"I don't right think he'll last the night, Massa. Land, I don't know what's taken' away the cream of our young men on this plantation."
"Leave me with him, Elvie. I'll see if I can give him some peace."
He watched until the woman had left the hut and then went over and silently shot home the bolt on the door. Returning to the pallet that took up much of the leaning, rough-wood cabin and was perched on a dirt floor, he looked down at the young darky who had once been so handsome, so robust, so giving and willing. He pulled the blanket away from the now withered, wasted body of the young man, naked save for the scrap of a loin cloth, the ebony slave still showing hints of the fine specimen he'd been just months before.
Some sort of wasting affliction.
He knelt down beside the young man and took the young slave's torso up into his arms, tenderly handling the now-thin body, stroking the chest and running his fingers around the navel on the flat belly.
"Can you hear me, Samuel?" he whispered in a low, soothing voice, his mouth close to the young man's ear.
"Yas, Massa," came the weak reply.
"I've come to give you rest, to smooth your journey home."
"Yas, Massa, thank you, Massa," the whimpered response.
He reached down with his free hand and loosened the knot of the loin cloth, pulling it away from the young man's privates. The cock lay long and limp against the slave's thigh, but it showed signs of life—greater signs than elsewhere in the young slave's body—as he encased it in a hand and coaxed it to stiff. He nuzzled Samuel's neck with his lips and ran his teeth down the side of the throat. Samuel rewarded him with a weak, but deep moan and the greater stiffening of his cock.
The master fumbled with the buttons on his own breeches, releasing his hardening cock. He coaxed Samuel's upper leg up and on top of his thigh, pulling Samuel's buttocks into position.
Samuel gave a low moan. "Yas, Massa. Please, Massa. Take Samuel to heaven, Massa."
"I am going to give you release now, Samuel," he whispered in the darky's ear.
"Yas, Massa," came the distant reply.
Samuel whimpered and gave a little jerk of his body, as the cock slowly pressed at his anus, invaded the channel, and began a slow, throbbing rhythm of penetration, short withdrawal, deeper penetration, short withdrawal, deeper penetration.
Samuel sighed and moaned, his own cock stiffening under the stroking hand of the master.
His face was turned toward that of his master, and his mouth was being pressed open by an insistent tongue for a deep kiss.
The stroking inside Samuel's passage picked up with intensity, and the young slave groaned from deep inside his collapsing body.
Then his mouth was free of the kiss and the lips were moving back to his throat. His head was being tilted away from the lover's searching lips, stretching Samuel's neck, exposing the barely throbbing vein there.
The slicing of the teeth into his throat was no more than a pin prick to Samuel now, and the sensation of the sucking of his blood through the embedded teeth came into sync with the now slow-pumping of the cock inside his channel as well as the stroking of his own cock encased in the master's hand.
"Massa, Massa, Massa. Take me, Lord," Samuel murmured. "Take Samuel on to paradise."
As Samuel gave his seed in a weak release, a stronger ejaculation creamed his channel deep, one last slurp at the throat was sounded, and Samuel's eyes rolled up into his head.
After gently laying Samuel back down on the pallet, rebuttoning his own fly, readjusting Samuel's loin cloth, and covering the young slave's fading body with the blanket, Philip DuCarde rose, looked around the cabin to see that all was in order, silently shot open the bolt of the door, and, a new spring in his step, emerged from the hut.
"He is resting now, Elvie," he said to the old slave woman sitting on a wooden bench across the path running in front of slave row. "He is at peace. But I am afraid that you are right—that Samuel will not last the night."
* * * *
Looking down on the orchestra level at Natchez' Institute Hall from the shadow of the box I was in, I was surprised at the turnout. The hall, construction having been completed the previous year, 1853, was the pride of Natchez, the only performance hall of its size and splendor on the Mississippi River between Memphis and New Orleans. The building, on South Pearl Street, almost on the banks of the Mississippi, had been designed for opera, and an opera was what had brought me, and so many others, out this evening.
I had come out of curiosity. Others apparently had come to observe who was and was not there. Institute Hall had quickly become the center of society in Natchez. I doubted that many had come because of the opera being performed, financed by an anonymous donor. I had made it my business to try to find out who had commissioned this, as my parishioners would expect me to. But I hadn't been able to find who had brought the controversial 1828 Heinrich Marschner opera
Der Vampyr
to the American south.
I tuned my ears into the gasps of discovery early in Act One as those in the orchestra section below learned of the content of the opera. I let my eyes wander around the hall and then drew back a bit into the shadows of my box as I saw, directly across from me in another box, the visage of the man who must be Philip DuCarde.
The DuCardes had been a prominent family in the area, owning various plantations on the eastern bank of the Mississippi both north and south of Natchez. Philippe DuCarde, a widower, though, had left suddenly and mysteriously some eighteen years earlier under conditions that were buried in the hazy gossip and legend of the areas. Something about questionable behavior and an uprising in society. I mainly was attentive to the stories behind this because my father had been a close associate of the DuCardes and had existed under something of a cloud in the city for some time after Philippe's departure. My father was too prominent in the town, though, to suffer for long—and suffer he did, from some sort of wasting disease after that, and died some eight years later when I was barely eleven.
I hadn't withdrawn into the box soon enough, as I saw that the younger DuCarde was staring intently at me and turned to his companion—a friend of mine named John Purnell, a young lawyer in the town—and gestured toward me. I was slightly disturbed to see John with him, but I was more disturbed by the aspect of John. I had not seen him in the last couple of months. In that time, he had been taken with some sort of sickness. He was pale and seemed listless. I marked the need to talk with him afterward. We were too close for me not to give him whatever help and solace I could in this condition. It occurred to me that he had not been to confession since the last time we were together—which was an occasion that begged for confession—by both of us.
As the curtain was being drawn for the first interval, an usher appeared at the back of my box and delivered to me, in a white-gloved hand, a note. "If you please, Father Hamilton," the usher whispered, "Mr. Philip DuCarde wishes to meet with you in reception room B during the interval." The note said essentially the same thing. I looked over to the other box as the lights came up in the hall and the hubbub of excited twittering crescendoed in the hall below. DuCarde's box was empty.
When I was ushered into reception room B, the attendant set the lock from the inside of the door, withdrew, and clicked the door shut. I was alone with Philip DuCarde, who was leaning his buttocks back on the top edge of a lounge chair, with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes boring into me.
I thought of them immediately as boring, possessing eyes. They were in stark contrast to the rest of his visage. They were pale blue and compelling. Otherwise, he was a dark young man, not much older than I was, a product of the Cajun strain of families settled all up and down the lower Mississippi. His hair was dark and wavy, his face sharp-featured. He was of medium height, but his body was muscular, finely proportioned. His dress was elegant, more the style of European capitals than Natchez, a pioneer town still, despite its pretensions of culture and refinement, acquired via King Cotton wealth.
He was smiling knowingly at me, the line of his mouth slightly cruel, his teeth gleaming white and somewhat wolf-like, but not, in any way, subtracting from his attracting looks. I immediately was put on my guard. I had seen him with John Purnell, who knew me as no one else in Natchez did. I felt at a disadvantage—almost hunted, although I had no idea—at least not yet—why I should feel that way—other than the slightly canine aspect of the man's visage. I worried what John may have told him about me.
I also have to admit that I felt aroused. This younger DuCarde was a man of sensual beauty, with an aura of danger about him that I couldn't help but feel compelling.
"Is this Father Hamilton I see before me?" he asked. His voice was a smooth baritone, giving me the sensation of caressing my eardrums. All of the vibes he was exuding were dangerous to who I was supposed to be, rather than the paths I sometimes took. Everything about him was strongly male, overtly sexual.
"Yes, and I believe you are Philip DuCarde, master of Evernew on the Mississippi. I know your family was prominent here in years past and that several plantations along the river have remained in your hands. I, of course, along with many others, I'm sure, welcome you back into the parish. I hope to see you at mass."
"Our families were very close at one time, I understand," he said. And, yes, I did notice that he didn't respond to the invitation to appear at the mass.
"Yes, our fathers were close friends," I answered. "I barely knew your father before he departed." As I said that, though, my memory was stirred and I almost gasped at the realization that Philip DuCarde was the spitting image of my admittedly hazy image of his father. My mind probably was just rectifying the two, I reasoned.
"Extremely close friends, Yes," he said as he languidly pushed himself off the chair back he had been leaning on and came very close to me. "Intimate friends." His hand came up and touched my cheek. For some reason I didn't back away from him. "I believe your father was ill when we moved away. I do hope he recovered."
"Somewhat," I answered. "It was some sort of disease of lethargy. Somewhat like the mosquito-borne malaria so prevalent around here. But then not quite like that in symptoms. He recovered a bit but never completely."
"That's sad, I liked him immensely," DuCarde said, with a sigh that came across as not quite genuine. I didn't get the impression that he cared much how my father had died. "I am hoping that you and I can be very close friends too—intimate friends. You know, you look so much like your father did."
