a necklace providing him confidence—until it was taken away from him.

* * * *

But Mussu was not Cudjo's wife. Cudjo already had a wife, Hawa, who had been sent over to the mainland for several weeks by the master of Oak Ridge Plantation because she was an expert in the processing of indigo and was hired out to ply her trade. She was returning to Daufuskie Island and would legitimately expect to occupy her own bed with Cudjo. Hawa had come to Cudjo the same way Mussu had—chosen by Cudjo off an incoming supply vessel of slaves, separated off from the rest, shackled to his bed, and fucked with an overpowering shaft, until she willingly took the role of his wife, gave loyalty and obedience, and could be permitted limited freedom—as determined, after she was trained to indigo production, by her white masters, not Cudjo. She now, however, time of familiarity and adjustment to reality having past, had the authority of a jealous wife. Realizing this, Cudjo turned Mussu over to the white plantation overseers, begging them to sell him away because Cudjo did not think he could resist the young man when Hawa returned to him, and that inevitably would cause bad blood among the plantation slaves, who had greater respect for Hawa than they had for Cudjo.

Thus, Mussu was sold to Jethro Stephens, the owner of the Wexford Plantation on the adjacent Hilton Head Island. Stephens was not in the need of a field worker. He was interested in acquiring a carriage driver and bed warmer. The beauty and, now, submissiveness and sexual experience of Mussu was such that he met the rice planter's requirements perfectly.

The beauty of Mussu was so striking that he caught the eye as well of Stephens's brutal overseer, Richard Baker, who had exotic tastes of his own and who controlled his supposed master by threat of exposing Stephens's sexual preferences to Savannah society. Stephens was a refined and experienced man for his time. From the very first night in his bed he was training Mussu in the more refined art of pleasing a man than Cudjo had known to teach Mussu before. Mussu was trained to be a male courtesan, not just a compliant whore. Mussu would live to appreciate this.

On their first encounter, the planter bathed Mussu in a brass tub at the foot of his four-poster bed, stroking the young man off in the tub while he sponged him off. Then he bent Mussu over the foot of the bed, the young man's arms stretched out sacrificially over the silk coverlet, while Jethro encircled the young man's stomach with one arm and explored the young man's small body with his other hand, culminating in greased fingers exploring up the young man's passage, as Mussu lay there and groaned. The old man went down on his knees behind Mussu and pressed his face between the young man's pert buttocks cheeks, working with his tongue while Mussu moaned. The man's fingers opened up Mussu's channel further, dilating the hole nicely, and then the old man mounted him from the back, wrapped a hand around the young man's throat, pulled Mussu's chest back into his, and fucked the young man slowly and fully.

As Stephens was coming, Richard Baker entered the room, naked, bound Mussu, arms stretched out, to the bed posts, and whipped him, while Stephens watched and sobbed for the young man. When this had made Baker hard and throbbing, he fucked the young man from behind more roughly than Stephens had, cutting him down before he came, turning the young man on his back at the foot of the bed, grabbing him by the ankles and spread-eagling Mussu's legs, and finishing him from on top while clutching the young man's throat with a fist and controlling his breathing. Baker left when satisfied and Stephens took over again, putting Mussu back into the soothing water of the tub, applying salve when the young man came out of the water, and taking the young man to bed with him, cuddling him through the night. He, of course, took his pleasure again on the young man.

Mussu endured, knowing there was no choice and having lost all confidence in his self-worth—but all the time learning what would make men of varied appetites sex slaves to him.

This loving master/cruel master arrangement went on for three months, during which Mussu, knowing how badly both the master and overseer wanted him, slowly gained confidence of his own and a sense of control. He took advantage on a couple of occasions of being given more freedom than the field slaves had and, indeed, than the Wexford Plantation house slaves as well had.

One freeing event was the death of Obah, Cudjo's mother, on Daufuskie Island. Without being given leave, when Mussu heard of her death and impending funeral, he took one of the Wexford Plantation canoes and paddled it over to Daufuskie. He appeared at the funeral, much to the consternation of Cudjo, who didn't dare acknowledge him because of the presence of Hawa. When he got the opportunity to be near the casket, Mussu grabbed his ivory necklace off the dead woman, which they were going to bury her holding in her hand, and ran for the shore. Only Cudjo saw for sure what he'd done, but he was unable to do anything about it.

But then Mussu, now feeling fully confident with the necklace in his possession again, stopped at the fringe of trees above the beach and turned and watched Cudjo. The funeral cortege left the small slaves' church and went to the graveyard. That was close enough to where Mussu had stopped that he could hear the singing and see the knot of people around the grave. He could easily pick out Cudjo, because the big buck stood head and shoulders above all the rest. Mussu knew that Cudjo was watching him. He saw the need in Cudjo's eyes, and, now having lain with several men, none whom was built as Cudjo was, Mussu felt the need and want for Cudjo as well.

When the funeral dispersed, Mussu remained standing, testing out his new-found powers. They were rewarded, as Cudjo appeared after a while, walking toward him. They fucked right there under the trees on the verge of the sand down to the Calibogue Sound, looking out toward the Wexford Plantation on Hilton Head.

Mussu took charge, using the refined techniques of putting Cudjo into high heat that he was learning from Master Stephens and almost indifferent cruelty he was learning from the overseer, Richard Baker. Mussu made Cudjo lie on his back and the young man, his necklace jiggling against his chest and singing confidence and power to him, rode the man's cock, in total control and denying Cudjo an ejaculation until Mussu was pleased to let him have one and then, after a period of recovery another, with Cudjo nearly sobbing in tears in awe and ache at the expertise of the beautiful, small Mussu.

"I must be with you again," Cudjo said when the sex was finished. "I can come across the water to you when it is possible."

"No," Mussu said. "I will come to you when I want—and you will pay me for it until I own you and use your cock at my pleasure."

Cudjo agreed and thus began Mussu's life as a paid male prostitute.

The other event of that three months that added to Mussu's eventual mastery of his trade was that, to avoid the growing rumors that Jethro Stephens had taken a black catamite in his bed, Stephens found a wife for Mussu. Her name was Bess, and she was a matriarch of slaves on the nearby Port Royal Plantation. She was so established with the Singleton family there that they wanted to award her with another husband of her choosing. She was forty if she was a day and had ridden three husbands into the grave with her sexual demands. She wanted someone far younger than her who she could train up from innocence, and she wanted him to be a beautiful young man.

She was given Mussu, a young man then of nineteen. They didn't live together or move from their respective plantations, but they were joined in a ceremony and proclaimed as husband and wife. Bess came to Wexford Plantation for one night every two weeks and Mussu went to Port Royal Plantation for one night every two weeks. The time was enough for Bess to teach Mussu everything he would need to know to please a paying woman client in later years. Mussu appreciated the education and was already foreseeing the usefulness of it, if the actual act with a woman didn't impress him much.

What did impress him was that while he was visiting Bess at Port Royal Plantation, he met and took a shine to a young and handsome black buck, Mingo, who worked the rice fields, was twenty, and was one year from having been brought across the Middle Passage from Sierra Leone. Their relationship began as sharing stories of life in Sierra Leone, with much there having changed since Mussu was in Africa, and speaking nearly the same dialect. It moved into the sexual. Mussu was still an extraordinary beauty and the difference in age only meant that he knew how to drive the young Mingo wild.

Mingo had been in the South Carolina Colony for a short enough period to pine for home. In theory, Mussu did as well, but his life had been become so comfortable and satisfying on Wexford Plantation that his lamenting for the old world, and even for his long-lost Quoy, had become shallow and perfunctory.

Thus, when Mingo told Mussu of the Quakers who were offering slaves on Hilton Head stolen freedom and a voyage back to Sierra Leone and Mingo was keen to go and wanted the young man he had come to love to go too, Mussu vacillated. Perhaps it was his relationship with Jethro or Richard Baker or Cudjo, or even Bess. Perhaps it was that Mussu had come to see his life in the New World as much more comfortable and, even in slavery, freeing than his life in Sierra Leone had been. Perhaps as long as he now kept the ivory necklace around his neck, he felt invincible. Whatever it was that held sway, when Mingo escaped from the plantation and, presumably, returned to Sierra Leone, Mussu didn't go with him.

For years afterward, Mussu, touching the ivory necklace and contemplating, and at least superficially lamenting, an opportunity lost, dreamed of what life could have been in Sierra Leone with Mingo—and perhaps even being able to locate the Quoy of his youth. But he was a realist. Life was good where he lived later in life. And very quickly that wasn't on Wexford Plantation.

Within three months, Jethro Stephens was dead, thrown by his horse into a marsh, where, unconscious, he drowned. In the ensuing confusion, Richard Baker disappeared, some claiming he did something to shy Stephens's horse or perhaps he was put underground by the plantation's slaves because of his cruelty. Stephens's relatives descended on the plantation to "make things right." They had known about Jethro's proclivities all along as well as where they centered and were played out. It thus would be no surprise for that time and those circumstances that Jethro's heirs sold Mussu to a brothel in Bluffton, on the mainland overlooking Hilton Head, a small but refined town where planters sent their families for the hot and muggy season and where they went themselves to play. The young man was such a draw there that before he reached his twentieth year, he was sold once more to Mrs. Fenton's brothel in Savannah, where his beauty and refined technique, with both men and women, made him a highly sought courtesan.

At twenty-one he was bought again by a fabulously wealthy planter to continue life in Savannah as the planter's private bed warmer. Even later he opened a brothel of his own, Stephens, which was the surname he had taken on Hilton Head. Stephens became the most exclusive gentlemen's club in Savannah, and, for years, the clients were met at the door by a big, black bull of a man slave who Mussu now owned himself. The doorman's name was Cudjo.

Mussu's distinctive characteristic and what people remembered him for long after his youth and beauty had passed was the ivory disks necklace he always wore and that the rising legend of was that it gave the wearer power and confidence, as it certainly had given Mussu.