Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “There was no one left alive. I was there. I don’t even know what I did, how many I killed. But I was there. I was part of it.”

  “Sarah,” all I could do was say her name. “Sarah.”

  I wanted to gather her in my arms, cradle her like a baby. She was my child, no matter what she had done. Whatever she had done, I was part of it. I had done it, too. But I sensed she could not bear to be touched. She held herself stiff and apart. She did not want comfort, could not allow herself to receive it.

  “You tried to tell us so many times that it wasn’t simple,” she spoke again, “but after what they did to Gwen and Lithben, for a while everything did seem simple, pure and simple. I wanted revenge, too. I wanted to drive every last Roman out of the Holy Isles. I thought I knew what I was doing. When I was a pirate, I fought battles. I’ve even killed armed men before. I thought I was a proven warrior with a chance to fight for a just cause.”

  At last I took her hand. She did not seem to notice. But when the fire of the stars began to flow from my hand into hers, it was met with a faint answering fire.

  “The people in that temple, they were just people,” she spoke more softly. “I could say that they are part of a corrupt occupation, and they are. I could say that they’ve benefited from oppression, and they have. That’s what Boudica did say when I went to her afterwards. To her they are not innocent. To her they are not even human. In her mind every one of them raped her daughters. But when I see what we did in that temple happening over and over and over in my mind, all I know is their flesh was just flesh. Their fear was just fear, and the mothers…and the mothers shielding their children with their bodies were just….”

  A gasp tore from her body as if she were being ripped open. I could feel it in my own body, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. It felt like the sickly stillness before a terrible storm. Then the storm broke, her sobs broke one after another, huge waves battering a shore. Finally she let me hold her. That much at least I could do for her, be the rocks to her wild sea of grief.

  At last she quieted. For a moment it even seemed she slept, her head heavy on my breast like a baby’s, her breathing soft and deep. Then she startled and drew apart from me.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “It’s going to happen all over again tomorrow.”

  “Maybe not,” I ventured. “Not the way it did in Camulodunum. The Roman governor is there. The town will be defended. It will be a fight, not just slaughter.”

  As soon as I spoke, I realized I did not believe my own words. Nothing was tidy about this or any war. No odds were even. The Romans had slaughtered everyone in sight on Mona. And Boudica fully expected to overwhelm the general’s inferior numbers and do the same in Londinium.

  “But didn’t you know? He’s not there!” Sarah said. “I was with the scouts; there is no sign of any troops. The governor has abandoned the town.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked her. “Could it be a trick? Could the troops be hiding somewhere planning an ambush?”

  “I don’t think so. Ambush isn’t a Roman strong suit. We covered a pretty wide area to make sure. My job was to infiltrate the town, because I’m dark and don’t look or speak like a native. From what I heard, the general tried to evacuate. He knew he couldn’t defend the town. The only people left are too infirm to escape or else they are wealthy or stubborn, determined not to lose all they’ve invested in the port. They were outraged that the general beat a retreat. They have some crazy idea that they will be able to mount a civilian defense.”

  She hesitated. I sensed there was more.

  “I tried to warn them, Mother. Some of them listened. Some didn’t. If Boudica knew I had tried to help her enemies, she would believe I had betrayed her. She might even execute me.”

  I took her hand again.

  “If you are a traitor, then I am, too,” I told her. “I did the same thing when I stopped in Londinium on the way to find Boudica’s camp.”

  “Perhaps we should confess,” Sarah laughed. “Maybe she would execute us together.”

  Her laughter was bitter and short-lived. Part of her meant it. Part of her wanted any out she could find.

  “And Boudica is determined to attack, even though the town is almost deserted?”

  “We argued about it in council,” Sarah answered. “I said we should pursue the general, ambush his troops the way the Trinovantes did the Ninth Legion. That’s the way the combrogos have always fought best. Boudica insists we’ve grown too big to fight that way. She says we’ve never had the advantage of superior numbers before. We’ve got to make a clean sweep, she says, wipe out all their centers of power. She says we are unbeatable now. No one and nothing can stand against us.”

  She paused again. Half a dozen reasonable and unreasonable questions rose in me and died. I did not want to suggest that Sarah could have done more, said more, that she could have turned this tide. As if she had heard me anyway, she went on.

  “When she speaks, Mother, everyone comes under her sway. It’s like listening to some huge force, a wind, an avalanche. Or maybe it’s more that the combrogos have become that force, and she’s the one who knows how to ride it. She’s got the reins and it doesn’t matter who or what gets trampled. Or maybe it’s all out of control and she’s simply holding on for dear life. She’s got to go. She can’t stop now. It can’t stop now. Oh, Mother. Oh, Mother, what am I to do? What can I do?”

  She put her head in my lap and curled into a tight ball, as if she wished she could go back into the womb, unmake this life that had taken such a devastating turn. As I held her, I felt the fire of the stars, not just in my hands but all around us, rocking us on a sea, golden as her eyes. What did it matter if we were two exiles without sail or oar?

  “Esus’s daughter, healer woman,” I spoke at last. “You will know what to do. For this you were born. For this you came into the world.”

  She sat up and looked at me. I could not see her eyes in the darkness, but I could feel them.

  “I am your daughter, too,” she said. “You are the one who gave up your life to protect me, you are the one who searched for me without ceasing when I ran away, who came to my rescue. Look how I have repaid you. You could be living peacefully in your cave. I could be living peacefully by the sea, maybe giving you grandchildren to come and visit. Instead here we are in the midst of this horror that I am part of. How can you love me? How can you forgive me? How can you call me my father’s daughter?”

  She sounded almost angry now. And I wondered if I was failing her again. Did she want me to judge her, condemn her? I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I thought of reasoning with her, of reassuring her that she’d been right. I needed to find Boudica. She had given me Lithben and Gwen, grandchildren I never would have known. Then in this dark night, in the roiling uncertainty, a memory rose of Sarah’s father in the harsh light of the Temple courtyard, scrawling with his finger in the dust, writing our names in ogham. Then he spoke:

  “Let the one among you who is guiltless cast the first stone.”

  “Who among us is guiltless?” I said out loud.

  Sarah didn’t answer. I went on speaking the words her father had spoken to me, so long ago.

  “Be free from sin. Be free.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ANDRASTE

  WHAT HAPPENED in Londinium cannot be described as a battle. The town was even less defended than Camulodunum. Boudi-The town was even less defended than Camulodunum. Boudica unleashed her army and before noon there was little left but rubble and corpses burning in the town where they once lived. The sky was black with smoke, and a hot, foul wind blew it all the way to where we noncombatants waited in our moveable camp. The mood among the women, children, and old people had shifted. The novelty of being on the march was wearing off. Children fretted, mothers spoke sharply to them. Even though victory was assured, waiting was hard. Gwen paced incessantly, and Lithben sat listlessly, looking down into her lap.

  “She should have let me fight,” Gwen declared a
gain, as she had about a hundred times that morning. “There was no real danger, no danger to us.”

  “There is always danger in battle, Gwen,” I said wearily.

  “Both your daughters are fighting,” she said. “Sarah is not all that much older than me.”

  At Sarah’s name, sudden tears welled. She had gone into the town with only her dagger. I had pleaded with her to stay with us. But she refused. She said she knew now what she had to do, what she was born to do. She would heal whomever she could heal. She would ease the death of anyone mortally wounded. Cariad, I prayed silently to her father, be with your daughter.

  “Stop it, Gwen,” Lithben looked up. “You’re making Grandmother cry.”

  Gwen stopped her pacing and came to sit next to me.

  “I’m sorry, Grandmother,” she said stiffly.

  “I know it’s hard to wait.”

  “I should be good at it by now,” said Gwen. “It’s all I’ve ever done.”

  I took Gwen’s hand, remembering how patiently she had cared for her father.

  “You will make a good queen, Gwen.” I said.

  “I don’t want to be queen,” announced Lithben. “I just want to go home.”

  So do I, I thought, but I had no idea where home might be.

  The warriors began to return, laden with loot, ready to drink and feast and brag into the night. Sarah must still be tending to the wounded. I wished I could go find her and help her, but I didn’t want to leave Lithben or drag her into the midst of the carnage. Then Bele came rushing toward us.

  “Sarah needs you to come right away,” she called out to me.

  I was already on my feet, Lithben holding tightly to my hand.

  “No,” Bele shook her head vehemently. “You must come alone.”

  “You said you wouldn’t leave me, Grandmother, you said.”

  I looked at Bele questioningly. She wrung her hands.

  “I can’t explain,” she said. “Just come.”

  “Lithben,” I turned to the girl and held her close. “I am just going to see what Sarah wants. I will come back as soon as I can. Stay with Gwen. You’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t see why either of us should stay,” objected Gwen, angrily. “There is no danger now. The battle is over. I am not a child. What’s going on, Bele? Has something happened to my mother? Is she wounded? I need to know.”

  Again Bele seemed at a loss for words.

  “Mother of Sarah, please just come. I am sorry, Gwen. I can’t explain.”

  “I am sorry, too, Gwen,” I said. “Sarah must have a reason. Please stay with Lithben.”

  Without waiting to hear whether Gwen conceded, I went off with the increasingly agitated Bele.

  “It’s Boudica. She’s about to do something terrible,” Bele told me in a low voice as soon as we were out of earshot of Gwen and Lithben. “Sarah can’t get through to her. Maybe you can.”

  A cold, heavy doubt I’d carried for so long that I had forgotten its existence rose from the pit of my stomach into my throat. It tasted of terror. My legs began to shake as I followed Bele out of the camp, skirting the smoldering town and heading into a wood so thick that twilight had already come. At length we came to a small clearing where Boudica, spear in hand, and a dozen or so chieftains stood around a beam balanced between two oak trees. From this beam, suspended by their wrists, nine women hung, stripped naked.

  At first I thought they were dead, but then one of the women moaned. I grabbed hold of Bele to keep my knees from buckling under me. Sarah, standing on the edge of the circle, caught sight of me and came to take my other arm. Between them, I managed to walk forward until I was face to face with Boudica.

  Her face was empty as a stone, emptier. The face of a stone would have more expression. Empty as a cloudless sky at dawn but without hope. Empty as a pool of still water, but without any light or reflection. Her silence seemed as though it had begun before time and would go on forever, as though it could swallow whole worlds. I felt helpless before her, helpless to reach her, helpless to know her.

  “Have you come to witness the sacrifice?” she asked blandly, as if she were saying something as perfunctory as will you be joining us for dinner?

  “Sacrifice?” I managed to croak. My mouth and throat felt parched as the Judean hills at noon.

  “Sacrifice,” she repeated. “To our goddess, Andraste. Did I not promise she would feast on Roman flesh? Drink Roman blood? She has fought hard for her children, for the combrogos. She is hungry. She must be fed. And revenge is the sweetest food, her favorite food.”

  I was distantly aware of the warriors murmuring among themselves and Sarah and Bele standing near me. The creak of tree branches echoed the groans and sobs of the hanging women. But my focus on Boudica and hers on me was so intense it was as if someone had drawn an invisible circle around us. Inside it we were alone.

  “I don’t know Andraste,” I stated. “I am a priestess of Isis. She prefers honey, wine, songs, beautiful robes.”

  “Isis,” Boudica said, the first note of expression sounding in her voice: contempt. “She is a whore. She has no people of her own. Even Romans worship her. We burned her temple in Londinium today. She has no power here. You must put aside your foreign past, daughter of Lovernios.”

  She identified me for the first time. Why had she chosen to call me daughter instead of mother, daughter of the man who had begotten us both?

  “You have seen the burning groves of Mona,” Boudica went on. “You have waded through the corpses of the druids. If you do not know Andraste, surely you know the Morrigan.”

  The triple goddess of war, death, and slaughter who sometimes took the form of a carrion crow.

  “I know the Morrigan. She feeds on the flesh of warriors slain in honorable battle, not on helpless captives,” I asserted, though I did not in fact know that her taste was so discriminating. “Andraste has been well served already. She does not need the blood of these women. Hold them hostage. But do not torture them.”

  Boudica stared at me, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. She looked so like her father, our father.

  “Do not dare to speak for Andraste. By your own confession, you do not know her. Your time among the Romans has made you soft, decadent, like that Roman dog Catus Decianus who fled with his tail between his legs. But the Roman wolf is not soft when it comes to what it wants, our land, our wealth, our children, our very lives. The Roman wolf showed no mercy when my daughters cried out. I will show no mercy now.”

  How could I hope to sway an outraged mother? How could any revenge ever be enough for her? Two leveled towns, thousands dead hadn’t appeased her.

  “It is true,” I said. “The Romans show no mercy to their enemies. I know that as well as you, as well as anyone. They tortured and killed Sarah’s father before my eyes, before his mother’s eyes. I say to you now what he said to the combrogos long ago when he warned that one day Mona would burn: “Rome is not a place. Rome is not an army. Rome is cruelty and idolatry and slavery. Wherever these flourish, Rome is in your midst.”

  I paused, praying for Esus’s words to find their mark at last, here in this dark grove on the other side of the Holy Isles, here in Boudica’s wounded heart.

  “Let’s banish Rome from our midst, not just Romans,” I went on. “We are the combrogos. We are the victorious today, strong enough to show mercy.”

  “Mercy,” she repeated, as if she were tasting the word, not sure it was fit to swallow. “Mercy. You preach to me about mercy, Lovernios’ daughter? The mercy of stealing a sacrifice meant for the gods, the mercy of drowning your own father in a tidal bore. The mercy of leaving your child to be raised by strangers and only returning when it suited you.”

  I wanted to protest again that I hadn’t left her willingly, but I could not deny the second half of the charge, so I let it stand.

  “And tell me,” she took a step closer to me, and I had all I could do not to back away from her, “when you visited the Roman governor
on the way to Mona was that an act of mercy, too?”

  I felt hot all over, and then cold. My heart beat like the wings of a wounded bird. It did not help that I could hear Sarah’s sharp indrawn breath.

  “I had you followed,” she said bluntly. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I thought it was the Romans who set a tail on me.”

  “Oh, they had you followed, too, no doubt. The combrogos are just better at not being seen. No one trusts a whore.”

  I felt Sarah stiffen at the epithet, even though she had used it once herself. Neither of them understood that instead of shaming me, the word restored me to myself—the self who had survived slavery to become a priestess and healer, the self who welcomed the god-bearing stranger at Temple Magdalen. The self who embodied the goddess.

  “I went to the governor to tell him of the procurator’s outrages against the combrogos.” I had nothing to lose by telling the truth and no power to make her believe it. “I begged the governor to pull rank and restrain him.”

  “Why would the governor even have agreed to see you, let alone listen to you?” Boudica asked shrewdly. “Who are you to him?”

  I took a deep breath. “I was his lover.”

  “Was.” The word wavered between a question and a statement.

  “Was,” I repeated, feeling that I was on trial for the crime of being myself. The outcome would determine not my fate alone, but the fate of the women who swayed in the still air. “On Mona I tried to kill him.”

  “So you told me. But you failed. And your lover showed you mercy. Mercy.” She spat the word at my feet. “His mistake. It will not be mine.”

  The look she gave me I had seen on only one other person’s face. For a moment I thought she intended to kill me herself. It didn’t matter why. I almost didn’t care. I almost wished she would, if it would ease the pain, quench the rage that drove her. I searched her face, and one last time I tried to see the child I’d held so briefly to my breast.