by E. Knight
I nodded, willing her with my fierce glare to leave me. Ria dropped her gaze, resentful, and left us.
“Apologies, Princess,” Andecarus started, but I cut him off.
“There is nothing to apologize for.” And without looking back, I left him in the middle of the clearing, wishing I’d taken the leap and kissed him. Because then maybe I would have known one gentle kiss in my life instead of violence, and love in my soul instead of a black heart of hatred.
KEENA
“We may have lost the battle, but Rome has not beaten us. We have fought them and won before. We will do so again.”
It was these words from my mother that roused me from my herb-and-mead-induced stupor. The Great Hall was still mostly dark. A thin strip of light sneaked through the door, and a single torch was lit nearby. The brazier had banked at some point, but the heat had been retained inside.
I rolled over, wiping dried crust from the corners of my lips and eyes and gazed up to see Mother arguing with her sister, as I so often argued with mine.
“It’s far too soon. You’ll break the stitches. And you may yet come down with fever.”
Mother grunted. “If the Romans come, and they will, they must not find me or my daughters here.”
My aunt’s hands on her hips fell to her sides. “We can hide you. You’re not yet well enough to travel.”
Mother struggled to sit up, managing to plant her strong feet on the ground. “It is pointless to argue with me, Sister. We are leaving today, and that’s final. As we speak, the Romans could be moments away from discovering our whereabouts.”
Catching me awake, Mother made a motion toward me. “Get a crust to break your fast. Wake your sister. We leave soon.” Hope alighted inside me. Perhaps the rest, the work of the healers, and some food had done her good. Just days before I’d thought us beaten, thought mother’s death to be imminent, but she seemed to be rallying. Perhaps Andraste was working to mend her mortal wounds.
Our aunt’s tribe provided us with a cart, a mostly fit pony, five sacks full of provisions, and several skins of mead. They gave us linens and a salve to help keep Mother’s wound clean and plenty of fur pelts to keep us warm. Again, hope sparked. We’d lost so much, but maybe there was something worth grasping on to.
We ambled outside, Mother’s arms over Sorcha’s and our aunt’s shoulders. We gingerly settled her in the back of the cart, but even soft treatment couldn’t take away her pride. Mother sat tall, pushed our hands aside when we tried to cover her with blankets. She was not yet too weak to cover herself, she said as she studied her sister who held out a shield to her. “We must learn to live with it or make a change. And I’m not taking your shield. Mother gave you this.”
“Take it. You will need it more than I,” my aunt said. And with that, she argued no more. She pressed her lips together, a hard expression on her pretty features, and watched us ride away.
Would I ever see her again? I doubted it, though I desperately wanted to.
I climbed onto Andecarus’ horse, whispering and smoothing my hands over the mare’s red mane, as I’d seen Sorcha do. I let my sister take the lead with the cart. As we left the hill fort, I kept turning back, watching our kin grow smaller and smaller in size until they disappeared altogether.
Despite having the cart, pony, and a horse, we seemed to travel slower than when we’d had only one mount and the two of us walking. Perhaps it was that the sound of our transport was so loud that we could not hear anything surrounding us, so we stopped often to listen, or maybe it was that when we went through particularly sopping grounds, we sought a different path as to not leave our tracks—which was nearly impossible given the icy rain fell once more in droves. We were lucky we didn’t get the wheels of our cart stuck in the ground.
We were nearly always wet and always cold, and fires at night did not last because the storms seemed only to grow rather than abate. We huddled beneath our furs in the back of the cart we’d led off the road, seeking shelter beneath the trees. A swath of wool, fitted to stay in place above us, served as a roof of sorts. The nights were miserable. The days only slightly better. Were the gods weeping for all of our people lost upon the battlefield? Could they even remember us with the Druids gone?
We carried on that way for three days. Together, my sister and I tended Mother’s wounds, we fed her, gave her mead to drink. We cared for each other, too, reminding each other to eat, drink, sleep.
My hard-found flash of hope faded because fever pounced on my mother despite all our efforts. Her skin burned, her wound leaked, and she faded from lucidity to muttering delirium. She woke from dreams ready to do battle with Romans that weren’t there.
The hope I’d had for her healing, for her strength that had shown itself at the Cornovii hill fort, was fading. My mother was going to die. Were we to die with her?
I had thought I wanted to die.
I wasn’t so certain anymore.
SORCHA
When I was small, my father would lift me into the air and toss me about.
We played rough; we loved hard.
His strong, capable arms would encircle me, and I felt protected from everything. Just as I knew Mother would swing her sword to keep me safe, I knew Father would sever the head of any enemy who dared touch his lucky princess. Yes, he honored the Roman edicts, but he was first and foremost our protector.
I knew that one day the Iceni tribe would depend on me. But I’d not expected that day to happen in the winter of my sixteenth year.
Mother’s cries wrenched the air, startling me awake. The sun rose with the piercing wail coming from her sleeping chamber at the back of the Great Hall. I clambered from bed, my heart lurching, stomach burning, and in my gut—I knew.
He was dead.
My father, the Iceni King, was gone. Though he’d been ill for a long time, it was still shocking. We'd hoped he was on the mend and then . . . nothing.
Why did so many die in the night? As though they wished to kiss us and deliver us with sweet dreams before taking their leave of the world. We drifted into sleep, and while we thought only to say good-bye until the morning, we were, in fact, bidding them farewell in this life.
He looked peaceful in death. The lines of concern that had creased his brow, eyes, and cheeks for as long as I could remember had smoothed. They would not let me near Father, nor Mother. I could see her clutching his body, great sobs racking her form. And then, just as suddenly, she stopped. As though someone had cut off her breath.
She stood, smoothed her skirts, and wiped at the tears on her face. She placed coins over his eyes, and then she walked out of the Great Hall, pushing past the guards, past the roundhouses, toward our sacred grove. Mother, ever the priestess of Andraste, would pray for her husband, the father of her children, the king of her people. She would offer up a sacrifice to the gods that they take him gently along their path, that they protect her people from hardship, and bargain for the future of her daughters.
I wanted to follow her, watch her speak to her goddess, watch her make the sacrifice. To study her. Because my mother fascinated me. There were moments she was everything a mother could be, washing my face and kissing my wounds. But there was another part of her, an untouchable part that made me want to stand in her shadow and bask in her light.
Keena pressed her waifish body beside mine and looked up with huge tears in her eyes, spilling over to stream down her cheeks. Awkwardly, I patted her hair. She let me, but I could see she wanted to rush forward, to drape herself over our father’s body and check his breathing just in case someone had made a mistake.
“Go to him,” I said.
Keena nodded, and as she approached, another figure darted from the darkness to kneel beside him.
Ria.
Another of father’s daughters.
Keena stilled abruptly and wavered enough I feared she would fall. For one brief moment, Keena reached for Ria’s hand as if she were our sister in truth before one o
f the slaves tugged Ria away to make room for the legitimate daughter alone. I’d never before sensed the wrong in this—that Ria, because she was a product of an indiscretion, because she was a slave, was never thought to have the same needs of her father as Keena and I. And until now, it hadn’t really mattered. But this girl, this dark-haired slave, she deserved as much as anyone to say good-bye to her father.
And yet, if I said anything . . .
I frowned, gazing about the darkened room, shadows bouncing where the light from torches and the brazier didn’t reach. What did I care? Mother was not in the room to reprimand me, nor to order Ria back.
I stepped toward the girl whose shoulders trembled, though her jaw was tight. She wasn’t allowing herself to sob outright. That I understood as I bit my tongue and gritted my teeth. I grabbed her hand, wanting to pull her to the other side of my father not occupied by Keena, but she resisted.
“I need you, Ria,” I said. Blame me for it. Let them think I cannot go forward without leaning on your shoulders.
Ria’s eyes connected with mine, and I nodded, grim-faced, hoping she would understand my meaning.
I don’t know if she did or if she simply followed my orders, but she placed her arm around me and led me forward, an awkward sight I’m certain given I was so much bigger.
We knelt together, praying as our people lamented and off in the distance somewhere, Mother’s calls to Andraste swirled on the wind.
It is no small occasion to bury a king.
For days before the funeral, people arrived to pay their respects. Even the oft-gossiped Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes came from the north to honor my father, though she departed before the funeral pyre was lit. Mother kindled that flame on a cold winter's morning, me at her right hand and Keena at her left. All around us, the bright cloaks and carved torcs of our people mingled with the pristine armor of Roman soldiers and the white togas of the procurator and his officials. I wished the Romans could have taken themselves away like Cartimandua. I wanted to grieve for my father, not be stared at by greedy Roman eyes. One of the centurions, a rodent-faced man named Helva, had been leering at me throughout all the ceremonies. We’d yet to speak beyond a simple introduction, and I hoped I’d never have to speak to him again. I didn’t like the way he looked at me. I pushed my chin up and stared him down through the smoke of my father's pyre, willing him to show me respect, but it only made his hungry smile more pronounced.
“Do not speak to them. Do not look at them. Stay clear of the Romans, Daughters. Let me be the only one of us to speak to them,” Mother had warned when the procurator and the rest of the Romans first arrived.
Dutifully, though begrudgingly, I ceased staring down the centurion, returning my eyes to my father’s body.
We watched the flames engulf the great king. Bathed and dressed and presented to all as much a Roman as the Roman guests attending, the only difference a bright Iceni plaid cloak draped over his frame.
Though Mother stood tall, expressionless, I could feel her tremble every so often beside me, and I knew it was not the quiver of a woman mourning her husband, but rather rage for the injustice she saw being caused. Father had insisted on a funeral pyre because it was the Roman way. But it felt all wrong. Too Romanized. Mother worried that Father would not be accepted into the next world, and so she hoped that burying his ashes with all his worldly possessions would appease the gods.
We both had our doubts.
The great king was reduced to a pile of ashes, which were gathered in great iron cauldrons, clouds of his burned body swirling up with the wind, refusing to be tamed or constrained to a tiny vessel. Flecks of his bones landing on those who stood near.
The burial ground had been dug near our sacred grove, accompanied by a sacrifice of a lamb, which would be buried with his ashes. Mother invoked Andraste. Father’s great sword was laid out beside his shield. On top of his wood-and-iron shield, my mother placed his gold crown.
When his ashes were placed beside his weaponry, she gripped my hand tight enough that I knew I was the one holding her up. She loved my father so much—I did not think she would ever love another. Her responsibilities now were to the tribe, to our people, to Keena and me. We would support her in her grief, and she would advise us.
If the Romans would only honor my father’s will. I felt tension seep through her as she watched the Roman procurator leave the burial early, heading for the Great Hall. We smiled, tight-lipped, as the funeral continued, each of us wondering, what next?
Midday had passed by the time the funeral was done. Trailing back to the Great Hall from my father's grave, I saw the rush of white togas. Bright armor. Roman slaves.
The procurator had taken the opportunity to begin ransacking our home. My feet rooted in place, and I wavered. Keena rushed forward, Ria on her heels. Two swift arms held out by Duro stopped all of us from moving forward.
But no one stopped Mother.
It is now legend through all the tribes: how she argued with the procurator, how he ordered her stripped, how a stake was thrust into the ground, and she was bound to it. It was the seed of her legend, that moment—but all I saw, horrified and furious, was my mother naked and exposed.
That greedy-eyed centurion named Helva stood center, gaze riveted hungrily on my mother’s body. “Harlot queen,” he snickered.
Roman guards formed a half circle around her punishment, their swords drawn, blocking anyone who might try to stop them. Our people wailed and cursed.
“They will not dare flog her,” I whispered frantically, praying that someone would wake me from this living nightmare. “They will not dare.”
But the lash descended.
My hand flew to my mouth as the line of blood opened across my mother's white back. I stood there, helpless, motionless, stunned. The procurator strode away, and Helva wielded the whip mercilessly. Three more angry stripes marred her flesh.
I reached for Duro, gripping his arm. He, too, stood transfixed.
“Harlot queen. Iceni bitch—” Every epithet from Helva's mouth was followed by a stroke of the lash. The sound of leather slicing through the air and tearing across her beautiful, strong back jarred me from my silence.
I screamed, “Why?”
No one answered me. Everyone’s tongues seemed to have been cut from their mouths. I looked for the procurator—the only Roman with authority to command this, or stop it—but he was riding away as though a creature from the depths of the earth were chasing him.
I tried to run forward to help my mother, but Duro grabbed me tight. Keena and Ria cowered behind us, clinging to each other as Duro whispered in my ear, “No! They will only punish you, too, if you go to her.”
“Mother!” I shrieked. This could not be happening. They could not be humiliating her this way. She was Queen of the Iceni. And she was my mother. “Cease this at once!” I cried with all the authority of the lucky princess, the ones the gods themselves blessed at birth. “Do not lay another mark on her body!”
I broke free of Duro, and then the voices sounded as though they’d been waiting for just that moment to speak again.
“Grab her!” one of the guards shouted.
“Not my daughters!” Mother’s fierce voice bellowed out above the rest. “Not my daughters!”
Ria grabbed Keena’s hand and started to run, but I could see them being circled by Roman guards, their shrieks of fear overriding the blood pounding in my ears.
I grabbed for the dagger at the belt of one legionary, freeing it before he could stop me. As the iron hilt grazed my palm, I knew it was a bad idea to take it. But I was powerless to stop. Incapable of doing anything beyond trying to protect my mother, my queen. A warrior’s first duty.
And so I rushed Helva, who was still mercilessly lashing my mother’s back. The sounds of shouting, the whistling of the leather through the air, blurred together with the pounding of my own heart. I stabbed at Helva, but violent hands grabbed me from behind, wrenchin
g me backward.
The dagger was twisted from my grasp, slicing into the soft pads of my fingertips.
I ground my teeth, lunging in the direction of the men who held me. The pure animalistic will to survive roared to life within me. Chaos had erupted everywhere I could see. Screaming women clutched their children; our warriors lunged for the Roman soldiers only to be beaten to the ground. I saw Duro and Andecarus vanish into the Great Hall, trying to drive off a centurion dragging a woman by the hair.
“Get your hands off the princesses!” Mother roared, her beautiful, hard face turned over her shoulder, fear and pain etched onto her features. “Sorcha! No!”
“Princesses?” A Roman smirked, pinching my breast painfully. “Property of the emperor now.”
I bucked, head jerking backward, connecting with someone’s face, only to have my arms wrenched upward, eliciting an unintended cry from me. They’d not hear me cry out again.
“You’ll all be executed.” Helva stopped flogging my mother, turning to glare at me. He seemed to carry more weight than the rest as he stepped closer, glowering fiercely. I hated him. Hated everything he stood for.
I spit in his face, watching the spray land on his cheek, and bared my teeth. Helva snarled and wrenched back his arm, slapping me hard, leaving the copper taste of blood on my tongue.
My vision blurred.
“I’ll teach you never to insult me again,” he growled, wiping at the spittle on his cheek.
He turned to his men, his arms raised to garner more attention. “We have a law against executing virgins. We’ll have to remedy that barrier.”
A resounding round of bloodthirsty calls answered. They chanted his name with raucous approval. “Helva! Helva! Helva!”
Pain still radiated where he’d struck me. I could feel the skin swelling and knew I’d be bruised. This man sought to humiliate me, but I did not fear him. Romans might be cruel, but they wouldn’t defile a queen's daughters.