Ravens of Avalon (42 page)

The Beltane celebrations had been a wake instead of a festival, though Prasutagos still lived. The chieftains, shocked at the prospect of losing their king, had been willing enough to agree to all that he asked. Summer was blessing the land with joyous growth, but with each hour the king’s strength ebbed as his failing lungs lost their battle to take in air.

With her face pressed against Branwen’s coarse mane, Boudica sensed, rather than saw the ebbing of the light. Then the mare stamped and shook her head, and Boudica realized that someone was calling her.

“Mama …” Rigana said tightly. “Brangenos says that you should come.”

A shudder she could not prevent ran through Boudica’s frame, but when she turned, her eyes were dry. She reached out and took her daughter’s hand. As they approached the roundhouse she could hear harp notes, sweet as memory. The Druid’s potions were no longer of much use, but music seemed to ease the king’s pain. As they passed into the entryway she stopped, steeling herself against the smell of sickness.

Rigana joined her sister at the other side of the bed. Bituitos and Eoc were there, and others. Boudica did not see them. Prasutagos’s face had grown more gaunt even in the time she had been gone, the flesh shrinking upon his bones. Each uneven breath was a struggle. Was he unconscious, or only so focused on staying alive that he had no attention left for the outside world? Now the tears that blurred her eyes were from pity, not her own sorrow.

What Brangenos had said was suddenly real to her. Her husband could not live. Each hour only prolonged his pain. Was this how Pra-sutagos had felt when he watched her struggling to give birth to his child? He labored now to release his spirit, and to her fell the task of midwifing his soul.

I cannot do it,
she thought.

I must …

She took a step forward and her husband’s eyes opened. His lips moved, trying to shape her name.

“Prasutagos …” She spoke as he had spoken to her so long ago. “Prasutagos, I am here …” She knelt and took his hands, willing strength through their linked fingers, and his agony seemed to ease.

His lips moved once more, the words almost without sound. “Watch over my people, Boudica. Guard my girls …”

“Yes, my love,” she answered steadily. “I will.”

With an effort he drew another breath, the body still fighting to live. She leaned forward. Her lips brushed his brow.

“You have done all that you could,” she whispered. “No woman ever had a better husband. It is finished now, my beloved. Go onward— go free …”

As she sat back his lips curved in their familiar sweet smile. He did not speak again.

Boudica waited, remembering suddenly how it had been when she took ship to go to Avalon, how it had seemed as if it were the shore, not the boat, that was slipping away. A long time later, she became aware that the labored breathing had ceased. His fingers were growing cool against her own. She released them and gently crossed his hands upon his breast.

Then she rose to her feet. If others spoke to her, she did not hear them. Prasutagos was still. In all the years she had railed against his silences, there had been none like this. Plead as she might, he would not answer her.

Boudica turned, brushing aside those who tried to stay her. Her steps led her to the horse pens where the white mare was waiting. What need had she for saddle or bridle? She leaped to the mare’s back, and in a moment they were through the open gate and away.

The queen rode the white mare as once she had ridden the red, her wild hounds baying behind her, and men fled inside their houses where she passed. “Epona rides …” they whispered. “Epona mourns the king.”

But no matter how wildly she galloped, she would never overtake him now.

TWENTY
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TWO

hiannon gripped the rim of the coracle that had brought her from the larger ship to the shore, and carefully clambered over the side. Sand crunched beneath her feet. She bent and scooped it up with her hand.

“I bind myself to this earth of Britannia,” she murmured, “to its soil and stone, stream and spring. To each thing that grows and to all that walks and flies, to the people of this land I pledge myself, not to leave it again.”

To her right loomed the gray masses of the holy mount. A few huts clung to the slopes. Fishing boats were drawn up on the shore, where crows squabbled with the seagulls for scraps from the last catch they had brought in.

“Is this Lys Deru?” asked the Irish Druid who had come with her, looking around him dubiously. His elders, responding to rumors of a potential influx of refugees from Britannia, had sent him to see for himself what was going on.

Lhiannon laughed.

“This is but the bare, stormy face Mona shows to the sea. No doubt these good folk will give us some food in exchange for a blessing, and then two days of walking will bring us to the village. But if I have not lost all my magic, someone may meet us sooner with beasts for us to ride.”

The prospect did not make the man look much happier, but he asked no more. Lhiannon sighed.
If I have not lost all my magic,
she thought,
and if the Druids of Lys Deru are not too distracted by fear of the Romans to hear my call.
The crew that had brought them from Eriu had carried disquieting rumors of a Roman advance. She had hoped to bring Caillean with her, but with the situation so unsettled it did not seem wise. The girl would be safe with the family Lhiannon had paid to keep her until she sent for her to come.

It was the dream that had awakened Lhiannon just after Beltane that concerned her now. She had heard Boudica weeping, and then she had seen a goddess on horseback who rode wailing across the skies.

he keening of the women cut through the murmur of the crowd. After three days of public mourning, Boudica no longer really heard them. Now that Prasutagos’s voice was silent, there was not much that she cared to hear. When the chieftains began to arrive she spoke to them, but a moment later could not remember whom she had seen.

The morning after Prasutagos died, the mare, having run herself out, had brought Boudica home. By then, preparations for the funeral were well under way. Old women had appeared at the dun to wash and lay out the body. Men were already digging a burial pit and gathering wood for the pyre. And by ones and twos and families the Iceni were coming in.

“Mother—it is time to go … ” Argantilla’s warm hand closed on hers.

Blinking, Boudica focused on the scene around her, the somber faces at odds with the splendor of festival clothing—Temella, Crispus, Caw as usual at Argantilla’s side. They were all waiting for her to mount the white mare and lead them to the burial ground. Rigana was already on her bay horse, face pale from nights spent weeping. Fragmentary memories told her that it was gentle Argantilla who had held the household together during these past days. A whisper of reviving maternal instinct wondered why that should surprise her.
Rigana is too much like me …
she thought numbly.
She is a sword without a sheath.

Obediently she allowed Calgac to give her a leg up and settled herself. Branwen, too, was on her best behavior, pacing sedately along the road as if she could not imagine galloping wildly across the moors.

A stretch of heathland to the north of Dun Garo bore a series of round barrows raised for ancient kings. Now a new pit lay open beside them. Her eyes avoided the wood-framed burial chamber where the flesh that Prasutagos had left behind rested on sheepskins laid over a bier. During the days he had lain there his people had come to say good-bye. They stood now in a great silent mass, waiting.

There should have been rich grave goods around the body, but much of what would have been offered had been sold. The wealth of “the prosperous King Prasutagos” had gone to help his people. But other items had been added to those she recognized—small things whose value was measured by the heart, not by the scales: a piece of embroidered cloth, a use-smoothed wooden bowl, even a child’s toy horse. Such treasure could never be taxed by Roman conquerors.

Brangenos stood by the pyre. Beside him, a burning torch was fixed in the ground. He had found a clean robe somewhere. Its snowy folds billowed in the light wind. He was a Druid of many talents, she thought grimly. Whether you needed music, medicine, or ritual, he was there. She would have liked to hate him for failing to save the king. But that would have required her to feel.

She dismounted and took her place with her daughters before the pyre, where Bituitos and Eoc had kept vigil since their lord was put into his grave. They had stood at the king’s shoulder since he and they were boys. Boudica supposed that their loss must bite almost as sharply as her own. Weeping, they jumped down into the grave-chamber and lifted their lord so that others could bear him to the pyre.

“This is the body of a man we loved.” The Druid contemplated the bier. “But Prasutagos is not this flesh. This flesh is earth and the food of earth, borrowed for a time. Now we must give it back again. From the waters that are the womb of the Goddess this man came. As blood, those waters flowed through his veins. Now the land is fed by the blood of the king. Through this body passed the breath of life. He has released it to the wind. Breathing that wind we take in his spirit … and let it go once more. Within this body burned immortal fire. Let that flame now set him free!”

He pulled the torch from the ground and plunged it into the oil-soaked logs. Instantly the greedy flames raged upward. Boudica felt her daughters’ fingers dig sharply into her arms and only then realized that she had started toward the pyre.
Why do you stop me?
she thought resentfully.
If I burn with him I, too, will be free …

Rigana began to sob, and with an instinct that transcended her sorrow Boudica gathered her into her arms while Argantilla tried to hold them both. Boudica was suddenly acutely aware of the warmth of their flesh against her own.
He lives in them … so long as I have our children, he is not completely gone …
And suddenly that heat melted the ice that had numbed her spirit and the healing tears flowed from her own eyes as well.

As the body burned, people were descending into the burial chamber, taking up each item and ceremonially breaking it, the cloth ripped, the metal snapped in sacrifice, to lie there with the king’s ashes once the burning was done. Bituitos brought out the gold-hilted sword that had been hidden when the Roman inspectors came, set the point against a stone, and leaned on it until the iron blade cracked. Eoc bent the bronze-covered shield whose whorled boss glittered with red enamel. The jeweled brilliance blurred through her tears. How could the sun shine so brightly on such a day? Even the skies should have been weeping to lose this man.

Brangenos took up his harp and began to sing—

“The king who reigns in peace is the shield of his people— Their praise is his glory, his wealth is their love, Until his time is done.

The king who wards his people by the gods is welcomed— He feasts with the blessed, he walks in the light, Until he shall come again …”

Smoke billowed blue in the sunlight, the scent of destruction mingling with the pungence of the herbs on the pyre. She would not look, would not bear witness to the withering of his hands that had touched her so sweetly, the destruction of his features—whimpering, Boudica faced the flames, for surely the reality could be no worse than the images her mind was creating now.

“Fire burn!” cried the Druid. “Wind blow! Flesh consume! Spirit go!”

Her vision was dazzled by the blaze. Fire, said the Druids, released the spirit, reducing the flesh that had confined it to its component elements. No wonder the world was rejoicing—Prasutagos was a part of everything now.

Everything …
For a single eternal moment Boudica was one with the world around her, her daughters, the land, the people who wept for their king. Prasutagos had loved them all. For a moment she felt his presence enfold her once more.

She lifted her head, a sudden tingling awareness shocking through her. Had the heat of the pyre set that shimmer in the air, or was the world only a veil of light that concealed a more enduring reality?

ys Deru seemed smaller than Lhiannon remembered. Or perhaps it appeared so because so many more people were now crowded within. She should not be s urprised—the influx of refugees had begun even before she went to Eriu—but it was strange.

“Thank you for sending out the horses,” she said as she followed Coventa down the path to the council hall.

“After my other recent visions, that one was very welcome.” Cov-enta looked back with a sad smile.

It seemed strange to see Coventa in the dark blue robes of a senior priestess, but she must be past thirty by now.
Well,
Lhiannon thought sadly,
we all grow older.

“Did you return because of Boudica? Her husband has died, they say. Rianor left to see if he could be of service to her. If he had known you were coming perhaps he would have stayed …”

Lhiannon stopped short in the path. “I felt … that she was in some trouble,” she murmured. “Thank you for telling me.”