“A warrior queen.” She answered, “Not an ornament. I take what I want. And I give what I want. I give my daughters to no one. Not today. For where would they rule if my kingdom becomes a memory?”
“Our work will be finished soon.”
“He tells me that a Roman named Paullinus will fight us soon.” She gestured to me.
“He knows too much. He is a Roman spy. A traitor.”
“We will soon know.”
Her chieftain brother Dubh approached her next, and shoved Cailte out of the way because he did not like to wait to have an audience with his sister. Cailte left in disgust.
“We will have Verulamium next,” the brother said, with triumph in his deep voice and not a trace of weariness. “The Trinovantes will join us there. It is both tribes now, and even more after the next victory.”
“We must prepare to be hard engaged,” she answered.
“They are no challenge….”
“Not by them, but by the Roman legions who will follow us there, circle around us, and strike.”
“How do you know?”
“He tells me.”
“He is a worthless cripple.”
“He saved my daughters and brought them comfort when no other Celtic man did.”
“Your gratitude or your lust for him?”
“Both and more. I am queen. Verulamium, but only to show Cartimandua what happens when the Catuvellauni show too much loyalty to the Romans.”
He nodded, pleased, and bounded off.
This was perhaps the saddest, most treacherous act of all. The people of Verulamium, the Catuvellauni she spoke of, were also Celts. There were few Romans stationed there, but it was not a military outpost, only a center for trade run by a Celtic tribe that had forged ties with the Romans. Boudicca hoped to force Cartimandua’s tribe, the Brigantes, also allied with the Romans, to think about their loyalties, and to ultimately join her in her fight against the Romans. She meant to show her what she would do to Celts who compromised. She seemed to forget that her own late husband, Prasutagas, had also compromised.
It was long a pattern in Celtic history. They could have amassed an empire of their own to rival even the Roman Empire, but for their inability to unite with each other. Much as the Protestant and Catholic enemies of a future day Northern Ireland, these tribal wars were filthy, fratricidal, and never ending.
Hear me, Billy O’Malley? You dumb ass.
***
“What will be the end to your rebellion?” I asked Boudicca, holding on behind her in her chariot, trying not to do a bump and grind against her when the vehicle shifted over rough terrain, which I think is what she was waiting from me. “When Celt kills Celt?”
“You are so troubled by a kill. You would better have been a peasant farmer.”
“I only ask, what is the measure of your success?”
“Victory.”
“To chase the Romans from Britannia?”
“To kill them, so they never leave.”
“They will engage you well after Verulamium. Britannia will have never seen any battle like it.”
“Britannia is their name.”
She pulled the trotting horses to a gentle stop, but we still lurched together. It was not so much a bump and grind as it was a stumble and fumble. She put her rough, strong hands on my arms.
“Victory or death,” she said quietly, “With the gods’ fortune, death on the battlefield. For if we are not killed in battle, we will be crucified.”
She was right. The ringleaders of the rebellion would be crucified by the Romans, tied to crossbars, their legs broken, and hung to dry in the sun for as long as their agony sustained them, like Spartacus’ soldiers of long ago. The peasants and warriors would be sold into slavery.
There was no turning back, there never was, not from the moment she showed contempt for the Procurator who came to inventory her kingdom for himself. Her plan was forged, her destiny was sealed at her whipping. There was no turning back for Boudicca. There was no turning back for her people.
She pulled me against her and kissed me. Despite her compassion for my wound, she determined to have what she could of me, like a woman who had nothing left to lose.
We were on a small hill above the camp, in a lonely spot where the tall wild grass had not been trampled by victors and victims. The sunset beyond the camp shone like a long, flat blinding pool of bronze in the slowly darkening sky. It had been a long, hellish day, yet she stepped off the chariot lightly into the grass, and pulled me with her, as if we had spent a leisurely summer outing in each other’s company. Like some avant-garde perfume commercial on television. Vengeance. That would be a good name for a perfume. It spoke of something wild, irresistible, and unattainable.
I did not know what to do, frankly. What exactly did Eleanor mean by “Don’t get involved?” I had taken it to mean, don’t kill anyone because you’ll upset the course of history, thereby rearranging the future. I had taken it to mean don’t let anyone know who you are and what your mission is. Don’t tell anyone what lies in store for them in the future. She never actually said don’t have sex.
Not in so many words.
It had been an unspoken moment of inferred intimacy between Eleanor and I, there in the sterile lab, and I smiled now to think of it. What a piece of work she was, Eleanor.
Boudicca puzzled over my face, and that brought me back.
“You have a secret?” she whispered, and actually grinned. She seemed to have most of her teeth. I’ll have to tell Dr. Ford. He probably would also like to know at what age she experienced menarche, but I didn’t know how to work that into the conversation.
“I am a slave.” I ran an end run, “That is my secret.”
“You are not a slave of the Celts, but of the Romans. We are avenging your slavery.”
“That is not what you are doing.”
She shrugged. Obviously poetic heroism was lost on me.
“You are a talker, like Cailte,” she said, and lowered herself into the grass, pulling me down towards her. Our skin was moist and sticky from sweat, and dirt, and chaff blown on the wind. Did she expect abrupt passion, ecstatically forceful and quickly done? I gambled on a different tactic.
I don’t know what she thought of foreplay, if it was her custom or not. It was my custom, and if my foreplay was too prolonged for her, a little more prolonged than usual even for me, she did not seem to mind. This was new. She was curious. I could feel her excitement building. She put herself in my hands, not knowing what to expect of me, but she responded playfully, with eager curiosity. Here’s an experiment for you, Dr. Ford. A Third millennium man in touch with his feelings and sensitive to a woman’s erotic desires, paired with a “barbarian” for whom the assuaging of lust was more mechanical and less prone to strategic delay.
Shut your face, John, you hotshot know it all. You’re touching a human being, not a barbarian. Slow down. She’s going to expect more from you right now. Didn’t we both witness the butchering of humans today? How many did she kill by her own hand? This hand. This hand that touches me. Just because it is over, does that mean it is gone? Because it is gone, does that mean it’s null and void, or perhaps even that it never happened?
Just like all the lessons of history that ever were.
Where’s Einstein when I need him? He got me into this mess. Him and his frigging Fourth Dimension.
I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to remember, and I didn’t want to stop.
Bouchal was nearly on top of us before we heard him. I rolled off Boudicca as quickly as if she and I were sophomores and he was her father. I stayed flat on my stomach for a moment, sweating.
“Leave us!” Boudicca screamed at him with more intensity than I had ever seen her display, even in battle. She was shaking. I rubbed my forehead into the ground.
“What, Bouchal?” I said to him, and suddenly remembered I had told the woman to send for help if she needed me. I sat up. “What?”
“The woman,” he
mumbled, his large, dark eyes round with fear.
“Where?”
“Master’s tent.”
I jumped into Boudicca’s chariot and sent it flying down to the camp. That I did not know how to properly drive a chariot was not as big a problem as the fact that it was the queen’s chariot I had stolen, the same queen I left in a state of pre-coital fury. I could only hope she wouldn’t drop-kick Bouchal all the way back to camp. I held out no such hopes for me when she arrived.
I did not bring the chariot to a stop, because I didn’t know how. I just jumped out of it and tumbled to the dirt when I got close to Cailte’s tent. The horses dragged it away, frenzied, all over the camp.
Inside the tent, Cailte held the woman across her chest, and almost as if he expected to see me arrive. I suppose that should have tipped me off, but I was a little loopy from interruptus and turned this intensity from Boudicca to Cailte, from love to hatred. How quickly we humans can turn, as if those two opposing feelings are born of the same wretched fire.
Looking only at me, he kissed her neck, and smiled, taking his time.
“What do you want?” he asked, and moved his free hand under her tunic and groped her. She did not struggle. She was a rock. Did she actually send Bouchal for help? Would she? No, she wouldn’t have in a situation like this. She would have just taken it. That should have tipped me off, too.
“Are you a man who takes the body of a servant because he cannot win the love of a noblewoman? Then you are a pig.”
He grew red in the face. Someone grabbed me from behind. It was Dubh. He pulled my arms back as if to break them, and held me to his barrel chest as if trying me on like a coat. He backed into a corner of the tent with me, and I saw that Nemain entered behind him, followed by Taliesin.
Cailte, still red-faced, said nothing. He pushed the woman away from him, as if in disgust, and glowered at Taliesin. Cailte marched out of the tent. Evidently he had done his part of the job.
Nemain folded the arms of his flowing druid’s robe, and directed Taliesin to slay me with his dagger. Taliesin looked at him in genuine surprise.
“A sacrifice.” Nemain blustered impatiently, “for the gods.”
“The gods will not take notice of one more sacrifice, Nemain,” Dubh answered him, stretching me, “This is for the tribe. This is for the good of the queen and the tribe. Do this for us. The gods can wait for another sacrifice.”
Nemain overlooked Dubh’s sacrilege, but Taliesin looked clearly shocked.
“I would be the sacrifice,” the woman said. “Is not a willing sacrifice a more sincere tribute?”
Nemain pushed her out of the tent and threw her to the ground outside. He glared at Taliesin.
“You would have Taliesin do your filthy work, Nemain?” I choked over Dubh’s arm.
Taliesin drew his dagger to kill me. Then his arm dropped to his side, as if the dagger was too heavy for him to lift. He looked at the dirt.
Nemain angrily took the dagger from him.
“Get out.”
Taliesin looked at me, rueful and pained, and humiliated.
“Go!” Nemain shouted, but Taliesin could not leave because the way was blocked.
Boudicca stepped over the woman without looking at her, as if she only were a crack in a sidewalk. She entered the tent with the bold attitude and physical force as if it were a much grander hall.
“This is what will be done!” Dubh screamed defensively at her, though Nemain was suddenly silent.
Boudicca answered in guttural calmness, “I will say what will be done.”
Taliesin looked from Boudicca to Nemain, and turned and quickly left the tent. Nemain lifted his head proudly.
“It is a duty,” he said.
“A duty to the tribe!” Dubh echoed hysterically.
“My tribe.” Boudicca said in her calm, guttural and always authoritative voice, “My rebellion. Release him.”
“You will not betray yourself with this slave!”
“I would not betray myself at all. Nor you. You are betraying me. I will not forget. Release him. Turn back from this decision you have made, Dubh, or I will force you to make another.”
Dubh held me a moment longer, but then pushed me away. Nemain, remembering to bow to her, left the tent.
Dubh paced with his anger, and tried desperately to think of something to say to her, but he was not a clever man, only a strong one.
“Leave us.” She was talking to Dubh. He looked unspeakably outraged, then his spite shivered into disgust and defeat. He proceeded to leave, but she touched his arm lightly. A reconciliation with a beloved brother?
“I am your queen. Do not forget, Dubh. Do not forget that. You will bow when you speak to the Queen.”
Appalled at the humiliation, nevertheless he stopped. He bowed to her, with barely contained self control. I had never seen him bow to her before. She never demanded it of her brother. She had been indulgent to him. She would never be indulgent to him again.
He left.
She turned to me. She looked at me hard a moment, but said nothing. The fire in her cinnamon eyes turned to ice. The woman who had wanted me so intensely a moment ago could barely stand to look at me now.
“I will send you to Cartimandua. I will offer her an alliance in our fight, and you will bring my message. Your three betrayers will take you. You will all return with Cartimandua’s allegiance, or be taken as slaves by her, or be killed by her.”
She turned, and left.
Don’t get involved, huh, Eleanor? When you’re right, you’re right.
I stepped out of the tent, where the woman and the boy waited for me.
“Did you send the boy for me, or did Cailte?”
“Cailte sent the boy,” she said, “I would not. You are not hurt?”
“No. Thank you for offering to sacrifice yourself. I’m glad this did not happen.”
“It would be better if you had not come.”
“I told you I would.”
“You will not be with the queen this night?”
By golly gosh no, I guess not.
“No,” I said, “Nor do I think Cailte will welcome me back to his tent.”
“I would welcome you to share my sleeping place with the boy. If it is too humble, say so.”
“It is not too humble.” A lice-infested heap of straw near a dung pile, but it was the loveliest offer I’d had in thousands of years. She led the way.
I heard the crackle of the straw beneath me as I lay down next to her, as I followed the line of stars that made Orion’s belt above me, as I followed her with my eyes. She sat down in the straw, her back to me, and guided Bouchal down into the straw with her gentle hands. He was still pretty shaken from the evening’s adventure, but he allowed himself to be bedded in the straw. She stroked his hair with light fingertips, observing him quietly until he obediently closed his eyes. I could almost see her look of study and concern, though all I could really see was her rag-covered, round-shouldered back and the cape of light brown hair.
In a moment she was satisfied with her sleeping boy. She pivoted at the waist and lowered herself beside me. From long habit, she did not immediately close her eyes. Instead, she listened a long while, looking up at the heavy stars which looked like they might fall on us.
“Will you tell me your name now?” I asked, unwittingly destroying the moment.
Her lips parted, and I could barely hear her whisper, “Tailtu.”
Tailtu. In their mythology, Tailtu was the foster mother of the sun god, Lugh. He declared that his name festival, Lughnasadh, be held in her honor. It was held in the summer, on the first day of the month the Romans named for Augustus Caesar, and was something like a kind of Celtic Olympic Games.
No festival would be held in this woman’s honor, though a foster mother she might be, like the one in the myth.
“I think the boy will honor you in his heart that way Lugh does his foster-mother.”
She said nothing.
“Will you te
ll me your tribe?”
She looked up at Orion’s belt, but did not know it was Orion’s belt.
“The tribe of Cartimandua.”
The Brigantes. I had to remind myself to breathe. The tribe Boudicca wanted to follow her into battle against the Romans. The tribe of the treacherous queen.
“Did you know your queen?”
She turned her head towards me and looked at me curiously.
“She was Queen, I was the child of peasants. Not all slaves consort with queens, as you do.”
“You were not a slave in those days.”
“I was like a slave.”
“You were poor, and your family used you as payment for a debt?”
“All the wretched are slaves, whether they are sold into slavery or not,” a wry smile formed on her lips, “I had some value after all. My family did not starve.”
I lifted my hand and touched my fingertips to her forehead, tracing the tiny line that spanned it. Smoothed beneath my fingers, it became minute. If I took my hand away, it would spring back and intensify, and display all her worry, and doubt.
With the sound of crunching straw as I rolled to my side, I lifted her head and tucked my arm beneath it to become her pillow. I kissed her temple through the veil of her hair, and reached across her body to rub Bouchal’s back.
“You need have no fear of me,” I said, “I do not own you. I know that.”
“I wish you did.”
This time I was the one to break eye contact.
“Go to sleep,” I said, “I will listen for trouble.”
We might all have been slain there out in the open, under the stars. But I trusted, and she trusted, and nothing happened.
CHAPTER 13
Dr. L’Esperance noticed Dr. Roberts’ presence before Dr. Ford did. She nuzzled his neck, and rested her face against his shoulder, lazily casting a contented look over to the door. She saw Eleanor, and smiled, as if she were very pleased to see her.
“Will you join us, then, Dr. Roberts, and we can talk together?” she asked. Dr. Ford pulled abruptly back from her and shot a look of alarm over his shoulder. Eleanor had waited for that embarrassed, guilty look. It would not be forthcoming from Dr. L’Esperance, evidently. Either she was the coolest and most blasé person Eleanor had ever met, or she simply enjoyed the ease of having no conscience and no shame.
Myths of the Modern Man Page 12
