Martin's Hundred

March, 1622

Wolstenholme Towne, Virginia

The unseasonable warmth that early March brought James West to the holding pool of the stream leading down to the river. James was a young settler in the royal grant English Virginia Company's Martin's Hundred holding on the Virginia peninsula east of Jamestown. As far as he knew, he was the only one who knew about this pool in the cascade of the stream as it came down a wall of rock that was tucked away in a forest. The pool was nearly a half hour's walk from Wolstenholme Towne, the seat of Martin's Hundred—"hundred" being an English word for "county." That he was coming there on this particularly warm day was because this was where he liked to come in privacy to wash himself and his clothes. It had been some time since he'd been able to do that. Between times he availed himself of the more limited resources in the stockaded town.

That wasn't the only reason for coming here that day, though. He wasn't coming alone. He had told his special friend, Charles Stephens, of the isolated pool and of the benefits of cleanliness in seeking it out. Without words, though, he had gotten across the privacy of the idyllic setting. Increasingly the two had wanted to seek out privacy. Increasingly they had been apprising each other with special interest, one in the other, through signaling of looks and choices of words and touching. They had an understanding of mutual need and desire without having directly vocalized it. They'd also established that James was the dominant one of the pair and the slimmer, more lithe and timid, Charles the submissive.

The pool, half way down the rock face of an escarpment, the upper lip of which was bounded by large boulders with curved tops, was closely hedged by dense tree cover. A pathway that James had taken as natural—and probably shouldn't have—wound its way from the creek bed, up along the side of the pool, and then up to the top of the escarpment, where the waterfall commenced its plunge to the stream bed below.

Almost shyly, but with great anticipation, each peeking at the other, each in full erection, the two young men stripped off the clothes they were wearing—billowy white cotton shirts; tight breeches, with laced-up codpieces; and woolen socks with leather boots—added them to the pile of other clothes that had been saved back for washing, and crouched down near each other beside the stream. First things first, they wanted to get their clothes washed. While they were doing that in the altogether, though, they could ogle each other and build a lust and a bravery to carry through with their intentions. Before washing themselves in the pool, they climbed up to the top of the escarpment. Each claimed a boulder on either side of the stream and laid his clothes out to dry.

In the stream, at the top of the escarpment, James came to Charles as he was crossing the stream, and their bodies and lips came together. James held Charles close. They had kissed thusly before, but never in nakedness, and both were trembling—not just from the nip in the air and the coldness of the water their feet were in, but more so in the passion of being together, at last, alone, and the anticipation of what they intended to do here.

Breaking from the embrace and knowing how deep the pool was at the waterfall end, James turned and dove head first into the pool below. Charles more gingerly worked his way down the path and waded, teeth chattering, as he slowly got acclimated to the cold water, into the shallow end of the pool. James had laid clumps of moss at the water's edge, and the two now came close together and stood, in knee-deep water, scrubbing each other's bodies. Their scrubbing became intimate and was accompanied by deep kissing. James held their cocks together, frotting them. Then, when desire and lust overtook them, Charles climbed James' body, hooking his legs on the sturdy Englishman's hips, and grabbed James' biceps to hold himself in place. After positioning his cock and penetrating Charles' channel a couple of inches, accompanied by cries of passion at the taking from Charles, James grabbed Charles' waist in his hands and commenced pulling the smaller man on and off his cock.

They had drifted farther into the pool in this process, so that the water come to under their taut nipples. But any onlooker—and there was one, a young savage of the Powhatan tribe was standing, concealed, within the trees rimming the pool and watching, his own cock in hand—would have no trouble knowing what they were doing.

After ejaculating, the two cavorted in the pool until they were wanting it and randy again, which was not long in transpiring, as both were healthy, virile young men. They came out of the water and James chased Charles to the top of the escarpment. Charles lay out on his belly, arms outstretched, hugging the curve of the boulder on top of his drying clothes. James mounted his hips, drove his hard cock inside Charles' passage, and fucked him again.

The sun was below the treetops after James had taken Charles for a third time in a doggie position on top of the boulder before they were finished and their clothes were dry. Laughing and exhilarated by their first taste of a fully completed tryst in the privacy—or so they thought—of the primeval forest of the virgin Virginia peninsula, the two dressed, gathered up their other washed and dried clothes, and kissed in departure.

James let Charles go on ahead so that the two would arrive at the Wolstenholme Towne stockade separately. He went down on his haunches on a rock beside the pool to think on and savor the at-last completed coupling with the other young man. His peripheral vision registered movement off at the edge of the trees on the other side of the pool, and he turned his attention there. But he saw nothing.

It was just the rustling of the departure of the young Powhatan tribe savage, melting back into the forest after having left his seed on the ground on the other side of the pool.

* * * *

The relationship with Charles was short-lived. He was called to go to the nearby settlement of Jamestown the day after he and James at last were able to consummate their mating. James promised to visit him there when he could. It wasn't a great distance, but increasingly it wasn't a safe journey to take, as the English settlers traversed back and forth between the two communities often and the danger of an encounter with savages was on the increase. Relatively good relations had been established with the chief of the Powhatans, ties that had been solidified when Chief Wahunsenacawh's daughter, Pocahontas, married the English settler John Rolfe, in 1614. But Wahunsenacawh had died four years earlier, in 1618, while visiting England, and the tribe had come under his brother, Opechancanough, under whose rule relations had increasingly become belligerent.

Thus, it was with concern and wariness that Richard Martin, head of the settlement came out of the stockade at Wolstenholme Towne, on March 15th, to receive the unexpected visit of a delegation from the Powhatans. James came to the stockade gate to watch the uneasy meeting and, while lurking there, became aware of particular attention an especially handsome and well-formed young savage of the delegation was paying him. The young savage looked upon James with a steady gaze and a small smile. James found him alluring but wondered why he was being picked out for the attention.

The meeting didn't go well. Voices were raised and knuckles whitened in clutching weapons, holding them at the ready. But neither side pushed the issues, and the Powhatans withdrew.

Martin was talking with another man as they returned to the stockade.

"I wonder what this visit was really about," Martin was saying. "No demands were made; only insults given. I wonder what they were up to."

"Some of them were looking the stockade over," the man answered. James hoped the man hadn't noticed the young savage looking him over. "Methinks they are scouting our defenses. I suggest that we tighten our surveillance and ensure everyone is inside the stockade by dark."

"Yea, I can see the wisdom of that," Martin responded, as the two passed James by and he lost contact with what they were saying.

James was left with the clutchy feeling he'd be trapped in the stockade until the unrest settled. He had always been separate from these people—other than Charles—and continually had the worry they would find out about his preference and make life miserable for him. He handled this by being as separate as he could. This feeling, plus the continued unseasonably warm weather, called him back to the pool below the escarpment again. There had been no sign of savages in that direction. The pool was remote. Surely the dangers would be along the trails between the English settlements up and down the river.

He took the chance two days later, taking clothes to wash with him that he hadn't taken when he went with Charles, as he had known that cleaning clothes was not what he'd be wanting to take up most of his time that day.

As he approached the pool, though, he realized he wasn't the only one there that day. He arrested his approach and crouched down at the tree line. The young savage who had given him the eye at the stockade earlier was standing in the shallow end of the pool. He was bathing himself. His nakedness made James' cock lurch and harden. The young savage was beautiful—lithe but muscular, not an ounce of fat on him. His legs were long and shapely, his body was hairless and of a darker tone than the skin of the Englishmen, even when they were burnt by the sun—more reddish gold than tan. His long, straight, black hair, which he was scrubbing, descended down his back to his shoulder blades. There were tufts of black hair in his armpits and at his crotch.

As James watched and almost moaned, the young savage took his half-hard cock in his hand and stroked it to ejaculation. Then he neatly dove into the deep end of the pool and swam laps. When he came out of the water, whipping his hair about his head to drive the water drops out of it, it was almost like he was posing for James—as if he knew James was watching him from the tree line and stroking his own cock—which, indeed, was the case.

Moving like a dancer or a panther, the savage pulled himself up the steep pathway to the boulders at the top of the escarpment and lay on his back on the curve of one of the boulders, arms and legs spread, offering his beautiful body to the sun to dry. The savage's cock stood up, proud and thick from his body.

James sucked in air and gave a little gasp when the savage produced a carved and polished cylinder of wood—in the shape of a phallus, and, turning, bending over the curved boulder, and spreading his legs so that James was looking directly into his passage, erect cock, and drooping balls, worked the wooden phallus into his passage and fucked himself with it.

But then the savage turned again and sat on the boulder, pelvis rolled up and legs spread and bent at the knees with his toes gripping the rock, the phallus still being held inside himself with one hand and looked directly at where James was hidden—or had believed himself to have been hidden. It became quite obvious that the savage knew James was there and that he had wanted James to be there. He smiled a sensuous smile, gestured at James, and looked down at the end of the phallus sticking out of his ass.

Quick as a rabbit, and operating entirely on instinct and lust, James was up the path in a flash, tearing at and discarding his shirt, unlacing his codpiece, kneeling between the savage's thighs, raising the young man's pelvis with palms clutching the savages buttocks, pulling the wooden phallus out to be replaced by his cock, and began fucking the young man hard.

The savage received him with open arms and a thrusting pelvis. The two rolled around on top of the boulder, thrusting and counterthrusting, reaching for and achieving a rhythm of the fuck. They roughly and brutally took and gave everything they had—two healthy, virile, randy young men lost in the fuck.

They exhausted each other—or at least the savage exhausted James. After repeated fuckings, where desire and lust were the only means they had to converse and connect with each other and where it seemed the savage was sheathing and milking James' cock for all he was worth, but where the communication of desire was more than enough, the two, panting and their chests heaving from the exertion, fell away from each other, lying side by side, face up to the sun.

James was totally exhausted, but the savage was not. He rolled over on top of James, gripped James' cock in his channel, and rode James to one last mutual exhaustion as, balls aching, James moaned his surrender. When they had ejaculated, the savage, with James going flaccid inside him, lay on top of the English settler, chest to chest, and both dozed off.

When James woke the young savage was gone. The young settler almost could believe he had dreamed it all, but it had been too vivid for a dream and his balls ached too much from the milking. All the same, he immediately wanted to be inside the savage again, and he remained by the pool almost to dusk, slowly washing and drying the clothes he'd brought with him, in the hope that the savage would return to him. But he didn't.

James didn't make it back to the stockade until after dark. The gate was closed tight, and James was afraid he'd be mistaken for a savage and shot if he pounded on the gate. He went around the corner, on the river side of the stockade, and pulled up to and crouched at the base of the stockade wall on the lip of the trench that had been dug around the stockade.

He drifted off to sleep in a crouched position, and this time, when he felt the presence of another man, breathing slowly, he initially did think he was dreaming. He had no weapons. He'd been foolish to leave the stockade without a musket or so much as a knife.

And his heart leapt into his mouth when he realized that the other man was a savage. But it wasn't just any savage. It was

his

savage—the young man he had fucked at the pool. The savage was crouching beside him, working the laces of James' codpiece, freeing his cock, and taking it into his mouth. Both breathing heavily. but both trying not to make a sound that would raise someone in the stockade, the savage sat in James' lap, facing him, skewered himself on James' cock, and rose and fell on the staff until the two men had come again. The savage was wearing just deerskin leggings, with a codpiece that, when opened pulled all the way to the back and tucked into his waistband, allowing James full access to his passage with his cock. The savage unlaced James' shirt and flared it, so they would melt into each other, lips to lips nipples to nipples, as the savage rose and fell on the cock. They could feel their hearts beating together as one—the beat the same, not one beat for the Englishman and another, different one, for the savage.

After they had come and kissed one last time, the savage evaporated into the darkness.

* * * *

The cold arrived the next morning. James couldn't break away that day as he was needed to help shore up one of the stockade walls, but on the 17th, he pulled away and ran to the pool. But the savage wasn't there. There was no question of swimming in the pool. When the cold had come on, it was with a vengeance. On succeeding days, James was needed in the vegetable patch, plowing up the earth in preparation for planting, and helping to extend the stockade wall around that piece of ground. Richard Martin had expressed the fear that anyone working in the patch was in danger of being picked off by the savages with an arrow, so the men were back at felling small trees, splitting them, and building at least enough of a visual screen around the field that workers in the garden could not be seen from the edge of the forest.

During these days, James maintained a vigil on that forest edge, and thus he was sure that it was only he who, on the morning of March 22nd, saw the savage—

his

young savage—expose himself enough to catch James' attention and signal that the young settler should follow him. There was an air of concern and immediacy about the savage's gestures, so James dropped his hoe and walked, as unobtrusively as he could, to the forest edge and then beyond, into the forest, keeping sight of the savage's disappearing figure, dressed now in deerskin vest as well as breeches, deeper into the forest.

He led James back, by a route he hadn't used before, to the pool—their pool—in the heart of the forest.

Still, there were no words communicated between the two, nor need for words. Their immediate need for sex—for James to be inside the savage and for the native to have James there—was all the language they needed to share.

There was no question of going into the pool or even disrobing. The savage backed James up against the trunk of an old oak tree just out of view of both the pathway and the pool, knelt in front of him, unlaced his codpiece, and took James' stiff cock in his mouth. Holding the savage's head in his hands and running his fingers into the native's silky, straight, black hair, James helped move his head as it bobbed on his cock. The savage didn't take James to completion, nor did James want him to. Pushing the native away from him when he needed to interrupt the sucking or he would come, James lifted his lover up and turned his back to the tree. Fully understanding James' intention, which matched his want, the savage unlaced his codpiece as James turned him, climbed James' hips with his knees, wrapped his arms around the young settler's neck, took James' mouth with his, and the two groaned and grunted in unison—a universal shared language—as James pushed the torso of the savage up the tree trunk and then let him descend, only to push him up again with the strength of the thrusts of James' cock up inside his passage. After an eternity of sweaty, deep-thrusting fuck, the two lovers came together.

They held there, kissing and fondling each other with their hands, neither of them showing any need to break away and leave this place. Both of them knew they weren't finished with each other. They found a depression in the ground, under the protective low-sweeping branches of a fir tree, out of the chilling wind and the possibility of discovery by any wandering Englishman or savage.

James fucked the savage twice more, the savage on his back and James lying on him between his legs in the first taking and then taking him from the side the second time, with a rest between until, like the previous tryst, James was exhausted into sleep. And, once again, when he woke, he was alone.

He heard the wailing before he came in sight of Wolstenholme Towne and almost simultaneously saw the tongues of fire leaping over the treetops. Running for all he was worth, he came upon a site of devastation and massacre. All told, the Powhatan war party had murdered some fifty of the settlers, both men and women, more of the latter, as they were more defenseless against the attack. Most of the stockade walls were down and all of the buildings were aflame.

No one asked James where he'd been during the raid. No one cared. No one knew he hadn't been there. All the shocked survivors knew was that it was the middle of the afternoon, they were now defenseless to a renewed attack, and there were some fifty of their fellows who needed to be put under the ground before they left seeking safety—most like in Jamestown, if it was not in the same condition.

When they reached Jamestown, they found that it had been spared but that many other separate dwellings and small communities had also been raided that day, on March 22nd. There now were more settlers congregating in Jamestown than the fort there could sustain. Fortuitously, two ships were in the river that were ready to return to England for resupply. They had not been intended to carry passengers, but now they would. They would take enough to reduce the population in Jamestown to a sustainable number. They would take volunteers, settlers who, after the horrors of the day, had had enough of this new world. Barring enough of those, they would conduct a lottery.