Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  At this the young Wydville flared up. 'My father is a gentleman, born and bred, and that is all an Inglyssheman need be to command the same respect as a king. And if you give me back my sword I'll prove it so on any in this hall.'

  At which our Eddie March joined in. 'I don't think so. When all's said and done there are those here in whose veins runs the blood royal. Such men do not fight with yeomen.'

  And there was an end of it. Cousin. I tell this story only to illustrate to you the strange customs of this Inglysshe tribe. All the nobility.ire descended, sometimes admittedly only in the female line, from the Norman barbarians who conquered the land four hundred years ago and it is a matter of pride in them that their blood is untainted, at least in the male line, with that of the ancient Inglysshe whose land they seized and on whom they look down, considering them boors, churls, uncivilised brutes. But, in truth, these nobles show little in their behaviour that you or I would readily call civilised.

  Well, cousin, it is time I brought this letter to an end. All you really need to know is that we are making some progress in the tasks we set ourselves, that we shall be sailing for Ingerlond just as soon as the wind is fair, and that in Eddie March we have a guide who will look after us.

  I shall not take up my pen again until we are in Ingerlond and have achieved some of what we are here for.

  I remain, dear cousin,

  Your devoted servant, Harihara

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a relief, you can imagine, to return to Ali's house a day or so later and find him recovered and sitting at his usual place. I had no wish to find another sheaf of papers waiting for me filled with the fustian Prince Harihara had written. I mean, could you follow all that stuff about Edwards, Richards and Henrys? Did you feel the need to?

  Yes, Ali was there. But he was not alone. Beside him sat a startlingly beautiful lady, some thirty or thirty-five years old. She was, I suppose, on that cusp of perfection that mature women achieve when they have seen much, done much, have had children, and either out of strength of character alone or character combined with widowhood have achieved control of their own lives.

  She was dressed in a bolero and full trousers made from rich embroidered silks, which were yet almost transparent in their fineness. In the gap between these garments her navel, filled with a substantial diamond, was exposed in the centre of a rounded but unblemished belly. A shawl covered her shoulders and head, which she held high, always with pride. Her high broad forehead was framed by rich dark hair, large dark eyes glowed with humour and sometimes malice beneath full eyebrows, her nose was sculpted and slightly aquiline with a smaller diamond in the side of her right nostril; her full lips were painted a deep crimson above a small but strong chin and a long neck. A pair of creases in the latter, just above her collar-bones, were the only physical signs of her maturity apart from her dignity, humour and self-possession, She wore a lot of jewellery, gold bangles on her upper arms,

  rings entrusted with emeralds and rubies, anklets and so forth. An invisible miasma of perfume hung about her and shifted in tone when she moved.

  'Mah-Lo. effendi, I should like you to meet the lady lima. Uma, this is Mah-Lo. I have told you about him.'

  My bow expressed, I hope, some of the reverence and wonder I felt. The goddess in front of me placed her palms together in front of her creamy bosom, which her bolero, cut low, scarcely hid at all, and gently inclined her head above her pointed fingertips. The eyes that looked up at me were watchful, calculating and seductive.

  I sat beside her with my hands on my knees. She picked up my right hand and placed it on the table between us, keeping it covered with hers, and murmured that it was a pleasure to meet me, or some such greeting.

  Uma, you know, has figured in my history,' Ali continued. 'As a vision, a promise, a sort of consummation – you recall how we bathed together in the Caliph's palace in Misr-al-Kahira – and, of course, disguised as a Buddhist monk. She is also the aunt of my two wives.' He took a date from the silver bowl that stood by the lemonade jug, popped it in his mouth, discreetly removed the stone in his palm, chewed, swallowed and went on. 'Sow, there are parts of our story which she can tell better than I since she was present at important times and I was not. In any case what happened to her and the things she caused to happen have their own intrinsic interest. So she has very kindly agreed to share some of her afternoons with us…"

  He passed his good hand over the empty socket of his missing eye and sighed. 'Uma. You may as well start,' he murmured.

  Uma withdrew her hand from mine, sat upright. 'Very well,' she said. She took a sip of lemonade and closed her eyes. For a moment the garden seemed still, almost as if with her it held its breath, though I suppose I fancied this. No doubt the fountain continued to play and the birds sang.

  Then she began.

  Sea-wrack and spume, sail-crack and whistle, heaving brown water swinging like a mother's soothing hand against the rough, seaweed-festooned stones of the pier. The blow of the wind round my midriff as. head down, I clutch my outer cloak about me – they must not see my rounded breasts, my steepled nipples. Well, that's what they feel like in this wind.

  There's quite a gang of us, a caterpillar almost for legs and cohesion, inching along a bent stick towards the tightly moored vessel, held snug against hempen bolsters by hawsers as thick as my arm, in spite of the lash and whip-slash of wind.

  Looking back above their heads I see the spires and towers of Calais, the tumbled roofs of thatch and slate, the smoke shredded down the alleyways of air between the chimneys, and the rainclouds bustling across the sky above them. Prince Harihara Kaya Kurteishi, a purple velvet cap trimmed with gold braid pulled over his glossy black locks and tied with a red silk scarf below his chin to hold it on, his plump dark lace screwed up against the wind which I know he hates, black sable tins as glossy furs his hair, and soft leather boots also fur-trimmed; Chamberlain Anish. eyes red-rimmed, moving with exaggerated care lest he slip on the sea-slimed cobbles, his elbow held by Ali ben Quatar Mayeen here the Lady Uma offered a warm smile to our host. who's in a muddle trying to keep his turban on, hold his stick and support Anish all at the same time, and with one hand not as functional as it should be, yet he finds time to peer around him with his one good eye, ever curious, ever seeking out the strange, the new. Then our fakir, with wild hedgehog hair, muttering arcane spells and mantras into his pointed beard or scolding the ten-year-old lad who carries his box of tricks for him. Last, or rather not last because our baggage train follows him, Eddie March, clanking and jingling with his accoutrements and leading by a bridle trimmed with scalloped purple hessian his high-stepping stallion with its balls like giant plums. This Ingerlonder is the only one of our party I've yet to fuck with, but I shall, I shall, and each of the rest thinks he's the only one who knows my breasts, my buttocks and my crimson quim.

  Then there's the mules, only twelve left now, so much of the goods we brought with us have been spent, and six out of our original ten muleteers. Anish sent the dhobi-wallahs, the cooks and all but two of the secretaries home with our soldiers. He said they were too expensive to keep.

  I turn away and look now across the sweep of the harbour, the forest of masts in front of warehouses, and quays stacked with bales of wool and casks of wine. I breathe in and the sharp air stings my questing nostrils: it's laden with smells, of tar and rope and timber, of fish and vinegar, of sea and all the smells of sea, the rotten sweetness of old fish offal, and salt and seaweed, rats' breath and urine, bleached wood and the bones of drowned sailors, and the cleansing ozone, which seems to carry the tang of semen freshly milked.

  And then the farmyard smell, mingled with all the spices and perfumes of India, as the mules clop by and one dumps yellow turds at my feet. They won't be coming on the ship, we'll have to hire or buy another lot in Dover, but the sacks and bags are all to be humped on board.

  I love departures, arrivals too and today we shall have both, the latter either in Dover where the b
urghers favour the men of York, or in the bosom of the deep.

  Although this is the shortest by far of our sea trips the boat is the largest, a great big three-masted tub, fat within hooped staves, like a barrel on its side. There are several of these freighters in the harbour, carvels they are called, built to carry wool out of Ingerlond, and coal and pig-lead, firewood, ironware and cheap tin trays, then back they come with furs and silks, German armour, French and German wine, and all the precious things merchants like Ali have always traded from east to west, but mainly, the Ingerlonders being as they are. wine.

  Because the hull bellies out, the gangway from the quay is eight feet long and quite wide, with roped sides and rungs nailed across the planks to stop us from slipping. First the muleteers unload the mules and carry our baggage below, stowing it in the hold, but now it is the turn of March's stallion, which is called Genet. Genet will not cross the gangway. A sweat breaks out on his shoulders, enough to froth in the wind. He arches his neck and rolls his eyes so you can see the whites. He neighs, almost bellows, like a trumpet, rears up then lashes out with his hoofs, whose clattering metal shoes strike-sparks from the granite flags. He gives off a hot, ferric smell, like a thunderbolt. It takes two of the muleteers to hold him and even then he contrives to bite one on the shoulder so blood streams down his back.

  Eddie March strides forward, his face black with rage, and taking a long whip from the chief muleteer, which he holds so the long thong is looped up against the shaft, he beats the animal about the face and neck until he backs away, head down and cowed, but as soon as they lead him forward towards the gangplank, he rears up again and almost breaks loose. I can see March will beat him again, and since he is a noble animal this distresses me. I move forward. 'Let me,' I say, 'let me.'

  'Get back, boy. He'll chew you and spit you out.' Spoken in that lazy drawl these Ingerlonder nobles use when they want to make you feel small, or assert their superiority.

  'I think not.'

  And I take the bridle, close up to Genet's cheek, and standing on tiptoe begin to murmur then croon in his flattened ear, which presently he pricks. With my free hand I stroke and soothe his quivering flank. His close-cropped hair is as smooth as silk one-way, rough as shark's skin the other. I can feel the dampness of his sweat, smell the fodder on his breath and peer into his flared scarlet nostrils. I sense his power, first shimmering across the surface of his skin, then, as he recognises my kindness, receding like a tide into his innermost organs. His eyes narrow a little, no longer flashing white, and become pools of deepest amber and jet again beneath fringed curtains of eyelashes I might die for. With my free hand I find in a pocket beneath my cloak three sugared almonds I had forgotten I had, and I let his hot, wet lips scoop them from my open palm, and now, it's fair to say, he's mine for ever.

  I station myself a little in front of his left shoulder and he turns and bends his neck so his cheek pushes against mine as I let him, with only the slightest prompting of the bridle, lead me across the booming gangplank and down a ramp to the stall that has been prepared for him below.

  As I fasten the half-door behind him I hear the clink of Eddie March's ironware. He is not, I think, too pleased: perhaps he has lost a little face. At all events, with a heavy hand and a grip like a blacksmith's tongs, he catches my shoulder, spins me, pushes my stomach up against the gate and hauls up my cloak and robe.

  'You spoil a brute to treat him like that,' he growls. 'How will he carry me into battle if he does not fear me more than arrows, gunpowder and shot?'

  'He'll carry you to hell and back if he loves you,' I answer.

  Coming on deck five minutes later, after his attempted buggery, I find the crew are already hauling and spreading the square mainsail down from its yardarm, against which it was furled, and dragging up the lateen, both of which now belly and swell, pregnant with the future. Whether or not he discovered my sex I am still unsure. Perhaps he did and it was the surprise that made him come prematurely deep in my natal cleft but not actually up my rectum. Though I don't know. I suspect these Ingerlonders take little more account of fucking, both in the time they are prepared to devote to it and in the pleasure they get from it, than they do of pissing. Less, considering how much beer they drink. Well, we shall see.

  Soon we are out and briefly we can see white cliffs both in front and behind, lining both horizons, but then the wind shifts and drops a little allowing the racing clouds to slow down enough to sink like a lover upon the sea, grey-green now that we have passed the harbour bar, and shed a driving mist of tiny drops, as cold as ice, that sweep into my face and down my throat. How I love these swift changes in the weather! If they were all we had discovered in the way of new sensations, they would be enough to justify this trip, make all worthwhile. Almost I pull off my cloak, step out of my robe and let the rain sweep over me, cleansing and stinging, caressing and tingling. Certainly, considering what milord has left behind, my buttocks and thighs would benefit from the sluicing. But circumspection is required, if only to ensure the continued stream of sensation I seek, and imagination, anyway, is free and carries no penalties.

  The big boat wallows on, heaving and reaching, slipping and dumping, and, right out in the middle, even dipping its prow with the sprit in front of it into the rollers and scooping them over the forecastle and main deck, much in the way an elephant in the Krishna back home will sluice itself with river water. Now I am dizzy with the motion and even my stomach heaves a little, but it is all sensation, sensation that tells you, you are alive. Above us the seagulls cry, holding station with barely a shift of their wings above the lateen, and out on the right-hand side we see a school of humpbacks blow then fluke when a pair of black and white masked killers get amongst them.

  I want the most, the most I can have at any given moment; indeed, that is why I am here, why I have come on this trip, so I may experience the most powerful sensations the world can offer and thereby discover the goddess within me. I climb the four or five steps on to the foredeck and, clutching rails and ropes, heave myself forward into the pounding spray, take it stinging on my face, plastering my robes against my breasts, my belly and my thighs, while the wind from behind shrieks by beneath the mainsail. Riding thus I begin to see looming up through mist, spray and rain those great white cliffs, so much higher and nobler than the ones we have left behind. Then, nearer still. I can make out the choughs circling their nests and hear above the wave-crash their shrill mewing. And now I feel him again behind me, shielding my back from the wind, the warmth and pressure of his chest against my back and, yes, again his prick above my buttocks, as hard and long, it seems, as that of his stallion stalled below.

  His big hands clasp my waist then slide upwards and forwards and close upon my breasts and I hear his sigh in my ear, a sigh of satisfaction, for he knows me now for what I am, a woman.

  One word breathes in my ear.

  'Albion!'

  Although I say nothing he senses the question in the way I lean back into him and raise my head so my temple rests against his neck.

  'Albion,' he says again, stooping a little so I can feel his lips in my ear. 'Albion, my new-found land.'

  For a moment I think he is talking to me or about me, finding a name for me. but glancing up I can see his young eyes are on the cliffs. 'One day.' he cries. 'I shall be… King… King of the World.'

  And he squeezes my tits so I want to cry out.

  At this moment I am saved further pain or embarrassment as the master and crew luff the boat, her sails crack and shake, the timbers creak and the full blast of the rain hits our faces. Then round she comes and the claws of the harbour moles open up before us to welcome us in. To Ingerlond, Engelond. Albion.

  Chapter Eighteen

  london!

  After all we do not properly disembark at Dover, but remain moored on the quay while March talks to the burghers who pronounce themselves friends of the Nevilles and York. However, they fear the King's or rather, the Queen's wrath if she learns they have
given Yorkists hospitality or even allowed them to land. With the Bill of Attainder passed against all who had supported York it would be an act of treason to do so, punishable with death, confiscation of goods and the rest. Why not, they say, go by boat to London where all the important people are Yorkists and who can, if need be, look after themselves? So, it is decided next day if the wind stays fair, we'll sail round the corner of Albion and up the river to London, and that is what we do, though it takes us a day, a night and a day to make the trip.

  Meanwhile the customs and excise officers make a brief examination of our spices, charge us the import tax but bribed by March with Harihara’s gold, ignore the smaller packets of treasure that are secreted amongst the rest. They fix seals to the bags declaring all dues paid, and give us penned receipts as well. Thus we are free to make our way to London with no fear of further molestation by the servants of the Crown.

  By river is surely the best way to arrive at an inland port. The long, slow dusk of English winter, which began as soon as the sun had passed its low zenith, marks out with gathering gloom our slow progress on the tide, virtually unassisted save by the lightest of airs out of the north-east. Any coast as it slips by is an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid or savage, and always mute, with an air of whispering. Come and find out. This one is almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. Behind us the sea and sky are seamlessly welded together and in the luminous space the tanned sails drifting up with the tide behind us seem to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished spars. A haze rests on the low shores that run out to sea in vanishing flatness. Ahead the air is dark above Gravesend, and further inland seems condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding over the biggest and the greatest town in Ingerlond.