A Year of Ravens: a novel of Boudica's Rebellion

by E. Knight

  The acid in his belly now boiled like a cauldron set over a fire. In spite of the winter cold, he felt a river of sweat running down the back of his neck. Maybe Valeria was right that he had been too soft on the barbarians if he was letting himself be lectured by an uppity savage who likely still lived in an uncivilized hut.

  “Good day, Madam,” Decianus said stiffly. “Safe travels north.”

  Towering over him, her eyes blazed. “Procurator, have you heard even a word—”

  “I said good day!” Decianus shouted, turning on his heel.

  Decianus was still sweating that morning long after the dead king was burned to ash and interred in his burial chamber with a magnificent sleeping couch, amphorae of wine, and baskets of bread to help ease his way into the next life. Prasutagus was buried shortly after dawn, with a magnificent sword that he had been allowed to keep in spite of the disarmament of the tribe. Decianus saw Valeria’s brow arch at the sight of it. As if she feared a less friendly barbarian might dig up the tomb and use that sword against Rome.

  Decianus was not about to object. Nor did he protest the burying of this hoard of wealth without counting it as part of the emperor’s estate.

  But this was all the accommodation he was prepared to give.

  He had a reputation as a mild-tempered man, did he? That was another way of saying that he was weak. Lacking the character necessary to maintain the honor of the empire and the esteem of his wife. Midday passed, and though the Iceni lingered at the burial mound to pay last tribute to their fallen king, Decianus left early to pack up Valeria and send her back to Londinium. As she was driven away, he thought, in the back of his mind, that perhaps he should wait a few days more to get about the emperor’s business, when the heat of grief might have cooled. But of course, it was winter. Everything was already so cold, and he did not wish to return here until spring, if ever at all.

  By the time the weather turned, he hoped to be in his villa in Gaul, swimming in the warmth of the blue sea, sucking sweet rosemary-flavored honey from combs the bees left in his orchards.

  But first, he had his orders.

  He commanded his servants to assemble in the Iceni Great Hall, where he would establish his center of operations. “Either bring more torches in, or we will have to drag everything else out into the sun to examine it properly. Bring me every item you find of possible value. Nothing is too small.” It was now early afternoon; with luck, he could be done by nightfall.

  He was taking note of the extraordinary metalwork of a silver platter when the king’s widow and daughters returned from the king's burial mound to find the procurator’s slaves dragging all manner of gold items into wagons in the clearing. Standing by the table upon which Decianus was making a ledger, Boudica put both of her indelicate hands upon her indelicate hips. “Procurator, what is the meaning of this?”

  “I am making a valuation of the late king’s property so as to take payment of outstanding debts and settle your affairs.”

  This did not seem to upset her as much as he feared it would, but her eyes were riveted upon the roundhouse. “You are allowing lowly slaves to ransack my house and paw through the king’s belongings.”

  Ah, these proud Celts. “I am just as happy to have Roman soldiers do it if that will please you better.” Decianus called to the nearest centurion. “Numerius Gratius Helva! Please relieve my slaves of their duties.”

  Boudica’s color rose, and several of the royal family crowded around her as she said, “In these past days, you have feasted in my hall, Procurator. Slept beneath my roof. Drunk my wine. But now you do me the disrespect of taking my—”

  “I am taking inventory,” Decianus protested, in no mood to be challenged again by a woman. “I remind you that these belongings are not yours, but the late king’s at the sufferance of Rome. You have no legal standing upon which to object. Now if you will let us be about our business . . .”

  Boudica pressed her palms flat to the scroll Decianus had been trying to write upon and glowered. “Would that be the business of thievery? I have lived enough winters to know how it is that you Roman magistrates enrich yourself. You will take this silver platter for your governor, this one for your wife, that one for your emperor and tell him that there was only one.”

  Helva snorted from beneath his centurion’s helm, and Decianus felt the acid boil up to the back of his throat. This woman was accusing him of dishonor and theft. Accusing him in front of all her royal kin. Accusing him in front of the soldiery, most of who had no loyalty to him and would be more than happy to report such a thing to Emperor Nero if they thought it would advance their careers.

  Catus Decianus might never have been an ambitious man, a brilliant man, a man to light the world on fire—a man like Valeria wanted. But he had always been an honest man. To be accused of corruption was too much to bear. One offense too many. Honor demanded outrage. For once, his own temper and the strictures of Roman honor were entirely in agreement.

  His stomach went from boiling acid to ice. “Madam,” he said in a voice so cold he scarcely recognized it as his own. “Understand that your kingdom is to be annexed by order of the emperor.”

  The gasps and angry shouts that went up from the tribesmen made a cacophony as Decianus had never before heard. The sound of it crumbled the walls within him—that inner fortress that defined the parameters of who he was and who he had been. In this moment, he only knew how to imitate the Roman he should be. Standing, he called to the soldiers. “Search all the houses in the enclosure for valuables. Debts must be settled.”

  Hulking Iceni men clenched their fists while their women shouted in that grating way of the Britons, but the soldiers went about their business, grabbing armfuls of glassware and bolts of cloth and—

  “This is an insult,” Boudica said again, quite calmly. It was eerie how calm she was in the center of the storm. He did not understand it. Yet she continued. “Recognize that you do an insult to the memory of a loyal king. A Friend and Ally of Rome. My husband left a will, yet his wishes are dismissed, and you are abusing his people.”

  Her voice rose in volume only toward the end, and it was not for his benefit. This damnable woman was playing to an audience. He realized that now. What could she possibly hope to accomplish except for infuriating him?

  She must have seen in him some weakness. The same weakness his wife saw. The same weakness that had always existed in a motherless boy who learned to count things to drive the bad memories away.

  Well, he could not be that boy any longer.

  “Seize the cattle and the horses!” he shouted. “And if anyone should interfere, we will seize the grain as well.”

  Boudica stared hard at him, as if bracing herself for something. “Know that it will be a hard winter for both the Iceni and the Romans if you should dare to seize our grain.”

  Was she threatening him? Yes. She was threatening him. Even Centurion Helva realized it and snarled, rushing forward as if to backhand the insolent woman. The other soldiers also seemed ready for a fight. Keen for it, even. But they all waited on Decianus for orders.

  No Roman magistrate should tolerate a threat from subjugated peoples. Decianus did not even need Valeria to tell him that. It was a matter of honor.

  “Seize the king’s wife,” Decianus commanded.

  Helva shoved aside a grizzled Iceni warrior and grabbed hold of Boudica’s arms. “Should we flog her?”

  Gods, no, Decianus thought. He had never considered such a thing. He was opening his mouth to countermand the idea just as one of the Roman soldiers shouted, “A sword! I found it half buried under the furs.”

  A sword. The Iceni were forbidden weapons. This should not be. “Whose sword is this?” Decianus asked, his eyes turning to the royal kin of the king—all of whom looked either outraged or terrified.

  “It was the king’s,” Boudica finally said. “As I was his queen, it is now mine.”

  She was lying. He could see that plainly.
The king was permitted his ceremonial weapons, but he would not hide them. “The king is dead, Madam, and the treaty has expired. You are not a queen. Not anymore.”

  “If the treaty between the Romans and the Iceni has expired, then we are not bound by it, either,” Boudica replied. “If we are not Friends and Allies, what does that leave? Neither you, nor Rome, has any rights over me or my people—”

  “Continue to argue, and I will have you flogged.”

  Boudica managed to fling herself free of Helva’s grasp long enough to confront Decianus, and this time she was not calm. “Would you dare show such a lack of decency, you sad little man?”

  The words came out. “Flog her.”

  Decianus waited for her to beg his mercy. She should beg for it, and that would help even the scales. She was a woman with honor to defend. She need only beg his pardon, and he would give it. But the damnable woman merely lifted her chin. And he stared at that chin, haughty as his wife’s brows, until he knew it to be the one challenge to his Roman mettle he could not back down from. “Strip her.”

  It seemed as if the whole of the Iceni tribe gathered around in shock, some blubbering, others screaming insults at him. Though they had no weapons, some of the Iceni rushed forward and were clubbed to the ground with gladius hilts. One of them might have been the boy Decianus once fostered, grown into a warrior. The procurator felt a twinge of horror to know that relationship must be severed now, for the boy would never forgive him this.

  And Decianus could afford no softness anyway.

  Not even for the queen’s young daughters, struggling to get to their mother while being held back by retainers. Decianus stood rigidly as Helva and his men tore the queen’s garments from her body, but he did not hear Boudica scream or cry out.

  He only heard the jeers of the Roman soldiers as her pale naked flesh was exposed to the cold air, her nipples hardening and the auburn thatch of hair between her legs shamefully on display. He wanted to avert his eyes, but Boudica seemed to feel no shame. She said nothing. She did not cry for help as they tied her to a pole.

  She did not cry out at all.

  Only her body told the tale of her mortification as it trembled under the gaze of the crowd. “Harlot queen,” Centurion Helva said with a snicker.

  But Decianus thought not of harlots, nor even of the wife whose body, by all the laws of Rome, was at his mercy, if never her heart and mind. No, he thought of his mother.

  Was my mother bared this way when she was dishonored? Decianus wondered. Was she stripped of her dignity while she struggled against an attacker, or did she quietly submit to some act that a man wished to force upon her? Did she—unlike Boudica—ask for mercy? Or was she never forced to her shame at all? Perhaps she willingly, even eagerly, removed her own clothes for a man . . .

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He would never know. But he couldn’t shake the questions in his mind. He couldn’t even count them. And all those questions disappeared the moment Boudica turned and locked her eyes with his.

  In them, he saw such unexpected resolve that it shook him to his core.

  He broke eye contact and moved several steps behind her so that he could not see her face. But still, when the first stripe was laid upon the queen’s back, Decianus shuddered from the impact. Then they struck her again, and this time she did cry out—for the vicious blow left upon her back a line of blood.

  Decianus stood transfixed by that line of blood. Taken out of time and place. Taken back to his childhood and another line of blood.

  His mother’s blood.

  Blood for honor. That was the price then, as it was the price now. It was always the price of honor. Always blood. Always pain. And as the queen was scourged, he wondered if such a thing as honor really existed at all. For what was honor if it could not strip the pride from a barbarian woman even as she was beaten before her people? What was honor if he could only defend his own by doing this to her?

  Honor, Decianus thought, was just an excuse for war and mayhem. An excuse for taking. Whether the taking of a woman or the taking of one tribe against another, one empire over another, one emperor over the world. An emperor like the one he served . . .

  If this was honor, he wanted no part in it.

  Shaken, Decianus quite suddenly lost his footing. Catching himself on the edge of the table, he stared at his feet. And watched them start walking.

  Centurion Helva called after him, ”Where are you going, Procurator?”

  Decianus kept walking. He had to find his horse. He had to leave this place. He had to leave these accursed lands. He was not the man for this job. In truth, he was exactly the wrong man for it and had always been. He wanted no share in the plunder. No part in the so-called glory. No measure of his wife’s approval if this was the cost.

  What he wanted was his little villa in Gaul, where juicy blue-black grapes grew in fat clusters over the tranquil pool into which he dipped his feet while studying the geometry of Euclid and the paradox of infinity.

  “Procurator!” the centurion barked. “What are your orders?”

  “My orders,” Decianus murmured, the sounds of the flogging—leather upon flesh—scourging his own sense of himself in the world. It took him a moment to realize he was clutching the emperor’s missive in his hand. “My orders are for you to do your duty by Rome, if you feel bound to it.”

  Which Decianus did not.

  Decianus read from the emperor’s letter, giving the words a bitter twist. “Seize it all and treat any interference, of course, as an act of war.”

  With that, Decianus let the letter with the emperor’s seal fall to the icy mud.

  Then he mounted his horse and rode away.

  CARTIMANDUA

  “You’ve come back to reconcile, then?” I asked my husband, shoving his legs from where they rested upon the table in my fortress. He came awake with a shocked snort from what appeared to be a drunken slumber.

  The entire hall stank of wine, which confirmed there had been a celebration in my absence. A premature one, though.

  While Venutius struggled to catch up, I said, “I cannot think of another reason you might return here to my stronghold unless, of course, you thought me dead.”

  Venutius let his eyes drink me in, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not he was disappointed at my survival or impressed by it. “Did the Romans save you again?”

  “I saved us all with the nearest implement at hand,” I replied. “Which is what I have always done, incidentally.”

  Venutius tensed for battle, but he must’ve understood that if I returned by stealth, so did my soldiers. “You don’t wield the sword of Rome, Cartimandua. If that’s what you tell yourself, then you have not yet realized that Rome is a blade always at your throat.”

  Talk of blades at my throat—from him, no less—did not put me in any better mood.

  And he was decidedly somber, realizing his peril. “What happens now? Will you have me beheaded with the sword I made for you?”

  That was a very good question. “Unfortunately, I am too weary from my journey to arrest and execute you today.”

  Venutius smirked. “Liar. You fear that the people would turn against you completely if any harm came to me. And you should fear it.”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted. “But I’m not afraid to execute your brothers and the rest of your kin.”

  Venutius reddened from cheek to jowl. “You are a she-bitch.”

  I patted his arm because I had nothing handy to stab him with. “And you are a pale imitation of the man you want to be, so perhaps we might work out a truce between us since we apparently deserve one another.”

  But no sooner had the words left my lips than I knew they were not true. I had clung with the greatest tenacity to our marriage, to my vain hope that his love for me was stronger than his pride. Just as I still hoped my people's love for me was greater than their resentment. But the desire to be loved was not a branch to reach for when I
was drowning.

  It was, in fact, the water rushing to tug me under.

  Venutius was a man bound by what people would think of him—he was, for the sake of pride and accolades, forming an image of himself as the perfect warrior against the usurper. And he could not be that unless he made me his enemy. But I realized that I no longer cared for his good opinion or the opinions of those who concocted lies against my character to the detriment of my kingdom.

  No. I had been the true protectress of the Brigantes, whether they knew it or not.

  I would no longer cling to a husband who wished me dead—a husband who was, in fact, the only choice I made in utter deference to the wishes of my people. And look how that had turned out.

  Venutius was right about one thing. What could be done could be undone. And Boudica was right to think that there was no wisdom in honoring a treaty with a faithless partner. I was finished with Venutius and would be rid of him as soon as it was practicable, because it was his survival or mine. And I needed to stay alive, if only to steer my kingdom from the coming troubles.

  With a strange relief and a moment's silent thought, it was decided. Not only the matter of my marriage but of my reputation, too. Taking up my newest white snake where it slithered on the floor, I let it coil for warmth within my lap while remembering a long ago conversation with the man I should have married.

  Let them all hate me, I thought. And this time I meant it. Though children of the Brigantes would one day spit upon my grave, I would rejoice that they were alive to spit upon me instead of perishing on some battlefield or rotting away in the belly of some faraway slave ship.

  Because I was not what they said of me. No collaborator, betrayer, or Roman whore. I was not even the Cleopatra of the Celts. No. I was exactly, and gladly, what I had promised to be. The embodiment of Brigantia. First the maiden. Then the mother. Now the wise crone, whom people fear and despise, but who sees beyond seeing . . .