A Secret Hidden From You

Chapter 1: The Beginning

"Charles! Charles! Where are you?!" The man called Charles opened the door to a magnificent study, dark in color and lit only by candles. No natural light shone through the heavily draped windows but it didn't matter, not for his master. "Right here my Lord," he answered the call. "Oh! Good! Do you know what today is?" "…Forgive my forgetfulness, I do not remember." "I thought so. To day is the day that the cargo ship comes to the port. You know the one that comes in only once every year…" "Ah yes, that one" "I need you to go down and get six units of cargo alright?" "Yes my Lord."

Charles closed the door to the study and made his way down the long hallway to the front of the large mansion, where his carriage was waiting. He got into the driver's seat, slapped the reigns and went off towards the port. The village that the port was located in wasn't the largest city in the country but it wasn't the smallest either. It was big enough to have all the shops the rich mansion owners that lived around the town wanted yet small enough that everyone knew everybody. The port was crowded when Charles got there, all the shop owners needed to fill their stock for the year. He stopped the carriage on the dock near the least crowded area of the large ship.

The captain of the boat, a large Russian who went by the name of Ivan, greeted Charles when he climbed off the carriage. "Hello Charles," he said with a large grin on his face. "Have you and your master had a good year?" "Yes, it's been pleasant." "Good" "Now, Ivan, if you please, the cargo?" "Ah yes, only for one of my best customers." The large Russian led Charles to a secret door hidden from the rest of the boat and away from the large crowd of people. "This time I also stopped in the West. Most of the others you have bought over the years have come from Asia. This time I decided to add something new to the pick." When Ivan opened the secret hatch, Charles saw hundreds of nude boys, chained to the walls of the ship. They ranged from the darkest of skin Charles had ever seen to the lightest, almost a sickly pale. One by one he went through the boys, quickly scanning their faces and whether or not they looked sickly and diseased. When he got to his sixth pick, Charles noticed a fair skinned, blonde boy. He walked over and grabbed the boy's face. The boy opened his eyes, reveling a stunning sea of blue-violet that Charles had never seen before. Charles quickly picked the boy, forgetting to check for illness or defect. The boy's pale body and violet eyes were too gorgeous to pass up.

Ivan handed each of the boys a ragged shirt, too big for any of them so that it covered all the way down to their knees. As Charles loaded each of them into the black carriage, Ivan sauntered over. "I'll send the bill over like normal. If there are problems with any of them, I'll be here till Monday of next week." He smiled and walked back to the other customers who were in need of his help. Charles then climbed back onto the carriage and started the long journey back to the mansion.

Inside the carriage, the other boys sat and chatted with one another, trying to get acquainted. Matthew, however, decided to gaze out the window at the scenery that flew by. He pondered about his future now that he was sold to some guy he had never met before. He was surprised that he was even sold in the first place, knowing that with his "condition" he could never do hard labor in the sun like the other boys. Matthew sighed and returned to gazing out the window.

It was night by the time Charles and the precious cargo reached the mansion. As Matthew exited the carriage with the other boys, he looked to the castle like mansion. In the dark it was positively frightening. Its dark towers loomed over the boys, a silent foreboding as if it were predicting a horrible future for them all. The large emptiness of the gardens that surrounded the castle looked like a dark sea of black with the trees and hedges taking the forms of mythical sea beasts. Matthew shivered, trying to think of happier thoughts and not of the eerie castle and its gardens. Charles led the group of boys into the house, down a long corridor into a hallway that was separate from the main one. "These," he pointed to six doors along the wall, "are your rooms. Pick wisely because you won't get to change your rooms. There are servant's clothes in each of the dressers in the rooms. Tomorrow morning, I will wake you up and my Lord will assign each of you a duty that you'll perform." With all that said, Charles turned and left the boys. They quickly scrambled to grab a room in which to call their own. Matthew, unfortunately, was too slow and had to pick the room the farthest away.

He opened the door to his new room. Inside, a mirror was hung above a small dresser that had an already lit candle on it. On the wall opposite the dresser was a bed. Next to the bed was a window without drapes. The moonlight shone through the window, lighting up his dim room. Matthew walked over to the bed and pulled out the sheet. He placed it over the window, blocking out the light. "Good," he thought, "I won't have to worry about the sunlight in the morning." Tired of all the day's activities, Matthew climbed into the bed and under the covers. As he started to fall asleep, he couldn't help but feel that something about the castle, Charles, and his mysterious new master was strange. He hoped that his uneasy feeling was due to all the events that had happened but he couldn't shake the feeling away.

Author's Note

Hi there! So...this is my very first story...I hope that you'll enjoy it. I'm not the best writer on the planet so if you see any errors, typos, grammar mistakes, anything please send me a message or a review that way I can fix it. I decided to start writing this fic because I really need practice at writing. Hopefully this will present me with the opportunity to get better ^.^. I'll try my best to update consistently but it I can't make any promises...Oh! Before I forget, Charles is a made up character. I just couldn't see any of the real characters being a butler in this story so I made a character up. I hope that he's an ok character. So with that said I hope that you'll enjoy the story!