Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:44:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Christian Debus Subject: "Changed Circunstances" Chapter 45 Gay Male/Authoritarian "CHANGED CIRCUMSTANCES' A Sequel to 'A Reversal of Fortune' Chapter 45: "The Quarries" This is s story of erotic fiction meant for adult readers over the age of eighteen years Written by Jean-Christophe (Chris) An archive of all my stories can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Jean-Christophe_Stories "The characters and ideas contained in this story are the writer's and shouldn't be used without permission" Chapter 45: "The Quarries" The difficulties I'd faced on the water-wheel paled into nothingness when compared to the six weeks I spent as a member of a team of twenty, heavy duty, draft slaves. My time spent in the team exposed me to further horrors of my slavery. There I learned I was no longer an individual but merely a single entity that existed for the good of the whole. I learned that, on my own, my efforts were puny. However when combined with the strength of another nineteen slaves, I became a powerful unit of labour. With my fellow slaves, I learned to pull heavy loads over long distances for sustained periods of time. In the team, I learned to close my mind to all inconsequential things and to concentrate only on the task my overseers had set before me. I learned to attune my mind and body to those of my unfortunate brethren and to act in unison with them. I learned to respond to all the commands given to us - and I have to say the whip was a powerful motivator - to stop and stand docilely as our dray was loaded or unloaded and to move off briskly when commanded to do so. I learned to pull with all my brute strength and add it to that of the other slaves in my team. When more exertion was demanded of us, I learned to draw on hidden reserves of strength that I never knew I had. For all practical purposes I was a member of the team - I shared their yokes and chains - and yet in reality I wasn't one of them. The contradiction for this lies in the fact that my time with them was to be temporary; at the end of six weeks I would be removed from among them to begin the third and final part of my training to become a pony for my Master. This lack of permanence and the fact that I spent my nights alone and locked away in my security cage meant I had no fellowship with them. But this was a mixed blessing in that I was spared the nightly degradations to which the weaker slaves were subjected. Nevertheless I felt an acute loneliness and I missed Norge so much. And not least of the barriers which separated us was their animosity toward me. Somehow, through the medium of the clandestine communication system which operates within all slave herds, they knew me. They knew me as the person who'd once owned and exploited them. And who can blame them for the resentment they displayed towards me as their former Master or deny them the pleasure of seeing me suffer as they suffered. I spent my nights in the stables which had so fascinated me as a boy and a youth. I recalled that I'd been erotically attracted by their earthiness and odour. Then, I'd truly loved the headiness that permeated the stables; the freshly strewn straw bedding for the slaves to sleep on, the manly sweat of their labours and myriad other smells associated with a large number of naked, incarcerated men. These had served to re-enforce the "animal" status of the slave in my mind and there is irony in that; for now I added my own essence to theirs'. I discovered these stables were different to the barracks where I had spent the nights of my first six weeks. Here, we were categorised as draft slaves rather than field-hands and we were stabled with the ponies; although each pony had the luxury of his own individual stall whilst the drafts slept communally. But one thing we all shared - both drafts and ponies alike - were the heavy, night-time shackles around our wrists and ankles. Since my enslavement there have been several defining events which marked my transition from freedom into bitter servitude. Among these have been the collaring, the brandings, and the inspections of my naked body together with the use of me as a sexual plaything for my superiors. But all these can't be compared to the trauma of that day when Judge Matthews had declared me to be slave-born and returned me to my slave birth right. Obviously that was the defining moment of my life but my placement in the team of heavy duty draft slaves ranks not far behind. The appalling conditions I endured as an anonymous beast-of-burden will stay with me until my death. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The quarries are some three miles distant from La Foret and to reach them one has to travel along a narrow, rutted road that meanders through the forest clad hills which are a feature of this area. The route is a tortuous one that dips and rises over steep, stony banks and shallow streams several times over the length of its course. The quarries have been in operation for many years as is evidenced by the tree-clearing and the deep scarring of the rocky hillsides from which are hewn the massive building blocks so favoured by city dwellers for their homes The stone quarried here is of the very best quality and is popular with architects and builders alike. Strong and durable - and an attractive sandstone-yellow in colour - it is used extensively to build the faux European castles and chateaux of the noveau riche and to construct the grand temples of commerce which tower over the Central Business District of the distant capital city. The quarry is home to hundreds of miserable, naked slaves who toil ceaselessly under the lash and whose bodies are seasonally blasted by the fierce, summer heat or chilled by the cold, winter winds. Some of these poor wretches are employed at cutting the roughly hewn blocks from the resisting quarry face and others are charged by the whips of their overseers with fine dressing the building blocks ready for shipment, by river, downstream to the city. To stand on the rim of the quarry and to peer down through the heat haze into its depth is to glimpse another world. It is a different dimension with almost biblical connotations where lost souls are condemned to perpetual labour and eternal torment. The sights and sounds of that labour drift up and overwhelm the senses. Everywhere is heard the clunking and rasping of metal on stone as the blocks are cut away and pried loose from the terraces which climb the quarry face like some giant's stairway, the constant tap, tap, tapping of hammers and chisels as other slaves dress the massive stone blocks, the abusive exhortations of the overseers, the loud cracking of whips and the anguished cries of the slaves as the lash falls across their unprotected backs. Hanging over the quarry like an invisible, sinister miasma is the reeking stench of slavery. Wafting up from the quarry floor is the malodorous smell of human suffering and degradation. The scent of unwashed, sweat-soaked bodies, of urine and excrement and of fear and misery fouls the air. Reduced in size by the lofty height of the quarry wall, the wretched slaves resemble a swarm of industrious ants attacking a tasty morsel of food. Bent to their labours, the slaves' heat-blasted and sun-blackened bodies glisten beneath the sheen of their work induced sweat. Who are these miserable creatures? What slaves toil here and what criteria are used to determine their suitability for the soul-destroying labour of the stone quarries? Predominately, they are the incorrigible and the recalcitrant who have proved too difficult for their masters to tame. Such slaves are sold to the quarries as punishment for their non- cooperation and disobedience. Others are longer serving domestic slaves who, nearing the end of their productive lives, have been sold cheaply to the quarry-owners to allow their former masters to replace them with younger, primer stock. Among these are the former pleasure-slaves, who because of their fading physical beauty, have been cast from the warm comfort of their masters' beds into the slow, lingering death of the stone quarries. And toiling amidst this seething mass of tortured humanity is the slave, Cato, formerly the proud chief steward of the once illustrious but now discredited Barrois family, He is now just another nameless slave doomed to spend the remainder of his shortened existence in the unrelenting drudgery of a quarry. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> As Lucien Barrois, I wasn't a stranger to the quarries. Indeed during my boyhood and adolescent years I'd been a sometimes visitor to them. For several generations the quarries have belonged to the Fournier family, who with the Barrois family, can trace their ancestral origins back to Pre-Revolutionary France. Emigres - like the original Jean-Marc de Barrois - they'd found sanctuary and great prosperity in the New World. The current head of the Fournier family is Louis-Phillipe and I attended boarding-school with his three sons, Thierry, Stephane and Francois. The youngest of the three boys is Francois who is my age. In fact we were in the same class and slept in the same dormitory at school and though we weren't the closest of friends, we rowed in the school's Octuple sculls and so we did socialise. To relieve the boredom of school holidays, Francois would occasionally spend time with me at La Foret or I would visit him at the Fournier plantation adjacent to the quarries. And one of our favourite pastimes was to visit the quarries and watch the slaves at their labours. Like my grandfather's stables at La Foret, the quarries and its slaves were a source of great interest to me. Francois and I were free to roam at will around the quarries providing we didn't hinder the slaves in their labours. The nature of work in the quarries was so different to the field work of La Foret's slaves. It was harder, more intensive and it always seemed to me that the slaves were subject to sterner discipline than was the case with my grandfather's slaves. The quarries were hives of activities as the slaves were driven to ever greater effort. The whips of the overseers were never still. They whistled and crackled through the air continually urging on the slaves in their herculean feats of strength and were answered by the agonised cries of pain re- echoing back from the quarry walls. There was so much for Francois and me to see. We'd watch the teams of slaves swarming over the face of the quarry as they toiled to cut the heavy, stone blocks free from their prison with nothing more mechanical or sophisticated than hammers and chisels, picks and crowbars. The stress this placed on the slaves' naked bodies highlighted the play of their work- hardened muscles and this provided me with guilty pleasure. At first, I wasn't sure of why this display of strong muscle and raw energy affected me. As a pre-pubescent boy I felt excitement but didn't quite know why. Later, I came to know why and my hard erections showed my appreciation of the erotic scenes being played out all around me. And as a pubescent youth, I no longer felt my schoolboy guilt! And I particularly liked watching the slaves from behind. I loved the sensuous tightening of their asses and the rippling of their back muscles as their hammers and picks rose and fell. Francois and I would watch until we grew bored and looking for something new to titillate us, we'd wander to another part of the quarry to watch as other slaves performed different tasks. We'd watch as these slaves used their hammers and chisels to chip away the sharp edges and to smooth the facing surfaces of the huge building stones. At the time, such things never intruded into my boyish mind but later, as an adult, I did notice the chisel marks - each unique to the slave whose work it was - on the building blocks of many a fine city building. And as I did so, memories of the Fournier quarries and the naked slaves busily chiselling away at their allotted stones came flooding back. There wasn't any waste in the quarries. Even these fragments and stone chippings were carefully gathered up and carried to the crushing plants in deep baskets borne on the backs of slaves bent almost double under their intolerable weight. Here they were reduced to either road metal or gravel size by the monstrous grinding stones. The Fournier's had always prided themselves on their environmentally, friendly work practices. They didn't rely on fuel guzzling machinery preferring instead to use the muscle and sinew of their slaves. Here, no machines belched polluting fumes into the atmosphere or disturbed the air with their ear-shattering roar. The creak and groan of the slave-driven capstans were barely audible over the sound of the hammers and picks of the slaves labouring at the quarry face. Once the stones were dressed and ready for shipping, a small team of slaves manhandled them onto sleds and dragged them along a tramway to the river-front some half mile distant. Here they were loaded onto flat barges for transportation to the city. True to their environmental practices, the Fournier's didn't waste fossil fuels on the shipping of the stones. Each barge was towed behind an oar driven vessel. Each vessel was equipped with twenty oars and chained to each oar were three naked slaves, As a boy and a youth, I always received a thrill from watching the slaves take to the oars and begin the journey down river to the city. Fran?ois and I would stand and watch as the slaves bent to their oars under the whips of their overseers. Always, I was reminded of the galley slaves who featured in the books that were my favourite reading. In recent times, I'd lost contact with Francois. As I said we were acquaintances rather than firm friends. After leaving school we simply drifted apart and went our separate ways. However, I know that Louis-Phillipe Fournier has stepped back from his many business interests and now allows his three sons to play greater roles in the operations of the family's companies. I know the oldest son Thierry lives in the city as the CEO of the Fournier enterprises while Stephane, the second son manages the family's plantation. And my old school companion, Francois has been placed in charge of the quarries. In fact, I see him ahead in the distance as I strain into my chains drawing the empty dray behind me. It is several years since I last visited the quarries as Lucien. Today, I return as the draft slave, Rafe. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "WHOA! WHOA!" Our driver's shouted command halts us alongside a gravel-heap twice the height of a man. We don't need extra encouragement to stop; all twenty of us are thankful for this break in the tedium of hauling a heavy dray behind us. This is more the case for me; as yet I am unused to long sustained pulling in a team of drafts. In fact this is only my second day of such labour. Yesterday, I had been paired with another slave, sharing a wooden yoke with him and chained into a team of twenty drafts whose task it was to pull a heavy, flat-topped dray between the fields and the processing mills. Here my perceptions of slavery and of myself were seriously challenged. It would be hard to explain to another how I felt. The wooden yoke I shared with my 'twin' weighed heavily across my shoulders and also on my soul. But then I wonder - do slaves possess souls? It would be interesting to know if our owners thought so. Or are they so steeped in their self- absorbed greed that they see us as mindless, soulless beasts-of-burden? It would seem so! And it was never a question that troubled Lucien Barrois! Certainly, as I strained into my chains and pulled with every fibre of my being and pushed with every ounce of my strength, I felt my animal-like status. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> This morning, I was woken, fed and watered, given a few brief minutes to void my bladder and bowels and then placed in my harness chains. The overseers worked efficiently and speedily to make us ready for our day's labour. My nineteen companions were well-rehearsed and knew what was expected of them. I, on the other hand, stood perplexed not knowing what to do. I watched as my team-mates paired off and knelt on the ground. There was order in what they did; like well-trained animals they knew what our handlers expected of them. The slaves seemed to know to which pair they belonged and they also knew the order of their allotted placement within the team. Soon, all nineteen slaves were kneeling in their pairs in five rows of four abreast. However, one slave was unpaired - my yoke companion from yesterday - and he knelt alone in the fourth row. He is to be my team-mate again today and for all the days to follow for the next six weeks. If I was uncertain, then so was my handler Sir Conn. Because of my special circumstances he is to remain with me and to supervise me in my labours. I didn't know that Claymore Jackson had forbidden any overseer other than Sir Conn to put the whip to my back. This is in accordance with my Master's instructions that I am not to be permanently marked by the lash. My special status will see me remain a "clean-back" whereas my team-mates wear the layered criss-crossed pattern of the heavy whip. Those stripes tell a grim story. The first layer consists of the reddish scar tissue placed there over considerable time. Superimposed on these are the more recent purple stripes congealing into hardening scabs and the fresher, bloody ones from the latest cuts of the lash. Very soon, I will see at firsthand how deadly efficient the whip is at laying open a naked back. Usually, it only requires one overseer to drive a team successfully. I am to find that all he needs to do is to ride on the dray; issue commands to his charges and apply his whip to the team when it becomes necessary to urge it along. I knew Sir Conn had been assigned to assist the overseer in whose team I am to serve. And during the course of the next six weeks, it will be Sir Conn's whip that spurs me into action. Sir Conn hustled me over to the solitary slave and ordered me to kneel on his right in the outside position. I discovered this is my permanent placement within the team and each morning, the overseers will expect that I go to this position without prompting from them. Once in place, I found the team was numbered consecutively from one to twenty moving from left to right and front row to rear and that I was number "sixteen". This meant that for the remainder of my time in the team, I would be referred to simply as sixteen. Soon I will become familiar with the shouted commands to "pull sixteen!" or "sixteen, move your lazy ass!" And often these commands will be given added emphasis by Sir Conn's whip. As the heavy wooded yoke was laid across my shoulders - and my companion's - I thought of the term a "yoke of oxen" once used to describe two oxen joined together to pull a plough. And I realised that it was so relevant to my situation. Here, I was just one "yoke of drafts" along with nine others. Those preparing us for our day's labours worked efficiently and quickly to get us ready. In keeping with all the other drafts in my team, leather blinders were fitted over my head and secured in place by tight, leather straps. The blinkers restricted my sight; I no longer had peripheral vision and my gaze was focused directly ahead. I will discover that this is what is required of me. As I strain to pull the dray behind me, my sole attention is on the way ahead and isn't distracted by what is happening elsewhere. Once yoked into our pairs and fitted with our blinders we were ready to take our places on either side of the central shaft protruding from the front of the dray. The drays in everyday use at La Foret are especially designed to be hauled by a team of slaves. It is just common sense that a slave - and even one within a team of burly slaves - isn't as powerful as either a horse or an ox and so the drays were built with this in mind. They are smaller and lighter - which makes them more manoeuvrable - and they can be adapted for a number of uses. They can be used as flat-tops for hauling bags of fertiliser out into the fields or for bringing in the harvest to the mills. Fitted with high enclosed crates they are also used for transporting La Foret's produce and livestock into the surrounding towns for sale on market days. Today however, my dray has been fitted with high sided, wooden panels that allows for the cartage of loose gravel from the quarries to the gardens at La Foret. Someone, at some time in the past, had worked out that the most efficient use of a draft team is the "pull-push" method where the slaves not just pull the load behind them but also use their brute strength to push it forward. And this is the system in use at La Fort. I took my place on the right hand side of the central shaft. There were three yokes of drafts in front of me and one behind and I stood almost shoulder to shoulder with slave, "fifteen" on my left. At chest height was the pushing bar which I was instructed to grasp and to which my wrists were fastened by heavy chains and manacles. This had the effect of inclining my body forward at an angle suitable for pushing. Working quickly - for our driver was anxious to be on his way to the quarries - we were joined together by long chains which connected our yokes to one another and to the dray. Thus we were ready to begin our journey. As we waited for the order to move, I had a few moments to look at my fellow team mates. Before me were three rows of four slaves and if my hands had been free, I could've reached out and touched the bodies of the two immediately in front of me; we were that close to one another. My line of sight was restricted by my blinkers and their naked backs - and asses - filled my vision. The long years of hard labour and the constant heavy haulage had over-developed their bodies to the point of ugliness and their bulging muscles bordered on the grotesque. Yet they were ideally suited for their task. Their broad shoulders were heavily muscled and their knotted biceps bulged in their strong arms whilst powerful muscles rippled and flexed beneath the sun-blackened skin of their lacerated backs. The corded columns of their thighs supported the hard, rounded mounds of their tight, clenching buttocks. Their unwashed bodies were coated with the patina of fine dust from the previous day's labours and the stench of their bodies - whilst distasteful to the overseers - was proving an attraction to the myriad flies and other insects which, like honey bees attracted to a pollen laden flower, swarmed over their nakedness feeding on their uncleanliness. It was still early morning when the order was given for us to "walk on" and as yet we weren't sweating. The sun was still low in the east and suspended in a cloudless, delft-blue sky which gave promise of a hot day. The order to "walk on" was accompanied by the cracking of a whip over our bowed heads and bent backs. As one, all nineteen of my companions strained forward against their pushing bars and the dray lurched into motion. I had no other choice but to add my efforts to those of the team. I was surprised that the dray moved so smoothly. Lucien Barrois had never concerned himself with their construction. Had he done so, he would have seen they are constructed of a wooden platform mounted on a sturdy, lightweight metal frame and that the axles and wheels are carefully balanced for ease of movement. Yet despite the lightweight construction and the free moving mechanism of the wheels, the dray demanded that we put all of our strength into moving it forward. As I looked straight ahead, I could see the enormous strain this placed on a draft slave's body. Every muscle is under stress, every sinew stretched to its limit and every tendon is almost at snapping point. My blinkered view of the world was limited to the two slaves immediately in front of me. Their angled backs showed the strain of their labours and their pendulous balls hung low and heavy between their massive thighs. Their cocks and scrotums swung freely with their forward movements and like the weighted pendulum of a clock, they "tic-tocked" from side to side in unison with each plodding step. And obscenely, as I looked at them, I saw their ass-cracks were stretched wide open and their puckering, rosy-pink orifices were exposed to my view. I realised that the slaves immediately behind me - and by my calculation they were numbers "nineteen" and "twenty"- had a similar view of me and my yoke-mate. I could feel the stress in my body and felt the tension in every taut muscle and stretched sinew. But most acutely, I felt the strain placed on my own puckering ass-hole; I could feel it winking obscenely at the slaves who lumbered along behind me. It's estimated that a healthy male can walk three miles - or five kilometres - an hour and on that reckoning it should only have taken us an hour to reach the quarries. Certainly, I and my fellow slaves are fit - our labours have made us so - and under normal conditions we'd have no trouble meeting this target. But we were pulling a load behind us - and although the dray was empty - it stilled slowed us. And the undulating road to the quarries alternated between long, gradual inclines and shorter, steeper ones with their corresponding descents. And these did slow us down. It was at these times that the whips of our driver and Sir Conn were brought into play and the backs of my unfortunate companions were scourged to extract the last ounce of effort from their tired, aching bodies. I was more fortunate in that Sir Conn held back in his use of the whip on me. Nevertheless, I was occasionally subjected to the whip's persuasiveness and like my fellow slaves I applied myself with renewed vigour. I was thankful for the early morning coolness as we set out. However, before we reached the quarries, I was perspiring profusely and my sweat added to my torments. With my wrists shackled to the pushing-bar, I couldn't wipe my brow and the saltiness of my sweat stung my eyes and nostrils and attracted swarms of biting, stinging insects to my body. The road we travelled was one that led nowhere other than to the quarries and so the only traffic we met were other drays similarly employed to our own but travelling in the opposite direction. Occasionally, our driver would stop to converse with the driver of another dray and I welcomed these short rests from my labours. While our drivers laughed and joked, we drafts had time to recover a little before resuming our journey. Enviously we watched as they slaked their thirst while our parched throats screamed for the soothing balm of fresh, sweet tasting water. But no water was given to us; we had to wait until we reached the quarries before we could slake our raging thirsts. Inevitably, there was a downside to these rest-breaks. When the order was given once more to "walk on" it took a lot of effort to start the dray moving and our two overseers, anxious to make up the time lost in socialising, would lash out savagely with their whips. I discovered hauling a dray around La Foret's fields was much easier than travelling on the road. For one thing the fields are mostly flat or gently undulating. By comparison, the road had very few flat parts and mostly we seemed to be moving uphill and this of course made out task all the more difficult. On the uphill stretches, the dead weight of the dray dragged downhill behind us and slowed our progress which meant we had to struggle much harder to reach the top. And again we were encouraged by the whips of Sir Conn and the driver. On reaching the brow of a hill there was a momentary easing of our labours before we began our descent which proved infinitely worse than the ascent. The dray's weight now shifted and instead of holding us back it pushed us forward with increasing speed. Always, there was this sense that we had no control and the dray was propelling us forward and we had to scramble to find a firm purchase for our feet on the road's gravelled surface. The dray was equipped with brakes on all four wheels and our driver applied these hard to slow our descents. This helped to slow the dray's downward impetus but the brakes' friction only added to our problems. But there was relief in knowing that the driver was in control of the dray and that it wouldn't run over the top of us as we awkwardly moved downhill. I never bothered to count how many hills there were between La Fort and the quarries. My mind was too pre-occupied with the return journey when we must once again tackle these same hills - only in reverse and with a full load of heavy gravel behind us. I wondered if my Master had given any thought to any of this when he'd instructed Colton, his major domo to put fresh gravel on the garden paths in readiness for his grandmother's triumphal return to the plantation after the long years of her banishment. I'd decided that he hadn't and why would he? He'd issued an instruction; it was to be carried out and the suffering it caused his slaves was of no concern to him. I know this because in similar circumstances, Lucien Barrois wouldn't have considered his slaves. Colton, in conjunction with Claymore Jackson, has decided that it isn't unreasonable for us to haul back three loads of gravel each day. The quantity of gravel Colton requires for the pathways will be determined day by day and just how many days it will take to meet his quota is unknown. Our Master had given Colton "carte blanche" to get the job done and he will take his time to ensure that Guy Maratier is pleased with the end results. Perhaps it will add to his is productivity bonus! Suddenly, when I thought I could go no further relief is at hand. We have descended our last hill and are entering the quarry. Soon we'll rest and we'll be given water to slake our parched throats while the quarry-slaves, equipped with large mouthed shovels, will quickly load gravel onto our dray. Our respite will be brief and we need to make the most of it before we are whipped into action to begin our return journey to La Foret. Our driver stops us by a gravel heap twice my height and I look around at the familiar surroundings of the quarries I'd known as a boy. I see wretched slaves still toil in the furnace-like heat of the quarries relentlessly driven on by the impatient shouts and angry whips of their overseers. All too clearly, I see their pain and I hear their anguish. Nothing has changed! My view is restricted by my blinkers but in my line of vision I see my former school friend, Francois Fournier walking towards us. Following a respectful pace or two behind him, a naked slave carries a large umbrella to shade his Master's fair complexion from the sun's increasing heat. All too vividly, I remember the day when I'd served as an umbrella slave to my Master at Lionel Schuster's slave-market and the shame I'd felt. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Yesterday, Colton had been in contact with Francois Fournier to place an order for the gravel. Francois - conscious of the recent change of ownership at La Foret and with an eye to doing future business with the new Maratier owners - had promised the major domo that he'd attend to his order personally. Besides, his curiosity had been aroused! He wonders what has become of his old school acquaintance and rowing partner, Lucien Barrois. He knows Lucien is now a slave - well, didn't everyone - but where is he? Does he toil in the fields of the plantation that had once belonged to him? Has he been sold to a new owner? Or is he a house slave back in the city serving his former great-aunt Charlotte Maratier? Perhaps he even graces his new Master's bedroom as his body slave and bed-buck? Francois recalls those times when he and Lucien had swum naked in the nearby river. Even then, Lucien had all the attributes of a desirable pleasure slave. And the delicious curves of Lucien's shapely ass had always invited Francois' furtive glances in the showers and dressing-sheds after a rowing practice while they were still at school. He'd never admitted to it but as a teenager he'd lusted after Lucien. There were times when, after a swim, he and Lucien had rested side by side on the river bank drying in the sun's warmth and he'd fantasised about using Lucien's ass or having Lucien's mouth accept his cock into its warm, moist embrace. And he asked himself, how many times had he flipped over onto his belly in a desperate attempt to hide an embarrassing erection from Lucien? There were too many times to remember accurately. But Lucien had always had an erotic effect upon him. He'd lost contact with Lucien once their time at boarding-school finished. He regretted that! Over the intervening years he'd heard whispers from those jealous of him that Lucien Barrois was gay and that he had a liking for handsome, young, male slaves. If this was so, then it is a penchant that Francois also shared with his former dormitory mate. Francois had wondered if the rumours were true. Certainly, he knew that Lucien had never married and even within the social pages his name had never been paired with that of a frivolous debutante or a calculating socialite. Francois accepted that the rumours were most likely true; and he regretted what he saw as the "lost opportunities" of his and Lucien's youth. Since Lucien's "fall", Francois hadn't heard that he'd been sold. But he is no longer called Lucien. What is the name Guy Maratier has given him? Ah, yes! He remembers; it is Rafe and there is a story in circulation that Guy Maratier had named him after a small, black and white, mongrel dog from his boyhood. He wonders how the proud, aristocratic school friend from his boyhood has adapted to his changed circumstances. Francois intends to find out. He'll ask the driver if he knows what has become of Rafe. To be continued........