Hugo von Tarlenheim left Strelzen with a certain amount of relief. A year in the city had much extended his sexual horizons and he had discovered a burning need for sex with other boys. But it had also taught him that he was not one of nature’s students, and his Rudolfer grades had suffered from the distractions of the White Tree and the Wejg. He had made few friends amongst his fellow students, none of whom appeared to share his sexuality.
Because of that he had resorted for friendship not to them but rather to Theo Ignacij, the attractiveness of whose slim body had not paled on him. Theo was not as uneducated and inarticulate as the other Postgasse boys, and he did not expect money for the privilege of taking his cock. But Theo loved him, he feared. Hugo knew he did not love Theo and was already wise enough in the ways of the world to realise that sooner or later this difference would cause both boys some unhappiness. For now he could just enjoy the easy way his cock slid into the heat of Theo’s practised hole, which always sent a huge thrill up Hugo’s spine. Theo’s deep and satisfied groan as Hugo sank his cock in his bottom was itself a turn on, and Hugo rewarded the older boy under him by sharply tweaking and pulling at the hard nubs of his nipples, which always caused Theo to squeal and buck under him. It also caused the youth to orgasm and ejaculate into the sheets below. Hugo came soon after Theo did.
Sex with Theo may have been predictable and was often as brief as it was passionate, but it was usually good. Hugo was happy enough with this level of intimacy, but was not so besotted with Theo that the thought of a separation of some months from him in Husbrau caused him much distress.
One advantage of the Hugo attachment these days was that Theo was able to chauffeur Hugo in Martin Tofts’ car. So Hugo left the city for the province of Husbrau sitting next to Theo in the front of the Wendel saloon, teasing the other boy with half-serious suggestions of al fresco sex along the way.
When the car reached Terlenehem, Hugo directed Theo to park in the town square, and he took him into the Red Rose for a farewell lunch. Hugo was well-enough known in the town, and the innkeeper bustled up to seat them, with much bowing and many a ‘Your Excellency’. When they had settled, Hugo found Theo staring fixedly at him across the table.
‘Er … your excellency?’ he murmured.
Hugo shrugged. ‘This is Ober Husbrau. Time moves slowly here.’
‘I mean I knew you were well-connected, but this is a bit much.’
‘Tell me about it. The landlord will expect an aristocratic tip. I’ll have to pay it too, or the honour of the Tarlenheims will take a local hit.’
‘So you’re a lord? A count?’
‘Fraid so. Me and all my brothers. Is that a problem?’
‘I suppose it might be, if I were ever to meet them. How would you explain me?’
Hugo smiled nicely. ‘As a friend, sweetheart.’
‘But not the sort of friend any young count would be expected to make.’
‘Hmph!’ Hugo snorted. ‘I can’t absolve you of reverse snobbery, Theo. You should have more self confidence.’
Theo was still somewhat abstracted when the time came for he and Hugo to make their farewells. But Hugo’s warm hug was not resisted, and Hugo promised that he would be in touch about his return to the capital. Once he had waved off the car, Hugo struck out along the familiar riverside road towards his family’s oldest residence, the Great House of Tarlenheim itself. The shady walk was pleasant enough, and it took him back to his days playing in the town fields and woods with his brothers. So much so that he was strangely taken aback when he heard the whoops and shouts of boys at play; briefly he thought he had by some magic gone back in time. He was at the open park gate and the boys he had heard were playing among the mixed oaks and horse chestnuts lining the drive up to the Great House.
‘Hey there! You boys! Do you have permission to be playing here!’ Hugo called to the three lads, one of whom had climbed up into the branches of an oak. The other two briefly stared and then ran for it, leaving their companion in mischief marooned in the branches.
‘Down, you boy! Now! You’re trespassing. I’m surprised the lodge keeper hasn’t dealt with you and your little mates already. His dogs used to be feared locally.’
The lad slowly and carefully dropped to the lowest branches and looked down at Hugo. He was a very pretty golden-haired child of around ten years. There was something odd about his clothing which registered on Hugo, but odder still was the quite untroubled smile lingering around his mouth. He spoke as confidently as if he had every right to be climbing trees in the park.
‘Excuse me sir, but would you be so kind as to catch me if I jump?’
Hugo could not help returning such a smile. ‘As you wish, young man. You don’t look heavy enough to knock me down.’
The child let himself drop, and Hugo caught his small body neatly. He was surprised that the boy’s fall seemed so slow and at the lightness of the boy as he dropped into his arms. He held on to him and was stunned at the child’s smell, a perfume unlike any he had ever scented, not so much sweet as aromatic and exciting, which stimulated odd and inexplicable feelings and images in his brain.
The boy was happy enough to be held by Hugo, and even placed his arms trustingly round his neck, smiling in the young man’s face.
‘What’s your name and where on the estate do you live?’ Hugo asked.
The boy returned a more quirky smile. ‘I’m Karl,’ he replied. ‘I don’t live round here. Me and my gang used to live in Strelsau, but we’re just here working for a while.’
‘Working? What job do you do? Are you a page up in the house?’
‘No your excellency, if I’m anything I’m a stable hand.’
‘How do you know me? Have we met?’
The child gave a little laugh. ‘I’ve met lots of your family, and one of my closest friends was a Tarlenheim. I’ve worn your family’s livery in the past. But I’m here as a messenger.’
Hugo put the uncanny boy down. ‘Explain yourself, Karl.’
The boy put his hands on his hips, ‘I have a friend, another boy, who really wants to meet you.’
‘And what is this boy’s business with me?’
‘He’ll have to tell you, sir. But it’s to do with the occupation of Holy and Sacred Rothenia and the danger threatening you and your friends.’
Hugo considered the boy, more and more aware that the child was in many different ways unaccountable. His appearance did not seem entirely fixed. At times he appeared in a house servant’s livery, red in colour. The next he presented as the stable lad he claimed to be, in a blue coat and riding boots. Eventually Karl said, ‘Ready, sir?’
‘Where am I to meet this friend of yours?’
‘Up the hill in the old castle.’
‘What? Why there?’
‘It’s where the barriers are thin, sir.’
Much to his own surprise, Hugo followed the mysterious boy as he headed on to the lawn of a nearby green ride, which he knew well enough led up to the remains of the medieval castle of Tarlenheim, Karl trotting in front of him telling him all about his friend Brunhild, with whom he had first come to this place. Hugo eventually realised that the boy’s friend Brunhild was a horse.
‘This friend of yours you’re taking me to meet, he is no ordinary boy is he, Karl?’
Karl grinned happily. ‘No sir, he’s the most extraordinary boy that ever has been. Oh, and by the way he’ll probably not be wearing clothes, so don’t be surprised, and he might have horns, if he forgets.’
***
Hugo sought out the library of the Great House that evening, which is not something he would ever have done voluntarily up to that date. But he had urgent questions that he thought only books could answer. The house no longer had a librarian on its staff, its books and records were managed in those days from Festenburg. His mother however explained to him how to use the card catalogue drawers, which included a subject index. So he now had a small stack of dusty leather-bound volumes piled on a desk awaiting his attention.
He took up the largest, a folio volume dated 1745 and entitled (in Rothenian) Sketches in the Province of Husbrau by Jan Timescu, Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Arts. It included a number of full page woodcut illustrations of landscapes and buildings, and after a series of plates of Medeln Abbey there was a rendition of ‘The East Front of the Great House of Tarlenheim’. It showed the house it was before its rebuilding in Neo-Classical style by the Marshal Prince Franz, Hugo’s distinguished forebear. It portrayed a frontage of many gables flanking a massive Gothic portico. The frontage was pierced by large square windows of twelve or sixteen panes, which was just as Karl had described it to him when he recalled his first visit to the place.
‘So those weird kids actually did know this place before the marshal rebuilt it,’ Hugo muttered to himself. ‘Either that or they’d searched out this book! Stunning!’
Hugo mused on this while picking up a second, rather smaller volume (in the English edition) Legends of Old Rothenia published in 1824 by F.W. Winslow, Librarian to HM the King. With the help of its index he soon found this item:
THE STRELSAU ELF
Rothenia, as with all the Slavic lands, has its ancient beliefs in the Alpe, or the White Folk, a species of nature spirit which in English we would call ‘Elves’. In most countries such creatures are rural spirits, creatures of woodland and pasture, and this is no different in Ruritania, where the Alpe are deceitful beings who play tricks on peasant farmers, turning milk and stealing away children. But there is one exception, an urban sprite called the Strelsau Elf (Rot. Strelzenich Alpfe), which though it certainly plays tricks, especially on authority figures such as beadles and constables, may also dispense favours on the poor and disadvantaged, particularly children. References to the legend are to be found in the 3rd edition (1698) of the Miracula Sanctae Fenicae by Fr Orosius Deschamps, and in the renowned Childes Boke of the Royal Hospital of the Fenizenhaus, in which institution there was once to be seen a remarkable image, portraying the elf as a nude, dark-haired boy, classically beautiful of face but with small blue horns adorning his forehead.
Hugo commented to himself, ‘Stranger and stranger,’ for he had that afternoon in the old castle chapel talked to a naked dark-haired child who called himself Jonas, but whom the boy Karl had introduced as his friend, the Strelsau Elf.
***
Hugo had spent much of his childhood at the Great House, the ‘better part of it’ he liked to say. It was where he learned to ride, and one of his purposes in visiting Tarlenheim was to revisit the rides and lanes of his youth. The other reason was to follow up Martin Tofts’s consultation with Abbess Katherine out at Medeln. He combined both in taking a mare from the stables and riding up the Taveln valley to the abbey. His mother had telephoned in advance, for she and the abbess were very good friends.
‘Now, Count Hugo, what may I do to help you and Mr Tofts’s … organisation,’ she said, after welcoming him to her abbey.
‘It’s not a small thing, reverend mother,’ Hugo replied, ‘but we don’t think it will be too much of an imposition. You’ll be aware that the Nazi German Reich has a reputation for manipulating information and for mass propaganda. They have seized control of newspapers and radio networks across Rothenia and their content is now strictly controlled, even the Ruritanischer Tagblatt, which has always been a German-language publication. Rothenian language newpapers and radio programmes have been entirely suppressed.’
‘Indeed yes, I have protested at the closing of our Rothenian school in Medelnbrücke village when I refused to switch teaching there to the German language. Queen Flavia herself opened our school in 1872 when it was the first Rothenian language school in Ober Husbrau. These are sad days.’
‘You can strike a blow, my lady. With newspapers and broadcasts under German control, we are going to offer a free undercover alternative, we’ll publish a resistance newspaper which will tell our people the truth of what is going on in Rothenia and abroad.’
‘To do that, young Hugo, you’ll have to find quantities of paper and ink, and a printing press.’
‘We have these, my lady. What we now want is somewhere to put them, and space to operate a secret printing plant.’
‘Interesting. We are certainly remote here at Medeln. Are you considering the abbey as the location you’re looking for?’
‘The abbey is a large compound, my lady, with many secret places, so Mr Tofts says. If you could give our printing shop a home here there are other important projects you might advance. The Ministry of Education of the Vaszny government under the orders of the Protektorat is to issue new German textbooks to our schools which will give the Nazi version of history and science. With our presses active, you can provide alternative books to teachers who want to continue to teach truth in Rothenian.’
Abbess Katherine pondered the request. ‘Very well, my dear Hugo, you may tell Mr Tofts that we agree. I shall consult with the prioress about where we may place your printing press. I imagine it will be very noisy when it is working, so it will have to be in the precinct as far from the abbey church as may be. There are large barns on the north side beyond the infirmary which might be suitable, and which I think have an electrical supply.’
‘I’ll tell Mr Tofts. Thank you, my lady. Er … umm … Can I ask you an unrelated question?’
Abbess Katherine cocked an eyebrow. ‘What sort of question, Hugo?’
‘It’s about this place, I suppose. But since I came to Husbrau, I’ve had some strange experiences and met some unaccountable people … if they were even people.’
‘Are you talking about a supernatural event?’
Hugo hesitated and then ploughed on. ‘I encountered a very strange child at Terlenehem, and he led me to meet an even stranger one.’
The abbess frowned. ‘Define strange for me.’
‘The first boy, a blond child of around ten years, claimed to have a history with my family, but from what he said that was some time ago, somewhat over two centuries indeed. The second child was even stranger, a naked boy of considerable physical beauty and presence apparently about the same age as the first.’
The abbess’s gaze became even more intense. ‘Did this boy have … er … horns?’
Hugo stared. ‘So you do know of such a creature!’
Abbess Katherine continued carefully, as if weighing her words. ‘In the records of this abbey kept by my predecessors there are many strange tales, none of which I may fully share with you. But there is one that concerns three particular boy children in the time of Maria von Tarlenheim who was abbess from 1687 till her retirement through ill health in 1696. The three boys included the then young Karl Wollherz, who went on to become a major benefactor of this house. He’s buried here. At the time he was a servant in the household of the famous statesman, the Freiherr Serge von Tarlenheim, of the Olmusch branch of your noble house.’
‘My lady, the boy introduced himself as ‘Karl’ and it so happens that he was playing with two other boys when I first encountered him. Then who is the boy he took me to meet? The Strelsau Elf?’
‘The boy Wollherz was tangled up in a complex plot that the Abbess Maria had got involved in that threatened the security of the Ruritania of King Rudolf II. It transpired that the plot drew the interest of powers which are greater than human, and of one particular entity who is known amongst those who study thaumaturgy as ‘The Horned One’ or ‘The Golden Child of the Dawn’. He is said to manifest as a boy child, and his power is beyond measure. From what you say, I would imagine that it is this spirit that you met at Tarlenheim, and that you also met his friend the late Karl Wollherz, walking the world once more. This is very … disconcerting, Hugo.’
Hugo pondered this revelation, before asking the obvious question, ‘Why me, my lady?’
The abbess frowned. ‘I cannot say, Hugo. All I can suggest is that the powers of the World Beyond have identified you as someone upon whom the fate of Holy Rothenia will turn in an hour of great peril. So they have moved to recruit you as they did Karl Wollherz and his friends in his day.’
***
The White Tree fell silent as a party of three black-clad SS officers came through the door and took a table.
‘Now what sort of statement is that?’ Martin asked Hugo, sitting in a booth at the rear of the club.
Hugo shrugged. ‘Dunno. Maybe they don’t know much about Strelzen’s nightlife or maybe they’re looking for boys to fuck? Something tells me that those three examples of the Aryan master race aren’t in agreement with their Reichsführer’s views on the subject of boy-fucking.’
‘That’s the master race for you,’ Martin snarled cheerfully, ‘their testosterone addiction leads to acute intellectual confusion. Not our problem … unless we can use it for blackmail sometime. Now. Have you looked over the proofs for the first issue of Vor Svobodjen?’
Hugo produced a much-folded mimeographed sheet from his jacket pocket, and gave a small laugh. ‘Having those three Nazi thugs across the club while we look at this gives me the creeps. The title is ‘For Freedom’. I don’t feel free at the moment.’
‘What about the masthead?’
‘The Crown of Tassilo? I like it. We are after all royalists. Isn’t King Maxim our government-in-exile, like the King of Norway or the Queen of the Netherlands are for their countries?’
Martin shook his head. ‘It’s not the same my lad, much though we might wish it were otherwise. Maxim is not the head of state, and he cannot appoint ministers to any government that can legitimately represent Rothenia. Now, what do you make of the front page?’
‘I like the commandments to the workers of Rothenia: Do bad work for the Germans; Work in slow motion for the Germans; Destroy tools and machines that could be useful to the Germans. That’s resistance without asking people to risk their necks. Just a suggestion: say “the Occupiers” not “the Germans”. Many German Rothenians are patriots. Our quarrel is not with them.’
‘Ah! Good point Hugo. I copied that section from a Danish resistance publication which they sent me from London when I asked for ideas. Hitler intends to use the occupied lands to support his war machine. We can slow them down.’
Hugo pondered this. ‘It doesn’t seem a very aggressive response to the occupation of my homeland.’
‘There speaks the Tarlenheim. You sound like Harries, one of my colleagues. He wants a resistance that undertakes sabotage, assassination, kidnapping and ambush. I understand why, because that would feel more like warfare. It would tie down German troops and seem like suitable retribution for what Hitler has imposed on his peaceful neighbours. But it’s not a sensible strategy at present.
‘Insurrectionists in Rothenia would call down appalling reprisals on the civil population from a ruthless occupier if they begin murdering German soldiers and officers. We don’t as yet have the munitions to mount such a campaign for any length of time. There is little chance of any outside assistance from Britain. It may one day be possible, but only when the Nazi empire is falling apart and under outside assault. At the moment it’s triumphant across Europe.
‘Until then I see our task as fostering and maintaining a spirit of resistance amongst the Rothenian people. We can do valuable work collecting and passing on intelligence, smuggling the enemies of Nazism to safety and frustrating the work of the Reichsprotektor.’
Hugo was clearly not convinced by Martin’s pragmatism. ‘Just promise me one thing, Martin. Talk to my cousin, General Henry von Tarlenheim, the youngest son of old Count Hugo von Tarlenheim zu Templerstadt. My father let slip that Henry had been given free rein by the General Staff to prepare the ground for an armed resistance to the occupation. If he’ll talk to you he might have a lot to offer.’
‘Noted, young fellow. I shall follow that up. But I also want to talk to Kamil Bermann.’
‘Bermann? Of the Catholic Renewal Movement? Surely he’ll be a collaborator. His party were a bunch of fascists out to overthrow the Third Republic. The Protectorate will be counting on his help. His lot were big in with Mussolini, Hitler’s pal.’
‘Maybe so. But for several reasons he’d be a useful ally. His people could form a great network for propagating and circulating Vor Svobodjen.
Posted 14 December 2024