To the Hessian Hills Ch. 06

Virginia had said it wanted the British and Hessian prisoners, but it wasn't fully prepared to receive them. When George Washington, the military commander for the colonialists, decided that Boston was just too close to where there were British troops in strength to be confident the large number of prisoners from the Battle of Saratoga wouldn't just be freed and returned immediately to the fighting, he faced a quandary of what to do with them. Eyeing the logistical burden they had been on the Boston area, even though they had added to the economy of the region, Pennsylvania bowed out as a possible place of relocation at that time. Only Virginia made a bid, and the bid was made by the prominent political leader Thomas Jefferson, who saw the advantage—and, in particular, the personal advantage—of locating them in central Virginia, where he himself lived.

The British captives—especially the officers—were welcome because, of all the colonies, Virginia had the closest ties to England and the English aristocracy. Many of the British soldiers had relatives in Virginia who were worried for their welfare and ready to host them for the duration of the war. As for the Hessians, Jefferson's reasoning was personal. He was a man close to European art, architecture, and music. He knew there were carpenters, artists, cooks, and musicians among the Germans. Jefferson was an architect himself, in the Italian and French style mainly, but any European influence was interesting to him. Having seen what the Hessians did for the Boston merchants in terms of building mansions, Jefferson wanted cheap and experienced labor to do the same for the plantation houses he was designing for his friends in and around Charlottesville.

Artisans such as Lawrence and Johann fell in closely with Jefferson's plans, but first they had to survive the winter of 1779, which hit Virginia particularly hard. The reception they received when the weary trekkers at last made it down to Virginia in January, 1779, was not propitious.

They were first brought to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a few miles west of Charlottesville, which lay between the Blue Ridge and the Southwest Mountains immediately to the east of the town. A hilly area had been designated for them and named the Hessian Hills. It was reached from Charlottesville by a road being built that was named Barracks Road, because it led to the barracks of the internment camp. But accommodations had not been completed for the prisoners before they arrived, and they even had to construct the last couple of miles of Barracks Road themselves. The British officer captives—and even the Hessian commanders, such as Baron Riedesel—were taken in by area landowners and entertained in style, but enlisted prisoners such as Johann and guards such as Lawrence were left to establish their own means of surviving the winter. They found half-constructed log cabins in dense woods on hilly terrain, few provisions, and a landscape swirling in snow.

Attrition stepped up over the winter. Many men died from exhaustion and exposure. Many more just walked off in search of better conditions. By now the American military strategists weren't that worried anymore that these men would get back to their home-forces lines. If they were absorbed into the local population, that was all for the good for the economy and was that many fewer mouths to feed and lives to control.

By spring, though, Jefferson and his friends had sorted out what the talents and abilities of this influx of manpower was, and the surviving men were put to work, basically in two sections. Jefferson lived on a mountaintop of the Southwest Range above the Rivanna River just to the east of Charlottesville. Most of his friends lived on plantations in the same area. The land west of the town and toward the Blue Ridge was being developed by more recent residents, many of them of Scots-Irish descent. Jefferson siphoned off the more skilled and talented of the Hessians for his own needs. The first Hessians, in fact, to leave the Hessian Hills and relocate to the base of the small mountain Jefferson's home, Monticello, topped were members of a band of musicians who accompanied Jefferson on his violin. Lawrence and Johann were in the next wave of men relocated to the east. Both of their skills were in high demand to turn Jefferson's European-style house designs into finely constructed buildings for himself and his friends, and, in particular for the interior plaster work that Johann specialized in that was popular at the time in Europe.

Living conditions for Lawrence and Johann and the other artisans snapped up by Jefferson immediately improved over those in the Hessian Hills. They were not so much better, though, that Johann shook the control of Lawrence. They still roomed together. Lawrence was still the jailer, and Johann was still his personal prisoner. Still, the improved conditions and now living together with other artisans in a village meant that Lawrence had to dispense with hobbling Johann at night.

Johann had ratcheted back his expectations for life. He lost himself in his work and was known in this period to be noncommunicative and withdrawn into himself. By all outward appearances, he welcomed the control of Lawrence—and Johann was too tired of life to try to dispel this impression. All he lived for now was his plaster art. There no longer seemed any threat of him trying to escape his lot in life.

That was until an afternoon in late June 1779, when a contingent of landowners from the west of town rode over to the artisan village at the base of Monticello Mountain to consult with Jefferson on house plans and to contract for the services of specialists such as Johann.

Johann was in a field near the artisan village, drying plaster medallions on boards laid across sawhorses, when the visitors from the west rode in. His eyes first went to a thin, elderly gentleman, very gray and gaunt looking, but elegantly dressed and patrician looking and riding his fine horse like he was a bred huntsman. Johann thought he looked handsome and very much in his element. But then his eyes slid away from that gentlemen to the one riding close beside him and being very solicitous of the elderly gentleman.

August! It had to be August. But it couldn't be. The man turned and looked at Johann then, though, and Johann realized that it indeed was August—seemingly back from the dead. The joyful expression on August's face acknowledged that August recognized Johann as well.

As the elderly gentleman was getting down from his horse, August leaned over to him, whispered something, and then dismounted and walked slowly over to where Johann was.

The two dared not embrace, although it was obvious they both wanted to. Johann looked around nervously, trying to locate where Lawrence was. But he was nowhere in sight. He was to be among those who met with the gentleman from the western side of town in the village's central hall, so he was fully occupied for at least the moment.

"You're . . ." Johann stammered as August hobbled as close to his former lover as he could without breaking down and rushing into Johann's arms.

"Yes, I'm alive," August said. "I know it is a shock for you—much more than for me. I looked for you for the last month in the Hessian Hills. But not finding you there, and hoping you were still alive, I thought I might see you here today."

"The last month?"

"Yes, I wasn't well before that. A wagon picked me up right after you left, so I rode the rest of the way here. I had blacked out and didn't regain consciousness until we were well ahead of where you were marching."

A wagon, Johann thought. The wagon that had nearly run him off the road that day when he was lost in grief.

"Oh, August," he said in a low, trembly voice.

"Not here, not now," August said. "But soon, I promise . . . I hope. Is Lawrence still here? Are you still with him . . . under his control?"

"Yes," Johann answered in a weak voice.

"Then we will have to be careful. If I were to find a way to help you escape, would you come with me?"

"Yes, oh yes. You need not even ask that."

"I thought that you and Lawrence—"

"I had become resigned to living with Lawrence and fully under his control. Because . . . because . . . but you are alive. I almost can't believe you are alive. But help me escape? I don't understand."

"Did you see that man I was riding beside?"

"Yes."

"That's Edwin Rutledge, one of the big landowners out near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Since I was ill, I was taken to his house, which he had permitted to be made into a temporary infirmary. He took an interest in me. And he wants to expand his house. When he learned I was an architectural draftsman . . . and when we became better acquainted . . . and he never married and is childless. We, well we . . ."

"Are you sleeping with him? Are you fucking him?"

"Yes. He's taken me in as a son, but he doesn't treat me like a son in private."

"I see."

"It needn't preclude anything between you and me, Johann. He's simply an old and lonely man."

"And a rich one. One you are fucking."

"I am giving him release; he isn't well enough for more. But that can be set to our advantage. The surgeon in Saratoga was willing to share you. I'm sure Edwin will be willing to share me. He need not even know about it. He will need your skills in the building of his house. I will tell him you are a friend of mine who I'd like housed during that time. He'll be willing, I'm sure. Your skills will guarantee his interest and a job on his plantation. And we can be discreet. We were so with Lawrence."

"To a point," Johann said. But he sighed in resignation. This was better than he had a right to hope for. Ten minutes earlier his lover was dead to him. Now he was alive again—and making plans for them to be together. Even if it had to be in secret again.

"So, you want me to escape and come to the Hessian Hills?"

"To Rutledge Hall, west of the Hessian Hills. The life will be a better one than you've ever known. In time, I'll tell Edwin. If he wants me badly enough, he'll share."

"But—"

"Hssst. I see Edwin coming. And Lawrence isn't far behind him. He can't see me. I must go. Somehow I will contact you again and get you out of here."

August withdrew then and, mounting his horse, tried to hide in the group of men rising into their saddles until Edwin Rutledge was in his saddle and ready to ride out.

But Lawrence did catch a glimpse of August and, although not being sure, did recognize at least that there was the danger of another man talking to Johann as Johann stood in the field, bare-chested and extremely desirable to any man interested in men.

That night Lawrence quizzed Johann with his fists on who Johann had been talking to. "Was it August?" he kept asking after he had hit Johann. Johann wouldn't reveal anything, though.

And so, Johann was fucked more roughly than he had been in months—and the hobbles came out again.

* * * *

Johann was simply laying back, letting August support him with an arm encircling his waist, as Johann sat in August's lap, the two facing each other, August's legs stretched out on the master bed in Rutledge Hall, one leg in a brace, and Johann's legs wrapped around August's buttocks. Johann's torso and head were arched back and his arms just dangling at his side. Total surrender. August's cock was reengorging inside Johann's channel, already having creamed Johann deep inside once and slowly working up to a second ejaculation as he rocked back and forth against Johann, causing the cock to rub against his lover's passage walls and move deeper inside him as the staff thickened and lengthened.

It wasn't lost on Johann that this was a position Lawrence had often used with him. But, with Lawrence, it usually came after a beating and was dispensed with anger and domination as Johann just lay there in the American soldier's arms too exhausted and weak from the rough treatment to do more than surrender all. It was a surrender with August too, but one of total trust and affection—and want.

As often was the case over the last month, August had come to Johann in the heat of the month the Hessian draftsman was named for, while Johann was stripped down out on the lawn of Rutledge Hall, working on drying the medallions to be used in the parlor of the hall's new wing.

August had watched Johann work for several minutes and then had come over and drawn the smaller man into his embrace, given him a deep kiss, and whispered, "I can't believe we are together again. I want you to come upstairs with me."

"You are always wanting me to come upstairs with you these days," Johann said with a happy laugh. "But I have plaster all over me. We can't fuck in our bed with me dirty like this. And now you're dirty too."

"Then we must both sluice our bodies before going upstairs," August answered with a grin. "Or maybe I'll just fuck you when we are both standing, naked, under the water bucket. Or maybe then and upstairs too."

"Can you never get enough?" Johann asked, a hint of tease on his lips because he was holding the bulge of August's groin when he was saying this.

"No, never," August had said.

"The men—"

". . . will just continue working," August said. "They know all about us, and I am the boss now."

And, indeed, August was the boss now at Rutledge Hall.

He had not come for Johann in the artisan's village at the base of Monticello Mountain until the middle of July. Johann had thought he wouldn't come at all—that maybe it was just an aberration even that August was still alive. Or that Rutledge had seen August's interest in Johann and put a stop to any future contact between the two.

But August did come, and he brought four of his men—the same carpenters and bricklayers who were working on Rutledge Hall now. The four men came in the guise of consulting Lawrence. They were men who offered no criticism of what August and Johann were to each other, as they shared similarly between the four of them. The conspirators took Lawrence to the makeshift tavern for ale, which left August to find Johann and to spirit him away on an extra horse the men had brought.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," August told Johann when he found him. "But there was the funeral and then the lawyers to deal with."

"The funeral?" Johann asked.

"Yes, Edwin died—just days after we had ridden over here and I found you. It had been coming on for some time, but he fought for a normal life and a planned future to the end. He somehow wanted to believe that if he worked on expanding Rutledge Hall, he would live to see it completed. He didn't, but I promised to do it for him."

"And the lawyers had to be brought in because Rutledge's heirs didn't want the work completed and didn't want you around anymore?"

"No. I am Rutledge's heir. His only one. The lawyers only came in to ensure that all was settled. I'm the master of Rutledge Hall now, Johann. I'm free to do as I please and I have the means to do it. And one of the things I will have is you, if you will come home with me."

Johann could hardly believe his good fortune, but here he was, no longer a prisoner, working on this beautiful mansion among lush fields in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and sharing the bed of the master of Rutledge Hall, the man he'd pined for for years now, August.

With a grunt, August came again deep in Johann's channel, and it was only then that Johann noticed that it was too quiet in the house. The four Hessian prisoners August had given jobs to—and thus had freed from internment in the Hessian Hills—had all stopped working. Johann turned his face to the tall window by the bed and saw him.

Lawrence was astride a horse on the front lawn of the house. The four workmen were fanned around him, the tools of their trade held in their fists to be used as weapons, if necessary.

"It's Lawrence," Johann hissed at August. "He's come for me."

"We always knew he would," August answered, holding Johann fast in his embrace, as Johann had involuntarily tried to bolt from the bed. "We knew he'd ask and ask until he had some idea where you were and that he'd then come for you. But my men will send him away. They won't even say that either you or I are here."

"But he'll recognize them as the men who drew his attention away from my escape."

"Certainly. If he's made it to the front lawn here, he has determined what has happened and who has done it—or he has deep suspicions. But I worked with the lawyers. You are free too now. Lawrence has no hold over you that you don't allow him to have."

"You don't know Lawrence very well," Johann said. "The law and lawyers will mean nothing to him. He'll see me dead before he'll let me be free."

"You don't want to go with Lawrence, do you?" August asked. He occasionally had asked that, seeking assurances that Johann wanted to stay with him.

"No, I want to stay with you, here, as long as you will have me," Johann answered. "I at last feel I've found someplace I want to stay. I have always been fleeing from somewhere to somewhere else that was not much better. This, here in Hessian Hills, and with you, is the 'better' I've always been seeking. I think I've always been moving toward you—and the Hessian Hills."

It did prove to be the case that August underestimated Lawrence's tenacity, however. For the next year and a half, Lawrence continued to show up periodically, trying to assure himself that Johann was here at Rutledge Hall, and if he could be found here, whether or not Lawrence could capture him back.

In the spring of 1781, though, Johann thought he could, at last, breathe a sigh of relief and truly feel free. Word came down that those prisoners still interned in the Hessian Hills were being moved yet again—this time to the Reading, Pennsylvania, area. Presumably their guards would go with them, and this would bring Lawrence back to near his farm and maybe prompt him just to go home. He probably had another captive in tow now anyway, Johann thought. Johann knew that Lawrence couldn't go long without another man to dominate. Surely among the artisans at the base of Monticello Mountain there was another man who suited Lawrence's need—both in a sexual nature and in providing him another set of skilled hands in building construction.

But maybe Lawrence didn't return to Pennsylvania with the remnants of the Battle of Saratoga internees, Johann thought. Regardless, after the internees were marched off to Pennsylvania, Johann and August were not plagued with the specter of Lawrence again.

Lawrence made one last visit to Rutledge Hall just before the prisoners were marched up Barracks Road from the Hessian Hills and on toward Pennsylvania. Somehow the more skilled Hessians who Thomas Jefferson had set up below his mountaintop home were overlooked in the march and settled down in Albemarle County. Therefore, there was the fear for Johann and August at the time that Lawrence had stayed in the artisan village. August had put out feelers on whether Lawrence had another younger man in thrall, and he had, a Hessian glazier who also played the flute in Jefferson's small, personal orchestra. But somehow that hadn't prevented Lawrence from continuing to look for Johann.

During Lawrence's last visit to Rutledge Hall, Johann watched from the master bedroom window as August and his four burly workers had a heated discussion with Lawrence on the front lawn, before pulling him from his horse, divesting him of the rifle he was carrying, and tying his hands together. They put him back on his horse as the four workers brought their horses around. The last Johann saw of Lawrence was the four workers riding away with him. August came up to the bedroom then and gave Johann something other than Lawrence to think about.

Ever thereafter Johann felt freer than he ever had before. He thought as little as possible about whether Lawrence went back to Pennsylvania with the prisoners or never made it back to meet up with the departing marchers. On occasion he thought to ask August about that, but he always decided that it would be best not to.