Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

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.

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.

This time my companion on the forecastle is the ship's boy, a twelve-year-old with a twisted arm caused, so he says, by a break that did not mend properly when he fell from the yardarm of his first ship. Although he has the dark skin of an Arab, he is a Londoner, or near enough, from Deptford, a village on the south bank, and he names for me each place of note as we idle by.