“We’ll leave her in your care, and if I see your daughter, I’ll send her to you.”
“Thank you,” I managed to say to the warriors, and then I turned to Bele and Alyssa again. “Lithben? Gwen?”
“Come inside the tent, Mother of Sarah,” urged Bele. “Come see for yourself.”
Alyssa lifted the flap and held her torch so I could see my granddaughters spooned together under a plaid blanket, Gwen’s arms wrapped around her younger sister.
“Mother of god,” I whispered, meaning Isis, meaning Miriam, meaning all of us. “Mother of goddess.”
I knelt beside them, my hand hovering over their cheeks, not wanting to wake them. Then I felt someone touch my cheek.
“I knew you’d come back, Grandmother,” murmured Lithben. “Don’t go again.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t leave you again, cariad.”
Alyssa came in with a cup of something warm. It felt like drinking the fire of the stars.
“It’s one of Sarah’s cure-alls,” said Alyssa. “Don’t wait up for her. Rest now.”
I lay down, holding Lithben’s hands in mine. When I woke again, Sarah’s arms were around me, her warm breath on the back of my neck. By the pre-dawn light creeping in under the door, I saw that Boudica slept on the other side of Gwen. Near the flap, Alyssa and Bele snatched some rest. I took a moment to savor this fleeting safety, this sweetness.
The moment passed. Boudica opened her eyes, caught mine, and gestured silently: Outside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
REPORTING
BEFORE THE SKY lightens and takes on color there is a long, seemingly endless time when the world is cold and grey, and the birds still have their heads tucked under their wings. Boudica’s face was like that, too, still but cold, quiet but without peace. We sat for a while like two boulders who had tumbled to a precarious halt after some cataclysmic event.
“Are you well?” she asked, not out of politeness but as a point of necessary information.
To my surprise I realized that I was. But then I had slept in the arms of the healer woman.
“Yes,” I said. “And you—”
I stopped myself. Of course she wasn’t all right.
“Oh, Boudica,” was all I could say.
“So you know,” she said. “Who told you?”
“No one told me. I had dreams. I saw.”
“You saw the rapes,” she stated, her voice without affect. “You saw the whipping.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Is that why you came back?” she asked after a moment.
She didn’t know what had happened on Mona. Of course she didn’t. No one could have reached her before me.
“I never expected to come back,” I told her. “I expected to be killed in battle on Mona.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
So I did, omitting only my visit to the fort en route. I told her of the vision in the well of eels and the plan to evacuate enough druids to preserve their knowledge. I described the battle itself, leaving out my single combat with the general. Boudica listened silently. Although her tears fell unchecked, it would be hard to say she wept. Her face didn’t move; she scarcely blinked.
“The groves are gone?” she said when I paused. “The great teaching groves of Mona are gone? The druids exiled or slain?”
Her voice broke, the first sign of emotion she had showed apart from the soundless tears. Whatever happiness she had known had been in those groves among the druids. At their bidding, she had sacrificed that happiness. And now the place she had hallowed for so long was destroyed.
“They shall be avenged,” she declared. “When I am done there will not be one Roman town or fort left in Pretannia. Not one Roman will remain. I will soak the land with their blood. Andraste will feast on their flesh.”
An image rose of the bodies piled on the beach, the sound of the flies, the stink. I covered my mouth with my hand and forced my rising gorge back down.
“Listen, Boudica, I must tell you the rest,” I said urgently. “Before I left, a messenger reached the general with news of your uprising. He left one tide behind me. He’s in Londinium now.”
“Why didn’t you tell me last night!”
She rose to her feet so fast it was as if she dove into the sky, her hair ignited by the sun’s first rays. She towered over me, even when I managed to stand.
“I was bound and gagged, if you recall.”
“Never mind that,” she brushed away her reproaches, my excuses. “How many men does he have with him?”
“It’s an advance contingent,” I said. “All cavalry. Five hundred maybe.”
Boudica smiled for the first time that day. It was not a pretty sight.
“We are a hundred thousand. Londinium is doomed and your general along with it.”
My general? My blood felt cold and black as sludge on a river bottom. Why would she call him that?
“By the way, where did you get that cloak?”
I decided to tell the truth.
“I tried to kill the Roman general.”
“And for that he gave you his cloak,” she stated rather than asked, her unspoken suspicion eloquent.
“Apparently he did. After he felled me.”
She looked at me long and hard.
“And Dwynwyn gave me this garment.”
I unfastened the cloak and let it fall to the ground. I stood before Boudica in the red robe streaked with the darker red of dried blood. The bloodstained necklace of skulls gleamed fiercely. I held Boudica’s gaze, until she nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Sarah, Bele, Alyssa!” She turned and lifted the tent flap. “Help me gather the chieftains for a council. We march to Londinium today.”
There was only time for a brief embrace before Sarah dashed off on Boudica’s errand. But it was a fierce embrace, and I sensed something had changed in Sarah. Something was troubling her. Before I let her go, I searched her eyes, which still held their strange, beautiful light, but it felt as though she had withdrawn to some place darker, deeper.
“We’ll talk later,” she said and hurried away.
I was left with my granddaughters. Gwen savagely stirred the embers under a cook pot and Lithben came to stand next to me, slipping her hand into mine.
“Gwen’s angry,” she confided.
I could see that by the angle of her back, the vehemence of her movements.
“Don’t speak for me, Lithben,” snapped Gwen.
Then she fetched a bowl and heaped it with stirabout.
“Here,” she turned and handed it to me, “Grandmother.”
I sensed the title was a deliberate concession on her part. An offering. She wanted something from me.
“Thank you, Gwen,” was all I said.
She would not want me to ask how she was or to offer sympathy. So I sat down cross-legged on the ground and ate silently. Lithben joined me, sitting so that our knees touched, and finally Gwen sat, too, pulling up bits of whatever vegetation was untrammeled.
“I should be at that council,” Gwen finally spoke. “I am queen of the Iceni.”
Despite all that happened, not much had changed between mother and daughter.
“I remember your father’s will.” I had been there when the disastrous document was drawn up. “And I know how the Romans have violated it.”
How you have been violated, I did not say, but it was as close as I could get.
“That’s why we’re fighting,” Lithben put in. “When the warriors came and saw what had happened to us, they wanted to fight the Romans, all the tribes together. Mother says that what happened to us was a sacrifice for the combrogos. A blood sacrifice,” she added softly, uncertainly, as if repeating her lines without fully understanding what they meant.
“That is one of her speeches,” said Gwen. “Whenever the chieftains start quarreling among themselves, she trumps them with us, the desecrated virgins, and herself the outraged mother.”
I di
dn’t have to close my eyes to remember that nightmare. The sound tearing from Boudica’s body when she saw her daughters pinned to the ground.
“She loves you, Gwen,” I said. “She fought for you like the goddess herself.”
“The goddess,” repeated Lithben. “The goddess Andraste.”
“Oh yes,” Gwen said bitterly. “She loves us. But she loves her cause more. She always has.”
I did not argue with her. It was probably true. Anyway, Gwen needed to say it. She needed to lance her wounds.
“My father loved me, really loved me,” she turned to look at me. “You could see that, couldn’t you, Grandmother.”
“Plain as the sun in a cloudless sky,” I agreed.
And the day was shaping up to be just like that. A soft summer day, with a breeze stirring the leaves and the grasses, and yet there was something missing. I listened for a moment beyond that racket of the camp waking up. No songbirds. Too many humans here, too much human sound and strife and stench.
“But he was wrong,” she said softly as if it was still hard for her to say it. “My father was wrong to trust the Romans. They dishonored him as much as they did us. More. I tried to tell her that. I tried to tell her that I want to avenge him, but she won’t listen.”
“Gwen wants to fight,” Lithben explained. “Mother says: no, stay with the women and children, protect the women and children. You’re a woman, too, Mother, says Gwen. Why don’t you stay with them? I’m the queen, says mother—”
“And so am I!” Gwen cut her off. “And so are you, Lithben.”
“I don’t want to fight,” Lithben whispered, ashamed. “I never did.”
Gwen went and knelt down beside her little sister and put her arms around her. However angry she was with Boudica, towards Lithben she could be tender.
“You don’t have to fight, Lithben. I will fight for both of us.”
Lithben clung to her sister.
“It’s all right, Lithben. You have Grandmother now.”
I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going.
“It’s all right,” Lithben repeated, brightening. “I have Grandmother now.”
“Grandmother,” Gwen stood. “I am going to join in the council, whether my mother wants me there or not. Lithben, you and Grandmother can take down the tent and load the cart.”
She turned and strode away, her gait determined like her mother’s.
“Gwen,” I called after her.
She did me the courtesy of turning back.
“When you are in council, listen carefully to what is said and not said. When you speak, speak wisely, without heat or haste. Like a true queen.”
She gave me a rare smile. My heart caught at the sight.
“You put her up to it!” Boudica accused.
She had yanked my arm, none too gently, and drawn me aside while the others finished breaking camp.
“You must have! She never would have dared interrupt a council meeting like that if you hadn’t.”
“I am afraid she would and did,” I said as calmly as I could. “Gwen takes after you, far more than she takes after her father. Surely you can see that? If I had anything to do with it, it’s simply that Gwen felt she could leave Lithben with me. She is very protective of her sister.”
Boudica appeared to consider what I said, her feathers slowly unruffling.
“I have to protect them both,” she said. “Surely you understand that.”
Oh, I surely did, and I also understood better than Boudica how easy, maybe inevitable, it was to fail to protect the ones you loved best.
“Gwen thinks I am disrespecting her father’s will. She thinks I want to be queen myself. She’s dead wrong. I want to make sure there is a free people for her to rule, land where she can be sovereign. Unless we drive the Romans out, there won’t be. Unless we drive the Romans out, we’ll all be dead, or worse, slaves.”
I stayed silent. It is hard to answer someone who is giving her stump speech.
“And I want her to survive. I can’t let her go into battle. She has nowhere near enough experience, and even if she did, she could be killed. If anyone knew who she was, she’d be a target. Make her understand. She’ll listen to you.”
It was not a good idea, I knew that, not a good idea at all to be a go-between at Boudica’s behest. To be her mouthpiece, her bull horn. But how could I say no? Hadn’t I pleaded with Ma in a similar way when Sarah was young? And hadn’t she told me repeatedly to let Sarah be, not to interfere with her fate?
“I will say whatever I can,” I conceded. “But you must speak to her first. You must ask her to sacrifice her longing to fight for the sake of the combrogos, just as you had to sacrifice your longing to be a brehon. Tell her the best way for her to avenge her father is to live to fulfill his will for her to be queen. Beg her to let you sacrifice your life for her life. Go to her with your heart in your hand. Do it now.”
Boudica gave me a strange look. I could not tell if she was seeing me or seeing through me to some past or future just out of her grasp.
“I will ask her to ride with me today,” Boudica said. “Then we will see.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
DAUGHTER OF ESUS
AN ARMY OF THAT SIZE (no one ever agreed exactly how large it was, let’s say one hundred thousand warriors with families in tow) moves over the land like an unnatural disaster, a human glacier or lava flow, an infestation. The land isn’t made to bear such movement. It trembles under the fall of so many feet, turns to mud or clouds of dust, depending. Streams get fouled, crops get consumed or trampled, cattle get rustled and eaten. It is a slow, inexorable business. This army was still fresh, flush from victory and laden with food and loot, so morale, so to speak, was good. Direction, target, and strategy were not in question.
Lithben and I stayed together, both of us riding and keeping pace, more or less, with Boudica’s entourage. Every now and then I caught sight of Boudica and Gwen riding together in a battle chariot. Sarah, Alyssa, and Bele checked on Lithben and me now and then, but seemed busy riding up and down the ranks as if they were the herd dogs of the army. I still had not had a chance to speak with Sarah alone or at any length. I began to wonder if she were avoiding me for some reason. But an army on the move is scarcely the right time or place for an intimate talk.
My contingent arrived around sunset at the base of the hill I had climbed only yesterday. On the other side lay Londinium. While the rest of the army was arriving, small parties of scouts would go out to assess the town’s defenses and the best points for a dawn attack. Sarah, Bele, and Alyssa were among the scouts, and Gwen stayed in council with her mother. Lithben and I, the too young and too old, were left to ourselves and went to bed early, worn out as much from the surrounding tension and anticipation as from the day’s march.
“Mother,” Sarah’s voice was so soft I thought it was part of my dream. “Mother, I need you.”
Sarah needing me. It must be a dream. She hadn’t cried for me in the night since she was a little girl.
I felt a hand hovering over me, not quite touching, a hand full of heat and hesitance.
“Sarah.” I woke up all the way. “I’m here. What is it?”
“Will you come apart with me?” she asked. “Away from the others.”
Easier said than done when you are camping with an army. But we wove our way through tents, over people sleeping on the ground, past sentries who recognized Sarah, around the base of the hill to the other side where in the distance we could see the torches of the unfortified port town and the river dark beyond it.
Sarah and I sat down together in a soon-to-be trampled field, our knees just touching. I waited for a cue from her.
“Why did my father turn away?” she asked. “When the people wanted to make him king? When the people wanted to fight for him?”
Because it wasn’t his way. He wasn’t a warrior. He did not want a kingdom, not that kind of kingdom. All those answers might be true, but I did not give any of them. He h
ad not given any of them. He had never explained. Just turned away, as Sarah had put it, more simply, more eloquently.
“Dear child,” I said at last, for she was my child, and his child. “I don’t know. You can ask him. Maybe he will tell you himself.”
She shook her head.
“I already know.”
“What do you know, cariad, Colomen Du?”
I waited again and at last she spoke.
“He did not want to do what I have done.”
Again I waited.
“Camulodunum,” she said. “Do you know what happened there?”
“I heard it has been burned to the ground. I heard there is no one left alive.”
I spoke carefully, neutrally.
“No one left alive,” she repeated. “No one left alive.”
I reached for her hand, but she shook me off.
“We killed the soldiers first,” she went on in a tight voice. “There weren’t very many of them. There were so many of us. A few of us died, but there were so many more. We kept coming and coming and coming. It was so loud, so loud. Everyone was screaming. The people were screaming. They were stupid, so stupid. But what else could they do? The ones who weren’t slaughtered on the spot ran to their big Roman temple and bolted the door. Why did they think they would be safe there? Why? Did they think we would fear their Roman gods?”
She stopped for breath, anguish and anger vying together, tearing at her throat.
“They rounded themselves up for us. It wasn’t hard. It was so not hard. We destroyed the roof. We rained down on them, thousands of us. We butchered them, all of them, where they stood—men, women, children. It happened so fast, so fast. And yet it seemed like it went on forever, that there had only ever been this screaming, this fear, this grim hacking away at people as if they were nothing, brush to be cleared, corn to be scythed. We left them drowning in their own blood, any who still breathed, and any who did not die face down in the blood bath, died in the fire. We torched the temple. We torched the town.”
She stopped again. I could hear her teeth grinding. I could feel the heat coming off her in waves as she sweated even in the chill night.
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