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

by E. Knight

  “Get a move on, girl!”

  Don’t think. Plunge the buckets in the river, stagger breathless back through the gates, splash the water into the barrel. Then run again, the three of us sticking close together without speaking, hoping that if the Romans came, Andecarus would hold the gate for us. Knowing that if we were too slow, he would have to slam it shut and leave us outside.

  I was gasping and muddy and wet from trying to run with full buckets when there was a shout from one of the lookouts. They were both straining to see something to the north. Then cries of “Yes, yes!” and the first fighters came thundering back in, whooping and yelling, waving swords and spears and Roman helmets in the air. There were things bouncing against the side of the chariots that looked like—that were—human heads.

  Everyone was out of the houses now. Running for the gates. Screaming and shouting, dragging our men down from their horses, embracing and kissing them. I said, “Where’s the queen?” but nobody heard. I had never seen such joy on the faces of our people, and when the cook grabbed me and kissed me and whirled me around in a circle, I laughed and hugged her back. Above us, the guards up on the gates were stamping and chanting and lifting their arms up to the sky gods, and then everyone was joining in, and some of the riders fought their way free of the crowd and ran up to the top of the bank carrying the captured heads and making them dance, too.

  Below them, the lone figure of Andecarus, the only man who understood how the Romans thought and planned and fought, had planted both hands flat against one of the gates and was straining to push it shut.

  But his caution was not needed. Soon he had to open the gates again to the sounds of more triumph as Verico roared in with his men, battle-stained and jubilant. In the end, the gates stayed wide open, with a row of Roman heads on each side of them, looking out over the land they had thought they controlled.

  There was no news of the queen. Verico and some of his men grabbed food and drink and rode out again, going north. The celebrations went a little quiet as the afternoon passed with no message. Then suddenly there were shouts of, “The queen! The queen!” and Boudica was cheered back in at the head of a great group of warriors, her hair wild and her chariot ponies dark with sweat. There was blood on her hands and on her clothes, but it was not her own. She, too, raised a sword in the air, and suddenly there was an eerie bellowing sound I had never heard before. For a moment, the people were hushed. Then the cheering started, even louder now, with the strange noise filling the air all around us.

  I saw the red flash of my sister’s hair below a helmet. There was rich crimson spattered on her clothes, and her smile was broader than I had ever seen it. Behind her, Duro’s clothing was torn and stained, his eyes glistening with tears. I knew then that we were hearing a sound that had been silent for thirteen long years: the cry of the warriors’ battle horn ringing out across the lands of the Iceni.

  People spoke later of other triumphs, but this was the one to be proud of. No one could say for sure if every Roman in Iceni territory was dead. Certainly, most were; few could have escaped when our warriors rose as one great army across the land. The soldiers had been outnumbered and caught completely unawares. There had been no chance to call for help; all the roads and likely escape routes had been blocked before dawn.

  Less than half the spaces that had been cleared in the Great Hall for our wounded were needed, and while their dead were left as carrion, ours were brought home and honored beside the river on a great pyre made from the palisade of the fort many of them had helped to overrun. It was not our usual way to bid farewell to the dead, but the queen said these men would fly to the next world safely on the waft of smoke from the destroyed Roman fort.

  Verico led the mourning for two of his men, and my cries of anguish sounded no different from the others, although partly I was sorry Verico was not among those being sent to the next world in the flames.

  Andecarus was standing alone on the other side of the pyre. When he saw me, he looked away. I wondered if he was glad that the men he visited at the fort were all dead now, possibly some of them at the hands of Princess Sorcha. And I wondered whether he feared that an Iceni who spoke Latin in his sleep, and who had not taken part in the fighting, might soon be sent to join them.

  More people were streaming in to join us now. The queen must have been exhausted after battle, but she was still about after dark, going around to every camp fire and every new arrival, welcoming, questioning, and marveling at glory so great that already the singers were composing new verses to honor the names of the fighters. From what I managed to overhear, it seemed she knew people in every group that arrived.

  “Sleep now,” she urged them. “I shall begin the day with more good news, and you will want to tell your grandchildren you were there to hear it.”

  The slave-master was of the same mind: he went around trying to gather us up, ordering us to go back indoors and rest. But how could any of us rest with the Great Hall and the fields and tracks around it alive with campfires and music and dancing, and yet more people arriving throughout the night? Even if I had gone to lie down, how could I have slept?

  It had been a great day. Tonight we were celebrating our just revenge with a lightness of spirit I had never seen among my people before. Yet only a fool could fail to see that the Romans would soon come looking for vengeance of their own.

  A lot of nonsense has been passed on about the queen’s words, much of it by Romans who were not there to hear them. I can remember little of what she said, but I can remember how I felt when she said it. As if the sun had suddenly burst into a house where we had all sat for too long huddled in the dark.

  This much I do remember. Our queen said it as she stood on the earth mound of the ramparts around the Great Hall. My sisters were proud on each side of her, looking very different than the way they had looked a few months ago, huddled beside their stricken mother. I suppose she welcomed everybody and praised them and made us all feel proud of whatever we had done. She was good at that. And then she went on to remind us of the outrages we had suffered and to tell us we were not alone. And if these are not her exact words, they are something like them.

  “Everyone has seen how we Iceni have chased the monster off our land. But we will not stop at our borders! We will not allow the Romans and their feeble emperor anywhere near us! My friends, the Trinovantes are allied with us, and others are following behind! Together, we have a mighty band of warriors who will chase the Roman monster all the way down its own road to its own lair, and when we get there . . .” We all strained to hear, eager not to miss her next words as she raised her spear toward the god of the skies. “We will take its head!”

  The roar of approval was so loud I could not hear my own part in it, and then it settled into a chant of “Camulo-dunum! Camulo-dunum!” that must surely have been heard in the Temple of Claudius itself, four or five days’ march away.

  Up on the ramparts, the queen put down her spear and raised both hands for silence. “I have sought counsel from the elders,” she declared. “I have visited the High Druid of all the tribes, and he has read the omens! This morning as I made sacrifice, the great Andraste gave me a sign to show you all.”

  We all fell silent, waiting. Suddenly, the fabric of her skirts shifted. Something leaped out from beneath them.

  “A hare!”

  “It’s a hare!”

  “Look at it run!”

  “Look!”

  The hare bounded along the ramparts as far as the gate, then ran down through the grass, and I lost sight of it.

  “Where did it go?”

  “Down that way, look!”

  The queen turned to my older sister and asked her to tell the people what she had seen.

  Princess Sorcha stood tall and shouted, “Andraste has sent a hare!” and the people at the front cheered.

  She turned to the younger one. “Daughter, tell our people which way it ran.”

  Mouse-like Keena l
ooked stunned, as if she had been caught daydreaming.

  She looked at her mother, but her mother gave no guidance. She looked at me. I nodded, wishing her courage. She took a deep breath, lifted her left hand, and pointed down the road toward Camulodunum.

  The roar of “Camulo-dunum!” erupted again. The mouse looked surprised and pleased at the effect she had had.

  “Camulo-dunum!”

  And so we set off.

  I cannot imagine what it was like down in the Roman colony of Camulodunum over the next few days. I know that for us, those days were like a giant traveling celebration that grew bigger with every mile we marched.

  Our army had no food supplies beyond the little that had lasted the winter, but as I said, our queen never did anything without thinking about it first. After they stormed the fort, they had raided the granary. All along the way, people flocked to the road to bring food and to march alongside us. Many of them stayed. Already whole families had come to support their fighters so that the numbers swelled beyond counting—thousands and then tens of thousands, they said. Winter was dead at last, the cold retreating more each day from the fickle warmth of spring—but this was a spring like no other. There had been few crops planted in Iceni lands this year—almost the entire tribe, or so it seemed to me, was pledged to sow vengeance rather than seed, to reap Roman lives rather than grain.

  Wherever we stopped, any families who hadn’t fled at the sight of us gave what shelter they could for the night, with grazing for the horses and the stock that were being driven along with us for meat and milk. There was singing and dancing all along the road that the Roman soldiers had built, and after dark, our warriors would brag around the campfires about what they were going to do to the Romans when they caught them. Of course our men were already heroes, which was good news for me: Verico now had his pick of girls eager for his repulsive embrace, and most of the time he kept his hands off me.

  Beyond boasting, nobody seemed to be giving much thought to what would happen when we got to Camulodunum. I found out why when I fell into conversation with a Trinovante girl in the queue for water. According to her, the Roman veterans who had retired to Camulodunum had not only not bothered to put up defenses, they had even knocked down most of the old fort and built houses over it. This was hard to believe, but she assured me it was true.

  “Ask anybody,” she said. They had built themselves a massive temple and a thing called a theater, and they had a great big statue of the dead Emperor Claudius on a horse. “I don’t care about any of that,” she said. “When we take over, I’m going straight to the forum. There’s a bronze plaque in there with names of all the soldiers who think they own our land. I’m going to rip it right off the wall and dance on it.”

  The queue shuffled forward. Luci arrived to join me, and the women behind me tutted but said nothing. Water was a problem with so many people and animals in one place at one time. So was waste. It was just as well we broke camp each morning.

  As we came to a halt again, the girl seemed to have been thinking. “When I’ve finished dancing,” she said, “I’ll have that plaque melted down. I’ll have a little bronze horse statue made for Epona as thanks for victory and getting our fields back.”

  Luci was clearly impressed. “Will there be a big battle like before I was born?”

  She laughed, put down her bucket, and grabbed him, lifting him above her head and turning him in a circle so he could see the size of the crowd. “When the people in Camulodunum hear this lot coming,” she told him, “you’ll see how fast they can run.”

  That night, rolled in a blanket under the kitchen cart and listening to the cook snoring, I thought about all those royal visits my father and his queen had made to celebrate Roman festivals and dine with the governor. Our queen must know exactly what defenses Camulodunum did or didn’t have. Had she been planning something like this even then? I could not believe that. But I could believe that she had looked over the town with the eye of a warrior sizing up an enemy, and now, with an army that had grown to tens of thousands, we all knew she was going to take it.

  Looking back, it was a party for us, but not for the leaders. I was working for the cook again, trying to keep the royal household fed. I knew how long the queen and the elders spent going about the camp after dark, chatting and encouraging, checking on the sentries, and making sure the warriors from the different tribes weren’t using their sharpened weapons on each other or getting too drunk to fight.

  The day before we marched on Camulodunum, the news came that our warriors had routed a strong force of Roman soldiers who had been hurrying to defend it. That evening while others celebrated, I found Andecarus wandering alone—or as alone as you can be among tens of thousands of people—just outside the area that was kept clear around the queen’s tent. He had lived as a hostage with the Romans and served with their troops. Whatever his blood, there must be some part of his heart that was with them and would grieve for their dead.

  I paused with the bread I was supposed to be delivering. I dared not mention the killing of the soldiers. Instead, I said, “It may not be as bad as you think tomorrow.”

  He looked up and scowled. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I don’t mean that,” I said, wishing I had put it better. “I mean, not as bad for your old friends in the town. Everyone says they’ll run before they fight.”

  He stared at me, the brown-and-green eyes clear in the dark of his unshaven face. “You have no idea,” he said. Then he turned away, picking his way awkwardly over the tent ropes and fading into the dusk with his walking stick on one side and his sword on the other.

  I felt suddenly cold. I needed to get the food delivered and myself wrapped inside a blanket and asleep.

  The guard motioned me forward, and I paused just outside the entrance of the tent, waiting for the right moment to interrupt and announce food.

  That was when I heard Duro say, “They haven’t left? You’re certain?”

  “Nobody’s moved,” said a voice with a Trinovante lilt. “They know there’s no legion coming, but they’ve been told the procurator’s sending men from Londinium.”

  “The place is indefensible, and he’s sending a couple hundred flabby office-boys! Didn’t you tell them that?”

  “Nobody believed me.”

  Duro grunted. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. What about the statue?”

  “Tipped over like we agreed. The priests all said it was a bad omen. The mad women danced around prophesying doom like good’uns, but the buggers still wouldn’t budge. Said they’ve got the land and they’re not moving off it.”

  “Is it a trap?” The queen’s voice took me by surprise.

  The Trinovante said, “If it is, I can’t see it.”

  Duro said, “Perhaps they’ll surrender,” although he sounded as though he would be disappointed if they did. “What do your people want to do?”

  The Trinovante snorted. “Some of them remember seeing their fathers’ and brothers’ heads on poles outside the fort gates. What do you think they want to do?”

  I do not know what was said next. I was seized from behind and held tight. I dropped the bread. Something sharp and cold pressed against my throat. “Traitor!” hissed my elder sister. Then louder, “Guards! This slave is listening outside the tent!”

  “Ria.” I could barely make out the queen’s face from the shadows of her hair in the lamplight, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

  One breath of betrayal. And oh, I had been so close to freedom. I said, “I was bringing bread.”

  “What did you hear?”

  I opened my mouth to say, “Nothing.” What came out was, “The veterans and their families are still in Camulodunum, even though we have tried to frighten them off. They think the procurator’s men are going to save them, but they are not. And now we cannot hold the Trinovantes back even if we wanted to.”

  My sister said, “You see? She was listening!”

>   The queen clasped her hands together and closed her eyes as if she was thinking, and it struck me how much responsibility rested upon her.

  “I always said she would betray us!”

  Her mother looked up. “And who will she betray us to, here, tonight?”

  My sister glared at her. “She will report to someone who will take messages to the governor—”

  I said, “I wouldn’t—” but she was still talking.

  “They will try to use it against us! What if they try to separate us from the Trinovantes?”

  I said, “It’s too late. Our warriors will never let the Trinovantes have all the glory tomorrow.”

  “You see? She’s thought about it! She was spying, Mother. You have no choice. You said you would have her executed at the least breath of—”

  “There is always a choice,” her mother declared. “Leave us, Sorcha.”

  “But—”

  “Tomorrow there will be another great battle. Tonight you need to rest and prepare.”

  “But—”

  “I will be obeyed!”

  My sister stalked out of the tent, still glaring at me, and I was left alone with the queen for the second time in as many months.

  When she spoke, it was more gently than I had ever heard her. “Is it your wish to betray us, Ria?”

  I said, “Never.”

  She took a long breath. “We both know that what will happen tomorrow is not what your father would have wanted.”

  I said, “Perhaps if we chase the Romans out—”

  “My children were violated,” she said. “Keena still wakes crying in the night.”

  My mouth went dry. I would never forget the sound of her screams in the storehouse.

  “Tomorrow I shall do what has to be done. But no amount of killing will make them whole again.”