Song for a Dark Queen (3 page)

And so we took our first look, all of us gathered
there, at Prasutagus of the Parisi, who was chosen to be Boudicca’s Marriage Lord and our next King.

He was short, but strongly framed, and his shoulders under his blue and russet cloak had broadened before the usual time, so that at seventeen he was already built like a man. His hair was darkly and fiercely red, with the same metallic golden glint at the ends that a bay horse shows in the sunlight; and under it, his eyes were sombre, but his mouth wide and, I judged, well used to laughter. He had a fighter’s face, but a thinker’s also; he would be a hard councillor as well as a warrior, by and by. ‘The gods grant,’ I thought, ‘that his council be good.’

He came up to the King, and gave him the spearsalute.

‘You sent for me, my Lord the King, and I am come.’

‘Welcome is your coming,’ said the King. ‘You know for what purpose you are called?’

‘I know for what purpose I am called.’

‘And are you willing in your heart to answer the Call, and to follow the way that lies before you?’

I wondered how many times those ritual questions had been asked and answered since first the Iceni were a People. And suddenly I wondered what the Priest Kind would do to any man who, having once been Chosen, refused the Call. It was a foolish thought. The sun does not take a whim to rise in the west. The pattern of things is the pattern of things.

Prasutagus said, ‘In my heart, I am willing.’

But his voice had quickened, and he said it, not as one making the ritual answer, but as one speaking his own mind; and his eyes had gone past the King, to where Boudicca came out from among the maidens in
her father’s Hall, bearing the Guest Cup in her hands.

And truly, she was worth the looking at; a figure all of gold, in her best gown of saffron wool, her hair braided and shining, the gold torque of the Royal Daughter circling her long neck. ‘Drink,’ she said, ‘and be welcome.’

But she made it very clear that her words were the ritual ones, and nothing more.

He took the cup from her and drank. They looked at each other across the rim, their eyes nearly on a level. I have said that she was tall for her age; I have said that he was short for his; and I saw that she knew it, and was trying to make herself taller yet, and that he knew it also. There was a sudden fiery flush along his cheekbones, as he gave the cup back into her hands.

The coming together was not going to be easy, between those two.

‘But there will be time,’ I thought. ‘Time for them to grow towards each other, if the gods are kind.’

There was two years of time. Two years and a little more. While still Boudicca was the Royal Daughter in the women’s quarters, and Prasutagus had his place among the young braves of the household, sleeping among them in the long half-loft above the Hall at night, and learning the ways of the Iceni and the ways of kingship.

And then the time for the marriage feast drew near. And Merddyn and his fellow priests traced strange patterns in red and yellow sand by day, and looked up into the wheeling stars by night, and chose a day not long before Samhein, the feast of in-gathering when the flocks and herds are gathered in from the far grazing-runs and folded close against the winter storms, and
when the souls of the dead also come homing to their own firesides.

Then, as always when a great marriage feast is in the wind, there began to be a constant coming and going of merchants and swordsmiths and workers in precious stones. For the King must give fine new weapons to the man who wed his daughter; and Prasutagus must choose out three bride gifts for his wedding night, according to the custom. There was much whispering among the women as to what those would be; for Prasutagus’s father was among the richest of the chiefs of the Parisi, and his gifts would be worth the having.

But less than half a moon before the appointed day, word came of a raiding party of the Catuvellauni laying waste our borders to the south-west. It was word that came often enough, but this was a greater war-band than the usual run of such things, and pressing far in along the High Chalk that makes a ridgeway linking us to the outside world. Always the traders have come and gone along that way, and our horses have followed it to the markets of the south and west; always it has been our place of greatest danger from attack, and we have kept the turf walls up and the guard bands alert, so that few raiders came that way. But this was no cattle raid half in sport. This was a strong war-company, leaving a trail of burned-out steadings behind them, and driving off all living things that came their way.

And again, the war-horns sounded to call in the fighting men, and the chariots were harnessed, and the King with his household warriors, Prasutagus among them, drove out to clear the borders, under a raiding moon.

They were gone seven days, and returned at the twixt-light hour when the first owls are crying and the
flare of torches has begun to bite. There was a first thin crackling of ice in the chariot ruts, and the breath of the horses smoked in the air as they came up between the tall gate-stones of the Weapon Court. And there were captured horses among them, and the heads of slain raiders swinging by their long hair knotted to the chariot rails. But there were gaps in our own ranks, too, and they came without shouting or triumph. And Prasutagus drove the King’s chariot; and on the chariot floor, bound down that it might not jolt out, lay the body of the King, under his shield.

In the gathering throng, the women had begun to keen: and men came running with torches, as he was lifted out and laid on the cold ground before the threshold. And then the crowd parted, and the Princess Boudicca came through. She stood long and long, looking down at her father’s body; and once she swayed a little, like a lone cornstalk in a breath of wind, then steadied herself. ‘Bring him into his Hall,’ she said in a small level voice. And then she looked up and met Prasutagus’s gaze; and she cried out on him, sudden and wailing, ‘Why must it be him instead of you?’

And Prasutagus looked back at her, with a great smear of dried blood across his cheek, and said, ‘Because the mark was on his forehead, not on mine.’

And they bore the King into his Hall.

So the death-fires burned for the old King; and when they were cold, his ashes were laid away in the Royal House of Sleep, with his finest spear and his great bronze-faced shield and his sword with the goldwork on the hilt, that he might be armed as befits a High Chieftain for his journey beyond the sunset. And when all was over, and the proper sacrifices made, the Oak
Priests led Boudicca up to the crest of the long grave mound, where our Queens have been made since first we were a People, and showed her to the assembled chieftains on the north and the south and the east and the west; crying out to each quarter, ‘People of the Horse, here is your Queen to you. Do you accept her?’

And from each quarter the chieftains gave her the royal salute, their spears crashing on their shields. ‘We accept her, we accept her, we accept her.’

And in the sight of them all, Merddyn the Chief of the Oak Priests set on her head the tall silver headdress of the moon. And so she became our Queen, Goddess-on-Earth to us; the Life of the Tribe in her keeping. And all the while her face was like a painted mask in the torchlight that sprang towards her up the grave mound; and her eyes in it only dark holes with the night sky showing through. And I thought, ‘She is too young – too young – too young. . . .’

Late, late that night, Boudicca went to the great weapon kist in the Royal Chamber, and brought out the plain long sword with the hilt of age-darkened nawhal ivory that had been her father’s when he was young, before ever he came to be King. And she took it beside her into the broad rug-piled bedplace where she had never slept before.

The nine days of mourning were accomplished, and the fires that had been quenched on the hearths were kindled again. And then it was the appointed time for the Bride Feast and the making of the new King. And before the assembled chiefs and great ones of the tribe, Boudicca and Prasutagus stood together on the threshold of the Hall – all thresholds are sacred places, the royal threshold above all others – she in her mantle of curd-white mare’s skin, the silver plates of the moon
headdress that hung down against her cheeks catching and losing the wintry light; he in the King’s great cloak of red stallion’s hide. They spoke the words that Merddyn demanded of them, and held out their hands while he made the marriage cut first on her wrist and then on his, and bound them lightly together with a rawhide thong. They stood so joined while a few bright drops of mingled blood spattered down upon the threshold. Then Merddyn loosed off the binding, and another priest brought forward one of the old King’s spears and touched Prasutagus with it, first on the forehead, then on the breast, then gave it into his hand. That is all the kingmaking ceremony there is, among the Horse People. Marriage to the Royal Woman, that is the real kingmaking ceremony. And so when they turned and went back together into the Hall, he was the King.

Then the cooking-pits were opened, and the feasting began. And midway through the feasting, Prasutagus brought from the breast of his tunic a necklace of amber and red cornelian and curiously twisted gold wires, shining like the sun, and put it round Boudicca’s neck. And that was the first of his Bride Gifts to her. And later, his charioteer brought into the Hall a young riding mare, mealy of mane and tail, and dark golden as heather honey, so light in her moving that her hooves seemed scarcely to touch the fern-strewn floor. And that was the second of his Bride Gifts.

And all the while, I watched Boudicca; on the threshold, at the feasting, when Prasutagus hung the fiery jewels round her neck, when she reached out to touch the mare’s forehead in token of acceptance. I watched her when I woke my harp and sang her the marriage song that I had made for her; – much thought
and much love and much walking in the apple garth, that song had cost me – and when she stepped out with him on to the paved dancing-floor, she with a long trail of ivy in her hand, he with a barbed and whippy branch of holly, to lead the Man-and-Woman dancing. And all the while, I thought, ‘She is too young! Grief upon me! She is too young. They should have given her more time.’

And yet I knew that with the old King dead, there was no more time to give.

Far on into the night Boudicca and her Marriage Lord went together to the Royal Chamber. I mind he held out his hand to her. But she walked beside him not touching it. In the doorway the women threw corn over their heads to bring them many children; a golden shower in the light of the spitting pine-knot torches. And there was laughing and jostling, and as many as the chamber would hold thrust in after them while the rest hung about the doorway.

In the heart of the chamber, the bedplace was piled deep with fine wolf and deerskin rugs against the icy draughts that whistled along the floor; for the wind was rising, and would be blowing a full gale from off the sea by dawn. And standing at the foot of the bedplace, the women took the silver moon headdress from Boudicca, and stripped her naked, then flung a cloak round her against the cold; while the young braves did the same for Prasutagus the King. And then it was time for the last ceremony of all. For drinking the Bride Cup of apple wine and honey and certain herbs. And Boudicca looked to her women, for Rhun to bring it to her. But before the old nurse could make any move, Prasutagus crooked a finger to Cadog, his armour-bearer, and the boy stepped out from the shadows,
bearing a cup that was certainly no Bride Cup of the Iceni. A cup such as I had never seen before; and strange, very strange.

It was a glass calyx, I judged of Roman workmanship; but I had seen Roman glass before, none like this; an inner cup held within an outer; yet the outer was indeed no cup at all, but an interweaving tangle of figures that seemed to stand clear away from the glass behind them. Later, when I came to know it well, and had more than once held it in my hands, I knew that the figures were strange indeed; half-man and half-horse, with struggling girls caught among them, and all linked and laced together with the twisted branches of trees, and that they touched the inner calyx nowhere but at the rim and the base. Surely, even among the Romans, there must be some who have the secret of magic-making. That night, I knew only that it was strange and beautiful, and that it was green. The dark, lifeless and lightless green of forest depths in late summer.

Prasutagus took it from his armour-bearer, and held it to Boudicca. She looked, but made no move to take it. ‘What is this?’

‘Your Bride Cup,’ he said.

‘It is no cup of mine.’

‘It is now,’ Prasutagus said in his level voice. ‘It is my third Bride Gift to you.’

And his voice was gentle, but the set of his mouth was that of a man who will wait a very long time, but will not in the end be denied.

There was silence. No more laughter in the Royal Chamber, only the soughing of the rising wind across the thatch, and somewhere the mocking cry of an owl. And in the heart of the silence, I watched the battle of
wills between those two. And I knew what it meant to Prasutagus that she should drink the Bride wine from that cup of his giving. She was among her own kind in her own world; he was the stranger, coming in from outside. For two years he had been broken and trained like a chariot pony, and had not found it easy, even as I had said to Boudicca in the apple garth. He was nothing in his own right, only because he had been chosen to marry with the Queen. He was young and proud, and to make the matter worse for him, he loved her. Therefore he had given her this third gift; the most beautiful thing that he could find, a lover’s gift; therefore he was determined that she should drink the Bride drink from it. In this one thing he would be her Marriage Lord indeed.

At last, Boudicca gave a little sigh, and put out her hands to take the cup. She held it so lightly, looking down into it, that for a moment I wondered if she were going to deliberately part her hands and let it fall and shatter on the flagged floor. But she raised it and drank. And as she did so, the full magic of the cup appeared; for as the light of the pine-knot torches caught and shone through it, it flamed from its dark shadow-green into shadowy fires, glowing with the furnace colours of a winter sunset over the marsh. There was a murmur, a breath of startled wonder, from those of us looking on. But Boudicca made no sign, only drank, and gave the cup again to Prasutagus. His hand enclosed hers for an instant as he took it back; then he drained the cup and turned to give it to Old Nurse, who was hovering near. And again, now that it had lost the torchlight, it had returned to its dust-dark forest green.