The boy had been walking since dawn. His left boot was stiff with blood where a musket-ball had grazed the leg, and the scattered remnants of his regiment – if there was anything left of it – was lost miles behind him in the thorn and bog. Alone, cold, and hungry, Jed pressed on, the only thing on his mind: to find shelter.
Toward evening he reached a hollow in the hills and leant against a dead tree in total exhaustion. It was a moment before he realised that he was looking down the valley at a small settlement of stone cottages clustered about a plain chapel with a bell tower. A walled garden stretched to one side, smoke from turf fires drifted lazily in the still air, and the distant sound of chanting reached his ears. Sanctuary.
As he stumbled closer he could make out nuns in heavy habits gliding like carrion birds, pale faces severe in the failing light. Amongst them walked an older man in a cassock, his while hair shorn, his lips moving in silent prayer. Jed collapsed as he finally made it to the blackened wood gate.
The nuns' hands were strong, but without softness, as they lifted him and bore him inside. The room they brought him to was more of a cell than anything else: narrow, with whitewashed stone walls, and a crucifix above the bed. The damp air smelled of peat smoke, candle wax, and old incense. With business-like efficiency the two nuns stripped him and put him to bed.
As Jed drifted in and out of consciousness, he was aware, at times, of his head being lifted, and hot gruel being fed to him; the feel of coarse wool habits at either side of him as he was taken to the toilet before being put back into the hard bed.
Jed opened his eyes and stared at the whitewashed ceiling as his memories returned. Beyond the small window set high in the wall he could see rain falling, trees moving in the wind. He examined his left foot – it had been bandaged with some unidentifiable herbs, and felt better than it had done.
A little later the door opened and a priest came in. He looked down in silence at the boy, then crossed himself and moved closer. He asked Jed how he felt, but the man's face showed little compassion. "I am Father Benedict. Your wounds have been dressed, you will recover." In slow, measured tones he told the boy that if he wished to remain here, he could do so, but only in obedience – by surrendering himself to their order: rising at the bell, daily Mass at dawn, kneeling through the hours of litany. He would be expected to toil in the gardens, to scrub the floors, and do other work which may be required. And – above all – he would attend confession, where every secret, every sin, must be spoken aloud and therefore scoured clean - no one in this place was free from the examination of conscience.
Jed had hated the war and, unlike most of his compatriots, had despised life in the regiment. So many times he'd thought that he'd give anything at all to be somewhere else. And anyway, his regiment was gone. They were probably dead by now. Life here seemed a great improvement on that. He'd been brought up Catholic, and although he wasn't particularly religious, it was something he thought he could live with – even possibly get into. However, he understood he had not simply found refuge, but that he'd stepped into a place that would not easily release him.
He raised his eyes to the priest and nodded. "I will stay."
He quickly discovered that the place ran with a relentless rhythm: the bell at dawn, the Mass in the chapel where his breath steamed in the cold air, long silences broken only by chanting, working in the gardens or the kitchens, scrubbing stone floors. His body was still weak but it was forced into discipline and began to strengthen. Meals were plain, but better than he'd been used to in the regiment.
The chapel smelled of cold stone and candle grease. He had been made to kneel for an hour before the crucifix, the chant of the nuns’ voices rising and falling in the dimness, until the priest appeared and beckoned him wordlessly toward the confessional.
It was not like the booths he had glimpsed once in a town church. Here, the box was narrow, carved from rough oak, the screen between them so thin he could see the pale shape of the priest’s face. When he knelt, the wood creaked beneath his weight, and the silence thickened.
The priest’s voice came, low and deliberate. “May the Lord be on your heart and lips. Make your confession. Speak. Leave nothing hidden.”
For a soldier, sins of violence, fear, and desire ran deep. The boy stammered out the sins could think of: small thefts as a child, curses spoken in the barracks, the violence of battle – thrusts of the bayonet, musket fire into faces he'd never had time to know. His words tumbled out awkwardly, and each admission was met with silence or a penance of prayer. Although he began to feel like he was being stripped bare, he realised that he felt lighter with each admission.
But when he stopped, the silence did not lift.
The priest leaned closer. “That is not all.”
The boy’s mouth dried. “It is,” he whispered.
A pause. Then, firmer: “No. You're holding back. Sin clings to you like rot. You will speak it, or it will be torn from you.”
The boy shook his head, though he couldn't meet the priest’s eyes through the lattice. Indeed there were other things he dared not confess, not here, not to this stranger with the hollow voice.
The priest seemed to read the hesitation. “The flesh betrays the soul. Do you think I do not see it? Every unspoken sin festers, and every festering wound must be cut open. If you will not speak, I will find the means to make you speak.”
Jed felt caught, pinned, as though the very walls were listening.
“You will return tomorrow,” the priest said, voice dropping to a whisper. “And the day after. And each time, we will go deeper. Confession is not mercy. It is surgery.”
When the boy stumbled from the box, the chant of the nuns had ceased. The chapel was silent, as if the stones themselves were waiting for what he would yet reveal.
The second time, he was led into the chapel at night. The candles burned low, the shadows of the rafters crawling over the walls like black ribs. The priest was already waiting. His voice slipped through the lattice. "May the Lord be on your heart and lips. Make your confession."
Jed’s throat tightened. He confessed quickly, desperately: stray thoughts of escape, anger at the nuns, the memory of cursing God when the musket ball had hit his leg. His words were thin, but he hoped they would suffice.
But the silence that followed was heavier than before.
“You give me bones,” the priest said softly. “Where is the meat?”
The boy shuddered. “Those are all the -”
“Not all. There are sins you will not name. I see them on your face. Do you think the Almighty is blind? Or I?”
The boy felt heat rise to his cheeks. It was as if the man could see inside him – as if he knew about the great sin he could not confess, dare not put into words.
The priest’s whisper cut through the darkness. “The flesh betrays you. It is always the flesh. Desire, indulgence, shame. You carry them still. They will devour you if you do not lay them bare.”
“I – I cannot,” the boy murmured. His hands clenched in his lap. The moment he'd said that he realised it had been a mistake; he'd as good as told the priest that such a sin existed within him.
“You will .” The priest’s hand pressed again against the screen, fingers splayed as if to seize him through the wood. “Confession is not choice. It is a scourge. And if your tongue fails you, then means will be found to loosen it. Better pain now than damnation eternal.”
When he stumbled out, the chapel was colder than before. A single bell tolled outside – not the call to prayer, but a note that sounded like a warning. He realized then that the priest would never let him stop until everything, every shameful corner of his soul, had been dragged into the light.
The third confession came in the middle of the night. A nun woke him, shaking his shoulder with a hand as cold and firm as stone, and told him the Father was waiting. No explanation, no chance to protest.
This time he was not taken to the chapel, but to the priest's own cell. Father Dominic stood by the side of a bed which, Jed noticed, looked every bit as hard as his own. But this room was larger. The man's eyes were fixed on the boy as he knelt.
“You have not yet bled,” he said, voice soft, almost gentle. “Confession is a wound opened clean. Yours is still rotting.” He crossed himself. "May the Lord be on your heart and lips. Make your confession."
The boy tried again – thefts, blasphemies, disobedience – but each word was dismissed with a slight shake of the priest’s head.
“No You circle the truth, but do not touch it. The flesh, boy. Always the flesh. Do not think I do not know it stirs in you, even now. The body remembers what the tongue denies.”
When silence stretched, the priest sighed, and produced a cord – a simple hemp rope, coarse and frayed at the edges. "Lower your trousers."
The priest wrapped the cord twice around Jed's cock and balls and pulled it tight. Then he passed the ends round the boy's waist and knotted them behind his back.
"You will wear this at all times. You will find that it will bite you when you lie down, when you stand up, as you work. Each sting will remind you of what you hide. And when you are ready, you will speak."
In the days that followed, the boy found no peace. It was almost impossible to find relief – even cool water, which at first eased the pain, made things worse later as it shrank the rope. And not only that – the constant presence and gripping of the hemp made him horny all the time, despite the pain.
In desperation one night he'd reached behind his back and untied it himself to loosen it. He'd taken the opportunity to have an explosive wank. The priest had noticed at the next daily inspection that the rope had been tampered with, and had refastened it as it had been. "Do not dare do that again."
“Every man breaks,” the priest whispered. “Better to break here, in the light of God, than in the pit where you are already half fallen.”
Back in his cell, Jed seethed. The constant discomfort was awakening in Jed both an intense hatred of Father Benedict, and also a fierce determination not to succumb to the man's abuse. The boy reasoned that God, obviously, knew every one of his weaknesses already, and so this obsession the priest had with uncovering things was clearly personal. And personal things he could deal with.
As the days passed, Jed's resolve grew.
At every inspection, the priest removed the rope while he heard Jed's confession, to allow the boy's balls to recover, before fastening it on again before he left. This time, however, Father Benedict put the rope away.
"Your will is strong, boy." He looked down at the kneeling figure as if deciding on a further course of action. "But we will get to the root of your sin, never fear. I know it is a sin of the flesh. It is always a sin of the flesh. So we will deal with it on its own terms."
He pulled a black cloth from something large at the side of the room. A rough wooden frame was leaning against the wall, fixed to it at the top and to the floor at the bottom. "Remove your clothes and stand against the frame."
Jed hesitated for a moment but the priest's eyes bore into him. "Do as I say."
The man's authority felt absolute. Jed stripped, and stood against the wooden device. He knew he was about to be whipped.
"No, face outwards."
Surprised, Jed turned around so that he was facing into the room.
Father Benedict took several lengths of rope and secured the boy's wrists and ankles to the corners of the frame. A further rope went tightly around his waist. Then he moved a three-legged wooden stool closer and sat down.
Jed's face went red as Father Benedict took the boy's soft cock gently in his hand. "The root of your sin," he said, sadly, gazing at the cock. His fingers began to fondle it slowly.
Jed hadn't cum for two days, and so, despite his best efforts, there was nothing he could do to stop it hardening as the fingers caressed it. It continued to stiffen as the man teased both it and his balls, until very soon it was fully erect. Even though he hated this man, what he was doing felt good. He was quickly getting very horny again.
Father Benedict wrapped his fingers around the straining cock and began to stroke the full length of it very slowly.
Jed felt himself approaching orgasm. He was going to cum.
He threw his head back and groaned as his spunk pumped out, covering the man's hand and making pearly white splotches on his black cassock.
When it was over, Father Benedict took a device from a pocket and began to attach it to the boy's genitals. Jed looked down – the thing was a cage made of hard wood and metal wire, and it enclosed his cock and balls completely. When it was in place, the priest took a candle and coated the fastenings with large blobs of wax. Into each of these he pressed his ring, creating an impression in the seal.
"If any of these show evidence of tampering, you will be thrown out naked to the wolves, and you will never return here. Do you understand?"
Reluctantly, Jed nodded.
"Return here in five days."
The first day was fine. The relief of not having the rope biting into him was wonderful, and the cage felt strange but interesting between his thighs. It made a slightly embarrassing bulge in his trousers, but the nuns seemed to ignore it and soon he lost his feeling of self-consciousness as he went about his duties.
The second day was more of a problem. He couldn't shake the horniness that was building slowly but relentlessly, and the long hours kneeling for the litany allowed his mind to wander. With the constant weight of the cage around his cock and balls, by the time it was over he badly needed a wank.
On the third day he was getting desperate. Alone in his cell he inspected the device carefully. There was no way he could remove it without breaking the wax seals, and it made any contact with his cock quite impossible. He tried to get a fingertip through between the heavy wires but he couldn't reach, and they were too short to be bent. In the end he sighed and gave up.
By the fourth day he would have sold his soul for an orgasm. He couldn't concentrate – the litany was a meaningless stream of sound; he removed five potato plants from the garden instead of weeds; and one of the nuns shouted at him in the kitchen for burning a stew. Back in his cell he lay on the bed, his cock as hard as it could get inside the confining cage, demanding relief. Precum was oozing constantly through the wires. Sleep was long in coming.
On the fifth day Jed was at the priest's door half an hour early, but the door did not open until the specified time.
Father Benedict tied him to the frame, broke the seals, and carefully removed the cage. Free of its prison, Jed's cock immediately sprang out into the air, fully hard, the glans red and swollen.
His eyes bored into Jed's. "May the Lord be on your heart and lips. Make your confession."
Jed raced through the ones he could think of.
Father Benedict's hand enclosed the aching cock very gently. "Now confess the real sin. The root sin. Confess it to me and to God." His hand moved – just once and very slowly, the grip as light as a feather – along the shaft and over the head.
Jed's body shuddered. At last – he was going to cum!
But the hand was no longer touching.
This was too much. He was on the very edge of orgasm. "Please. Please, Father, let me cum."
The priest waited, silent. When the confession was not forthcoming, he stroked the cock again. "Confess, boy!"
The single stroke had brought Jed to the edge again. He shook his head in desperation. "I've confessed my sins to you."
"No," the voice was calm, slow. "Not the important one. Confess it. Now."
Jed scrunched his eyes closed, his head still shaking. "Please. I cannot."
"You will. I can give you relief, boy." His fingers stroked the head of Jed's cock teasingly.
It took every ounce of Jed's determination to force himself to remain silent.
"You will break. Boys need to cum. It is only a matter of time." He gave the cock one more soft, slow stroke, and locked eyes with Jed, searching for the faintest crack in the boy's resolve.
Jed felt a renewed and acute surge of need at the touch, but he would not allow this man to control him like this. He refused to meet the priest's gaze.
"Very well." The hard cock was doused with cold water until it was soft enough to return to the cage. "Return after Vespers, in three days."
Jed was in a turmoil of indecision. As he lay on the narrow bed he was trying to find a way out of this. Of all sins, his was the worst: it was the unnatural one, the direct offence against God's created order. Confessing it would damn him permanently. And the priest's obsession with it – the moment he admitted it, Jed just knew that the man would seize on it, return to it, and use it to bind him in fear. Or worse.
But how long could he endure this cage? Such a simple, passive thing, but it worked on him relentlessly, using his unbearable horniness to undermine his will, his resolve. There was no way he could fight it.
If he confessed fully, he would undoubtedly be whipped before being thrown out of the place, naked, to fend for himself – and he knew he wouldn't last long in the bleak winter countryside on his own.
But if he didn't confess and get out of this cage, he would surely go mad.
Jed was shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stood facing the door to Father Benedict's room. The last three days had been impossible. He almost rushed to the frame when the priest let him into the room.
The man's face was impassive as he finished tying the ropes. After removing the cage, he stood close and took the rigid cock lightly in his hand. He looked at the boy. "May the Lord be on your heart and lips. Make your confession."
The moment the hand touched his cock it jerked, and Jed took in a shuddering breath. He needed to cum. Oh God, he needed to cum.
Even though he knew it would not satisfy the man, he recited his transgressions of the last two days. There was no point in hiding it, so his sinful thoughts about orgasm were high on the list.
The priest was silent, but he moved his hand. He took just the boy's cock head between his thumb and first finger, and began stroking them across the engorged glans, hardly touching. Two soft, slow strokes, and then he removed them completely. "I can do this for a long time. I can do this until you break, boy. You will confess." Two more strokes.
Each time brought Jed to the brink of cumming, but no further.
His eyes were closed tightly, his head shaking.
A finger teased slowly and lightly under the cock head, where the ridge met the shaft.
Jed's body tensed – this was the worst thing yet.
The priest saw that this was effective on the boy, so he continued to do it. A gentle stroke, then nothing. A gentle stroke, then nothing. He was timing the pauses so that Jed was never allowed to back off from the edge now. He was keeping him there, almost at the very point of cumming, all the time.
Jed's breathing was fast and shallow – almost as if he were panicking.
"Confess that root sin, boy."
His need was now so urgent, so compelling, that he no longer had any choice. "I confess! Oh God I confess."
The finger continued to rest on that spot, but now was no longer moving.
"Tell me, that your soul may be cleansed in the sight of God," breathed the priest.
The words came from Jed in a rush. "I think about fucking boys and men and sucking them off and kissing them. All the time." He opened his eyes and glared at the priest. "There! I have fucking confessed. Are you happy now? Now let me fucking CUM, you fucking bastard."
Father Benedict let go of the cock.
Jed had steeled himself for words of damnation, but they did not come. Instead, for the first time ever in Jed's experience, the priest smiled. It was not an attractive smile. "Ah, it is as I thought."
Then he stood straight, brought his hand up and slapped the boy's face hard. His voice dripped venom. "And don't you ever speak to me like that again, boy."
Jed dropped his head.
"I will give you relief. But first..." He reached into the pocket of his cassock and held up a soft feather. "This, boy, is a great teacher. You are going to learn from it the meanings both of humility, and of need. Kiss it."
The boy kissed the feather.
Father Benedict pulled up the stool and sat down. Then he began to work on the boy's cock with the feather. Very, very, slowly.
Jed lay exhausted on his bed, his body still twitching occasionally. The bastard Benedict had taken over four hours to make Jed cum. The boy had been out of his mind for most of that time, and when, eventually, the priest had put the feather down and had taken the cock in his hand, had gripped it firmly and had milked it fast and hard, Jed had screamed as he'd cum. That orgasm had been the most explosive he'd ever had.
Jed had been expecting a huge punishment for his sin, but to his amazement the priest had said nothing about it at all. He hadn't been whipped, he hadn't been thrown out. Father Benedict had seemed quietly satisfied, however, that the boy had finally confessed everything.
Jed discovered later, however, that there was, in fact a consequence – an ongoing one. He no longer had to wear the rope or the cage, but he was required to present himself at the priest's room every Wednesday evening, after Vespers. He was tied to the frame, and the priest worked on his cock until late into the night with fingers, feathers, and – lately – his mouth.
Jed still hated the man, but he couldn't wait for those Wednesday nights every week. Oh, he yelled, pleaded, and even – when he forgot himself – swore as the fingers left him hanging on the edge of cumming yet again, but the eventual orgasms were the most wonderful thing ever, and he lived for them.
Time passed. There had been many changes: new nuns had come and gone - few of the original ones were still alive; and Father Benedict had passed away a year ago. Jed, now in his thirties, had become something of a senior there, and was well respected.
Life went on as usual, until one January afternoon there was a commotion. Jed watched, the memory of his own arrival here vivid as the nuns brought in a figure who had staggered to the wooden gate. A boy.
The following day he visited the newcomer. The boy – Geoffrey – was in bad shape. His family had perished from crop failure, and with nowhere to go, and with winter sharpening his desperation, he'd sought shelter anywhere he could.
Jed knew that food and rest were all that were needed to return what had clearly been a good-looking and very healthy late teenage boy to that former state of fitness once more. And he could see in the clear blue eyes that the boy had much to confess. He went back to his room – formerly occupied by Father Benedict – and pulled the black cloth off the wooden frame.
It would need a little repair, he thought as he looked it over, remembering being tied to it so very many times. He nodded to himself – strong leather straps would be better than ropes, he decided.
But it would still be eminently serviceable.