To the Hessian Hills Ch. 01

Great Britain was at war with its colonies in America and the region around Lüneburg still held a certain allegiance to the English monarchy, now embodied by George III, the great-grandson of the George I, originally the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. England was taking advantage of this link to employ Hessian troops in putting down the rebellion in America. A good many of the young men of Johann's age and circumstance in Lüneburg were enlisting, as much for the wanderlust call of the New World as for any allegiance to one side or the other in the war.

Johann stood, briefly, to watch the seasoned soldiers introduce the new recruits to the famous Jäger rifle, the rifle used exclusively by the Hessian troops. The young men were being recruited for the light infantry at present. Johann's friends, August and Claus, had already enlisted in the artillery and were off in intensive drills and had been so since before Johann contracted with Rudolf as an apprentice. Johann had lost track of them. Both August and Claus were better off than Johann was. Johann had worked on the farm of August's family, who were builders. Claus's father had been a physician, and although the father was dead and Claus also was reduced to working in the fields of August's family farm, he'd had a higher-class upbringing than Johann had had.

The three once had declared that they would go into the army together and see the New World through each other's eyes. There had been a budding relationship there between August and Johann, but it had always been complicated by the presence of Claus. Johann hadn't completely understood why he gravitated toward August more than Claus—or at least he hadn't understood before he had experienced the enlightenment of the attraction men could have for each other that Rudolf had given him. The truth was that Johann and Claus would enjoy the same thing from August—and that Claus had received that attention first.

Johann wondered if he'd ever see August again.

For now, though, he realized he was late to report to Rudolf at the palace, so, after taking one more interested look at the Jäger rifles being assembled and used in the salute in the muster on the square, he moved down the hill toward the river and the duke's palace.

Rudolf was too busy with his work to remark either on how much later Johann arrived at the palace than he expected or why Johann exhibited the afterglow of two days of sex. Rudolf certainly had every reason to know what Johann looked like after good sex.

"Take these sketches and these plaster medallions to the room above this one and start applying them to the fireplace mantel, the cornices above the windows, and the crown modeling," Rudolf said absently, as he shoved the parchment pages and box of medallions at the just-arrived Johann.

The interior of the wing where the fire had been was in better shape than Johann expected. Of course, this was the home of the duke. Everyone was working at double pace to bring the rooms back to life. Rudolf was busy trimming and burnishing the wood panels that less-skilled workers were nailing to the walls of the first-floor ballroom.

Johann had trouble not dropping the materials Rudolf had pressed into his arms as he climbed the curved staircase in the outer foyer to the next level, as other workers were scurrying up and down the stairs around him, some carrying wide loads.

"Mark the carving on the staircase railings as you go up the stairs," Rudolf had said. "The carving of the crown molding in the upper foyer will have to match that. I will leave that job to you."

Johann was glowing with the responsibility that Rudolf was assigning to him. He had been apprenticing for not quite a year, but he had been a quick learner and had a talent for the work. He hadn't been sure that Rudolf recognized the talents he had beyond those in the featherbed.

All was in chaos in the upper room, which obviously was a music room. The walls had only been scorched slightly here. Most of the damage was from smoke. There was an ornate white grand piano in the center of the room, around which an army of workers swirled. It was the first such musical instrument Johann had ever seen. The raised decorations on the case of the piano were gilded in gold, and, with his trained eye, Johann could see immediately that the pargeting that was to be done on the walls and fireplace of this room were meant to match the raised designs on the piano.

The piano was producing music, which was incongruous in the construction activity bustling around it—and the young man calmly playing the instrument was equally incongruous. He obviously was a member of the duke's household, if, indeed, not from the duke's immediate family. He was young, as young as Johann, and was a sultry, sensual, dark-haired in contrast to Johann's outgoing blondness. He also was willowy and of delicate construction to Johann's slight construction but muscular virility. His clothes also were a contrast. Johann wore scuffed and split leather boots, breeches reaching just below his knees and tied at the waist with rope, and a simple jerkin of the coarsest-weave cotton. The young man at the piano, in contrast, was dressed in silk, wore what looked to be ballet pumps on his feet, and had a frilly, billowy shirt of the finest white cotton.

He stopped playing when Johann was passing the piano, and, despite the swirl of other workers moving around the piano, reached out, touched Johann's arm, and arrested the apprentice's progress. Johann felt a chill run up his spine at the soft touch on his bare arm.

"You are loaded down with finer material than the other workmen. Are you the master craftsman who is going to bring this room to life again?" The voice was a silky tenor, the language refined, the thick, curly eyelashes batting at Johann invitingly.

"I am just an apprentice, my lord," Johann answered, keeping his eyes averted—or trying too. The young man was just too exotic and sultry to be ignored. "But, yes," he continued, proud to be able to say it, "I will be doing the finishing work on this room." He drew the young man's attention to the sketches and box of medallions as if he needed to offer some proof of what he had boasted.

He was rewarded with a smile for that. "I will love watching you work with those," the young man said. "It won't embarrass you for me to play the piano in here while you work, will it? I must practice a lot and this, after all, is the music room—and this, alas, is the only piano we have." He'd said it as if anyone else in the town owned one piano, not to mention two.

"No, my lord, it will not embarrass me." But, of course, Johann's blush belied that.

"These other workers will be finished soon, won't they? And then it will just be you—applying the decorative elements and gilding them?"

"Yes, my lord. The other workers will be finished soon, and then it will be less of a distraction for you to practice your music in here. I will make as little distraction as I am able."

"Some distractions are very welcome," the young man said, giving Johann a meaningful look that Johann could not avoid understanding. In embarrassment, Johann pulled the sketches and box of medallion into his body as if he needed protection from something—and, indeed, he didn't want the young noble to see the effect he was having on the involuntary response of his body.

"I will just start on my work then," he mumbled, as he started to back away from the piano.

"My name is Werner," the young man said in the silky tone his voice had.

"Johann; I am Johann," came back the answer, but in such low volume that Werner made him repeat it.

Werner, Johann thought. The people of the city knew who was in the duke's household even if they rarely, if ever, cast their eyes on them. Could this Werner be the duke's second son?

* * * *

"Wait. Let me do it. The ends of these branches under here are like knives."

Werner dutifully lowered his buttocks to the soft, damp soil under the ancient boxwood bush in the Lüneburg palace formal gardens and let Johann control the fuck.

Johann and Werner had waltzed through their dance of teasing interest for nearly a week as Johann tried to concentrate on his pargeting and gilding work in the second-floor music room and Werner at least pretended to practice his piano. To Johann's ears, although he'd never heard piano music before, Werner didn't need all of the practicing he did. The music he produced was stirring—sometimes in ways that Johann was fighting.

As the basic wall plastering work was completed, the ranks of the less-skilled workers thinned out until the two were alone in the room for long stretches of time. Werner took the initiative, asking Johann to come over to the piano to pick up some sheet music he dropped and then, when Johann hesitatingly complied, pulling Johann down on the piano bench and insisting on showing the apprentice how to play a few simple tunes.

Johann couldn't have said who initiated the first kiss, but he felt sure it must have been Werner. Johann was too much in awe of a young member of the duke's household and in fear of Rudolf finding out that someone other than him was tasting the delights of his young apprentice to have made the first overt move.

It would have been better for Johann to worry more about the duke.

Terrified that someone would discover them, Johann nonetheless could not stop the embracing and kissing and roaming of hands that first time as they sat, side by side, on the piano bench. In the days following, Johann tried to protect himself—protect both of them—by insisting that another worker help him with the setting of the medallions and other decorative plaster work—claiming that time was of the essence and someone else needed to help with the gilding. But Werner was just as inventive in devising reasons this helper should run errands outside the room. Whenever they were alone, Johann could not resist the call to approach the piano.

Werner whispered to Johann what he really wanted from the well-formed blond hunk, and showed no fear of what Johann might tax him with. Indeed, more than once he'd taken Johann in hand, and, in his arousal and sense of danger, Johann had quickly come from Werner's close attention. But time and again Johann declared that it was much too risky for him to give Werner what the sultry, dark-haired, willowy man wanted. Besides, Johann wasn't sure he could take the role that Werner was suggesting he take, as heretofore he had taken the same position Werner wanted to take with him.

But Werner was persistent—and inventive. He waited until Johann needed to make more plaster medallions and was setting them out on a makeshift table out in the palace's formal gardens on a sunny day. Werner decided he needed to be writing a letter that day rather than practicing his piano, and he sat on a bench near to where Johann was working to do so. Johann could work under the sun only wearing his breeches, but Werner couldn't. He could, however, open his blousy shirt to expose his chest, turn toward where Johann was working, surreptitiously untie and drop his codpiece, and expose himself to Johann. His need was quite obvious.

The boxwood bushes in the garden had been there for a couple of hundred years already. Although the leaf coverage was solid at the surface, if one pushed between the branches, a cave-like cavern formed of thick trunks and soft earth underneath could be found inside. It was here where Werner pushed Johann when it appeared no one else was looking.

And it was here that Werner stripped off Johann's breeches and unloosed and shed some of his own clothing as his mouth found Johann's hard cock and the young, blond artisan apprentice was lost to the control of the equally young, dark-haired nobleman.

They wrestled symbolically for ascendance, but it was clear from the beginning that Werner wanted Johann to master him, which was a new role for Johann. But it was one that the week of teasing and the buildup of sexual need had prepared Johann to step up to. He had just done it with Christina—the basic principles were the same with a man.

Once Johann, lying on top of Werner in the inner recesses of the mature boxwood bushes, was mounted, Werner went into a frenzy of wanting, raising his hips to counterstroke, locking his ankles over the small of Johann's back, raking Johann's back with his fingernails, and trying to cry out the joy of the taking, the latter only stifled by one of Johann's hands being clamped over his mouth. It appeared that Werner did not care if anyone heard them, while Johann cared all too much.

Werner arched his back and moaned deeply, as Johann moved his cock ever farther up into the channel, his strokes increased in intensity, and the two set into a rhythm that would not abate until both had ejaculated, which, because of how keyed up they were, came quickly.

Johann's fear was that someone had seen them roll under the bush. And his fear was well-founded. One of the palace servants—one far more loyal to the duke than to his fickle second son—had seen them and had come close enough to be able to hear them thrashing about.

"What was that? Did you hear something?" Johann hissed in abject fear of being discovered.

"It is nothing. You can't stop now. Fuck me again—harder," Werner murmured.

Johann responded, but his fear increased as he thought he caught a glimpse of the motion of light-blue material through the leaves of the boxwood. Was someone close by, he wondered.

He wasn't sure he had seen someone, though, until later, after the two young men had satiated their lust and carefully moved back to their previous positions in the garden—Johann checking the drying of plaster medallions on the makeshift table and Werner writing his letter.

Then Johann saw the men talking and gesturing toward him over by one of the entrances into the palace. Rudolf was red as a beet, and had turned a hard gaze in Johann's direction. And there was the architect of the palace. But more ominous, there, standing between them, pointing to where Johann stood and Werner sat, looking very pleased with himself, was one of the palace servants. His torso was covered with a light-blue cotton jersey. Johann had remembered seeing him before Werner had pushed him under the bush, but he had thought the servant had moved out of sight. Obviously he hadn't.

Rudolf started to trudge toward Johann, his fists clenched and his jaw set. But Johann didn't wait for him. He turned and fled out of the back of the palace garden. He ran as quickly as he could, up the hill; past the city square, where the Hessian troop muster and recruiting was still going on; and on to Rudolf's shop and home.

Christina met him at the door, looking distraught. She seemed to have positioned herself there to catch the men when they came home, although this was much too early for them to come home.

"Where is Rudolf? Is he with you?"

"No, and I must go," Johann said, as he brushed by her. She clutched at him with her hands, but arrested his forward progress by only a fraction of a second.

"It's good he's not here. We must . . . go? You must go where?" she asked.

"Anywhere. Rudolf will beat me to death. Or the duke will. I must be away!"

"Away where?" But then she stopped. He had moved through the shop, to the lean-to shed where he slept. He had few belongings, and what there were he already was stuffing into a sack. "Indeed, you cannot go," she said, her voice stronger now, more strident. "You must stay. We must figure this out together."

"Figure what out?" Johann asked, stopping his packing and turning to look at her.

"I am with child."

"With child? What child? Where?"

"Here in my belly, Johann. You put it there."

He looked at her aghast, the magnitude of the problem sinking in.

"It can't be mine. You have a husband."

"A husband who has not touched me. There will be no question in his mind that the baby is not his."

"We can't, Christina. I can't . . . you must go back to your family. I will not be here." There was scant room in his panic—in one sudden tragedy piling on another—to feel responsibility. Christina had gotten him drunk. It had been Christina who had taken advantage of him. His week working in the palace had cleared his mind on that score. And it had not been long enough for her to know she was with child—surely not long enough. What sort of dunce did she take him for? She'd been gone recently. Who was to say that she hadn't lain with another man while she was away in Kalkberg? She might know she was with child from the time of a previous visit to the quarry but not from the recent nights Johann had been inside her. No, he would not take the word of the scheming little vixen so easily.

But what would Rudolf believe? What would Rudolf do? He couldn't publicly reject a baby. He wouldn't want it known that he lay with men rather than his wife. But he could do something terrible to Johann and no one would lift an eyebrow. A master was a god to his apprentices and treated them however he liked. That's what put Johann in Rudolf's bed to begin with.

"Will not be here?" Christina cried out. But already Johann was pushing by her, headed back through the shop and out on the street.

He had no idea where he would go, where he would try to hide. But his feet seemed to know. They carried him back to the city square, and before he could have the bad fortune of catching a glimpse of either Rudolf or Christina again, he was recruited for the Hessian infantry to go fight for the British in the New World, and he was being marched out to the bivouac area on the edge of the city.