Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

Then one old man, with a long, flowing white beard and a big red velvet hat with a long scarf looped round it and round his neck, above a black velvet gown, comes rumbling in, stamping newly fallen snow off his boots and refusing to be divested of his cloak until he has drunk a quart of red wine heated with cloves and cinnamon, our cloves and cinnamon, with small sour apples bobbing in it, and eaten half a loaf of hot bread and a plate of rabbit stew. Then he coughs like a whale and spits a great fistful of phlegm into the tire, whose heat he was keeping from every one else. He ignores Eddie and turns to Alderman Dawtrey. 'Fucking Hanse,' he says.

  'Oh, hear, hear,' say all the rest.

  'Over the fucking top this time,' he says.

  'Oh, absolutely,' they reply.

  'You know what their latest ploy is?' 'No, but you're going to tell us.'

  'No Inglysshe cloth north or east of the Weser unless it's in Hanse ships.' 'You're joking.'

  'No. I've a lad works in their kitchens down Steelyard, keeps his ears and eyes open. They'll be coming up to Guildhall in a day or two with a proclamation to that effect.'

  'Fucking German bastards.'

  'What are we going to do? Got to do something. They've already tied up the cloth markets in Antwerp, Bruges and Cologne. We'll be lucky if we make ten per cent.' Dawtrey turned on Eddie. 'You see? If we had a proper king who lived in London, or Westminster anyway, and had some real clout, they wouldn't dare. I mean, if you were king, what would you do?'

  Eddie doesn't hesitate.

  'I'd tell my Lord High Admiral to get the fleet out and sink the next Hanse convoy that came anywhere near our coasts and then I'd invite the bastards in Steelyard to dinner in the Tower and suggest a compromise might be reached before they go home.'

  It's what they want to hear.

  At this moment Ali swings himself nearer on that stick of his, takes Eddie by the elbow and they have a few quiet words together. By the way, Prince Harihara and Anish are no longer with us, having retired to a chamber at the back of the house where they're busy filling chamber-pots. I told them not to drink the water unless they had seen it boiled first. Later I'll make sure they eat some plain boiled rice and suck a lemon or two. Then Eddie nods and turns back to these merchants. 'I don't know why I didn't think of it straight away,' he says, 'but my lord of Warwick, over in Calais, has eight carvels – with cannon – and I'm sure, for a fairly large consideration, he could have them mocked up to look like pirates

  And so it goes on, through to about two o'clock when Mistress Dawtrey causes a dinner to be served so all the visitors can eat, and drink of course, before early nightfall. There's roast swan and sturgeon, a barrel of oysters, followed by marzipan made from almonds and crystallised sugar-cane juice bought off a Moorish boat that has just come in from Malaga and a barrel of the sweet wine from the same port. But half-way through Eddie goes a touch pale and begins to sweat, and I suggest he should be in bed. He argues, till I let him know I'll come up and tuck him in.

  So here we are now, and his little man is no longer a little man but a very big man, standing up proud like a bowsprit above his stomach, and flicking the way a young man's does when its full of blood and spunk and responds to the heartbeat.

  'But I can't lie with you,' he moans. 'My fucking arm. I'll never be able to hold myself on top of you and do it properly.'

  'Properly?' I say, marvelling at the innocence of this seventeen-year-old. 'What's properly?'

  And I swing my leg, which glows like a ripe peach in the candlelight, across his tummy and kneel above him. I tease the tip of his prick with the lips of my cunt for a moment or two then lower her on to him, swallowing him right up. And. of course, the silly bugger conies straight away and I have to start all over again.

  Chapter Twenty

  Not, I promise you, out of our love-play, but taking infection from the filth, damp and cold of the attic they have hidden him in, Eddie's fever worsens. The cut on his arm festers a little, oozes a yellow pus and then a colourless ichor, and he complains of alternating heat and cold, comes out in terrible sweats, and suffers a thirst like torture. It's so bad Mistress Dawtrey wants him out of the place, believing him perhaps to have the plague, but it is winter with frost most nights and sometimes all through the day as well, and the plague never strikes, they say. when the weather is cold. Anyway, he lives thus through three days and nights and no one survives the plague that long. And now it occurs to me that I know why plague absents itself in winter, though no one will believe me. It's carried by fleas. And frost kills fleas. Simple as that.

  I find this fever enhances our love-making. Think of the heat of his body almost too hot to touch, after I have stripped off beneath those cobwebby rafters, low, so that short though I am I have to stoop, and the icy draught thrusts like a sword through the gaps round the tiny window. Imagine us on deep straw mattresses, the top one eiderdown from Zeeland, beneath a pile of woollen blankets and furs making a cave filled with the odours of sweat, sperm, my love-juices, the slick sweetness of pus and shit. Then when it's over for a time and I lie with my head on his shoulder, my runny nose peeping above the coven, and our breaths making mist in the dim light above our heads and the pigeons inside the eaves cr-croo, cr-croo, and the mice scuttle between the joists. Runny nose? Yes, I've caught the cold. The cold even-one in this wet, cold island has.

  But Mistress Dawtrey has another reason for wanting Eddie out. He is a Yorkist. All right, so most of the City is, but the garrison in the Tower under the command of Lord Scales is the King's. Unpopular though Scales and his garrison are, once he knows where Eddie is a quick sortie with a hundred or so professional soldiers could easily get down the seven or so blocks on East Cheap that separate us from the Tower and snatch him before the City can mobilise its own militia against them. Or so says Mistress Dawtrey, and the Alderman agrees.

  And so, outside the attic, the household fidgets and chafes. Anish and his two secretaries, Moplahs from Malabar, lean hard-working youths who are losing their sight through working at their accounts and copying the Prince's letters in light which even at midday is no better than gloomy, work away at the books, pretending there is more to be done than there actually is, yet finding mistakes at the eighth or ninth perusal of their papers. The Prince himself sits in silence at the head of the big table in the hall, which annoys the Alderman since it is where he is accustomed to preside, and there he drums his fingers and stares with what he imagines is dignified melancholy at a future that has become obscure if not pointless. Actually he has chronic indigestion, which I try to alleviate with peppermint cordial I buy at an apothecary's at the Poultry Lane end of Old Jewry. And what an apothecary! What a shop! He has a dead tortoise hanging up, a small crocodile, bladders, musty seeds and it is all filthy. In Vijayanagara he would have been closed down as a health hazard.

  And with every hour Mistress Dawtrey, who seemed such a buxom, welcoming person when we first arrived, bumbles about her household tasks, which consist mainly of chivvying the help, muttering beneath her breath about how the Queen will have search parties out by now all up and down Wading Street to the north-west and Ermine Street to the north, as if these are the only thoroughfares out of London to take us to the parts we want to go to. She herself has never left London and has no conception at all of what a place might be like if it be different from London.

  Alderman Dawtrey, a vintner specialising in sweet Iberian wines, such as sack and malaga, keeps to his counting-house at the back of the property from where he sends out his apprentices to run errands to the quays, making sure his ships are sailing and welcoming those returning, and generally pretending to be busy. But in truth he is staying indoors because he knows if he goes out their worships the other aldermen and the justices of the City, too, might question him as to our whereabouts and he does not wish to involve them in falsehoods. Clearly the whole household welcomed us on the understanding that we would be there for one night at the most.

  Well, there must have been a spy in the household, there usual
ly is, because on the third night they come for us, for Eddie anyway, and know where to go. We hear the tramp of their feet coming up East Cheap, and…

  'Eddie,' I say, 'that's soldiers, by the clink of their harness and the clatter of their horses' hoofs.'

  But this is the first time he's got himself together enough to do it 'properly', that is with my legs spread beneath him, my knees up and splayed, and him lying on top of me supported by his elbows and his arms. And he bangs away in that position, like a pestle in a mortar, pleasuring neither of us as much as we do when I call the tune. But at least she's wet and ready for it, having done it in two of my ways earlier in the evening, so even if there's not much pleasure there's no pain either – though what I am colluding with, had I not been ready to let him do it this way, would have been rape.

  However, that we have already been there before is almost our undoing, that and the way I have taught him to hold back, for now he is taking far too long,

  'Come on, Eddie,' I cry, as we hear them hammering on the big street door below, 'gerroff will yer.'

  See, I am already learning to speak English the way the natives do.

  'Damn it, no,' he grunts, 'I'll not be hurried thus,' and he keeps up the same dull rhythm.

  Then the quality of the sounds shifts to something nearer and more resonant as they get indoors. There's a crash of pewter and faience and I know that a fine Moorish bowl, freely painted in green and pale yellow patterns, which Mistress Dawtrey prizes, has gone from the big table to the floor. She'll not risk any more breakages and I can imagine the jerk of her head that sends them stamping up the first flight of carved stairs.

  It's ladders from now on, two, the first coming through a wide square hole in the first floor, the second propped against the threshold of a low upright plank door that opens into our nest of love.

  Thump, thump on the stairs, and thump, thump on my pelvis. Voices, harsh, deep, gruff, with a cleared throat and phlegmy rasp like stones off a shovel.

  'He's up there, milord. Up that fucking ladder. Behind that door.'

  Silence, then another voice, this time the Norman drawl. 'Come on, Eddie. We know you're there. Be a good chap and come down.'

  'Bastard John Clifford,' says Eddie, in my ear. Then, much louder: 'Fuck oft", Clifford.' Then quieter again: 'Bastard hates me. He'll have my balls off before he hands me over to the hangman.'

  But the thought doesn't stop him fucking me. Outside: 'Get an axe, old chap, will you?' Inside: 'His dad got killed at St Alban's, doesn't like Yorkists.' Thump, thump. 'Nearly there.'

  Outside: 'Oh, for Christ's sake, try the fireplace in the main hall.-

  Lots of running up and down stairs, up the ladders.

  'Here, give it to me.' Thump, thump, and the plank door begins splitting not far above my head, and the axe-blade flashes briefly. Then a whoop of pleasure. Two actually.

  One outside: 'He-e-e-ere comes Johnny!'

  One inside: 'He-e-e-ere comes Eddie!'

  Another plank comes loose, Eddie rolls off me, hauls me upright, stark naked as we both are, picks up a chest that's at the end of our makeshift bed and smashes it against the joists. At the second blow he's through and a shower of tiles goes skittering into the gully between the two roof ridges. He's not let go of the chest, though, and now heaves it at the door. 'Aaaargh!' and we hear a great crashing and banging as Clifford, I suppose, takes it on his midriff and falls off the ladder. From the musical, mystical chimes we hear I guess the chest bursts open and showers him with gold pieces.

  Eddie's out on the roof, reaching in to get me, grabs a bare arm, hauls me out. Oh, Shiva, it's cold. And I slip down on my bum into the gully, with him slithering behind and almost on top of me. He gets me to my feet and for a brief moment I can take in the night, the stars, the roofs, hundreds of them, the spires, the rising three-quarter moon, the silver ribbon of the river, the rising threads of smoke from still smouldering fires. Then the cold strikes again, like a blow in my lungs, like knives on my feet and hands.

  'Come on!'

  Two things the Londoners live in mortal fear of: plague and fire. And against the latter the big houses, with yards closed off from the public thoroughfares, have rungs fastened into the walls so people can use the windows, even the highest windows, to get to safety. From where we are the highest, nearest window-sill is five feet below us and the top rung three feet below that. Eddie goes first then, holding the guttering with icy fingers, I lower my feet towards him so he can guide them on to the sill. The insteps of my feet feel ticklish, the rough loam of the wall between its timbers scrape my breasts. There is a brick frame round the window and I get the fingertips of my left hand between two narrow bricks.

  It isn't a big drop. The lean-to roof, with a shallower camber than the roofs of the house, is below us. Several things now happen at once.

  Ali appears, coming in from the street through the yard door. He looks up at us with his one gleaming eye, waves and disappears into the stable. Clifford. I suppose it is Clifford, appears in the gully above us. Then disappears. I can hear him shouting but not make out what he says as he storms down the inside of the house, calling the soldiers together behind him, or sending them on in front. Ali comes out of the stable, hauling Genet on the end of a rope halter. Eddie, after a moment's hesitation, launches himself, bare-arsed, on to the stallion's back. Genet rears like a mad thing but Eddie hangs on round his neck and scoops up the rope halter. Soldiers appear in the gateway behind Ali who steps to one side as, knees and ankles, Eddie drives Genet into their midst. A clatter of weapons and armour, hoofs on cobbles flashing sparks, a neigh like a banshee, and they are gone, with the soldiers making a show of following them.

  Ali comes and stands beneath me, looking up with his squinting eye. 'You'll catch your death,' he says.

  He helps me down with his good arm, steadying me with his bad one until my toes touch the stones. Then he wriggles out of his smelly old fur and wraps it round me.

  'And that, Mah-Lo, is quite enough for one session.'

  I drew in breath and let out a long sigh. She was right but I had been so caught up in her telling of this eight-year-old tale that I had quite forgotten where I was. But Ali's garden was all around me, just as it had been, and Ali himself in the shade of his tree on the other side of the table. He appeared to be asleep, but stirred, emitted a tiny fart, opened his one eye.

  Uma turned to him. 'Ali, ask Murteza to fetch the children. I should go now.'

  Ali rang a little handbell and presently the Nubian servant appeared, received his instructions and departed.

  Una stood. 'It has been a pleasure,' she said, again dipping her head above her lingers.

  I struggled to my feet. 'Wonderful, wonderful, I assure you,' I managed to blurt out. 'Will you… when will you…?'

  'Oh, I shall be back when Ali reaches a point where my side of the story is needed.'

  And she walked away, across the flags, past the little fountain, through the pierced sandalwood door. Briefly I caught a glimpse of two young children in the vestibule, holding Murteza's big black hands. He passed them to their mother and the door swung shut.

  There was a long moment of silence before I sighed again.

  'She tells a good story, doesn't she?' Ali murmured.

  'Yes,' I said. Then I gave it a moment's thought. 'And true, I suppose?'

  'As the day is long. Why should you think otherwise?'

  Again that brow, lifted like a cobbler's needle.

  'Oh, I don't know. These three voices you are giving me. Your own, the Prince's letters, and now Uma's. I suspect art, contrivance.' 'Contrivance? What can you possibly mean?'

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I glanced up over the low eaves at the fanciful dragons and suchlike that adorned the gables of Ali's house, and shivered. So long, I thought, as he limits himself to three narrators, I'll go along with him. But if a fourth appears, making, forgive me, a set of Chinese boxes out of it… I resumed my seat, breathed in. A hint of Uma's per
fume still lay on the air.

  'What did you do then?' I asked.

  Ali sipped lemonade, eyed me across the rim of his gilded cup. 'Dear Mah-Lo,' he murmured, 'this is the tenth consecutive day you have come to hear my tale. And I cannot believe that, following the vigour of Uma's story-telling, you want to hear more from me. I am not so conceited that I cannot recognise that I lack her style, her enthusiasm.'

  I could see that my passing doubts had disturbed him and I was at pains to reassure him that truly I was enthralled, and not least by the unassailable veracity of his telling.

  'Very well, then.' Ali set down his cup, stretched his legs out into the slanting sunlight and laced his fingers, the good ones and the withered ones, over his hollowed stomach. He cleared his throat. I took the poor shivering thing,' he resumed, 'back into the house and sat her down on a settle in front of the fire. I kicked the smouldering logs into life and tossed on another, then went in search of a hot drink for her. At that moment the main hall of Alderman Dawtrey's house was empty, apart from a couple of small long-haired while dogs that he kept, which snuffled about everywhere and nibbed their penises against your shins if you sat down. But by the time I got back from the kitchen with a mug of mulled wine for Uma, there was quite a gathering, summoned I suppose by the commotion which had just taken place…"

  Prince Harihara had taken the big chair with arms at the end of the table, which, of course, annoyed the Alderman as it always did. The Prince was wearing a lace-trimmed nightshirt, beneath a velvet stocking cap with a gold tassle on the 'toe', both purchases made in Venice. His long black hair and glossy cheeks shone in the lamp- and candle-lights. Next to him was Anish, shivering despite his coat of beaver. At the other end of the table Mrs Dawtrey was having hysterics, while the Alderman stood with his back to the fire and Uma to his side. Although he was angry and disturbed, I could see how his eyes kept flickering to the flesh she had left exposed above her breasts in spite of the coat I had given her. I longed to put the poor fool out of his misery and tell him, yes. you're quite right, she's a woman and naked underneath it.