by Henry Treece
Marcus sat down upon the grass and put his head between his knees, the way soldiers are taught when they feel faint from marching. He felt her power coming down over his neck and back, so he sat up again and tried to smile as though he had not felt it at all. He said to Tigidius, ‘Did you hear someone addressing us, centurion?’
But Tigidius did not answer, and when Marcus looked again she was still there, her face stiff under its ochre mask, her hair all starry and staring like the rays of the sun with its yellow clay dressing. But most of all that made him wonder was the great eye painted in the middle of her forehead, as though it glowed and pulsed at him. He put his hand across his own eyes to avoid it, for it seemed to send off sparks of fire that went into his head. He said, his eyes covered, ‘I only know that there is a beast abroad now. That good men have died for nothing, and children too.’
The cold voice came back at him again: ‘All men die, Roman. And in a land that knows old Nero’s rule, children are fortunate if they see light, much less grow old enough to play one game of hunting through their fathers’ woods.’
Marcus got up and yawned like the dark-skinned tribesmen. He tried to stretch his arms but suddenly found that the pain in his shoulder was more than he had thought. So he dropped his arms and slapped his right thigh with his good hand and said, ‘It cannot be done, woman. You are trying to do what cannot be done. Look, let me explain to you: there is only one world, and over that world there is only one master - Rome. Yes, yes, I understand, you bridle at that; but it is true. We all have something to bridle at - I have my sore shoulder and a dead father at this time. You have a dead husband and a grievance against Decianus Catus, that dolt of a Procurator who broke open your family-chests and took the treasures. But it is true. I tell you, it is…’
He was so taken up by his own tired words that he did not see the queen’s frown, or her signal to the dark runners behind the cart. But he felt their hands on him, and felt their hard feet kicking into his face as they swung him on to a pole like a caught bear. Once as they carried him along, he glanced sideways and saw that Tigidius was on a pole as well. This puzzled him, because poor Tigidius had not even opened his mouth to speak to this strange savage queen.
Then a man who walked beside the pole bent over gently with a polished flint axe in his hand and said, ‘Sleep well, youth. If you were my son I would he proud of you. What a shame you are a Roman.’
Then the man did something and Marcus went flying among the gold and silver stars.
And when the stars had come to rest again and the dark blue heavens had lightened to a misty grey, he opened his eyes and looked about him.
He was still in the depths of the forest, with the boughs so woven over his head that they seemed like a thatched roof. On the ground, among the dried grasses and the ferns, fires burned. It was night and owls called from away in the trees, hunting for other things than Romans.
He was sitting against a fallen oak-bole and Tigidius was beside him to the right, running his tongue round his lips as though he marched in Libya under the sun there. Marcus looked again and saw that now Cynwas was with them again, bound as they were and sitting on his left.
The old man wearing the stag-mask and the antlers sat before them, beyond the wood fire, muttering to himself and touching a skin drum with tired fingers.
Marcus called out, ‘Hey, old man, where is the waterskin? My lips are cracking. Where is the water-skin?’
He had to say it many times, and when the old man noticed him, Marcus saw that the eyes which glared from the stiff mask were as blind as flint.
Tigidius said painfully to Marcus, ‘I have tried a score of times while you were asleep. He is not in this world, that old man. His heart is in the drums and in what they say - whatever that may be. I do not understand the tongue his fingers talk on the skins. But we shall get nothing from him, I can tell you.’
Marcus shook his head to clear it then said, ‘I would like a cup of clear cold water, friend. How strange life is when a man wants no more than that!’
The centurion looked away. He said softly, ‘I do not think we shall have even that much before they impale us. I cannot see an army on the march wasting water. Frankly, if I were in command I would not use good water on such as we are.’
Marcus said, ‘That is because you are a soldier, and only a soldier, old one. But these are woodland tribes and field tribes. They are not true fighting-men. It is worth another try.’
But before he could call to the antler man again, Cynwas came awake and said to him, ‘Be quiet, you fool. I have heard that they have got my sister here with them. Please do nothing to make them angrier than they are. I beg you.’
Marcus turned round painfully in his thongs and looked at Cynwas. It was hardly the man he had known before. He had been cruelly treated by the Iceni when his friends had made their forlorn run through the woods.
Marcus bowed his head. ‘I beg your pardon, brother,’ he said. ‘I will be quiet. Why, we will drink a barrel of water later on, when this is over.’
He laughed but Cynwas did not join him. Nor did the centurion, who found that he had lost two teeth on the right side from the kicks he had taken in that pole-ride through the forest.
[15]
Under the Oak Boughs
There was a sudden stirring throughout the woodland, as though all the trees were sighing and groaning and shifting their deep roots to gather as a great army and to come to a meeting before battle. Or as though all the creatures - the foxes and wolves, the deer, the sullen bears, the wild dogs, the sly lynx - were on the move, seeking pasture or berries or prey.
Marcus felt the hair standing up on his neck. His eyes darted to left and right, and at first he saw nothing in the dimness of the thickly-columned woodland. Then, like the figures in some horrible vision, lit by torches, he saw what was coming into the trodden glade where he and the others lay bound.
Men in the stiff painted leather masks of hawks and eagles, their feathered cloaks floating behind them, came first, flapping their wings and shrieking out as though they poised for the swoop. Then came devil dancers, their thin bodies daubed with white clay, their faces hidden by long shield-like masks of dark wood. Behind them swayed forty young men, dressed as for war, swinging bone bull-roarers in a surge that pained the ears. They came on like men in a trance. Then came the young girls, their long hair white with ashes, their faces blackened with soot, their eyes ringed round with blood-red. Each one carried a skull in her left hand and a short spear in her right; and with every step each one beat on the skull with the spear-blade, as though on a drum, setting up a ghastly clacking counterbeat to the bull-roarers.
Tigidius said grimly to the Tribune, ‘For this we Romans have wasted our lives over a hundred years. Only for this.’
Marcus drew in a deep breath, the pain of his arm stabbing at him again, and said, ‘They have gone back to the childhood of their people. They have forgotten all we have tried to teach them. If anyone is to blame it would be two fat men - called Decianus Catus and Nero. Now we are reaping the crop they sowed, and the bread it makes needs some chewing.’
Cynwas was sitting with his head bowed and his eyes shut. His shoulders and legs were shuddering. His lips were moving all the time, like those of a man praying to be guarded against evil spirits.
Then all at once Marcus saw what came next, and turned towards the Celt and said, ‘Look, brother. Look!’
Cynwas raised his head and opened his eyes. Less than a hundred paces away, well lit by torches, six young men dressed in green cloth and wearing headgear made of oak and alder and ash leaves carried a wattle-hurdle on their shoulders. Sitting on it, her arms and legs bound with thongs, was Aranrhod. Cynwas saw the ash on her head and the black streaks down her face. He saw the white linen shift they had dressed her in, even the Roman medallion that still hung round her slender neck.
He said, ‘No! No! Look, Marcus, they have chosen her for the sacrifice! They cannot do it. They cannot do it.’
The young girl’s face was calm and showed no terror at what lay before her. She too was like someone in a deep sleep. Her eyes were closed and their lids stained a deep blue. Marcus had trouble in recognizing the little girl who had tricked him so gaily in the wood when he had ridden in with his squadron.
He said to Cynwas, ‘Take courage, brother. They are only trying to make us afraid. She will come out of it.’
But he knew that he was like a man who whistles to keep his heart up in the dark. As for Tigidius, he was looking away now, trying to shut the scene from his mind.
Then suddenly all stopped; all the prancing and roaring and clacking, all the wailing and groaning and deep sighing. The forest glade was silent again. And the many dancers seemed to fade to left and right, so as to leave a space along the central aisle for some great one to travel down.
It was the queen on the cart, dressed as they had last seen her, but now surrounded on every side by her counsellors, wearing deerhide robes slung over their shoulders like Roman togas.
‘Look, Tigidius,’ Marcus whispered. ‘They even have wreaths of laurels on their heads. We have taught them something, after all - though to see what they make of our teaching is enough to bring tears to the eyes.’
The centurion stared before him, but did not answer.
Then the horns began to howl, from somewhere deep in that dark forest. And when their howling had grown almost unbearable, they stopped all at once. And Boudicca stood upright in her chariot and called out in a dreamer’s voice, ‘See, we have come at last; and we have brought the offering for the green gods. We have brought the one who will speak our words to Diana the Maiden, when we have set her free of the body that hampers her pleadings now.’ Then the bull-roarers started and the white skulls began to clatter. Cynwas dropped his head and tried to shut out the sound.
Boudicca spoke again, above the din, and called out, ‘Have you anything to say, Aranrhod the Blessed? Have you a message to leave to kith and kin, my child?’
Now Cynwas looked up, his eyes fixed on the young girl. But Aranrhod did not even open her eyes. She shook her head gently from right to left and then sat as still as an image.
‘See.’ called the queen, ‘she is ready for the journey. She knows no kith and kin on earth, now that she has been chosen. Light the fires, set the stakes in the earth. Let the young one fare forth while her heart is with Diana.’
Now some of the women ran forward, bringing stones to set in a circle, while others flung brushwood and ferns into a great pile in the middle of the stones. Then four counsellors brought ash stakes, sharpened at one end, and set them in a ring about the fire.
Tigidius said sharply, ‘This has gone too far. This is an insult to us all. It cannot be allowed.’
Cynwas was still frozen. His lips moved but no words came from him. Then all at once he turned his head towards Marcus, and the expression on his face was the saddest the Roman had ever seen.
The Tribune struggled at his bonds and tried to stand upright, but the tough deerhide dragged him down again. He shouted out, as though he was. back on the parade ground at Lindum, ‘Stop this, you barbarians. This has gone too far.’
A man wearing the eagle-mask with its curved bronze beak ran forward and thrust a short stabbing-spear at the Roman’s face. He did not flinch, and before the eagle-dancer could do him harm, the queen called out again, ‘Wait a while, my people. The gallant Roman wishes to speak a prayer over the girl before we send her to the green goddess.’
Marcus sat back and tried to stop the shuddering of his limbs. Then in a clear voice, so that all could hear, he said, ‘Boudicca, Lady of Victories, the prayer I wish to make is to you and not to the green goddess.’
The forest glade was suddenly heavy with murmurings, as though some wrong had been done, some mistake made in the ritual. But the queen held up the spear in her right hand and all was quiet again. Then, in a gentler voice, she cried out, ‘Take the Roman to my bower. Let him speak to me face to face, alone, if he dares. Let him make his prayer as a man should in the secret darkness.’
She turned her cart about and went back among the clustered folk. Then, before he had seen the last of her, Marcus was lifted up bodily and carried away, as roughly as though he were a sack of grain.
They bumped him painfully among the oak boughs, but at last, beyond the light of the torches, he felt that they were going under some sort of doorway, then down into the darkness. Everything now had a dank scent as though they were in a low cavern.
And suddenly they flung him down on to the hard rock. He felt damp mosses against his face, and the chill of water by his feet. And then for a time all was silent, except for the trickling sound that seemed to come down the wall away to his left.
He lay a while then said, ‘Is there anyone here with me?’
And after a space, the queen’s voice said softly, ‘Yes, Marcus. There is one here with you who will be in your mind all your life however long you live. And that might be one hour, or fifty years.’
He said, ‘Why are we in the darkness, lady. Do you fear to face Rome?’
He heard her laugh, about three paces away from him. Then she answered, ‘I am beyond fear, Marcus. Consider what has happened to my family - I have no more to lose. Then consider what is to happen to those who stand against my great army. I have all to gain. So, I do not fear.’
He said again, ‘Why are we in the darkness, my lady?’
Her voice was even gentler than before. She said, ‘I am pleased that you still call me “My lady”. You have not forgotten the little lesson I taught you in that sunken lane when you were a child. And Rome will not forget the lesson I shall teach her now, and Rome is not a child.’
Marcus sighed with weariness and said for the third time, ‘Why are we in the darkness, woman?’
This time Boudicca answered almost before the question was asked. She said, ‘Because I do not wish to hurt your pride, Tribune. That is all. In the darkness, words can be said that would not come to the lips in the light. You are a proud young man, just as you were a proud boy - ah, I saw it even then, and I would have loved to have taken you to be my youngest brother at that time….’ She paused a while, then went on quickly, ‘Look, Tribune, I am speaking to you in confidence now, as great ones should. My folk are simple field-diggers and herdsmen, they cannot understand what great ones must suffer. For them all is black or white, winter or summer, pain or joy. But we who rule others know that life is not so simple and yet we have to make it seem so to their weak wits.’ Marcus groaned as the damp took hold on his wounded shoulder. The queen said, ‘We must see to that arrow-wound. The flint barbs that the older tribes use are not clean. They are dipped in unclean things and so, however shallow the wound, bring sickness.’
He said quite firmly, ‘We are not here to talk of arrow-wounds, Lady. Say what is in your mind.’
After he had spoken, he felt almost afraid to have raised his voice against this queen.
But her own voice came back as calmly as before. She said, ‘Marcus, all has its season - crops, fruit-trees, empires. Every man’s life has its time of growth, of fullness, of decay. Rome is dying fast, dying on her feet like a drought-starved old cow. This has become plain to me in the last weeks. Once I had the courage to move out from Venta your legions could not stop me - yet, for years we have thought they could stop the sun from crossing the sky if they wished! It is strange! The great Ninth Legion, your own legion, has run screaming back into its kennel, half of its men stark. The Second sits shivering at Glevum, under the coward, Poenius Postumus, afraid to move an inch outside the camp walls. The Fourteenth and Twentieth are stuck in Mona, or in the hills of the west among savages, and could not get across the land to me even if they had eagles’ wings!’
Marcus said drily, ‘Suetonius could make them cover a hundred miles in three days, Lady. And in a week, they could be tearing at your throat. They would show no mercy, Lady. Of that you can take my word.’
He sensed that she h
ad come closer to him. He even thought he felt the little draught of air as her skirt brushed by him. She said, above him now, ‘In a week, my Tribune, I shall have done all my work. They would come back to a desert land. They would come back only to drag their weary, starving bodies down to the shore to look for ships. But, my young counsellor, there would be no ships. We should have burned them all. Then how would your brave Fourteenth and Twentieth go on, with no ships? Would they swim across to Gaul or Germany? Or would your fat emperor fly out on his gilded wings and waft them across the seas to safety?’
Marcus thought a while, then said, ‘At the moment you are in a strong position, Boudicca. But…’
Her voice was sharp now. ‘Do not use my name,’ she said, ‘until you have the right to. Only my chieftains have that right.’
The Tribune held back the words he had meant to say. Instead, he asked as simply as he could, ‘Do you expect me to become one of your chieftains, Lady?’ He tried to make it sound as bad as he could.
Her answer came back in a very low voice. She said.
‘Yes, Marcus. Of course you will do as I say. You will forget Rome, because Rome no longer matters, Rome is no longer alive in this Province. But you will forget Rome for a better reason than that - because if you do not join me now, I shall soon have you taken back to the glade, where you will see Aranrhod go to the goddess Diana. We shall place you beside the stakes so that you will miss nothing, I can promise you that, Tribune. And what you see will stay with you all your life, because you will know, as you hear her screaming, that with one word you could have saved her from that suffering. I can tell you, friend, it is not a pleasant thing that happens, and few of us who have seen it, we of the noble folk, ever forget it.’
