Song for a Dark Queen (11 page)

And I, I made a new wolfskin sheath for my sword, and when that was done, I mended my harp and restrung it, and made for it a fresh bag of well-cured mare’s skin. And there were evenings when the day’s spear practice was over, when Nessan would leave her sister to polishing and repolishing her blade, and come to be with me, as I coaxed the wracked frame back into shape, and twisted the horsehair for new strings. But she never sang any more, and when the mending was done, and I would have had her to pluck the strings (there is no other, even her mother, who I would have let to touch them) she shook her head. ‘There is no music in me, any more. I lost it along with the rest. I could never be a Queen’s Harper now.’

And my heart wept blood for her, and I would have given my own gift of song to have my hands round the throat of the man who had driven hers away. And I snapped the twisted horsehair under my fingers, cutting my hand so that the red sprang out in a thin line.

That was within a moon of midsummer, when the nights grow short, and after sunset the light lingers in the north like the echo of the sea in a shell, until it turns toward sunrise again. And before midsummer, two things came to pass at the same time. The watchers in the west sent word that Suetonius Paulinus had had his victory against Mon and was already making to leave his war-camp beyond the mountains and march his
legions back to the great base fortress they call Glevum. That was the one thing; and for the other: the Red Crests who came each year about that time for their muster of young men for the auxiliaries, came again, just as though it were last year or any year before that, but demanding a greater number because we were part of the Province, and no longer a free state.

But we had other need of our young braves. And the grass was tall enough for grazing horses. So then we knew that the time was come to be sending out the Cran-Tara.

The hazel tree was felled; and rods cut from it, as many as were needed. And while one end of each rod was charred in the fire, the black goat was brought for slaying, to the threshold of the Hall, where the Queen stood waiting with a long knife in her hand, that caught and mingled the red of the fire and the white of the young moon on its blade. Two men dragged it forward by the horns, bleating wildly, for it smelled its own death. But when it was close before her, Boudicca bent forward and set her empty hand on its forehead between the horns, and spoke softly, looking into its eyes; and the bleating stopped. Then she cut its throat. Blood spurted out over her hand. She looked at her hand and smiled; the first time that I had seen her smile in many moons; and drew her hand across her forehead, leaving a great dark smear behind, and touched her cheeks and even her lips with her fingers. Then while the goat still lay twitching, she took the hazel rods and dipped the uncharred end of each into the hole in its throat, and gave each to the man waiting for it.

So the Cran-Tara went out; the summons that speaks of death by fire and sword.

And that night, every Roman in Icenian territory died. That would give us silence for a few days. And before the Romans beyond our borders began to wonder, and think of sending to ask questions, we should have no more need of silence.

Before dawn, the first and nearest of the war-bands had come in.

For three days the Hosting went on. On foot and on horseback and behind their chariot teams, the warriors came in, leading spare horses but half-broken, even mares whose foals had been killed to set them free for war. Men bearing old weapons or new ones hastily forged in those forest clearings, the war-patterns already daubed red and yellow on their cheeks and foreheads. Women, too, and boys not yet come to manhood, carrying their fathers’ heaviest hunting-spears.

The Royal Dun became the centre of a vast camp, and the horses grazed under guard all across the countryside; and the smoke of a hundred cooking-fires rose on the evening air. And men brought their swords to the tall black stone in the Weapon Court to whet the blades that were already keen beyond any need of whetting. And at dusk, when the light of the cooking-fires brightened from red to gold, the young braves made their war dances, whirling and crouching and leaping to the rhythm of their own stamping heels and the clash of spear on shield and the throbbing of the wolfskin drums. And in the secret places of the forest, the Priest Kind wove their own hidden ceremonies for victory.

And on the second day came the Parisi, their chariot columns raising a summer dust-storm behind them; and watching them come, I was thinking that Prasutagus would have been proud of his kindred.

And throughout the third day and far into that night, in small bands already drunk with the promise of war, came the Brigantes, with their blue painted war-shields and their great spears crying out for blood.

Then the first part of the Hosting was complete. And at daybreak, with a great braying and booming of horns, we swept south on the war trail.

Boudicca led the swarm in her chariot covered with red and white bulls’ hides; the horses of her team bay-coloured, and so dark that there seemed a bloom on their hides like the bloom on a thunder-cloud. And for driver, Brockmail who had been Prasutagus’s charioteer. Her hair was bound back in a single braid thicker than a warrior’s wrist, to keep it out of her way, but her cloak, a warrior’s cloak, flowed back from her, red as flame on the wind of our going. And we followed the flame-flicker of that cloak, more than the stallion-skull standard with its streaming saffron tassels that a mounted chieftain carried beside her.

And when I looked back from my place among the warriors close about her, I saw the War Host like a bee-swarm following the Queen, a dark spreading stain of men and beasts and thundering wheels reaching back and back towards the lumbering ox-wagons of the rear, where the Princess rode with the Queen’s women in the great Royal Wagon with its high roof of painted and tasselled horsehides. But I could not see the wagons, they were so far behind, and the summer dustcloud rising and thickening over all.

And I felt the slap of my old sword against my thigh. And I felt the harp in her bag behind my shoulder stir in her sleep, ready to wake and sing. Hush, my harp, for the time is not yet, for singing; and bright dark and terrible the song will be.

Dearest and most honoured Mother, I grow doubtful as to whether any of my letters written from our forward base camp at Segontium will have reached you. All things are somewhat uncertain here, including the post. Therefore I make brief repeat of what was in them.

I reported for duty here at Deva, to find the Governor just about to march with the Twentieth and part of the Fourteenth Legions in to the far west, to subdue the native priesthood who are the heart and core of tribal resistance to our rule, and who had withdrawn into their last stronghold, the Island of Môn, off the mountainous west coast of this Province. Môn, it seems, is also the chief granary of much of western Britain and therefore better under our control. We were away something over three months, chiefly spent in building our base camp between the mountains and the sea, and making ready such boats and rafts as we could for the crossing. Mother, you should have seen that crossing! The boats served for those who could not get over in any other way, but the rest of us had to swim for it. To be sure, the Straits are only a mile wide, but the current runs fast there. The Friezian auxiliaries made the best showing, being mighty swimmers and well used to estuary work in their own land; and they formed the vanguard. The cavalry came next, each man fully armed and swimming beside his horse; the
Staff also, which of course included me and Felix, who is reputedly the ugliest horse in three legions, but has a heart to match Bukephalus. (Come to think of it, with a name like that, Bukephalus was probably ugly, too.) And to his everlasting credit, the Governor himself. Paulinus is a hard man; not much mercy in him, I think; but he never asks any of his men to do what he will not do himself Therefore there is little grumbling among the ranks who serve under him.

Well, we made the crossing, stirred up our hornets’ nest, and met a great, and I must say valiant resistance, with heavy fighting on the landing beach. The warriors in a kind of frenzy, almost as though they had taken aconite or the like, cried on by the Druids, many of whom fought among them. Dark-robed furies who seemed to be women, too. It isn’t good, finding a woman at your throat, and knowing you have to kill her or she will kill you. I know, I’ve done it. I wonder if I’ll ever make a soldier. Anyhow, wefinished the job, wiped out the Druid stronghold and hacked down the sacred groves, and left Mon desolate and full of dead behind us. Paulinus says it’s like cauterizing a sore or burning out a hornets’ nest. And here we are back in Deva.

There were no letters waiting for me here, which is what chiefly makes me wonder if you have received mine. The posts, as I say, are very uncertain, and everybody is looking anxiously for letters from home.

The trumpet has just sounded for watch-changing, and I am on duty. It is good for one’s self-esteem to be chosen by the Governor for his Tenting Companion, but of all posts on the Staff, it leaves one less time to oneself than almost anybody else in the fort.

I’ll finish this later.

Later:
In haste. Word has just come in of some kind of rising in the east of the Province, headed by the Iceni. Paulinus has determined to ride for Londinium and his supply base tomorrow, leaving the legions and other foot to follow, all that can be spared from garrison-duty and frontier work. (It will take them the best part of a week, even forced marching, and the gods know what can happen in a week. Hence his decision that the cavalry push ahead.) Also he has sent a galloper to summon the Second from Glevum to join us. I am of course leaving Marcipor here. He begs me to tell you that it is not
his
fault if my things are not properly looked after.

I have a chance to send this off with the official despatches, and Jupiter alone knows when I shall have such a chance again.

Your dutiful and affectionate son

Gneus Julius Agricola

FIVE DAYS THE
War Host swept southward. Four nights we camped beside the way; and all the while we gathered strength and power as the war-bands of other tribes came in to join us at the appointed Hosting places along the way; and they leaving all the land westward up in arms behind them. The Trinovantes and the Cats of War joined us last of all, some on their own borders, less than a day from Dun Camulus, some within sight of the city. And the Trinovantes brought with them wild stories of omens and portents, voices crying woe in the empty theatre, the statue of Victory in the temple fallen from its place with its back towards our advance as though it sought to flee, and all within the city lost in fear and confusion.

‘Truly,’ said the Queen, ‘did I not say that five men in the heart of an enemy stronghold are worth many chariots outside the gates.’

Though indeed there were no gates. No gates, no walls, for such defences are not allowed to Roman provincial cities. The people of Camulodunum must have felt the mistake of that, in the past few days, since they had known of the tempest sweeping down upon them from the north. They had sent to Londinium for help, said Vortix the Bear. But the Procurator had sent them only some two hundred men, ill-armed and slack trained, from the depot garrison, who had reached them scarcely a full day ahead of us. They had made some attempt to throw up rough barricades across the main streets. But it is in my mind that they must have
thought with longing of the great turf banks that walled the Royal Dun in King Togodumnos’s day.

The outlying farms and steadings were empty, for their slaves had joined us or melted away, and their owners had fled to the little safety the city could give them. We slaughtered abandoned cattle and drove off the horses, and fired the buildings as we went by. But not all were quite deserted. In one of the first, we found a man; old and sick. Maybe he had stayed of his own will, maybe he had been abandoned there. But I think he was the master of the house. And he stood clinging to the doorpost for support, and watched us come. In his free hand he held a short Roman sword, but when he would have lifted it, it fell from his grasp.

Boudicca had bidden her charioteer to pull aside there, because there was a well under a cherry-tree in the open courtyard, and she was thirsty. And when he reined up, she stood looking down at the man in the doorway, while the team fidgeted for their heads. And he stood looking back at her, his empty sword hand fumbling a little as though he half thought to feel the hilt still in it.

‘Poor old man,’ she said. ‘Could your people not even wait to give you the mercy-stroke before they fled? Then we must do it for them.’ And she made a gesture with her hand to the warriors gathered round; and they cut him down, quite cleanly and quickly.

‘He was a brave old man,’ said the Queen. ‘And he deserved that. But it is the last mercy that we show until the wrath of the Mother is washed away with blood, and the Tribes are free once more. Let you strike off his head.’

So they hacked off his head. But his grey hair was cut short in the Roman fashion. Too short for tying to
a chariot rim. So the young braves stuck it on a spear, to carry among the standards. And somebody took a brand that still smouldered on the hearth, and fired the thatch. And when the Queen had had her drink from the well under the cherry-tree, we crashed on to regain the head of the War Host.

The ground sloped down to the river; and on the far side we saw the city on its low whale-backed hill, the evening sunlight on the white and red and gold of the great temple in its midst. The people of the city had hacked down the bridge; but that made small difference; it would have taken too long to get a War Host across one narrow bridge, and that within javelin throw of the nearest buildings on the city slopes. We swung off righthandwise and forded the river at low tide further up; and that night we made our camp among the ruined banks of the old Dun, westward of the new city, where, eighteen years before, I had come, riding behind Prasutagus, when the Kings gathered to swear faith and friendship with the Emperor Claudius in King Togodumnos’s High Hall. You could not even see where the Hall had been now, its stones and timbers had gone with all else that was of use from the great Dun, to help build the new city of Camulodunum. I knew where it had been by an ancient yew tree that had grown in the forecourt. Maybe it was sacred; for some reason or none, they had left it alone. For me, it was a landmark, but I did not speak of it to the Queen.