KING OF THE SEA
A Short Story by Lee McAulay
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Copyright 2011 Lee McAulay. This work is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The moral right of Lee McAulay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All the characters in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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KING OF THE SEA
Cold was the wind which harried us from the north, driving deep-bellied clouds heavy with snow lumbering down the Channel to France, and it zipped along the edge of the sea like a rip in a sheet of vellum. The horses fidgeted on the shingle. Sleeping hounds lay heaped on the shoreline, one lazy eye on the nobles in their flapping cloaks who stamped and laughed and waited for Cnut the Great.
The smell of dank marshlands drifted from miles inland. Wide and brown and studded with worm-casts lay the sands, rippled and puddled, stretching out to the east towards the grey waters and Denmark beyond. Above the shore the sky was leaden, the tide apparently on the turn.
Yesterday I, Sidhric of Wessex, came here to see the Danish king fail.
Somewhere out there in the North Sea the pagans believe a goddess lives, a goddess who can be summoned by the one true king, to be his protector as he to be her Consort. Tacitus tells us of sacrifices made in the wooded groves of the northlands, where each year the old king dies at the hands of a challenger, a new king to serve the Lady's lustful desires in heathen rites. Such practices the men of Essex still perform, they say, in their marshy fastness north of London. An excuse for debauchery and license amongst the peasants, no doubt. I have heard tales of the like in the abbey at Sarum, and when I hear them whispered amongst the novices in the scriptorium I insist each youth pays penance.