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

by E. Knight

  Given the way Princess Keena inches toward me, I believe she is beginning to accept the idea that I mean what I say. That she will survive, after all. That I will protect her, for her father’s sake.

  But that is only the half of it.

  I will protect her for her mother’s sake, too. With respect and gratitude. For though it is true that I did not side with Boudica in her fight with Rome, I benefited from it. Given the vengeance “a mere woman” orchestrated against them, Romans will no longer take me for granted as a client queen. And I am not the only one who will benefit for her sacrifice. The Romans will be more careful now. Warier of dismissing the people they conquered as unthinking animals.

  Boudica.

  You’ve heard her name. Of course you have. Everyone has. And when you’ve heard it spoken, you’ve heard the hushed awe of her admirers or the grudging respect of her enemies. You’ve heard her legend.

  Because she did not fight merely for lands or even for freedom. She fought for her humanity and the dignity of her daughters. Because of that, her name will always serve as a rallying cry for those who seek justice. And for as long as there are tyrants in the world, the name of Boudica will strike fear into their hearts.

  I can see to that.

  So even as I bow to Rome, I will honor Boudica. I will shield her daughter and nurture the story of the warrior queen of the Iceni until it becomes a legend to last a thousand years. Boudica will be a hero, and I will be despised, but I can make my peace with that.

  Watching the girl eat hungrily by my fire, I ask, “What name shall we call you now that you are to have a new life?”

  Keena stops chewing, and closes her eyes with pain, as if the thought of parting with the name she’s earned for herself is too high a price to pay. But then, at last, she says, “Branna.”

  Raven, it means.

  And it’s a good choice, too. For the Romans are wrong; it does not all begin and end with them. It all begins and ends with ravens. Ravens, who have seen all the great tragedies of the world unfold, and whose cry is eternal.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We would like to thank our friends, families, and beta readers, including Erin Ahlstrom, Rebecca Alexander, Brenna Ash, Hillary Brown, Robin Carter, Andy Downie, Annalori Ferrell, Audra Friend, Nikki Green, Ashleigh Inglesby, Hoff Inglesby, Maria Janecek, Robyn Lucas, Matthew Parker, Ash Parsons, Jessica Payne, Tanja Peterson, Kelly Quinn, Andrea Snider, Tabitha Smith, Ernesto Spinelli, Kristen Stappenbeck, Stephanie Thornton, Bill Wahl and Sally Whitfield. We’d like to thank our cover designer, Kim Killion, Dave Slaney for promotional images, and Simon Walpole for the iconic Raven design. Also, our copy editors, Adam Dray and Jennifer Quinlan.

  For resources, we owe much to Tacitus and Cassius Dio. Also, Cartimandua: Queen of the Brigantes, by Nicki Howarth Pollard; Boudica, by Vanessa Collingridge; Boudica: The British Revolt Against Rome AD 60, by Graham Webster; The World of the Celts, by Simon James; The Towns of Roman Britain, by John Wacher; The Land of Boudica, by John Davies; The Boudican Revolt Against Rome, by Paul R Sealey; The Philosopher and the Druids, by Philip Freeman; Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain, by Ronald Hutton; Who’s Who in the Roman World, by John Hazel and Daily Life of the Pagan Celts, by Joan Alcock.

  NOTES FROM THE AUTHORS

  The Queen, by Stephanie Dray

  Allow me to begin by thanking my colleagues for their generosity and talent. I have learned so much from each and every one of them because this book was no small task to put together. Tricky decisions had to be made about everything from story order to which characters and plotlines would carry through the entire novel. And each author lent expertise to a specific job.

  Mine was to introduce a number of characters and give context to the rebellion.

  Given my focus on client kingship in the Nile series—featuring Juba II and Cleopatra’s daughter Selene—I was probably the natural choice to write about the consequences of royalty allying with Rome.

  Yet, I never intended to write about Queen Cartimandua.

  My original idea was to write about the wife of the Roman procurator, who would watch Boudica’s mistreatment unfold with sympathy but helplessness. Fortunately, Valeria wouldn’t cooperate with me. (And as you’ve seen in Kate Quinn’s story, she is anything but helpless.) Instead, the voice of an imperious Brigante queen came to me in the middle of the night saying, “You cannot know Boudica’s story without knowing mine.”

  It’s a rare thing when characters speak to me—even more rarely do they wake me up in the middle of the night—so I couldn’t refuse the ancient queen who wanted to be my muse. Researching Cartimandua, I realized that she was right. We can’t understand Boudica’s story without comparing it to Cartimandua’s.

  Of the famous Britons of her day, Cartimandua alone witnessed it all and survived to tell the tale. It was only through her eyes that I could show that Boudica’s revolt did not arise in a vacuum. The resentments and abuses of Roman imperialism had built to a boiling point. And Cartimandua was a part of that milieu, from the start. She ruled over the Brigantes as a sovereign queen in her own right for almost thirty years by Roman counting. She appears to have been an astute and calculating leader whose kingdom prospered, but who ultimately needed to be rescued by the Romans from an uprising led by her husband Venutius. After she was driven out of the kingdom of the Brigantes, she may have lived out her years in Rome. The rebel Caractacus was probably dead by then, but it tickles me to think that they may have run into one another at the Forum.

  Now, a confession of my sins.

  Truthfully, we don’t know much about the religious practices and gods of the ancient Britons. (We don’t even know what they called themselves, though assuredly it wasn’t Britons.) Most of their religious beliefs are lost to history. So for the re-creation of Cartimandua’s worship I relied on Neo-Druidism. (You can learn more at www.druidry.org.) That’s where the snake came from and not just because I have a thing for queens associated with snakes.

  As for the timeline of Cartimandua’s marriage, divorce, and subsequent remarriage to an armor bearer, the historical record is actually quite conflicted due to Tacitus mentioning two similar instances, first in the Histories, then in the Annals, with different details and dates. I have adopted the scholarly “flashback” theory that Venutius led two different rebellions in the kingdom of the Brigantes. The first in the AD 50s, before Boudica’s rebellion. The second in 69, after Boudica’s rebellion, when Cartimandua found a new husband, possibly a Roman one. Roman or not, her new husband wasn’t a popular choice amongst her people, and he cost her the crown.

  As to her other suitors, we have no idea whether Caractacus or Prasutagus ever vied for Cartimandua’s hand, or even if Venutius was her first husband. We don’t know if Caractacus was the youngest son of the Catuvellauni king, but he certainly was the most famous. Though Venutius’ tribal origins are not known, he is most often associated with the Carvetii, so that is reflected in my work.

  There are several competing theories about how Boudica’s husband came to be the King of the Iceni. The first is that King Antedios died in a failed rebellion against Quintus Ostorius Scapula, the second governor of Roman Britain. Thereafter, Prasutagus was allegedly installed in his place as a Roman puppet. There is good reason to think this is true, but there are also several problems with the theory, including the fact that the Iceni allegedly elected their kings. Another problem is that, having put down an Iceni rebellion led by a supposed Friend and Ally of the Roman People, the Romans had excellent motivation to annex the Iceni lands then and there. That they did not suggests something more complicated was going on—much more complicated than could be explored in a single story—and so, in the interest of simplification, I adopted the theory that the various tribes of the Iceni had more than one leader and that Prasutagus had been one of the chieftains to swear his friendship to Emperor Claudius from the start.

  With regard to Prasutagus’ funeral, a
gain, we know little about the rites that would have been given to an Iceni king. Discovered burial chambers lead us to conclude there was a belief in another life. But how differently the Iceni may have approached death from the Romans, we haven’t a clear grasp upon, so I had Prasutagus choose to be cremated in imitation of old Romans like Julius Caesar.

  When it came our “accountant,” Decianus, I played fast and loose with ancient prices by inventing figures that fell somewhere between the highest and lowest estimates I was able to find in the sources. My main goal was in making sure that the king’s horse was worth more to the Romans than his daughter, the slave girl, which assuredly would have been the case. Finally, there is some dispute about Decianus’ name. In The People of Roman Britain, Anthony Richard Birley argues that Tacitus inverted the names. Nevertheless, we called him Catus Decianus because it’s most commonly used.

  What is uncommon, of course, is my interpretation of the allegedly rapacious procurator. Decianus comes down to us through history as being single-handedly responsible for the entire Boudican rebellion, after which he fled into obscurity and shame.

  It might have happened that way: he might’ve been a greedy procurator, a predictably twisty-mustachioed villain who put his boot on the throat of the Iceni tribe, ordering the enslavement of royals, the flogging of a queen, and the rape of her daughters simply because he could. But that’s not very interesting, is it? Besides, it’s a story you’ve all read before and Romans of the day weren’t big on mustaches, twisty or otherwise.

  I thought I owed it to Decianus—and to readers—to think a little more deeply about how such a crime and catastrophe might come to pass without dismissing his motives as base or simplistically evil. Because that kind of dismissal is exactly how we miss seeing crimes and catastrophes coming . . .

  — Stephanie Dray

  The Slave, by Ruth Downie

  History—even when we all think we know what happened—is surprisingly hard to pin down. Already I’m hesitating over “No one knows exactly where the Iceni royal family lived,” because I expect there are people who are certain they do know. Besides, new evidence may turn up in the time between my typing this and anyone reading it. In the meantime, Ria (who of course knows exactly where she is) lives in an amalgam of the most likely locations.

  As for the sequence of events she recounts—well, in one version Tacitus says the Iceni “flew to arms,” as if the rebellion began with a spontaneous outburst of fury immediately after Boudica was flogged. His other account, along with that of Cassius Dio, suggests the uprising may have been a more deliberate process like the one that Ria tries not to see. In any case, as far as the Romans were concerned, all Iceni weapons had been confiscated. So either the tribe were very good at hiding them (which is always possible) or the Iceni smiths needed time to build up the supplies.

  The Iceni were certainly good at burying treasure. Amongst the hoards that have turned up in their lands, there are several—notably the Crownthorpe Hoard, for those who care about these things—that date to the time of the rebellion. The tragic implications of this are that there was no one left who could go home to retrieve them.

  The better news is that thanks to this ancient custom of burying valuables, readers who want to “meet” Boudica’s people can now enjoy fantastic displays of gold torcs and ornate metalwork—along with much else—in the Castle Museum in Norwich.

  But while we can admire the handiwork of the native people of Roman Britain, their voices are silent. The stories that have come down to us only give the occupiers’ view of events. Even the speeches put into the mouths of British leaders are Roman inventions, so I’ve chosen to follow this fine tradition and invent my own. Because how can anyone rely on the words of men who failed to record the existence of Prasutagus’ third daughter?

  — Ruth Downie

  The Tribune, by Russell Whitfield

  Taking on the life-story of one of Rome’s great men is a huge task. Fortunately for me, I only had to take on a tiny period in that man’s life, which I feel very fortunate to have been invited to do.

  We know a good deal about Gnaeus Julius Agricola, Governor, General, Praetor and so on, but I was lucky enough to write the part that we don’t know so much about—less about his great deeds and more about the young-man-yet-to-be-a-great-man. I decided from the beginning that the story would be a coming-of-age one. Reading about Agricola in his later life, it’s hard to imagine him as a cuckolding rake—but when I was offered the chance to write his viewpoint of Boudica’s uprising, the first thing that sprang to my mind was a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V:

  And, be assured, you'll find a difference,

  As we his subjects have in wonder found,

  Between the promise of his greener days

  And these he masters now

  As any man of a certain age will know: we’ve all been young, we’ve all been stupid, and we’ve all done things that we wish we could change. I think this was my starting point for Agricola—and the events that transpire in the story I fancied changed him profoundly. It’s cool to be a young Roman officer when there’s no real war going on, but the reality of war scars Agricola as I have him. But, at the same time, he’s a servant of Rome and for a Roman citizen of standing, which he certainly was, his attitude was that war had to be conducted for “the greater good”—or the Glory of Rome if you prefer.

  It’s one of the great joys of writing historical fiction, wondering more about the characters and less about the deeds of these long past lives; and writing fiction is something that I would encourage anyone reading this book to do. All writers are readers: reading sparks something in you (for me it was Donna Gillespie’s The Light Bearer, the works of the great David Gemmell, and Wallace Breem’s The Eagle in the Snow—not, I hasten to add, that I’m in the same league or division of those great people!) that, once ignited, can’t be put out. It’s a bizarre compulsion and it’s often hard, depressing, frustrating, and all of that. But ultimately, I think that this Frank Norris quote sums it up best for me: “Don’t like to write, but like having written.” It’s a bit of a hard graft, but when you finish a piece of work,there’s really no way to describe the immense satisfaction of turning it in.

  We live in an age where the doors to publication have been flung open by the Internet. Writing is no longer the province of the lucky few. Today, anyone with the wherewithal to finish a project can get it out there, and I would encourage anyone who has an idea, some itchy fingers, and a blinking cursor up on their screen to just do it.

  I did—all the brilliant and wonderful people I worked with on this book did—and you can, too. Of course, the real work comes when you think the work is over: editing. How we all love it when someone comes along and points out all the flaws in our magnum opus. But it’s a fundamental and necessary part of the process.

  I’ve been very fortunate with editors. On this project, the awesome task of melding together timelines, picking up inconsistencies and making this whole story from seven different points of view, was taken on by the redoubtable Kate Quinn. She’ll poo-poo this, so I’m saying it here: A Year of Ravens could not have happened without her. She’s a legend.

  Thanks also to my fellow collaborators on the project: Eliza, Ruth, Simon, Stephanie and Vicky. You guys were awesome to work with (and special thanks to Ruth, who pointed out that my merry band of soldiers would have ended up in the Irish Sea if they’d have gone to Aquae Sulis instead of Glevum!) and of course Kate herself, whose story moved me to tears at the end.

  I also need to thank Ed Handyside at www.borderscripts.com. Ed was my editor on the “Gladiatrix” books and is now offering his not inconsiderable expertise to beginning writers who want to get a foot up on the publishing ladder. Without Mr. Handyside, I never would have got a start in this game.

  To my lovely wife Sally and my daughter Sam who put up with me wailing, gnashing my teeth, and living for days on end in my man-cave and writing about swords and sandals. You
are the best things in my life and nothing means anything without you.

  Finally, to those of you who are reading this book, thank you for giving it a whirl. I sincerely hope you enjoyed our perspectives on this war, Britons and Romans, Warriors and Soldiers, Slaves and Royalty. Without you guys, we can’t do what we do—thank you so much.

  — Russ Whitfield

  The Druid, by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  Imagine if an invading army marched into Vatican City and killed the pope, all his cardinals and bishops, and all of the worshippers who lived around them; then set fire to the faith’s most sacred churches and museums in an unprovoked attack.

  The outrage and pain of loss would be beyond comprehension, wouldn’t it? Yet that’s essentially what the Romans did to the Druids during the Boudican rebellion. They attacked the Isle of Mona (today’s Anglesey) and killed Druid priests, priestesses, and worshippers in an unprovoked attack, and then set fire to all their sacred spaces.

  The only account of the attack came from the Romans. They, of course, had a vested interest in making the Druids appear barbaric and threatening in order to justify the assault.

  Because the Druids did not keep written records, we know very little about what they believed and how they practiced their faith. Writing from a young Druid’s point of view gave me the opportunity to imagine both the spiritual aspects of the religion and the trauma of watching it all go up in flames.

  Some historians believe remnants of the religion continued in Ireland and Scotland and in pockets of Britain until the advent of Christianity, but in general, most agree that Druidism was dealt a deathblow on that fateful day in 69 AD.