by Ilka Tampke
The first thing amiss was the position of the entrance. Stenwic’s gates faced the west. Our townships were always entered from the east, in alignment with Lleu’s midsummer rise. But we could afford no query that may alert the guards we were anything other than farmers wishing to see the queen about our tithes.
As we walked through the courtyard to Cartimandua’s hall, a watchman with bulging eyes and curling horns followed our every step. His face was wrought of hammered bronze and stared out from the front panel of the most ornate war chariot I had ever seen. This queen possessed wealth. I saw it in the strong and gleaming horses that whinnied in the yard behind the chariot. I saw it in the gold-inlaid doors of the hall, and the waist-high bronze pots that stood beside them.
In the immense size of the hall and the row of young horse skulls that lined its lintel, this royal courtyard displayed all the mystery and earth-hewn grandeur of the tribes, yet there was another power on show here. Something more flagrant, something that exalted the hand of its makers, its bearers, in ways our tribecrafts did not—the presence of Rome.
Caradog had sent a trusted rider from last night’s township to convey our arrival secretly to the tribequeen. A servant admitted us into the hall, and instructed us to await Cartimandua’s attendance. This also, was unusual. We would not normally enter a leader’s hall in the absence of the host.
We took our seats around a robust fire, leaving free the strong place. Caradog stretched and loosened his cloak. I looked around. The tall walls were skirted with shields as dazzlingly ornate as the chariot outside. From smoking pots poured a spicy, almost oily scent, unfamiliar to my nostrils.
Into this foreign and dizzying theatre strode a red-robed figure so tall, so awesome, that were I not certain I sat in Albion, I would have sworn was a creature of the Mothers’ realm.
‘My brother! My dog!’ Her voice boomed like a lowing heifer. ‘You brew trouble like an ale-smith! And you have the hide of a bullock walking into my township—how do you know there are not five legionaries waiting beyond the door? I could fulfil Scapula’s dearest wish with just one word to a rider…’
Caradog rose, smiling. ‘But then you would be denied the pleasure of watching what trouble I am yet to cause.’
She roared with laughter and they embraced warmly as kin.
‘Brother,’ she repeated more softly, clasping his shoulders as she looked at his face. ‘Last time I saw you, you had barely a sprout on your chest, yet now you are sought by the Emperor himself. And as handsome as a cockerel!’ She laughed again, then her eyes fell to me. ‘And who is this? Wait—do not tell!’ she said, clapping her palms. ‘I have heard of this trinket from the few remaining journeymen bold enough to attend me—this is she who is Mother-chosen, Albion’s last Kendra!’
‘Last?’ I questioned, although we had not yet greeted. I suspected she would forgive my directness.
She frowned through her smile. ‘Do you believe that Claudius will permit any such an idol to stand once he has laid claim to this isle?’ She cocked her head when I did not answer. ‘If you do you are a fool. The wheel has turned, Kendra, as surely as spring follows winter.’
I turned to Caradog. Would he permit such disrespect, even from someone who had chosen to step outside of the Mothers’ reach?
But he was smiling, enjoying the spectacle of our encounter.
‘The Romans will pull journey-law from our soil as our farmers pull the dead roots before new seeds are sown,’ she continued. ‘When my grandchildren are grey, the tale of the last Kendra will be a pretty fire-story, nothing more.’ Cartimandua walked towards me and grabbed my hand. ‘But I will still kiss your fingers, journeywoman, for it is no faint soul that might rise to the Kendra.’ She squashed her soft lips against the back of my hand.
Staggered, I could not speak.
‘I greet you,’ she said, rising to kiss my cheek. ‘I am Cartimandua, daughter of Trintovan. Skin to the horse.’ Beneath the thick, lily scent of her perfume, she emitted an animal pungency. She may have marked the treaty in Claudius’s tent, but her spirit rose up from the earth of the tribes.
I told her my name and bowed to her skin.
She sat down in the strong place with all the ease and bearing of one who had been born to rule. She was not fresh—perhaps five and twenty summers—but she was poised at the very crest of her succulence, like fruit softened just beyond perfect ripeness, its flesh only sweeter for the first musky traces of decay.
She wore a dress of blood red, its plainness serving only to highlight the weight of metal and gemstones that hung from her ears and throat. Her forehead was high, her hair dark as cherrywood and her black eyes both shrewd and merry.
I stared at her in all her shimmering, muscular heft. This woman, more than any other being I had yet encountered, possessed authority. I wanted to lie at her feet and drink from the cup of her.
Cartimandua called her servant from the doorway and bade him pour wine into cups made of glass.
‘Do you like my gift?’ said Caradog, accepting his wine. The armband lay on the bench between them.
‘Breathtaking,’ said Cartimandua. ‘To what do I owe the honour of such an offering?’
‘To kinship,’ said Caradog.
The tribequeen smiled and slid the band over her wrist beside several others. ‘Where is that sorry wretch of a Songman you always dragged around with you?’
‘Too precious to bring into these fallen lands.’
Cartimandua laughed and motioned to me. ‘And she is not?’
‘She is strong enough.’
‘Is his voice as sweet as I remember?’
‘Sweeter than any croaking Brigantes frog, I’ll wager!’ said Caradog.
Cartimandua chuckled again. Firelight flickered on her skin as we sipped the dark wine. ‘Riders tell me that the elders at Môn have crowned you high king.’
‘True,’ said Caradog. ‘And I come to you, sister, to ask you to acknowledge my title. And to promise your warriors to my war.’
I stifled a gasp. Could he not have dressed his intention in even the lightest of cloaks?
Cartimandua stared at him for a long time, unsmiling. ‘What is your purpose in this war?’ she asked.
‘Our sovereignty,’ he answered without pause. ‘The tribes of Albion were not born to be slaves.’
Gold bracelets tinkled as Cartimandua stretched out her arms. ‘Do I appear as a slave to you?’ She placed her hands back in her lap. ‘It seems that you are the ones dressed as workers in fields.’ She glanced at my threadbare dress.
‘It is but a costume,’ I said.
Ignoring me, she turned to Caradog. ‘I confess it surprises me,’ she said, ‘that you fight so desperately to be free of Rome. Were you not raised with all the privilege and comfort that came from their trade ships? I was there, Caradog. You could have made a fine Roman prince. You would have led a powerful life, and yet you lead a war against them. What turned you?’
‘I did not turn.’ For the first time she had roused him. ‘My father was Rome’s servant. He thought he could hold them back with tin or slaves or dogs. But I knew, even as a boy, that they would come for more whenever they chose—’
‘It was your actions that called them forth!’ Cartimandua said, herself now angered.
‘And it will be my actions that banish them.’
Cartimandua breathed deeply, air hissing through narrowed nostrils. ‘You are fuelled by pride,’ she said. ‘Your father—my uncle—was the mightiest of kings. Even now I model myself on his judgement.’ She sipped her wine. ‘But he shunned your views on the Empire, so now you oppose him against all reason.’
‘How little you know me and yet we were so close,’ said Caradog.
‘I know you yet. You would be sovereign to tribelands that are not your own. Tell me, what difference should I see between your desires and Rome’s?’
My body stiffened. The cascading whinny of a horse in the stable yard was loud in the silence.
Caradog
sat motionless. If her words had breached him, he did not reveal it. ‘She,’ he said, turning to me. ‘She is the difference. The Mothers have chosen me through their Kendra, and she is my testament.’
Cartimandua stared at me. ‘What does she say then?’
My heartbeat quickened. What could I say to reroute this torrent of a woman? My only choice was the truth. ‘We are born of this land. We are its kin.’
Her eyes narrowed and I saw the sharpness of her mind behind her splendour.
‘And this, my dear ones, is exactly the heart of it. Rome offers kinship through ties that are beyond land, beyond birth.’
‘Bondage?’ asked Caradog with a smirk.
‘Citizenship,’ said Cartimandua, savouring the word. ‘You can be made citizen of Rome without ever having set foot in the city. It is kinship unfettered by birth or land. It can grow without limit. The whole world could be granted citizenship of Rome without ever once sighting its walls. Does such power not intrigue you, Kendra? Brother? Do you not wish to dive in and bathe in it?’
I looked at Caradog. I knew such power did enthral him. But he said only, ‘Are you such a citizen, sister?’
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘It is bestowed to all who sign client treaties. And who wish it.’
‘So you relinquish your kinship to these lands?’ I said in disbelief.
‘Not at all. I am bound to two places at once!’ She laughed again. ‘Do not look so shocked. Such things are possible in the modern world.’
My thoughts spun. She spoke of an idea I had no understanding of, and yet had I not lived much of my life without knowledge of my birthplace? Did I not now live far from my home? Did not Caradog? What tied us to land we were not born to?
An answer stirred deep in my breast. But I could not yet hear it clearly.
Suddenly Cartimandua exhaled with a heavy breath and turned back to Caradog. ‘Brother,’ she said, softening. ‘I hate the fucking Roman maggots with all the juice in my body. They are guileless, soulless, dogs’ arseholes of men. But if we want to hold power in the tribes, then we must walk at their side. They have harnessed the gods of war to their armies, Caradog, and they will not be stopped.’
I glanced at my husband. Did she not know such words would only incite him? What strange power did she wield that he now remained so silent?
‘You claim that you are high king, and this your sovereign queen—’ she nodded towards me. ‘Well I am sovereign to this land. I seek no other ruler. And I will lie with whomever will strengthen my rule. Claudius is my chosen consort.’
Caradog tightened his grasp of his cup. ‘This cannot be the will of your tribe—’
‘Certainly for some of them it is not. My people are as various and changeable as seasons,’ Cartimandua answered. ‘It is a delicate dance I lead in binding them together, yet nothing is more important to me than keeping the Brigantes whole and within my command. You, of all people, must comprehend such a goal.’
‘Yet I do not pursue it by courting the violence of Rome.’
‘Caradog! You are like the last pup to open its eyes. Rome brings us peace! Before I made terms with Claudius, the petty tribes of the Brigantes were ever at the brink of war. Now there is stability in my tribe.’
This, at least, was true. We had witnessed the loyalty of her chiefs.
‘So, my answer is no,’ she continued. ‘I will not bow to you. I will not give you men.’
Caradog sipped his wine without expression. ‘How does it feel to know no love of Albion?’ he asked.
Cartimandua was unflinching at the insult. ‘Perhaps in my allegiance to Rome, I show a love of Albion greater than your own. Perhaps we must become as they are to preserve what we are.’
‘I pray that I will never be loved with such disloyalty,’ said Caradog.
My own thoughts were beginning to swim. Was there love of the tribes beneath the surface of her betrayal?
‘I love you as I have always loved you,’ said Cartimandua. ‘You have flame in your breast equal to no other tribesman’s. You are a strong king—’ she leaned towards him, ‘but Rome is stronger.’ She sat back, filling her wide, jewelled chest with a long breath.
Caradog straightened also, no less commanding for his absence of metal.
Cartimandua could not dent him. ‘I accept that you are now a willing subject to your captors,’ he said. ‘But there are still some chiefs in treaty-held Albion who will yet rise against Scapula. Aedic of the Iceni is mounting a rebellion.’
‘Oh, you have not heard?’ she said. ‘The Iceni are savagely defeated several days ago. They took up arms in the mountains of Coritania. But they were trapped within their own fortifications as the legion came, and were almost all slain. Scapula has installed Prasutagus as king and he rules with his second wife Boudicca. Aedic asked also for help from me, but I did not supply him.’
I startled as she gave another throaty laugh. ‘Tell me what lies beneath that costume, my wise Kendra!’ Despite our lack of agreement, Cartimandua was eager to show Caradog her home, gifted by Plautius in honour of their treaty.
When she led us through the gateway in a high stone wall, I stopped in shock.
Here, deep in the Mother-sung moorlands of northern Albion, stood a most startling testament to Roman ambition. Two snarling carved beasts, as large as bulls, stood sentry at a mighty doorway, each resting a clawed paw on a moon-shaped orb. Fur flowed from their stone heads, like rays of the sun.
Scores of white columns, like sapless trees, fronted a dwelling so absurdly wide it might house a whole clan without any feeling the heat of the centre fire.
Strangest of all was a collection of painted urns that lined the path along which we walked. From each sprouted a youngling tree of a species I had never seen, with foliage as sparse and silver as an old man’s head. By what class of plant-law did a tree grow from a vessel? For what purpose were they arranged so?
I remained quiet as Cartimandua led us into the puzzle-like passageways within the house and past square-cornered walls that seemed to shun any alignment to the solstice. I observed politely as she explained how the bronze dog heads in the bathing room spurted fire-warmed water with the pull of a lever, and the names of the unseasonably lush blossoms that grew within the very walls of the building.
But when Cartimandua took us into the room that held her shrine, and I saw a row of small clay figures in an exact human shape, I could no longer contain myself. I burst out laughing.
Even Cartimandua was forced to smile and shrug. ‘Such is the worship of those who see themselves as gods,’ she said.
‘What are they?’ I asked, picking up a white stone statue, carved into the perfect likeness of a robed young woman.
‘They are the Mothers, rendered by Roman craftsmen.’
I snorted. The rendering was entirely obvious, there was nothing to decode, to unknot, nothing to lead the mind’s eye to what lay beneath the surface. Were the Romans so unseeing, that they must force our spirits into their own image to know them?
We walked back to the interior garden within and stood by a pool dug into the floor where the Mothers had not intended it. Everywhere I looked, there was a bending of nature as if I were in a dream, or a festival of inversion where the fool was queen, and the queen made subject. Everywhere was gleaming stone, glass tiles, and polished metal, all in honour of nothing more than human glory and conquerors’ pride. I sat on a bench and accepted a cup of elder wine from a servant.
If this was the Romans’ grandeur, then I saw only their weakness. They sought to make their greatness visible.
But what was truly powerful would always be hidden.
‘Do you think you can turn her?’ I whispered as I washed my face at a basin in the guest hut.
There was scarcely time for us to speak before Caradog and I were expected back at the hall to take bread and meat with the Stenwic council. Cartimandua had warned us, as we left her, that the gathering would be neither lavish nor well-attended, or else the Roman procurato
r might hear that she had hosted a feast and he would demand to know which visiting chief had sat at her fire. But she had sent a servant woman to our hut, bearing an armful of dresses and neckpieces I was bidden to choose from for the evening.
Her foster-brother was delivered no fine clothing.
‘No,’ he answered as he rested on his bed. ‘Even as a child, she wanted the brightest jewel, and the most tender joint at the feasts. I have always known that she thirsted for greatness. I did not know how rotten she would become with its attainment.’
‘Was she always so…’ I searched for the word, ‘…ferocious?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, but she has been enflamed since I last saw her. She is made volatile, like any wild creature, by the bars of its cage.’ He lay back on the bed with a groan.
I dried my face and sat beside him. ‘Are you so surprised by her answer?’
‘Yes…no.’ He rubbed his eyes. We were both weary from travel. ‘I am surprised she would allow the Iceni to fall unaided. Their alliance has stood since before I was born. I am surprised that the infection of Romanitas runs so deep in her.’ He spat the word, so often quoted from the governor’s speeches, that described the mindstate, the very consciousness, that the Empire sought to spread. ‘We were foolish to have come,’ he said.
‘No we weren’t,’ I answered. ‘Do you not always claim that we must know our enemy?’
‘Surely she is not yet that.’
I did not answer. He stretched out beside me. ‘Does she dissuade you from your purpose?’ I asked softly.
‘If I faltered at every barrier, Ailia, I would have long ago been sent to Annwyn. She thinks the Empire is unstoppable, yet four legions cannot catch the single man they seek above any other. My purpose is unwavering.’
‘What of her…citizenship?’
He scoffed. ‘Honey to coat the sourness of enslavement. She can suck it. We will win this war through our bonds with our land.’