Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  Again the centurion struggles with his better judgment.

  “Sir, begging your pardon again, but I am a military man. The action you suggest might lead to trouble. It might be better to wait until Governor Suetonius—”

  “We can’t wait. The governor is on an important campaign on the far western front, as you know, and he may be gone for months. I command the home guard in his absence. Do not question me again. You will go at once while they’re still wailing over their dead king, before they can get up to anything. You will deal with them swiftly and thoroughly. Do you understand your orders?”

  “Yes, Lord Procurator. I understand.”

  * * *

  I woke in a cold sweat, uncertain for a moment where I was. The dream had been so vivid, not like a dream at all. When I saw the glow of my cook fire, banked for the night, and heard the waves lapping at the shore as the tide came in, I felt momentary relief at recognizing my surroundings. Then I was overcome by sickening horror. If the dream was real, then Boudica and her daughters, and very likely Sarah, Alyssa, and Bele, were all in imminent danger. I wrapped myself tighter in my cloak and closed my eyes, willing myself to dream of them, to dream to them, but I was much too tense to go back to sleep. After a little while, I got up and felt my way in the dark to the well of eels.

  A waning moon gleamed. From time to time, the eels surfaced, breaking up the moon’s reflection with their sinuous darkness. I gazed until my eyes grew heavy again, but saw nothing in the shifting patterns of dark and light. Eventually I slept again and again I dreamed—or did not dream.

  She has brought Prasutagus to her home. He lies on a raised pallet, dressed as a king, complete with a gold crown that looks like a wreath of vines. He is wearing a plaid tunic beneath a woolen mantle, clasped with a brooch. His sword has been placed in his hand at his side. There is no remnant of anything Roman about him. Boudica, bare-headed, her face streaked with red as if she had torn at it with her fingernails, sits on a stool beside him. Gwen and Lithben are at his feet. Gwen, worn out with grief and months of nursing her father through his last illness, has fallen asleep with her head on his legs. Lithben, too, rests her head against her father. Boudica is awake, her eyes wide and unblinking, as she stares past her husband, her lips moving. At first I can’t catch any words, but gradually she speaks louder or my hearing sharpens.

  “You did wrong, you did wrong, you did very wrong,” she says over and over. “You meant to do right, but you did wrong. You thought you could save us with deals and compromise, but you did wrong, you did wrong, you did very wrong. Never mind, my dead one, never mind, my long ago love, my lost false love, who betrayed me. Never mind. The Roman wolf will not win. I am the mother bear, the wild mare, the leaping hare. I will never let go, I will never give in.”

  She goes on and on, rocking slightly with the rhythm of her words as she repeats them over and over again.

  “Boudica,” I call to her, hoping I am here in this dream, whosever it is. “Boudica, can you hear me? Listen.”

  She keeps on talking and rocking.

  “Boudica,” I say again.

  “Grandmother?” Lithben lifts her head and turns toward me. “Grandmother, I knew you would come back.”

  Lithben gets up and comes to me. For a moment, I can feel her warmth, almost feel her solid young body, but then I can’t.

  “Grandmother, are you a ghost?” she says with surprising calm. “Have you seen my father’s ghost?”

  “Dearest child,” I say, longing to gather her into my arms. “I am not a ghost or at least I am not dead. I am still far away to the west, and I can’t come to you any other way. We’re having a dream together, cariad. You must listen to me and tell your mother and sister what I say.”

  Lithben nods, looking grave and sweet, young and wise all at once.

  “Do you know about your father’s will?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Gwen and I are to be queens together. Our mother doesn’t mind about not being heir. But the will says we have to share with the Roman Emperor. Gwen and mother are already arguing. Gwen says we have to make peace with the Romans. And our mother says absolutely not. I wish they wouldn’t fight. My stomach feels sick when they do. I wish my father was still alive.”

  “So do I, cariad, so do I. Listen, Lithben, you are almost grown and you are a queen, so I know you will understand what I am about to say to you. The Roman procurator of Pretannia doesn’t want to share the land. He is sending soldiers to do harm to you and your sister and mother. You must leave now and go into hiding where they can’t find you.”

  Lithben’s eyes grew wide and she glanced at her mother, who continued to rock and mutter.

  “I don’t think…I don’t think Mother will listen to me,” whispers Lithben.

  “Get someone to help you with her. Get Sarah.”

  “Sarah is not here.”

  “Not here?” I am dismayed. “Where is she?”

  “My mother sent Sarah and Alyssa and Bele and lots of the others to get word to all the Iceni about my father. And they are going to some of the other tribes, too. My mother wants them all here when we bury my father. That is the one thing she and Gwen both agree on.”

  If she had dispatched most of her able-bodied guard, the danger was even more serious. Not that they could hope to hold off a Roman century even if the village was fully armed and guarded.

  “Will Gwen listen?” I ask Lithben. “Can you wake her now?”

  Lithben nods and goes to her sister, touching her shoulder and whispering to her, though Boudica pays no attention. Her eyes have closed and she seems to be sleeping bolt upright.

  “Grandmother wants to talk to you,” says Lithben in a low voice.

  “What are your talking about?” Gwen rouses herself and rubs her eyes. “Our mother’s mother left months ago. Has she come back?”

  “She’s over there,” Lithben points to me.

  Gwen looks right through me.

  “There’s no one there, Lithben,” Gwen says, kindly for one who is so exhausted and grief-stricken. “You must have had a dream. You should go lie down and sleep. I will stay by father.”

  Lithben turns and stares at me as if to make sure.

  “It’s all right,” I encourage her. “She may not be able to see me. Just tell her, tell her about the danger. Tell her you must all find a place to hide.”

  “Maybe it was a dream,” Lithben says with impressive control. “She even told me it’s a dream. She says it is the only way she can come to us from all the way in the west. She says to tell you the Romans won’t share with us, like father wanted. They want to hurt us. She says we must find a place to hide.”

  “If she’s in the west,” says Gwen all too logically, “how can she know what the Romans in Londinium plan to do?”

  Lithben wrung her hands in the air, tugging at frustrations that must have plagued her all her life as the younger daughter.

  “Because she’s magic, Gwen! She knows things. She had eight mothers, all witches.”

  “Well, she may not know as much as she thinks she does,” says Gwen. “We are civilized people, Lithben. We will not run and hide from the Romans like guilty fugitives. We will meet with their ambassadors. We will negotiate the terms of our rule, just as our father did. That is why he left us in charge, and not our mother. If you see her again in your dreams, tell her not to worry. Now get some sleep.”

  Lithben turns to me again and shakes her head.

  “Gwen,” I try again. “Gwen. Listen to me! Please.”

  But she just sits quietly, head bowed, one hand resting on her father’s leg.

  “Who’s there?” Boudica comes out of her trance; in seconds she is on her feet, sword in her hand. “Who dares disturb the peace of this royal chamber?”

  At their mother’s alarm, Gwen and Lithben rise, too. For the first time all three face me.

  “Boudica,” I say. “Boudica it’s me, Maeve Rhuad, your mother.”

  “Who is it?” she repeats.
r />   “There’s no one there, Mother,” Gwen insists. “Lithben had a bad dream.”

  Lithben, goes to her mother, puts her hand on her arm and points to me.

  “Can’t you see her,” Lithben pleads. “She’s right there.”

  “Who is there?”

  “Grandmother.”

  “Grandmother?” Boudica repeats as if the word had no meaning to her at all.

  “She had a dream,” Gwen explains. “She thinks your mother is here.”

  “The woman,” Boudica says. “The woman behind that stupid treacherous will.”

  “It is my father’s will,” Gwen says sharply, defending him, I guess, not me. “She only wrote it for him. She even argued that the Romans will not let us rule. We shall prove her wrong, won’t we, Mother?”

  She makes a roundabout appeal for solidarity.

  “Won’t we, Mother?” Gwen repeats, sounding more like a child than I had ever heard her.

  “No! Grandmother says they are going to hurt us!” Lithben tries one more time. “She says we have to hide.”

  “That is out of the question,” snaps Boudica. “We are going to bury your father as befits a king with all the tribes and warriors attending us. Then we shall see what we shall see.”

  All at once her eyes widens and her mouth opens. I know, for an instant, she sees me.

  “Boudica,” I call to her with my heart, my voice, “Boudica, save your daughters, Boudica!”

  And I woke to the sound of my own voice calling in a cold, bitter dawn.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A MORNING’S WORK

  THE DAY AND NIGHT that followed gave between-the-worlds a whole new and horrible meaning. I was not here; I was not there. Waking and sleeping both held dread. There was no escape from my helplessness; there was no escape from my knowledge. You could say that I prayed with every breath, with every agitated step. But my prayers brought me no peace. If my beloved was with me, I could not sense him. I have never felt so alone and so not alone. Between the worlds were cords that bound me to my daughter and my daughter’s daughters. I could not and would not cut those cords, and yet they did no one any good. So I paced and prayed until I dropped.

  The dream begins with the sound of hammering, dull and methodical, and a workman whistling softly, tunelessly, just doing his job, his job of nailing a man’s wrists to a wooden cross piece. Women cry out and then try to stifle their cries for his sake. I am one of them. And the awful hammering goes on. Now the workman has secured the wrists. One huge spike will do for both the heels. Still whistling, the workman drives it through.

  The soldiers arrive at Boudica’s compound just before dawn. I see them hidden behind the hedgerows in the fields surrounding the village. The centurion, as official envoy, approaches the guard, who demands to know his business.

  “I have a message for the royal family from the Procurator of Pretannia,” he announces in poorly pronounced Celtic.

  I sense the centurion taking stock of the sleeping village, how poorly defended it is, how pathetically easy his job will be. Even now his men have surrounded the village, quietly dispatching a few early risers on their way to work who might have sounded the alarm.

  “The royal family is in mourning, sir,” protests the guard. “They are not to be disturbed.”

  “I am afraid they must be,” says the centurion. “Will you fetch them out, or shall I?”

  I feel the guard’s dawning horror. He knows how few armed people there are in the village. He guesses this centurion is not alone. Should he draw his sword now and sound the alarm or should he go to Boudica first?

  “Wait right here,” the guard says. “I will see if the queen is willing to receive you.”

  The centurion does not bother to say, there is no queen here anymore, and if there were, her will is irrelevant. Let the man have his last shred of dignity. This is a job, only a job. It’ll be over quickly enough.

  “Send the word along the lines,” the centurion says to his aides, “ to be ready at the signal.”

  “Queen Boudica,” says the guard, lifting the heavy plaid across the door to her hut. “I wouldn’t disturb you for the three worlds, but I must. There’s a Roman here, a centurion, I think. He says he has a message from the procurator.”

  Inside the hut, Boudica rouses herself but does not get up.

  “Tell him to go away, Geraint. I will see no one till after the burial rites. No one.”

  “Queen,” says Geraint, “I have told him so already. I am afraid he is not alone. You know how poorly defended we are right now. I am willing to fight and die at your bidding, as are all your people. But if you will meet with him, maybe we can forestall him till the warriors arrive, till we have a fighting chance.”

  “Their demand is not seemly,” says Boudica. “Already they show their contempt.”

  “Mother,” Gwen rises to her feet. “You forget. I am Queen of the Iceni now. I will not risk our people’s safety for your pride. If the man is bringing us a message, I, for one, will go to receive it. Lithben, will you come with me?”

  Lithben looks from one to the other and seems to search the dim hut for someone else, for me.

  “Courage, cariad,” I whisper in my heart, to her heart. “Courage. I will be with you.”

  “Very well, we will all go,” decides Boudica, wresting back her authority from Gwen in the only way she can.

  Boudica stands, then turns and takes Prasutagus’s sword and shield from his body.

  “Mother!” Gwen is horrified. “You complain of the Romans, but you desecrate my father’s body. My father’s honor.”

  Boudica actually shrugged.

  “He won’t be needing these now. And if he had made better use of them in his life, I might not need them either. Come on, let’s go.”

  And before Gwen can protest, Boudica thrusts aside the plaid and steps out into the dawn.

  “You come with sword drawn, domina,” says the centurion. He refuses to call her queen. “That is not a wise way to welcome an envoy of Rome.”

  But it will make my job easier, he is thinking.

  “You are not welcome,” states Boudica.

  Gwen, to her mother’s right, draws herself up, while Lithben on her left hangs back.

  “I am the Queen of the Iceni,” says Gwen. “You may deliver your message to me.”

  The centurion looks at her, almost with pity, almost but not quite, and then he gives the signal.

  Everything happens so quickly, it is a blur, and yet I also see each detail. Boudica’s skeleton guard is outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed, all but Boudica, whose sword swings and whirls as if she had eight arms. The centurion watches almost wearily, then gives another signal. A cluster of men rush Gwen and Lithben, hurl them to the ground and pin them there.

  No. Not this.

  For a moment I am enveloped in silence. Then I see my beloved’s cracked lips, the cracked sky. My beloved opens his eyes and looks at me from the cross, just looks.

  And I know what to do.

  Lithben, I cry out with my whole being, Lithben, fly!

  Just in time I am there, in her place. A young man, hardly more than a boy, heaves himself onto me, hoisting up chain mail that cuts into my flesh. For a moment our eyes meet, and he knows and I know that he’s scared. And he hates me for seeing his fear. He spits in my face, and then it happens, I am torn open and pain rips through me, brutal, red, endless. Until everything goes black.

  When I can see again, Gwen is crouching over Lithben, who is still unconscious. Gwen’s tunic has been torn from her and she is naked and streaked with blood. Boudica’s sword still clangs; six men lie dead on the ground. But there are more surrounding her, and finally, one man aims a kick that sends her sword flying, two more jump her from behind, and another comes with rope to bind her.

  Then Boudica sees her daughters.

  There is no word in any language for the sound she makes.

  When it stops, for a moment everything is silent. Everyone s
tands still.

  “Set up a stake,” the centurion says. “Bind her to it, bare her back, and give her thirty lashes, but be sure to leave her alive.”

  “Alive?” one of the men dares to question. “She has killed half a dozen of our men. Surely she should be executed or taken captive.”

  “Those are my orders, soldier,” snaps the centurion. “And those are yours.”

  Let me take her place, too, I plead. Let me take her place.

  But this prayer is not answered.

  The sound of the lash goes on and on.

  Boudica never cries out.

  Lithben wakes and Gwen holds her tight, stifling Lithben’s cries with her hand.

  Will it never end?

  At last it does. And before noon, the soldiers are done with their job and gone. Gwen and Lithben go to their mother and struggle to unbind her, but the knots are too tight. They are both shaking too badly to work them and in so much shock they can’t think what else to do. And so they just lean against her, with their arms around her, and weep.

  That is how Sarah finds them when she returns with the warriors just before sunset.

  Dusk found me pacing the sands; I had torn my face and my breasts with my fingernails till they bled. Boudica’s sound was coming out of my mouth, out of my body, stronger than the sea, wilder than the wind. Then suddenly the sky blackened with wings, and my voice was lost in the cry of crows, a murder of crows.

  The priestesses of Holy Island had arrived.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE STORY ONE LAST TIME

  THE PRIESTESSES, some thirty of them, made camp with me on my isle where they proposed to wait until General Suetonius and his troops attacked. I was the hostess, but they cosseted me as if I were a baby, making me soothing potions that helped me sleep without dreams. They had brought various things for the pot—leaves, roots, and portions of meat—some of which I could not identify and did not care to. As always, the pot never became empty no matter how many people ate from it. The cask of mead, too, appeared to be developing the same magical properties, and we drank deeply of it into a run of clear, star-laden nights. Sometimes, at their request, I told stories. They particularly liked to hear about Miriam (aka Ma) and seemed to feel she was a long-lost priestess of their own ilk. When I was too tired or heartsick to speak, they sang songs, reminiscent of Ma’s humming, that had no words or human melody, songs that wove in and out of birdsong and wind and the roll of stones in the waves.