Song for a Dark Queen

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  And when I looked back from my place among the warriors close about her, I saw the War Host like a bee-swarm following the Queen, a dark spreading stain of men and beasts and thundering wheels reaching back and back towards the lumbering ox-wagons of the rear, where the Princess rode with the Queen’s women in the great Royal Wagon with its high roof of painted and tasselled horsehides. But I could not see the wagons, they were so far behind, and the summer dustcloud rising and thickening over all.

  And I felt the slap of my old sword against my thigh. And I felt the harp in her bag behind my shoulder stir in her sleep, ready to wake and sing. Hush, my harp, for the time is not yet, for singing; and bright dark and terrible the song will be.

  To the Lady Julia Procilla, at the

  House of the Three Walnut Trees in

  Massilia, Province of Southern

  Gaul. From Tribune Gneus Julius

  Agricola, on the Staff of the

  Governor of Britain. Greeting.

  Dearest and most honoured Mother, I grow doubtful as to whether any of my letters written from our forward base camp at Segontium will have reached you. All things are somewhat uncertain here, including the post. Therefore I make brief repeat of what was in them.

  I reported for duty here at Deva, to find the Governor just about to march with the Twentieth and part of the Fourteenth Legions in to the far west, to subdue the native priesthood who are the heart and core of tribal resistance to our rule, and who had withdrawn into their last stronghold, the Island of Môn, off the mountainous west coast of this Province. Môn, it seems, is also the chief granary of much of western Britain and therefore better under our control. We were away something over three months, chiefly spent in building our base camp between the mountains and the sea, and making ready such boats and rafts as we could for the crossing. Mother, you should have seen that crossing! The boats served for those who could not get over in any other way, but the rest of us had to swim for it. To be sure, the Straits are only a mile wide, but the current runs fast there. The Friezian auxiliaries made the best showing, being mighty swimmers and well used to estuary work in their own land; and they formed the vanguard. The cavalry came next, each man fully armed and swimming beside his horse; the Staff also, which of course included me and Felix, who is reputedly the ugliest horse in three legions, but has a heart to match Bukephalus. (Come to think of it, with a name like that, Bukephalus was probably ugly, too.) And to his everlasting credit, the Governor himself. Paulinus is a hard man; not much mercy in him, I think; but he never asks any of his men to do what he will not do himself Therefore there is little grumbling among the ranks who serve under him.

  Well, we made the crossing, stirred up our hornets’ nest, and met a great, and I must say valiant resistance, with heavy fighting on the landing beach. The warriors in a kind of frenzy, almost as though they had taken aconite or the like, cried on by the Druids, many of whom fought among them. Dark-robed furies who seemed to be women, too. It isn’t good, finding a woman at your throat, and knowing you have to kill her or she will kill you. I know, I’ve done it. I wonder if I’ll ever make a soldier. Anyhow, wefinished the job, wiped out the Druid stronghold and hacked down the sacred groves, and left Mon desolate and full of dead behind us. Paulinus says it’s like cauterizing a sore or burning out a hornets’ nest. And here we are back in Deva.

  There were no letters waiting for me here, which is what chiefly makes me wonder if you have received mine. The posts, as I say, are very uncertain, and everybody is looking anxiously for letters from home.

  The trumpet has just sounded for watch-changing, and I am on duty. It is good for one’s self-esteem to be chosen by the Governor for his Tenting Companion, but of all posts on the Staff, it leaves one less time to oneself than almost anybody else in the fort.

  I’ll finish this later.

  Later: In haste. Word has just come in of some kind of rising in the east of the Province, headed by the Iceni. Paulinus has determined to ride for Londinium and his supply base tomorrow, leaving the legions and other foot to follow, all that can be spared from garrison-duty and frontier work. (It will take them the best part of a week, even forced marching, and the gods know what can happen in a week. Hence his decision that the cavalry push ahead.) Also he has sent a galloper to summon the Second from Glevum to join us. I am of course leaving Marcipor here. He begs me to tell you that it is not his fault if my things are not properly looked after.

  I have a chance to send this off with the official despatches, and Jupiter alone knows when I shall have such a chance again.

  Your dutiful and affectionate son

  Gneus Julius Agricola

  11

  The Grove of the Mother

  FIVE DAYS THE War Host swept southward. Four nights we camped beside the way; and all the while we gathered strength and power as the war-bands of other tribes came in to join us at the appointed Hosting places along the way; and they leaving all the land westward up in arms behind them. The Trinovantes and the Cats of War joined us last of all, some on their own borders, less than a day from Dun Camulus, some within sight of the city. And the Trinovantes brought with them wild stories of omens and portents, voices crying woe in the empty theatre, the statue of Victory in the temple fallen from its place with its back towards our advance as though it sought to flee, and all within the city lost in fear and confusion.

  ‘Truly,’ said the Queen, ‘did I not say that five men in the heart of an enemy stronghold are worth many chariots outside the gates.’

  Though indeed there were no gates. No gates, no walls, for such defences are not allowed to Roman provincial cities. The people of Camulodunum must have felt the mistake of that, in the past few days, since they had known of the tempest sweeping down upon them from the north. They had sent to Londinium for help, said Vortix the Bear. But the Procurator had sent them only some two hundred men, ill-armed and slack trained, from the depot garrison, who had reached them scarcely a full day ahead of us. They had made some attempt to throw up rough barricades across the main streets. But it is in my mind that they must have thought with longing of the great turf banks that walled the Royal Dun in King Togodumnos’s day.

  The outlying farms and steadings were empty, for their slaves had joined us or melted away, and their owners had fled to the little safety the city could give them. We slaughtered abandoned cattle and drove off the horses, and fired the buildings as we went by. But not all were quite deserted. In one of the first, we found a man; old and sick. Maybe he had stayed of his own will, maybe he had been abandoned there. But I think he was the master of the house. And he stood clinging to the doorpost for support, and watched us come. In his free hand he held a short Roman sword, but when he would have lifted it, it fell from his grasp.

  Boudicca had bidden her charioteer to pull aside there, because there was a well under a cherry-tree in the open courtyard, and she was thirsty. And when he reined up, she stood looking down at the man in the doorway, while the team fidgeted for their heads. And he stood looking back at her, his empty sword hand fumbling a little as though he half thought to feel the hilt still in it.

  ‘Poor old man,’ she said. ‘Could your people not even wait to give you the mercy-stroke before they fled? Then we must do it for them.’ And she made a gesture with her hand to the warriors gathered round; and they cut him down, quite cleanly and quickly.

  ‘He was a brave old man,’ said the Queen. ‘And he deserved that. But it is the last mercy that we show until the wrath of the Mother is washed away with blood, and the Tribes are free once more. Let you strike off his head.’

  So they hacked off his head. But his grey hair was cut short in the Roman fashion. Too short for tying to a chariot rim. So the young braves stuck it on a spear, to carry among the standards. And somebody took a brand that still smouldered on the hearth, and fired the thatch. And when the Queen had had her drink from the well under the cherry-tree, we crashed on to regain the head of the War Host.

  The ground
sloped down to the river; and on the far side we saw the city on its low whale-backed hill, the evening sunlight on the white and red and gold of the great temple in its midst. The people of the city had hacked down the bridge; but that made small difference; it would have taken too long to get a War Host across one narrow bridge, and that within javelin throw of the nearest buildings on the city slopes. We swung off righthandwise and forded the river at low tide further up; and that night we made our camp among the ruined banks of the old Dun, westward of the new city, where, eighteen years before, I had come, riding behind Prasutagus, when the Kings gathered to swear faith and friendship with the Emperor Claudius in King Togodumnos’s High Hall. You could not even see where the Hall had been now, its stones and timbers had gone with all else that was of use from the great Dun, to help build the new city of Camulodunum. I knew where it had been by an ancient yew tree that had grown in the forecourt. Maybe it was sacred; for some reason or none, they had left it alone. For me, it was a landmark, but I did not speak of it to the Queen.

  They made the wagon-park where the elephant lines had been, that other time. And when the dusk came down their great humped outlines against the sky brought past things very near. And dead men, too; dead men, too.

  The Queen did not sleep with the Princesses and her women in the Royal Wagon; but as she had slept every night since the setting out, between the wheels of her chariot, her warriors sleeping on their spears around her, and she lying with her cheek on her father’s sword.

  There was a restlessness in the air; comings and goings between the watchfires, ponies stamping and fidgeting as though they smelled tomorrow’s wind. Faint sounds from the city, awake and restless also; waiting as we were waiting. I could not sleep. I went and walked in a little wood in the loop of the river below the camp. A small wood, but a dark one, of ancient trees, oak and yew. A little earlier in the year I might have thought to hear the nightingale as I passed in among the first of the trees. But the further in I went the more it seemed to me that no bird would ever sing in that wood. Silence held it; silence that hung like mist among the trees, allowing not even a rustle among the undergrowth, and I found myself moving with care not to break it. The Grove of the Mother, the Trinovantes call it, a sacred wood. And suddenly it came to me that the whole wood was waiting; waiting for something that was not mine to see; and also that I was not alone in it. And I would have turned back, but in the same moment, I came upon the edge of a small clearing, where the moonlight plashed through the branches on to a circle of open turf; soft short turf for a dancing floor, among the crowding trees.

  And then I knew why I had felt that I was not alone. For in the centre of the clearing, the red of her cloak quenched almost to black by the moonlight, stood Boudicca, who I had thought asleep between the wheels of her chariot. Tree-tall and straight and still, her arms stretched wide to the moon in an agony, an ecstasy of prayer.

  I froze among the trees, like an animal when it scents danger. And she dropped the cloak from her shoulders. And under it she was naked. And naked, she began to dance, treading a circle of strange small steps round and round; and as she danced, her head tipped far back, she drew her hands again and again down her breasts; gently, it seemed, almost as though she caressed herself; but behind each stroking movement, the track of her fingernails showed dark on her white skin, like the claw marks of a cat. A low crooning came from her; and I knew that the web she wove was one of those that are not for a man’s watching. And I covered my eyes and crouched back into the deepest shadow, and stole away, having more care than ever, not to break the silence.

  When the horns sounded at first light to rouse the camp, the Queen rose from where she seemed to have slept all night between the wheels of her chariot with her bodyguard about her. And the wild beast marks were hidden beneath the bright checkered stuff of her gown; and almost, I wondered if I had been dreaming.

  Men ate the morning barley cake while they harnessed up the chariot teams that had been picketed close all night. And the sun had not yet cleared the rim of the world to touch the proud roofs of Camulodunum, when the war-horns began snarling for the attack.

  We were half round the city, covering the two sides that were not held by the river; and certain war-bands thrust forward between the city and the riverbanks to complete the circle and swarm up from the shipping quays. But we thrust in our main attack along the broad ridge that made level going from the old Dun. The Princesses had been left with the other women and the children and the Priest Kind among the wagons. But the Queen’s chariot led the foremost column. Her war-captains had sought to make her wait in safety, but she said, ‘The Mother will let no harm come to me until it is time. I am the spear in her hand; I am the people’s freedom. How shall the warriors follow me if I do not lead?’ And so again we followed the red flame-lick of her cloak. Again I rode close behind her chariot, among the horse warriors of her bodyguard; and among us also, behind the standard-bearer, rode one carrying aloft on its spear-shaft the head of the old man we had killed yesterday. Morning sun under a low sky caught the sour-white horse-skull and streaming saffron tassels of the standards; and the ground shivered under our hooves and wheels, and the dust-cloud rose, and the clods flew back from our horses’ hooves.

  And so we crashed in through the sunken wreck of old earthworks, and between the first neat white houses of the city fringes, giving tongue like the Wild Hunt, to crash into the first barricades, the first lines of those gathered to defend the place against us.

  But save for the Queen and her following column, we did not carry the chariot charge beyond the city boundaries, for the narrow gullies made by the streets would not serve for chariot warfare. So after the first shock, the first crumbling of the outer barricades, while the horsemen thrust on, the charioteers reined back according to custom, and the chariot warriors leapt down and rushed ahead on foot.

  And then we found that the men of Camulodunum, who were fools and tyrants, were not also cowards. They met us, old men and boys in greasy leather tunics, with short Roman swords in their hands, and fought us for every street corner, every garden wall and shop doorway, every spear’s-length of the way. We were glad, for it is not good to fight cowards; it sets no fire to the blood.

  There was fire enough in our blood, that day!

  I took little part in the fighting. A harper is not a warrior. But no man should go into battle leaving it to other men who have work of their own to do, to protect him. I had my old sword, and I used it when need arose, and found that my hand had not altogether lost its cunning.

  All day we fought them slowly back, while they rushed us down every side-street and made of every building a fortress; back and back from one barricade of piled grain-sacks and upturned carts to the next, until our feet slipped in the red gutters, and the dead lay piled at every corner. Their dead and ours tumbled together, but they had no more living to take the place of those that fell. . . .

  Even so, in narrow ways four men may hold back many, and the day was close to noon before we cleared the outer quarters of the city and thrust on towards the fine tall buildings and open spaces at the heart. And always, in the forefront of the fighting, we followed the red flame-lick of the Queen’s warrior cloak and her bright hair.

  By sunset, the city was ours. A wild, fiery sunset half lost behind drifting smoke, for in half a score of places, Camulodunum was burning – and most of the defenders yet alive had fallen back on the great temple to the Divine Claudius and made their stronghold there.

  All next day, while we flung in attack after attack, they held the temple against us. It was good to have an enemy worth the killing. It was dusk when they made their last stand. But the dusk was swallowed up in the furnace-glare of burning Camulodunum; and the steps were slippery with blood and filth, and the white columns splashed with it. They stood shoulder braced against shoulder, and I saw the light of the flames in their eyes; and they did not give back any further, for there was no further to go, but died where they stood; the ol
d men and the boys in their worn leather tunics and battered armour. I have held a warmer heart for the Roman kind since that night than ever I held before.

  The War Host was drunk with bloodshed as well as wine from the wine-shops that they had broken into, and with vengeance and with victory. There were women and children packed close in the inner part of the temple; some still living, though many of the women had killed their children and then let out their own lives before the warriors broke in. The still living children they hacked down and were done with quickly. But the Queen had ordered that all captive women were to be brought to her. So they gathered up the women – the screaming, terrified, foolish women – who had not the sense or the courage to kill themselves while there was yet time, and brought them to the Queen, where she stood in her chariot behind her tired team, in the open space that the Romans call the Forum, clear of the rags of fire dropping from the burning city.

  Some of them were young and fair. I saw them. They fell on their knees, crying out to her for mercy, because she was a woman like themselves. She looked down at them. And as the light of the Council Fires had never reached the darkness within her eyes, nor did the flames of burning Camulodunum. And she bade the men who held the captives take them to the Grove of the Mother, outside the town; and she sent back word for the women who waited with the wagon train to come to her there. And word also for three chiefs from every tribe of the War Host; which was a strange thing indeed. . . .

  I will not tell, I will not remember, how they died, those women. But after all was over, I saw their bodies hanging there, like dreadful white fruit hanging from the branches of the dark and ancient trees, and I knew what Boudicca had promised to the Great Mother when I saw her dancing there, two nights ago. And I knew why the wood had grown full of fear.