The ward was dark. It must be night, I thought. The bandages that had made it perpetually dark were off now. There was a glow through the window across and down the ward. The moon providing more light outside than existed inside what must once have been a ballroom. A screen had been pulled out between my bed and the next one down. Mine was the last bed down the long room from the door. My bed was the only one with a screen that could be pulled out to make it private. “To keep the boy away from the men, when needed,” had been the explanation they’d given me. At least that’s what I thought they said. I find it so hard to remember—to keep hold of the memories.

How did I know it was a hospital ward? And why in blazes could I remember this afternoon and not earlier than that—and that tomorrow I’d remember the night, but not this afternoon? And four hours later the here, the now, would be gone. Did I want the here and now gone? Why was that even a question? When I’d asked those questions out loud, Nurse Enid had just patted my arm and said they were heady questions for a boy in my condition and that all would be revealed when I’d had my operation—at least I think that’s what she said.

His name was Earl—the orderly’s name—I’d heard that this afternoon. I wouldn’t remember it tomorrow unless I saw him again then and he told me his name. But would he do that, considering what he was doing now? He was big and heavy. He had to be fifteen stone, redheaded and florid, wheezing now. How did I know as dark as it was that he was redheaded? I just knew. I have no idea how long I would know that, however.

I tried moving my arms to push him away from me, but they were restrained with surgical gauze to the brass rail overhead of the bedframe. I wanted to scream, but there was gauze wrapped around my mouth too. My head was covered with gauze but, for some reason, that was as should be. It wasn’t wrapped around my eyes anymore—if it ever had been. I couldn’t remember.

That had become my mantra: I can’t remember.

This, though. This wasn’t what should be. Even I knew that, even with my head perpetually swimming in a daze and memories coming in and out. It wasn’t as it should be that Earl was on the bed, on his knees, between my knees, pushing my hospital gown up to above my belly, running hands up underneath and squeezing my pecs, thrumming and pinching my nipples. A hand grasping my shaft, squeezing it and stroking it. Me moaning behind the gauze gag, not reacting as I should, rising to his touch, digging my heels into the mattress, and thrusting my pelvis up into his hand.

He gave a low, guttural laugh, and fingers went to my entrance, penetrating me, moving in and out. Groaning, I pushed my pelvis up more, rocking on the fingers. Should I welcome this, take pleasure from it, as I was?

“Like that, dontcha?” It was murmured. I almost didn’t hear it. Another ten minutes and I wouldn’t remember I’d heard it. “Done it before me, aintcha, boy?”

A moment of clarity, but not the here and now. Fire on board, a cannonade. Ship listing. Cold water and debris everywhere. A bay in France. The “Essex” going down. Hanging on to a board, the French coast in sight. Other’s reaching out from the water. Me reaching for them, but unable to find a grip.

This afternoon, Doctor ... Doctor ... I couldn’t remember his name now. The doctor had told me what they said when the French had turned me over. “He’s just a boy. We don’t war on boys in 1759,” the doctor had told me they said, and when I hadn’t understood him, he’d said, “The Seven Year’s War, son. They say they took you from the sinking of our ‘Essex’ when their ‘Soleil Royal’ went down in Quiberon Bay. No one your age was known to be on the ‘Essex,’ though. When you arrived in Southampton, you were fairly raving from the lead that was embedded in your skull. You were brought up to us here at this temporary military hospital south of Salisbury straight away.”

“My age?” I had asked.

“Aye, boy. I reckon you to be about fourteen by your development—other than stature, though. You are a bit small for your physical development. You must have been on the ‘Essex’ when it took cannon balls and went down. You have shrapnel in your head. We’ll take that out. You’ll be good as new in no time. And then you’ll remember and be able to tell us who you are and how you came to be on the ‘Essex’.”

I couldn’t remember much of what I was being told of my condition and what brought me to this improvised military hospital in an old castle. But so far, I had remembered this. I was fourteen and I’d been taken away from a naval battle, too young to be in that battle. And, yet, I felt that I had a reason to be there, someone I served there. Someone I served as I was serving Earl now.

I certainly knew Earl now, his belly pressing down on me, the orderly knowing me intimately. Dead weight. Fifteen stones of Earl. And I remember the look he gave me this afternoon. I remember him asking something. I don’t remember my answer. But I know the here and now.

I arch my back and cry out through the gauze of the gag as he enters me with his shaft. He’s thick, as thick as ... I can’t remember. But I do know this isn’t all that alien. He’s hovering over me, his hands clutching and squeezing my bare butt cheeks, pulling me up to him. Deep inside me. Sliding in and out. Me stretching to take him. Opening to him. The muscles of my passage walls gripping his shaft, shimmering, and rippling over the hard rod. I remember being possessed like this and wanting this intimacy, this shaft inside me, wanting and owning me. This isn’t alien to me. Why isn’t this alien to me?

“Fine lad. Sexy boy. Give it to me. Surrender. Yes, like that. Open to me. Ahhhh.”

It’s also comforting in its own way. Soothing, if having a thick shaft stroking inside you can be soothing. I knew how to do this. Set into this rhythm, I was calmed, anxious for the ending. I dig in my heels in the bed and set my hips in motion, thrusting up as he thrusts down. The low, guttural laugh again. Earl releases my cheeks long enough to grasp my legs and raise them, setting my ankles on his shoulders and then palming my buttocks again, pulling my hips up to him, putting my weight on my shoulder blades. Picking up vigor, intensity. Fucking me hard and deep.

Another flash of clarity. On board the “Essex.” Running the “Soleil Royal” into a box, in Quiberon Bay. The lieutenant excited, holding me in front of him at the rail as we watch and experience. Sexually aroused. Calling me to do my duty in his excitement. Engorged and pressing at my buttocks. Pulling the waistband of my trousers down and bending me over the rail. Holding my head down with his hand. Me staring into the roiling water below as he enters me—taking his privilege in his excitement in the sea battle. Anthony. That was his name. Anthony. Gloucestershire. We’d come to sea together. We were here together. We were together, our bodies joined, close to coming together. Thrust, thrust, thrust.

“I’m going to come!” I don’t know who called that out. It could have been both of us. Suddenly, with the burst of an explosion above us, blood all over the place. All over Anthony. All over me. And Anthony slowly slipping out and away, clawing down my legs as the ship lists toward the water and both Anthony and I slide down into the sea.

Thrust, thrust, thrust. “I’m going to breed, boy. Take my spunk,” delivered in a husky whisper as fists buried on either side of my chest and red, florid, chubby face staring down into my eyes, Earl—it had to be Earl who muttered this; I could not—pulled back, thrust forward deep, and then again, and again, and, with a shudder, released inside me.

We lay there, Earl still on top of me, Earl still inside me, both of us breathing heavily.

“Knew you wanted it,” he muttered in my ear. He reached up, pulled the gauze away from my mouth, and then extracted the metal clip at each of my wrists holding the gauze in place. He unwound the gauze and my hands were free. I didn’t know where to put them. Put my fists against his chest and push him away? He was still wearing his medical tunic. Or what?

It was “or what.” I pressed my hands into his shoulder blades and lowered my legs to hook my knees on his hips. “Again,” I begged.

He laughed, pulled his tunic over his head, briefly dislodging my grip on his shoulder blades, but only briefly, and pulled my gown over my head. We were both naked now, his chest deep, muscular despite the beer belly, and covered in what I knew, despite the darkness in the ward, would be reddish blond swirls of curls. We were going to fuck again now.

How did I know he was hirsute before his tunic came off? Had we done this before?

He covered my mouth with his lips. I parted mine and his tongue darted in, taking possession. I took the thick tongue inside me hungrily, just as I took the thick cock inside me hungrily. I clutched him with my claws and pulled my mouth away. “Again, now. Deep, hard. Fuck me again, Anthony,” I whimpered.

The laugh was low, guttural, husky.

He was coming alive again. I moved my hands down to his bulbous buttocks, holding him close to me there, as he regained my lips and his thrusts began again. I moved my hips, knowing just what to do, having no idea at the moment why and how I knew what to do. But I did. We were fucking again. He wasn’t just fucking me. We were fucking each other.

He pulled his mouth off mine, arching his head up, putting everything he had behind the deep thrusts, huffing his declaration of victory. “I knew it. I knew you wanted it, boy. I knew how you looked at me when I gave you the glad eye that this was what you wanted. This was what you needed.”

Thrust, thrust, thrust.

“It went quite well, I think. All of the shrapnel is out, I’m quite sure. The pressure on the brain is off. You should start regaining memories, slowly at first. At least we hope you will. We might know who you are. The Royal Navy is working on that. It will help if you are able to tell us soon. In the meantime, some time outside, in the garden, will do you wonders.”

“Thank you, Doctor ... doctor.” He had such a fine head of wavy chestnut-brown hair, graying at the temples. I thought I knew his name. But I couldn’t come up with it.

“Wentworth. Samuel Wentworth,” the man hovering over me said, patting me on the arm as I lay in the bed, in the last bed down the long wardroom, formerly the ballroom at the stately old Longford Castle, south of Salisbury, on the Avon, temporarily given over to be a military hospital during the war with France—or so I’d been told. Did I denote a slight dimming in his eyes? A twitch at the side of his mouth as he looked up to the nurse standing behind him? Was I supposed to know who he was? Of course I was if he’d been the surgeon who had just taken shrapnel out of my skull at ... at ... wherever this was.

The nurse was a woman, one who looked vaguely familiar to me, although I couldn’t bring up a name. I expected to see a man—a burly young redheaded man standing behind the doctor, a male orderly rather than a female nurse. I don’t know why I did, though. It was just a passing snatch of memory that there had been a redheaded man there the last time that Doctor ... that the doctor had visited my bedside.

The nurse disappeared from behind the doctor and he turned his head as if watching her move further down the line of beds in the ward. When he turned back and smiled down at me, I felt his hand go under the hem of my hospital gown to rest on my inner thigh, high up.

“I’m glad the surgery went so well,” he said. “You are a beautiful, yielding boy. Thank you. You must get your strength. I suggest walks, a bit longer each time,” he continued. “We can set my house on the edge of Nunton, on Nunton Drove, off Ebbleside Villas, as a goal, if you’d like—if you’d like to visit me where we can chat ... and be alone. Here, I’ve written out the address and given walking directions.” He smiled at me and slipped the paper into the top drawer of the nightstand beside my bed.

Long after he was gone I wondered what the hell he meant by that—by my being a beautiful, yielding boy. But I also remembered that, when he placed his well-manicured hand on my thigh, I had no desire that he take it away.

The flash of an image surged across my mind: An examination room, a padded table. Stirrups. My feet in the stirrups, legs raised and spread.

“We’ll see what we can see. There will be signs of how old you are.” My gown is drawn off.

“Just go on your back, feet in these stirrups here. Ah yes, the start of deeper chest development. You have a perfect body; a boy turning toward manhood. Such slim hips still. A lovely boy.” Hands on my chest running down my torso, on my legs, up my inner thighs, centering, fingers testing, hands weighing, prodding, distending, squeezing my balls. “Ahhh, oh fuck.”

Arousing pleasure, going hard under the stroking of his hand. My hands cupping a head lodged between my thighs, my fingers running through wavy chestnut-brown hair, the fingers pressing through the gray at the temples. The pleasure lifting me up into the clouds, using the leverage of my feet in the stirrups to raise and push my pelvis into the licking tongue and the nipping teeth—the warm, moist mouth opening over my shaft. Lips gliding down the sides—and back up.

“Oh, you beautiful, yielding boy.” The lips gliding down the side of the shaft again.

Moaning. “Yes, yes, yes. Do it. Put it in.” Hands running up my inner thighs. The white medical coat pressing into my chest. The pleasure-pain of the penetration, and the stroking inside me of the hard cock. Panting, spreading open. All sensation centered on the throbbing, searching, sinking shaft. Remembering not required, the muscles of my passage grabbing and rippling over the cock, pulling it deeper. “Yes, yes, like that. Deeper, harder. Stroke me.” Down, down into the soft, spongy, shimmering, hungry core. Explosion.

“Oh, Doctor!”

The nurse—or a nurse; I couldn’t remember if it was the same nurse who had visited me with Doctor ... Doctor Wentworth—accompanied me out to the garden behind a stately old manor house—a castle really. I had little idea why we were here. She’d said it was Longford Castle, but that meant little to me. I didn’t know whether she was with me to help me find my way back ... to wherever, or to ensure I didn’t wander off. I’d been told that this place ... Longford Castle, which had been given over to the Royal Navy as a hospital and rehabilitation center for soldiers and sailors, had extensive gardens undulating down towards the banks of the Avon River.

I was a little scared. The memories were coming and going. But they were coming, which was hopeful, I thought.

I sat on the bench listening to Nurse Enid—yes, that was her name; she’d told me that some time ago—reading to me from a book of poetry, when I saw him come out of the house and onto the terrace above the lower one where Nurse ... the nurse and I were sitting, and walk across the back of the house toward the service wing. He was a big man, a little pudgy. Florid, with flaming red hair. He was a hirsute man, curly chest hairs. Although, how I knew that, I certainly didn’t know. A big-cocked man. Older than I was—a real man.

I had been told I was about fourteen, a boy still, but already turning into a man in many ways. Someone had told me I was ideal for them—developing men’s attributes but still young, fresh, small, pliable, innocent, yielding. Who had told me that? A man in a white coat? A doctor or an orderly?

I was touching myself and Nurse Enid brushed my hand away, with the comment, “We’ll have none of that, young man.” She put the poetry book away she was reading from and had told me she’d been given by Doctor Wentworth when she’d wanted something to read to me in the garden and picked up another book. “I suppose Richard Barnfield isn’t the best of poets to be reading to you, young men,” she murmured, turning to a book of sonnets by Shakespeare.

The redhaired young orderly—Earl—looked out in our direction, make an abrupt about-face, and went back into the building. It was a fine-looking building, a central section with columns set into the walls, with castle towers on either side. I wondered what building it was.

Later, in the darkness of the night, men settled in their beds in the ward, fewer beds occupied now than before, there being a lull in the war making in France, I was told by my good friend in the next bed, Bram ... whatever, I heard the scraping of the legs of the screen by the bed as it was being drawn between my bed, in the back corner of the ward, and whathisname’s bed beside me. It was even darker now than before. I heard the heavy breathing, though, and pulled my gown over my head and lay, naked, on my back on top of the sheets.

Come to me, I thought. Come into me, possess me, come inside me.

He was on top of me, naked, substantial, heavy. I spread and raised my legs and, as he pushed his knees between my thighs and under my buttocks, I sighed, “Yes, yes, do it.” He pressed a big, beefy palm over my mouth and I raised my arms over my head, grabbing the brass rail of the bedframe to hold myself in place and arched my back, as he entered, entered, entered me and my passage fought to stretch to take him in.

Yes, yes, yes.

I gasped when he took his hand away, pulled his hips back and then thrust them forward—and again and again. I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist and lowered my arms, grasping and squeezing his undulating buttocks, holding him close to and inside me as we rocked together in the fuck. He possessed my lips with his, invading my mouth cavity with his tongue, which I sucked on as we moved together. His curly chest hairs rubbed against my chest—his red hairs, I knew was the case despite the darkness that enveloped us, as we moved together in perfect harmony, me sheathing him, him buried deep in my core, filling me to the stretch, kissing my passage walls with his possessing shaft as he stroked inside me.