Song for a Dark Queen (13 page)

There was a low, angry muttering, and men looked to and fro among each other, while the chiefs of the Iceni pulled in closer about the Queen. But before Tigernann could answer her, Andragius of the Catuvellauni spoke up, gentling his left wrist that was bound with bloody rags.

‘Assuredly, from this trail there can be no turning back.’ And he swung round from one to another of the war-captains behind Tigernann, lashing them as with a whip of savage laughter. ‘Oh you witless ones! Do you not know why she did the thing that she did two nights since in the Grove of the Mother? Nor why she called in chiefs from every tribe of the War Host, to have a part in it? Do you think the Romans will ever forget
that
?’

There was a long, jagged silence. Beyond the silence were the sounds of the war-camp, voices and the ring of the armourer’s hammer, the neigh of a horse, the lowing of captured cattle driven in for slaughter. But within the circle of the war-captains, only the silence. Then Tigernann looked round at his fellows, and shrugged. ‘Nay now, I did but jest. As to those who have gone – there are those in every War Host who will go their own way, and the War Host is the better without them.’

And the moment passed.

I looked at the Queen. Her eyes were opened wide, and for the first time in a long while, something looked out of them. I thought that it was horror. Then she turned, and dropping the whole company behind her like a fouled cloak, walked away.

Before noon, one of our hunter scouts rode into camp on a blown horse, with word that nearly half of
the Ninth Legion were less than a day’s march away, coming down on us from Lindum. But we had known that they must be on our track within a day or so, and the plan was already made.

Some seven Roman miles upstream from Camulodunum, the new legions’ road that runs straight as a spear-shaft north-west to Lindum, crosses the river by a paved ford. Forest and scrub country all thereabouts; good country for an ambush. Before the noon sun had moved a handspan over to the westward, Andragius, with the Cats of War, and a strong band of the Trinovantes, who best knew their own countryside, were on their way. . . .

The day passed. And Boudicca was no more seen, but when the smoke rose from the cooking-fires to mingle with the darker smell of burning that still drifted from the silent town, and the lights and shadows lay long across the land, she came out from the Royal Wagon and fell to ranging about the camp. And as the sun sank lower and the high grey sky drifting up before the summer wind began to flush with shadowy foxglove colours, it seemed that the whole great camp was not big enough for her restlessness.

Then she called for me, and with the warriors of her bodyguard following a little behind, she wandered down to the river, and so came to the place where the War Host had forded it four days ago. The banks were torn down for a spear-throw up and down stream. The foxglove pink was deepening to furnace red in the west, and the river running out on the ebb tide caught the same colour, running flame-streaked between shadowy alder-fringed banks.

The Queen checked in her walking, and stood looking down into the eddies. ‘The water is running red.’

I thought of that other ford, seven Roman miles up river. ‘It is only the sunset in the water,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘The Washer by the Ford is washing blood-stained clothes, do you not see her?’

The evening wind seemed suddenly chill between my shoulders, and I looked where she was looking. But there was only an old alder tree trailing its hair in the water.

‘There is no one there,’ I told her. ‘You speak foolishness because you are weary. But you must not let the War Host hear such foolishness.’

‘You think that they would take fear, and yet more of them melt away?’ she said drearily. And then she asked, ‘Was it true, the thing that Andragius of the War Cats said, that none of them can turn back because of the offering we made together in the Grove of the Mother?’

‘I think so, yes. But even though they will not melt away, such ill-omened talk as that may suck the heart out of them and leave it cold.’

I do not think she even heard that part. She said, ‘Cadwan of the Harp, is it true, as he said, that that is why I made the offering?’

And at first I could not answer. I remembered her dancing naked to the moon in that Grove, and I knew that it was not. But I remembered also, how she had called in chiefs from every tribe that rode with us, to take a part in the horror, even though it was so much a matter of the Women’s Side that she had not called for the Priests. I remembered further back, the bare fields where she had ordered no corn to be sown; and along with that memory, stories I had heard from traders and the like, of Red Crest leaders, who, landing on an enemy shore, had burned their own ships behind them,
that there might be no way back, and no way open ahead but victory.

‘Is it true?’ she demanded again, urgently.

And I said, ‘Few of us know the full truth of our own hearts.’

‘But the All Mother knows . . . It is needful for the War Host to be bound together. Yet if I have misused the Priest-Power, if I have bent my vow to her so that it serves another purpose, then her wrath is upon me, and it will be for me and all who follow me that she washes bloody linen by the ford.’ And she gripped her hands together, driving them against her teeth until the knuckles broke and bled. Then she said again, wailingly, ‘But the War Host must be bound together, or how can the evil be washed away. How can we ever be free again?’

And how could I answer her? It was a raven that answered, flying over from the smoking ruins of Camulodunum, black-winged against the flaming bars of the sunset. It croaked as though in harsh mockery, and Boudicca raised her head and listened.

For a little, it had seemed that something human, maybe even the Boudicca I knew, had been there. But sudden as a priest putting on a god-head, that Boudicca was lost again, and the other was back, with only the forest darkness looking out of her eyes. ‘I am what I am,’ she said. ‘I do what I do. Now I would drink, for the thirst is on me.’

And going back, I took the horned war-cap from one of the bodyguard, and brought her water from among the alder roots; and she took it from me and drank deep, the sunset reflecting red as blood in the helmet-cup.

In the short clear darkness of the summer night, the war-bands returned, they carried fringed and coloured standards with gilt laurel wreaths on them; and when Boudicca came out from her sleeping place to meet them, they tumbled Roman heads at her feet.

‘The cavalry wing escaped,’ the Prince Andragius told her. ‘Their Legate with them. Some of our warriors are away after them yet.’

‘But the rest?’ said the Queen.

‘They died well,’ Andragius said. ‘So we brought you the heads of their captains, for they were worth the taking.’

She looked down at the heads in the light of the nearest watchfire. Dawn was not far off, and somewhere down towards the river, a willow-wren had begun singing. ‘I saw their deaths in the river at sunset,’ she said.

Mother, we have been in Londinium two days, and it seems that tomorrow we pull out again. The place is not really defensible, unwalled and straggling. Only the supply base is entrenched and palisaded, and has a small garrison – very small; our valiant Procurator sent half of it up to hold Camulodunum against the rebels, before he himself hurried aboard the last ship to leave for Gaul. It seems to have been largely his treatment of the Iceni that fired the heather in the first place.

When we rode in, the people here greeted us as saviours; and Paulinus did have some idea that if we got everyone herded into the supply depot, and the Second Legion did get through to us from Glevum, we could hold out, with them and our own cavalry and the remains of the garrison, plus every able-bodied male we could arm with a spear, until the Twentieth and the Fourteenth arrived.

But it hasn’t worked out like that.

The Second has let us down – at least their camp Commandant has. The Legate is away, and he (the C. C.) has refused the Governor’s summons, on the grounds that if he strips Glevum of its troops, revolt may flare in the south-west. The galloper got back to us with that word this morning – by the southern road, clear of all the trouble. Paulinus has sent back repeating the order, but it will be too late now, anyway. The tribes have sacked and burned Camulodunum, and it looks as though they have ambushed and wiped out the vexhilation of the Ninth somewhere. No direct news as to that, but reliable reports of the cohort standards having been seen in rebel hands. And now the rebels are thrusting south again. The Iceni seem to have gathered to themselves war-bands from all over the
north and west of the Province, and the whole pack of them led by their Queen, Prasutagus’s widow (I begin to see why we have always looked on the Furies as women!).

The merchants plead for us to stay and defend them; but the situation is hopeless, and to remain here in Londinium, would be to allow ourselves to be trapped, and waste what troops we have to no purpose. So Paulinus has given the order to pull out tomorrow, by the south-west road towards Noviomagus. That’s really the only road that’s open to us. We shall be pulling back into friendly territory, King Cogidubnos of the Regni being our staunchest ally. Maybe he will even be able to gather us somefighting men; we ‘re like to need every man we can get, even if the legions get through to us; the Governor is even taking the remains of the depot garrison. He has made it known that we will take with us any refugees who choose to come and are strong enough to make the march. But we cannot take the old or the sick or children; and that must mean that few women will be free to come with us, and that many of the men will elect to remain. For them, the depot is being opened and arms issued. I suppose if you are going to die it is better to go down with a spear in your hand than stand to be butchered like sheep.

Some people are taking to the country southward, though I do not think they will find much safety there. A donkey is fetching more than a matched chariot team would have done a week ago. The bridge is being kept clear for the troops, and anyone who owns a boat is making a fortune this evening. Only gold isn’t much good to you when you are dead. You can imagine the scene in the streets. If I were Governor of Britain, I wonder if I’d have the courage to pull out and leave
this place to its fate. I hope I should, because it’s the only thing to do. But I’m not at all sure I should – have the courage, I mean.

Paulinus is shouting for me. I’ll try to add to this from time to time, in case the chance ever comes to send it off to you.

I do not need to ask you to think of me when you go each evening to our little household shrine.

WE LEFT CAMULODUNUM
with the ravens gathered over its blackened ruins, hanging and swirling like fragments of charred thatch in a high wind.

Our best hunters who were the Eyes and Ears of the War Host far ahead, had sent back word that Suetonius Paulinus was in Londinium, but no more than a few squadrons of cavalry with him, while the two legions he had brought back from Môn were on the march from the great fortress of Deva to join him. So from Camulodunum we went two ways, Andragius with the Catuvellauni and upward of half the War Host taking the road for Verulamium to cut off the legions on their march and deal with them as they had dealt with the Ninth, while the other half pressed on straight for Londinium, following again the scarlet flame of the Queen’s mantle, and bearing with us in triumph the coloured and gilded standards of the Red Crest cohorts. Captured Roman weapons also, we had now, to add to our own. Not much of armour; it is in my mind that a man must be trained to it before he can move easily in the heavy Roman war-gear. But here and there among us was a leather tunic or the russet of a soldier’s cloak or the crimson hackle of a helmet crest; and there was Roman grain and wine and gold necklaces and cooking-pots in the wagons that brought up our rear.

So we flowed south like a river in spate for three days, until slowly the country changed and the made road left the flat lands and the willows and the alder
woods and climbed into the higher ground and great dark forest stretches of oak and beech and yew that circle Londinium to the north.

And on the evening of the third day, our wagons left far behind us, we came over a long hill-crest, and looked out from the woodshore over scrubland that sank away to corn and pasture, and saw far away to the south through the summer haze, a great sprawling town beside a broad river. And the town might almost have been a cloud shadow, but the evening light touched the water and we knew it for the Father of Rivers.

We camped that night on the woodshore. They must have seen our watchfires strung out along the high ground. And to us in the darkness before dawn, came one who looked like a smith – like enough he was a smith – with tidings that the Governor and his cavalry had left Londinium heading south-west by the Noviomagus road, and taking many who would flee the city with him.

‘One day sooner, and we should have caught the wolf in his lair,’ grumbled an old chieftain of the Cornovi.

But Boudicca said, ‘True enough. Yet it was not for catching the wolf in his lair that we came this way. It was for the sake of the Red Crests’ weapons and stores – and for the tax-gatherers and the moneylenders and the fat merchants who made us lean and stripped our freedom from us. Some of our men have only hunting-spears, even sickles despite the spoils of Camulodunum, and we shall be better armed to hunt down this Governor of Britain, this wolf from his lair, after today’s work be done. Harness up, my brothers, soon it will be dawn, and we head for Londinium.’

So at first light, with the mist still hanging among the trees, we swept down from our ridge.

The outer skirts of Londinium were empty. No fighting from street to street as there had been at Camulodunum. Only one live thing I saw in those streets, save for the river gulls wheeling and crying like lost souls overhead, and that was a brindled cat who spat at us from the top of a wall. We quested down side-streets and into buildings as we went; but bathhouses and temples and the great Basilica and Forum stood up empty as though they belonged already to a city of the dead. Every living soul must have gathered to the supply depot. The river was empty too, no ships alongside the wharves and jetties; and the water was ruffled and blue under a fresh east wind that was rising.