I have no form here, not even my dove form. For a moment I am giddy with terror. Then I discover I can move at will, widen or narrow this awareness. I follow Boudica as she circles the entire field all the way to the back where the women and children throng around the carts. Now she steps out of the chariot and embraces Gwen and Lithben.
For a moment I am in her heart. She doesn’t want to let them go. She doesn’t ever want to let them go. For a moment, she is just a mother, like any other mother.
Gwen is biting her lip, fighting tears, fighting rage. Fighting wanting to fight.
Lithben is weeping silently. She is losing her mother, losing her mother again.
Then abruptly Boudica lets go, mounts her chariot and drives back to the front, followed always by wild cheering.
Where is Sarah? Where is Sarah?
As soon as I think her name, I see Sarah riding along the opposite flank of the army, leading Macha with her, ignoring the din, searching for Lithben and Gwen. When she finds them, she dismounts.
“Where is my mother?” she asks, startled not to see me at Lithben’s side.
“She’s gone,” answers Gwen, anger covering her fear. “She disappeared in the night. She said she wouldn’t leave Lithben. She broke her word.”
“Disappeared?” Now Sarah is panicking.
“She didn’t disappear,” says Lithben patiently, as if she were the grownup, having to soothe an unreasonable child. “She told me she had something to do. And she isn’t gone. She’s here with us now.”
Gwen and Sarah exchange worried glances.
“She’d better not be dead,” Sarah mutters. “Or I’ll kill her!”
“She’s not dead, Sarah,” Lithben insists. “She’s here.”
I am here, I think to them with all my might, I am here.
“Well, if she’s not dead, she’s bloody well invisible,” says Gwen exasperated. “And I wish she wouldn’t be. Oh, Sarah, please, please let me take her horse and ride with you! I know how to fight. My mother trained me herself.”
“She trained me, too,” puts in Lithben more as a point of fact than anything else.
“You are not to go into battle!” says Sarah sharply. “You know perfectly well why. If you’re going to be the queens of the Iceni, you have to stay alive. If I let you disobey your mother’s orders, she’d kill us both. Listen to me. You keep Macha here with you. If you sense any danger, any at all, don’t wait. Both of you get on Macha and ride away from here as fast as you can. That’s an order. Do you hear me!”
Gwen’s silence is her answer.
“I hear you, Sarah,” says Lithben. “Don’t worry. Grandmother will tell us what to do.”
Sarah throws up her hands and then gathers both her nieces into a swift embrace.
“Now,” says Sarah, “I’ve got to find your mother.”
Before it’s too late, Sarah does not say aloud.
“She’s heading back to the front,” Gwen relents. “That way.”
It’s a trap. It’s a trap. It’s a trap. The words sound over and over in Sarah’s mind as she gallops after Boudica.
Whatever I am becomes a prayer. Let Sarah reach her in time. Let Sarah reach her.
Let me reach her.
Boudica, Boudica, Boudica!
Inside Boudica’s mind there is deadly quiet while behind her the roar rises and rises. Then she sees them, the Roman cavalry in the distance riding straight toward her army.
The fools, the fools, she exults, as she raises her laigen high above her head.
And then in the next moment, Boudica understands:
It’s a trap.
She lets out a sound so huge, so desolate. If anyone heard it, they would weep. But no one does hear it. Boudica has no choice now. She must ride the wave to its end.
I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it.
Lazarus’s hands hold mine without holding them. The river flows around us, joyous, soothing. I can’t stay here.
I am in the valley now between the ridges. I am hearing the fury of Boudica’s army rushing towards the Roman soldiers as if I am one of their rank. It doesn’t feel like an enemy army; it feels like a natural disaster. Every fiber in their bodies wants to run. It takes all their years of training and discipline to stand still. Some of them can’t help shaking. Their armor rattles, and shame underscores their terror.
Then I find myself looking out at them, the infantry in their perfect formations, red and gold shields polished bright, pila at the ready. The archers are in place, and the cavalry will soon arrive with the enemy behind them. Strangely I find my heart welling with love for these men. Then I understand; I am seeing them through the general’s eyes. They are his; he has trained them; he has made them what they are. He has been with some of them for years. He knows they will not fail him. They are what matters. Not Rome, not Pretannia. These men.
“Have no fear,” he is saying, even though he knows they do, and he does not blame them. “We fight against an enemy who has no plan, no discipline. An enemy drunk on easy victories against civilians, an enemy overconfident because of its size. They will hurl themselves against us and shatter. For we are solid as rock, as a mountain. We will withstand them; we will make a mountain of their dead. Keep your ranks tight, keep your eye on the standards, and you will know exactly what to do at each moment. There will be no uncertainty, no chaos. We have made a good trap. The enemy is doomed, and before this day is out, we will win not only victory but lasting fame.”
No more words. The cavalry thunder into the valley and take their places guarding the flanks. Boudica’s army is only seconds away. Now they are close enough for the men to see the painted faces, the wild eyes of the enemy. They wait, they wait. The trumpet blasts, the standard is raised half way; the men ready the pila. Then the next blast, the eagle atop the standard plunges into the sky.
And now I am with the combrogos, the first ones, the brave ones who will not stop, who cannot stop. The Roman spears sing in the air; the sky is black with them. There is no time for fear. Some drop without a sound. Then the screams begin. The ones who have not fallen must rush on, over the dead, over the wounded. Another round of pila and another and another. There is no time to stop to pull the spear out of your shield if you have a shield. Drop it, keep going. Thousands are behind you, pressing you forward. Climb, climb over your friend, climb over your brother, your father, your sister. Don’t stop. There is a Roman there, waiting for you behind his immense, heavy shield, fending you off till he finds your soft belly and thrusts the sword swift up into your heart.
Now I am in two worlds at once: in the thick of battle, in the place between sword and flesh; in the straining heart, in the pierced heart. Each death wound is a doorway, a birth canal to the Otherworld, where the river flows, the golden river, the merciful river. Hundreds are arriving, thousands are arriving. They come coated with dirt and blood, fear and horror. They don’t know yet that it’s over. There are many here to welcome them, to take their hands the way Lazarus took mine. They are guiding the newborn dead into the river. They are washing them in the cool golden waters. I recognize Ciaran and Moira and many of the fallen from Mona. I can still hear the screams from the country of life, but here someone is singing. I am singing. We are singing. The river is singing, a song without words, a mother song that washes away the pain. Among the river reeds, the birds sing, too, then rise, flock after flock, to bathe their wings in light.
I long to stay here, singing with the river. But something is drawing me back, away from this light into the stench and dust and din of the battle beneath a sky where vultures gather, patient and certain as they circle and circle.
The trumpet blares again, three blasts. The standard is raised and thrust forward, and the ranks obey instantly, reconfiguring as a monster with huge teeth. Lockstep by lockstep, the soldiers advance in saw tooth formation, the nails in the sandals holding firm in the slick mess of blood, guts, lost limbs. On and on they march, killing as they go, pushing the dead and living before t
hem in one tangled mass.
“Hold!” screams Boudica from her chariot. “Hold your ground!”
But they can’t hear her any more; they can’t heed her. She feels it before she sees it: her army is turning, her people are running for their lives. She aims her chariot directly towards the Roman ranks. Roman arrows fly. Her horses sink to their knees and fall. She is hurtled from her chariot. On the ground, she struggles against the tide of retreat, reaching the front ranks of the Roman army, her sword swinging, whirling so swiftly no can touch her, and in all its wildness, deadly, accurate. She fights on and on, all the way back down the field.
Still on her horse, Sarah breaks free of the stampede. She is racing to reach the women and children, to warn them.
I can be there faster. I can be there now.
“Lithben,” I speak to her mind. “You and Gwen get on Macha. Ride away as far as you can, ride away now.”
I watch as they gallop away to the shelter of the trees in the distance, just as the first wave of fleeing warriors crashes into the barrier of carts and wagons. The Roman cavalry closes in, and the final slaughter begins. No one is spared. When the last of Boudica’s army is forced back to the edge of the plain, she turns at last and looks: men, women, children piled in heaps around their carts.
It is finished.
There is nothing I can do for her, this child I carried under my heart. This child I held in my arms so fleetingly. There is no mending of the tear in her heart or mine when they tore her from me. And yet I will be with her in this last bitterness. I will be her. I will be in her heart when she drives the blade home.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CALLED BACK
THE RIVER IS SINGING all around me. I am lying on the shoals, watching currents of air swirl in golden light. Lazarus is with me, holding my hand without holding it.
I am so tired, so tired.
“Rest now,” says Lazarus. “I will wait with you.”
“Why do I have to wait?” I ask.
“Rest now,” he says again. “Wait.”
And I do. I rest for what seems like a long time. The river flows. The birds sing. The pebbles shine. And then something changes.
Why is the river so sad? I wonder. Why is the river weeping so bitterly?
“Mother,” someone is saying. “Mama, don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.”
Sarah. It’s Sarah. I wish I could go to her, but I don’t think I can.
“Mama,” she weeps. “Mama.”
“Beloved daughter.”
Someone else is speaking, but not to me.
“Call her back, call her back, as I once called Lazarus, as she once called me.”
“Father, I don’t know how. Help me.”
I hear no more words, but someone is holding my heart in her hands, as if it were a wounded bird. My heart is alive. Its wings stir and flutter.
“Maeve,” says a voice that shines with its own light, golden as the leaves on the tree of life. “Maeve Rhuad, come back to us, come back to me.”
When I open my eyes, I am looking into Sarah’s. She is bending over me, her hands over my heart.
I stood with Sarah on the ridge, overlooking the plain, the setting sun casting in gold the devastation below, as if its light had borrowed a little mercy from the Otherworld. It was hard to believe it was the same day that had dawned that morning.
“The general told me where to find you,” Sarah said. “He let me go to look for you, because he knew I would come back.”
“How could he be sure of that?” I wondered, still feeling shaky and disoriented. It was strange to be back in a body, even one miraculously restored by Sarah’s touch.
“He has taken Gwen and Lithben captive.”
“But they got away! I saw them. They rode away!”
I did not have to explain to Sarah how I knew that. She seemed to understand that I had been there at the battle, even as I lay dead or near dead on the ridge.
“They came back when it was over. They came looking for their mother.”
Of course they did.
“Boudica is dead,” said Sarah. “She died by her own sword.”
“I know,” I answered. “I know.”
We stood silent for a time.
“Alyssa, Bele?” I finally asked.
She shook her head.
“They were killed in the final onslaught. I would have been, too, no doubt, but I went to look for Lithben and Gwen.”
I listened for anguish and self-reproach but she seemed to have passed beyond that into some stark, empty place.
“The general is holding anyone connected to Boudica’s family. You know what that means, don’t you?”
He would execute us publicly and display our remains in some gruesome way. Or he would take us to Rome where we would be publicly paraded and humiliated.
“Yes, I know what that means. And you know what, Sarah?” I paused, feeling giddy and certain at once. “That is not happening. Let’s go.”
You can imagine—or maybe you cannot—what it was like to cross that killing plain at dusk, where preparations for mass burning for the enemy and burial for the troops were only just underway. Someone was no doubt in charge of the body count. Eighty thousand of the combrogos, four hundred Romans. Not an inch of earth unstained.
At last we arrived at the fort Boudica had intended to occupy. The fallen queen’s mother and sister did not have to wait to be escorted to the prison cell where Lithben and Gwen kept a huddled vigil over their mother’s body.
Lithben jumped up and ran into my arms. Gwen barely lifted her head. She kept holding her mother’s hand and stroking it, as if she could rub life back into her. Sarah sat down next to Gwen and put a hand gently on her back. In the dim light, I could see the fire of the stars pulsing there.
None of us spoke.
After a moment, Lithben took my hand and led me to her mother’s body and placed Boudica’s other hand in mine, her sword hand. Boudica still wore her bloody battle clothes. No one had brought water for washing her. I put down her hand, touched her bruised cheek, and then lifted a lock of bright red hair to my face and breathed the scent, dust, blood, but some faint lingering sweetness, the scent of a newborn’s head.
Then I got to my feet.
“Guard,” I called to the man posted outside our cell. “Tell General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus that I will see him now.”
I unfastened my Roman cloak and let it fall, and I stood in my blood red tunic and necklace of skulls.
“Tell him Maeve Rhuad, mother of Queen Boudica, will see him now.”
I don’t know what it was about my aspect that persuaded the man he should obey, but he went.
I stood waiting, sending roots into the blood-drenched plain, sending my branches to the moon and stars wheeling over it. At last I heard two sets of footsteps approaching. The guard went back to his place, and the general stood before me: this man who had faced and defeated a vast army, looking pale and shaken.
“I thought you were dead,” he said in a low voice. “I thought I had killed you.”
“Then why did you send my daughter to find me?”
“I had to know,” he said simply.
He had killed tens of thousands today. Hundreds of his own men had fallen. Why should my life or death matter so much to him? Unless he feared me. Unless he loved me.
“I was dead,” I told him, “and it would have been a lot more pleasant to stay that way. But I came back from death. I came back to tell you something you need to know.”
Now he would have to listen to me.
“Yes?” he asked, wary, resigned.
“Your son ordered the rape of my two granddaughters, the same ones you have now imprisoned. Your son had their mother beaten in front of them. Your son started the war that you had to finish, the war you have just won.”
For what it is worth, he did not look away from me; for what it is worth, he made no defense. He waited. Behind me, Lithben, Gwen, and Sarah were as still as Boudica.
“Now,” I said. “You will give us water to wash my daughter’s body and oil to anoint her and a shroud to wrap her in. You will give us five days’ provisions, a cart and our horses. At dawn we will leave this fort, and you will see to it that none of your men harms us or follows us.”
It was so quiet in the prison cell, I could hear the moans of the wounded in the courtyard outside; I could hear the rats scuttling in the walls.
“Why would I release the heirs of Boudica and Prasutagus? I have just put down one rebellion. Why would I sow the seeds for another?”
Reasonable questions, inevitable questions. While I waited for answers, I closed my eyes and saw us on the cliffs before either of us knew who the other was, when we were only a boy and a girl, stripped of our age by some inexplicable magic. A boy and a girl wounded and lost like everyone else.
“There are three reasons,” I said at last. “First, honor demands that you make amends for the harm the son of your bloodline has done to the daughters of my bloodline.”
I paused, feeling him tighten, ready to resist.
“And the other reasons?”
“The love you bear me. The love I bear you.”
He was silent for a moment, his face still. I could see him swallow once, twice. Then he took a breath, as if he had just surfaced from some airless place.
“It shall be as you will.”
And he turned on his heel and walked away.
History records the general’s ruthlessness in the aftermath of the rebellion. He hunted out the remnants with dogged thoroughness. Some may not believe he would have been capable of such an act of mercy—even of folly. Perhaps he regretted it; perhaps he was called to account for it, and believed he had to prove his loyalty to Rome and his efficiency as the Empire’s lone representative in an unruly outpost. I will never know. I never saw him again. I only know he honored his word to me.
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