Chapter 2 – Chapter 2
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.
James was reunited with Charles in Jamestown. They even managed to find enough privacy between boxes in a storage shed for James to fuck Charles against a wall. Their lust, mutual joy that the other one was alive, and need for each other ignited and flared immediately, and they pledged, given the horror they both had escaped, to remain together. Charles drew a "leave" in the lottery. James thought long and hard, but life in the new world just didn't measure up now with the possibility of life with Charles. So he volunteered to leave on the same ship Charles was assigned to.
It wasn't until they were in a small boat rowing out to the vessel that was to take them home to England and to a life with the only certainty being that they would be together, that it occurred to James why he had not been at Wolstenholme Towne for the massacre there. Looking back at the shore, he caught a glimpse of a young savage—his savage—standing half hidden in trees running down to the bank of the river. The savage smiled, laid a hand on his heart, then to his lips, and then extended toward James.
James gestured back his appreciation and love. Now he knew why the savage had insistently lured him away from Wolstenholme Towne on the morning of the March 22nd.