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

by E. Knight

  Julius Caesar wrote about the Druids more than one hundred years before Boudica in his famous Gallic Wars. There, he claimed the “common folk were treated as slaves” and implied that human sacrifice was routine. He even described the infamous wicker man—a giant cage, “woven out of twigs,” stuffed with live men and set afire. However, no corroborating evidence for these accusations has ever been found.

  However, these claims served as excellent propaganda for justifying extermination. Despite the fact that Caesar himself claimed that the Druids “hold aloof from war,” later Romans claimed that the Druids at the Isle of Mona fomented rebellion. Again there is no corroborating evidence for this accusation. More likely, the Romans wanted to “break” the Briton spirit by cutting out the heart of their religion.

  Some scholars point to “Lindow Man” as proof that the Druids did indeed perform human sacrifice (http://ow.ly/TcbDE). Killed around the time of Boudica’s rebellion, Lindow Man—or the bog man—was executed in what most believe was a ritualistic fashion. He was hit on the head, garroted, and then had his throat slashed. Lindow Man was found in a peat bog in northwest England and while he inspired the sacrifice in my story, my account is entirely fictional. Though I didn’t hesitate to have my young Druid kill his sacrifice in the same way.

  While writing, I became fascinated with the mental gymnastics involved in excusing the mass murder of civilians and innocents (both sides were guilty of this), which I explored in conversations between the Druid Yorath and the Roman Felix. I found no answers because there are none. Only this truth: everyone suffers.

  Rome generally tolerated defeated peoples’ religions. Occasionally, it tried to ban certain faiths from within the city: Isis worship, some of the ecstatic rites of Dionysus, and even early Christianity. However, it only ever attempted to exterminate two religions on their own native lands: Judaism and Druidism. In each case, the Romans firmly believed that the religious elite fomented rebellion against Roman rule and that peace could only be achieved by removal of the religion. Judaism, of course, survives today and is the base from which two other major world religions were launched—Christianity and Islam.

  If ancient Druidism had survived, what kind of modern religion might have morphed out of it? Sadly, we’ll never know. However, modern Druidism anchors its practices and beliefs on what we know of Celtic culture as well as a deep respect for and connection to nature. Still, even though the ancient Druids are long gone, they continue to live on in all our collective imaginations, surviving as iconic “magicians” like Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore, and countless other famous wise wizards in our stories, movies and games.

  — Vicky Alvear Shecter

  The Son, by S.J.A. Turney

  When I was approached to contribute a tale to this magnificent story, I imagined taking on one of the conflicts of the revolt from a Roman perspective (that being my forte). I found myself instead looking at a brief to cover one of the Britons during the height of the revolt’s brutality and wondering how best to do it. And the more I looked at it, the more I found myself wondering how one of those Romanized natives—a Cogidubnus of sorts—would see the actions of the Iceni. Thus was born Andecarus, son of Duro.

  The Roman practice of taking hostages has a long and illustrious history and helped to Romanize new lands, giving the sons of native nobility a taste of Rome and then sending them back to their people to influence the locals. Andecarus is clearly conflicted by his ability to see the horrors of the rebellion from both sides. He seemed the perfect pair of eyes through which to view the moments of the war that were both great and terrible, to give a more objective view than either side alone might achieve.

  My portrayal of Londinium is based largely on the scant knowledge of pre-Boudican London, material evidence of which is on show in the Museum of London, and the extrapolation and theories of John Wacher in his Towns of Roman Britain, where he conjectures about the likelihood of an early fort guarding the Thames crossing and abandoned by around 50 AD. So little is known for certain that conjecture is our best hope for recreating that early settlement. It is entirely plausible that Catus Decianus was based in the growing settlement, since he fled sometime after the destruction of Camulodunum, suggesting that his office was not located there, he sent soldiers to help at that conflict (from where if not Londinium?) and the Procurator was certainly based in Londinium shortly thereafter. We know that Londinium had been partially abandoned before the revolt but that people must have stayed (judging from the layer of destruction and the records of barbaric violence given by Tacitus and Cassius Dio). We also know that Paulinus visited the city and decided it was not defensible.

  Verulamium was a much different place in Boudica’s time even than it became in the next century—still largely a Catuvellauni settlement with new Roman additions. The original focus of the town on the hill shifted to the riverside with the arrival of the conquering race. There is some conjecture as to whether the town had been abandoned in advance of its sacking due to the absence of coin and grain hoards. I have chosen a different angle, partially for the progression of the story, and partially because the Catuvellauni probably did not know or believe the Iceni and their allies were coming for them. Thus far the marauding warband had focused on Roman sites, not native ones. Moreover, the absence of such hoards might be explained by a fled populace, but it can also be explained by a surprise attack and subsequent thorough looting by the aggressor.

  The final form of this tale owes a great deal to excellent input from the other authors of the collection, who have taken Andecarus and given him a history and… well, not a future, but you know what I mean. It grew in the telling from a simple individual story to a living thing that sent out ripples across the whole book and I am very grateful for being asked to contribute alongside such wonderful authors. Vale, Andecarus. Salve, Roman Britain.

  — S.J.A. Turney

  The Warrior, by Kate Quinn

  The exact site of Boudica's doomed final battle against Rome is unknown. Tacitus is precise in his description of the terrain the Romans chose—a position flanked by woods, approached by a narrow defile which widened into a broad plain—but landscape has a way of changing over the course of two thousand years, and today we cannot pinpoint with certainty the place where Boudica's dream of freedom died. We know that she took her vast war-band northwest from Verulamium along a Roman road known today as Watling Street, and that Governor Paulinus marched his soldiers southeast to meet her. At some point along that path, they met and fought. I have focused my own story on landscape details as described by Tacitus and not tried to solve the mystery of whether Boudica was defeated at Mancetter in Warwickshire, at Towcester, or somewhere in the Chilterns.

  The size of the two armies that clashed that day is another point of contention. Boudica left posterity no records, and Tacitus states that she brought a force of 230,000 Iceni fighters (ha!) against Governor's Paulinus' 10,000 legionaries. Either the Romans inflated her numbers to make their victory look better, or Tacitus' figures take into account the huge number of wives, children, slaves, and hangers-on who would not have taken part in the battle. I took my best guess that Boudica's fighting force was somewhat less than half Tacitus' estimate, but whatever the numbers truly were, Paulinus was vastly outnumbered. He owed his victory to the discipline of his troops and the advantage given by the ground. Boudica's tribesmen were too tightly packed by the narrow defile to swing their long swords effectively, and the slaughter of the Iceni was sealed when, as I have described, their retreat was blocked by the watching ring of spectators and wagons. Tacitus lists the Iceni dead at 80,000 and the Roman dead at 400, but like his earlier numbers, this seems highly suspect (a bit like Shakespeare claiming in Henry V that, at Agincourt, the English lost 25 and the French 10,000). Paulinus won the day against Boudica, but I have zero doubt he lost more than 400 men. The Iceni, however, lost everything: their independence from Rome, their lives, and their queen, who fled the battlefield to an unknown death.


  Boudica's pre-battle speech is written down by Tacitus, who wasn't there and moreover didn't know anyone who was (his primary source was probably his father-in-law Agricola, who as a young tribune would have been quaking in his boots on the Roman side, and far out of earshot of even Boudica's famous voice). Tacitus was less interested in historical purity than in amping up the drama of the moment, so the words he places in Boudica's mouth—particularly the ones that subtly paint her as an unnatural female bringing moral decay and male subjugation in her wake—are highly suspect. I used some of Tacitus' words in my story, but gave Boudica her own as well.

  Duro and Valeria are both fictional; none of Boudica's warriors were named by history, and it is not known if Catus Decianus was married (Tacitus, disapproving as he is of the procurator’s actions, never mentions an abandoned wife). My contribution to A Day of Fire also featured a man and woman quarreling on opposite sides of the same issue, so it seemed natural here to use a Roman woman and an Iceni warrior as my vehicles for the entire Rome vs. Britannia struggle: eternally on opposite sides, loathing everything the other stands for, disagreeing sometimes ferociously and sometimes humorously on everything from democratic policy to running water to skull decor. Duro's red-enameled sword is based on the Kirkburn Sword, a third century BC weapon found in an Iron Age grave. Decorated in red enamel and bronze, it stands as a fine example of La Tene-style scrollwork—the early Britons, for all Valeria's jibes about their mud huts and lack of advanced engineering, were superb metal-workers and artisans. The Kirkburn Sword resides in the British Museum. Duro's sword went to live in Valeria's new home in Gaul, where (I imagine) she and her procurator husband lived a quiet life much enlivened by a huge, hell-raising son.

  I vowed, after writing about the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in my last book, Lady of the Eternal City, that I was done with massacres for a while, but A Year of Ravens made an oath-breaker of me. From the moment I joined the project, I knew I wanted to put on my Bernard Cornwell hat and write the final battle: the glory and the agony, the horror and the blood, the dashed hopes and the doomed last stands. I couldn’t have done it without my co-authors: Simon, who thrashed out with me over many emails the father-son relationship between his hero and mine; Stephanie, who showed so marvelously the other half of Valeria’s marriage; Vicky, who gave me my first scene, and Russ, who gave me my last; Ruth, who fact-checked me like a champion; and Eliza, whose brain-child this was from the beginning. If you have to write a massacre, it’s a lot more fun to have a team like this one behind you.

  I hope you enjoyed my story. Normally my aim is to make my readers laugh—this time around, I hope I made you cry.

  — Kate Quinn

  The Daughters, by E. Knight

  Fierce, independent, strong, cunning women are some of my favorites to read and write about—especially when these women rise up against tyranny, triumphing, even if only in some small way. Boudica’s story, though tragic, is one that I have admired from the very first moment I heard about her as a child. A widow beaten, her daughters raped—she turned an entire country on its ear. Not just because she sought vengeance against those who mistreated her and her daughters, but also because she didn’t want this to happen to anyone else. She wanted to defeat the enemy. To grind them to dust and make them disappear. But what about her daughters?

  Who were they? What did they desire? What were their strengths and weaknesses? What did they look like? What were their names?

  Nearly everything about them, other then their existence and mistreatment, has been forgotten. While Boudica was immortalized in the writings of Tacitus and Dio, her daughters receive no more than a mere mention. I think they deserved more than that. I think that in this massive rebellion undertaken by their mother, Boudica’s daughters would not have faded into the background as our two historians portray. The majority of artistic depictions of Boudica show her riding her chariot with her two daughters beside her, or depict her standing tall, her daughters clutching onto her. I find it sad, though not surprising, that her daughters were brushed aside as unimportant to Tacitus and Dio—then again, perhaps they never knew their names to begin with. There is some question about whether or not Boudica is actually our warrior queen’s true name.

  Boudica’s daughters. Not even named. Our names—they mean so much to us. They are who we are. They identify us not only to ourselves but also to the world. They mean something. When I decided to write a story about Boudica’s daughters, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that no one knew their names. Certainly there are guesses. Beautiful speculations. But that’s all they are. I couldn’t use them. I had to name these girls myself, and so I chose names that meant something. For Boudica’s eldest daughter, born in the likeness of her, their tribe’s lucky charm, a warrior, I chose the name Sorcha, which means “bright light” or “princess.” For Boudica’s younger daughter, I named her Keena, which means “brave.” Both of these names were chosen based on the girls’ personalities and their journeys to find themselves and the meaning of their own lives.

  In my story, I made Boudica a priestess of Andraste, the warrior goddess who leads her people to victory. I did this for a couple of reasons, one is that Tacitus’ account talks of Boudica releasing a hare from her skirts as a sacrifice—something a priestess or Druid would do, but it is unlikely she was a Druid. Additionally, there is some speculation that a priestess of Andraste would have a better chance as a warrior, gathering enough support and troops to take on the Romans, than as a simple consort queen who’d just been widowed (even though she and her daughter were abused).

  On the topic of human sacrifice, and in regards to the weak infant Sorcha, we know that human sacrifice has been part of religious cultures for thousands of years, and the Druids were not exempt from this practice. Whether infants were sacrificed, there is some speculation. In regards to the sacred grove near the Iceni village, Celtic Lore and Mythology puts Boudica there when she made sacrifices and invoked her goddess. (Not that all lore and mythology is true, I know, but I think there can be some measure of faith or trust in stories repeated generation and generation, and after all, we are writing fiction!) Now speaking of lore and druidism, I had the Druid in the beginning of my story tell Boudica to “bite the after-birth thrice.” This wasn’t something I simply made up, though I wish I had, because it’s so peculiar and interesting. In fact, I found it in, Survivals in Belief Among the Celts, written in 1911 by George Henderson.

  For a final thought, I’d like to take a moment to explain the ending of my story. Tacitus and Dio both differ on how Boudica died. Dio states that though she escaped the final battle, Boudica died of her wounds, and there is no mention of her daughters’ deaths. Tacitus says she and her daughters poisoned themselves. I decided to take a bit of both of these accounts for Boudica and make it hers. The truth is, we have yet to find a final resting place for Boudica (though there are guesses and suspicions) and since the two accounts give different ways in which she died, and we have no proof, there is truly no way to know for certain. I did not use poison, because, on the run, where would she have gotten poison? I believed that a warrior queen would have chosen a death by her own blade. But I did not want her two daughters to die the same way. I wanted Sorcha to take the life of the man who tormented her. I wanted her to die defending not only herself, but her sister, too. I wanted her to die heroically. And Keena, sweet brave girl—I wanted Keena to live on, even if in secret, to give hope that though their people were beaten, not all was lost.

  Using research and a liberal amount of creative license, I wrote a version of events that took place during the last year of Boudica and her daughters’ lives, and I hope that in living through them—their pain, their happiness, their loves and friends, their personal triumphs, their losses—we can memorialize their lives and give them the peace of mind that we still remember them and the sacrifices they made.

  — E. Knight

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  RUTH DOWNIE rea
d far too much Jane Austen at university, emerging with an English degree and a plan to get married and live happily ever after. As a backup plan she learned typing and shorthand in the mistaken belief that people would always need secretaries and that she might be good at it. Finally escaping into fiction, she won the Fay Weldon section of the BBC End of Story competition in 2004, and the BBC’s threat to come back and see how her writing was going spurred her to finish her abandoned crime novel about a Roman army medic. Medicus became a New York Times bestseller and The Times recommended it as one of their ‘Seven best thrillers for Christmas’. Vita Brevis, the seventh book in the series, will be published in 2016. When she isn’t writing, Ruth’s happiest moments are spent groveling in mud with an archaeological trowel. Find out more at www.ruthdownie.com

  STEPHANIE DRAY is an award-winning, bestselling and two-time RITA award nominated author of historical women’s fiction. Her critically acclaimed series about Cleopatra’s daughter has been translated into eight different languages and won NJRW's Golden Leaf. As Stephanie Draven, she is a national bestselling author of genre fiction and American-set historical women's fiction. She is a frequent panelist and presenter at national writing conventions and lives near the nation's capital. Before she became a novelist, she was a lawyer, a game designer, and a teacher. Now she uses the stories of women in history to inspire the young women of today. She also hosts a Historical Book of the Month Club. For a chance to win a best selling book in the genre every month and keep up with Stephanie’s news, please sign up at: http://ow.ly/SvkEU. To learn more, visit www.StephanieDray.com