Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

I looked him up and down. He was certainly a well set-up lad, with shoulders definitely broad even though the fashion of padded, fluted upper sleeves exaggerated the effect, with a narrow waist clipped in by a tight belt on which he wore a small dagger. On his lower half he wore tight woollen hose, which revealed well-shaped muscular thighs and when he turned, lean, hard buttocks. His expression was open and pleasing, and his features regular. He smiled often. His voice was mellifluous too, but fittingly strong. I looked at the rest of my entourage: Ali, like a cross between Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea; Anish, plump and wheezy, and, since we had arrived in Calais, always with a drop of watery phlegm on the end of his pointed, drooping nose. And both of them elderly. With no soldiers we would be in poor shape if attacked by footpads.

'It is kind of you to offer your services,' I said, and made a slight bow. 'We are happy to accept them.'

'There is just one thing,' March now added, with some confusion in his face, a heightening of colour. 'I have no chinks at the moment, dead out of funds.'

His speech, perhaps out of embarrassment, had become clipped and formal.

'I shall pay you, of course.'

‘I would not dream of hiring myself out as a paid hand. However, a small loan… I do have prospects, you know.'

'Say no more. Anish here will provide you with whatever you think you need.'

And so, with little more ado, we settled on arrangements, and fixed a day, a week from now, for our departure. I looked up at the sky, wishing to bring to an end an interview that I guessed March might find embarrassing if it were continued in front of his companions.

'It looks like rain. Again.’ Anish does not like to be caught in the rain. ‘And you will want to finish grooming your master's horse.'

As we went indoors Anish grumbled that March would probably make the loan to which we had committed ourselves far too large, while Ali muttered that I had made a silly mistake: the stallion belonged to March himself. He might lack a servant to look after it for him, but he owned a horse fit for a king. Both of them were right.

The second notable event was the return of Sir John Dynham and his three hundred men. His expedition had been successful. Knowing the harbour of Sandwich, where the commanders of the King's or Queen's men would be lodged, and the narrow streets of fishermen's cottages and ships' suppliers around, he had contrived to surprise and capture all who were within the town of the King's people without alerting the main body who were camped in the fields a quarter of a mile away.

The commanders of the captured men were a certain Richard Wydville. Lord Rivers, his wife who had been born a princess, married a duke, and now was married to this Wydville-Rivers, and their twenty-year-old son. Anthony. Warwick decided to put on a show to humiliate these people, whose commission had been his arrest or death and who had been so ignominiously dragged from their beds and shipped across the Channel. He lit the hall with a hundred and sixty torches as well as many hundred candles, celebrating, he said the Feast of Candlemas and the Purification of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Odd. I thought she was meant to be pure already. We fought our way through another huge meal, which was not, this time, quite so awful since there was spit-roast wild boar, and sweet puddings called syllabubs made from soured cream and honey which, with a little of our nutmeg, were quite palatable.

When the tables were cleared Warwick called for these Wydvilles to be brought before him and, old and dignified though the father was, began to berate him. Apparently Dynham had reported to him that Richard Wydville had behaved arrogantly since his humiliating capture, calling the lords in Calais arrant traitors and worse. But it was Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury, much the same age as Wydville, who began.

'Just who do you bloody think you are?' he shouted, using the clipped form of speaking which I have already noted is typical of the Ingerlonder nobility when they are crossed. Normally they drawl, in a lazy way, dragging out vowels and dropping consonants. 'Just where do you think you get off calling us traitors? We are the King's men, you know. It's from you people and your pernicious influence that we aim to free the poor man. It will be your lot to end up on the scaffold as traitors… mark my words.'

Lord Rivers withstood this onslaught with, as I have said, some dignity, not to say continued arrogance. His son, too, contrived a superior sneer, though he said nothing. This infuriated Salisbury's son Warwick.

'Just recall, my good man, who you are dealing with and where you came from. It may be forty years have gone since you were pushing a plough, caught my lady's eye and grubbed a coronet for yourself out of the ditch, but you still carry the smell of the farmyard with you.'

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

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,