It might not have been Nero back in Rome who gave the order, it could have been one of these transplanted legionnaires feathering his nest, but the order was to take it all.
They did not extend the courtesy of their alliance made with Prasutagas to his wife Boudicca, partly I think because they already had a similar alliance working for them with Cartimandua, queen of another Celtic tribe, the Brigantes to the northwest, and, undisciplined wench, she was already seen as a loose cannon. No, it was better to step in and take over these troublesome natives. Diplomacy was wasted on them anyway.
Unfortunately for the Romans, the only thing worse than a woman scorned was a Celtic woman scorned.
Bowls of bread and honey were brought in to the lodge. Chunks of pork and mutton. The long hall began to fill with Boudicca’s personal guard, her court, relatives, and servants. People were gathering outside the hut as well. Nemain entered, the head druid priest, with Taliesin following behind.
Boudicca nodded to them, and they bowed to her.
Torches were lifted from crude sconces on all sides of the lodge, and carried to a central dirt pit. They were extinguished, and the room grew dim save for the long twilight in view from the large open doorway at the far end of the lodge. The last hopeful source of light fled the room. Fresh air got a little scarce in here as well. Nemain raised his arms and spoke, more to himself than to his gods or his people. Taliesin stood at attention with a different torch, a long silver ornamented shaft that as yet bore no flame.
“Feis de Beltain.” Cailte leaned into me, laughing at my obvious expression of curiosity. Of course, the feast of Beltain, the god of life and death. Tomorrow would be May 1st, the beginning of summer.
So who said I needed a calendar?
The Celts had two seasons, winter and summer. Summer began on what we knew as May 1st, or perhaps the druids felt they made it begin on that day, I don’t know. Winter began on November 1st, after the Samhain, the night where departed souls from the otherworld mingle with the living in this one. When I was a kid we called it Halloween.
Nemain lifted sparks from pieces of flint and scraps of prayer, and Taliesin held the ornamented torch to it. When the fire leapt to the torch, everyone in the lodge sighed in relief, and chuckled, and began to sing and laugh. There would be a summer this year. The time of the dead was over.
The crude torches which had been extinguished were re-lit from Nemain’s fire. He held the ornamented silver torch now, having taken it from Taliesin. He held all the mystical power and grandly doled out its protection as a gift.
What a cheesy act.
Boudicca watched him, but she did not praise him, nor did she join in the praise of Lugh the sun god. She was I think, pragmatic, preoccupied, and the glowing, golden light now beginning to fill the lodge made her sit back with what looked like resignation. How odd. I wonder if she preferred the darkness.
Boudicca had called for magic to challenge the Romans on this matter of inheritance, for wisdom to know what to do. I understood that much. But, such important matters would require more of Nemain than could be performed in the lodge before mere humans. He would lead her to the temple later, and make votive offerings to divine their fate.
Boudicca ate sporadically, foraging among the bowls before her, and encouraged her daughters to do so as well. They were fidgety, excited as any teenagers at a party. Her girls were dressed in long, flowing tunics of green and gold and purple. Their hair, the color of their mother’s, was plaited into several thick braids and decorated with beads. They wore armlets. They wore silver broaches and their skin was white from being protected from the sun with long cloaks. They were enjoying themselves.
Boudicca had dressed in a long linen tunic as well, belted at the waist, the color of corn silk, and I did not expect that. A sword in its scabbard lay at her feet, the only indication that she had authority over all present, and that she was a warrior. Her hair flowed freely, as would a warrior’s, and was not bound neatly as a maid’s.
She glanced sideways at her girls and smiled, with begrudging, rueful, motherly authority. What did they know of her responsibility or her burdens? They were young.
Cailte stood, and crossed the floor, past the pit where the torches had been extinguished, to the other side of the lodge. I lost him in the bodies for a moment, then recognized him again as he approached her daughters. They both nodded shyly to him, and he strained to lift his voice above the voices of many others to be heard.
Taliesin watched me still from his post three paces behind Nemain. A young woman brought me food. She did not look me in the eye, required behavior of a servant or slave. I dipped a fistful of bread into the bowl of honey and shoved it into my mouth. I didn’t care about the proper protocol, I was hungry.
I glanced over my dripping, sticky fist to the queen. Boudicca called to Cailte, distracting him from his pursuit, and jerked her head, I think towards me. She looked him in the eye, never taking her eyes off him as she herded him back here with her glare, without ever lifting a finger. He stood before me and sighed, annoyed, shaking his head. I glanced toward the daughters, with whom he would clearly rather spend time, and looked up at Cailte. He glared at me, and grabbed me by the arm, hoisting me up. He pushed me, stumbling, towards the queen, and I let him. She kept us waiting by granting an audience to another man, a huge black-haired warrior.
“Dubh,” Cailte said, rolling his eyes. So, he was called the Dark One, whoever he was. He did not make it to the history books, so he was a mystery to me. But, Boudicca gave him her patient attention.
I was brought forth at last, while I licked the honey off my fingers, to be presented to her.
She glowered at me, much as Cailte did, like they were all just about fed up with me. She looked at my limbs as if she were deciding to buy a horse. She spoke, in the same guttural, flowing gurgle that Cailte spoke, and I understood very little. Cailte spoke for me.
I got bored with this really quickly, and decided to speed things up. With a quick thrust and grab, I yanked the knife from Cailte’s belt. Boudicca watched, breathless, but she did not draw back. She would not show fear.
Abruptly, I turned my back to her, squatted, and etched into the dirt floor a map of Britannia. I put a mark for her in present-day Norfolk, and drew Roman shields for as many cohorts as I knew all around the west country. I marked the empty forts, and the ones which Dr. Ford said were full, according to the historian Tacitus.
At first she looked at me as if I were a loony. Then she left her seat, and joined me on the floor, lifting her yellow gown above her knees as she went down on all fours to study the design I had made. We both looked like we were playing marbles on our hands and knees.
“Romans. Iceni.” I said, and pointed to my scratches in the dirt. The druid priest Nemain now glared at me. He would not get down on all fours for nothing. Besides, I stole his thunder. Taliesin looked apprehensive.
I gave her something to think about. I did not tell her what to do. I did not really tell her anything she couldn’t find out about herself. In a few weeks.
She fingered the silver broach on the shoulder strap of her tunic, a design of a sword crossing a shield. Her eyes were not steely now, but luminescent with wonder and torchlight. I don’t know her age. Late twenties, middle thirties? Her two daughters were very young women, not yet joined with husbands, and still under her protection. They looked like noblewomen, in long, colorful tunics and carefully presented. Their mother, however, looked like a warrior. She was the Queen, but I sensed she was a warrior, first.
There were many warrior women in Celtic society, many women leaders, and many of the fiercest battle gods were females. They were not lesser individuals in a society hell-bent on just surviving. They wandered, some were driven, from the heart of Europe to the British Isles. They needed everyone who could fight, to fight. It made no difference to chieftains if the warrior was a man or woman, as long as the warrior could stand firm. The Romans found them distasteful, humorous, and quaint.
>
I read once the words of a Tibetan ruler who declared that the first principle of a warrior is not being afraid of who you are. Simple words. Wise words. I was sometimes afraid of who I was, and worried about vulnerability. How afraid was Boudicca?
At first, I thought I might be praised for my knowledge of the Roman positions, then I realized her fascination was that she had never seen a bird’s-eye view of the land before. I smiled, the joke was on me. My showing off with info on the enemy was for nothing. Dr. Roberts would rather have it that way. I wasn’t supposed to get involved.
She sat back on her heels and considered the floor. Dubh, Nemain, Taliesin, Cailte, they all looked at my creation coldly, and I had an idea my molecules might be visiting Avalon sometime soon. It did not look like I would make it back to my seat, let alone back to the 21st century.
Boudicca looked at me now, but with a startling absence of judgment. I submissively put Cailte’s knife back into its sheath on his hip, and I stood, slowly, cautiously, as if she were an animal waiting to bite me. I extended my hand to her to help her up. She grasped it, her eyes not leaving mine, and she stood. She released my hand, stepped back lightly over her sword, and sat down again in her place of honor.
Cailte did not wait for direction, but seemed to know when enough was enough. He shoved me back to my place along the far wall, and pointed at my food sternly, as if I was a naughty kid who had not finished his supper.
Cailte was called upon now for his own special knowledge, which was much less confrontational or controversial than mine. He was the bard. The Shanachie. He kept the history of his people in his head, he kept the stories to tell. Eventually they mingled, and the stories became history, and history became legend, and so true history became decorated, designed, and utterly lost.
Cailte stood in the center of the room.
“Aoifa, the warrior-princess, came from the Land of Shadows,” Cailte intoned myth as history in words I barely grasped, though following his hands, his expressions was easier. I had already heard the tale from a Dublin professor at the lab anyway. Boudicca settled back in her seat, giving her attention to Cailte.
“The great hero Cuchulainn, being mortal, was instructed in the art of war by Scathach, the sister of the warrior princess Aoifa. When he learned all she could teach him, he requested that he might test his skills against Aoifa, the sister of Scathach. Scathach deterred him, fearing Aoifa would kill him, for she was the most skilled warrior of all. Yet, he challenged Aoifa, and before their match, he cunningly asked Scathach what her sister loved best in the world. She answered that above all, her sister loved her chariot.”
Cailte smiled briefly, charmingly, to the daughters of Boudicca. Boudicca looked at the ground again, at my drawing.
“The combat between the warrior princess and the hero of Ulster began, and she overcame him. He was no match for her skill, for she was an even greater in battle than her sister Scathach, who had taught Cuchulainn. When all seemed lost for him, he called out to Aoifa in alarm that her chariot horse was in danger. She loved her animal, and turned to see for herself what was wrong. He caught her off balance, and would have slain her.”
Boudicca lifted herself from her seat of honor again, and cat-like, lowered herself to the dirt on her hands and knees, and examined the drawing up close again. Cailte spoke faster. Poor guy was losing his audience.
“He could not kill so fine a woman, who was so great a warrior. In after days they took each other as lovers….”
She touched the markings I had made with Cailte’s knife, tracing them with her long, white finger.
“….for they were matched not only by their skills in battle, but by their passionate hearts….”
Taliesin looked from his druid priest Nemain to Boudicca, and seemed to shrug helplessly at Cailte.
“…to be blessed by a son, Conlai, who was taught by his mother Aoifa to be as great a warrior. The gold ring Cuchulainn gave to Aoifa as a sign of their love, Aoifa placed on her son’s hand. In later years, when Conlai grew to manhood, he joined a challenge of heroes to test themselves against the might of Cuchulainn. Conlai did not announce himself as Cuchulainn’s son. He was a proud warrior. He wanted to announce himself by his actions alone.”
She sat back on her heels, crossing her arms. I think she still listened to the story, though she seemed preoccupied. You could not help but listen to the grace of Cailte’s musical voice. Her daughters, both of them, were clearly enchanted.
“Conlai fought his father well, and Cuchulainn was impressed with the young warrior’s skill. But, in a moment of temper, when the young one ridiculed the elder by slashing off a lock of his long hair, Cuchulainn drove his sword home. He looked upon the limp body of Conlai, and he at last noticed the gold ring, and remembered, and knew this was his own son. Overcome with deepest grief….”
Deepest grief, always. You could hear the tears in his baritone voice. Always doomed. Always tragic. Did it make a better story? Did it justify their many losses, their losses of kingdom, of unity, of heritage? Billy O’Malley, who enjoyed singing maudlin songs of the Black and Tans, and the sorrows of a people from whom he was far removed, as if he had suffered them himself…never sang about Vercingetorix. He had no idea who he was. He sang no songs about Boudicca.
She looked directly at me.
Cailte sat down, frustrated that he seemed not to entertain her tonight. He glanced in disgust at me. I shrugged like Taliesin.
She looked directly at me.
Almost two thousand years later a statue of Cuchulainn, from Cailte’s story, was erected in front of The General Post Office in Dublin, Ireland. It depicts him at the moment of his death, when, mortally wounded by a spear thrown by his enemy, he tied himself to a stone pillar that he might die on his feet, fighting. It is a memorial to those who died in the Easter Uprising of 1916 and all those who died for Irish independence.
In London, a monument to Boudicca, or Boadicea as they called her, was erected in 1902 facing the Embankment, flanked by the House of Commons and Big Ben. It is a bronze tablet depicting her in her famous chariot and horses, rather like the way Cailte described the mythical Aoifa. Both memorials symbolize the toughness of two modern nations and one ancient people. One of the figures is a myth, and the other was real.
To the Celt, it is of little difference.
She looked right at me.
Goblets of silver, chalices of wood. Long wooden shields covered in bronze plating and blessings of their gods. Some of the shields would be thrown into a nearby river as a votive gesture to those gods. Some would be used in battle. Some would be unearthed in two thousand years and studied by strangers.
The party lasted long into the night, but Boudicca did not glow with mead or weep with song. She stood resolutely when it was time to go, and the giant Dubh, who had had plenty of beer and song, boisterously yelled what must have been a warning to let the queen pass. Some small semblance of order occurred, but Boudicca did not require absolute silence or total homage. She did not mind stepping over a body or two on her way out. She seemed to accept that her people were human. Nemain and Taliesin followed her.
She stopped before me. Cailte, red-faced with drink and caught off guard, quickly stumbled to his feet. She looked at him, then tossed a warning glance over her shoulder, with a sharp remark. Her servants escorted her daughters from the hall. Bedtime for them, evidently. Their evening of fun was over. So was Cailte’s, I think.
Then she looked at me and muttered something meant for Cailte. He nodded and pushed me into the parade. Evidently, where Boudicca, Nemain and Taliesin were going, I was to follow. She told Cailte to remain behind.
We walked slowly out into the cool, moist breeze of the dark night, across the encampment to a high round hut, a kind of wooden tower, surrounded by a square wooden enclosure. The open door to the hut I knew faced east, a druid temple.
Most of their high ceremonies took place in forest groves, but they were not above emulating the Romans with similar r
itual temple sacrifices to the gods. The Celts, however, were also in the habit of making human sacrifices to the gods.
I did not feel good about this.
Like a dark cave inside, the temple stank of blood and death. Taliesin placed the silver torch above a stone altar. Boudicca produced an iron spear that had been purposely bent at the tip, a symbol to represent the failing in battle of their enemies. What enemies? The Romans? As yet no rebellion had started, not really, only the fermenting of resentment. What was she planning, and was she planning it now?
Nemain voiced prayers to two warrior goddesses on behalf of Boudicca, to protect her and lead her to victory. He called upon the goddess Badb to inspire courage in Boudicca’s people, and for good measure, entreated the goddess Macha to curse the enemy.
Macha knew about curses. One of the most powerful of the goddesses of war, Macha was said to have been forced to outrun the horses of the king of Ulster because of a boast her husband made of her prowess and because of a dare and a threat by the Ulster king to execute her husband if she did not follow through. Macha, though very pregnant at the time, performed that astounding athletic feat and beat all the horses. Not content to simply win the bet and save her prideful husband’s life, she vengefully put a curse on all the men of Ulster for making her exert herself in her delicate condition. Those men were made to suffer the pain of childbirth for five days and five nights.
Macha gave birth to twins, and the wombless men she had cursed with labor pains presumably got the message. So much for her being delicate.
Boudicca watched the torchlight make darting finger patterns on the smoke-darkened walls of the hut. Nemain produced a long, jeweled dagger. He passed it over the altar, and then he presented it to Boudicca, who raised it above her head. She lowered it to her chest and glanced towards me. I stood perfectly still, and met her eyes.
Myths of the Modern Man Page 6