Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 23:48:51 +0100
From: Mike Arram <marram@wanadoo.co.uk>
Subject: Heart of Oskar Prinz - 12

The following story describes people and places wholly fictional, although
based on some element of reality.  How much is really up to you to decide.
There is a place called Ruthenia, but it is not the Rothenia depicted here.
It won't take long for the alert reader to realise that my Rothenia is
unapologetically borrowed from Anthony Hope's magnificent creation of
Ruritania, although updated for the twenty-first century.
  This is my third attempt at gay erotic fiction.  The earlier ones are
'The Decent Inn' and 'Terry and the Peachers' which can be found in the
Nifty archive under the College section.  Excuse the self-indulgence of the
crossover references, but they did amuse me.
  The story contains graphic depictions of sex between adult males.  If the
reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your place of
residence please leave this site immediately and do not proceed further.
If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.





XII


Rudi had Will back on his examination couch again on Monday, as he had
promised.  He looked pleased at the progress on Will's shoulders and abs.
He was prescribed more of the same.  'But you are so pale you English
boys,' he said.  'No wonder your vitamin levels are so low.  Which reminds
me.'  Will felt the thin stab of another injection in his bum.  'Thirty
minutes a day in the ultraviolet cabin from now on.'
  The working out continued, and afterwards Will followed Oskar to the
tanning rooms.  'You're not keeping your underpants on?'
  'Er ... yes?'
  'Don't you want an all-over tan?'
  'Well, I suppose.  Do I drop them here?'
   He stripped off and went into the tanning capsule, putting on the small
goggles.  Soon he was bored, standing there and feeling very naked and
exposed in the blue light, watching a grim Romanian pop video on the screen
in front of him.  But he looked at his reflection and was rather smug about
his chest development, the sudden bulk in some areas, and slimness in
others.  Even his balls seemed tighter.  He also noticed an odd thing, his
pubic bush had sprung a trail up to his navel that had not been there
before, and he seemed bushier between the thighs.  He shrugged.  Must be
all the testosterone he was pumping now.
  The day at the library went well, although Will's concentration was even
more astray than the previous week.  But with all that had happened over
the weekend, he could hardly be surprised.  He was also even more urgent to
have sex in the loos, and again Oskar allowed it on Monday, this time
letting Will mount him.  Again, the issue of protection was forgotten.  The
orgasm was intense and Will fired eight large pulses of semen into his
lover's hot interior.  Every night the lust for his Oskar grew, as did his
appetite.
  On Friday, the files had stacked up even higher, and Will had begun a
master index.  Oskar had produced some creditable synopses of the principal
Elphberg biographies in Rothenian, and had gone beyond the books to the
periodical literature.  Will had got permission to xerox what they found,
after paying a big fee, and by Friday it was a huge stack.  He was able to
speed read them, and had highlighted interesting passages.
  They decided to celebrate at Ribaud's and plan their next moves.  They
took an inside table and went for the beef this time.  It was a leisurely
meal, helped down with two bottles of a rich red wine from the south of the
country.
  'You'll be farting all night,' said Oskar, a bit unfairly, as he was just
as much an offender as Will, but as he said, whoever heard of a prince
farting.
  'As long as Marietta doesn't complain,' retaliated Will, 'why should
you?'
  'So what about next week?'
  'I've been looking around things and we need to round up on any big
provincial collections of art.  There's a gallery of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Rothenian pictures at Modnehem which a lot of the books
take plates from.'
  'I know it,' Oskar said.
  'We can take the express on Monday after the gym session.'
  'No, I don't think so, Will.  It's closed Monday, so I suggest that on
Monday we get all the stuff we already have packed and sorted, post it to
England, e-mail our progress to Matt's PA from the University where I have
an account, and then hit the Spa and chill out.  Also, we can ring ahead to
talk to the curator.  I know her.'
  'Oh, that's convenient.'
  'Isn't it?' Oskar answered, a little shortly Will thought, even in his
mildly drunken state.
  Will looked around, 'Oh fuck, it's your boss again.'  Hendrik had arrived
with a curly headed boy in tow, no less than Max Wolf, as Will recognised,
even though Max was wearing clothes.  Oskar raised his glass to them, and
they smiled and nodded back.  Will thought that Max kept staring at him.
  Will went for the local pudding, an amazing confection of apricots, cream
and meringue.  Oskar watched him, faintly disgusted; he had no sweet tooth.
He excused himself and went to the loos.  It was not long before the door
banged and he was joined by Hendrik next to the porcelain.  Oskar was not
at all surprised.
   'The English boy is looking well and has a good appetite.  I see Rudi
knew what to do.'
  'Yes and there'll be no more of it.  Two shots of his steroid cocktail is
more than enough for any normal man.  Stacking drugs like that is
dangerous.  We don't know enough about the boy's medical history to burden
his metabolism in that way.  He's already rippling in the chest, and
shrinking in the testicles.  Yet he is as randy as a mountain goat in
season.'
  'He's still pale.'
  'We're trying to do something about it, but U/V only makes him red.
You'll just have to colour screen the shots.'
  'Doesn't always work, as you should know,' Hendrik said.
  'Yes, I look like I was painted chestnut in my publicity shots.'
  'We need to get started soon.'
  'It'll be the end of this week.'
  'Good. I am intrigued as to how you can talk that pretty and respectable
English boy out of his clothes and in front of the cameras, but you have
delivered so far, you clever boy, so I shall trust you.'
  'And you haven't forgotten that this time I get a finder's commission as
well as my fee.'
  'This is going to cost me big, Oskar.'
  'But you know it'll be good.'
  'Yes, I'm sure it will be ... Felip will break him in.' Hendrik added.
  'What?  That wasn't part of the deal.  I thought that was to be me?'
  'Hardly.  The punters want variety.  You will star in the main
production.  But "Jason Williams" will be an interesting novelty to come
out of Rothenia.  Our first American model.  It makes us look good, and he
really is quite a catch, so gauche and so pretty.  I do see what you saw in
him.  So we need him with different bodies in different situations.'
  'Then make sure Felip behaves.'
  'Of course,' Hendrik smiled benignly.

On Monday, they skipped the gym, and Oskar went for his clinic tests, while
Will boxed and listed all the files back at the flat.  When he returned
they caught the tram for the University and found the computer suite more
or less empty, since it was the vacation.  Oskar rapidly typed their joint
report in his excellent English, and e-mailed it off, with a series of the
choicer images they had found attached.  At a bit of a loose end once Oskar
had rung Modnehem, they looked round.  There were some old buildings ranged
around the fifteenth-century Grand Chapel, the core of the campus, where
mass was said daily once more by a college of superannuated priests for the
soul of the founder, Duke Rudolf II.  The School of Theology was the oldest
faculty, housed in a grand sixteenth-century hall.  The library, even after
the depredations of the twentieth century, was still famous and admired for
its liturgical collections.
  'Look!  It's the Tarlenheim arms!' called out Will, pointing to the
decoration of a grand sculpted doorway.
  'Yes.  That's the hall for foreign students built in 1678 by Count Oskar
the Great, after whom I was named.'
  'It must feel odd seeing bits and pieces of your family history scattered
all over this country.'
  'Not half as odd as ...' Oskar began, and then shut up abruptly.
  'Sorry?'
  'I was just going to say, that the Tarlenheim legacy has moved around a
bit too.'
  'Eh?'
  'Nothing,' Oskar said tersely, and suggested they get out to the Spa.
>From Parlementplaz they caught a bus, which ran out along a straight
avenue to the western hills.  Its last stop was the Spa, a series of
palatial nineteenth-century hill top structures in big grounds.  It was not
unlike Alexandra Palace, without the aerial.  They paid at the main gate
and admired the pleasure gardens.  In the Spa reception they hired towels,
plastic sandals and robes, and left their clothes in lockers.  They put
their keys on cords around their necks.
  'No trunks?' said Will nervously.
  'Grow up,' answered Oskar with a grin.  He took Will to a big outside
pool, where the mineral waters bubbled up from warm natural springs.  Naked
people of all ages and both sexes were everywhere, some attractive, and
most not.  Oskar nonchalantly dropped his robe and took a seat in the
bubbling blue water on a submerged ledge, and relaxed against a plastic
pillow.  Will undressed and hastily joined him.
  'So now I see why Rothenians are willing to get naked on DVD so readily.'
  'The nudity taboo isn't so strong here as in the west, that's true,'
Oskar agreed, 'and if you've got it, the Rothenian way is to flaunt it.  It
helps Hendrik find his young men.  Look, see the boy over there opposite
us?  That's Radik, he's a Falkefilm scout.  Summer's a good time for
scouting.'
  Will saw a dark boy naked except for a pair of shades, lying on his
stomach in the sun, on a towel on the grass.  He was surreptitiously
scanning the passing groups, looking for suitable males looking at him.
  Will relaxed into the warm water; it was quite a sensuous experience, he
admitted.
  'Relaxed?' Oskar asked after fifteen minutes or so.
  'Sure am.'
  'Then let's do the baths.'
  They got up and went dripping indoors.  Oskar carried his robe and didn't
bother to put it back on, and Will steeled himself to walk naked in public
after him in the open air.  It was just too arousing to see that perfect
bum in front of him in the sunlight.  But after a while the nakedness
stopped bothering him.  If people were looking at him, they were being
surreptitious about it.  They took the cold plunge first to clean off the
spa water.  Will shot out as soon as he was in, but Oskar took a few lazy
lengths of the pool first.
  'You're tough,' Will admired, sitting on the edge and waiting for him.
  'Just used to it,' Oskar said.
  'OK, now the tepidarium.'  They kept their sandals on but left their
robes and towels on a ledge and walked round the indoor spa pool, then
through a long, shallow and warmer pool like a sort of submerged corridor.
Steam emerged from further doors, they went up steps and in through the
doors on the right, women took the left hand.  The humidity inside sent
Will into an immediate blind sweat, and Oskar had to lead him over to a
bench, as he could barely see where he was going.  They lay out sweating
amongst a lot of other bodies.
  Oskar whispered into Will's ear once they'd got used to the steam and
heat. 'Watch that guy over there.'
  Out of the corner of his eye, Will glimpsed a paunchy man in his late
thirties with a towel over his groin.  Another man sidled up to him and
Will saw him quickly slip his hand under the towel.  They hastily got up
and disappeared out of a side door.
  Oskar grinned at Will.  'Don't ever come in here and lay a towel over
your lap, it's code that you want a blowjob.  He's being sucked off right
now in the corridor.  If you don't want to be bothered, go naked.'
  'Oskar, life is too damned complicated for me.'
  'It's all part of the rich tapestry ...'
  'You're a bit of a philosopher, do you know that?'
  'Bitch.'
  'Cynic.'  Under cover of the steam, they kissed happily.  After half an
hour Oskar got up and led him back to the cold plunge.
  Will shrieked as he jumped in, but he felt fantastic when he got out,
'This is great!'
  'It's what made the Ancient Romans world conquerors.'

  They put their robes and sandals back on, found their lockers and
dressed.  Will felt better than he had for weeks.  The sense of irritation
and the lack of focus seemed wiped away.  Oskar and he strolled out of the
Spa precinct and found a table at a roadside café opposite.  They sat under
a spreading vine, took two chilled glasses of the local fruit wine, and
watched the crowds moving in and out of the grounds.
  'Willemu, my dearest love,' Oskar observed with a complacent smile, 'You
look at home here.'
  'I feel at home here.  I feel more at home here than I do at home.'
  'Rothenia seems to suit you, my darling one.  I think it would suit you
even if you weren't with me.  You were born to come here.  It happens you
know.  My father once told me a strange story, a very strange story, of an
Englishman and this country.  But he told me I was never to tell anyone
except my own son.  But I will never have a son, so I think I will tell
you, and Fritz, when he is older.  And he will tell his son, for he will be
prince and count one day, although he does not know it yet.'
  Will was very intrigued.  Oskar was clearly warming up for a very long
story, so he called over a waiter in what was now quite fluent Rothenian,
and ordered a chilled bottle of the wine.  He was rewarded with the usual
dazzling smile he got as a foreigner speaking Rothenian.  It made you
instantly popular in Strelzen.
  'Now, my Will.  Have you heard of a family of English counts of
Burlesdon?'
  'We call them earls, but yes, I have heard of the earls of Burlesdon.  I
also know that Rudolf III, as a playboy prince, slept with the countess of
Burlesdon and gave her an unexpected parting gift of a red-haired little
boy, whom the earl adopted as his son, with none to deny him, and so the
Burlesdons are in fact Elphbergs.'
  Oskar's mouth had dropped, he took Will's hand in his, looked seriously
at him and said, 'If I ever underestimate your cleverness again Willemu,
take a hammer and beat my brains out.  How do you know this?'
  'Mr Pokolosky told us the story on his tour of the presidential palace a
couple of weeks ago.'
  'Ach, then I see where you got the information, but there is a lot more
to the story, and this I do not think Mr Pokolosky knows, in fact only I do
amongst living men.'
  'In 1854 a younger brother of the then earl came here to Rothenia on
holiday, his name was Rudolf, Rudolf Rassendyll, which is the Burlesdon
family name.  Rudolf, of course was a cheeky reference to the scandalous
Rassendyll ancestry.  Rudolf was tall, powerful and red-headed, just like
his ancestor King Rudolf III.
  Now it happened that the Englishman came to our land in the days
immediately preceding the coronation of Rudolf V.  The new king's father, a
most unpopular king, never forgiven for the brutal suppression of the
people in the Strelzen rising of 1848, had just died.  His eldest son, the
new Rudolf, was not too popular either, and there were radicals enough in
the kingdom ready to revenge the butchery of 1848 by removing him.  The
aristocratic opposition party was headed by his own half-brother, Duke
Mikhel, who saw his chance to take the throne.
  My ancestor, the Francis who is buried at Strelzen cathedral, was equerry
to Rudolf V at that time, and assistant to the marshal of the household, a
steady old soldier called Sapt.  It is, you understand, from that Francis –
who was called generally Fritz – that this story ultimately comes.  King
Rudolf and he were friends, but he could not stop the king over-indulging
himself in a hunting lodge in the woods of Zenden, and an agent of Duke
Mikhel slipped the king drugged wine.  He was unconscious on the morning of
his coronation and could not be woken.
  However, also at the hunting lodge was Mr Rassendyll, whom the king had
encountered walking in the woods of Zenden and invited in as a cousin – it
was his humour.  When the plot was discovered, Sapt persuaded Mr Rassendyll
to take the king's place, and substitute for him at the coronation.  The
king and Mr Rassendyll both had the look of their common ancestor, Rudolf
III, you see.'
  'My God,' interjected Will, 'This is true?'
  'It is a story, but it is certainly as true a one as can be.  For it is
so true it can be told to but one person at a time.  How more true can you
get?  I will continue.  So here we have Mr Rudolf Rassendyll of Burlesdon
in England crowned king of Ruritania, while the king, the real king, was
hidden away in a cellar, sleeping off the effects of the drug.  But when Mr
Rassendyll, my ancestor Fritz and Colonel Sapt reached the lodge, he was
gone, kidnapped by the duke's agent, a nasty piece of work called Hentzen.
They had no choice but to get back to Strelzen, and get Rassendyll to
resume his reign as king, while Mikhel held the real king for ransom.'
  'A bit of a standoff then.'
  'Certainly.  But in the meantime, Flavia of Elphberg, the king's cousin
and intended bride, had met and fallen for Rassendyll, evidently a fine
figure of a man.'
  'More and more complicated.  How was it resolved?  For I assume it was
resolved one way or another.'
  'Rassendyll, Fritz and a party of soldiers surrounded the castle of
Zelden.  Rassendyll himself swam the lake to the old castle and saved the
captive king, while Fritz and his men broke down the doors of the modern
château.  The Duke Mikhel was by then dead inside, killed by intrigue
within his own party.  Rassendyll indeed was nearly killed himself when he
fought the radicals, and though he escaped, he may have wished he had not,
for he then had to watch Flavia, the love of his life, marry another, the
king he had himself saved from death.  And she knew him too for Rassendyll,
and not the king, and she loved him back.'
  'This is incredible,' cried Will, 'What Matt White would give for this!'
  Oskar looked at him sternly, and Will was quelled.  'You understand the
concept of secrecy, do you not?'
  'Of course, Oskar.  You have carried this story in your head since you
were a boy, and I will do no less.  Forgive me.  It was just the surprise.
But there is a reason you have told me this, I think?'
  'Yes, there is, and it is in the moral.  Can you see it?'
  'Er ... never impersonate a king and fall for his girlfriend?'  Will
smiled.
  'My darling Will, there are times when I think that you might look better
with a broken nose.'
  'Sorry.'
  'I have not yet finished in any case.  Years went by.  The royal marriage
was not happy and although Rudolf V proved a good king, employing clever
ministers, and restoring parliament, he was an unhappy and suspicious man.
His queen too hung on to a fantasy of Mr Rassendyll that she was besotted
enough to indulge, and in the end a compromising letter came into the hands
of an anarchist nobleman – and there's an odd concept – that same Hentzen I
have already mentioned.  Rassendyll returned to Ruritania, which he should
not have done, and tried to recover the letter.  But the anarchists moved
on the king in the forest of Zelden, where Hentzen miscalculated and
murdered him in 1861.'
  '1861?  But that's not right.  Rudolf V's reign ended in 1862.'
  'So many people think, but they are wrong.  The king was murdered, but
there was another man who looked like the king.'
  'Rassendyll!'
  'The very man.  He and his friends, including my ancestor Fritz, disposed
of the royal body, and Rassendyll took the king's place in Strelzen, and
became once again King Rudolf, so that he might hunt down the anarchists
and make the land safe for his beloved Flavia; and he succeeded.  Hentzen
was cut down, but alas, at the end, an assassin escaped the sweep and shot
Rassendyll to death in the palace grounds.  And so Rudolf V died twice.'
  'And the body in the cathedral ...'
  '... is that of Mr Rassendyll, and his queen lies beside him.'
  'Oh!'
  'Now that's a story, isn't it?' smiled Oskar.
  'Wow.  I hope you Tarlenheims make sure it never dies.  It should always
be remembered that there was once such romance and chivalry in this world.'
  'I think that is why Count Fritz eventually told his son, who told his,
and so on.  It has never been written down.'
  'I am honoured that you told me too,' said Will.  'But you said there was
a moral.'
  'There is, and one day it may be important, my Will, that you remember
it.  It is this.  There is such a thing as nobility in the world, but noble
actions are sometimes carried out in dark places by desperate men, and it
may be that they seem no better than brigands, yet nonetheless what they do
is still noble and the end they pursue is not selfish, but the greater
good.'
  And Will finally recognised that he had met a better teacher than he
could ever be.  He was just puzzled as to what it was that he was supposed
to have learned.