Confederate Gold

[This is chapter 1 of a five-chapter completed novella, to be finished posting 8 August 2020.]

June, 1864, Wellington Place plantation, on the James River, between Richmond and Williamsburg, Virginia

It was no surprise that there would be changes—and probably not for the best—when James Matthew's brother, John, arrived from Mississippi to take up the inheritance of Wellington Place. The biggest change was supposed to be the freeing of the slaves by the Emancipation Proclamation a year and a half earlier. And that may or may not have made all of the difference for Hetty Matthews' man, Obie, or her oldest son, Mathias, both of whom had run off right after the proclamation had become known to them, but neither of whom had written back that they had survived the running off. Not that either one of them could write. It was deemed dangerous to give education to more than a select few slaves needing it for the jobs their owners assigned them.

By the time John Matthews, a fire-and-brimstone preacher by trade, arrived at the plantation, though, Hetty, who, by custom, had taken her master's surname and passed it on to her children, and her daughter, Betty, and younger son, Eaton, were ready for change. It had been four months since James Matthews, the plantation's master, had died, and they'd been rough months on Hetty and her remaining brood, not the least because of the watchful eyes being held on them because Obie and Mathias had run off.

Hetty, a mulatto slave, daughter from the coupling of a slave woman by the master of the nearby Savery plantation, had been both the housekeeper of the plantation house at Wellington Place and James' bed warmer. James Matthews was the father of her three quadroon children, who also worked in various capacities as house slaves. Eaton, the youngest of these, had only recently been brought into house service when coming of age. Before that he'd been given some schooling so that he eventually could help James in the plantation's business office.

James had been a benevolent—affectionate, even—master. But he had died, and in the interim until the new master arrived, the plantation overseer, a rough Irishman, Edwin Hayes, had taken not only Hetty, but also her daughter, Betty, into his bed. Hetty now was too old to produce cash slaves for the plantation, but the overseer had bred Betty, now three months gone. He knew that the new owner would be pleased at the prospect of yet another slave to add to his holdings.

When naïve Eaton had tried to intervene in the bedding of both his mother and sister, he'd been whipped and sent to tend the pigs, although he'd been brought back into the house when word came that the new owner was about to arrive.

On a Sunday morning in June, they all, house and field slaves alike, were standing in a row, in their newest, cleanest clothes, below the front porch steps of the plantation house, looking down at the James River rolling by down to the ocean, awaiting inspection. John Matthews looked at each of them sternly, somewhat like assessing horse flesh, as Hayes walked him down the row, telling him the provenance, duties, and relative docility and trustworthiness of each of his newly acquired slaves. The new master stopped in front of Eaton and took a long look, which made Hetty hold her breath, before he moved on down the line. As expected, he looked questioningly at Hayes when he got to Betty and was proudly told that, yes, thanks to the overseer, Matthews had some new property on the way.

Hetty had every reason to be concerned that John Matthews had looked at Eaton, a smaller-than-average and delicately beautiful young, hardly chocolate man, the way he had. It was the same way that men had looked at her over the years. She too had been a great beauty until the overseer had fucked it out of her.

Eaton lost his virginity to the new master that night in the hut on slave row that he had once shared with his older brother, Mathias, but that now, conveniently for John Matthews, was occupied solely by Eaton. The young man, who slept in just a rough-cotton flour sack converted to a shift, was asleep, on top of his blanket, the shift having ridden up to his waist, when John, erect just from the thought of the delicate beauty of his brother's blow by, stole into the cabin, and came down, full length, on top of Eaton's back with his considerable weight. Surprised, but small and agile, Eaton managed to roll out from underneath the man. Matthews was up on his feet immediately, hunching in a pouncing mode, and standing between Eaton and the only door to the hut. Eaton gave him a terrified look, knowing that fighting with the man would get him killed or shipped south to the rice plantations.

Matthews' trousers were unbuttoned, and his cock jutted out in angry erection. Eaton looked down at the staff in alarm, and Matthews quickly closed the distance between him and the panting young man, his back to the log wall. With one blow of the bigger man's fist to Eaton's face, the small slave fell to the ground. Matthews climbed on the young man's back, pulling his pelvis off the ground with an arm slung under Eaton's belly. He mounted the young slave's buttocks, and, with a hand covering Eaton's mouth, was inside him and pumping before Eaton was fully recovered from the blow to the face.

Eaton struggled ineffectually at first, but he already was undone before he had any chance of saving himself from his new master—not that he would have any right to struggle anyway. John embraced him closely, latching his teeth on Eaton's neck like a cat subduing a kitten, and, moving just his pelvis up and down in an ever-more-frenetic pace. Deaf to the moans, groans, and pleading of his young slave, he plowed and seeded Eaton's virginal ass channel deep.

It was not the shocking violation of Eaton that it could have been, as his thoughts had long gone to the magnificent bodies in motion in the fields of the black male field slaves rather than to the women. Matthews wasn't particularly long or thick—certainly not in comparison with what Eaton had seen in the fields jutting out of the male field slaves breeding their women and each other in hollows made in the corn fields, but he was the first one inside Eaton and was using little but spit for lubricant. Eaton went through a lot of pain before reaching pleasure, and the new master didn't finish taking his pleasure quickly.

Although painful, the taking by John Matthews was as much liberating as violating for Eaton. John sensed this as, at long last, he came close to loosing his seed—feeling it in the moaning Eaton was doing, how he slightly raised his buttocks to receive the thrusts, and in how he began to move his own hips in rhythm to the fuck and gave up his own ejaculation just before John came inside him.

At the last, young Eaton was bucking with the thrusts, grasping the wooden legs of his cot in a death grip, and crying out in passion, as hard, searching, and demanding, his master rode him like a stallion covering and breeding a mare—and probably with little more moral concern than the biological necessity and privilege of ownership of the act of control, domination, and use.

A second coupling might have been much more satisfactory for both of them if Hetty had not arrived shortly after the moment of ejaculation, having feared precisely what was transpiring. She had a short whip with her and laid into John, who had little trouble wresting the whip from her and turning it on her—and also on Eaton when he attempted to come to Hetty's assistance.

Three days later, Hetty was sold south to a rice plantation outside of Charleston on the banks of the Ashley River. Betty was sent to the overseer's house as the housekeeper there, although the overseer kept her on his bed more than in his kitchen. Eaton spent the next three weeks in John Matthew's bed—the first few days, until he had become totally submissive to John, tied to the bedposts. Thereafter Eaton became compliant to anything John Matthews wanted to do to him, which was most of what one man can sexually do to another. Matthews was a master of sexual positions and acts, and Eaton learned more in those three weeks of lying under him of the techniques of pleasing a man sexually than he would have learned in a year in a male brothel.

When not in bed on top of Eaton, John Matthews was occupied with finding a buyer for the plantation. He had no faith that the South would win this war of independence and Virginia was too much taken up with the fighting for Matthews to feel safe this far north. He wanted to realize what he could from this property and head back into safer territory down south as fast as he could.

He found a buyer for the plantation, who took most of the slaves as well. The price he got was almost laughable, but he felt lucky to have gotten anything at all. The remaining slaves were worth more than the land was, but they were bought by small farmers who would work them to death, hedging on getting their profit out of them before the marauding Union forces set them free. Betty was sold over into the Shenandoah Valley to a Scottish farmer, and Hayes was discharged and, seeing the writing on the wall, made his way north to join the Union army.

Of everything John Matthews would miss of his inherited property when he mounted his horse with his inheritance in a saddlebag and rode south, he would miss Eaton most. But eventually he sold Eaton for a tidy sum to a Thomas Temple of Richmond, showing his regret at parting from the young man by fucking him to exhaustion the night before sending him to the capital of the Confederacy.

By then Eaton was toughened up to lying under a man and had discovered that he could charm a man with his natural talents. John Matthews had given him a taste for it if not the roughest and most filling of rides. Between the time of being undone and being sent away, Eaton found opportunity to walk out into the cornfields, to more than one black bull field slave he'd seen breeding other men, and discovered the pleasures of having a huge black cock churning in his channel and bathing his insides. Here also he learned that he could manage having several men inside him in quick succession. All of this was a valuable education for how he was to serve his new master in Richmond.