Christmas Ritual

Copyright Oggbashan October 2019

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

[This story is set about 250 years later than my story Great Rite i.e. about 850 AD. It stands alone. It is not necessary to read Great Rite first.]

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Of all the annual rituals I have to perform as King I find the Christmas one most irritating, humiliating, and it has the potential to end my reign.

I have four Queens as my deputies and wives, each with their own specific responsibilities. By tradition from the first King Albert's reign, those Queens, whatever their name had been, take on the names of King Alfred's Queens -- Edith, Bertha, Gudrun and Helga.

At Easter, on Good Friday, I pretend to die. I retreat to an inner chamber of the Royal Palace and I am disguised as a nun, with a lower face veil to remind me I must remain silent. That veil is almost a gag and is only removed to let me eat and drink. My ceremonial sword of kingship is placed on an empty coffin displayed in the main hall and stays there while my people pretend to mourn me. My wives stay with me and attend to my needs. On Easter Day, I am dressed in white and enter the hall as 'risen from the dead' and reclaim my sword. That ceremony is boring but no more.

On May Day I appear as the Green Man, dressed in green with a green face and hands, wearing a wreath of greenery. As a celebration of spring I have to make love, to ejaculation, to all four of my wives. If I can't, that is a sign of poor crops that year. But I have from midnight to six o'clock to prove my fertility and it has never been difficult, so far. I have usually managed to complete the couplings before eleven on May Day.

The Harvest festival is similar except that I am dressed and painted in gold and carry a sheaf of wheat. Again, making love to my four wives is required and I haven't found that difficult - yet. If I get older I might, but no King in recent decades has survived beyond his early forties, usually dying as leader of the war band.

But the Christmas ritual is different.

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The old Roman fort had now been filled by a walled town. We even had a few settlements beyond the town walls, far enough away to provide a clear space longer than longbow or crossbow range, but close enough that the outer inhabitants could take shelter inside the town's walls if we were attacked.

We were unlikely to be attacked. Not only were our walls tall, up to the original Roman height, and well maintained, but we had effective Roman based war engines mounted on the wall towers and an armed population trained in the use of weapons.

Every able-bodied adult male was expected to carry a sword at all times and to attend practice sessions in swordsmanship. At age 16 a youth was expected to pass a basic test of swordsmanship before being required to wear a sword. Any younger boy, particularly the larger ones, could take the test earlier and become a qualified arm-bearing citizen. The adult sword varied between a Roman gladius about eighteen inches long and a Saxon-style long sword up to a yard long.

A woman, or a disabled youth, girl, or man who was very old, was expected to carry a knife at least ten inches long and be able to use it for stabbing. All children over the age of five carried a knife small enough for their hands.

Over the past couple of hundred years we had traded with the sea peoples from across the North Sea. Our harbour was well protected from storms and defended against other raiders. Our peoples had intermarried and it was difficult to say who was descended from the original inhabitants or who from marriages with the sea raiders. They had brought knowledge of ships and navigation to add to the locals increasing skills in masonry, carpentry, ceramic and metal-working. We had become a prosperous industrial centre, trading in our own ships along the East coast of Britain and the West coast of Europe.

We knew our prosperity made us a target for the increasingly daring Viking raids but our defences were formidable. Our villages were all defended by masonry walls and had a signal tower that could send messages to the town if they were attacked. We were well aware that our physical defences were most vulnerable to an attack from within. Any foreign trader, seaman or visitor who was not resident could still carry a sword but it had to be fixed in the sheath by 'peace strings' and any other naked weapon such as an axe had to have the blade covered. Failure to do that would lead to instant expulsion or temporary imprisonment before exile.

We were still an independent small kingdom with our own laws and customs. We were allied to the King of Kent but he wasn't our overlord. He owed allegiance to the King of Wessex. We didn't. We would help defend Kent and the King of Kent would help us -- if we asked.

Some of our traditions seemed odd to our neighbours. The King had four wives who were also his deputies as Queens and nominal King's Companions -- military defenders -- wearing swords unlike other women. The other King's Companions were a small group of military elite and weapons instructors. The King's handmaidens, traditionally a source of the King's wives, ran the King's palace and kept a record of decisions made by the King as advised by the Witan of elder noblemen. The Witan itself had two subsidiary advisory bodies, one of women and the other of young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one.

What had been the Roman Temple was now a Priory Church. Again we were seen as odd. The Priests of the Priory Church were all female, based on the very early church traditions and unlike the current practice of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of their rituals seemed to hark back to older rites of the Goddess instead of Christianity. What had been the basement for the worship of Mithras and later the sanctuary of the Goddess was now the storage space for the records of the Kingdom and library. The female Prior and her three Priests (never called Priestesses) were assisted by twelve nuns.

The Prior oversees the four annual rituals I have to undertake as King. She does not have to see me making love to my wives. Their word that I was successful is enough for her. The public sign is that I wear a wreath at the services in the church. For May Day it is a wreath of ivy leaves. It is best if I can wear that at the eleven o'clock morning service but as long I have completed my task by the six o'clock evening service that meets the requirements. This May Day I managed with a quarter of an hour to spare. I am unsure that any of the rituals are Christian, more a survival from pre-Christian pagan times. But my people expect me to do them for their continued prosperity.

This year has been eventful. Shortly after May Day our kingdom was attacked by a large number of Vikings who had been forced away by the King of Wessex. They landed at night about five miles away from our walled town and aimed to take some of our villages. As they approached the first village the wall sentry raised the alarm and the signal tower's beacon was lit. The villagers' defenders manned the wall in such strength that the Vikings moved on to another village that they thought might be less prepared but the lit beacon had warned everyone and each village's wall was well defended.

All our villages and the town have a large stock of basic crossbows and bolts for them, stored in niches on the battlements. It takes a few seconds to ready a crossbow, longer than a trained archer with a long bow, but anyone can learn to use a crossbow after an hour's training, unlike an archer who needs years of practice. Our carpenters and metalworkers have produced enough crossbows for every person on the wall to have at least five. If we have enough warning all five crossbows can be made ready and any attackers coming within a hundred yards from the wall would bit hit by multiple crossbow bolts.

When I arrived with the war band we were outnumbered by the Vikings but we had decades of experience and discipline using Roman methods. From the few prisoners we took I learned that because of my still green face, left over from the May Day ritual and visible in the flaming torches, my enemies had thought I was a magic king, and if they had killed me they would have won. That meant that their attacks were against me and the King's companions, our most skilled soldiers. I had suffered several cuts to my arms and lost a considerable quantity of blood. But what really defeated them was our small band of cavalry. The Vikings had fought chariots before, but never disciplined horsemen armed with long lances and swords. Our cavalry had broken up groups of Vikings and had harassed their retreat.

Once back at the town my queens dressed my wounds. I thought they weren't serious but I developed a fever and had to retire to bed, leaving Edith as the ruling Queen. On the second day when I was feeling slightly better and able to sit up and converse rationally, Queen Edith came to me.

"Alfred," she said.

I am King Alfred the ninth but always called just 'King Alfred'.

"Your Queens and the Witan have decided that you now need a Queen Ingrid, Alfred," Edith said. "This is the fourth time you have had battle injuries, and your worst reaction."

"I suppose so," I replied. "Who will become Ingrid?"

"If acceptable to you, Martha?"

"Martha? But she is married."

"Not any more. Her husband died by your side fighting the Vikings. She is now a widow, Alfred."

"I'm sorry. We lost too many good men."

Martha is a large well-built woman a few years older than me and older than my four queens. She has two sons who have just passed their swordsmanship tests. She is popular with the other King's handmaidens and has a wicked sense of humour. I could do far worse than have her as 'Ingrid' and my fifth Queen.

"Yes," I said. "I will have Martha as Ingrid, Edith."

"Then she starts now, Alfred." Edith said loudly.

Martha walked in, carrying the wooden sword that was an heirloom from the original Ingrid. My ceremonial sword of Kingship and the Queens' five metal swords were also relics from the time of the first King Alfred. My sword was originally that of a Roman Centurion and had a plain blade in the original decorated sheath showing Mithras killing the bull. The Queens' metal swords had invocations to the Goddess engraved on the blades and on the sheaths. All of them were inappropriate for a now Christian Kingdom but the sword belts, which had been replaced many times, bore Christian symbols.

I found it an effort to sit up from my bed and fasten the sword belt around Martha, now making her formally Queen-designate Ingrid.

'Ingrid' asked me the formal and traditional question.

"Do you promise to obey me, Alfred?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then lay back and rest." Ingrid said. "you have done too much today. Until I say you are fit to resume your duties as King, Edith will rule."

I was grateful to be able to rest again and more grateful when Ingrid joined me in bed and held my head against her large breasts as I went back to sleep.

After a week of Ingrid's nursing I was still weak but felt that I could resume my duties as King. Ingrid didn't agree that I was fit enough yet. By tradition she could have ordered me to continue to rest and her order would have been backed by the other four Queens, She didn't. She climbed over me and impaled herself on my erection. She rode me mercilessly for over an hour before I went back to sleep, flattened under her heavy body and exhausted. She did that several times in the next few days, every time I suggested I should become King again. I was enjoying being her victim but worried that Edith was finding the burden of Kingship too much. Ingrid's lovemaking proved that I wasn't fit enough yet.

A week later I was able to roll Ingrid over and make love with me on top. This time she was the first to go to sleep. She took that as a sign that I had recovered and was able to be King again.

I had one reservation about having Ingrid as the fifth Queen. For the harvest festival in a couple of months' time I would have to prove myself with five Queens instead of four. Could I do that? But that was a worry for the future. Could I wear the wreath of corn stalks by six o'clock?

One of my first acts as resumed King was to formally accept Ingrid as my fifth Queen. I took away her wooden sword, knelt before her and the other four Queens and asked her to marry me. I also had to promise to obey her. She accepted. I put the sword belt with the fifth Queen's metal sword around her waist before all six of us went to the Priory church for me to marry her in front of the Prior and her priests. Only the King could have more than one wife. How that fitted with Christian practice? We didn't care. It was a tradition that the King of our small kingdom could have four or five wives so we went through the Christian marriage rite.

In late July we were approached by a fleet of twenty Viking long ships. Although we had a few captured long ships of our own I set out with our five fighting ships. They are much larger, more heavily built, and equipped with rams which the Viking ships could usually evade because our ships were slower. But we had stone throwing catapults and our longbow men, higher on our ships, could outrange the Vikings. We sunk one ship with catapulted stones and set another on fire with flaming arrows before they sailed away. Any Viking ship coming close to one of ours would have to climb our ships' high sides in the face of multiple crossbow bolts and stones dropped to hole their hulls. The Viking raiders preferred not to face us at sea but to land after dark for a quick incursion.

I had led the war band out several times to intercept small raids and been injured twice before the harvest festival. Each time, thanks to Ingrid, I was only incapacitated for a day or so.

I was still concerned that I might not be able to meet the requirements of the harvest festival. My wives and Queens did not share my worries. I practised several times a month and was successful five times each time even if I had to take more than twelve hours from the first Queen to the last. They assured me that they would help, riding me if necessary. I found each attempt to be a serious trial but it was pleasant, when successful, to go to sleep with five wives wrapped around and over me.

Most nights I had Ingrid in bed with me, if only as a hot water bottle and with her breasts as a comfortable pillow. At least once a week I shared my bed with all five Queens and made love to all of them, even if that meant getting up late.

Shortly before the Harvest festival I had been injured again, fighting yet another band of Vikings. I had only been declared fit enough, by Ingrid, three days before the festival. This time all five wives rode me instead of me riding them. Ingrid was the last but she was so skilled that she managed to extract an ejaculation from me even though I was almost asleep. The Queens had to help me to get dressed so I could appear at the eleven o'clock service wearing my wreath. There was a collected sigh from the congregation when they saw my wreath. They, like me, hadn't been sure I could perform in time. But I had -- again.

I wasn't enjoying the prospect of the Christmas ritual. That was the time when my year of Kingship, and as war leader, was formally assessed by the Witan. If they were unhappy, I would be deposed along with my queens and replaced by a younger King. So far I had survived fifteen years as King. How much longer could I rule, or would I die fighting the Vikings?

Queen Edith had told me, that Ingrid, as the largest Queen, would replace her as the principal Queen for the Christmas ritual.

After midnight of the morning of Christmas Day, usually an hour before dawn, my Queens would wrap me tightly, so tightly that I couldn't escape, and gagged so I couldn't protest, before stuffing me inside the voluminous dress worn by the largest Queen who would pretend to be pregnant with me as her baby. With Edith I has been almost impossible because a large part of the swathed me was still visible. The lower hem of the Queen's dress was tightly tied around my legs and my head was pressed between her breasts, almost smothering me. The 'pregnant' Queen was also tied so she could not release the King.

At dawn all the King's handmaidens would enter the room where I was confined inside the Queen's dress. If the Witan had decided I was no longer fit to be King, the handmaidens would take away the five Queen's swords and leave me trapped in a former queen's dress. The replacement King would appear, dressed in white, at the eleven o'clock service. I couldn't be released until that service had ended, and with it the reign of me and my queens.

If the Witan were satisfied with me during the last year, the handmaidens would cut the rope securing the dress and pull me out as 'reborn' as the King. The handmaidens were witnesses of my rebirth and would usually kiss me while I was still tightly bound before stripping me completely naked. My queens would then dress me in white so I could attend the Christmas morning service as the newly reborn King.

The deposed King would become part of the Witan, still married to his four or five wives who would resume their original names.

Once, about fifty years ago, a deposed king had died, suffocated by his wife's breasts while waiting for release at the end of the Christmas Day service. Although that justified the Witan's decision to depose him, and he was an elderly small man with a much larger wife, that was a bad omen. The replacement King had been killed fighting the Vikings less than a year later.

I was worried that unlike Edith's small and delightful breasts, Ingrid's much larger ones were a real threat and could suffocate me. The Witan could decide that as I had been injured so many times this year, I ought to be replaced.

On Christmas morning the other four Queens wrapped me, gagged me, and tied me tightly in a bundle before pushing me up inside Ingrid's dress. They moved my head so I was in Ingrid's cleavage before tying a band around her dress against the back of my neck. I couldn't move my head down and out of Ingrid's cleavage and her breasts surrounded my head. I was relieved that by pressing my forehead against her, I could leave just enough space for me to breathe, but whether I could keep that up until after the end of the morning service was doubtful. Her soft flesh was constantly threatening to obstruct my nose and with it my breathing.

I felt Ingrid moving her back to give me slightly more breathing space whenever her breasts became too threatening. Even so I was relieved when the twelve handmaidens hauled me out as 'reborn' at dawn. I panted for breath through my nose before the gag was removed. Shortly afterwards I was short of breath again as all the handmaidens took turns to kiss me very effectively.

Unlike previous years the handmaidens didn't unwrap me immediately. All five of my queens pressed my face into their cleavages. I managed to say "thank you" to Ingrid just before she demonstrated with her dress covered breasts that she could have smothered me very effectively.

After them, the twelve handmaidens also grabbed me for a breast smothering before they sat me up in bed with the back of my head between Ingrid's breasts. They took it in turns to feed me breakfast with kissing and more breast smothering. It was an hour before they released me and stripped me naked to be dressed in white for the Christmas Day service.

I was pleased to still be King and to have survived Ingrid's breasts this year. Will I survive next year's Christmas Ritual. If I trust Ingrid, I will even if I am deposed as King. But now I have another year to rule our Kingdom and enjoy five Queens and wives.