J.O. Dickingson

Travels with Nicolau Ribeiro

Chapters 25-26

Nicolau Ribeiro (16yo)
Supporting characters: boys and men from 7 and 64.
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Unable to sleep with my excitement over finally leaving these heathen lands and worry that I would be prevented from doing so, I spent a fitful night and was fully awake long before the sun rose. As a final gesture of gratitude, Husein had offered his slaves to help carry my belongings, which along with my sword, short bow and daggers, my nay, ud, nababah, and krar, and the two chests and four saddlebags I had arrived with, I had added a third chest to carry the sack of salt I had been given along with my leopard skin cloak and the zebra skin and several other items I had purchased in Cairo. To my surprise, my host and his son were awake at that early hour and my host insisted I break my fast with them before leaving. As I finally gathered up my belongings, he presented me with his final gift, a finely tooled leather bag inside which was a three-foot tusk, a gift for nighttime services I had provided him and his son, which of course I insisted was not necessary but was obligated to accept.

I had not, as I had feared, been assassinated during the night, but I was still worried Mustafa might have followed me and would be watching and waiting for me to leave the protection of Husein's home. Much to my surprise and gratitude, in addition to five of his slaves to serve as porters, Husein had arranged for two of his household guards to accompany me. Greatly relieved, I thanked him profusely and tried to pay for the extra service, but he refused, saying if it had not been for me he would not be there that morning to see me off. And so I made my way to the docks, leading a party of five slaves and accompanied by two fierce-looking, heavily armed guards, my sword at my side, my bow strapped to my back and one of my finest daggers in my belt. If Mustafa had been watching for me, I would have been impossible to miss.

The master of the ship I was to sail on was, needless to say, greatly surprised and, from the look on his face, greatly impressed with my arrival. He and his first mate had suspected I was the son of a family of some wealth and influence, and the entourage I had arrived with confirmed their suspicions and I was received with a courtesy that I suspect would have been accorded to no other Saracen. Until I was safely on my way and free of these heathen lands, I was not about to correct their misconception, and I ordered my borrowed slaves and guards as would a spoiled son, and given my position in their household the short time I had stayed there, they expected nothing different.

I did not sigh with relief until the ship pulled away from the dock later that morning, fully expecting Mustafa to arrive and somehow scuttle my plans. For the next two days we sailed along the Nile, the distance to the sea, the crew told me, being longer each time they came to Cairo, the river depositing a furlong of silt in the delta each month. From the great width of the river, the largest I have ever seen, I had no reason to doubt the sailors, and the distance out did seem much longer than the distance I had travelled upon my arrival.

At long last the muddy brown water began to clear and we entered the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean. As we picked up speed with a strong south wind blowing off the coast of the black continent and the shore became a thin line in the distance and then finally disappeared, elation filled me. I was yet a long way from home, but I was on my way, and after all these months, I was finally free of these heathen Saracens.

This being a merchant ship, only the captain had a separate room. The first and second mates shared a second, and the three merchants were crowded into the third and the purser had a small cubby. I had been given a berth in the crew's quarters, and being the last, my hammock was nearest the stairs leading topside, the least preferred location. I was expected to work for my food, though they had not expected much out of me and had me assigned to help the cook, which was mainly washing the pots and pans, and perform the most menial of jobs, swabbing the deck and cleaning the side of the ship used as the latrine. When the opportunity arose, I pitched in with the work of the sailor, adjusting the sails according to the winds and checking the rigging lines and the like, and again my past experience and my joy in performing such work served me well. The other sailors, mostly Venetian with a mix of other men from along the Italian coast, regarded me indifferently at best and with some suspicion and distrust at worst, but as they saw my capability and willingness to work, their attitude gradually softened and though we never became close comrades, I was treated with respect as men who work together exercise toward each other. I obeyed orders without question and often anticipated what was required and did not have to be told, which set me well with the captain and officers of the ship also.

Eager for any trade information I might know and for any knowledge about the Egyptian Sultanate and the surrounding area that might benefit them, the merchants treated me decently enough for an Arab. My arrival with servants and guards and considerable possessions certainly helped to improve my lot with them, as did the fact that I had intercepted the cutpurse and directed one of their members to a better source of merchandise, and they apologized they did not have better quarters for me. So it was that Naqi Ah ibn-Mustafa became the son of a moderately prosperous trader who traded along the east coast of the black continent.

I told them what little I knew of Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qa'it Bay, the sixteenth Burji Mameluke Sultan, a Circassian by birth, purchased by the ninth Sultan as a slave already at the age of twenty, freed by the eleventh Sultan to become a palace guard, then a taqaddimat alf (commander of one thousand) and eventually Sultan of all Egypt, all of which I had learned long ago from Usama, the Mameluke guard who had purchased me and inducted me into the Mameluke army. That a slave could become a sultan amazed them as it had amazed me. I told them stories about long-legged horses with necks as long as three men and jackals which laughed insanely during the night and could tear apart a man in seconds with their razor-sharp teeth, of lakes so thick with salt it formed a crust on the surface upon which women could walk, and of black men deep in the jungles who went about naked and wore diamonds in their noses and ate the flesh of men.

I had every intention of revealing my true identity once I was certain I had escaped from the lands ruled by the Moslem heathens, but once I began my fanciful tale it was impossible to do so, and with each passing day the trench I dug I got deeper. Besides, as the days passed, I discovered that while still a powerful and prosperous nation, Venice was facing constant attacks from the Turkoman Empire and other Italian states and feared invasion by France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and even the pope himself. They greatly feared the loss of their predominance in trade with the east with the rise of less friendly Arab powers throughout much of western Asia, and with reports of expeditions by the Portuguese seeking a trade route around the tip of Africa and establishing settlements all along the African coastline. Hearing their hatred of the Portuguese, I certainly was not about to reveal I was really a Portuguese citizen, son of a merchant besides, posing as an Arab! And so Naqi remained Naqi and I was content with my hammock beside the stairs.

My journey was without incident, and winds were favourable. We arrived at the grand republic of Venice eighteen days after leaving Cairo. Several sailors recommended an inn near the waterfront, one of reliable reputation and reasonable price, and most important, one that catered to "my kind." They even assisted me in transporting my belongings to the inn, and after ensuring the safety of my possessions, I treated my companions to a few drinks at a nearby tavern. I went to sleep that night much relieved to be back in civilized, Christian lands and woke late and in good spirits.

The first thing on my agenda that morning was for Naqi Ah ibn-Mustafa to disappear and for Nicolau Ribeiro, son of João Ribeiro, to resurface in his place. Packing away my turban, pantaloons and robes, I sought out more appropriate clothing, finding that I had little suitable and what little I did have was the clothing I had worn as a tellak sixteen months ago. As I tried to squeeze into them, I realized just how much I had grown in sixteen months, in height, weight, and muscle. Finally resorting to the most modest pantaloons and shirt I had worn as a koçek, I sought out one of the better clothing merchants, intending on returning to my homeland in the style befitting that of an adventurer and merchant's son.

Upon seeing my foreign clothing and my dark skin, the merchant tried to usher me out of his shop, telling me in poor Arabic that I had come into the wrong establishment and that he had nothing that I would be interested in. I replied in perfect Venetian dialect that I was most certain that I had chosen properly unless he knew of someone who offered superior quality merchandise to his. Caught by surprise at my bluntness and audacity and certain I would not have the money to purchase anything of quality, he was about to retort when I opened my purse and slapped down a handful of coins. Glancing at the coins and then at me, he had a sudden change of attitude. From the ensuing bartering as I selected a new set of clothes, it was clear that he assumed I was the rich, spoiled son of some westernized Arab, and by the time we were done I had shown that I was a knowledgeable and shrewd bargainer.

Having me remove my shirt, he measured my arms, chest, and waist for a shirt and jerkin, and from the way he looked at my body and the way his touch lingered, I suspected he had thoughts other than professional. That was confirmed when he measured me for breeches and hose, taking liberties while measuring my crotch that a professional tailor or a man interested in only females would not take. When I showed no objection, those liberties became more pronounced.

"I could ensure a better fit if you were to remove your pantaloons," he said huskily.

"I am sure you could," I replied seductively as I placed my hand on the bulge that had developed in his breeches. He flinched in surprise at my touch but quickly recovered and pressed his crotch against my palm. "And I could assure you it would be a delightfully tight fit." As he reached to untie the cords of my pantaloons, I stepped back. "Perhaps we should revisit the cost of my new garments first," I suggested.

"For a young man such as yourself, I am sure we can arrive at something suitable," he said, placing a hand on my backside.

"As I am sure you have concluded, I am not without experience, and experience can be of considerable value."

"We can perhaps negotiate a commensurable price once we determine the extent of your experience and skill."

"In that case, it just might be you who would be paying me to take your clothes off your hands," I said with a smile and a leer.

"If you are that good, it would be well worth the coin," he suggested, "but I would have to be the judge of that."

"You strike me as a man of good judgement and a connoisseur of good quality," I agreed, "and an honest man."

Putting a closed sign up and locking his door, he took me to the back of his shop where there were curtains hanging to set off where one could strip and be fitted for his new clothes. Stepping up to me, he was already breathing heavy, and as he began to caress my chest and my back and as he drew me to him for our first kiss his breathing became even heavier. I unfastened his vest and removed it and untied the ties of his shirt and pulled it over his head. A pleasant fragrance wafted up from his body, some sort of sweetish perfume I more commonly found nobles and royalty wearing. He was not an unattractive man, slender with dark black hair that extended in curls to his shoulders, a thin moustache, a narrow beard that followed his jaw line, dark, seductive eyes, and a thick, curly mat of chest hair that spread from nipple to nipple and down over his chest, narrowing to form a thick trail that disappeared into his trousers. I estimated his age to be thrice mine.

Following his hair trail, I undid the ties of his trousers and let them drop. He was wearing nothing under them. His member, already partially aroused, the bulb extending at least two fingers below his lowest nut, was circumcised. He quickly untied my pantaloons and let them drop, and then untied my thong to reveal my own member which had also begun to swell. He gently and reverently massaged my buttocks, commenting on their compactness and smoothness, and ran the tip of his middle finger along my crack and massaged my pucker with the tip of his finger, sending ripples of pleasure through the bud. As we kissed and caressed each other, we both continued to swell until we were both erect and our members were jutting up between our legs with eagerness.

Taking a jar of lubricant from one of the many shelves holding pins, needles, assorted scissors and dozens of spools of thread in the back of his shop, he quickly greased first his cock and then my anus, finally slipping his long, slender, greased first and middle fingers one at a time up my rectum to lubricate it. Eager to begin, I turned around and spreading my legs, I braced myself against the back wall and the tailor stepped up behind me and placed the tip of his cock against my greased hole. His member was long and slender and he penetrated me with little difficulty, inserting his stiff cock up to his balls. Grasping my hips, he slowly began to ease his member in and out of my rectum, and I shivered with delight at the feel of his stiff cock stretching apart my anus and causing it to burn, and then penetrating deep up my rectum, stuffing me with his erect flesh and brushing against the sensitive spot deep up my rectum and causing me to tense with the pleasure that radiated out from it. It was a pleasure I had felt many times now, but one which I find difficult to adequately describe, and one which continues to bring me delight.

He was a skilful fucker, working his member in and out of me slowly and deliberately, pausing frequently to enjoy the pleasure and to prolong the act. He paused and wrapped his arms about me and kissed the back of my neck, and then slid his hands with those long, slender fingers down over my smooth chest, toying with my nipples and then descending down further, past my short, curly hairs to cup my dangling testicles and to wrap about my stiff cock and gently massage it from base to tip, all the while having his own hot, throbbing cock deep up my rectum. He then slowly began to pump his cock in and out of my rectum once more as he stroked my cock, pulling back on it as he withdrew, and then sliding his fist forward and over my bulb as he sank his member back up my rectum.

Our breathing became laboured as our passions rose, and he paused more frequently to enjoy the pleasure he was feeling and the pleasure he was giving me, and to allow both of us to calm ourselves and delay our orgasms. He finally could wait no longer, and nor could I. As he approached that peak once more so did I, and when at last he gasped more sharply than usual and tensed, I felt his hot seed spurting up my rectum and I quivered with the pleasure of receiving his seed and with my own ejaculation, my seed racing up the core of my numbed cock and out the burning tip and spurting against the back wall of his shop and oozing down the wood. Spurt after spurt erupted from my body and gob after gob oozed down the dark wood, and spurt after spurt squirted up my rectum until he emptied his testicles. At the age of sixteen and not having spent my seed for the past eighteen days, the volume of my ejaculate was not surprising. At the age of forty-eight, his was.

We stood there motionless and gasping for breath for a long time afterward, dizzy with our ejaculations and flushed with pleasure, inhaling the distinct aroma of sweat and spent seed. It was a long time before he withdrew his cock. Mine had already begun to droop, a final pendant of my seed clinging to the tip. He handed me a cloth and we dried ourselves off. Retaking my measurements, all business now, he at last dressed and bade me remain where I was while he returned to the main part of his shop and finished making the adjustments to my new clothes. He returned soon thereafter and I tried them on, and they were a very good fit indeed. The man was a skilful tailor as had been promised

"Now, we said we would reconsider my cost," I reminded him.

He paused to think for a moment. "You already have the better of the bargain."

"Perhaps this second hose," I suggested, having spotted it earlier and having intended on adding it to my purchase. "I would not like to learn there was a rumour that you are not an honest man, or are a poor judge of quality," I suggested. "I would think you would want to have a high reputation regarding your clothes, and your other skills."

"You come in here in the dress of a Saracen, and rob me as one," he said with a half smile.

"Or there could be a rumour that congress with you is worth a fine set of clothing, and as splendid as the clothing you sell. That should bring you new clients for both."

His smile slowly widened. "You have the tongue of a Saracen also. Are you sure you are not one?"

"You have an appetite for boys like a Saracen," I replied with a smile. "Are you one?"

"I have not seen you before," he observed, conceding to me and handing me the hose.

"I am a traveller, pausing only to enjoy the delights of your fair city."

"Then perhaps you will honour my humble shop with your presence again while you are here," he said with a nod, "though I do not know if I can afford many of your visits."

"They would bring you a level of delight which you can get nowhere else," I said coquettishly as I gathered up my old clothing.

"If you are staying in the city long, one of the delights of Venice I would recommend is the Riolta, especially at night after the sun has gone down. It is not far from here. Just ask anyone for directions. You will not be disappointed." (1)

"Thank you. I just might do that."

Locating a reputable inn closer to the market and which catered mainly to traders and travellers, I made several trips to transfer my belongings. Seeing that they were secured, I headed to the marketplace. Venice was a large and rich city and I was fascinated by the number and diversity of people milling about. Those who had come to make purchases ranged from the richly dressed and respectable, wearing the latest fashions, to those who from their simple and drab clothes were labourers and peasants from the surrounding farmland. I also noticed mixed in with the Venetians were a number of whom I assumed were non-citizens from their colour and styles of dress, mostly from the Italies and other European countries. I was also surprised at the bustle of activity at the marketplace, comparable to that of larger and older centres like Rome, Lisbon and Madrid, and at the great variety and diversity of trade items, from local fruit and vegetables to those I knew came from Arab lands and from the dark continent, the products of local craftsmen along with gems, pottery and oriental silks clearly from the far east, carpets and tapestries that were of the style I had seen in Istanbul, and colourful birds that could only have come from the jungles of Africa. There was no doubt in my mind that rumours I had heard as a child that Venice was the trade centre of Europe, connecting those locally and those countries to the west with countries and goods from the east and south.

Eating my evening meal at one of the many outdoor patios, I asked the serving boy about the Riolta and after giving me a quick examination from head to toe and a look that I can only describe as bordering on repugnance, he gave me directions on how to get there. As I headed up the street, I was joined by a boy whom I figured to be my age dressed in breeches and tunic of dark green velvet with gold trim and tassels, his clothing a size too small which emphasized his buttocks and slim waist, and a large, bright yellow codpiece that drew one's attention immediately to his crotch and reminded me of the gaudy piece I had somehow come into possession of while at the Vatican. He was good-looking, with long, dark, curly hair, smooth cheeks and chin, a modest nose, deep blue eyes with long, feathery eyelashes and sensuous lips.

"I heard you asking about the Riolta," he said, falling into step beside me. "You are not a Venetian."

"No. I am new here."

"Hmm, new and asking the whereabouts of the Riolta, and young and handsome-that can only mean one thing." I glanced at him warily. "Relax," he said with a smile. "One cannot be arrested for asking directions, especially one new to our city. But it is too early yet. Come, join me for a drink." I hesitated. "I am buying. My name is Raphael." He extended his hand.

I took it and shook. "Nicolau." Having gone by the name Naqi so long, the sound of my name seemed strange.

We stopped at one of the many inns and he ordered each of us a tankard of ale. My new friend was the son of a local glassmaker, evidently quite well to do, and very talkative. He spoke in great detail about Venice, about himself, and about a great number of other things. Regarding Venice, he was particularly proud that the city was a republic, ruled by the Doge, who was himself selected by an elected council which was known as the Council of Ten though it had over time added other members from the Sorenissima Signoria, the supreme body of government, and now numbered seventeen. Regarding himself, he was proud his father was one of the leading merchants in the city and his family a great supporter of the arts, and he fancied himself as educated and worldly. In many ways he reminded me of the group of young artisans who had gathered at Lorenzo de'Medici's Academy in Florence. Regarding other things, Raphael was an authority on them all. Time passed quickly. By the time we had finished our third tankard of ale, the sun had set for at least a candle mark and I was feeling a bit tipsy, never being much of a drinker. We at last continued on our way toward the Grand Canal and the Riolta, a wide stone bridge that spanned the canal.

"Now," he said, looking at me somewhat glassy eyed and with a tilt to his head, "if it is those younger than you that you are interested in, it is the far side of the bridge that you want, and if it is those who are older, it is this side, but keep your distance from me-I do not need any competition."

There were, I discovered, several boys around our age sitting or leaning on the bridge in a provocative manner, all with tight clothing, some of it showing exposed midriffs and others with their tunics open and revealing smooth, muscular chests. There were also several older men strolling nearby, and, in the shadows and under the bridge, couples in various stages of lovemaking. Raphael drifted away from me and I stood there, self-conscious of the glances I was getting even though I had seen such looks for much of my past year and a half. Feeling uncomfortable, I continued on over the bridge. On the other side I found much the same, except the boys lounging there were much younger, perhaps seven to fourteen years of age. The men walking by and evaluating them were the same as on the other side of the bridge, with the same hungry looks. And there were couples in the shadows and under the wide, stone bridge here also, the younger of the pairs kneeling before the other, or turned and bent over.

Perched on the stone ledge was a street urchin in a half-open shirt and tattered trousers with ragged bottoms and worn knees, his dirty, bare feet swinging in the carefree manner of a child. He had to be no more than nine, with a thick, unruly mop of dark brown hair, insolent, dark-brown eyes that reflected lustful thoughts behind them, and a smug, confident twist to his seductive lips. Our eyes met and he slipped off his perch and approached me.

"Ten centesimi," he said. "Twenty if you expect me to swallow. I do not do Greek."

I followed him under the bridge. We passed several other couples too involved in what they were doing to pay attention to us. Finding a spot far enough from the others not to be intrusive and giving others who wanted past enough space, he stuck out his hand. Fumbling for my purse in the dark, I took out a coin and handed it to him, unable to tell its value in the dark but certain it was much more than he had requested. He examined it in the moonlight and looked up at me curiously. I smiled and gestured to my crotch. Looking at me as if I was crazy, he shrugged, pocketed the coin and knelt before me. Untying the laces in the front of my breeches, he slipped his young, slender fingers inside the opening and guided out my cock. He fondled it for a few moments and examined it, and satisfied it was clean, he slipped his lips about the bulb and caressed the rim with his tongue. Despite his young age, he was an expert in arousing a man, and I was soon stiff. He began to suck and at the same time worked his lips up and down the shaft of my erect member and over the bulb, reaching out and grasping my legs for support. He was skilled at that also, and slipped his lips down to my balls so my cock had to be in his throat, and back up over my bulb.

Normally I suspect he would have been quick, bringing me to my climax being his purpose rather than pleasure, and the more men he did the greater his income for the night, but I also suspect because I had generously overpaid him he took more time, and even paused occasionally to delay the end. It was not the best I have ever had, but it was pleasurable, and the added excitement of doing it clandestinely and near others similarly engaged and with a boy whose sole purpose was to make money added to my arousal. So I soon approached that peak, but to my surprise, at the last moment he clamped his lips about my cock just below the knob and cut off my desire. He clamped his lips down for a long time, and then finally resumed. The boy knew his art well, and was rewarding me for my payment.

A couple passed us, a boy close to the age of the one sucking me and an older man probably thrice my age. They stopped not too far away and the boy immediately dropped to his knees and opened the man's breeches. Watching him gave me a thrill up my spine and my swollen member twitched and leaked a droplet of the nectar that precedes one's seed. I turned my attention to the young boy on his knees before me and I admired his fine, handsome young face as he worked his lips up and down my swollen member, his eyes closed and his long eyelashes brushing his dirty cheeks. He swallowed his cock-flavoured saliva and went back down on my cock. Once more he brought me to that peak, and again he sensed from the tenseness of my member and the throbbing of the deep blue vein along the underside when I was about to emit my seed and delayed it.

The third time he did not, and he swallowed my thick goo eagerly and quickly as if drinking sweet milk straight from a cow's teat. I was highly aroused and spurted out my seed rapidly and voluminously, and he drank all I had to offer like a hungry little pup drinking from his mother's teat. I inhaled deeply with the pleasure and ran my fingers through his thick, tousled hair, my loins weak and the core and tip of my cock burning delightfully. Having swallowed all I had to give, the tousle-headed nine-year-old urchin continued with his suction, and tightening his lips about my still swollen member he slowly drew them up and down the shaft, sucking and milking the remainder of my seed out of my cock with his lips until he had sucked me dry. He finally slipped his lips off my cock and got to his feet.

"Perhaps you will tell others as generous as you about me," he said with an impish smile. So, the service I had gotten was more than in reward for my overpayment. He was a smart entrepreneur.

"Signori di Notte!" called someone before I could respond.

The boy dashed into the shadows and disappeared in a blink, and those about me just as quickly sprang to their feet and began to run, some up the bank to the street, some along the canal, and some even leaping into the water. I had no idea who these Signori di Notte were, but they were evidently trouble. I made for the street along with several others, stuffing my flaccid cock back into my breeches as I ran. Several men and boys were lined up against the stone ledge of the bridge where several men were keeping them in line with cudgels. Keeping to the shadows, I made a dash for it when their attention was drawn in the opposite direction. Several others ran along with me, men and boys, deer running wide-eyed for their lives. I had no idea where I was going being on the other side of the canal, but where did not matter at the moment as long as it was as far from the bridge as I could get. I was aware of someone running right behind me. One of the Signori di Notte or a fellow sodomite I did not know and could not turn to see. Several blocks away from the Grand Canal and beginning to run out of breath, I finally turned into an alley and spun around to confront whoever it was running behind me. To my surprise, it was Raphael. Pulling up beside me in the shadows, he bent over and grasped his knees as he gasped for breath, much less in shape than I. It took several minutes before he could speak.

"Well, Nicolau!" he finally gasped, evidently not knowing whom it was he had been running behind. "God has smiled down upon us and given us another day to delight in the pleasures of the flesh." I doubted that God had done any such thing. "Do you live on this side of the Canal?" I shook my head. "Alas, nor do I," he said. "Well, tie up the laces in the front of your breeches and we will walk back, two good friends out for a stroll. If we take our time, the Lords will likely have departed with their captives." (2)

They had indeed left by the time we returned to the bridge, as had everyone else. The area was totally deserted. Raphael joined me in my room at the inn that night, after purchasing a bottle of wine which we proceeded to empty. Raphael was drunk with the excitement of having been chased and almost caught, and he admitted that he enjoyed the thrill he got from the adventure and the danger of having sex with those of his gender as much as he enjoyed the physical pleasure of sex itself. He observed that it would be doubly hard on him if he was caught as he had already been caught twice, the first time receiving a month of jail and a half dozen lashes, and the second three months' imprisonment and a dozen lashes. I asked if the idea of being imprisoned did not frighten him and I observed that it did me. He laughed at that, saying that his jailors were just as eager for the services he provided men under the Riolta and treated him well for those services, and his fellow prisoners were willing partners to help pass the long nights if their jailors were otherwise occupied. Removing his tunic and pulling his shirt off over his head, he turned and showed me his back crisscrossed with scars from the whip as if his scars were trophies. I shuddered at the thought of such punishment, and marvelled that one would risk such punishment for a quarter of a candle mark of pleasure. (3)

The next day we arose late and toured the city with Raphael as my guide. Venice is a fascinating city, unlike any I have ever seen, built on over a hundred islands with over a hundred canals running through it. It is famous for its glassware, mirrors, glass beads and lace, and I could not resist buying gifts for Mother and my sisters. It is a beautiful city with huge palaces and churches and ornate government buildings. The centre of the city is Saint Mark's Square with Saint Mark's Cathedral and the Doge's palace, the Palazzo Ducale, on the eastern side and the grand residences of the nine procurators of the city on the north side. Near the Doge's palace stand two tall, granite columns, the top of one being the winged lion of Saint Mark and the top of the other a statue of Saint Theodore of Studium on a crocodile. The campanile of Saint Mark's is most impressive, towering three hundred feet in the air and the bells heard clearly from one end of the city to the other. Behind the Doge's palace is the Bridge of Sighs, connecting the palace to the prisons, which reminded me most uncomfortably of our adventure the night before. Snaking through the city is the Grand Canal along which are the homes and gardens of the city's aristocracy and nobility.

A grey-bearded, grey-robed priest was preaching in front of the cathedral and whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his condemnation of those who have strayed from the teachings of the Bible. In particular he ranted against sodomites, whom he said were found in all walks of life and were breeding like rats and would soon outnumber the decent citizens of the city. I wondered exactly how sodomites were breeding considering where they planted their seed, but nobody questioned his claim. Even worse, according to the priest, were the paedophiles, who preyed on the young boys of the city, corrupting the innocent sons of good men and gentle women so they wallowed in sin and lust instead of following the Word of God. Sodomites and paedophiles had to driven from the city and exterminated from the face of the earth, he warned, or God would flood the city and destroy it and all its citizens just as he had flooded Sodom and Gomorrah.

That God had actually flooded the entire earth and not just two cities because of its corruption and had much later rained fire and brimstone upon the two cities in specific because of the wickedness of its inhabitants I would have pointed out, but I did not figure he would appreciate being corrected by a youth of sixteen, or by any man of any age for that matter, and the crowd by then were so worked up I do not think they would have cared how the cities had been destroyed. The priest reminded me of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola whom I had heard preaching to the masses in Florence and ranting about immorality and corruption. I found his speech most disturbing, but Raphael laughed it off as the harmless ranting of an old man who had lost touch with the real world. (4) (5)

Raphael was eager to return to the Riolta, but after the flight in the dark the night before and listening to the priest now, I was not so eager to tempt fate again and so we parted company. On my way back to the inn where I was staying, I was gawking at the variety of stores crowded along the canal and not watching where I was stepping and twisted my foot on a patch of loosened cobblestones, managing to catch my balance but ripping the heel off my shoe in the process. I hobbled along the line of shops and was delighted to spot the sign of a shoemaker who, from the size of his shop and the quality of his shoes, was doing a good business. When I entered, I recognized him immediately as a Jew from his dress and long forelocks. He hurried over to provide me service, but upon discovering I only wanted my shoe mended and was not interested in purchasing new shoes, he turned me over to his son, a boy a hand shorter than myself but a year or so older by the name of Saul who took my shoe and bade me sit while he repaired it.

He was a quiet, handsome boy who glanced over at me frequently as he worked and smiled shyly when he was caught. Smooth cheeked and dark-eyed with an olive-brown complexion, he had long, slender fingers ideally suited for his type of work, and as I watched him stitching the heel of my shoe I could not help fantasizing about him. With his good looks, I imagined he was popular with the girls, possibly even betrothed. I knew nothing about Jewish customs and marriage but I suspected they were not that much different from Christians when it came to such things. I did know that marriage did not necessarily prohibit congress between men among Christians and Moslems, and that in all faiths, Judaism included, there were those who did not fanatically follow the doctrines of their religion which gave me hope. (6)

The boy's father interrupted my thoughts. Telling his son that he was retiring, and to close up the shop when he was done, he headed upstairs, giving me even more hope. The boy was exceedingly attractive and as I watched him work I was reminded of a poem that was the favourite of Hasan, the poet I had travelled with along with a group of artisans across Persia, and evidently of many others in that he often recited it in his performances.

A gazelle desired in Spain
wondrously formed,
Given rule and domination
over every living thing.
Lovely of form like the moon
with beautiful stature
curls of purple
upon shining temple.
Like Joseph in his form.
Like Adoniah his hair,
Lovely of eyes like David,
He has slain me like Uriah.
He has inflamed my passions
and consumed my heart with fire.
Because of him I have been left
without understanding and wisdom.
Weep with me every ostrich
and every hawk and falcon!
The beloved of my soul has slain me--
is this a just sentence?
Because of him my soul is sick,
perplexed and yearning.
His speech upon my heart
is like dew upon a parched land.
Draw me from the pit of destruction
that I go down to Hell. (7)

Finishing his task soon after his father had left, he knelt before me and held out my shoe and I raised my foot for him to put it on. He slipped it on and after a moment's hesitation, he ever so slowly slipped his fingers over my ankle and up my calf, continuing to stare at my foot resting in his lap. Finally looking up into my eyes, his filled with apprehension and with hope, he continued to slowly slip his trembling hand up to my knee. Continuing to look up at me, he ever so slowly continued up my thigh, stopping at my crotch. Smiling, I reached down and guided his hand between my legs. My cock quickly responded beneath the cloth and the boy exhaled with a shuddering sigh. I had not realized he had been holding his breath.

Reaching out and holding him by the shoulders, I raised him as I stood, and drawing him close to me, I bent my head and kissed him on the lips. They were smooth and soft and tasted of salt and his breath was fresh and clean. Our lips parted and we kissed a second time, and a third. I ran my forefinger along his cheek and looked into those dark, innocent eyes, filled with wonder and delight and anticipation.

"You are beautiful," I whispered.

He blushed. "Not half as handsome as you," he replied, looking up at me in admiration.

I kissed him again and caressed his back. "How did you know?" "I saw you looking at me," he responded, understanding what I meant, "admiring me, as a man might admire a fine shoe." I knew the look he meant and smiled. "My father has many customers, young and old. I can tell when one is interested in girls, and when one is interested in boys."

"How?"

"The way they look at me. The look in their eyes when they are not looking at me, the way they walk, the way they hold themselves. There are many ways."

He had been caressing my thighs as he talked, and he now slipped his right hand up and cupped me between the legs. We kissed again and again and began to unlace each other's tunic and undo the ties of each other's breeches. Letting them fall to our ankles, we slipped each other's tunic off and unlacing each other's shirt, we drew each other's shirt off also. His chest was smooth without a wisp of hair and that growing in his pits was long and silky. He ran his fingers over my chest, also smooth and hairless, and remarked on how muscular it was. We kissed again as we eased off our shoes and stepped out of our breeches. We stood there caressing and kissing, clothed only in our thongs. My member was quickly swelling, as was his.

An open tin of oil they used to work into old, dry leather sat on the bench beside us. He dipped his fingers in the oil and dribbled it over my now erect organ, and then dipping his first and middle finger in again, he reached behind himself and slipped his fingers into his anus. His ass was round and smooth and firm, and I caressed the cheeks as he turned and presented his ass to me. Leaning forward and bracing himself against the wall, he spread apart his legs and I stepped up behind him. From his actions and from the ease with which I penetrated him, I was not the first, but I could tell that there had not been many before me. Just as he could tell my nature, I had much experience and could tell his.

We inhaled deeply with the pleasure of our union and sighed with delight as I slowly began to fuck him. The shop smelled of leather, old and new, and of oil, a delightful, arousing odour, and as we fucked the smell of sweaty balls and of cock mingled with the odours of the shop. I caressed his chest, soft and smooth, and brushed my fingers over his nipples, causing them to become firm. I slipped my hand down to his smooth waist and while one hand remained on his hip the other continued through his silky, curly hairs to cup his balls and roll his eggs in his sack, and then to grasp his slender, erect cock by the base and slowly stroke it.

He arched his back with pleasure and breathed deeper and faster as I stroked his cock, continuing all the while to pump mine in and out of his hot, moist ass. I was breathing more quickly and deeper also as I gradually approached my climax. I paused and releasing his cock I stood there with mine buried deep up his rectum and kissed the back of his neck, willing my lust to subside and enjoying the pleasure of having my aching cock surrounded by his flesh. At long last I resumed my fucking and my stroking of his cock, working slowly, delighting in each stroke. Once again I approached that peak and once again I stopped and we stood there, sweating and gasping for breath, our bodies flushed with arousal and desire.

The third time I did not stop. With each thrust forward I felt my lust increase and I closed my eyes and threw my head back in pleasure as that raw, itching feeling encircled the rim of my knob and my stiff cock ached for the release of my seed. Saul threw his head back too and I knew he was delighting in that burning ache that encircled his knob as his cock opened and closed its peehole in anticipation. My cock grew numb and seemed to enlarge even more and I thrust it in and out of his ass now in desperation, pumping faster and faster on his swollen, throbbing cock. We were soon rewarded with that burning sensation deep at the base of our cocks and rushing up the core as our seed raced up our swollen cocks and spurted out the tip, mine spurting deep up Saul's hot, tight ass and his spurting into the air and spraying the wall before him. Squirt after squirt erupted from our bodies and we gasped with the pleasure of our ejaculation and that of the other as the nutty fragrance of seed joined the other odours of the shop. We sucked in the fragrant air deeply and desperately as our heads spun and our loins grew weak, gasping in delight with our orgasms.

The following day I toured the shops, seeking information on the major trade routes and the sources of the items on display in the shops besides the goods produced there in the city, knowing that such information would be of much interest and great value to Father and Uncle and to King João. At noon I found myself at Saint Mark's Square where the priest of the previous day was replaced by a priest in tattered rags hanging in a cage before the Palace of the Doge. I inquired of one of the crowd who had gathered to jeer the man and toss rocks at him as to his crime, and I was told he was a sodomite, in this case of the worst kind, one found engaging in his sin with a child, having been caught in congress with a young altar boy. I asked how long he was to hang there on display, and was told until he breathed no more, and, God willing, hopefully he would suffer a long time. (8)

I quickly left the square, my appetite gone. I wandered about the city aimlessly and without seeing, wondering what it would be like to be put on public display for all to know one's most terrible sin, what it would be like to suffer a long death from starvation and thirst, and what sort of men would condemn one of their own to such a fate. I found myself before an unknown inn and I calmed myself with a mug of ale, and then another. A group of young nobles, half a dozen in number from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five, were drinking there, and called upon me to join them, for from my dress I was deemed to be of a high enough class to be included in their number. Half of the nobles were local citizens, the other half were visitors to the city. We talked of many things, including the priest in the cage, the Catholic Church, the Lords of the Night, the Council of Ten, and the merchants' fears that God would flood the city because of its sodomites. I learned that the city ran brothels with the full knowledge and support of the church in order to satisfy the lusts of the young men of their city and the lusts of visitors, hoping that by offering girls they would satisfy the sexual needs of young men which would otherwise be satisfied with members of their own sex. (9)

Half drunk, we left the inn and headed for the nearest apothecary where several of our company paired up with men loitering there while the rest of us headed to the next apothecary, there appearing to be an exorbitant number in the city. The apothecaries, I was told, were common meeting places of men interested in satisfying their needs with other men. Those in my group were eager to help satisfy those needs, a few for the extra money as a result of overly stringent parents, a few, like Raphael, for the adventure and danger which gave them as much pleasure as having sex itself, and for all of them as an act of defiance of their parents and of the authorities, both of whom they considered addled, repressive and hopelessly old-fashioned. One of our group, a boy my age, thought it all a lark and bragged of his conquests and how he exploited the men who frequented the apothecaries, extolling outrageous gifts in return for his silence.

Drunk and worked up by my companions, I joined in their adventure, pairing up with a man four times my age at the next apothecary, a man old enough to be my grandfather, a thin, balding man with a thin nose and a thin cock, grateful to have a young boy's ass to satisfy his lust. I stood there bent over in the dark, listening to him panting and wheezing as he thrust his cock in and out of my ass, him finding delight in the fucking, me finding delight in defying those who would see me punished. He paid me well for the pleasure I had provided him and left satisfied, I did not. On my way back to my inn, I noticed I was being followed, and I immediately thought of the Lords of the Night and my heart leaped to my throat. As I approached an unlit corner he quickened his pace, and shoving me into the dark alley, he pulled out a dagger and demanded my purse. Expecting some fop out for sex, he did not expect to come up against a trained soldier and former guard. I easily disarmed him and he fled into the night and I had another fine dagger to add to my collection.

The next day I strapped on my sword and slipped my newly acquired dagger in my belt and continued making my inquiries, wishing to take full advantage of my unplanned visitation of the city to further the welfare of my father and my king. In the course of my inquiries, I learned that many of the citizens were gathering in Saint Mark's Square in the latter part of the afternoon. Figuring that perhaps the priest had died, or that they were gathering to heap more scorn upon him, I joined them out of curiosity. I found instead a platform has been erected before the palace of the Doge. Shortly after my arrival a young man of perhaps twenty-five was hauled up onto the stage, a man proclaimed to be a sodomite and whose partner had escaped and fled the city. Again those present were worked up to a feverish pitch, and to my horror, the man was beheaded before us all and his body thrown on a pile of faggots and set on fire. I was reminded of the scene in Madrid in which a man was burned alive for being a moro. At least this man died a quick and painless death. As the stench of burning flesh reached my nostrils, I turned and fled from the scene, ducking into an alleyway and upheaving.

"It is not a sight for a civilized man, is it?" I turned to find a richly dressed man in his mid-twenties standing there observing me. "Come," he invited, "a drink of fine Venetian wine will clear your head, and your nostrils."

I doubted that but joined him anyway in the hope that he was right. He introduced himself as Bartolomeo Coscinni. In the course of our conversation I learned that his family was one of the richest in the city and part of the city's nobility. I followed him to an inn located along the Grand Canal called The Gull's Nest where we were joined with several other young men evidently friends and of the same social status from their dress. Several, I noticed, were wearing swords, though I suspected they were largely ornamental and not functional. The major topic of course was the beheading in the square and the increasing presence of the minions of the Council of Ten and their supporters. As the night before, the company I found myself in was not supporters of the establishment, and as the night before, I found myself drinking too much, to the extent that I lost any focus of the conversation and would later be unable to repeat most of it. I do remember a discussion involving Florence and the School of the Medici and of Plato and the more enlightened thought of the Greeks, and I do recall observing that I had once attended a meeting of such great minds at the Academy and not only met some of the up and coming artisans and philosophers, but got to know several intimately, which greatly impressed my present company, and I am ashamed to say, loosened my tongue even more. One of the nobles, a quiet, plain-looking man a bit older than Bartolomeo by the name of Frucciano, was particularly interested in what they had to say about Plato's philosophy and was teased about his infatuation and single-focussed interest in another man.

A few candle marks later Bartolomeo and I left the others and I followed him to a gymnastic school, one of several in the city, and we stood on the sidelines and watched the lithe, bare-chested, young boys practising their floor movements, exercising on the pommel horse, parallel bars and rings, and vaulting. One of the lads of about the age of fourteen noticed us and when they took a break ran over to us with a friend. They and Bartolomeo evidently knew each other and he introduced me. When their instructor called them back, Bartolomeo asked if they were available after practice, and when the boy said they were, he invited them to join us, and told them with a suggestive leer it would be a waste of their time showering before joining us.

Finding a small, secluded piazza nearby, we sat on the edge of the fountain, several maidens and male youths pouring water from jugs, and consumed a bottle of wine Bartolomeo had brought with him and talked about sports and physical fitness and the practice of ancient Greeks of youths practising in the nude. One of the boys excused himself to empty his bladder, and Bartolomeo joined him. I sat there awkwardly with the other boy, who I figured to be the same age as the other or a year younger, not knowing what to say. The boy asked me if I knew how to fence and I replied that I had been trained as an army recruit, and at one point had served as a caravan guard. That of course impressed him, and he asked the inevitable question if I had ever killed anyone, to which I replied simply that I had, which impressed him even more.

"And are you trained also in use of the little sword?" he asked shyly.

"By the best," I replied, "and I have pierced many with it also."

The boy smiled and then glancing around, jerked his head toward the other end of the piazza. I quickly agreed and we quickly stripped there in the shadows behind some conveniently placed shrubbery. The boy was, as one would expect of one from a school of gymnastics, slim and with strong, muscular arms and legs. As the moon shone on his smooth body and sharply defined muscles, I was reminded of the marble statues back in the garden of Lorenzo de'Medici. He even wore his hair short and in tight curls like many of the statues I have seen, and he had the face of a cherub. He was no innocent, though, and though not skilled, he was familiar with how things were done. He and his friend, I later learned, met Bartolomeo and one or another of his friends occasionally and discretely for a lark, and for the prestige, for Bartolomeo was well known as a lover, and his family well known as patrons of the arts and of sports and with connections with the rich and the powerful.

My new companion and I fondled each other there in the dark, and soon we were both erect. He had come prepared and retrieved from his discarded clothing a jar of lubricant which he applied to my stiff cock and to his anus. As he bent over and spread his legs, I stepped up behind him and placing the tip of my cock against his hole, I grasped his hips and slowly pressed forward. He readily opened up to me and ever so slowly but surely my bulb stretched open his anus and then popped inside his rectum. I paused and then slowly sank my cock up his asshole until my hairs were pressing against his smooth, compact buttocks. He had a beautiful ass, round and firm, and I grasped his cheeks as I slowly eased my cock back out and then sank it back up his rectum. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the pleasure of having my stiff cock surrounded by hot, moist flesh, and on the pleasure of having congress with a young boy for the pure physical pleasure it brought both myself and him.

It was pleasure that was first and foremost of the reasons he and his friend joined Bartolomeo and his friends, certainly the pleasure that came from providing pleasure to others, but even more so the pleasure that comes from engaging in sex with another male, from having one's rectum stuffed with another man's hot, stiff cock, and from having another male wrap his fingers about your stiff cocklet and fondle it as he did his own, creating ripples of burning pleasure in your cock that he knew all to well from his own. I stroked his stiff, little cocklet, perhaps a hand in length, with my thumb and three of my fingers, very much aware my partner had only recently entered his teens and for whom this throbbing pleasure was still something very new and mysterious. He squirmed with the pleasure I was providing him, the throbbing of his cock and the throbbing of his anus, both burning with an itch that doubled in strength with each stroke of my fingers and each stroke of my cock.

Soon we were breathing heavily with the pleasure enveloping us, and I threw back my head and sighed as I worked my aching cock in and out of his ass and rapidly stroked his little, throbbing cocklet. He inhaled deeply and tensed with the pleasure pulsating though his anus and through his swollen cock, the two of us gradually approaching our climax. I finally paused to allow our passions to subside, and then worked my cock in and out of him slowly and stroked only his shaft to keep up the pleasure but to delay the inevitable. For the moment the ranting against what we were doing was forgotten so great was the pleasure, and later I would have to wonder again what was so terrible about what we were doing that men were put to death for it.

As my cock went numb, I gasped for breath and thought only of the pleasure pulsating about our union and seconds later I felt the familiar twang deep up my groin and the burning delight of my seed racing up the core of my cock and spurting out of the tip. I closed my eyes in ecstasy and trembled with the pleasure, and seconds later I felt his little cocklet throbbing hotly between my fingers and then throbbing out his seed. Spurt after spurt of his hot, watery seed shot out of his hot, little cocklet, flying through the air and striking the stones lining the piazza. When we were spent, we stood there for the longest time enjoying the warm flush that floods the body and the mind after the spending of one's seed. Returning to the fountain, we found Bartolomeo and his young friend waiting for us.

The following afternoon I returned to Saint Mark's square to check on the priest and found him weak but still alive. The burnt body was also still there. As I looked back up at the priest, I was joined by one of the young men I had met the day prior, a nineteen-year-old by the name of Grecco del Guidecca. "Poor devils," he said, looking at the priest and at the burnt corpse. I agreed. "At least his death was quick and painless," he said, looking at the corpse. "I would much sooner go that way." I had to agree again. I commented on my surprise of the risks of being discovered that men who had congress with others of their sex took, and he observed that he was careful and did not frequent the known spots where men were known to pick up young boys, and that besides, his parents were rich and connected to the Council of Ten, which everyone knew. Even if caught, he would likely be allowed to slip away as his parents would see that he went unpunished anyway.

"Do you have any plans for the afternoon?" I shook my head. "I am going to meet a friend. Come and join me." Having nothing better to do, I did.

His friend, I discovered, was a fourteen-year-old boy by the name of Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondolona, an attractive, effeminate boy with gorgeous, long hair extending half way down his back and dressed in dark blue tights, an elaborately gold and silver embroidered tunic of a lighter blue, and a long-sleeved white shirt with frills and ruffles about the neck and wrists. We were invited to stay for the evening repast, the main course being a delicious seafood pasta dish with wild mushrooms and a thick, rich white sauce. The boy's mother and father fussed over Grecco as if he were royalty and proudly bragged about their fourteen-year-old son's attractiveness and the number of admirers and suitors he had. (10)

Grecco had introduced me as a visitor from Florence connected to the Medici family, which greatly impressed our hosts, and I spent much of the meal talking about my experiences in Florence and at the Academy and about the men I had met there. It is not my nature to brag, but the parents were most eager to learn about the Medici's and pressed me for details and I found myself embellishing what I did not know or did not remember so as not to disappoint them, nor my new companion. To be honest, I found their sycophantic behaviour flattering and am ashamed to admit that I encouraged them.

After our evening meal we accompanied Andrea to his bedroom, which was more richly furnished than any I have ever seen. The moment the door was closed, Grecco took Andrea in his arms and kissed the boy. Embarrassed, I offered to leave, to which Grecco responded that he had been looking forward to me joining them, and Andrea added that he had been hoping I would do just that the moment he had met me. It had been obvious throughout the evening that the boy was infatuated with Grecco, and now in the privacy of his bedroom the extent of that infatuation was openly revealed. He clung onto every word that Grecco said and was eager to please him in whatever way that he could.

They soon had each other half undressed, and then approaching me, they included me in the disrobing until all three of us were naked. When asked if I preferred the French way or the Greek, I responded that I enjoyed both equally, which was the truth, whereupon Grecco chose for me, telling Andrea he wanted to watch us suck each other. So I lay on my back on the boy's bed and the boy climbed above me, straddling me in the opposite direction and balancing on his knees and elbows on either side of me. His beautiful, long, soft hair fell over my loins and thighs, causing my by then stiff cock to jerk with excitement. He then slipped his lips over my bulb and began to suck and it was quickly evident that this fourteen-year-old boy was skilled in the French art.

His own cock, six finger widths in length, pointed down at me and I raised my head and slipped my lips round his bulb and began to suck also, Grecco slipping a pillow under my head for support. I savoured the delicious taste of the young boy's cock and the fragrance of his balls as I sucked on his bulb and enjoyed the pleasure of his hot mouth enveloping my own bulb, and as he slowly began to work his lips up and down my cock, I did likewise to him. Engaging in sex with this gorgeous boy two years my junior was arousing, and being watched by his friend and lover made it even more so. My cock throbbed hotly in his mouth, and his own throbbed in mine and I knew the boy was finding this as erotic and as pleasureful as I was.

Grecco watched for a while and then joined us, kneeling on the bed behind Andrea and caressing his smooth buttocks, and then inserting his middle finger up the boy's rectum. His finger was soon followed by his cock, and he slowly fucked the boy as the boy and I sucked on each other's member. Soon the three of us were panting with arousal and we closed our eyes and concentrated on the pleasure, for me and for Andrea the pleasure of being sucked and of sucking another's cock, and for Andrea and Grecco the pleasure of being fucked and of fucking. All the while I could not help but think of the boy's mother and father who by then had probably retired and who had to know what their boy was doing. It was with that thought that I released my seed and the gorgeous boy eagerly swallowed my hot, thick cream, at the same time releasing his and I swallowed his slime with the same eagerness while Grecco grasped the boy's buttocks and filled his rectum with his seed.

We relaxed afterward and talked, mostly about my experiences in Florence and the philosophies I had heard the others at the Academy express. In time our interest turned to the physical once again, and this time Andrea and Grecco formed the position the boy and I had, and I mounted the boy from behind as Grecco had done. As I worked my stiff cock in and out of the boy's rectum, I could not stop thinking that I was sliding my cock in and out of Grecco's seed, and that Grecco was sucking on the cock that only a candle mark ago I had been sucking. Again I found the experience highly arousing, as did my two companions, and soon they were swallowing each other's seed while I squirted mine up the boy's rectum to mix with Grecco's seed.

We left in the early hours of the morning and headed to Grecco's parent's house, Grecco having invited me to spend the rest of the night there. We slept until late the next morning, by which time his father had long ago left for work. His mother bid him good morning and ordered the servants to bring us food to break our fast. She asked nothing about me and did not appear to care that I had spent the night in his bedroom, and she asked nothing about where we had been.

Learning of my interest in Venetian merchandise, Grecco took me that afternoon to visit several merchants dealing in blown glass, the most exquisite and expensive, and I purchased several at a much reduced price, thanks to my friendship with Grecco. This we took to my room at the inn, and that evening I accompanied Grecco upon his invite and we dined with another rich merchant who dealt in mirrors. We were warmly greeted as we had been at the Gondolona household the night before, and the way the merchant and his wife fawned over Grecco you would think he was a Prince. They had two daughters, a girl of fifteen, a year younger than myself, and another of twelve, and two sons, Marco age eight and Giovanni age seven. Again Grecco casually commented on me being from Florence and knowing the Medici family, and again our host became most interested.

Following our meal, the wife and daughters excused themselves and the boys were dismissed and we and our host retired to the parlour where we consumed a bottle of wine over conversation, mostly regarding the Council of Ten and political matters, of which I had little to contribute. After a candle mark or so our host excused himself with the curious comment that his sons were most likely growing anxious and bid us good night.

As we left the room, to my surprise, instead of leaving, Grecco headed up the stairs and down the hall. He evidently knew his way around the house and where he was going. Following him, I was surprised to find ourselves in the bedroom of the two sons. They, on the other hand, were not surprised to see us. They were also eager to begin and soon had the two of us stripped naked and lying on our backs on the bed they shared as they quickly tossed off their clothes. Grecco insisted they arouse me first and he lie there propped up on his right elbow watching as the two boys descended on me, the two of them eagerly licking my balls and my cock and sucking my nipples until they and my member were stiff and aching. They then proceeded to do the same to Grecco while I watched, and watching the two naked, preteen boys arousing him had my member dripping nectar and me aching to engage in sex with them.

The youngest, Giovanni, proceeded to suck my member while his older brother sucked that of Grecco. The boys sucked on our swollen cocks and worked their lips up and down the shafts with such eagerness you would think our members had been coated with honey, and it was not long before the two of us were squirting our honey into their mouths. We then returned the pleasure, sucking on their little cocklets until the two brothers were squirming and squealing with their orgasms. They then presented their backsides to us and I took eight-year-old Marco while Grecco took his seven-year-old brother. From the ease with which we penetrated them, it was clearly not a new experience for either boy, and they took as much delight in being fucked and masturbated by us as we took in fucking and masturbating them. It was not the first time I had engaged in sex with brothers, and I had to wonder what each was thinking of the other and in a way I envied them having a brother with whom they could share this delight.

We rose late the next morning and broke our fast with the two boys, the merchant having left long before and the mother and sisters discretely out of sight. Again I had to wonder about such parents who offered up their prepubescent sons for possible political gain, and what they had to have been thinking knowing their sons were being ravished down the hall, and what the boy's sisters had to think about their brothers engaging in sex with those of their own gender. I asked Grecco if he did not feel guilty, leading on this family and the one the previous night, letting them both think he was in love with their sons. He laughed and said he was not leading them on and that he did love the sons of both families equally, and the sons of several others. Besides that, he added that the families were most certainly entertaining others and offering up their sons to them also.

Grecco, feeling the effects of too much wine the night before, and not being the most ambitious of people to begin with, was content to laze around for the afternoon. Agreeing to meet him at The Gull's Nest later that afternoon, I headed down to the docks to see what information I could find about ships sailing to Rome or beyond, and anything more about trade with the Arabs. One of the ships I noted had a different design from the rest and a crew that looked neither Venetian nor Arabic though their dress was vaguely familiar. I wandered in its direction out of curiosity and as the crew unloaded its cargo, I wondered what it was.

"Noble young knight!" I paid no attention to the call. "Sir Knight of the Langue of Aragon, Order of Saint John of Jerusalem!" I turned to see who had called. I recognized the turban as the type the Ottoman wore. As the man limped toward me, it took me several moments to recognize him. "By Allah, a thousand blessings on his name, it is you," he said.

"And it is you," I replied. I did not know his name but it was the Ottoman soldier who had seen me fall in battle and had also been injured, and who later had spoken to me in the hospital in Angora, and even later accompanied me as a guard during my audience with Sultan Bayazid II.

"I did not ever expect to see you again, but our Benevolent and Gracious Majesty appears to have been correct, a tellak boy of your looks can earn enough to buy passage to the west. Tell me boy knight, are you now on your way to Anacona to escort the Holy Relic to your Pope?" I looked at the man blankly. "Ah yes, I remember your message to his Gracious Majesty. Or more appropriately, I remember the look on his face!" he laughed. "From the darkness that passed over his face I thought for sure he would order me to separate your head from your body on the spot. I never thought I would ever see the day when one so young would speak so boldly to the Sultan of all the Ottoman! I bear a message for you from my Pope he says! And what a message!" He laughed again.

"Well, I have made my way to the Italies," I replied, "though the route has been long and circuitous. But what of you? You no longer wear the uniform of a soldier. What brings you to Venice? Surely not the artifact of which you speak."

"No, I am no longer a soldier. His Majesty's army has no need of a foot soldier with a gimpy leg. I am now a humble guard protecting the goods of a certain merchant, who was once a solider himself, until they have been unloaded and taken possession of by these infidels and we can return to friendlier ports. We are at peace with Venice today, but tomorrow is another day. As for the artifact," he said in a lowered voice, "with the death of King Corvinus, the Hungarian Empire is leaderless, and our Sultan would prefer it stay that way. I do not know if your Pope had anything to do with lessening the threat from the west, as Sultan Bayazid had suggested to you, and if that was reason for him to fulfill his promise regarding gifting the artifact. I am now a simple guard and not privy to such information. But your audience with the Sultan gave me much to tell and many bought me a drink to hear the tale, and there are still those who remember and pass along rumour to me, and the rumour is that the artifact of which we speak is this very moment making a ceremonial progression through our land before travelling by ship to Anacona where it is to arrive in… two weeks."

That was indeed a surprise, and a delight to learn that what is rightfully a Christian artifact was being returned from these heathen lands to where it belonged, whatever the reasons. When I headed to The Gull's Nest I was in a good mood and bought a round of drinks for Grecco and his friends. In such a good frame of mind I was, I let Grecco and Bartolomeo convince me to join them and a third member of their group on an excursion to the nearest pastry shop, where they promised with winks and leers I would find a particularly sweet treat.

They were quite right. The pastry shop drew youngsters to it like a magnet draws iron filings, and the youngsters drew Grecco and his crowd just as a field of flowers draws bees. The boys gathered there were anywhere from seven to fourteen years of age, and it was not just the sweets that drew them. They were all well aware they themselves drew Grecco and his crowd. To my surprise I learned at least half the boys had been in jail, where they learned much more about the craft of male to male sex, and some even had been whipped for plying their trade. Several at that tender age even declared they cared only for older men and wanted nothing to do with the female sex. Grecco and his friends joked how bad the boys were, and the boys joked how bad we older boys were and to my shame I admit I found such talk arousing. The three of us soon paired up with three boys and found secluded spots nearby to savour our sweets. The boy I chose was a tousle-headed cherub of seven, and he tasted as sweet as honey, and the way he sucked my cock you would think he felt the same about it. Of course the coin I gave him afterward had to have much to do with his delight, and with the skill he had demonstrated

Stiff, his cocklet was no longer and thicker than my thumb and his testicles the size of a swallow's egg. The sight of one so young and innocent with a tiny erection jutting up from his hairless crotch and knowing this child was feeling the same desire and lust as I was never ceases to amaze me and to arouse me. As I knelt there sucking on this young boy's little cocklet and felt hit throbbing between my lips, I closed my eyes and delighted in the pleasure I was giving him and that I knew he was feeling. His little noodle was silky smooth but hard as a bone, and he squirmed and giggled with the pleasure my lips and tongue were causing him.

I then stood and opened my breeches and he eagerly knelt before me and wrapped his hot, little fingers about my swollen member. Holding it at the base, he leaned forward and sticking out his tongue he licked my blood-engorged cock and closed his doe-like eyes with delight as he savoured my swollen, throbbing flesh. His tongue ran around the rim of my bulb, causing me to quiver with delight, and he fastened his rosy lips to the tip of my cock and sucked on the peehole, his long eyelashes fluttering with delight as I inhaled sharply with my own pleasure. He knew the art of sucking cock well and the sight of this cherub eagerly sucking on my cock caused it to leak the first of a stead stream of clear nectar.

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, I looked down at this cherub on his knees, my cock in his mouth, his thumb and first fingers pumping his own little stiff cocklet, his cheeks flushed with arousal, and swooned with delight and love that only a boy-lover can know, a delight that exceeded the throbbing pleasure of a stiff cock and the burning itch of one's bulb. I would that that pleasure could last forever. All too soon my cock went numb and the boy sucking on my cream-filled treat was soon gulping down my thick slime as he quivered with his own dry orgasm. Spurt after spurt of my seed shot into his mouth and he eagerly swallowed it until I had emptied my balls, now drawn up tight below my cock. At last he withdrew his lips and he smiled up at me, his deep brown eyes filled with delight and his smooth lips coated with film of my slime.

The next day Grecco and Bartolomeo bragged to their companions about what we had done the previous night and the pleasure they had experienced, both the sexual pleasure and the pleasure of satisfying their lust and defying the attempts of the church and the establishment to deny them what they considered their rights as citizens and as men. Rejoicing with them in bragging about their badness, I agreed to accompany them again that evening. The three of us toured those areas of town where boys were known to loiter and meet up with sodomites.

Finding three buddies the age of ten or eleven, inexperienced but out looking for "fun" and to defy the authority of their parents, the six of us headed to the closest secluded site, a dark, treed graveyard behind one of the city's larger churches. There we dropped our breeches and satisfied our lusts in the open under the light of the moon, enjoying the physical pleasure of engaging in the forbidden with those for whom it is still largely a mystery and enjoying the excitement and danger of our flaunting of the laws and mores of society, daring God to flood the city if he found our pleasure so to His disliking, finding seeking our pleasure there on hallowed ground particularly suited considering the opposition of the Christian church and its leaders, and our three young partners rejoicing in pleasures still new and wonderful and in their daring and defiance of their parent's wishes. I have to admit I found the fact I was encouraging my young lad to pursue my path and to defy his parents who would have us punished heightening my own pleasure. The risk of being interrupted by the Lords of the Night added further to the tension and delight of our clandestine pleasure. As I filled the rectum of the young boy whose name I do not know, I found it particularly exhilarating to consummate my act there in the shadows of a tombstone above the grave of evidently a rich patron of the city.

The following day I continued my rounds of the merchants and at noon while seeking something to eat I could not help but linger where a vendor was selling sweet confections and admiring the assortment of boys who came to purchase his wares. One of the older boys, about fifteen I estimated, exceedingly handsome, dark haired and dark eyed, seemed to be some sort of hero to the other urchins who hung about him with enamoured looks. Noticing me watching, he whispered something to two of the boys whom I figured to be ten and twelve, and the three approached. He came straight to the point.

"I have noticed you watching," he said. "Are you looking for something sweet?"

"Sweet, but with some spice," I said, daring to take a chance, which I knew was dangerous and foolish but which I could not resist so great my debauchery and depravity.

"My name is Murano, and this is Giacomo and Rinaldo," he said, introducing his ten and twelve year old companions respectively. "I think you will find Giacomo can satisfy your sweet tooth, and Rinaldo can satisfy your need for spice." "And you. What can you satisfy?"

"That itch you cannot reach, and where the sun does not shine," he said saucily. He reminded me of the Berber Ahmar, and I discovered that afternoon the two were very similar. Each plied his trade very well, the one a cutpurse and the other a boy whore, and each having his admirers who worshipped his existence and would gladly follow in his footsteps.

"And why are you concerned about one man's hunger?" I asked, glancing at each of them in turn.

"It is not good for a man to hunger," replied Murano, "and you look like a man with discriminating tastes."

"Discriminating tastes can be expensive."

"You will find what we offer well worth the cost."

They were. I followed the three boys to a nearby residence and easily climbed over the stone fence covered with vines. There I found myself in a courtyard choked with overgrown shrubs and weeds. Assuring me that the home was owned by an old bedridden crone who never entered the courtyard, the three boys proceeded to demonstrate their skills. The three quickly untied the ties of my breeches and pulled down my hose and untied my thong. Murano and Giacomo quickly dropped their breeches and revealed their privates, the two boys wearing neither hose nor thongs and they pulled me down to my knees. While the ten-year-old stepped up before me and offered his treat, the fifteen-year-old stepped up behind me and fingered my pucker and twelve-year-old Rinaldo sat on the ground and reached for my dangling member. The four of us were soon erect.

And so I knelt there in the unkept courtyard of the old crone and licked and sucked on the hairless balls and stiff little cocklet of one boy while a second similarly sucked and licked on mine and a third eased his stiff member up my rectum. The three boys performed their actions for the promise of coin, but from the eagerness with which they did so they also did it for the pleasure it brought them. Rinaldo eagerly slipped his lips about the bulb of my cock and sucked and Giacomo balanced himself by holding onto my shoulders as I sucked on his stiff, throbbing little cocklet while Murano grasped my hips and pumped his stiff cock in and out of my rectum. Assaulted by the pleasure of having my stiff, itching cockhead sucked, by the burning of my anal opening as it was stretched by the teenage boy's stiff cock, and by the delight of sucking on the tender young sprout of ten-year-old Giacomo, I knelt there feeling like I was in the Garden of Eden and being pleasured by the promised Gilman the faithful deserved.

I grasped the smooth backside of young Giacomo and delighted in sucking his slender little cocklet no longer and thicker than my thumb, and delighting even more in knowing the pleasure the youngster was feeling, a pleasure forbidden by church and by law. I knew the throbbing delight of his swollen little member and the burning itch of his bulb was the same as I was feeling as twelve-year-old Rinaldo sucked on my cock, and I knew the pleasure the two of us were feeling was the same pleasure Murano was feeling as he pumped his stiff, throbbing cock in and out of my rectum. Fucked, sucked, and sucking, I closed my eyes in ecstasy and tottered dizzily from the physical and mental pleasure assaulting my mind. I concentrated on those pleasures and eagerly sucked on the young boy's cocklet and worked my anal muscle in time with the stiff cock working in and out of my ass. The tension in my groin gradually increased as my cock was sucked, the twelve-year-old at the same time having slipped his hands inside his breeches and was now stroking his own throbbing cocklet.

All too soon we reached our climax and I shot my seed down Rinaldo's throat as he quivered with the delight of drinking my seed and with the assault of his own dry orgasm by his own hand. His young companion shivered with his dry orgasm also as I sucked on his throbbing, aching little cocklet, and their hero and mentor grasped my hips and quivered with his orgasm, squirting his seed deep up my rectum. The four of us snorted and panted in sheer ecstasy as we reached our orgasms, wet and dry, our minds spinning with the pleasure. I rewarded the three boys well upon slipping back over the wall and they returned to the sweet vendor, to spend some of that coin I suspect, and to look for another customer they might offer their service.

I was tempted to go to The Gull's Nest but decided at the last moment nothing could equal the pleasure I had just experienced and instead I sought my evening meal elsewhere and returned to the inn to spend the night alone. The next day I discovered that Grecco and two of his companions had been caught at the Riolta and arrested. Grecco they figured would certainly be released but would likely not be seen for some time, his father most likely sending him away to keep him out of trouble. The other two were also of rich families and likely would escape punishment, but it would cost their families dearly. The mood was not one that I found encouraging, and I left soon afterward, pausing at a wine shop to purchase something to calm myself. There were several boys loitering there, and as I made my selection I noticed several older men furtively making connections. I also noticed one boy perhaps two years younger than myself loitering in the shadows shyly, a boy of not great looks nor build with perhaps a nose too long and too narrow, a body too thin, and with sad eyes. I stopped to talk to him and it was clear why he was there. His eyes suddenly widened with fear as two men appeared, and before he could slip away, approached us.

"What are you two boys doing here?" asked one, evidently the leader of the two.

I gave the man a glaring look as I appraised him. I slowly moved my hand to reveal my sword. "My cousin and I were discussing how pleasant the evening was, and if we should take a stroll and enjoy it before we return to my uncle's."

"Cousins," said the leader, studying us dubiously.

"A white eight-pointed cross," the other observed, nodding to my sword and keeping his eyes on it. "How is it you carry a sword of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem?"

"I am a knight of the Order, knighted by His Holiness Pope Innocent VIII himself."

"Come," said the other to his leader. "Not these two. A knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem does not seek male companionship in the streets."

"The depraved behaviour is found in all walks of life," his leader responded, sounding very much like a reprimand, and I saw the hint of jealousy in his eyes. "I have not heard of the order knighting one so young. How do we know the sword is not stolen?"

"You have insulted my family name twice this evening," I replied coldly but evenly as I partially drew out my sword, the blade gleaming in the lamplight, "first of sodomy and now of thievery. It would be a grave mistake to do it a third time."

"Come," insisted the second. "One does not wear a sword if he is looking for delights of the flesh, and the other looks so timid if a man were to pull out his little dagger he would surely faint."

"That one I have seen before, though never before with a man," the leader said, nodded at my supposed cousin. "Curious, I am thinking, perhaps tempted." He quickly glanced at me to see if I would respond to this insult, and when I did not, he thought for a moment further. "This one I have not seen before." He looked at me challengingly.

"I am new here, from Rome, visiting my uncle. My cousin was showing me where to buy good wine," I said, speaking slowly and emphasizing each word as if restraining my anger as I continued to stare at him coldly. I had learned from far greater men than this. I raised my bottle in evidence.

The leader considered my words a moment and motioned for us to go, mumbling about us being too close in age, more to justify his decision not to challenge me further to his companion than to provide a reason for letting us go. My companion was trembling so greatly that I thought I might have to carry him. "If the Watch had arrested us," he said with a tremor when we were out of earshot, too shaken to finish his sentence. (11)

I took the boy to my room at the inn and poured him a glass of wine. He confessed that he had recently turned fourteen and that the leader of the pair who had intercepted us had been correct. He had been frequenting wine shops for the past six weeks since his birthday, figuring it was time he became a man and being too uncertain about engaging for his first time with a woman, and figured it safer to begin with a member of his own sex. Besides, he confessed with a blush, he was curious about just what men did together. He confessed also that the leader had been right, he was tempted, but each time lost courage at the last moment, and had been about to leave again this night when I arrived. He almost turned and ran when had I approached, but, he did not know why, but this time he hesitated.

I replied that was because we were fated to be together this night, and that I had introduced many a boy to the pleasures of the flesh, and would be a gentle teacher. We had another glass of wine and talked further, the boy, whose name I learned was Venito, asking about my sword and if I really had been knighted by Pope Innocent, and me telling him a bit of my travels to the Holy Land. I let the boy talk and the more he talked the calmer and more comfortable he became. Of course the wine helped. The boy had little self esteem, no close friends, and an uncaring, domineering father. This was not a boy who sought sex for money or for daring, nor as an act of defiance or a statement of his beliefs. He was seeking affection.

I brushed back his thick, curly locks from his face and ran my fingers along his smooth cheek. I lifted his chin and looked into those doe-like eyes and slowly bowed my head and kissed those trembling, satin smooth lips. His lips and breath were sweet from the cherry wine and his cheeks flushed almost the same colour, though he spoke clearly and was not drunk. I disrobed him slowly, caressing each square of flesh I exposed, kissing him repeatedly and gently. He was frightened and despite the disrobing, kissing and caressing, was still limp when I was done. I disrobed before him and he watched, his eyes bright with curiosity and desire but filled with apprehension. Naked, we lied down on my bed embraced and kissed and caressed each other for a candle mark, the boy following my lead and gradually becoming more certain as the humours that control passion and lust coursed through his veins.

Venito had no hair in his pits and the patch above his cock was soft and curly and extended at the most three fingers up his smooth, flat stomach. The cock of this gazelle was beautiful, a swarthy colour like the rest of his body, the shaft slender and the bulb only slightly wider and forming a rounded bulb instead of a mushroom cap such as my own. His stones were a slightly darker colour and hung in a hairless, pendulous sack which was silky smooth to the touch. I gently rolled his eggs and snuggled down and inhaled their fragrance, and my cock twitched with excitement at the earthy odour of his genitals. I caressed them gently, barely touching his stones and the bulb of his cock with my fingertips and the timid gazelle trembled with a combination of fear of the unknown and the natural desire of all males.

I took his hand and placed it on my stomach and he carefully entwined his fingers in my coarse hairs. When he dared go no further, I took his hand again and cupped his fingers about my balls and showed him how to roll my eggs, and then I wrapped his fingers about my shaft and squeezed them tight and he exhaled with a shudder at his first touch of another man's most private part. I kissed him again and again as I slowly stroked his velvety member and he jerked and trembled with each soft touch of the rim of his bulb so unfamiliar was he with being touched there, by himself or anyone else. His purity and innocence filled me with such a burning lust that my own member leaked out the first of my clear nectar. I flicked it up and raising my fingers to his lips, I smiled reassuringly at him as I smeared his rosy lips with my clear, sweet nectar. His tongue slipped out and tasted that sweet nectar for the first time in his life, and he smiled up at me, his eyes sparkling with delight, and with desire.

More of my nectar oozed out and I had him slip down and lick it up with his tongue and then fix his lips about the opening of my member and suck it out. Twisting around, I took his stiff little cocklet, as long as the width of four fingers and the thickness of two, in my mouth and gently sucked on the bulb. He followed my lead, slipping his lips over my bulb and sucking on it, and as I slipped my lips down his shaft, he slipped his down mine. As I began to slip my lips up and down his member and to suck on it, he again followed my lead, and I explained to him how to breathe through his nose and to regulate his breathing so he could go all the way down on my cock, two finger widths longer than his and a finger thicker. And so I introduced my gazelle how to suck cock, slowly and gently, until he began to squirm and breathe more erratically. He tried to pull away from my mouth, telling me with great embarrassment that he had to piss, and I asked if he had ever spent his seed and he confessed that he had not.

Informing him that what he was feeling was not the need to piss, but the warning that he was about to release his seed, and assuring him that when it happened it would be the most pleasant and awesome sensation he would ever feel, I continued to suck on his slender cocklet and he continued to suck on mine. Soon his breathing grew erratic again and he began to squirm as he reached the point he had before, but this time he did not try to pull away and I reached around and cupped his smooth buttocks and caressed them. His breathing became more rapid yet, and suddenly he inhaled sharply and tensed and I felt his sweet milk spurt into my mouth, the first seed to erupt from his body. He trembled and gasped and threw his head back as spurt after spurt erupted from his slender, throbbing member, his nuts now drawn up tight under his member, and I eagerly gulped down his sweet milk, the first of his body.

Venito was panting loudly and had ceased working his lips up and down my member, but recovering as his seed ceased spurting, he began again to suck on my cock and massage it with his smooth, velvety lips. I concentrated on the pleasure pulsating through my cock, and as I felt the familiar twang in my loins, I warned him I was about to begin spurting my seed, and I drew my cock back so only half the bulb was in his mouth so he could swallow more easily, something I had learned so long ago. I tensed as I felt the burning gush of my seed race up the core of my cock, and I quivered as I felt it spurt out of the burning tip and into his mouth. He began to swallow, but in his excitement he lost grip of my throbbing member and as it slipped from his lips it sprayed his face with my thick, white cream. Blobs struck his cheeks and his nose and a thick creamy glob struck his upper lip and his chin before he managed to slip his lips back over the head of my spurting snake and take the remainder of my seed in his mouth.

I lay there with his still stiff cock in my mouth and I gently sucked on the now tender, sensitive bulb, drawing out the remainder of his seed, and he lay there sucking on my now calmed snake. At last I let his cock slip from my lips and again, following my lead, he did likewise, allowing my cock to slip from his. I twisted around and flipping up a blob of my seed from his cheek, I fed it to him, and as he looked up at me, ashamed and embarrassed by his ineptitude, I smiled down at him and laughed, not at him but assuring him that what had happened was quite common and nothing to be humiliated about. Scooping up another blob from his chin, I dangled it above his mouth and he parted his lips and I allowed it to drip into my mouth, like a mother bird feeding its young I observed, and he laughed at the idea.

We rested then and talked much more, and I told him about some of my adventures as a caravan guard and posing as a Saracen, and he was most curious about their customs and habits and whether it was true that they were all sodomites as the priests claimed. He told me more about his life, of being an only son but having no interest in becoming a cooper like his father, and having no interests that most boys had in things like athletics or weaponry. He was an intelligent boy, and interested in more intellectual things that his father considered effeminate and of little use, and I told him of the philosophers and learned men I had met in Florence and encouraged him to work hard at his studies. He confessed he particularly enjoyed studying the heavens and yearned to be an astronomer, and I told him how sailors used the position of the stars and the constellations to guide them on the ocean, and how caravans in the great deserts did likewise, and I encouraged him to follow his dreams.

He thanked me and kissed me and observed that nobody had an interest in what he thought and wanted before me, and I told him there were others who felt as he did and he had only to seek them out. We kissed again, which lead to caresses, and as I fondled his member and stones he fondled mine, and he observed that he was glad he had not run away as he usually did, and that I had to be right about us fated to be together that night. I told him that the night had only begun, and there were many other things I would teach him before we were done. We continued to kiss and caress until we were both erect once again.

Getting up and retrieving a jar of ointment, I lubricated my member and then his anus and his rectum, and told him of boys who pleasured themselves by finger fucking themselves, and of others who pleasured themselves by caressing their cocks until they spent their seed, and of still others who combined the two. I then had him lay on his back and I raised his hips and slipped my pillows under his ass, and then I knelt between his outspread legs and mounted him face to face, for I wanted to see the look on his face when he felt a man's cock deep inside him for the first time. He was of course a tight fit, and it took us several attempts to unite, for I wanted to be gentle and for this first time to be enjoyable. My decision to do it in that position was rewarded with a look of wonder and apprehension and of pure delight and of awe as I slipped my stiff member up his lubricated hole until my hairs were brushing his tender eggs and my knob was deep inside him.

I paused for a long time to allow him to become use to having his rectum stuffed, and to give both of us time to fully enjoy the pleasure of our union. I then ever so slowly began to fuck him, instructing him on how to constrict and then relax his anus in time with my thrusts and withdrawals. The naive boy concentrated first on doing so, and as he became accustomed to doing it he relaxed and pleasure filled his eyes. I told him to stroke himself as I fucked him, and he did so readily, trusting in me completely.

As I worked my cock in and out of his virgin hole, he stroked his cock for his first time, experiencing both the pleasure of being fucked and the pleasure of satisfying his itch with his own hand. I fucked him gently and slowly, both in consideration of him and so we both might enjoy the experience for as long as we could. When I felt myself approaching my peak, I paused and told him to pause also, explaining why, and I drew my cock out so only the knob was within him and told him to clamp his anal muscles tight about my swollen bulb and to similarly clamp his first finger and thumb about his stiff cocklet below his own bulb. I had to smile at his look of surprise and delight as his lust urge faded. I then resumed fucking him and he resumed stroking himself, and the two of us gazed into each other's eyes with gratitude and understanding. Once again we approached that peak and as I began to fuck him more vigorously, he began to push out and draw back his hips, pushing toward me as I plunged forward as if to further impale himself on my throbbing short dagger, and then drawing back as I withdrew as if to lengthen my stroke.

I spent my seed first, spurting it deep up his rectum, and he inhaled deeply and his eyes widened with the unique experience of being filled by a man's seed. I was still throbbing out my life juices when he ejaculated, his thin seed spurting out of his cock and flying through the air to strike his smooth, thin, heaving chest. We both came copiously and my cock began to make schlucking noises as it worked in and out of his asshole and through my slime, and he laced his chest and ribs with streamers of his seed.

We relaxed again, and talked further, and then I had him lubricate his cock and my asshole and I assumed the position of balancing on my knees and elbows and had him take me from behind, choosing that position so he could experience it, and because with his shorter dagger he could penetrate me more fully. Venito was surprised that I, his senior by two years and one of a much higher social status, would assume the passive role, and I assured him it was not just so as to instruct him, but because I enjoyed being fucked as much as I enjoyed the active role, especially when my partner was near my age or younger. The position also allowed him to reach under me and stroke my member at the same time. A virgin still at fucking another and at stroking another's cock, he did so with enthusiasm and I had to remind him the faster he went the sooner it would be over. He immediately slowed down, and went so slow I chided him that any slower and we would likely both fall asleep, at which he laughed, and, I know, was lightened of his anxiety that he was doing things correctly and pleasing me.

He was pleasing me, this shy, fourteen-year-old son of a cooper, for I know of no greater pleasure than having a young boy experiencing his first fuck as an active partner. He pumped his hips to and fro, working his slender young cock in and out of my rectum, and he stroked my swollen cock in time with his thrusts and withdrawals. I felt his hot breath blowing against my nape and gradually his breathing became more rapid. Having learned by example, he paused and squeezed my swollen member below the bulb and I squeezed my anal muscle, closing it as tight as I could. After a time he resumed fucking and masturbating me and I knelt there concentrating on the triple pleasure, the pleasure of having my ass fucked, the pleasure of having my cock stroked, and the pleasure of bringing pleasure to this naive youngster. This night his curiosity was at last satisfied and his patience rewarded. When his seed spurted into my body and mine erupted once more from my tightened balls, I sighed more with his pleasure than with mine. And, when he at last withdrew his cock and I rolled over onto my back and looked up at him, the look of pure wonder and satisfaction in his eyes and the curling his lips filled me with warmth and a satisfaction that knows no equal.

He spent the night, and in the morning I asked if he would get in trouble with his father being out all night. He replied that he most likely would, but it was worth it, and when I offered to accompany him for support he replied that if I did so his father would surely suspect that we had spent the night, and it would go even worse for him for his father frequently and vigorously expressed his disapproval of congress between those of the same sex. Striking upon an idea, I told him I had a solution to mitigate his father's anger. And so dressed in my finest, selecting a couple rings from my vast collection, strapping on my sword and slipping my showiest dagger into my belt, I had him lead me to his father's place of work. As I approached, I suddenly grasped him by the collar of his shirt and lifted him so he was taken unawares and was skipping with wide-eyed surprise in front of me on his toes.

His father looked up from his work with a look of puzzlement and concern, and, I noticed, despite what Venito had said about his father's lack of caring, the man looked like he was prepared to come to the defence of his son. Before he could speak, I began the speech I had been rehearsing since leaving the inn, telling the man I had caught this "imp" with my family's serving wrench and angrily telling him he had best keep closer reins on his prurient son and ensure in the future he kept his cock in his breeches, for if my uncle caught him again he might find it missing. The father could not hide the smile of pride at that information, his son evidently more of a man than he had given him credit for, but he knew too well the folly of encouraging the wrath of the rich, which I evidently was. Before things could get complicated, I spun on my heel and angrily marched out of the premises, certain that Venito would be receiving no reprimand and might even find a father with a different attitude in the future.

The smile of satisfaction on my face soon faded when I noticed a larger crowd than usual heading toward Saint Mark's Square and I was informed that two sodomites recently captured were to be punished, the crowd all the more gleeful for these two were reputed to be of high rank in the republic, and the common folk who took such delight in such entertainment being those who had little respect for those whose fortunes were better than theirs. Knowing what I did, I dreaded whom I might find, but I had to go see. Upon arriving, I noticed first that there were two stakes in the ground before the Palace of the Doge each with a pile of faggots, and second, that the priest, still in his cage, had died. Shortly thereafter there was a commotion to my left, and the crowd parted to allow the Lords of the Night to escort their two prisoners to the stakes, followed by their executioner, bare chested and hooded. It was neither Grecco nor Bartolomeo as I had feared, but Frucciano and another man, whom the senior officer declared had been found in congress with each other and had that morning been declared guilty of sodomy and sentenced to be decapitated and burned.

He continued with his rant about sodomites and their depravity and their sin before the eyes of God and of the Doge, and encouraged all present to report anyone suspected of such perversion, reminding them of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the fear that their fair city might fall the same way because of such wickedness as these wretches practised. Throughout it all, Frucciano and his lover stood looking into each other's eyes, ignoring the crowd, and, in their limited way, defying them by showing them the love they had for each other despite the consequences. The executioner was called forward and the two men forced to their knees. I did not stay for the rest.

My joyous mood of the previous day and the morning turned into sorrow and anger and frustration. I barely knew the man, and did not know his lover, but I felt a great loss, and I was filled with a great disgust and contempt for the courts of Venice, its leaders, and its population in general. The two men had not done anyone any harm. Their lives had been taken simply because they loved each other as a man loves a woman, and chose to express that love for each other physically, as a husband and a wife would do. For that love, they had been brutally killed. The Saracens, with whom I had lived with the past year, were accused of being barbarians, but who were the barbarians, they or these Venetians? I headed back to the inn that afternoon angry and depressed and much troubled, knowing that every moment I remained in this great republic I was risking all for so great was my lust for pleasures of the flesh with my own gender I knew I would not be able to deny it when the humours rose and pulsated through my body.

Nicolau Ribeiro (16yo)
Supporting characters: boys and men from age 5 to 32.
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Despite the extreme dangers and the horrific punishments I had witnessed, I knew if I remained in Venice I would not be able to resist the excitement and adventure, and the temptation, that waited under every bridge and in the shadows of every sweet shop in the city, and yes, the opportunity to defy the church and civic leaders who dared condemn the pleasure that I desired and delighted in. In my short time in the city, I had become swept up by the fervour of indignation and rebellion of those whose sexual desires were the same as mine even though I did not have the family connections and protection that many of them had. I had also, that night, exactly one month after my sixteenth birthday, admitted to myself, and upon my knees to God, that I preferred congress with those of my own sex over those of the opposite sex, and that I was a boy lover. I was both a sodomite and a paedophile, and right or wrong and whatever reasons for me being so, that was the way I was. I paced from one wall to wall in my tiny room, torn between fleeing the city immediately and marching to the Riolta and engaging in sex with the first male I met in indignant defiance of the authorities and in commemoration of the death of two gentle men I barely knew. It took several candle marks for me to calm down and consider my situation and alternatives analytically, as Father faithfully practised and as he had been training me to do as I prepared to follow in his footsteps. Reaching a decision, I slept little that night and rose before the sun.

Purchasing a fine horse and two pack horses, I packed up my belongings and headed out of the city gate as the sun was beginning to rise. It took me three days to travel to the Republic of Florence, and it was a long, miserable journey. The grey skies and constant drizzle were fitting for the mood I was in, for upon leaving Venice I fell into a great depression. How weak is the human mind, and how fragile the human soul! Five days ago I was walking in the clouds and singing the praises of congress between those of the same sex and proud of having introduced a boy barely turned fourteen to the pleasures of the flesh and having encouraged him to follow my example. Today I cursed the little black bastard who had introduced me to those pleasures in the fetid jungles of the dark continent two years ago and the dozens of men who had used me since because of my weakness of spine and of soul, and the dozens who had encouraged and rewarded me to follow the path of sin and depravity that they were travelling.

I cursed the gods who had made me and who had made me what I am, my Christian God, Yahweh of the Jews, Allah of the Moslems, the god of the Zoroastrians whose name if I ever knew it I had temporarily forgotten in my anger, and all the gods that existed and whose names I did not know. Most of all, I cursed myself for my great weakness, for giving in to the pleasures of lust so totally and completely as to risk my life for the pleasure for the few heartbeats of time it took to spend my seed. And, when I was done, I began anew, cursing those who ruthlessly and without cause persecuted me and those like me and those who condemned me for actions that caused no ill to any person and brought only pleasure to those who chose to participate in my secret delight. Such were my black thoughts from the moment I awoke to the moment I fell into a fitful sleep those three days, damning those who made me what I was and damning those who would have me otherwise. My reason for heading to Florence was simple. I had ten days before the Lance of Longinus was supposed to arrive in Anacona. My journey to Anacona would be, I had been told, an easy ride of four days, mostly on a well-travelled trail along the coast, which would leave me six days to sit around in a strange inn in a city I did not know with people I had no desire to know. Travelling by way of Florence would only add one more day of travel, which would leave me five days to spend in a beautiful city with men I felt I knew well. Besides, Florence was the only place I knew of where there were people who could provide me with council regarding what was troubling me, counsel that I desperately needed. (1)

And so upon arriving at the city, I headed directly for the palace of Lorenzo de'Medici in search of those people, knowing that there at the Academy there were others who were much wiser than I and who could help me understand the complexities of the church and the law, of the human soul, mind and body, and of civilized society. Upon my arrival, I was surprised and dismayed to learn that the master of the house, Lorenzo de'Medici, had died on April 9th, only five weeks and five days earlier, at the age of forty-three. Although he was past middle age, his death came as a surprise to me. His eldest son Piero had inherited his position, and being a man appreciative and supportive of the arts, he had maintained the Academy, but being the head of Florence's most powerful financial institution and the head of Florence's most powerful family weighed heavy on his shoulders being only twenty years of age, and with increasing threats of invasion from the King of France and the increasing popularity of the Franciscan friar Girolamo Savonarola who was arousing the common people against the extravagances of the church and the nobility, including the de'Medici, he had little time to indulge in the finer things in life.

On a more positive note, I learned that Lorenzo's youngest son Giovanni had faired well since I had last seen him. A month before the death of his father, Giovanni, at the age of sixteen and three months, had been invested in the cardinal habit, and two weeks later had been received by Cardinal Jorge da Costa in the church of S. Maria del Populo, and the following day had been allowed to deliberate with Cardinal da Costa's support in the College of Cardinals. And, only a week ago, he had been named legate a latere in Tuscany and Florence and had left Rome the same day for Florence. The day I had watched Frucciano and his lover being lead to their death, confessed to God, and had decided to leave Venice for Florence, Giovanni had arrived in Florence to take up residence as the representative of the Holy Father, God's mortal representative on earth! How could there not be a connection between my confession and prayer for help and the elevation of Giovanni de'Medici and his arrival in the very city I had chosen to flee to?

The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, built for Cosimo de'Medici, Piero's great-grandfather, faces the church and cloisters of San Lorenzo across a large piazza. Attached to San Lorenzo is the Medici Chapel, a private chapel for the Medici family and where the Medici ancestors are buried. West of San Lorenzo on the right bank of the River Arno stands the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, an immense structure of red, green and white marble with a large dome that can be seen anywhere in Florence where Giovanni would be giving mass and conducting church business. Donning my best clothes the next morning, I headed for the Cathedral where I was told where Cardinal Giovanni was with the intention of congratulating him and offering my condolences regarding the death of his father, and hopefully to seek his advice. Entering the Cathedral, I was directed to the Master Concierge and Secretary of Appointments, an elderly, sour-faced cleric who informed me that there were many who wished an audience with the Cardinal, all of whom had important and urgent business, implying that as an unknown and one as young as myself I did not, and lacking any official reason to see him, it was improbable that I ever would, and at any rate, the Cardinal was busy at the moment selecting his personal attendants. As I calmed myself and fought the urge to throttle the imperious old codger and considered my alternatives, I noticed a young, very official-looking, and delightfully handsome page of about twelve years of age standing nearby awaiting orders. Locating a quill, ink and parchment, I penned the following: "Nicolau Ribeiro, merchant adventurer, has returned from Saracen lands and has many new sins to confess since he last confessed to you in the Studium Library of Pisa."

Folding it and sealing it with a bit of candle wax, I returned to the front office and approaching the page who to my relief was still there, I handed him the note and told him it was urgent Cardinal de'Medici receive the message. Thankfully the boy was impressed by my dress and manner, and the ducat I pressed into his palm, and did not question my authority to send him on such an errand, and the withered old Concierge did not see the exchange. I waited patiently and tried to keep out of sight, the latter not being difficult with the number of priests, laymen and faithful citizens milling about. The former was much more difficult and I hoped that my reference to being a merchant, Saracens and our first meeting in the Library of Pisa where he had finger fucked me would remind him of who I was and intrigue him enough to see me. I realized I was of little import for someone of his elevated state and compared to those desirous of meeting him, but I could hope our meeting in Pisa and the subsequent congress we had with two young scribes would be sufficient to warrant at least a few moments of his time. And, speaking of time, it moved at a snail's pace. Fearing my message had been intercepted or the page was not as diligent as he had looked, or that the Cardinal had forgotten our first meeting, or even worse, had thought so little of it that he had no desire for another, I was finally about to leave when the page arrived and looking about, came over to me and said if I would follow him I would be seen now.

I followed my guide through the cathedral to the private rooms and offices of the clergy and laity. Arriving finally at our destination, the young page bade me wait outside the door, reappearing after a moment and ushering me in. As he announced me, a man in cardinalate red with his back to me turned. He was taller and considerably heavier than I remembered him, the formal liturgical vestments of a cardinal making him appear even fatter, but there was no mistaking he was the same person I had first met in the library in Pisa. I approached and as I dropped to one knee, he held out his hand and I kissed his gold ring, received from the Holy Father himself only two months ago. "Well," he said, motioning for me to rise as he appraised me from head to toe, "you do not appear to have suffered from your travels."

"You appear to have done well yourself since we last met," I observed. Actually, from the weight he was packing about his middle and the plumpness of his cheeks, perhaps a bit too well.

"Done well, perhaps, but the stresses of my new position and of moving are unbelievable," he observed with a heavy, dramatic sigh.

"I heard of your acceptance into the College of Cardinals and came to congratulate you," I said, "and I also heard about your father and have come to offer my condolences."

"That is most kind of you. How long have you been in Florence?"

"I just arrived yesterday evening. Your brother has been most kind in offering me accommodation at the Palazzo."

"And what is this about these heathen Saracens you mentioned?"

"I have been living with them for the past year and five months."

"Indeed?" he said, raising an eyebrow. "Of that I am most interested in hearing."

"I know you are busy, with your new position and all," I replied. "I do not wish to interrupt you in your duties." I glanced at the row of nine young boys whom he evidently had been addressing and who were standing there motionless and respectfully and more than a little nervously.

"Ah, one has no idea what it is like, the move back to the Palazzo, the new responsibilities," he sighed dramatically. I do not know if he was trying to impress me or the boys or perhaps both, or if he was being sincere. "I am in the process of choosing my personal attendants who will be seeing to my needs from the moment I arise to the moment I go to bed. I have narrowed the candidates to these nine. If it were up to you, which would you select?"

I looked at the row of boys. They all appeared to be about nine years of age, and all were exceedingly attractive, which I am sure had been one of the requirements to have reached this far in the selection. "Would one of the services be similar to that provided by a certain two scribes I met in Pisa?" I asked.

"Most certainly," he said with a discrete smile.

"If I may?" I asked, gesturing to the row of boys.

"By all means."

"I would look each of you in the eye," I announced as I turned to them. "When I approach you, take three steps back from the others." I approached the first boy who immediately took three steps back, and as he looked up at me I stepped forward and cupped his testicles. I stepped back and approached the next boy and repeated my action once he had stepped back, and so it was down the line of nine boys. I then stepped back to join Cardinal Giovanni. "Did you notice their reactions?" I asked with a whisper, and with a smile, he said he had.

The eyes of all the boys had widened with surprise when I had groped them, not expecting it, and certainly not in the House of the Lord. In addition, of the nine boys, five had flinched and pulled back and the surprise was replaced almost immediately with a look of disapproval or displeasure. Of the four who had not, puzzlement and curiosity had replaced the surprise in two, fear replaced the look of surprise in the third, and one had a repressed smile as he pressed his crotch into my palm.

Giovanni stepped forward and calling forward the boy who had pressed his crotch into my palm, he appointed him Principal Valet Cardinalate, and then calling forward the two boys who had reacted with puzzlement, he told them they would be Seconds. The others were dismissed and the three new personal assistants were told to report to the Chamberlain to be fitted for their new robes and to then report back to the Cardinal.

"Did I choose as you would have?" he asked as they filed out.

"You were most observant," I responded, nodding in deference.

"Now then, have you truly been to the land of the Saracens for the past year and five months?"

"I have."

"And you have new sins to confess?" he asked with a raise of an eyebrow and an eagerness in his voice.

"Many."

"Then let us not waste time," he said, his voice rising an octave as he clapped me on the back. "I am most eager to hear them. Tell me, are these Saracens all sodomites as we have been told, and the lovers of young boys?" he asked as he lead the way.

"Well, not all. There are those who are just as fervently against congress between males and between men and boys as there are in Florence, or in Venice. But, there are many who are in favour also."

"There are, I think, more who are against it in Venice than in Florence."

"I have seen many terrible things in Venice in that regard, Your Eminence. Many," I emphasized with a shudder.

"And these are weighing heavily on your mind," he said. How he knew I do not know, and I was impressed further with his insight. Father once said that men are born to be servants of God, not trained, and I believe at least for Cardinal Giovanni that is so. We entered what appeared to be a small, private sanctuary. He closed the doors and we sat side by side on the front pew. "Tell me about Venice and of the Saracens."

I told him of the corrupted version of the Flood and of Sodom's destruction that was being preached in Venice and believed by those who should know better and that I had heard with my own two ears. I told him of the priest left to die of thirst and starvation by his fellow priests for the sin of sodomy with an altar boy, of the beheading and burning of Frucciano and his beloved for the sin of loving each other, and of the persecution of those who sought pleasures of the flesh with those of their own gender, and of the risks and defiance of those who would engage in such pleasures. I told him of the rampant depravity of the Venetians, under bridges, in shadowed alcoves, in courtyards and graveyards, and their madness in pursuing such pleasures under such oppression.

I told him of the strange customs of the Mamelukes where slaves became rulers and where soldiers developed bonds cemented by sodomy with each other, of the cruelty and barbarism of the Tamurids who decapitated their enemies and made piles of their heads and married multiple wives and kept harems of young girls and of young boys solely for their physical pleasure, of the depravity and pleasure-seeking of the Ottoman, of being a tellak and a koçek and the violent and senseless murder of a beautiful boy who would be a girl, of the numerous noblemen and commoners that I had congress with, both with men three times my age and more and with boys half my age, and of the faith and beliefs of the Moslems and the Zoroastrians and the Oromo, and of my depravity and lust and shame and loathing and delight and pleasure.

"I can see why you are confused and upset," he said when I finally stopped my jumbled rambling. "You have seen and experienced more in your few years than most men have in a lifetime, certainly more than I have."

"I can make no logic of it all. There are so many things the same, and yet so many things that are different." I shook my head. "I am sorry. I am making no sense."

"The world created by our Lord is a complex world, as is our Lord."

"But… if we are created in His image, how is it some of us are created lovers of women and others lovers of men and still others lovers of both?" I asked. I had many questions but that was one that distressed me the most, and which was the first to come to my mind. "And how is it He created each to hate the others so greatly?"

"As I said, our Lord is complex, too complex for mere mortals to comprehend, even those who make Him a lifetime of study. One thing we do know, is that God is love. Has Christ not told us so? He created all forms of love. The love between a parent and a child, between a husband and wife, His loves for all mankind, and yes, love between two men which the ancient Greek philosopher Plato recognized and exalted. All of these forms of love are in Him and part of Him. Hatred on this earth, on the other hand, is not His doing. It is the doing of man as a result of his fall from His Grace, and the doing of Satan. It is man and Satan that have twisted things and caused hatred on earth, the hatred of one person for another, and the hatred of one group for the other. Those of true faith and belief do not express such hate, for has not the Lord commanded, Love thy neighbour as you would thyself?"

"But I saw with my own eyes a priest left to die by his own brotherhood for having sex with a boy."

"Priests can error, as can bishops and even cardinals and brotherhoods of priests. None are protected from the influence of lesser and evil men and of Satan. Those who condemned one of their own to such a death have reacted to preserve themselves, and the church, thinking only of themselves and our mother church, and in their ego succumbing to the ignorant and unwashed masses who lack the intelligence to form their own opinions out of fear and weakness."

"Then you are saying for a man to love a man is not a sin? Or for two males to have sex, men and men, boys with boys, or boys with men?"

"Did I not say it was not when you asked me in Pisa? Did I not say that men can have sex with men because it is for pleasure, which is not how man lays with woman, whose purpose is only to have children? Did I not show you proof that it is God's design for man to have sex with man?" I blushed and nodded as I recalled how he had proven that by sticking his finger up my rectum and rubbing that pleasure spot God had created there, a spot that can only be reached by another man's member. "My opinion has not changed since we last met. Indeed, it has become more resolved as a result of my studies. And as for corruption of the Word of God, that priests have strayed so far as to claim Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by flood instead of brimstone, did I not tell you in Pisa how the reason for the destruction of Sodom and the punishment of Onan has been twisted from the truth as found in the Bible even by learned men of the church?"

"But if God supports such love, why does He allow the torture and killing of men for loving other men?"

"It is not the way of the Lord to intervene in the daily lives of mortals. Having eaten of the fruit of knowledge, man has been left to making his own decisions. Once he fell into temptation, he was forsaken by the Lord."

I shook my head. "I still do not understand why it is that some encourage and celebrate congress between those of the same gender and others denounce it thoroughly."

"Such is the way of men. Left to their own devices, they choose different paths. If a man and his companion come upon a fork in the road, they might choose to travel one or the other together, or they might choose to go their separate ways. Having eaten from the tree of knowledge, men make their own decisions. If the same two men encounter a band of thieves, one may decide to join them out of greed or perhaps fear, and the other may rebuke them out of belief what is proper. The civic and church leaders in Venice have swayed the general populace into believing their corrupt version of the faith, and they have done so because of greed and selfishness, fearing the loss of their material possessions and striking out at any whom they fear, rightly or wrongly, will take their possessions from them. Their actions are not based on theology and cannon law but on their personal prejudicial ways just like our mythical two travellers."

"Then the souls of the priest who died in the cage, and of Frucciano and his lover, will not descend into hell as was claimed?" Nor mine I included but did not express out loud.

"No. It is those who caused their death who will, for is not one of the Lord's commandments, 'thou shalt not kill'? There is no commandment that says 'thou shalt not love one of your own gender' but there is one that says 'thou shalt love thy neighbour', and the commandment makes no qualifications that the neighbour must be a female or a male, a child or an adult, nor that it be Platonic or sexual."

I shook my head in wonder at his wisdom. "You make things sound so clear and so simple when I speak with you."

"I have many years of study in theology and canon law," he replied. "As you have spent much time studying the ways of boys as you so aptly demonstrated this morning. But more of this talk later. My Personal Attendants should be ready by now. Shall we see how accurate your selection process has been?"

"I am confident you will not be disappointed."

And so Cardinal Giovanni de'Medici put my mind at ease. Given his greater knowledge of such matters and his unquestionable devotion to God, I was not surprised. After all, there had to be a very good reason he was named legate a latere, the Pope's representative to Florence. As we left the sanctuary, we found the three boys in question waiting outside in the hall, the three dressed in their pure white robes of service, and the Principal Valet Cardinalate having the additional red trimmed mantle of his office. How they knew where we were I did not know and did not inquire. We followed Giovanni to his private quarters in the cathedral.

"Now, has my Chamberlain instructed you in your duties?" he asked, addressing the three boys. They nodded respectfully, and apprehensively. "This is a good friend, a merchant and an explorer, who has just returned from the far east after living with the barbarous Saracen heathens. And if I recall rightly, he is Special Envoy of his Majesty King Joáo of Portugal to Cairo and Jerusalem and a knight of the Order of Santiago, though he seems to have forgotten his cape of office."

"Put aside temporarily when I arrived at Cairo as we feared it would not be safe to wear such emblem in the presence of the heathens. Hopefully it is back in Portugal along with the mantle I received when Pope Innocent made me a Knight of the Langue of Aragon, Order of Saint John of Jerusalem."

"That will never do." He turned to his Principal Valet. "I do not know your name."

"Antonio, Lord Cardinal," the boy said respectfully. "And this is Emil and Pietro."

"Well, Antonio, when we are done here see that Sir Nicolau has the cape and mantle of his two orders ready for him for tomorrow."

"Yes, Lord Cardinal."

"Now then, Sir Nicolau and I will instruct you on your additional duties that I am sure my Chamerblain has not informed you of. Sir Nicolau and I have reason to believe you are aware of the pleasure that can be had by that which makes you a boy. Are we correct?"

Antonio blushed, making him all the more attractive. "I ... ah ... yes Your Eminence." Surprised that we knew and wondering how it was that we did, he knew better than to try to deny it.

"And by what actions has it brought you pleasure?"

"By… ah… well… my hand," he said with much embarrassment, adding still to his attractiveness. "I was only curious if what other boys had said was true," he quickly added, hoping that would make it less a sin.

"And what did other boys say?" Giovanni asked, suppressing a grin but unable to hide the merriment in his eyes.

"That it felt good."

"And did it?"

"Yes, Lord Cardinal."

"And have you found pleasure by the hand of others?"

"No, my Lord Cardinal! Only my own!" I had to smile that in denying the one, the boy had further incriminated himself regarding the other.

"And have you found pleasure by any other means?"

"No, Lord Cardinal."

"Well," Giovanni said as he sat on one of the several large, cushioned chairs in the room, "bring that footstool over here in front of me and stand on it and raise your robes."

The boy hurried to do as he had been commanded. His linen thong, newly issued, bulged invitingly. Reaching out, Giovanni untied the thong and let it drop to the boy's feet. The boy stared straight ahead, embarrassed and apprehensive, unable to release his hold on his gown to cover himself. Giovanni placed his hands on the boy's hips and leaned forward. He inspected the boy and inhaled deeply.

"You keep yourself clean," he observed. "That pleases me. There is nothing more pleasing than the fragrance of a young boy's flower, clean and natural. And the sight," he added, glancing over at me with a knowing smile.

His hands still on the boy's hips, he leaned forward further and slipped his mouth over the boy's dangling cocklet. He closed his eyes and sucked on it, and then slowly worked his lips up and down it. Emil and Pietro stared in unabashed surprise and my member began to swell as I watched, knowing the pleasure that both the cardinal and his principal valet were experiencing. Giovanni continued for some time and the boy Antonio began to breath more heavily and could not help squirming. When Giovanni at last slipped his lips off the boy's member and sat up, the boy's little cocklet, as long as my little finger and only slightly thicker, jutted up stiffly above the boy's tiny marble-sized testicles.

"Now, how did that feel?"

"Very… pleasurable… my Lord Cardinal."

"Better than using your hand?"

"Yes!" So excited was he that he forgot to use Giovanni's address.

"Now then, Emil, I want you to kneel before me and please me as you just saw me pleasing Antonio, and Pietro, move that chair closer and place it in front of me so Sir Nicolau can sit, and kneel before him and please him with your mouth so I can watch. And Principal Valet Cardinalate, I want you to watch your seconds and ensure they do to us what I did to you."

Dropping to his knees as Giovanni stood, Emil pulled up the Cardinal's bright red cassock and lace trimmed rochet and with some difficulty managed to untie his linen thong. As it fell to the floor, it was revealed that the Cardinal was already partially aroused. Meanwhile Pietro slid another of the stuffed chairs over and placed it in front of the cardinal, and as I stepped up before it he undid the ties of my breeches and pushed them down, and then pushed down my hose and undid my thong, also with some difficulty and awkwardness having never worn one himself until this day likely, and having never had to untie another's. I too was partially aroused and the boy glanced at my turgid cock with admiration and with apprehension. Giovanni and I then sat down and the two boys knelt before us and took our members into their mouths and began to suck on them and to work their lips up and down our shafts under the critical eye of the Principal Valet Cardinalate, his robe now lowered but from the way it peaked the boy evidently still fully erect.

That the two, innocent boys were sucking cock for their very first time I found highly erotic, and that they were doing so in each other's presence and being watched by a third their age made it even more erotic. I could only imagine their embarrassment and self-consciousness and the thoughts going through their minds as they knelt there with our growing cocks in their mouths. I became stiff quickly with such perverted thoughts and my cock throbbed delightfully with arousal and pleasure as I sat there watching the bobbing head of the nine-year-old cherub dutifully sucking my most private part, and occasionally glanced over at the other cherub dutifully sucking Giovanni's member. The sight of the Cardinal dressed in his full liturgical vestments, his cassock and rochet pulled up and tucked about his waist, getting his stiff member sucked by a beautiful, curly-locked boy sent a thrill of arousal up my spine. Holy men are supposed to be virtuous and chaste, which by now I realized was frequently not so, and I found seeing one engaged in the base act of sex with another male perverse and arousing. Glancing over at Antonio standing there watching the four of us intently and dutifully, his little cocklet still tenting out his pure white robe, I arched my back and clenched my pee hole closed with arousal.

Giovanni explained to the two boys how to clamp their lips tightly below our bulbs to curb our arousal, and he had them practice it twice. As I felt myself approaching that peak a third time, I wondered if I should say anything but before I could Giovanni announced that he was about to release his seed, and explained to Emil how he was to draw back with just the Cardinal's bulb in his mouth and prepare to begin swallowing. I announced I was also about to emit my seed and Pietro followed the instructions he had heard given to Emil.

Moments later we began squirting our seed into the mouths of the two nine-year-old boys while the third stood there watching. We came rapidly and voluminously and the two boys swallowed our seed noisily and desperately, drinking for the first time the seed of a man. That thought caused me to squirt all the harder and all the more as the delightful cherub kneeling before me swallowed my slime. As I stood there panting with delight, I suspected the three boys would be swallowing the cardinal's seed many times in the future and I envied him. Under Giovanni's instruction and Antonio's supervision, the two boys sucked us dry and then wiped off our cocks with strips of fine white linen Giovanni had Antonio retrieve from a stand, strips which I suspect were used to wipe the lips of the faithful in communion, and although I was spent that thought caused my now flaccid member to flinch. Giovanni congratulated the three boys on their performance and then sent Antonio to fetch us a flagon of wine and five goblets and a plate of cheese and bread. While we relaxed, I told Giovanni more of my adventures and he and his attendants sat in rapt attention as they sipped their wine and nibbled on the bread and cheese. Such was our depravity, and the skill of my narration, that the five of us became erect once again.

"Now then," Giovanni at last pronounced, "I think it time Sir Nicolau show us this pleasure that our Saracen heathens appear to be so fond of, if he would be so kind." I most readily agreed and Giovanni sent Antonio to the desk in the room to retrieve a jar of lubricant from one of the drawers. If the boys were suspicious why the good Cardinal kept a jar of lubricant in his desk, they had the good courtesy not to show it. Having remained where I had been sitting and having not bothered pulling up my trousers or hose, I then instructed Antonio on how to lubricate my erect cock, which the nine-year-old did most willingly and with acute attention, in part because of the natural prurience and curiosity of all boys, and in part because of the watered wine he had been drinking. He then practised on Giovanni who had also remained sitting where he had been with his robes raised and tucked under his backside. I then instructed the nine-year-old boy how to lubricate the anuses and rectums of the two Secondary Attendants.

The two boys dutifully, though self-consciously, hiked up their gowns and turned and presented their backsides to their superior. They giggled and squirmed as Antonio greased up their puckers, as boys do when experiencing something new and forbidden, and also I suspect aided by their consumption of watered wine also. Antonio was hesitant to do the next part and the two boys were hesitant to have it done, but having sworn obedience to the cardinal, and again prompted by the natural curiosity and perversity of boys and the alcohol they had consumed, they did as I instructed. The two boys squirmed with arousal as Antonio stuck first his pointer finger and then his middle finger up their assholes to lubricate their rectums and I smiled as I thought back to when such simple pleasure was new to me. There was no doubt in my mind that all three boys would be making a regular practice of finger fucking themselves, and probably each other, in the future.

Grasping the backs of the two chairs and spreading their legs to brace themselves, the two boys bent over, their new white robes of office hiked up about their waists. His cassock and rochet tucked about his waist, Giovanni stepped up behind Pietro and kicking off my shoes and removing my hose and breeches, I stepped up behind Emil. Grasping their hips, we pressed the tips of our greased members against their lubricated assholes, again with Antonio's supervision and assistance in lining up prick head with hole. Then ever so slowly the two of us penetrated the two virgin boys, stretching apart their tight little puckers and stuffing their rectums with our swollen flesh. Penetrating the hot, moist hole of a willing boy is a delight anytime as I had been told and had learned for myself long ago. Penetrating a virgin boy is doubly so, knowing that you are the first one to introduce him to that unique pleasure of being penetrated, and knowing yourself the thrill of the very first experience of being penetrated and fucked.

That pleasure is doubled again when doing so in the presence of another your age, and doubled again being watched by an innocent, virgin boy, himself with a raging erection. Watching the face of a virgin boy as he experiences having a man's cock being stuck up his rectum for the first time is worth the weight of the boy in gold. The momentary pain and discomfort, the begrudging acceptance and then surprise and delight of feeling pleasure, and finally the smug look of accomplishment and of perverse, forbidden pleasure on Pietro's face was a delight to see, and though I could not see it, I was sure Cardinal Giovanni was rewarded by the same look on Emil's face. Being watched by a third curious and precocious nine-year-old increased my pleasure still further, and I am sure that of the cardinal also.

Having inserted our bulbs inside the two boys, Giovanni and I slowly sank our members up their rectums until our hairs were pressing against their smooth backsides, and then we slowly drew back until our bulbs were stretching open their anal muscles, methodically and slowly fucking the two young attendants under the watchful eye of the Cardinal's Principal Valet Cardinalate. It was pure delight to see the look on his face as he watched us, his eyes bright with lust, and I am sure beneath his robe his little cocklet stiff and aching with desire. I fucked the cardinal's young second attendant with lust, and it was with great difficulty and far too soon that I paused to let my desire subside, but I knew I had to or I would be shooting my seed in no time so great was my arousal. Giovanni was similarly aroused, and paused frequently also, and I tried not to look in his direction for I knew it would arouse me even further, but I could not resist. Seeing him standing there in his red cardinal robes, his stiff cock up the pretty, young boy's ass, and hearing the two of them grunting and gasping as he fucked his young attendant, caused a thrill of desire to ripple up my spine and up my stiff, aching cock.

As when we had the two boys suck us, we paused frequently to allow our lust to subside, and fucking this tender, virgin boy and hearing him gasping and snorting for breath as I worked my cock in and out of his tight rectum and knowing the awe and wonder that he was feeling being fucked for the first time, I had to pause often, as did Giovanni. As I paused for the fourth time, I reached under Emil and slowly stroked his slender, erect little cocklet, causing him to squirm all the more. Giovanni quickly followed suit, reaching under Pietro and stroking the nine-year-old's slender little prick and causing him to squirm with a delight unknown until that moment.

The look on Pietro's face was again a delight to behold. Anyone who has seen the flush of lust in a prepubescent boy's smooth cheeks and his parted lips and the glaze in his eyes as he experiences for the first time that itch of arousal around the rim of his bulb and the ache of desire deep up his loins cannot possibly think a man introducing him to that secret, solely male pleasure is doing wrong. I know if one were to ask those two boys at that moment as their little cocklets were tingling and itching with that sweet pain and their anuses were burning with the same pleasure as our stiff cocks worked in and out of their holes, they would not see any wrong in it.

Again we could not continue forever although we would like to have been able to, and soon the two of us were squirting our thick slime up the rectums of the two quivering, gasping boys, and the two boys were trembling with the shock and the pleasure of their first orgasms, the result of our hands and of being fucked. I grasped Emil's backside tightly as I shot my seed up his rectum, and the boy trembled as his little cocklet wagged and his cock head burned with his first orgasm. Before me, Pietro had his eyes half closed in ecstasy and his ruby lips half open as his anus and stiff little member throbbed with pleasure never before felt, but I knew, which would be forever desired from that moment onward.

Again Antonio brought us cloths to wipe off our dripping, faecal-smeared cocks and the boys to wipe the lubricant and seed from their anuses. The boys were sent for more refreshments and we again snacked on cheese and bread and drank more chilled wine. At last I made my departure, thanking my host for the past hours of pleasure, and for his earlier advice. Giovanni insisted I meet with him again on the morrow for there were questions he had about the practices and beliefs of the Saracens, and I still had much to tell him. Advising his Principal Valet Cardinalate that he hoped he had paid close attention for upon his return he would see just how much he had learned, the Cardinal headed off to a meeting with a couple bishops hoping to garner his favour, and indirectly that of Pope Innocent, and I made my way back to the Medici palace. I wondered what the two bishops would think of their new cardinal if they knew he had just engaged in sex with his young assistants, and if they would smell the sex and scent of boy on him when they met. I envied him taking his pleasure with a second curious and eager virgin boy that evening, and I imagined he and Antonio in various unions as I stroked myself to still another a climax that night in my bed.

Spent from my afternoon of sex in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and my mind at peace for the first time since my arrival in Venice, I slept soundly and arose late the next morning. The Palazzo de'Medici, like many other palaces, has a fort-like bottom floor consisting of offices, meeting rooms, servant quarters and rooms for cooking and doing the laundry and such. In the centre was a large and beautiful courtyard. In the case of the Medici, a portion of this floor was also where important artisans employed by the family or attending the Academy adjacent to the palace slept. It was also where my sleeping quarters were. The second floor was where the family entertained and met with friends and other influential citizens and where the bedrooms of important guests were located. The third and any higher floors were the private chambers of the family and bedrooms for visiting family. Finding myself alone, the servants all busy at their daily tasks and the artisans at the Academy or in the adjacent gardens engaged in their craft, I made my way to the kitchen where the cook, accustomed to the idiosyncrasies and erratic times of the artisans frequenting the palace, prepared me an omelet and a plate of fresh fruit and a jug of chilled milk. I knew Giovanni was living in the palace, but where his rooms were and where he was that morning I had no idea, and I had no idea how I was to contact him. Fortunately he arrived at that moment dressed in his non-liturgical robes and found me.

"Ah, so this is where you are!" he said enthusiastically, amazingly full of energy and wide awake after what I was sure was a long and physically and emotionally strenuous night with his Primary Valet Cardinalate, who was dutifully tagging along behind him, definitely looking tired and with dark circles under his eyes. "Come, you must see this!"

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and bustled out of the room. I quickly followed. We quite honestly raced up three flights of stairs, which for Giovanni was a major feat considering his weight and his weak, skinny legs. The hallways and upper chambers of the palace were large and elegant and reflected the riches and tastes of the former and the current occupants. We entered a room toward the end of the hall that was undergoing extensive restoration and renovation. Most of the contents had been removed and what remained was covered by large sheets. A scaffolding had been set up and at the top was a mason and his assistant working on an elaborate frieze, the boy applying the plaster and shaping it and the master carving the decorative design. It was a hot day and hot work and the boy had removed his shirt, revealing muscular arms and chest glistening with sweat. He was, I figured, three years younger than us.

"Does that not cause your heart to quicken?"

It was ornate, but not that distinctive to warrant such enthusiasm in my opinion. Of course I was not about to say as much. "It is an interesting design," I observed.

Giovanni looked at me as if I was an idiot. "Not the frieze," he said with an annoyance of a tutor with a slow student, "the mason's apprentice."

"Oh," I replied, looking more closely at the boy. He was pleasant to look at and his eyes were particularly seductive. His fingers, chest and trousers were splattered with plaster. "Yes, he does make my heart quicken, more than does the frieze," I observed with a grin and I ducked as the Cardinal tried to box my ears.

Heading back down a flight of stairs to the third floor, I followed Giovanni to the suite where he had taken up residence. There were still tradesmen repainting and replastering the apartments and servants scurrying about taking down and putting up tapestries and paintings and removing and bringing in sculptures and vases, adding Giovanni's personal touch to the rooms. Finding a room that was finished, Giovanni sent Antonio off to bring us lunch despite my protest that I had barely finished breaking my fast, and while we waited he explained that the rooms we had visited on the floor above were long unused and being prepared for family guests now that he had taken over this corner of the palace with his appointment to Florence. He also confided in me with a cheery grin that the previous night had been exquisite, and that I had made an excellent choice in his Primary Valet Cardinalate. When Antonio returned, he brought along with enough lunch for four men a new cape and mantle for me with the insignia of my two orders. Giovanni insisted I put on the mantle, and then whispering something in Antonio's ear, he dismissed him.

As we began to eat, Cardinal Giovani began pressing me for all I could remember about the Zoroastrians, especially about their faith and their god, for he was most interested in them, and the more he probed, the more I discovered that I knew and could recall. He was particularly interested in them being called People of the Book by the Saracens and being included with the Jews, and the special status they had compared to all other faiths. The rest of the afternoon was spent with him asking me questions about my travels and with us discussing theology and cannon law and the cardinal espousing on his particular version of sexual mores, which brought me much comfort for it exonerated me for many of the things I had been taught were sins. The afternoon went by quickly.

At last Antonio appeared again at the door and stood there discretely until Giovanni called to him. "Rinaldo Boccotelli, the mason's apprentice, who I have been informed is also his son, awaits your pleasure, as you requested, my Lord."

"Show him in. And we will have a third goblet, and then leave us, but be nearby should I have further need of your services."

Antonio nodded his understanding with a slight smile indicating he had a pretty good idea what was about to happen to the boy Rinaldo, set out a third goblet, and then showed the boy in and discretely disappeared. Rinaldo stood before us, nervous and perplexed why the cardinal had asked to see him. He had put on his shirt but had no time to otherwise make himself presentable.

"You and your father are doing excellent work," Giovanni began.

"Thank you, Your Eminence. My father is a skilled man, and a good teacher."

"And you strike me as a fast learner," Giovanni observed, causing the boy to blush. He reached out, filled the goblet with wine, and motioned to the boy to take it.

Surprised, the boy did so and sipped it. From the look on his face it clearly was a vintage far better than he was accustomed to.

"You are most attractive, besides skilled."

"Thank you, Your Eminence." The boy blushed again, and I saw in his eyes a hint that he had a good idea where this was going to lead.

"I suspect for a boy such as you there are many girls who hope to win your heart and bear your children."

"There are a number," he replied modestly.

"And how many of these have spread their legs for you?" The boy turned bright red. "Well?"

"Two… Your Eminence." Two, and thirteen years of age. I was impressed, but not surprised. The boy was attractive and had a good body.

"And did you enjoy it?"

"Yes." He was by now so embarrassed he forgot the honorific.

Giovanni smiled and motioned the boy to come closer. He reached out and ran a finger along the boy's jaw line, stopping at the chin, and then raised the boy's head so they were looking into each other's eyes. "And what about men? Surely there are those similarly smitten by your looks."

"There have been, Lord Cardinal," the boy replied, unable to turn his head and forced to continue looking into the cardinal's eyes.

"And how many of these have you spread your legs for?"

"None, Your Eminence," he stated emphatically.

"Perhaps they have spread their legs for you?"

"No, none, Lord Cardinal," the boys said, most shocked.

"Come now, a lusty boy such as you must have needs that exceed what a peasant girl can satisfy."

"I put my mind to my work, My Lord. My pa says that hard work is as good as a cold shower, if you know my meaning, My Lord."

"Your pa is right. He is a skilled man and a wise one."

"Thank you, Lord Cardinal."

"But now, tell me honestly. Despite the willing maidens and the hard work, are there still not days when lust raises its head?" He dropped his hand and glanced down at the boy's crotch, leaving no question as to what head he was referring.

"I confess it is so," the boy said, his cheeks so red they had to feel like they were burning. He lowered his head and cast his eyes down in shame.

"'Tis no sin to be lusty," Giovanni said. "If it were, Sir Nicolau would be condemned to the pits of Hell for eternity," he added with a chuckle, glancing at me with a smile. The boy glanced at me with a look of surprise that the cardinal would make such a comment in front of someone evidently of position, and with a hint of curiosity as to what would make a cardinal make such a comment.

"Sir Nicolau has spent much time with the Saracens, and has learned much about their ways, including how they satisfy that need that all healthy men have, Christian or otherwise. So, I ask you again, with no fear of reprimand or censure, have you known another of your sex carnally?"

"No, Your Eminence."

"Do you not like men or boys, Rinaldo Boccotelli?"

"I ... I neither like nor dislike them, Lord Cardinal," Rinaldo replied cautiously. It was not just his father who was wise. This was evidently familiar ground for the boy, which to me was no surprise given his good looks and athletic body. Given Giovanni's own lust, I suspected there were those who knew of his romps, Rinaldo included.

"Well," said Giovanni with a smile, a smile a cat might give a mouse before leaping upon him, "that I think will change this day. For your good work, how would you like Sir Nicolau show you how a Saracen bath boy pleases those who come for more than a bath?"

Rinaldo glanced at me and then at the Cardinal. "If it so pleases him, and you, Lord Cardinal."

"I think it will please all of us," Giovanni said, grinning at me and then motioning for me to begin.

Approaching the thirteen-year-old boy, I knelt before him and reaching out, untied the cord holding up his breeches. They dropped to the floor, revealing that he was wearing nothing under them. He had a fair-sized cock for his age, and I was sure from his state of apprehension and lack of interest he was not the slightest bit aroused. Despite his stained breeches and his clay streaked arms and hands, his member was clean. He inhaled sharply with nervousness and apprehension and with more than a little aversion as I reached out and took it in my fingers. Bending over, I opened my mouth and took his warm, limp sausage in my mouth. I sucked on it gently and I slowly slipped my lips down the shaft and then back up. As my saliva basted it, his member slowly began to swell despite his aversion, and as it began to swell I thought about it having been inside a girl, and I wondered what he was thinking and how for him being in my mouth compared with being in a girl. He may have been indifferent about liking men or boys, and may even have found the idea repugnant, but he had to be finding having his cock in another boy's mouth arousing for he continued swelling and he was soon rigid.

Grasping his buttocks for support, I knelt there sucking on his stiff cock and slipping my lips up and down the shaft and over the knob. That he was no virgin when it came to sex with the opposite sex I found arousing, and that he was a virgin when it came to congress with those of his own sex was arousing also. My own cock was soon stiff and aching as much as I suspect his was. His breathing slowly became deeper and I paused. Removing my lips from about his cock, I ran my tongue over his knob, causing his cock to jerk. I teased it for a while, and then resumed sucking it. Knowing the pleasure I was bringing him, I had no guilt sucking the cock of this thirteen-year-old boy, not even in front of a cardinal. Actually, doing it in front of the cardinal and knowing this was the boy's first experience I found erotic. As his breathing became deeper and more rapid, I knew he was approaching his climax and I sucked on his member more eagerly in anticipation of his upcoming pleasure, and of the delight of tasting a young boy's cream.

"I… I am going to… ," he gasped as he began to pull away, knowing from experience what was about to happen, but I held firm to his buttocks. Seconds later his seed shot into my mouth and I began to swallow the sweet, thin juice of a thirteen-year-old boy. He came violently and with quick, short spurts, spending his seed in a dozen heartbeats. I continued to suck and work my lips up and down his shaft, drawing out his remaining seed, but not so long that pleasure turned into irritation. At last I sat back and looked up. He was staring off into space, his eyes dazed, a stunned look on his face as if unable to believe such pleasure could be had with another male. Gradually he recovered and as he looked down at me, realizing finally I was looking up at him, a slight smile of gratitude and wonder and pleasure curled his lips, his self-consciousness still reflected in his eyes.

"Giving is as pleasurable as receiving," Giovanni observed with a slight smile as he spread apart his legs. Rinaldo knew immediately what was being suggested, and though he had known the opposite sex and was not an aficionado of congress with those of the same sex, he knew the consequences of not complying. This was the legate a latere, the representative of the Holy Father, and if he wanted to remain in his favour, and for his father to also, he had best do what was being expected of him. It was my hope that he had found sufficient pleasure in what we had done to be willing to take the active role, but from the look in his eyes that did not appear to be the case as he stared down at the cardinal's lap. Having one's cock sucked was one thing, but sucking another's cock was something quite different.

He was a good-looking and intelligent boy and I did not want to see him nor his father suffer any ill just because he did not feel the same way about sucking another's member as I did, so I sighed with relief as he slowly knelt before Cardinal Giovanni and Giovanni raised his simar. The way his linen loin cloth was bulging, there was no doubt he had found witnessing Rinaldo and I arousing, and as he removed it, his short, fat member sprang up demanding attention. The mason's son dropped to his knees and dutifully took Giovanni's sceptre into his mouth and as his cheeks sank in I knew he was sucking as I had done to him. I suspected his haste had not been due to desire, but because he knew if he did not do it quickly he would gag with the mere thought and it would be over for him. Many times Father had reminded me to throw myself into an unfavourable task for the sooner tackled, the sooner it would be over. Of course Father did not have in mind the task facing the mason's boy.

The boy slowly began to slip his lips up and down the Cardinal's cock as I had done to his, willing himself to perform the perverted act for his sake, and the sake of his father. Giovanni smiled and leaned back, enjoying being sucked off by the boy, and particularly enjoying engaging in sex with still another innocent virgin, one good-looking and with a muscular body. He was clearly too aroused, or too concerned with his own pleasure, to have noticed the boy's momentary reluctance and his evident aversion to what he was doing. Knowing it was the first time he had a cock in his mouth I found arousing, and my already stiff cock twitched and I felt the first of my clear nectar ooze out of the tip. That he was doing so reluctantly and likely with revulsion I found, much to my surprise and my shame, arousing also, proof of my depravity and corruption despite all the cardinal had said about the rightness of congress between members of the same sex.

As I watched the boy pleasing the cardinal with his mouth for his first time, I hoped that the boy would find some pleasure in the act, and if nothing more, he would remember the pleasure I had given him and see the rightfulness of giving the same pleasure to another. I also hoped I could exercise enough control not to cream my hose. Fortunately it was not long before Giovanni began to breathe deeply and rapidly and I knew he was approaching his climax, as was I. To my surprise, the boy stopped suddenly and withdrew his mouth. Giovanni sat there in surprise also, his stiff cock jutting up between his legs and jerking with arousal and need. He stared at the boy in disbelief for a moment after which his face darkened with anger. He was about to say something when I realized the boy had done exactly as I had done when his breath had quickened. Catching Giovanni's eye, I motioned for him to wait.

The boy waited patiently until Giovanni's breath returned to normal, and then he leaned forward and sticking out his tongue, he licked Giovanni's stiff cock, causing it to jerk with renewed arousal. He knelt there licking his member for a short time, licking the shaft and occasionally running his tongue around the rim of his bulb, much to the cardinal's delight and exactly how I had done his. He finally slipped his lips about the cardinal's member and began to suck on it once more as he slipped his lips up and down its length. He had paid attention to what I had done amazingly well. Giovanni soon reached his peak a second time and moments later he threw back his head and sighed with pleasure as he pumped his seed into the boy's mouth. For his first time, the boy did surprisingly well keeping up with the cardinal, though some of the cardinal's slime oozed out of the corners of his overfilled mouth and down around his chin.

Giovanni sat back, clearly pleased, and Rinaldo knelt there in confusion, not sure what he should do, if he should wipe his chin, ignore it, stand, genuflect.… I felt embarrassed for him, and did not know what he should do either. Giovanni solved the problem. To my surprise, he instructed the boy to give me the same pleasure. The boy turned and still on his knees he looked up at me uncertainly, the trickle of Giovanni's seed extending from the left corner of his lips around his chin. He had not found his first experience that pleasurable that he wanted to repeat it, but he also knew his position in relation to the two of us and that he could choose to do as ordered and remain in the cardinal's favour, and mine, or he could refuse and suffer the consequences, and likely his father also. The boy was no Pelagius. He chose to do as ordered though his eyes reflected his reluctance. (2)

I also had a choice. I could decline and save the boy from having to make a difficult decision and do something he did not want to do, or I could avail myself of the opportunity. I stepped forward and pushed my breeches and hose down to my ankles and removed my thong. It was not a difficult choice. And I had several good reasons for the decision I made. How often Father had admonished me not to avoid something unpleasant, but to face the task head on, and he was right. Of course he did not have the task the mason's son was facing in mind, but the principle remained the same. I knew from my own boyhood experiences that one can become accustomed to doing the most distasteful things if it was necessary, and that was certainly reinforced in my duties as a tellak boy and as a koçek. Conversely I knew also that one can become accustomed to avoiding unpleasant tasks, which is never a good thing. Besides, the boy's experience at being sucked, and his first experience at sucking had not been all that repugnant, which was its own good reason for my decision. It is only natural that one approaches something new and unusual with hesitation. Thirdly, I did not believe what we were asking him to do was wrong, and I sincerely hoped that with familiarity he would come to see it that way also.

I realize some, and probably most, would be wont to say I had in mind my own lust and my own perverted desire in making my decision, and I cannot honestly deny that the lust I was feeling having watched the boy and Cardinal Giovanni had some influence in my decision. I can also say with certainty that for me to have declined would have been an insult to my host, and as close in thinking and as friendly as we were, he was still a man of power and someone you did not want to cross. Those, however, were two minor reasons for my decision, and weighed against the hope and the very real possibility that having him engage in that act with me would bring him some degree of pleasure and lean him toward a more positive view of the act they were of little import.

My member was stiff and aching with desire and a droplet of clear nectar had oozed out and formed a bubble at the tip. As Rinaldo knelt before me, I told the thirteen-year-old boy to begin by licking up the droplet of clear nectar. He hesitated and looked at my cock, and then inhaling deeply, he leaned forward and licked the tip of my member. From the look on his face, he was surprised at its sweetness, as I knew he would be. His lick and the look on his face caused a second bubble to appear, and that he licked up with more readiness. He then slipped his lips over my bulb and proceeded to suck on it, still with some apprehension but also with willingness, proof to me that he had found congress with Giovanni pleasant enough, as I had suspected. As I looked down at this handsome young boy sucking on my cock, the delight I felt combined with my earlier arousal caused me to reach that point of spending my seed far too soon. Instructing the boy to clamp his lips down below my knob and explaining why, I closed my eyes and willed myself to become calm, which took more than a little effort and more than a little time.

When I at last opened my eyes, I found Giovanni once again erect, and coating his stiff member with lubricant. As he approached the boy and knelt down behind him, there was no question in my mind nor the boy's what he was intending on doing. He slowly inserted his pointer finger up the boy's rectum and twisted it, lubricating the inside of the boy's ass and wiping the grease from his finger at the same time. He then shuffled forward and pressed the tip of his cock against the boy's anus. He entered the boy with surprising ease given the thickness of his stump and the boy's virginity and the tightness of his ass. The boy had stopped while he was being penetrated, and as Giovanni began to slowly ease his cock in and out of the boy's ass, he resumed sucking my cock. It was only the second time the thirteen-year-old boy had ever sucked another's member, and the first time for him to be penetrated and fucked.

As he worked his lips up and down my stiff cock and Giovanni pumped his member in and out of the boy's backside, I wondered what the boy thought of having sex with the two of us. Although we were of a much different social status, we were only three years older than himself and our youthful lust and needs were not that different from his given that the same humours of passion flowed through the male body. I did wonder if the boy's father had any suspicion why he had been called away, and what he would say if he knew the truth. Would he prefer death for himself and for his son before he allowed his son to become a cardinal's plaything as some of the legends of old would have us believe was the proper response? Somehow, I suspected not.

While he knelt there and slowly worked his hips to and fro, Cardinal Giovanni reached around the boy and began to stroke the boy's member. Seeing him masturbating the boy and seeing the boy's member quickly become stiff caused my own member to throb more hotly with arousal. Regardless what the boy was thinking, his body was responding, and he could not help but be deriving pleasure from congress with the two of us. Thinking of that, I inhaled deeply and relished the thought that the boy was feeling such. I had to wonder as he was being fucked if he thought at all about what it might have felt like for the girls he had penetrated with his own member, and if he was comparing the pleasure he was feeling with the two of us with the pleasure he felt with a girl. I myself could not see how there could be any comparison.

Soon the three of us were gasping for breath and inhaling the musky scent of boys in rut, a scent so familiar to me but new to our young apprentice. And, though familiar, it was a scent I delighted in still, just as much so as my first time. Having spent their seed once already, it took Giovanni and Rinaldo longer to reach that peak, and it was with great effort that I willed myself to fight the urge, not wanting to spurt earlier so that theirs became anticlimactic, nor for my pleasure to become an endurance test as I was forced to stand there and wait for them. To my relief, the boy began to spurt and seconds later Giovanni lunged forward and whimpered with his release, and I followed by throwing back my head and groaning in ecstasy as my seed raced up the core of my hotly throbbing member and into the young boy's mouth. It was a delight for me, and for Giovanni, and when we separated and wiped up, also for the boy from the look on his face, delight mixed with wonder and with realization what sex was really about.

Giovanni dismissed the boy with expressions of gratitude and hints that there would be rewards for the boy and his father coming, and I suspected that the boy would be making more visits to the cardinal in the future. Giovanni invited me to join him and his brother and cousin Guilio, whom I had met my last time in Florence, in their evening repast and sent Antonio to inform the cook and the servants. There being no other guests and the artisans in residence normally eating separately, there were only the four of us and though many would be intimidated by the company I was with, I was not. The meal was as lavish as my surroundings. Pietro talked briefly about his day dealing with creditors, the latest rumours about the King of France preparing to invade Italy and his desire to engage in war, and the rising tensions in the city, the result of the ranting of the Franciscan friar Girolamo Savonarola against the rich and against extravagances of the church. He innocently asked us about our day, to which Giovanni quickly replied that we had spent the day discussing theology. I wondered if Pietro or Guilio knew about Giovanni's sexual pastimes. It seemed to me he was making no effort to keep it a secret and that they had to know. As I sat there I had to wonder what it would be like to know your younger brother or your older cousin liked to have congress with young boys. To my shame, the thought caused me to begin to swell and to think about the sex I had just engaged in before supper as I sat there with them at the supper table. Fortunately Guilio began to talk about his day and his lessons, distracting me from my profane thoughts.

I observed that the College of Cardinals must have a high regard for Giovanni's knowledge to make him a cardinal so young, and a legate a latere besides. To that he and Pietro laughed and said it was more because they wanted his vote for the next cardinal, expressing with great sadness the illness of Pope Innocent and his eminent death. Giovanni confided that the choice was likely going to ultimately be between Cardinals Giuliano Della Rovere and Rodrigo de Borja. When I asked which individual he would vote for, he smiled, and said that his decision would be guided by God, and would be his and God's secret. As we finished our meal, I had to wonder what the future held for all of us. (3)

Following our meal, Pietro excused himself and headed to his study to contend with the financial matters of the family and Guilio headed off to his rooms. Giovanni and I retired to his quarters and directly to his bedroom where he immediately threw off his clothes, leaving his expensive vestments scattered on the floor, and laying on his stomach on his large bed and spreading his legs, he offered his body to me. Lying there totally naked, his corpulence and his thin, weak legs became even more evident. He did not have an attractive body and not that attractive a face, but I have had sex with those much more repugnant, and I was no fool. Although he was only four months older than myself, I knew the power that he wielded, and the influence he could have. Besides, the thought of having congress with a fully acknowledged cardinal, and the Pope's representative, was intriguing. Not many sixteen-year-old's had an opportunity such as that!

So, removing my clothes, I knelt between his legs and lubricated my cock and his anus and rectum and penetrated him. As I began to fuck him, he opened and closed his anus in time with my thrusts and withdrawals. We were both prurient and were soon fucking rapidly, and beginning to perspire. Feeling my sweat trickling down along my ribs added to my arousal. With his extra weight Giovanni was particularly prone to perspiring, and he was drenched in his own sweat. He was also a squirming, vocal partner, much as I imagined a wrench might be, and his squeals of delight as I fucked him added to my own pleasure, and I had to think back to what I had been told what seemed now so long ago that sex with women was a duty, but sex with a boy was a pleasure and I had to amend that to say sex with another male. My best times were when I knew the person I was with, whether it be boy, man or one of my age, was deriving as much pleasure from the act as I was. There was no question that Giovanni was enjoying being fucked immensely. As I felt my own pleasure throbbing between my legs, I could not see why one would want to have congress with one of the opposite sex other than to beget children when for them there was no pleasure in the act. When I at last spurted my seed up his rectum, Giovanni screamed with delight, and when he rolled over, I found that he had spent his seed all over his rotund belly. He smiled up at me, finding no shame in his pleasure, and I found no shame in having made him spend his seed.

We had heavy rain the following morning and so I spent the morning and better part of the afternoon in the library at the Academy and pondered what Cardinal Giovanni had said and what we had done. When the rain finally let up, I followed the advice of Michelangelo and headed for Ponte Vecchio, Old Bridge, which had been built in 1345 and was lined on both sides with goldsmith shops and jewellery shops where he said I would find the best Florence had to offer. He did not exaggerate and I spent several pleasant hours browsing, finally buying an ornate gold box I thought Uncle would appreciate just as the shop was about to close. I crossed the Arno and headed to the Palazzo Pitti, a new palace built just over thirty years ago on the left bank, behind which were the vast Boboli Gardens, my destination, also recommended by Michelangelo. There in the shadows I found couples in various stages of coupling and as I strolled about the gardens and considered possible partners for a quick, clandestine encounter, I found myself being similarly inspected and considered.

Feeling that I was being followed, I paused at one of the many fountains and turned, pretending to be admiring the statues, and discovered I was indeed being followed, by the goldsmith at the last shop I had stopped at. He was in his early thirties, perhaps twice my age, and markedly tall and slender with long delicate fingers and I wondered if his member was as long and slender. He was not exceedingly handsome but nor was he uncomely. He had hooded eyes and a thin nose and a thin moustache and a narrow, close-trimmed beard that followed his jawline. When our eyes met, I smiled and held my gaze and he returned my smile and approached me. Why we were both there was obvious and required no words. He reached out and I took his hand and he lead me over to and behind a neatly trimmed hedge. We untied our breeches and pushed our hose down and I turned and bent over. Grasping my hips, he stepped up behind me, his cock already stiff. It was, as I had expected, long and slender, two hands in length and barely two fingers in width. Wedging the tip in my anus, he placed his hands on my hips and eased forward, easily penetrating me and I delighted in the extra two finger widths in length penetrating me. There was no kissing nor caressing for he was there for one reason only, to find a willing hole in which to plant his seed, and I was there to have congress with a man and whether it be by my mouth or anus or by his was not important as long as it was pleasant.

It was a warm, humid night that third week of May, the flowers closed for the night but the gardens and the air infused with a fresh, sweet fragrance. As the goldsmith slowly eased his slender cock in and out of my ass, he reached around with one hand and those long, slender fingers found my balls and cupped them and rolled them, and then wrapped about my turgid member and slowly began to stroke it with a feather-light touch. The storm clouds of the afternoon had begun to break up and we fucked there in the shadows in the light of a full moon. He was an accomplished lover and took his time, enjoying our physical union and extending it by pausing frequently and by fucking slowly, just the opposite to my congress with Cardinal Giovanni the previous day.

I inhaled with delight the sweet fragrance of the night garden, the air fresh from the spring rain, and the musky fragrance of my lover, and as I delighted in the rich fragrances I delighted in the burning friction around my anus and the stab of stimulation each time his cockhead brushed against that sensitive button deep up a man's rectum. The joy of being penetrated deeper than I usually am and of having a throbbing member stuffed up my rectum added to my pleasure. We were strangers meeting in the dark for those few hundred heartbeats of carnal pleasure, neither feeling a commitment to the other, likely to never meet again, meeting solely to share in that forbidden pleasure sought by so many and condemned by many more. Doing it there in the gardens, desiring only to bring him as much pleasure as he was bringing me, and knowing that there were other couples similarly united and enjoying the pleasure we were feeling left me with a peaceful, satisfied feeling, and I closed my eyes and concentrated on that feeling and marvelled how varied congress between two men could be. Being fucked by this stranger and fucking Cardinal Giovanni was as different as night and day, and both enjoyable. As he at last tensed and his seed began shooting deep up my rectum, I shuddered and spurted out my own seed, the result of the pleasure of being so lovingly fucked, and of the gentle touch of his long slender fingers. When we were done, he kissed the nape of my neck and I sighed with the touch of his moustache and beard on my naked flesh. We pulled up our breeches and hose and when I turned, he had already slipped away into the night. I returned to the Palazzo Medici wonderfully refreshed.

The next morning I again rose late and spent the latter part of the morning in the gardens at the Academy enjoying the flowers and the many statues that had been created there or imported from Greece so they may be copied or used for inspiration for new works. That afternoon I accompanied Michelangelo to the Casa Buonarroti upon his invitation to see the a relief sculpture he had just completed and which he called the Madonna of the Stairs. I complemented him on the reality of the sculpture and detail of the figures, and though he claimed my praise was exaggerated and denied any greatness, I knew my praise pleased him greatly. It was not false praise for he was truly talented, but I also knew that he had a great need for flattery, and being a friend, I praised his work for that reason also. I have come to recognize men who have an exaggerated sense of self-worth and the need for affirmation of their greatness, and I know of no one with a greater ego than he. While others found his company difficult at times for that and for his eccentricities, I found delight in both.

He confided in me that he found sculpturing women difficult, not because of their different form and proportions, but because unlike males he had limited ability to study them naked. Besides, he added with a grin, he found the naked male body much more attractive. I waited in the courtyard while he conducted his business, and then accompanied him back to the Palazzo Medici. As he searched through his sketches for a particular picture, I noticed one of a naked young boy with wings, his head thrown back and his arms spread as if running or leaping in joy. I commented on how realistic it was and how he had captured the rounded contours and softness of the muscles of a child. He said it was a study, a sketch to illustrate and remind him of the position of the muscles of the body in a particular pose. This one, he said, was a study he hoped to some day use to sculpt a statue of Cupid. He suddenly paused with a strange look on his face, studied me as if seeing me for the first time, and with an exclamation of excitement and discovery, raced out of the compound, calling for me to follow him.

We ended up at a weaver's shop a dozen streets away where he requested the company of the man's twin sons, two very attractive, curly-haired, eight-year-old boys looking exactly like the sketch, one or both of them having had to have been the model for his study of Cupid. Practically running back to the Academy, he had the three of us strip and he then had me pose with the two boys, one of them clinging to me on my right and the other clinging to me on my left, one staring at my genitals in admiration with one hand on my buttocks and the other hand reaching for my testicles, and the other looking up at me with adoration as I looked down at him. As he began to sketch us, he said the sketch would be a study which he would use to carve a sculpture he intended on calling "The Adoration of Adonis." The brothers, Giorgio and Marcella, had evidently served as models before and stood rock still, whereas for me it seemed like suddenly I had a maddening itch demanding my attention in the most awkward places and I could not keep still, much to the amusement of the boys and Michelangelo's growing anger.

Standing there stark naked with two naked eight-year-old cherubs clinging to my body, one with his hand on my buttocks and reaching for my balls and the other staring into my eyes with worship, also had another effect on my body. It was impossible not to think about how delightfully beautiful the two boys were and how beautiful the male body was, and how the male was truly created in the image of God. It was also impossible not to think about how delightful it would be to have sex with one or both of the two boys. That, of course, caused my member to begin to swell, and when the boys noticed, as it was impossible for them not to, they said nothing but their members began to swell also. Now I know there are those men, including some very learned men, who would claim that boys that age cannot have the feelings and the urges of men and so are blameless in any liaison with men, but the evidence I have seen says otherwise. It is clear to me that boys that age are very capable of feeling lust and desire and are aroused by the male body, at least one that is attractive, and I make that claim solely as evidence for my viewpoint and not out of conceit though I have been told often of my attractiveness. My point is that I did not touch the boys but their bodies responded as if I had, and that can only be because of the lustful thoughts in their young minds.

Michelangelo reminded us that we were supposed to remain perfectly still, and jokingly asked how we expected him to draw our members accurately and in perspective if they kept increasing in size, which of course made the two boys giggle and made all three of us swell all the more. Tossing aside his sketch, Michelangelo attached another sheet of parchment to his easel and declared if we were going to be difficult, then he would draw the three of us with erections. Of course by then it was impossible to ignore or to reverse the change that was taking place and ever so slowly my member rose to its full size, as did the little cocklets of the two boys. Complaining with a smile that betrayed his seriousness that we were impossible, Michelangelo put down his charcoal and walked over to us.

Taking the hand of the one who had been staring at my testicles, Giorgio, Michelangelo drew it forward and wrapped the boy's hot, slender fingers about my shaft and with his hand on the boy's, he slid his fingers up and down my shaft and over the bulb of my stiff cock. Motioning for the boy to continue, he drew Marcella aside and reaching down, slipped his fingers about the young boy's stiff cocklet and stroked it, causing the boy to squirm and jerk with the shocks of pleasure that shot through it each time Michelangelo's fingers brushed the rim of the boy's sensitive bulb. I similarly reached down and took Giorgio's stiff little cocklet in my fingers and began to stroke it, delighting in the rock hardness of a boy so young and delighting in the evident pleasure he was feeling having his cocklet stroked. Marcella at the same time pulled open Michelangelo's tunic and vest and untying his purple and yellow striped breeches which were all the fashion in Florence at the moment, drew them and his hose down just enough to expose his member, which was just as stiff as ours.

The boy wrapped his fingers about Michelangelo's member and began stroking it, evidently experienced in the act, and I wondered if he had done his brother before, or if he had masturbated the seventeen-year-old artist in the past. It is a delight to stroke one's own member, and an even greater delight to be stroked by another. When that other is a gorgeous young boy, the delight is doubled, and when one can stroke the dicklet of such a boy also there can be no greater pleasure. The sweet, unassuming innocence of an eight-year-old boy combined with a lustiness expected of a boy twice his age results in a most remarkable creature and caused my cock to ache with an arousal that bordered on being painful. From the looks in their eyes, the two boys were feeling much the same as I. The pleasure of having their little, slender cocklets stroked is still new and wondrous for such boys, as is stroking the cocks of boys twice their age. What we were engaged in was even more stimulating for them than it was for us.

After a bit, Michelangelo stopped stroking Marcella's cocklet and had the boy stop stroking him, and so Giorgio and I stopped also, much to my disappointment, but my disappointment was short lived when I found out Michelangelo's intention. He instructed the two boys to lie down facing each other with their faces parallel to each other's crotch, and then to suck on each other's stiff cock. The boys worshipped Michelangelo and obeyed his every demand, and I am sure the pleasure induced by past experiences had much to do with their eagerness and willingness to comply. Seeing the two naked, young boys laying on their sides and sucking each other's stiff, little cocklet with an eagerness that can only be the result of experience and pleasure caused my own member to jerk with arousal. Michelangelo was clearly feeling the same way as I was, and as we watched the two naked boys pleasuring each other, our own desires quickly began to rise.

Looking at me and nodding at the two boys, Michelangelo lay down behind Giorgio and so I took my position behind Marcella Using our spittle for lubrication, we licked the young boys' smooth, hairless cracks much to their amusement and delight and worked our spittle into their rectums with our fingers and tongues. Drooling on our stiff members, we snuggled up behind the two cherubs and with some manoeuvring and shifting of positions, we penetrated the two of them. Obviously neither was a virgin, but sinking my member up the tight asshole of the prurient young eight-year-old boy was a delight nonetheless, for me and for him. I sank my stiff, aching cock up to my balls, and then began to fuck the little cherub as he and his brother resumed sucking each other's cocklet.

The four of us were aroused and it was not long before we were gasping for breath and squirming with our approaching orgasms. I concentrated on the burning of my knob and the throbbing of my stiff cock and on the heat and moistness of Marcella's tight asshole, and on the boy's deep breathing as he sucked on his brother's little cock. Inhaling deeply, I shoved my cock deep up his smooth, compact ass as I felt my seed begin to burn its way up the core of my cock, and I grasped his hips tightly as my seed spurted up his rectum. He trembled and arched his back as he felt me filling him with my seed, and he sighed with pleasure as he tensed with his dry orgasm. At the same time Giorgio was pumping his little cocklet in and out of his brother's mouth as he clenched his eyes with the painful pleasure ripping up his stiff cocklet and up his rectum as he reached his own orgasm and as Michelangelo shot his seed up his ass. We lay there in the gardens a long time afterward enjoying the flush that follows one's orgasm.

The next day I found Michelangelo in the gardens and as he worked on a marble sculpture we talked. I began by observing how much I had enjoyed the previous afternoon and how the two boys seemed to have enjoyed it also, to which he replied that the boys had been virgins when he had first hired them as models and that he had been unable to resist their sexual appeal. That, he said, had been six months ago and ever since they had been eager participants, even going so far as to initiate things with him. I asked if he was not worried about the reaction of their father should he find out he was hiring the boys for more than being models, to which he replied with a smile that was all he was hiring them for and was not paying them for sex, albeit they were well-paid models. When I asked what their father would say when he found out why they were so well paid, Michelangelo said that for the privilege of having sex with him, their father should be paying him.

Unable to get a serious answer, I remarked on the extreme difference between Florence and Venice regarding congress between those of the same gender, to which he replied that he had heard about conditions in Venice and was not surprised given the temperament of the population and the greed of its leaders. I told him about the death of Frucciano and his lover and how they had reminded me of Marsilio Ficino and his pupil Giovanni Cavalcanti whom I had met in my earlier visit to Florence, and I observed that both loved another male but while Frucciano and his lover expressed their love physically and were beheaded for it, the love between Marsilio and Giovanni was supposedly Platonic and as a result nobody bothered them, to which he replied that it was not so much the way they expressed their love but the fact that one couple expressed it in Florence and the other Venice. I observed that it was illogical for the rules for citizens in one place to be so different for the citizens in a city three days ride away, to which he shrugged and said rules defined by men were not meant to be logical. Coming from an individual whose behaviour was as erratic and spontaneous as his, that did not surprise me.

I mentioned my conversation with Cardinal Giovanni and his views on the matter of congress between those of the same sex and Michelangelo observed that it was refreshing to hear his views compared with some of those being expressed by the older cardinals, which, given his views, did not come as a surprise either. He was versed in the philosophies of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle and quoted from their writings, lamenting that many today were considering the old philosophies irrelevant. He had a brilliant and inquiring mind and of course was interested in my journeys and experiences with the Saracens and especially on their views regarding congress between men, and between men and boys. We talked about how prevalent congress between those of the same gender was given the obstacles and the dangers, and how it was practised in all walks of life, and he expressed the opinion that the universality of congress between males was proof of the superiority of such sex, and of males, though he had heard that of all the races, the Arabs and the Spaniards practised paederasty the most. (4)

We talked for a long time and when the heat became unbearable and storm clouds began to darken the sky, we headed inside and tossing the clutter on his bed on the floor we made love in his bedroom. He was a year and a month older than I and while my chin and chest were still devoid of a single hair he had the beginnings of a beard and already a thick mat of chest hair. That plus his crooked nose gave him an older and more rugged look but he was not unpleasant to look at. He complemented me on my body, which was more muscular and defined than his, the result of my military training and daily weapons practice which I had continued since leaving the Saracens and my more physical life. Unlike many I have had congress with, he spent much time in foreplay, slowly bringing me and himself to full arousal with gentle kisses and caresses so that when we were ready to unite I was feeling almost desperate for him to begin, greatly heightening my anticipation.

He took me in what I heard the Tamurid soldiers call the dog position, me on my knees and elbows and him kneeling behind me. He had an average sized cock with a curious upward curve to it. He applied a lubricant to it and after wiping off his hands, he grasped me by the hips and slowly penetrated me. After working his cock in and out of me for perhaps a hundred heartbeats, he reached around and wrapped his long, boney fingers about my by then stiff member. As he began to stroke it, that it was this master sculptor, already praised and sought out for his work, and sensitive, brilliant scholar who was wise far beyond his years who was fucking me and stroking my cock struck me and added to my physical pleasure.

As his breath became more laboured, I knew he was approaching his climax, and to my delight he paused to allow his passions to subside so we would remain united longer. It was surprisingly different with him, more tender and loving despite the fact we really did not know each other that well, and he was just as desirous of bringing me pleasure as he was of deriving pleasure himself. As he spurted his seed up my rectum and I spurted mine on his bed sheets I could sense his love and gratitude.

I could have easily spent a month or even two relaxing at the Palazzo Medici and the gardens of the Academy, talking to Cardinal Giovanni and Michelangelo during the day about theology and philosophy and engaging in sex with them in the evening, or exploring the city filled with its splendid palazzi, gardens and piazzas by day and experiencing the night life, particularly given the assurance such liaisons were considered to be no more than slight sins or minor faults at most and unless practised blatantly would most likely be ignored. Life here was so relaxed and rewarding compared to Venice it was difficult to leave, even with my desire to return home. I had, however, already left myself precious little time to travel to Anacona and actually should have already left.

So I reluctantly loaded my pack horses once more and headed out the city gates. Delayed by rains which made the roads muddy and slippery, I cursed myself for not giving myself more time. Arriving late the second night after two days of hard and miserable riding, I headed directly for the docks, fearing that in my stupidity and selfishly dallying in a life of lust and leisure I had missed the exchange of the Holy Lance. With relief, I spotted the Arab dhow with the Ottoman flag and a small cluster of men at the gangplank. The weather fortunately for me had also delayed the ship. One of the men dressed in black and wearing the red zucchetto and scarlet sash of a cardinal I recognized as Cardinal Niccolò Cibo who had been pointed out to me during my visit to the Vatican as a nephew of Pope Innocent and a most important and influential man. Being a relative, and being able to speak Turkish, he had been a logical choice for this most important mission. Slipping up in the dark and the rain in my mantle of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem and cape of the Order of Santiago, I tried to appear natural as I joined them. The envoy from Sultan Bayezid assumed I had accompanied the cardinal from Rome as a guard, and the cardinal assumed I had disembarked from the ship and had accompanied the sword from Istanbul to Anacona. Fortunately few words were exchanged and we parted company before either could discover his error.

The following morning Cardinal Cibo and I, along with Luca Borsano, the bishop of Foligno, and Aldello Piccolomini, a canon of Siena who had been sent as the officer of ceremonies to take charge of the formal procession from Anacona to Rome, travelled to Narni, three days of riding in the heat and the constant rain. There we were joined by Cardinals Giuliano Della Rovere, whom I had secretly spied upon and witnessed in congress with one of the Helvetian guards during the visit to the Vatican, and a third cardinal who was introduced as Cardinal Jorge da Costa, an elderly man in his mid eighties, the two having been sent to join us as legates de latere. I was surprised one of Cardinal da Costa's age would have been sent to escort the Lance, but I learned later it should not have been a surprise since the cardinal was one of the oldest and the most influential in the College of Cardinals.

I recalled that he was the one who had sponsored and supported Giovanni in his efforts to be recognized by the College of Cardinals. I actually knew his history well in that he was Portuguese and was the crown cardinal of Alfonso V, Cardinal Bishop of Albano and Archbishop of Lisbon. Having gotten into a disagreement with Prince João, he had gone to Rome when Prince João became king upon the death of his father Alfonso, and he had remained in Rome in exile ever since. It had not been a hardship on him as he was, I learned, one of the richest Cardinals in the Holy See and a great protector of the arts. Although I had changed considerably from when he last saw me, he recognized me immediately and recalled my presentation before Pope Innocent. His presence I met with apprehension as I was not sure if his presence was going to be helpful or harmful to me in the long run given his feelings about King João.

From Narni, we travelled to the Vatican, a short trip that should have only taken a day but which took three with the heavy rains and the oppressive heat, and the age and number of travellers now escorting the Holy Lance, and the formality of our procession. We arrived on the evening of the thirtieth of the month, the day before Ascension, and camped outside the city gates so that we and the Lance could enter in grand ceremony the next day.

Despite the hot weather and the threat of rain, Pope Innocent rose early the next day, May 31st in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-two, Ascension Day, and walked to the Church of S. Maria del Popolo to pray while we waited just outside the City Gate with the iron head of the Holy Lance in a crystalline tabernacle. Donning a rich pluvial and a precious mitre, he followed the cardinals and officials into the piazza, having had to abandon his baldacchino due to the pressure of the immense crowd which had gathered while we entered the piazza from the opposite side, pausing some forty paces away. The pope and cardinals della Rovere and de Costa slowly walked toward each other. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere handed the tabernacle to Pope Innocent who received it et illud asculatus est reverenter.

Such was the fervour of the crowd that it took the papal chamberlain, Bartolommeo Montani, an hour to get the procession started back to Saint Peters. Never have I seen such excitement and devout expressions of faith. Nor have I seen such pomp and ceremony as we headed back, the guildsmen and confraternities leading the way, followed by Neopolitan nobles in the suite of the young Prince of Capua, Ferrante, helping to carry the papal baldacchino followed by the cardinals and nobles from Rome. Arriving at the steps of Saint Peters, the pope, obviously tired and ill, handed the tabernacle to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia as he gave the crowd his benediction and granted plenary indulgences to all who had witnessed the arrival of the relic.

The Ottoman envoy, Chasimpuerg, having travelled from Anacona to Rome by another route accompanied only by five servants along with ambassadors from Poland, Venice, Milan, Florence and Siena, had arrived at the Vatican on the twenty-ninth and had been staying at the house of Bartolommeo Montani. He now approached the pope, and with Giorgio Bacciardi interpreting, delivered letters from Sultan Bayazid and asked to see the sultan's brother, Djem Sultan. To my surprise, the Pope said he would read the letters later and turning them over to Cardinal Niccolo Cibo, he retired into the Palace while the cardinals and young prince Ferrante entered Saint Peters for a public mass. (5)

As I left Saint Peters, I was approached by a page dressed in the livery of the pope who informed me that Pope Innocent wished an audience with me at his earliest opportunity and regretted that it could not be immediate but he had retired to his bed and asked where I might be contacted. I had made no arrangements and was at a loss what to reply. Cardinal Jorge da Costa happened to be nearby and overheard and to my surprise offered his home if I had no other arrangements. I was most uncomfortable with that and wary of his motives, but could hardly refuse.

I had hoped that I might avoid him while staying there, but he invited me to join him for his evening meal later that day. We ate alone, just the two of us. The meal was extravagant, as was his home, as to be expected for one of his wealth and position, and pieces of art on display were from master artists. He of course knew of the Medici Academy and was delighted to learn I had spent some time there, and much to my relief we spent a considerable portion of the meal and afterward discussing art and the artists I had met.

He of course was also interested in my role in the return of the Lance, having assumed I had been responsible for Sultan Bayazid's fulfilment of his promise to the pope finally. I knew I would be asked that by Pope Innocent, and during our journey to Rome I had tried to recall my meeting with the Sultan, which really had not been that productive nor that long, and had been so long ago and so innocuous I could barely remember it, and I had sorted out my thoughts and what I would say to him. I was actually glad the cardinal had asked as it gave me a chance to recite what I planned on telling Pope Innocent, and to refine the weaker parts, particularly my lies!

I was summoned midmorning the next day. Having expected to be called, I had dressed in my finery, and put on both my cape signifying my knighthood in the Order of Santiago and my mantle presented to me by the pope as a Knight of the Langue of Aragon, Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. Although it had only been nineteen months since I had last seen him, Pope Innocent had aged considerably and looked like a man far beyond his sixty years. Despite his frailness, he had an acute mind and had spotted and recognized me at the ceremony the previous day, and remembered in great detail my presentation to him the day he had knighted me, and his charge to me. He was of course elated with the arrival of the Lance and wanted to know every detail of my journey since I had left. I told him about being captured by the Mameluke slave trader and then made a slave in his army and of my travel through Jerusalem and the sights I had seen. I was saddened to hear the Dominican friar I had met there had not returned to Rome, or if he had, had not delivered the messages I had given him for Pope Innocent and for my father. Pope Innocent had met with Father, who had reported that I was missing, and I was surprised that he had not mentioned my meeting with Rabbi Abraham.

I told about my capture by the Janissaries, of whom he was most interested, and of my conversation with Sultan Bayezid. From what I had learned in Venice, circumstances had occurred which had facilitated the desires of both men, and their assumptions about my role in matters I did not try to correct. Of course I made no mention of my sexual activities up to then, it being of no import to him, and I skipped over my travels from Istanbul to Abyssinia. He was most interested in my travels in that country, and though disappointed I had not encountered the Kingdom of Prester John, he was extremely interested in my account of the empire of Eskender. He lavished great praise on my success in convincing Sultan Bayezid to return the Lance, and not wanting to upset him considering his grave illness, I made no attempt to correct his impression. He also confided in me that he had not read the letters from the Sultan publically for he feared the Sultan might mention the forty thousand ducats he was paying to have his brother detained, a fact he wished to remain known by as few people as possible. My audience was two hours, by the end of which the pope was fatigued and so was I so worried I was that I might get caught up in my lies regarding my role in the Lance's return. (6)

As I left my audience with the pope much relieved, a page intercepted me and I followed him to a meeting with Cardinal Borja, who also wanted to know about Sultan Bayezid and any comments he might have made regarding his brother Djem, about my travel with Cardinal Rovere from Narni and any comments he might have made about anything whatsoever, and if I had managed to investigate the existence of the Kingdom of Prester John. Having already related much of my tale first to Cardinal da Costa and then to Pope Innocent, my telling was much freer and easier the third time. He thanked me most profusely for meeting with him and indicated that if there was anything that I might need, and anything I might recall about the topics we had discussed that I had not mentioned, not to hesitate contacting him.

I tried to find the choir boys I had befriended my last time at the Vatican, but being unsuccessful as they were all preoccupied what with the arrival of the iron Lance head and the illness of the pope, I returned to the home of Cardinal da Costa, who was most interested in my audience with Pope Innocent, and even more so of my meeting with Cardinal Borja when I informed him I had also met with him. He immediately sent a messenger off to Cardinal della Rovere, and by that evening I had a request for an audience with him the following afternoon. I was becoming most popular, and feeling most uncomfortable with all the attention.

In our discussions, Cardinal da Costa got around to asking about King João and his disposition, as I suspected he would, to which I could honestly reply I knew little, particularly since I had been away for over a year and eight months. He still seemed to foster great enmity against our sovereign and I did my best to remain neutral. During our discussion I also learned from the cardinal that a merchant vessel from Lisbon, the Santa Verde, was currently docked and would be leaving with the tide for Portugal the day after tomorrow. I was most excited to learn about that and despite the hour left immediately to make inquiries, but to my great disappointment, was informed by the ship's purser that they had a full crew and had no room for a passenger despite my offer to pay handsomely. All attempts to speak to the first mate or the captain were rebuked, both official requests and requests made with hints of bribery. I returned to the home of Cardinal da Costa much dejected, and in desperation I penned off a note to Cardinal Borja informing him of my problem. Despite having an otherwise successful day with no serious repercussions from my audiences, I went to bed depressed and slept fitfully.

Late the next morning a page arrived from Cardinal Borja with, much to my surprise and delight, a letter saying he had written to the Captain of the Santa Verde requesting he make room for me on his voyage to Lisbon, and that the captain had replied and assured him I would be given a berth! Elated with the news, I was still beaming with happiness when another page arrived, this one from Pope Innocent with letters of commendation of my services to be delivered to Cardinal da Costa and to King João and to Father, along with a medallion and an order making me a Knight Commander of the Order of the Holy Lance and a purse containing a hundred ducats. There was also a letter inviting me to the wedding of his granddaughter Battistina to Luigi of Aragon, the uncle of the Prince of Capua, on the following day. I wrote a most grateful letter back thanking him and with the regrets that I would be unable to attend the wedding as I had obtained passage back to Portugal but wishing his granddaughter well.

I once again attempted to make contact with the choir boys I had met earlier but again was unsuccessful. I did manage to make contract with my countryman, the castrati Fabiao da Pavalha who was now twenty. He was considerably plumper than the last time I had seen him, and even less cordial. He had no messages for me to take back to his parents and would just as soon I not even mention having seen him. I suspected it had to do with the fact he had chosen to become a castrati and was embarrassed for his family and friends to find out, but he did not mention it and I figured it was just as well that I not mention it either.

That afternoon I met with Cardinal Rodrigo della Rovere who wanted to know much the same as Pope Innocent besides why Cardinal Borja had an audience with me, and I told my tale for the fourth time. Thankful for my information and my honesty, he invited me to a wedding ceremony to be held later that afternoon. I did not particularly wish to attend it, but I knew to refuse would be discourteous, and I was well aware of the importance of having contacts with those of wealth and power, so I gracefully accepted.

The wedding was one of two that he had arranged. One was the marriage of a niece of Virginio Orsini, a relative of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Orsini, whom I had been told was one of the contenders to the papal throne upon the death of Pope Innocent, with a nephew of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. The other wedding, the one about to be held, was of another of the nieces of Virginio Orsini with the son of Prospero Colonna. There was no question Cardinal Rovere was making alliances to further his ambitions for the throne of Saint Peter. I found it most interesting as I knew the Medici family had married into the Orsini family and that there was little love between the Medici family and Giuliano della Rovere so this marriage left Cardinal Orsini caught in the middle.

Heading for the Rovere palace, I planned on making my appearance and leaving at the earliest possible time, eager to see that my belongings were ready for transport to the Santa Verde and wishing to get a good night's rest. The Rovere palace was of course resplendent with pennants and streamers hanging from the ceilings and glistening silver and sparkling cut crystal glasses on the tables. Servants circulated among the guests with canters of wine and platters of fresh fruit, assorted cheeses and a variety of hors d'oeuvres such as I have never seen. I was sure the guests would be drunk and full before the wedding supper even began. Recalling the revelry at the party I had last attended at the Holy See, I was careful to limit my intake of wine and began to worry that something might interfere with my plans to leave on the morrow.

The wedding ceremony was being conducted right there at the palace and by Cardinal Rovere himself. As he took his position at the altar in his scarlet biretta and robes and lace rochet, I could not help thinking back to the afternoon I and several newly befriended choir boys had watched him stip naked and fuck a Helvetian guard half his age in the courtyard of his private apartments at the Vatican and hear him curse like a sailor as he shot his seed up the ass of the twenty-five year old guard. It was like he was two different men, one pure and sacrosanct and the other dark and evil, and that I found frightening. While we waited, a half dozen boys between the ages of four and seven, whom I assumed altar boys or choir, joined him. Shortly thereafter, someone began to play a harp and a half dozen young girls about the same ages as the boys made their way down the aisle to join them at the altar. I kept watching for the bride to follow these flower girls, but nobody appeared, and as I turned to the front, I wondered when the groom and his groomsmen were going to appear. Cardinal Rovere then gestured, and one of the girls and one of the boys stepped forward and I realized I had been watching the arrival of the wedding party. Neither the bride nor the groom had yet reached the age of six!

Arranged marriages between families were common, and betrothals arranged while the couple were still children frequent among the wealthy and members of royalty where it was important to cement wealth, power and allegiances through marriage. The actual ceremony, however, to my knowledge, is seldom conducted until the youngest of the couple is at least twelve, and more frequently not until the bride is of childbearing age and the groom has reached puberty. It was most strange to see these children dressed and acting with the solemnity of adults, to hear the groom vow to love, comfort, honour, and keep his bride in sickness and in health and to keep himself only unto her, and for his bride to vow to love, comfort, honour, obey, and keep her husband in sickness and in health and to keep herself only unto him. I had to wonder if they even knew what the vow to keep themselves only unto their partner meant. The ceremony ended with the customary kiss, which the bride and groom performed awkwardly and self-consciously to the applause and merriment of the wedding guests. They then made their progression back up the aisle hand in hand, followed by their prepubescent entourage.

There followed the traditional banquet, speeches and toasts to the bride and groom and entertainment by musicians and jugglers and a formal dance, lead by the bride in her flowing white dress and the groom in his vest and tunic embroidered in gold thread and in his green and yellow striped pantaloons and black hose, the two looking very much like innocent children despite their apparel. Totally bored by it all, I was about to make my excuses and depart when with much fanfare it was announced that the bride and groom were about to make their exit. As they prepared to do so, the master of ceremonies circulated about the room, pausing to whisper to various individuals. To my surprise, he stopped beside me and whispered that the Cardinal requested that I be one of those to witness the consummation of the marriage!

A request from the Cardinal, a man who possibly would be the next Holy Father, was not something one refused, and so confused and certain this could not be the same as what I had heard rumoured happened when adults marry, I agreed and found myself being ushered into line behind the newly married couple along with a number of cardinals and nobles of the royal families. Having gathered about a dozen and a half of us, the master of ceremonies lined us up behind the newly married couple's attendants and we filed out of the hall, down the hallway and up the stairs to the married couple's bedroom, where the bride's attendants were ushered off to a separate room to await the bride. Entering the bedroom, the bride and groom glanced at each other apprehensively and self-consciously, their apprehension and self-consciousness increasing as they slowly walked toward the marriage bed, a huge, curtained bed that dominated the room and could easily accommodate them and the six groomsmen who had accompanied the groom. As they stopped before the bed, we witnesses took our seats, three rows of eight chairs having been set up in front of the bed, the first row reserved for the fathers of the bride and groom and the six groomsmen.

The two oldest of the groomsmen, boys of about seven years of age, stepped forward and helped the bride remove her veil and detach the long train of her dress, the boys evidently having been rehearsed in their role. The next two oldest boys assisted the groom in removing his vest and tunic, and having him sit on a stool beside the bed, helped him remove his boots. He looked so bewildered and frightened by what was about to happen as he sat there in his adult clothes with his hair carefully trimmed and curled for the occasion. Holding out their hands, the two older boys helped the married couple up the steps before the huge bed and then pulled the sheer curtains closed and took their seat in the front row. The candles were extinguished with the exception of a couple on the wall behind the bed so that the married couple appeared as dark silhouettes behind the sheer curtains. The ropes of the bed creaked as they shifted positions, the boy slowly removing his clothing and then hesitantly and awkwardly disrobing his young bride.

As the silhouettes merged together there was a murmur among the witnesses and ribald comments as the married couple embraced and kissed and awkwardly caressed each other. Many of the witnesses already had too much to drink, and our host had ensured there was plenty to imbibe as we watched. The tongue of even the shyest and most reserved of the witnesses was loosened by drink and the erotic nature of our very private entertainment. The couple had likely been advised prior to the ceremony, but advice and experience are very different, and it was evident that they were experiencing difficulty. This only served to further amuse the witnesses and I began to feel sorry for the couple as once again one shadow lay on its back and the other hovered above it and then slowly lowered to lie on top of it for what was probably the sixth time.

This time the bottom silhouette cried out in pain, causing the witnesses to cheer and one to comment about it being only a little prick, the play on words causing great amusement among the watchers, even the young boys in the front row. As the top silhouette began a slow, rhythmic rise and fall and the ropes of the bed began to creak in a constant rhythm, the boy was cheered on and the room drew silent as all watched. Many of the men shifted uncomfortably and discretely reached down to ease what had arisen into a more comfortable position. Two of the boys, one seven and one five, were not so discrete as they reached between their legs. The rest of the boys stared in bewilderment and curiosity. I must confess rather than finding witnessing the two repugnant or at least uncomfortable, the thought of the two children engaged in that adult and most private act was arousing and my own member to begin to swell.

The top shadow continued its rhythmic rise and fall for what seemed like the longest time though in reality it was probably no more than two hundred heartbeats. At any rate, it was long enough for my swollen cock to itch impatiently for attention. Finally the top figure began to move more jerkily and erratically, twitching this way and that, until its head was thrown back and a whimper was heard between gasps for breath. The figure stopped almost immediately after that and rolled off the bottom figure, and then, after a long pause, the two rose and the one, apparently the groom, removed the sheet covering the bed. The sheer curtain parted and the sheet thrown out and immediately candles were lit. The sheet was lightly stained with blood and the witnesses clapped and called out congratulations and then rose and began to file out. (7)

As we left, one of the clergy stepped up beside one of the seven-year-old boys and whispered something to him, and one of the nobles leaned over and whispered something to the other seven-year-old. As another man pushed past the other witnesses and placed his hand on the shoulder of the five-year-old who had reached down to rearrange and comfort his swollen member, I made my move before anyone else could beat me to it, pressing through the crowd of witnesses choking the exit to the bedroom to step up beside the other five-year-old boy.

"So, what did you think of that?" I asked.

"I am glad I do not have to get married," he said as he wrinkled up his nose.

"Why not?"

"And have to stick my thing inside a girl, and with everyone watching? Ewww!"

"It is not as bad as it seems," I assured him. "And it does make your thing feel good." He made no response. "Of course there are other ways to make it feel good without a girl." He still did not respond. "I imagine you already know that." He looked up at me and shook his head in the negative. "Half the men in the room would like to show you how," I observed as I looked around the crowd. There were several watching myself and the boy at that moment, ready to move in if the two of us did not leave together, some intending on approaching the boy, and others intending on approaching me. The boy glanced around the room also and could not possibly not notice we were being watched.

"I would rather it be you than any of them," he whispered, his voice quavering with fright and distaste. I smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder for reassurance, and to signal those watching to back off. "I am sure we can find a room where we can be alone," I whispered.

"I know a place where nobody will be," he responded and I let him lead the way.

He lead me to the library. He was quite right. Nobody would be interested in reading this evening. Kneeling down in front of him, I again placed my hands on his shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. "You do not have to do anything if you do not want to. I saw the way some of the old men were eyeing you and I suspected you might not want their attention, not for what they have in mind. So I figured having you leave with me would be the surest way to get you out of the room and away from them. As much as I would like to show you the pleasure you can have with another male, I understand if you are scared or think it is disgusting and would rather I not. You have many years ahead of you to discover such things."

"That is why Cino and the older boys left with the men who spoke to them? To do stuff together?"

"Cino was the boy with you?" He nodded. "That is why."

"Then I would like to know too," he observed, though somewhat hesitantly.

"And I would very much like to teach you," I said with a smile. "I will tell you what. If at any time you want us to stop, just say, and we will, alright?"

He nodded. I began by pulling his shirt out of his breeches and pulling it off over his head. Still kneeling in front of him, I reached out and caressed his soft, hairless chest and his back and then lightly ran my fingertips over his little nipples. He of course squirmed with the stimulation but put on a determined face and held his ground as I continued to caress his teats until the little buds became firm. Telling him that was somewhat like how his member would feel when I touched it, I proceeded to untie the chords of his breeches and draw them down. He, like the other boys, was dressed formally and was wearing a pair of black hose and the tight cloth clearly revealed the outline of his little member and his testicles. I reached out and caressed them above the cloth and then drew them down. Ah, what delight his privates were, so soft and dainty, so small and innocent, and yet even at that age so sensitive to the touch. Surely it was God's design that they be played with or He would not have made them so responsive and so covetous.

I caressed those sensitive, little robin eggs in their loose, silky sack and I picked up his limp little hose and stroked the shaft and gently caressed the head, causing him to squirm. He smiled as I looked up at him, clearly interested and curious and wishing to continue. Leaning forward, I took his little cocklet in my mouth and gently sucked on it. It of course quickly responded and grew hard in my mouth, proof that even at that young age a boy was ready and eager for sex, which again, I can only say had to be God's plan or he would not have made boys such. As I removed my lips, his little cock stood up proud and eager for attention and he giggled with amusement at the sight having never before seen his member in that condition. I licked his dangling balls and then ran my tongue up the shaft of his member and around the bulb, causing it to bob with excitement and arousal and causing him to squirm with pleasure and giggle with amusement again.

Sliding off my boots, I undid the buckle of my trousers and pushed them and my hose down and stepped out of them and then undid the ties of my thong and let it drop. The boy stared with interest at my partially aroused member, it likely being the first chance he had to examine the member of another male closely. I motioned for him to take it in his hand, which he eagerly did, and it began to swell with the touch of those hot little fingers and the thought that it was the first cock for him to hold other than his own. I showed him how to stroke it and then let him continue until my member was rigid. His eyes widened with amazement when I told him to squeeze it as hard as he could and he felt the strength and power of that precious member. I then resumed sucking on his little member and working my lips up and down the length, and then stood and offered to let him do the same to me. He was hesitant but with his little cock throbbing and burning with pleasure, he was curious enough to be tempted. I had him proceed slowly, taking just a bit of my bulb in his mouth and sucking on it, and then slowly easing forward until he had my entire bulb in his mouth. He sucked on it a bit and then slowly began to work his lips up and down over my bulb and down the slightest bit of my shaft as I had done to him. The assault on the rim of my bulb and the sight of this innocent, stiff-cocked cherub sucking my member soon had me oozing the sweet nectar that precedes one's seed.

As the boy sucked me, I slipped my pointer finger in my mouth and sucked on it, and then reached around and caressed the boy's little pucker and slowly inserted my fingertip into his rectum. He of course squirmed uncomfortably and then with pleasure as I caused the same burning ring around his pucker as I had caused around the rim of his cock. I continued for a while, slowly inserting my finger deeper and deeper up his ass, and then slowly easing it in and out to loosen him up as he dutifully continued to suck my now aching cock. At last I had him stop and I turned him around and had him bend over.

Holding my stiff, aching cock up, I had him drool over it to lubricate it and watching the cherub dribble his spittle over my member caused it to jerk excitedly. I then wedged the tip of my cock in his opening and ever so slowly began to press forward, telling him to open his anal muscle and push out at the same time. Ever so slowly I stretched open this unbreached portal, stretching it open wider than it had ever been stretched until my knob popped inside. I paused then to allow the boy time to get used to having my knob inside him and to recover from the pain he had experienced, and for me to recover from the arousal and excitement of penetrating him. I was eager to continue, however, and so was he, so we waited only the briefest of time. I then slowly pushed forward, and having overcome the tight entrance, my penetration was unhindered until my coarse hairs were pressing against his smooth backside and my large, pendulous balls were hanging behind his hairless little sack and I wondered what he was thinking having a sixteen-year-old boy's cock buried up his ass.

I then began to pump my hips to and fro, sliding my stiff member in and out of this tight, virgin five-year-old boy. I cannot begin to describe the delight of fucking this child, the delight of knowing I was the first up his asshole, the first to introduce him to the burning pleasure of being fucked. When I thought of tales of fathers who chose death for their sons rather than engage in this act I thought of them with sadness, not admiration nor desire to emulate, and I swore that should I be so fortunate to marry and have sons, I would not prevent them from having such an experience, and indeed, would encourage them to do so.

The boy squirmed and wiggled with arousal and inhaled and exhaled deeply as I worked my cock in and out of his hot, moist, velvet-smooth rectum, sending shards of painful pleasure deeper up his rectum and through his burning, stretched anus. I knew the itching sensation he was feeling was the same as I was feeling about the rim of my cock, a pleasure that united the two of us, and I quivered again with the delight of being the first inside this boy, the first to introduce him to the pleasure of being fucked, which multiplied my pleasure tenfold.

All too soon I reached my peak, and although I wished to pause so that I could enjoy the pleasure all the more, I knew that to prolong the act any longer would likely be more painful for my five-year-old partner than pleasurable, and so for his first time I allowed myself to continue, telling him that soon I would be squirting my seed up his ass. Soon I felt the twang deep in my groin and I grasped the boy's compact buttocks and shoved my cock as deep into him as I could as my seed raced up the core of my cock and spurted out the tip and up his rectum. I gasped and groaned with ecstasy, inhaling the pungent fragrance of a boy child in rut and of my own sweat and my freshly spent seed. I spurted violently and repeatedly and my cockhead burned and my member throbbed hotly, it and his throbbing rectum becoming one, and my mind spun dizzily with my release so that I had to grasp his slender hips for balance as the boy arched his back and quivered with the first orgasm of his young life triggered by my throbbing cock up his ass and my shot up his rectum.

I knelt there a long time with my stiff cock up his rectum, enjoying the warm flush that follows ejaculation, spreading through one's groin and causing one's cheeks to grow hot. Slowly my breath, and his, returned to normal. Finally I eased my cock out of his tight rectum now filled with my seed. The boy glanced at my cock out of curiosity and his nose and mouth twisted with disgust at the sight of my slime and faeces-smeared member. Wiping my turgid member off with my handkerchief, I squeezed it and offered the boy a closer look at the seed I had spurted into his body, encouraging him to touch it and smell it, which he did with boyish curiosity. I wiped off his anus with the other end of my handkerchief and the two of us dressed.

"I hope that was as pleasurable for you as it was for me," I said as we stepped out of the library.

"It was," he assured me with a smile.

"I am glad," I replied, "and I hope you can find someone to do it with again. If you do not, it is not the same, but you can pleasure yourself using your finger, but be sure you trim your nail well before sticking it up your ass. You do not want to scratch yourself," I advised. He nodded seriously. "And of course you can feel good by stroking your thing like you did mine." He nodded again, his eyes brightening with the memory.

We parted ways and as I headed down the hallway I thought back to the six-year-old black boy who had introduced me to the pleasures of sex and the wonder and delight that I had felt that night, and a warm feeling passed over me with the thought that I had in my turn introduced the same pleasures to this five-year-old boy child. Hopefully, sometime in the future he would likewise introduce another, an older boy, a man, perhaps even another his age.

Crossing the courtyard, I passed a Helvetian guard and though I could not be sure, he looked very much like the guard I had seen Cardinal Rovere fucking my first visit to the Vatican, and I wondered if he was heading for a meeting with the cardinal, or returning. Surely after the events of that day the cardinal would be in a good mood and wanting to celebrate his successes. As I continued on my way, I thought of that and of the hypocrisy of the Holy See, how some cardinals, even those who aspired to become Pope, preached one thing while practising the opposite, how some stridently condemned congress between those of the same sex while their colleagues just as enthusiastically fucked their altar boys, and how positions of power were not determined by merit but by bribery and favouritism and who was related to whom. None of it was how I imagined the Holy See would be. As I stepped out of Cardinal Rovere's palace and headed for the home of Cardinal da Costa, two men who could not be more different, I would be glad to leave their world of hypocrisy, scheming and mistrust behind.