Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “Will you break your fast with us, Lithben?” I invited.

  She nodded, still wordless, and held the blanket back from the door as we went in to eat by the fire. I realized I hadn’t yet heard her speak. I hoped she did not have an affliction that had rendered her dumb. She was a slender girl who might yet be tall. Her hair was lighter than her mother’s, more gold than red, and her eyes hazel…like mine. As she settled down next to Sarah, I suddenly saw that she looked a little like my womb mother, Grainne. The resemblance shook me and I found myself tongue-tied. There was too much to say—and not say.

  “How old are you, Lithben?” Sarah took it upon herself to start a conversation.

  “Eleven summers,” she answered, her voice surprisingly low for a young girl’s but with none of her mother’s harshness.

  “I am more than twice your age, then,” offered Sarah.

  “Is that old?” Lithben asked, doubtful and perhaps a little disappointed.

  “Not too old. Not old enough to be your mother.”

  “But older than my sister Gwen.”

  “How old is your sister?” I decided it was time for me to enter the conversation.

  “Almost fourteen.”

  “Where is your sister?” Sarah asked.

  Lithben looked from Sarah to me, and then at her stirabout, but didn’t answer.

  “Maybe you should ease up on the questions,” suggested Alyssa to Sarah in Greek.

  “You’re interrogating the poor kid,” agreed Bele.

  Lithben looked at the Alyssa and Bele curiously.

  “They don’t speak the language of your people,” Sarah explained. “I don’t speak it very well, either. But I spoke a language like it when I was a little girl living in the mountains far, far away from here.”

  Lithben’s face lit up at the idea of far away and the hope of a story.

  “The mountain people were called the Galatians. They are part of the combrogos.”

  “Oh,” Lithben said, and I guessed this favorite word of her mother’s made Sarah’s distant origins less interesting.

  “Tell her you ran away from home and became a pirate,” suggested Alyssa, sensing the shift in Lithben’s response. “Tell her you were the scourge of the Roman merchant navy.”

  “I think that might be too much information,” I said sharply, not wanting my granddaughter to get romantic notions about running away from home. “Sarah has had an adventurous life,” I turned to Lithben. “As I have, as your mother has.”

  Lithben could not make the connection.

  “My mother only lives here,” she said.

  “I heard that she and your father once led a rebellion together against the Roman governor,” I said. “That must have been an adventure.”

  Lithben stared at me. The rebellion had happened before she was born. Could it be that she had never heard this story before? Could it be that it wasn’t true?

  “I am not supposed to talk about my father,” she said so softly that I almost couldn’t hear.

  Then she put down her bowl and got to her feet.

  “Stay, Lithben,” I pleaded. “We won’t ask you any more questions.”

  “I am late for practice,” she mumbled.

  She was on her way out the door when she paused and turned back.

  “Don’t tell my mother.”

  Don’t tell your mother what, I wanted to ask, but she was already gone.

  We were all quiet for a moment, but this time there was no avoiding speculation.

  “What is going on here?” Alyssa demanded. “You two, talk!”

  “It’s pretty clear there’s some major rift between Boudica and her husband,” Sarah said.

  “I am afraid so,” I agreed. “I don’t know if any of you caught it, but Boudica did not introduce Lithben through her father’s lineage last night.”

  “And she didn’t mention her other daughter,” noted Sarah.

  “Actually, she did,” I said, “at least indirectly. She called Lithben her younger daughter, so at least she is not denying the older one’s existence. She hasn’t disowned her.”

  “Lithben wouldn’t say where her sister was,” said Sarah.

  “Seems like her mother keeps the girl on a pretty short leash,” observed Bele. “I think Lithben is scared of her.”

  “I would be, too, if she were my mother,” said Alyssa. “Boudica is positively terrifying, but in a magnificent way. She’s like an old time Amazon queen. I’m not surprised she’s given her husband the boot.”

  “Lithben is not allowed to speak of her father,” said Sarah. “That can only mean one thing.”

  “Gone over to Rome,” agreed Alyssa.

  “It may be more complicated than that,” I felt obliged to say.

  “Not to Boudica,” Sarah countered.

  And I feared she was right.

  Before we could speculate further, one of the guards who had challenged us last night came to find us. He was indeed well past his first, second or any youth. There seemed to be a dearth of young men in Boudica’s village. Did she discourage men in general?

  “The queen awaits you at the practice fields. I will guide you to her.”

  We followed the man through the muddy lanes of the village past the wooden stockade and the ditches and earthen fortifications. Though not exactly a hill fort, Boudica’s village was on the highest ground for some miles around and clearly designed for defense. People from surrounding farmsteads probably banded together here when there was any threat.

  Outside the village compound, our guide led us along the edge of a wide flat field where there was indeed practice of several kinds of martial arts underway. At the far end of the field a group of a dozen or so archers practiced hitting a semi-moving target suspended from a tree. There were several sets of people sparring with swords. And still others practiced casting the laigen while on horseback, also at targets suspended from trees. Alyssa and Bele, keenly interested, kept up a running commentary on the weapons in use, how they were different or similar to the ones they knew.

  But the best was yet to come. Beyond a hedge row lay another field with a circular dirt track. In the center a huge woman on the back of an equally massive grey horse shouted instructions to two charioteers who drove their horses full speed around the ring. As they careened towards our end of the field, we could see that the drivers were women, or rather girls not much older than Lithben. In fact, as I looked more carefully, I saw that one of them was Lithben, her face white and rigid with terror, determination or both.

  “Go, girl!” cried Alyssa, and she and Bele clapped their hands and burst into ululation.

  Sarah watched intently; her silence louder than her friends’ cheers.

  As for me, for a moment I was back on Tir na mBan listening to my mothers shout at me as I first raced a chariot on the beach. All the intervening years fell away for a dizzying moment.

  Then Boudica saw us and rode towards us, motioning to the charioteers to slow down. When she reached us, she dismounted, still topping the tallest of us by a head.

  “You have rested well and breakfasted?” she inquired gravely as if it were a matter of state.

  “We have, thank you, Queen Boudica,” I said.

  No one seemed to know what to say next, then Sarah jumped in, tactfully or not, asking the question I had not managed to form yet and might not have risked if I had.

  “Is that your older daughter on the field with Lithben, Queen Boudica?”

  “No,” she answered shortly.

  If her lips had been a door, they would have slammed shut; even Sarah did not dare to probe further.

  “All the young women of the tribe are trained in the warrior arts,” Boudica said after a moment, “if they are willing and show aptitude.”

  Or if you force them, I added to myself, for I wasn’t sure that Lithben fell into either category.

  “I myself oversee their training as much as possible.”

  “Do you train the young men as well or does the ki
ng see to that?”

  Sarah was determined to push it. If I was close enough to kick her, I would have. I kept my eyes on Boudica’s face, where admiration for Sarah’s cheek warred with anger at this violation of her unstated rules.

  “Do you see any men on the practice fields?” she asked Sarah.

  “So those were all women,” Sarah said. “I couldn’t be sure from a distance. They might have been boys.”

  “There are no young men,” Boudica stated. “Have you not noticed? No young men.”

  Then she turned from Sarah to me. She gave me a look I can hardly describe, both pleading and resentful at once, almost as if…as if I were her mother, someone who should have made everything better and had failed.

  “Maeve Rhuad, foster daughter of King Bran the bold, you asked me to tell you how it is with us. The Roman occupiers conscript our young men into their armies by force, the ones that have not escaped and gone into hiding. Thank Andraste that despite the treacherous Brigantian Queen Cartimandua who betrayed Caratacus to the Romans and fought on their side (and small thanks she got and small thanks she deserved) the Romans still think she was a freak, an aberration, a monstrosity. They still do not understand that the women of the combrogos will fight, without their men if need be.”

  Apart from her recital of her lineage, this speech was Boudica’s longest yet. I began to understand what Branwen and Viviane meant. She had no small talk, but if she chose she could command a crowd, just as my father could. But she had something all her own, something more elemental than his brilliance, some kind of barely restrained power that made you think of the muscles of a horse’s neck rippling, nostrils flaring. She held herself in check, but only just. At any moment she could rear up and bring down her thundering, lethal hooves.

  “And that is not all they take from us; that is not all.”

  We waited for her to go on. But as abruptly as she had begun she stopped, gathering her force back into herself. Then she turned and signaled to the young charioteers.

  “Give your horses a rest now!” she called, her voice competing easily with the hooves and the wheels. “Take them out of harness. Walk them and rub them down.”

  I didn’t realize until the chariots slowed and came to a stop and I let out my breath, how tense I had been. I resisted the urge to go and gather my granddaughter in my arms. With Boudica for a mother, she was going to have to be tough whether her temperament suited her to it or not.

  “Queen Boudica,” Sarah spoke again. “My two combrogos and I have some experience with horses and with chariot driving. We have also met Romans in battle before and know quite a bit about their weapons and how they use them. We would be honored if we could be of any use in warrior training while we’re here. I am sure we could learn something, too. Will you allow us to join martial practice?”

  Alyssa and Bele seemed to follow the gist of Sarah’s offer and nodded with enthusiasm. But it was Boudica’s response that held my attention. She turned her focus on Sarah so completely that I could almost see the edges of her vision darken and blur. She had Sarah in her sights, and nothing else existed in that moment. I remembered Jesus looking at a paralyzed man with equal intensity, as if he and the man were alone in all the worlds and that moment could suspend itself into eternity. But Boudica’s intent was different, and I sensed that, paradoxically, Sarah herself did not matter. She was assessing Sarah’s use. My blood (blood I shared with them both) slowed and cooled, as if it were not blood but something thicker and darker.

  “Can you a shoot a bow or throw a laigen with any accuracy from a moving chariot?”

  “I can,” said Sarah.

  “Good, you can coach my daughter. Lithben, fetch fresh horses. Meanwhile, I will show you the other trainings.”

  She strode off across the field with my women, as the general had referred to them. I could have followed, but I didn’t. No one seemed to notice me, except Lithben, who cast a backward glance at me as she led the spent horses back to their pasture.

  “I’ll just entertain myself for awhile, shall I?” I said, though no one could hear me.

  And suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MOTHER-IN-LAW

  CLEARLY AGE AND WISDOM have not curbed my impulsiveness, not to mention my willfulness. I am afraid, as you have already seen, age was having just the opposite effect, and really wisdom is not synonymous with prudence, not in my opinion. Also, if it is true that people become more like themselves, even caricatures of themselves, as they grow older, that truth explains a lot about what I did, even if it does not excuse it. It was totally in character for me to investigate for myself the mystery surrounding the missing half of Boudica’s household.

  So I meandered across the fields, as if I were just taking a morning stroll. Once I was out of sight, over a rise, I turned and headed for the rutted track we’d followed last night, intending to retrace our route to the fork in the road, the fork that I was convinced marked the division between Boudica’s traditional stronghold and the Roman villa we had glimpsed last night. By midmorning I reached the fork and made my way towards the villa, which was the center of its own small village, surrounded, like Boudica’s stronghold, by fields, pastures, stables, buildings for various crafts and industries, but all square with tiled roofs in the Roman style. There were also barracks, like those I’d seen at Paulina’s country estate, for housing slaves. Although the villa and surroundings were extensive, as I came closer I could see that the buildings were not in great repair. Tiles that had come loose lay haphazardly on the ground, and holes gaped. Weeds had grown up in the gardens, and a place that should have been bustling was strangely quiet. As I approached the main entrance to the villa, a railed wooden walkway to a small outer colonnade, I began to wonder if the villa had been abandoned. Then a guard stepped forth from the colonnade. Like Boudica’s guards, he was not young. He was dressed in the Roman style and armed with a Roman spear, but he challenged me in the Celtic dialect of the region.

  “State your name, lineage, and your business with Prasutagus, King of the Iceni.”

  Not again, I thought. I decided I couldn’t bear to recite my maternal lineage only to be asked about the paternal. Nor was I sure that the lineage of a famous resistance fighter from the west would be welcomed as credentials here. As I stood pondering my answer, a gust of wind blew back my hood and loosened my hair from its never tidy knot. It floated on the wind, grey and wild. And for a moment, I fancied I could hear a necklace of small skulls rattling. Once long ago I had shape-shifted and taken the form of the old woman of Beara. It wasn’t such a stretch now.

  “I am the Grey Hag,” I intoned. “My lineage is the holy earth of the holy isles, the very bones of her mountains, the breasts of her hills, the soft fertile flesh of her plains, the secrets hidden in her valleys, the lifeblood of her rivers, the cool bright reflection of her still waters, the ragged rocky edges of her shores, the breath of her tides, the depth of her seas….”

  All right, I was getting carried away. The man looked visibly shaken, as if I had announced I was death on the doorstep. I didn’t think I looked that bad. Still, I thought I had better come to the point.

  “I seek the king of this land.”

  “R-right this way,” he said.

  At least I had achieved the desired effect.

  The guard led me through the atrium where a dried up fountain sat forlornly gathering dead leaves. In Rome at this time of year, braziers might have been blazing and clients would sit waiting to call on their patron. There would have been sculptures garishly painted littered about the place. But the inside of the villa had the same neglected air as the outside. If Prasutagus had been bought off by Rome, where were his ill-gotten gains?

  At the door of one of the rooms off the atrium, the guard paused and announced.

  “King Prasutagus, the, uh, Grey Hag, daughter of the holy earth of the holy isles….what was the rest?” he turned to me.

  “That’s the gis
t of it,” I said.

  “She seeks audience with you, sir.”

  “The grey what?” a voice queried.

  “Hag, sir.”

  “Did my wife send her?” he sounded both suspicious and oddly hopeful.

  “Did Queen Boudica send you?” the guard relayed the question, as if I could not hear it perfectly well.

  “Yes and no,” I said, figuring one or both of the answers had to be right.

  “Well, show her in,” the king answered. “Old woman or goddess, messenger or beggar, it shall not be said that the king of the Iceni is lacking in hospitality, even were it his own end he must entertain.”

  Whatever concessions he had made to the Romans, the man was still a Celt at the core if he spoke like that.

  “But you are in pain today,” a woman’s voice protested. “Surely she can wait.”

  Did he have a mistress, I wondered? Was that the cause of the rift?

  “It is no matter,” said the King. “Roc, send her in and fetch wine and something to eat.”

  Roc, as the king had called the guard, stood aside and I went into a small room warmed by a brazier and lit with oil lamps. The king reclined on a couch. I hardly needed to see his face, grey and slack, to know that he was ill. The charcoal could not cover the scent of the medicines he must be taking. I could feel the fire of the stars buzzing in my crown, flowing into my hands. Perhaps he would allow me to examine him, but it was too soon to ask. Beside him on a low stool, sat a young woman, really no more than a girl, her head bent to him as if to say or hear something not meant for my ears. Dark hair fell over her face, but then she turned to look up at me. Her face was pale from too much time indoors, and her eyes looked the darker and fiercer for it. It was the set of her jaw, the tension in her neck that gave her away. I had seen them both before and recently.