Between the cycle of killing and love making there was yet an undefined goal for Boudicca and the Iceni. If the tribes of the Trinovantes and Cartimandua’s crew joined us, and if we prevailed over the Romans, what then? Would they unite, these rival Celts, and form a new nation with Boudicca as everyone’s queen?
Not bloody likely, mate.
They never thought that far ahead. It was only “on to Verulamium.”
Verulamium would one day be called St. Albans, where King Offa of Mercia founded a Christian abbey in 793.
It’s an interesting coincidence that with the spread of Christianity in the later centuries of the 1st millennium AD, around the 700s and 800s, there occurred the waning of the age of warrior women. Their place in society altered when the influence of a male-ruled clerical world would come to dominate Renaissance Europe. Despite examples of remarkable women who came into being in the next millennium, it was not until near the end of it that warrior women emerged again, taking up arms either because of equal opportunity laws or frank necessity for the survival of their people. It was manifest even in the simple attitudes of self worth, self discovery and self-empowerment made by my grandmother’s kick-ass generation. Now, in the 3rd millennium AD, as the world serenely atrophies there are only half as many men as women, so, what to do?
And who to do it to?
So my mission, and my purpose, and perhaps even like Boudicca, was my destiny.
Was Dr. Roberts, who from the safety of her lab shared my mission, such a warrior woman? The civilizing factors of evolution aside, I didn’t think so. She had intelligence, wielded a small amount of power. She commanded respect in her field. But, she had no guts, no passion. Strangely though, in her way, she seemed as single-minded and without conscience as Boudicca.
Boudicca attacked again. The tribe of the Catuvellauni who lived in and around Verulamium, fellow Celts all of them, were slaughtered. Their city, Verulamium, which had been sponsored by the Romans as a municipum of the Province, was destroyed. The third city taken, the third laid waste. Fires raged everywhere. What was not worth stealing was destroyed. This included people as well as objects.
Paullinus and his legions waited it out beyond the ruins of Verulamium, planning his one great battle to finish the Celts once and for all, like a director reviewing stage directions, choosing the terrain, assembling his units, setting the scene.
His main force numbered around 10,000 men. It included the XIV legion, and parts of the XX. The II legion was supposed to have joined in, but its temporary commander, Poenius Postumus, refused orders and stayed where he was in the west. Either he didn’t want to get into the scrape with the profanum vulgis, the vulgar herd of Boudicca’s people, or else he was truly concerned with being hit from behind by other tribes which might join her. The result was the same, no II Legion, but Paullinus forged ahead with the force he already had.
They waited, these Roman legionnaires, in tight ranks with the discipline and strength of an empire behind them. The Celts ran wild in the city, gone half-mad with their victory and the taste of revenge. They were ecstatic, the rush of their immortality upon them.
Only Cailte and Taliesin looked somber. They approached me as I watered Boudicca’s horses. I no longer had the favor of their queen. She withdrew from me. Unlike them, I had not regained my honor. I waited out the attack of Verulamium with her servants, who kept me busy packing up camp and loading carts.
Nothing needed to be said, except my thanks to Boudicca for saving my life in the nick of time before Dubh slit my throat in Cailte’s tent, but she was still too proud and too angry to accept it from me.
Nick of time. Listen to me.
“You will have much story telling of this rebellion, Cailte,” I said as I saw him approach. He did not answer, but looked at Taliesin, whose robe was not stained with sacrificial blood today. His dagger had been taken from him. Evidently, he was in the doghouse, too.
“What shall I tell of you?” Cailte said, fingering his sword, while his lyre hung lonely on his back, “That you hold the garments of a queen, waiting out battles to become pretender?”
“Be plain. Not full of trickery as you were that night.”
He laughed and sneered at the same time, making indiscriminate faces that told he searched for the best words to slay me. His power as a bard diminished and left him impotent. He should not have had to search for the words.
“If I wanted to kill you I would do it myself, not assign that work to another.”
“Then you did not know I was to be slain?”
He did not answer.
“You knew.” I said, my accusation quiet, and tinged with enough humor to make him not dismiss me yet.
“You will not take Prasutagas’ place. Even if Boudicca wishes it.”
“She does not wish it.”
“She does not love you?” Taliesin asked.
“No.”
“Of what matter is love to Boudicca?” Cailte said, “She would wage war, make passion, make treaties with no concern to love. How much power do you intend to have?”
“You’re right, truly,” I said, “Had she been in love with me, it would not stop her from reigning in her own manner. As it is, there is only the company I give her.”
“I know her mind. I want to know yours.” Cailte said.
“I will not be king.”
“What will you be?” Taliesin asked.
“A friend.”
Cailte scoffed, shaking his head.
“Cailte,” I said, “let this wait until after we defeat the Romans. Until that day, this is only talk and means nothing.”
“When will this happen?”
“I don’t know if it will.”
“Traitor.”
“A word you should know well.”
He bristled, and Taliesin looked away.
“I am a man afraid for the Iceni, that is all.” I said.
“A coward, a traitor, and slave. I should kill you now.”
“Shall I tell you something to save your life?” I said, “Both of you. The Romans fight not with the lust of men yearning to be free, but with organization, and deliberate thought. While you push forward the only way you know how, with the long sword and the blue woad and the shouts, they will shift, pause, turn, push according to several different choices. They have rehearsed by killing thousands of others in other lands. They know their work well. You have only your passion to guide you, and it pales beside an army of thinkers.”
Cailte belted me in the face. I dropped to the mud.
He pulled his sword, evidently not hesitating to do the job himself this time. I pulled his legs out from under him. Taliesin wanted to finish the talk, but he stood by quietly, not committing the social error of interrupting a fight. Cailte was down now, but I had no weapon. I didn’t really need one. He’d never seen any of the martial arts. I knocked out two of his teeth and broke his nose with one kick. He fell back with a face full of blood and a groan in the mud.
“Crippled in the morning, a god in the afternoon.” Boudicca said somewhere behind me, “I think you are as full of trickery as Cailte says.”
Cailte spit blood.
“Why are you here?” she finally asked me.
If I could have answered that, I’d have the answer to a lot of other questions.
“Don’t underestimate them, your enemies, Boudicca.”
“I have underestimated you. Why are you here?”
“To survive.”
She drew her own sword. It was long and heavy in her hand, but she handled it well. She was accustomed to its feel.
“At what cost?” she asked.
“I might ask the same of you.”
“Come.” She said, measuring the distance between us with her sword. “Walk onward.”
She spanked me once, hard, with the flat of the blade, and drove me with the point of her sword like a sheep to the hilltop behind the camp. An odd tactic, I thought, to remove me from camp, since she could have demanded and go
tten privacy anywhere, from her tent to the most crowded marketplace.
When we were alone, and far enough away to suit her, she lowered her broadsword, but still held it in her cold, chafed right hand. I could tell Dr. Ford she was right handed. That was all I really knew about her. That and the mole on her thigh.
She reached behind my ear and grasped a handful of my long hair, and sifted her free hand through it.
“Boudicca….”
“Don’t….” she said. “Will I die today?”
“You think I have such knowledge?”
“Will I die today?”
She was more courageous than Cartimandua.
“I don’t know. But, your rebellion will die today. Your people will die today.”
She looked into my eyes with deliberation, and need.
“Unless you change your force,” I said, “you will flow into their mighty power like the rush of water through one of their aqueducts, and they will bend you where they want. They are Romans, Boudicca, they have done this many times before.”
“And Cartimandua? What did she say?” Her pride had prevented her from asking me earlier, but she still wanted to know. She was not as stupid as Dubh, Nemain or Cailte, who were too proud for knowledge.
“She will not join you, Boudicca.”
She pulled her hand away, and pushed me.
“I could have loved you.” she said, disgusted. She walked away.
But, I knew it wasn’t any love she could have had for me which cemented her plans, nor her considerable pride. The threat of crucifixion was too strong for her to change.
Nearly 100,000 Celts sure of their coming victory could not be managed, let alone changed. They did not even need Cartimandua’s tribe to help now, they thought, for the Romans assembled on the battle site were only about 10,000 to 13,000. It would surely be a romp, they all felt this.
Their non-combatants, mostly elderly, women and children among them, sat in carts at the far edge of the battlefield so that they might watch the victory and tell their own tales of it in days to come.
The drunken, blood-besotted warriors straggled out of Verulamium and followed the tracks of Boudicca’s chariot.
With me no longer on board.
They gave me a sword this time, and told to fight for my freedom. They meant it literally.
Don’t get involved, huh, Eleanor?
In the front lines Cailte stripped off his clothes, and began to paint his naked body with the blue woad dye. He drew an intricate pattern of sharp, magic lines and symbols on his thighs, and then across his abdomen and chest. Boudicca had made him my keeper again, since she and Dubh, and who knows how many resentful others in camp, demanded I fight like a Celt.
Cailte did not like babysitting me. That was the only thing in my favor.
Another warrior came and drew marks on Cailte’s face.
“Cailte,” I said, “I will die today. Let me talk to the woman.”
He turned to face me so the warrior could paint upon his back.
“You love a servant.”
“She was kind to me. I would like to say goodbye.”
“Boudicca knows of her kindness to you. You have lost favor with the queen. Will you insult her again?”
“It is no insult to Boudicca….”
“That you prefer a stinking slave….”
“How many times have you preferred her?”
“Go,” he said, I think only to shut me up. Boudicca was right, I was the only one in camp who could out-talk Cailte.
“If you do not return to me before the battle,” he said, “I will kill you this day myself.”
“I understand you.”
The woman and the boy guarded a small cart with Cailte’s tent and belongings packed into it. Bouchal sat upon the cart horse, playfully dangling his legs over the side. The woman stood beside him, looking down into the valley, her hand covering the glare of the sun from her blue eyes.
She did not notice me trudge up the hill until I had almost reached her, and then she started back, dropped her hand, and tried to look busy by tugging on a strap that went nowhere.
“I have come to say goodbye to you.” I patted Bouchal’s leg and he smiled at me.
“You will fight today,” the woman said.
“I will try to stay alive.”
“This will be a different battle from the others,” she said.
“Yes. How do you know?”
“I feel it.”
“If the Romans break us, they will not stop at killing warriors. They will come straight up here for the rest of you. When the battle starts, leave. Don’t stay here.” I know I wasn’t supposed to get involved Eleanor, but damn it, this is different. What could it hurt? What if I stayed, what could that really hurt? I could not tell Tailtu to wait for me, because that would only put her in danger. I had to get her to run away, and hope I could catch up with her.
“Leave? And be killed surely by Cailte for leaving him?”
“What if Cailte does not survive?”
“I will have to wait to know this.”
“If you wait, you may not survive. Cailte’s death will mean your freedom, won’t it?”
“What is freedom? The freedom to starve?”
I patted the horse’s flank, and grabbed the boy’s foot and tickled it. He giggled and squirmed.
“You do not wear the magic woad?” she observed.
“It has not been my custom.”
“It could spare you.”
“Cailte has none left.”
She walked around to the other side of the cart, and came back a moment later with a blue-stained wooden bowl.
“Nemain blesses my master’s blue dye, but I made it.” She scraped the bowl with her finger and touched it to my cheek. I don’t know what magic symbols she drew upon me, but I felt blessed. She slowly, gently stroked her blue finger across my forehead. When I was a baby, a priest had drawn a cross there in oil at my baptism. She busily continued the pattern down my nose. She caught my eye briefly, and lightly dragged her finger up and down my neck. I lifted my chin, and swallowed.
“Shall I cover your body?” she asked.
“There is not enough,” I said, and I took the bowl from her. I touched my finger to the blue bottom, and drew a small line on her upper arm.
“To protect you.” I said, and then I dotted Bouchal’s nose. “To protect you.” He and I laughed at the joke, but she did not.
“Tailtu,” I said, “I saw a man and a woman camped on the edge of the Brigantes’ land with some others. They had a boy with them, a youth with hair the color of yours. His name was Oisin.”
She started, and colored.
“I told them you were well.”
After a moment, she said softly, “I am dead to them.”
“Oisin said to tell you they were also well.”
She looked up at me.
“Oisin remembers you.”
I could see she was moved, and pleased, but would not be so bold as to confess happiness.
“I will remember you, if you die,” she said in a thick voice.
“Do you pray?” I suddenly asked her. She looked puzzled.
“Boudicca has her war goddesses to ask for courage. Nemain serves his gods of water and land with sacrificial killings. Cailte tells tales of men visiting the gods, and gods visiting men through the mystical screen that separates us from their world. Who is your protector? To what god do you pray?”
“To no god.”
I must have looked as amazed as I felt, because she immediately faltered and tried to explain, as if she had committed a terrible social faux pas.
“To what god would I pray? There is no god of slaves.”
***
I shouldered my borrowed sword and wandered lost through a sea of 100,000 Celts in various stages of battle dress. I did not intend to return to Cailte, but instead made my way carefully to the edge of the line of trees that bordered one edge of the battlefield. I would die if I had to this day, e
ither by the Romans’ hands or by Cailte’s, but I wasn’t going to kill anybody.
A funny pacifist’s stance for a warrior to take, and I had been a warrior for twenty years. I had seen conflict. I had taken part in the discharge of weaponry before I joined the space program.
But, I did not feel like a military man anymore. I did not feel like an astronaut, nor a time-traveler. Dr. Ford was toying with the idea of calling us Chronnauts. I told him he was chro-nuts.
I felt tremendously human, with a desire to live, and with faults to keep me human. This odd humbling and grateful sense of humanity only came upon me when I was dropped like a heavy library book through the book deposit return slot to the past, where humans did inhumane things to each other. Why did I not feel the grasp of joyful humanity in my world, which tried so hard to be technologically perfect, thinking this would make us biologically perfect, emotionally whole and spiritually perfect as well? Or that all the technology would at least make us happy. Did our technological skills make surviving become so easy that we forgot how dear life is? I wished I could talk to someone back there about it, but Dr. Ford was only interested in the past, and Eleanor was only interested in the future, by way of the past.
I seemed to be the only one of the crew that had a sense of the present.
Right now the present was about to become history.
Paullinus, more a military man than even I had ever been, would make this happen.
Paullinus chose the proper place and the proper time. A gap between hills led to a small valley. Here he meant to meet Boudicca’s army. He would funnel them through the valley notch into an abattoir of Roman blades. Behind his troops, a thickly wooded area prevented outflanking or escape. In front, at the opening to the valley gap, an open plain lie before with no hope of cover.
The ancient historian Tacitus, who seemed like a mentor to me, and though absent from this stage played very much a leading role, recalled the two leaders’ words to rally their troops.
“I stand with you this day, not as a queen, but only as a woman,” Boudicca hollered in her hoarse voice, her Celtic speech dripping like honey. I could barely hear her from my vantage point near the woods, but what words I missed on the wind I had already read back in the lab, thousands of years from now.
Myths of the Modern Man Page 15