The Devil's Mark
Romance short. In medieval Bohemia, a young man trails after the executioner after the hanging of his father.Â
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11k, rated E, M/M. After the hanging of his father, a young man lingers on the doorstep of the village executioner. Eventually taking pity on him, the executioner invites him inside.Â
Some age difference, intimacy, oral sex, and masturbation, but the E rating here is more for heavy themes, including social ostracisation, religious trauma, past rape, and past incestuous abuse.
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Jan strings up WĂłjslav on the bailiffâs orders â heâd been caught thieving, Jan is told, not that it matters all that much to him. âThievingâ is a charge that can account for all manner of charges, and if he spent all his time wondering what the men and women he hangs have done, precisely, heâd have little time left for other things.
Itâs blood on his hands, either way. Such is the nature of the thing.
When Jan walks down the hill, his hands stained with grave dirt, he finds a boy sitting outside the gate of his house. Heâs a scrawny, underfed thing, openly weeping, and Jan sees in the planes of his face a similarity to those of WĂłjslavâs â his son, probably.
âAway with you,â Jan says harshly. âThereâs no place for you here.â
The young man doesnât move, stays on his knees in the dirt and sobs into his hands, and the executioner grabs him by his upper arm and hauls him physically off the ground. He weighs barely anything, and his big wet eyes are brown and dark. Thereâs something pleading in them.
The boy doesnât say a word, but Jan feels himself baulk, staring down at him, and he drops the boy: he falls in a heap in the filth, and Jan hurriedly steps over him and into his yard, goes inside the house, and closes the door.
The boy stays.
 *
A day passes, and then another â he doesnât eat, drinks straight from the bucket of Janâs well, a holdover from where more houses were out this way, and he sits in the dirt on a scrap of fabric.
When it starts to rain, he sits under the eaves of one of the open sheds in Janâs yard â the dogs have given up barking at him by now, and although the boy doesnât entice them closer, they keep walking up and examining him, sniffing at his feet, his hair, his shoulders.
By the time the dark is setting in, Jan sees that heâs shivering in only the sodden shirt and coat he has, his knees up to his chest.
Jan walks outside with his lantern held up, his hands still feeling filthy from burying the boyâs father those days past, although heâs long-since washed them clean.
(The boy had watched from the farthest distance possible, and then disappeared from the executionerâs sight, returning to his place at the gate of Janâs homestead.)
The young man stares up at him, shivering, damp.
âYouâre not to stay here, boy,â Jan tells him, putting out one hand to touch the dog that that comes nearest to him, his head against his masterâs thigh. The dog is not looking at Janâs face, but at his hand on the dogâs head, his expression⌠something. âI and this house are unclean,â Jan goes on. âI handle death, have unclean hands, am an unclean man. I have no wife and no children â no one looks my way in the village, will not so much as brush my shoulder, or share a table with me in a tavern. Would you have them treat you the same way?â
The young man keeps shivering silently in the wet mud, and Jan, frustrated, stalks back inside.
The young man flinches when he strides back out again, raising his hands to shield his face as though expecting a blow. Jan sets a horse blanket and a bowl of stew, still hot enough to eat, below the eaves beside him, and whistles sharply to call the dogs away when their eyes immediately go to the bowl.
The young man touches neither until Jan is inside, and then dives upon them.
Jan watches through the window, watches as he devours his meal, uses his filthy hands and then drinks greedily from what is left in the bowl, licks his fingers, licks clean the surface.
Only then does he reach, hands trembling, for the blanket, and begin to unfold it.
The rain has let down some, only a spray now, but he still retreats further into the shed, under the eaves â itâs a hay shed, one wall open to the elements. Enough moonlight gets in that as the young man strips off his clothes, Jan sees white flesh. He sees his skinny thighs and backside, his torso, his ribs. He turns away before the boy can turn and show more of himself, however incidentally, only lets himself glance back to see heâs wrapped himself in the blanket.
The boy sleeps on hay that night, instead of in the dirt beside it.
 *
The young man lingers, then.
Jan knows itâs no different to stray dogs or cats â that now heâs fed the boy, he like as not wonât leave. He gives him a bowl of stew two evenings in a row, the both of them silent.
On the third, he asks, âYouâve no family elsewhere?â
The boy is as dumb as he ever has been, cupping his bowl between his palms.
âAnswer me,â Jan orders, and the boy looks up at him defiantly, his jaw set.
When Jan raises his hand threateningly, the boy flinches, but still doesnât speak. Itâs never sat well with him, hitting dogs or hitting other men â bad enough he should slaughter them without bruising their faces beforehand.
âGo inside,â he tells the boy, who stares up at him, disbelieving. âWash your bowl before you go to bed.â
The boy is all but running into Janâs home before heâs finished the sentence, and Jan picks up his undershirt and leggings from where theyâre drying over a post.
Two of the dogs are looking up at him pleadingly.
âOne animal inside is enough,â he tells them, not without affection as he knuckles the tops of their heads, and goes inside.
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