“No, you cannot!”
“Why do you do this?”
“She has done nothing!”
The man’s vacant eye flicked over them. He took off his helmet and laid it on the grass, unstrapped his leather jerkin and let it fall, and the other soldier returned and handed him a long leather whip, barbed at one end. He fingered the barb longingly for a moment, considered, then deftly removed it and threw it onto his jerkin. If the barbarian died he would be demoted. He flexed his muscles, put his legs apart, and the first stroke came whistling down to leave a deep welt in the naked back from waist to shoulder.
Pain burst like raw, new fire in her brain and her head snapped back, but before she could tense her body, the next stroke fell, the tip of the whip curling under her chin, and she cried out. Blood trickled slowly down her spine, under her armpits. The third stroke was lower, searing, biting deeper as the centurion found his rhythme, and she sagged against the post, taking her lower lip between her teeth and grinding it. I will count, she thought, already light-headed. Before her she saw the friendly gray stone of her wall, patched with moisture where the sun had warmed the frost to water. She saw the thin winter light flowing through the leafless little copse that hid the garrison. She saw her chiefs, their necks in iron rings, their dark, murderous eyes fixed on the sweating soldier. Four. The pain was unendurable. I must scream, I must cry for mercy, Andrasta, I am dying and I cannot take this pain, then all at once her people began to shout.
“Courage, Lady!”
“Stand, Boudicca!”
“Remember Subidasto!” and at the mention of her father’s name a final shred of dignity came to her. Six. Count well, my soul, she thought. For every lash, a thousand men will die. Her head was spinning and her thoughts echoed nonsensically. She thought she heard Prasutugas dying, his breath rasping in and out, in and out, but she realized that it was her own labored lungs marking time as the trickle of blood swelled to a stream and spattered onto her feet. Nine. Her head lolled forward and she closed her eyes, slumping to her knees, feeling the tendons crackle in her straining wrists. My daughters. My sweet, innocent daughters. I have betrayed you. Why am I so hot when it is wintertime? Dizziness roared in her ears. Eleven. Her body went limp as unconsciousness overtook her.
At last Marcus made up his mind. Turning reluctantly from the tiny window that showed him only the cold hostility of a winter night he picked up his cloak from the cot and moved quietly to the door. His father had told him that Priscilla would be leaving with him in the morning and they would go earlier than planned, with as little fuss as possible, and reading the anxiety in Favonius’s eyes, Marcus had understood. There would be trouble. Perhaps it would not come tomorrow, but Favonius was taking no chances and he sent his son to bed with an uncharacteristic sharpness that betrayed his unease. Marcus had gone to his room and doused his lamp but then he went to the window and stared moodily out at the deceptively peaceful courtyard, filled with moonlight. What of his plans with Brigid? She was to have met him in the forest just before dawn and would have traveled to Colchester lying in the wain that was to carry his belong ings to the ship. Now, with an earlier start and his mother’s company it was clearly impossible. Miserable, he considered the alternatives and came up empty. There was simply not enough time to hatch another plot. Besides, he had no idea what was going on in the town. Had Decianus withdrawn his men for the night? If that was so, he had not returned to the garrison to sleep. What were they doing, the outraged Iceni, his friends, his other kin? Fighting back? Or submitting with that sullen, secretive cloak of seeming patience that he knew so well, drawn around them? He felt wretched. Guilt made him squirm. He should have stayed to find Brigid, gone from chief to chief and offered what help he could, interceded on their behalf with the callous, gluttonous soldiers. But that would have landed his father in trouble and, indeed, he thought with exasperation, who would have listened to a sixteen-year-old?
A sentry crossed the courtyard, his footfalls echoing against the shadowed palisade, and Marcus rubbed his eyes and sighed. How to get a message to Brigid? Shall I write her a letter and leave it with one of the secretaries, to give to her in the morning? Dear Brigid, the plan will no longer work as Father has changed… No. Dear Brigid, when you read this I will be gone, but I will send for you the moment I am established in Rome… He groaned, thinking of her face as she read such a cold, precise proof of his desertion. That was how she would see it. No, the only alternative was to go at once and look for her, as he should have done in the morning. He fastened the cloak securely on his shoulders, tiptoed to the door, and softly let himself out into the still, frosty night. The moon was a swollen blue chariot wheel rolling slowly to its zenith, and its colorless light saturated the courtyard, throwing the barracks, the administration building, the storehouses, into sharp relief. He crept along the wall, reached the gate, and slipped under it like a purposeful ghost.
The copse was drowned in deep darkness and he hurried through it, looking neither right nor left for fear of what strangeness he might see. With a vast relief he broke through it and left the road that ran to the main gate of the town. Now he could hear life, a low, constant murmuring interspersed with shouts, the high calls of a stricken woman, the drunken singing of a satiated legionary. There were ominous red glows here and there, little flushes of color that looked to him like three or four suns about to rise, but as he sped silently over the grass and gained the slight hill that brought him to the low stone wall, the tongues of flame danced on his upturned face. The fires were not serious or extensive. By accident or by the hands of the procurator’s men, single huts had been torched, and for a few beleaguered families the winter had become a scorching, unwelcome summer. But Marcus was suddenly taken with a gush of real fear. He crouched beside the wall, consumed with a desire to turn around and run back to his bed to dream a safer dream. This black night shot through with orange flares, this blue, overburdened moon, these frightening sounds of rapine and desolation belonged to an unreal world that he had never before visited, even in his nightmares. These things did not belong to the sunny days of his carefree youth. He swallowed, closed his eyes, then stood and vaulted the wall in one clean spring. His doubts for Brigid’s safety suddenly became terror-stricken certainties.
He made his way to the house above the first circle, hugging the shadows, avoiding the reeling, whooping soldiers, the freemen who scurried down the paths, the huddles of weeping, destitute families who sat before the doorskins of their empty huts. He was not challenged. The soldiers’ orgy of destruction had glutted itself and the men were seeking rest beyond the gates. In the morning they were to join their fellows who had been in Icenia for months, and finish the business they had started. The townspeople no longer cared who flitted past them. He reached the house and cautiously went from room to room, but it was empty and cold, like the huge, dark mausoleum his mother had taken him to see in Rome on one of their trips, a place redolent with dampness and finality. He crossed to the hall and peered inside. A fire burned in the big grate, but the shadows were untenanted. All the rich shields, the skins covering the floor, the bright hangings, were gone. He turned away and doggedly began a search of the first circle and here he became aware of the hopelessness of his task. Crowds wandered aimlessly here and there, loosing and forming, grouping and then scattering suddenly, as though lightning had struck in their midst, and looking for Brigid was like looking for one white hailstone in a summer shower. But he did not give up. For two hours he lifted doorskins, clambered over discarded rubbish to disturb frightened families squatting in darkness, walked up and down the littered paths, and at last, weary and frustrated, he had to admit defeat. She might be anywhere, with anyone. He had tried questioning the people once or twice but had received astonished, brutal laughter, curses, and terrified silence. He found himself by the wall. The moon had shrunk and now was floating almost overhead. It was time to go. What shall I do? he asked himself as he scrambled over the wall and plodded across the grass
toward the hostile, thick darkness of the copse. What shall I do? What will she think of me? This is the end and I must go without her. How lonely I feel, how cold. Brigid, where are you? Must I go without ever seeing you again? His distress was so great that he plunged in under the black, gaunt branches of the copse with no hesitation and his feet followed the winding, narrow path through the overhanging trees while his mind wept. He felt as though his whole world had been blown apart, as though he had somehow lost control of his own destiny and another massive force had rushed in to march him along a way he did not want to go and could not see—like a man blindfolded and pushed onto a bridge with no parapet. The water churned and crashed below him.
Then she stepped from behind a tree onto the path before him. He jerked to a stop, dumbfounded, his gaze trying to pierce the pressing dimness, and he ran forward crying, “Brigid! Brigid! I have been searching for you everywhere, I had given up all hope, I was so afraid for you, ah Brigid!” He stopped suddenly and looked at her, puzzled. She was clothed in a torn tunic and her feet were bare on the frosty ground. A braid hung decorously over one naked shoulder but the rest of her hair fell in a silver tangle over her face, giving her a half-wild, half-prim air like a native god, like Andrasta herself, caught in the slow moment of change from the Queen of Victory into something else. Brigid’s hands were behind her back and she was nodding at him, a fixed, idiotic smile on her mouth, her head on one side. His blood slowed and began to chill. “Brigid?” he faltered, and she swayed toward him.
“Marcus!” she hissed. “I have seen her! She is here! Sitting on a branch in the moonlight, very big, very black! With the moonlight glossy on her smooth, dark feathers.”
He stood rooted to the spot, transfixed by a dawning horror, and Brigid bent closer. “She told me things.”
He wanted to turn and flee from her monstrous aspect. He wanted to scream for his father.
“What kind of things, Brigid?” he whispered, fear beating with frantic wings in his chest, and she licked her lips.
“She told me to kill everyone. She told me to kill you.”
Then without warning she leaped, her face contorted. The blade arced upward and came slicing toward him and even though he felt it bury deep within him, the explosion of pain was not as great as the shock of her derangement.
“Wh…wh…” he choked, but he crumpled slowly forward at her feet and died, without ever knowing why.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
SHE was squatting in front of the fire in the Council hall, watching the flames roar to the ceiling, and outside a winter gale was howling, throwing rain against the sturdy walls like handfuls of arrows. Her father sat cross-legged on the skins to her left, his gray braids resting neatly on his green tunic, his sword across his knees. He was shaking his head sorrowfully at her. “I warned you not to wed that milk-cow chief of mine, Boudicca,” he rumbled, “but you would have him, even though the omens were bad and the invoker spoke against it. You see what ruin it has brought you.”
She wanted to answer him sharply, to tell him to mind his own business and leave her alone, but there was a reasonless, empty ache inside her and she could not speak. The fire was too hot. It clawed at her back with fiery nails and she wondered why that should be, when the flames lit her face and colored her naked breasts. “Father, why am I naked?” she whispered, and he giggled suddenly.
“Because you have no clothes on,” he smirked. The wind soughed in the smoke vents. Rain, it sighed. Rain and dew, cool rivers tumbling over smooth stones, streams trickling beside the green, shaded ferns of summer, water, sweet, cold water. She opened her eyes.
“Water,” she croaked.
Lovernius tossed his dice onto the table, poured from the jug, and carried the cup to her. She lifted her head and drank thirstily, then put her cheek back onto the cool pallet. She was lying face down on her own bed, in her own small hut. Outside a storm keened and lamented, and rain poured onto the roof and spilled down the walls. It was dark. Her fire twinkled red and comforting, her lamps shone with a steady glow, and the dice clicked again in her bard’s fingers. She closed her eyes once more and explored her body. Her head ached with a sick, nauseating constancy. Her legs and arms felt heavy and numb, her neck was stiff, and her back… Her back throbbed as though a thousand freewomen sat around it and plunged their needles in and out of the tender, swollen flesh. She wanted to sleep again but rest would not come and in the end she raised a slow arm and pushed the hair from her bruised, pained jaw. “How long?” she whispered.
He pulled his chair closer and bent to her. “This is the fourth night, Lady. I thought you were going to die.” The hand level with her eyes opened and closed, opened and closed, and the dice rattled cheerily.
Which door shall I enter first? she thought. Which death-filled black hole shall I crawl into? Lovernius was waiting for another question, his brown gaze fixed impassively on her, and she noticed the purple bruises on his temple, the swiftly closing gash under his eye, but she did not want to ask. She wanted to lie thus forever in the peaceful dimness of her room, quietly ignorant, calm and passive, and let time snuffle past her, smelling out someone else.
“Tell me,” she begged softly.
He did not look at her. His glance strayed to the bare wall beyond her. “The soldiers tied me when my soul returned to me,” he said. “I do not know why they did not kill me. Lady, I am ashamed. I could do nothing.”
“I know. Reproaches are vain, Lovernius. Go on.”
He sat up, and stilled his hands. “Your daughters are deflowered, Lady,” he said harshly. “Many soldiers came and raped them and threw them out into the cold. Ethelind has not spoken since and will let no one near her. Brigid…” His fingers went to the ragged wound on his cheek and Boudicca saw that they shook. “Brigid’s soul has left her, Lady, and will not come back.”
A wave of sick pain started at her back and shivered over her, and when it reached her head she crawled forward and vomited onto the floor. Then, white and gasping, she slumped weakly back onto the mattress. “Where is she now?”
“With Hulda, in one of the huts. A chief found her wandering on the edge of the copse and brought her home, but her feet are badly frozen and the wound on her breast will not begin to heal.”
Boudicca carefully put aside the succession of images coming clear and small into her mind like visions seen from far away. “Decianus?” she said.
“He and the soldiers have left the town. They go to the villages now, and the farmsteads. Doubtless the agents have already chosen the ripest fruit for the picking.”
“What is left to us, Lovernius?”
He raised his thick eyebrows, grimaced, and his fingers began to juggle the dice again. “Our lives—most of us. Our wits.” Suddenly he realized what he had said and his face flushed crimson, but she did not recoil. She knew that if the Iceni were to be salvaged as a free people she must learn to sink all catastrophe, all evil news no matter low brutal, beneath the new wall she would begin to build around her heart—a high wall, smooth and impregnable, more pain-resistant than her customary straightforward honesty. “Our huts, a little food, a few clothes, the chariots and ponies.”
“That is all?”
“Yes.”
She pondered for a long second, glad to have her thoughts centered on something other than the pain that was ending waves of faintness over her. Then Lovernius sighed, pulled his chair closer, and dropped his voice. The wind still skeetered around the hut like a wild stallion, and the rain gusted under the doorskins.
“Lady, a doom has befallen Favonius as well. Marcus is dead.”
She was not prepared for this shock. “Young Marcus? But how?”
“No one knows. He was found in the copse, a knife in his chest. Favonius and his guard have been going among the chiefs, asking questions and making threats, but he is learning nothing. I do not think the people are hiding anything from him, they simply do not know.”
“Oh Lovernius,” she said, grief making her
tones even more hoarse and deep. “He was such an upright young man. Poor Priscilla.”
“Favonius has sent his wife to Colchester, and I believe he is going to apply for another garrison to command. He has been asking to see you.”
“Yes, I suppose he has, but I have no wish to receive him lying in my bed.”
“Lady,” Lovernius responded urgently, “Let him come. Let him see what his countrymen have done to you. Is his suffering more bitter than yours? Happy is Marcus, who lost his life rather than his soul! Let him come, I say!”
“You are right,” she said slowly. “Why should I care for my dignity anymore? I am a broken branch. My life oozes away like sap dripping to the earth. My daughters are children with scarecrow’s eyes.” She broke off and turned her head away from him so that he would not see the tears come hurtfully from beneath eyelids squeezed shut against them. “My people. My valiant ones. You trusted me, and I failed you,” she whispered, and Subidasto muttered in her ear, “I told you, I told you. Now you know why you are naked.” For a long time she lay quietly listening to Lovernius’s restless movements, the capricious bluster of the storm, the hot, rapid rhythme of her own feverish breath, then she rolled her head to look at him again. “Lovernius,” she said. “Bring me a Druid.”
He stood up, the dice disappeared, and he began to smile. “Do I understand you, Boudicca?”
“You understand very well, but no one else must understand. Send someone you can trust, and send him quickly. Tell the Druid that the holding spell of the Iceni has been broken.”
The Eagle and the Raven Page 88
