“Then let us ride. Sound the carnyx, Aillil. Vengeance is mine today.”
The shrill, haunting battle call floated far on the fresh morning, and out of the shade of the thick forest ten thousand chariots rolled, the sun sparking on their slender spokes, harness clinking as the little horses cantered over the green flat. Behind them the freemen came running, pouring from the dimness into the full glare of light like multicolored insects, and Colchester turned from its morning optimism to see a lake of death lapping at is feet. Shouts rang out, and the charioteers could see the crowded streets empty suddenly. Helmets bristled above the low wall.
Boudicca drew her sword and waved it above her head. “The House Icenia forever!” she yelled. “Andrasta, Andrasta!” and she thundered for the gate, red hair streaming on the wind, the rumble of chariot wheels and the cries and curses of the chieftains tingling in her ears. The gate loomed. She reined sharply and leaped down, and while the women of the town still screamed and ran hither and thither, shepherding their terrified, bewildered children, the rebel host flowed over the wall, the first onslaught carried by the sheer press of the thousands behind, and the new-forged swords of Icenia began their work.
It was a massacre. Only the two hundred soldiers sent by Decianus were active, serving legionaries. The men of the town were civilians or retired legionaries who lived in Colchester while their Trinovantian and Catuvellauni slaves farmed their allotted land. Most were unarmed, all were unprepared, and they fled from the carnage of the lowest circles to the stone-ringed safety of the forum. The civilians milled about in terror, but the veterans soon recovered and began to ransack the administration buildings and the homes of the first circle for weapons. Many were found, and the ex-legionaries pushed through the wild-eyed, screaming mob and ran to give battle.
For those who sought to jump the wall and run, there was no escape. The tribesmen were still coming, line after line, and all the land from town to forest was thick with men who had not yet given battle. The outer rim was already on fire as freemen looted, flung their booty over the wall to their friends, and set more huts ablaze, moving up the slope and killing anyone in their path. The detachment hurriedly retreated, met the now-armed veterans coming to join them, and managed to block off many streets so that for some hours the chiefs could not get through and were content to range about, tearing women and children from their hiding places and spearing them, broaching the wine shipments that were kept in the warehouses by the gate, and running with flaming brands in their hands to hurl at any thatch that had not caught. The lower town slowly filled with more freemen and fresh swords, and at the last, when nothing lived below the prosperous houses of the rich, they turned to battle once more. The soldiers fought grimly, back to back, but a spirit of insanity had entered the once peaceful Iceni and their cowed allies. It became an inferno of hate that burned up all pity and all mercy, and unleashed an orgy of bloodlust. The years of degradation and misery were being washed away in one howling, exultant moment of long-due retribution, and the soldiers looked into the red eyes of animals as they were slowly beaten back, closer to the packed, crazed citizens in the square.
Noon passed in a stinking heat of fear. Bodies choked the streets, the open gutters began to trickle red streams, and the gasping, staggering legionaries at last broke and ran, diving into the mass of unprotected civilians to be lost for a while. Then the tribesmen paused, and the terrified people on the fringes of the forum could see them standing in every street, swords wet, mouths grinning, agape. “Mercy!” someone screamed in a voice high and thin with fear. “Mercy. Ah, mercy!” And at that the attackers surged to new life. They rushed into the square, screaming, howling, cursing, their swords slashing, and the people went down before them like a crop before hail.
Boudicca lurched toward the administrative building, the din of slaughter battering her hearing. She kicked open the first door and reeled inside, but it was empty. She leaned against the wall for a moment, panting, then walked down the corridor and flung open the second door. A woman crouched in the farthest corner, sobbing, and as the vision of horror staggered toward her and raised a sword she sprang up, crying, “No! No! Boudicca, I am your friend! Look at me! Do not slay me, oh please let me live!” Boudicca slowly lowered her sword. It was Priscilla, pressed against the wall, her graying hair loose and disheveled, her stola filthy with blood and mire, and her face gray with fear and her eyes wide. For a long second they gazed at one another, not moving, then Boudicca closed her eyes and swallowed. Her throat was parched, and her breath was coming in quick, painful spurts.
She turned to the door. “Someone else can kill you,” she croaked, and she staggered out to where the bodies lay heaped, covering the square, and she walked ankle deep in a river of blood.
By the time a red evening light diffused through the town there was not one citizen left alive, and the drunken, satiated chiefs had to climb over bodies that were heaped in every street. The sunset passed unnoticed, for the conflagration burning in the lower circles roared into the darkening sky and obscured its last, placid light. But in the temple the men of the detachment from Londinium had gathered in a tiny, hopeless gesture of resistance, and much to the chiefs’ surprise they could not break the lines of stubborn men strung behind the smooth columns that fronted the steps. Boudicca and her men stood at the foot, looking up to where night’s shadows were swiftly multiplying. “We cannot leave them to spread and bring the legions down on us before we are ready,” Lovernius said, and Boudicca nodded wearily, her mind and body almost too dumb to think.
“I know,” she managed. “Domnall, have the chiefs tried to force a way through the rear of the building?”
“The doors have been barricaded as well as locked, but some of the freemen are trying.”
“Good.” She shook a trembling fist at its pristine indifference. “Citadel of eternal domination,” she said, her voice half-whisper, half-raven’s caw. “I will not leave until I have defeated you!” Turning to the chiefs she ordered them to determine if any sober freemen could be found, and to organize forays against the soldiers throughout the night. Then she laboriously picked her way through the now dark, corpse-riddled streets and the feeding fire to the gate, and the sweet, tree-filled silence beyond.
Brigid was asleep, curled up in blankets beside the little cooking fire, her face relaxed and full of dead innocence as her mother bent wearily over her. Ethelind sat wreathed in her voluminous cloak, leaning against the bole of a tree and staring into the tangled depths of the forest. Hulda and the young chief nodded, their heads full of sleep, and without a word, Boudicca cast herself down in the clean, dry grass a little distance from the fire and closed her eyes. Such cool, sweet-smelling grass, she thought. Such stupendous quiet, such unknowing peace. Andrasta, did you see? Did you clap your black wings together and dip your cruel beak deep into the entrails of my revenge? “More blood,” Subidasto grumbled in her. “You are only half-clad. You look wanton and unkempt without your honor. More blood, Boudicca, oh much, much more!”
“Leave me alone!” she hissed sharply at him. “Stay dead, old man, and trouble me no more!” But she tumbled into a deep, soaking sleep and dreamed that he squatted over her, his rugged face impatient, his gnarled, hot fingers tracing the crooked paths of the lash upon her naked back.
In the morning she ate a little stale bread, drank deeply from the stream, and left the clearing before her daughters were awake. The sun was just rising, tipping the trees in pink as she got down from her chariot and entered the town. The stench of decay smote her immediately, a fetid, thick miasma that reminded her of the cattle slaughtering of Samain, and she retched as she made her way to the obscene unmoving gathering in the square. The lake of blood had run down the gutters to the wall, there to pool out and find channels through the grass beyond, but the stone beneath her feet was sticky as she trudged to Domnall and the others. He greeted her in a parched whisper.
“They are holding. How, I do not know. I must rest now, Lady,
but half the freemen have slept and are ready to fight again.”
She waved him toward the gate and drew her sword, struggling against the sick fumes of death and burnt houses. “Today we must kill them and be gone,” she said. “Aillil, the carnyx.” The strident, high bronze voice spoke, another wave of tribesmen assaulted the temple, and the soldiers formed their ragged ranks within its shelter and parried with no sound, and no hope.
Morning deepened into a cloudy afternoon, and the afternoon into windy evening, and at last the chiefs stood in the square and admitted defeat. Most of the forces had retired long ago to the forest, there to load the wains with booty and grain taken from the storehouses, but five hundred of them now squatted or stood loosely amid the already swelling corpses, looking up at the baffling imperiousness of the unsullied pillars. Boudicca cursed hoarsely, wiped her face on her sleeve, and sheathed her sword.
“There is no choice now,” she said. “We must burn them out. I do not want to do it, they have fought well, but they cannot be left alive. Domnall, bring wood. There are plenty of houses left. Aillil, make more fire. The stone will not catch but the interior is full of things that will burn.” They ran to do her bidding and soon a fire blazed up at the foot of the steps. Within the shadows there was a small flurry of movement as the soldiers knew that now they must begin to count the moments left to them. But Boudicca cared only to finish and be gone. At her word the chiefs began to cast flaming brands between the pillars, a shower, a storm of flame and shooting sparks in the cool dim air, and the men trapped inside ran back. The fire continued to rain into the darkness, then all at once a long tongue of yellow flame billowed out, followed by another, and a black smoke began to roll outward. For a few more minutes the people in the square stood silent, watching the fire take hold. Then the entombed soldiers began to scream and Boudicca turned abruptly toward the gate. “Fire the rest,” she ordered and she forced herself to pace away slowly, the death cries of the Romans loud in her ears.
In the clearing a scout was waiting for her and she, Domnall, her bard, and her shield-bearer went wearily to the earth, taking the beer offered to them by Hulda and drinking thirstily.
“The Ninth is on the march from Lindum,” he said. “Cerealis has emptied the fort.”
“How far?”
“He had just arrived at Durobrivae when I left, but I do not think he will stay there long. He will rest the men for a few hours and then press on toward Colchester.”
She thought deeply, drank again, then drew up her knees and rested her arms across them. “Do we wait here for him or do we go out to meet him?” she asked herself aloud. “If we wait we will have time for preparation, but there are too many trees, it is too hard to fight a legion in the trees.” Her head went down but she raised it slowly. “We will move north and west to where the land is more open,” she decided. “A legion will not be hard to find, particularly if the scouts keep moving.”
“Colchester was no gamble,” Lovernius cut in. “It was like slaughtering sheep. But a legion will be a fitting test.”
She scrambled to her feet. “For the rest of this night we will eat and sleep. I want to change my clothes and wash.” They left her then and she began to strip off the crusted, foul tunic and breeches, not caring who passed in and out of the fire’s light. Her limbs shook with fatigue and her back was burning and sore. Stepping to the stream she lowered herself under the chill, chattering water and when she was clean she put on fresh clothes, drew her cloak around her, and lay with her head on her shield. The remains of the town burned all night, casting a lurid, dappled glow through the trees, and around her she could hear the sighings and mutterings of the thousands of people, and she could not sleep. She was afraid.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
PAULINUS removed his helmet and then lifted his arms so that his servant could unbuckle his breastplate. It was hot in the tent and the air was hazed with acrid blue smoke from burning wood and shriveling bodies. The sound of axes came to him clear and rhythmical and he heard the crisp shouted commands of his officer as they brought order into what had been a chaos of destruction. Yesterday Mona was an island seething with white-clad, raging priests and the screaming curses of incensed women brandishing swords and flaming torches. Today the sun poured over dismembered corpses, smashed altars, and the sweating work detail who were slinging the limp dead onto bonfires and chopping down the thick, vigorous oak groves. He moved his stiff shoulders under the soft leather jerkin, flung the plumed helmet onto his camp cot, and eased himself into his chair. The burn on his thigh tingled and he rubbed at it absently, his thoughts still entangled with the day before. It had been close. Not the battle, of course, if one could call chasing wildmen up the beach and slaughtering refugees under the trees a battle. There had been no element of surprise in his attack, not with his legions on the march for days through the embittered, hostile countryside, and every native for miles around knowing full well where he was bound. He had had his share of false alarms—wrong turnings under the blanket of the brooding mists, accidents with the baggage train on the narrow track be tween ocean and mountains, and then the swift burning of the village opposite the island that loomed dark from the beach, fogged with sea spume. A camp was built, boats and rafts were constructed, and the water was probed for shallows in order that the cavalry could cross. And all the time Mona sat there like a spell-hung monster of the depths, humping malignantly and filling the horizon. The officers had been worried, claiming that the soldiers felt the magic of the place and were afraid, though he himself could not catch so much as a whiff of this so-called spell. Indeed, when the time came for assault the men huddled in the rocking boats and on the rafts, cowed into immobility at the sight of a shore thronged with yelling, cursing Druids, and until he himself had leaped into the water and plunged for the beach they had been paralyzed with fear. He had led the charge, the men had responded, and no superstition had turned their lethal blades after all. Naturally. He grunted a thanks to his servant who had placed wine before him, and dismissed the past. Back to Colchester now, a message to the emperor, and peace for the province at last.
“Your second is here, sir,” the servant said respectfully, and Paulinus took off his arm bands and sipped gratefully from his cup.
“Show him in, then, and find me some good hot water. I need a bath.”
The tent flap was pushed aside and Agricola bent his head and came forward, saluting gravely. Paulinus smiled at him and indicated the little leather stool. “Sit down and have a drink, Julius. How goes it this morning?”
The younger man pulled the stool forward and sat, running a hand through his curly brown hair. “Very well, sir, but it will take quite a few days to fell all the oaks and burn them, and a detachment has gone after the natives who escaped us. There were not many and they will all be dealt with in a week. How hot it is today!”
“A welcome change after the mountains. Our losses?”
“A score or two, not enough to mention, and no officers. Some wounds, a few broken gladiae. What shall we do about the crops?”
“Crops?”
“Many of the fields had already been seeded. Shall we leave them?”
Paulinus drank, considered, and answered bluntly. “No, not this year. Have them turned under. Next spring we can have them tended, for the soil seems incredibly fertile here, but the men will have enough to do on the island without becoming farmers. I don’t think the western tribes will attempt to take Mona again, but until they surrender I have no intention of inadvertently providing them with more food.”
“I’m surprised we got through with so little opposition.”
“So am I. Conditions must be very bad for them by now. Well, Julius, we can relax for a week or two in the sun before we wend our way back to civilization.” He picked up his cup, the gray eyes smiling into Agricola’s brown ones. “A toast. To the emperor, and our success.”
“The emperor.” They drank happily. Agricola rose to go, but before he could leave the t
ent, Paulinus’s servant pushed past him.
“There is a scout here, sir, from Deva, very upset. He will not give his message to a legate, he insists on speaking to you in person.”
“Let him come, then. Julius, you’d better stay. I hope that Brigantian woman isn’t in trouble again.” Agricola retired to the stool, the servant bowed and went out, and a moment later the scout came into the tent. He was splashed in mud from head to foot and limping but Paulinus did not at once notice these things. His eyes were on the man’s face. A thinly masked terror was there, veiled only by a soldier’s discipline, and the big jaw trembled as he tried not to vomit the words that for the last twelve days had whipped him all the way from Lindum as he rode alone. He came clumsily to attention, saluted with one weary arm, and Paulinus nodded. “What message do you bring, centurion?”
“Sir,” the man answered, his voice husky with fatigue, “the Iceni have risen. They have destroyed the garrison within their territory and they are headed for Colchester. Thousands of them. The whole of their country has emptied.”
Agricola left the stool and went to stand beside Paulinus, but the governor did not move. “Is this only a rumor?”
“No, sir. The speculator from Lindum saw the remains of the garrison himself, and said that he rode through countless deserted villages. The legate of the Ninth has taken the legion and left Lindum, marching south. He asks me to tell you that he will not arrive in time to save the city but will endeavor to engage the rebels as soon as possible. There is a rumor that the Trinovantes have joined the Iceni, but that is just a rumor.”
The governor’s hand came crashing down on the table, and he rose heavily. “The Iceni? It is not possible! We have had no stauncher allies than Prasutugas and his chiefs.” But then a memory stole into his mind, a dispatch from the command of the Icenian garrison, a dispatch from the procurator. He had glanced over them briefly and handed them to his secretary with a few absent-minded words of vague instruction, all his attention focused on Mona, but now snatches of them drifted back to him. “… the chieftain of these people having died, and his will having been made known, I intend to proceed at once to Icenia…” “I do not believe, sir, that rapine and murder can be considered to be a part of imperial policy or the procurator’s duty, and I respectfully request to be transferred from Icenia…” Icenia. Boudicca. Ah yes, Boudicca. A colorful, big, hoarse voiced woman, a joke to the occupying forces with her outdated ideas of loyalty and her rude but harmless insults against the emperor.
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