by Manda Scott
“It’s not my business. I only came to see how you were. I’ll be outside, helping with the others. Find me when you’re done.” A memory came of a cavalry officer with russet hair, who had stood beside her, watchfully, while there was still danger. He was a good man, and he cared deeply, but not for her.
With him gone, the texture of the voices changed and a voice in her ear said, “Breaca? If you’re awake, just nod. You don’t have to speak.”
She nodded.
“I need to move you. Is that all right?”
She nodded again and steady hands turned her head and someone dribbled water into the side of her mouth and she swallowed it without coughing and thought that she had lain long enough like a helpless infant and could move by herself, and did move; and stopped moving, abruptly.
When she could breathe again, she said, “Why do I have to move?” Her voice wavered, weakly.
“Because your back will heal into something like wood and you will never swing a sword again, nor cast a slingstone, nor throw a spear. If you can keep moving now, then it will heal freely and you will only have more scars, not a body that fails to answer your bidding.”
A long time ago, in her childhood, her father had taken a bone splinter out of her hand. The pain then had seemed as bad as anything could ever be. The man sitting at her bedside sounded exactly as Eburovic had then, or Luain mac Calma at other times with other wounds: benignly reasonable when pain was coming and there was nothing to be done about it.
She swivelled her head round to look. He sat near her shoulder, holding her hand. He had cleaned her fingers and he was mac Calma, Elder of Mona, more exhausted than she had known him, and with a new edge of irony, turned in on himself, and a hound at his side that looked very like Hail.
Hoarsely, she said, “I thought you were on Mona?”
Surprised, he raised a brow. “I was.”
“What brought you here?”
“Luain mac Calma sent me. He thought you should be encouraged to raise the tribes in rebellion while the governor is busy in the west. That was what he said at the time. I suspect his true motives may have been different.”
Luain mac Calma sent me. That made no sense. She closed her eyes, the better to think. The hound stood very close to him, as Stone would do for her, except that Stone was a hound of flesh and blood and this hound was not.
Luain mac Calma’s dream was the heron. He did not have a hound that would cross from death to life to find him, nor a russet-haired cavalry officer with a gruff voice who cared for him with single-minded intensity; nor, if she thought about it, had he ever ridden a horse that could kill a man on command, nor ever had the need to find one.
Breaca opened her eyes.
“Bán?”
It was not the right name. Her brother flinched as if struck and the strange, dry humour of his gaze died to bleakness. Without it, exhaustion showed, and the bottomless well of pain to which his horse had given such shattering voice in the morning. Suddenly, he looked very much as he had done on the boat returning from Gaul, brought close to destruction by the ghosts of his own despair. He had used another name then, perhaps not only to taunt her.
Guessing, Breaca said, “Valerius, then. If it fits better.”
He looked down, and seemed to be searching for words. When he looked up, he had found the humour again, however shakily.
“I think it does. I had hoped not, even prayed not, but the gods are wiser. Bán died a long time ago, and cannot be brought back now. In his place, you have Valerius of Nemain and Mithras, a dreamer with some facility as a warrior, who offers you his service, if you wish it.”
There was too much in that to deal with at once. She said, “Of Nemain and Mithras? Can you serve both?”
“It would seem so. I had thought there would be space for only one, but apparently not. We have reached an … accommodation. It serves us all well, and could serve you, if you wish it.”
He had said the same, exactly, a moment ago. Breaca held her breath against the pain and made herself sit up. “Why might I not?”
He looked at her, and through her, to all that was beyond. “When we met last, on a ship, mac Calma stopped you from killing me. He said you would have need of me. He did not tell you that he was my father, and that he had that much reason to keep me alive.”
The brother she once knew would have given that news more tightly. The man sitting by her bedside might have done, she thought, if he had remembered what it was to be gentle with himself.
Misreading her silence, he said, “Mac Calma is not here now. I would imagine that is by design, not accident.”
“So that I could kill you now if I chose?” She laughed, which hurt them both. “I’m hardly in any condition to kill anyone.”
“Which is not the point.”
He was not smiling; even the irony, which had seemed so habitual, was gone. His eyes devoured her and his soul lay open, so that she could see the dark corners of it much as the ancestor had shown her the darkness in her own heart. Before, she would have been appalled, and might indeed have turned him away. Now, knowing herself as she had never done, she saw past the dark to the god-space, and the passion that fired it, and had given him the strength to serve two gods and not split apart.
He dropped his gaze, hiding himself. His hands lay flat on the pallet, scarred and sun-worn, with the nails pared tight and the tendons like ropes on the backs, from years of wielding a sword. They shook, lightly, and would not be stilled.
The silence stretched and he would not break it. He was offering his soul and her response mattered to him, as much as anything, as much, possibly, as the parting from Corvus.
Breaca had heard that, lying beneath the stanchion, and the words neither had said. She had not known who he was then, only felt the raw currents that had tugged at them, and she knew, if no-one else, that the explosion of grief that had come afterwards and had slain the procurator had not all been for the sake of the children.
He was her brother, and they shared no blood, except that their mothers had been sisters. Unknowing, she had grown to adulthood and beyond, had become Warrior of Mona and then the Boudica, and each battle had been fought with this man in her heart, believing him brother, believing him dead, wanting him to know that she loved him.
Still he did not know it.
She made herself move, slowly, carefully, until she could grasp both of his hands between her own, and feel the shaking, and still it. She said, “A long time ago, I made an oath to the serpent-dreamer of the ancestors that I would do whatever it took to protect my family. I renewed that oath now, at the stanchion, understanding more of what it meant. Whatever your blood, you are part of my family. On the boat from Gaul, I had forgotten that. It was a mistake. Will you forgive me?”
He was weeping and had been for some time. She held his hand and waited and watched and he forced himself not to flinch this time but sustained her scrutiny for as long as either of them could bear, and then broke away and looked down again at her hands holding his.
He said, “It’s not for me to forgive. So much of what I have done is unforgivable and there is no going back. But we can go forward, and perhaps not make the same mistakes again. Airmid says you are looking for warriors to drive the legions back to the sea. I am not the warrior to lead the final rout of Rome, but rather a dreamer who has lived the past twenty years as a warrior, and can still fight if I have to. If I offered to fight for you, would you accept it?”
The world held its breath, and the ancestor, who was within her.
Breaca made the moment last, because it was a good one, and few things in the recent past had been good. Then she pulled his hands to hers and kissed them and then reached up and kissed his cheek; he was her brother, whatever his blood, and he needed to know it.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “With great gratitude, I will accept and return it; my life for yours, for all time.”
EPILOGUE
TWO HAMMERS RANG ON THEIR ANVILS, RHYTHMICALLY. Breaca woke and lay f
or a while staring at the striated thatch-shadows spread across the wall to her left. The noise made its own stripes, matching the light-and-dark. She lost herself in them for a while, working up to moving. It was important to move; Valerius had said so and had come to remind her three times each day for the past five days. “It’s the old rule of the legions: keep moving your back while a flogging heals, else the flesh will stiffen for ever. It hurts for now, but it’ll be worth it later, I promise.”
He was a man who did not cast his promises lightly, she was coming to know that. Experimentally, she brought her knees to her chest and away again. It was possible to do it now without holding her breath to keep from swearing. She did it again, more smoothly.
“Mother?”
Breaca jerked upright, forgetting the pain. “Graine? I thought you were asleep?”
“No. Don’t want to sleep. It hurts.” Graine lay an arm’s reach away and had done for two days, since Airmid had said she was well enough to be carried the distance across the steading from one hut to the other. She lay now in the striped sunlight, insubstantial as a ghost, with her white skin stretched tight over the battered bones of her skull and the bruises fading on her face and the blue-black shadows beneath her eyes not fading at all.
Breaca made herself stand, slowly. “Airmid left something for you to drink. It might help. Do you want it?”
“No.” Graine made a face, and turned away, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands, like an infant.
“I have some milk, then, and some cheese. They have no poppy in them, or anything that will make you dream. Would you eat them with me?”
Breaca sat on the edge of the piled sheepskins and crumbled the white goat’s cheese and found a wrinkled apple that one of the incoming warriors must have brought. She bit away a half-moon portion and held it out. “Graine? Love of life, can you eat?”
“A bit.” They sat up together, both of them broken, and ate slowly, pushing food past the nausea and fear.
Graine chewed, slowly, mechanically, as if it were a duty, unwillingly met. She stared out of the door to the steading beyond. “Who’s making the noise?”
“The hammering? That’s Gunovar and Valerius, my brother. They’re making weapons for the new warriors.”
There were a great many new warriors. In the days she had been bedridden, the war host had grown to over a thousand, and was growing still. Ardacos had charge of it, with Dubornos. It mattered to keep Dubornos busy; he was alive only because Graine was still alive. If she had died, he would have laid himself on her grave and followed her into the lands beyond life. Breaca had absolved him of all fault, openly and before witnesses, and he had not believed her.
“Will there be war?” Graine was still looking out of the door.
“Yes. Very soon.”
“If you’re still sick, will Valerius lead it?”
“Maybe. If the others will follow him. He knows most about Rome. If the legions come, which they must do now, then he knows best how to fight against them.”
“Cunomar hates him.”
Breaca laid down her cheese, unable to eat. Graine was so small, and had been so sick, and Breaca had thought her asleep when Cunomar had carried her into the hut, and found Valerius already there, and refused to acknowledge him. It had only lasted a moment; Valerius had gone out, as if it were right that he do so.
Breaca had not stopped him. It was the first time she had seen Cunomar since he had stood in slave chains beneath the cross on which he was about to die and it had taken all her self-control simply to lie still and look at her son and not show anything, or speak.
Cunomar had laid Graine on the sheepskins piled along the wall and, straightening, had said, “It doesn’t matter. An ear’s a small price to pay for living.”
Breaca had nodded, speechless. Her beautiful, gold-haired warrior son was beautiful no longer. Sometime during the day, he had shaved the hair at his temples and back along the sides of his head, so that his one ear stood proud and unhidden, and the other, which had gone, showed a black clot of old blood and the hole in the centre of it that Airmid had packed with rolled leaves to keep it open. He had been beautiful, and was damaged beyond all repair, and knew it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he had said, again. “We’re alive. We have a war to fight and to win. If this is the worst of what happens, we will be happy at the end of it.”
He was right, for himself if not for Graine, the child-dreamer who feared to sleep, who cried out at night and made herself wake and then lay rigidly still, staring into the dark. She found no safety or help in the things that would have held her before; she could not call on the elder grandmother, nor hear the ancestor-dreamer, and the hare that ran through her dreams was gone.
Privately, Airmid had said the dreaming could have been driven out of her for ever or could return later, stronger; that it would be impossible to tell until all the pieces of her that had been broken were mended, and that such a healing could not be hurried and might take days or months or years or pass beyond this lifetime.
“There’s nothing any of us can do, except care for her,” she had said, and Breaca had stared at the wall and bitten her lip and said nothing. As she was, there was nothing she could do about anything, and the frustration of that was driving her to distraction.
Now, she made herself walk from the bed to the door and back again. Outside, a fire burned, fragrantly. The wind tugged strands of smoke into the hut. Graine sniffed and smiled thinly and took a crumb of cheese, as if that might make the walk back to the bed easier.
“Cygfa likes him,” Graine said, “your brother. Ardacos told me. She’s training her horse to be like his Crow-horse.”
“Is she? I don’t think it’s possible to train a horse to be like that. Can you drink this?” Breaca held a beaker of milk and helped Graine to drink it, and then stayed at her side, holding her small shoulders, trying to find some comfort. “Is Cygfa well enough to ride?”
“Not really. But she won’t listen to Airmid. She said she would rest but she got up and spent the morning training with the new warriors and the afternoon talking to your brother about his horse. He’s a dreamer, isn’t he, not a warrior or a smith?”
“Valerius? He’s all of those things, but he’s a dreamer before everything else, yes. How do you know?”
“His hound walks in his soul. Like Airmid’s frog, and your serpent-spear.” Graine tilted her head back and studied her mother curiously. “That’s new,” she said. “Stronger.” She continued to look. Her face blurred, as if sleep-drenched, and then cleared again. Her eyes lost some of their haunting. “Cunomar doesn’t have a bear like that. He is given to it, but it doesn’t live in him. Is that why he hates your brother?”
“I think so.” Breaca bent her neck against the stiffness in her back and pressed her lips to her daughter’s sweated hair. She breathed in the smell, the sharpness of pain and fear and hurt and the aching absence of dreaming. She reached inside for the ancestor, and found her, quietly watchful.
I promised you her life, said the ancestor. You did not ask that she be whole. I could not have made her that.
“I know. Nobody could. But she sees Valerius’ dream-hound; she cannot, then, be for ever cut off from her dreaming?”
No more than you were.
Once, she would have railed against so ambiguous an answer. Now, she nodded and kissed Graine again and said aloud, “Since I first came from the ancestor’s cave, Cunomar has wanted to be the one to lead the rout of Rome. He is afraid now that Valerius will take his place. I have said that only the gods can know who will be alive to fight and that we should all be ready but he is still afraid.”
“What does the ancestor say?” Graine squirmed round to see her properly.
“Nothing. She will speak when it matters and not before. For the moment, all that matters is that you get well again. Can you drink some more milk, do you think?”
They drank, and finished the apple and the cheese and a haunch of roast hare th
at Airmid had cooked and wrapped in leaves and infused with the faintest taint of poppy, and other things that might bring dreamless sleep.
Breaca lifted Graine and carried her back to the pile of hides that was her own bed and they lay in it together, carefully, curling round to find the places of least discomfort that still let them lie together, skin on skin, finding a semblance of peace in a world racing to war.
Later, when Graine slept, and her breathing was even, Breaca lay quietly awake. She ran her fingers through the ox-blood hair and bent forward, painfully, and kissed the place at the back, in the middle, where a small arrow-head of rich red hairs came together.
“You’re alive,” she said to the child, and the listening gods. “It was all I asked for. For today, that’s enough. Tomorrow, or the day after, we can give thanks that everyone else is alive and then we can raise and arm every warrior of every tribe and push Rome and its legions back into the sea.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THOSE WHO KNOW ANYTHING OF BOUDICA’S STORY, FROM SCHOOL or modern media histories, know that she was flogged and her daughters were raped and that this was the spark that lit the fires of her revolt against Roman occupation. It makes romantic reading and gave our Victorian forebears an understandable excuse for why and how a woman might have had the opportunity and ability to lead an armed war host in a series of successful military actions; the “wronged matron” fighting to avenge the assault on her daughters ruffles no feathers.
In reality, the atrocities committed by the Roman authorities in the wake of Prasutagos’ death were the end point of a cumulating oppression and, it seems to me, were more likely in retribution for the beginnings of insurrection that was already under way than the trigger that began it. We have no exact date to pinpoint the start of this uprising but it came at a time when Suetonius Paulinus was attacking the druidic island of Mona (now known as Anglesey) and we can assume that he attacked early in the battle season, simply to give himself time to complete his actions before the autumn. We also know from Tacitus that the tribes “… had been careless in sowing corn, people of every age having gone to war …” from which we can assume that the revolt was under way at the time of the spring plantings—not long after the winter thaw.
