London Folk Tales (4 page)

As Boudicca’s ever-ecstatic host approached London, they strung more strings on the loom of war, gathering more warriors to the fight, Boudicca whipping them into frenzy as they went. ‘Iceni! Iceni! Trinovantes! Corvoni! Brigantes! I am a woman, a woman as you are women, as you are men. I am a woman whose daughters were violated, whose back was beaten, whose wealth was stolen. Fight! Don’t submit to the scythe of these Roman bandits!’

Her chariot was spattered with blood. Around the necks of her horses were garlanded the heads of Romans – dipped in cedar oil, until they glistened like uprooted bulbs looking for soil. A tsunami roared in her ears, a volcano erupted in her heart, while her will grew wings and danced on the tips of the spears of her people, like a crow with many beaks. In their excitement, warriors leaped on, and from, their speeding chariots, spinning their swords and performing feats for their families to applaud. Women whirled their arms like spinning wheels, their necks bulged, and their legs kicked as they slaughtered alongside their menfolk.

The day belonged to Boudicca, and her people torched the city. The Queen of the Iceni blazed like a full moon. Andraste had made her a goddess for a moment. But for the inhabitants of London, that goddess was a great black crow spreading the war cloth of her wings over the face of their moon. To this day, London remembers Boudicca in her entrails – London has a layer of red earth 4m below her surface, not from the bloodshed, but from the oxidised iron of the fire that blazed at 1,000 degrees.

And while London was blazing, General Seutonius pared his fingernails and considered the difference between the Romans and the Britons. His men were trained and properly armed. Every Roman soldier had a helmet, armour, a studded belt and studded sandals, whereas the Britons fought naked or in cotton trousers. They were farmers and family men as well as fighters and only a few had chariots, shields and helmets; in fact, most of them just had a single sword. ‘Amateurs,’ muttered the general under his breath.

He clicked his tongue, strode out of his tent, assembled his men and began to bark orders. Explaining the lie of the land, he rehearsed them into arrowhead formations, zigzags, points and wedges until they were like one compact war machine made up of interconnecting parts.

And while he watched them at their manoeuvres, he considered how the Britons were all spirit and no strategy. As unruly as leaves blowing in the wind, they were a collection of solo fighters and virtuosos, who dissipated themselves shouting, invoking the gods, beating clappers and singing random airs. But there were loads of them! He had only 15,000 soldiers whereas, if reports were correct, Boudicca had 200,000. The general raised his wrinkled brow to the horizon, wishing for more troops to arrive and fearing for his reputation in Rome. He paced and cracked his knuckles. No troops came.

Even as they approached the battle site, Boudicca knew her tightly woven war cloth was beginning to unravel; the strings of the loom were beginning to bend and snap. She couldn’t keep a handle on the mass of warriors that were becoming out of control. Was she the only one that saw the whole war cloth? Her people devoted too much time taunting and torturing their victims and not enough time speaking to the gods of air and earth. There was too much drinking, too much boasting and now, with the prospect of victory, too much buffoonery around – imitating the blank expressions of their enemies, their mechanical marching, their excessive armour and mimicking their fat, mad Emperor Nero. Still she couldn’t demand only incite. They saw her as Andraste and she had played up to it, leading by example, raising her arms to the moon and the sun, making the most of sudden flocks of birds and flashes of light, but now that the war threads were spinning off, fraying in every direction, who knew where it would end?

As the battle began, it was instantly clear to Boudicca that, unlike her, the Romans were leaving nothing to chance. First came the legionnaires, the front liners, each had a gladii, a short sword of around 30cm, and a smaller dagger; behind them came the infantry with their 3m javelins, followed by the cavalry on horseback with long lances. The Britons fell like corn, crushed by the threshing shields and swords of an army carefully orchestrated by Seutonius, marching ever forward, thrusting and slashing, using the dead as their pavement.

As Boudicca saw her people falling to the left and to the right, she found herself thinking of the hare that had promised them victory. It had run to the left, but who knew what twists and turns it took when it got to the forest? That was the trouble with divination – it never saw quite far enough. With her impeccable timing, she threw her tartan cloak round the shoulders of her daughters and they disappeared into the forest. From her belt she took a leather pouch containing a combination of hemlock, yew, bryony, buttercup, belladonna and thorn apple. She shook back her own rough hair, smoothed the soft curls of her daughter’s and urged them to take the powder, rather than be at the mercy of their enemies.

‘Live by your own rules and die by your own hand!’ The poison threw them against the trees and on to the grass with such violence that they danced like maddened dryads in a grove.

The Romans had a final piece of luck. The families of the Britons who had come to watch the downfall of their hated invaders, had lined up their wagons behind their own soldiers and had been cracking nuts and suckling their babies, watching the show. As the bloodbath commenced, the warriors found themselves hemmed in by line upon line of wagons. There was no escape for fighters or audience. Boudicca’s war cloth was trampled into the mud, soaked and reddened with blood. Nearly 80,000 Britons died in the final battle, compared to 400 Romans. The general hunted down any survivors and exacted such a terrible retribution that Rome hardly celebrated the victory, fearing it might stir up another revolt.

In a very short time, a bigger and better Londinium was rebuilt and Romanisation continued apace. The city they created covered roughly the same region as the City of London district today. If you walk through it now, you may happen upon a market, with fresh, brightly coloured fruit displayed on fake green grass. Maybe some of the market hawkers might catch your eye. Their timeless faces that have been folded into deep creases by the cold, early starts, snappy jokes and the constant packing and unpacking of their ripening and decaying produce, could have come from AD 70.

But despite the rebuilding, Boudicca’s feisty spirit remains as much a part of London as that layer of burnt red earth. Some feel it strongest in the Kings Cross area, the part once known as Battle Bridges. It was there, so they say, that the Battle of Watling Street took place – the Britons’ terrible defeat. Some even claim that the queen was buried under Kings Cross Station, platform 10. And you can see her ghost there now and again.

But to my mind, if you really want to sense her ancient presence, turn your back on the bustle, and your feet from the streets of the city. Walk north until you’re deep in the peace of Epping Forest. Take a mossy path up through a line of giant beeches, until you reach Cobbins Brook. There, beyond the reach of motor cars and even mobile phones, is a great earthwork known by several different names: Castrum de Eppynghatthe or Ambresbury Banks or, locally, Boudicca’s Last Stand.

London Bridge is falling down,

Falling down, falling down.

London Bridge is falling down,

My fair lady.

It was the Romans who built the first London Bridge. They decided that the ford the Britons had used before would be wholly inadequate for the hordes of soldiers and civilians, chariots and carts, horses and donkeys, cattle, sheep, pigs, geese, and all manner of other beasts that they confidently and correctly anticipated would wish to pass over to their new city on the north side of the river. The Britons’ old ‘settlement’ was barely worthy of the name, as far as they were concerned; just a poor cluster of huts and a wooden fortress. And it was only defended by a simple timber palisade. That was the first thing the Romans replaced, and in good solid stone, too. Proper city walls. They were built to last. And they did.

They did find one thing of interest. In the middle of the old encampment, there was a fine menhir, presumably a marker stone of some sort. It was not local stone. One very old man told them that his father remembered hearing that the stone had come from Troy long ago. Although that was clearly nonsense, the Romans left the menhir standing where it was, and decided they would use it as the central milestone for their new city, from which roads would lead in all directions. So they called it after their name for the city, the Stone of Londinium.

As for the bridge itself, that was built in wood, resting on a heavy bed of clay and small stones, which had to be built up very high into an embankment on the southern side because it was so marshy. They called that part the South work, which eventually became the name of the poor settlement that grew up there, on the south side of the bridge.

Build it up with wood and clay,

Wood and clay, wood and clay,

Build it up with wood and clay,

My fair lady.

But even the Romans, experts in construction, must surely have underestimated the power of the Thames’ tides. Or perhaps they were relying on other ways to strengthen the bridge. ‘Giving it a bit of spirit’ you might call it. In time-honoured fashion that was done by choosing a living creature and burying it within the structure, thereby ensuring that its ghost or essence would always remain there to protect it. It might involve an animal, particularly a black dog, or sometimes a child, or sometimes a woman.

It was the latter, they say, who was selected to watch over London Bridge. My Fair Lady indeed, although how fair she was by the time she was through no one knew. Because the point was not to see her, but to be aware she was there, and perhaps, if you needed to, hear her. And though many scoff and say there is no proof, no evidence of the tale to be found in the foundations of the bridge, people have heard and sensed things that are equally hard to explain over the years.

A reputable man, a beadle of Borough Market, said a colleague had told him about a time when he was working nights there. Borough Market is right under the end of London Bridge, spreading into the street, and they used to patrol the whole area, up and down, all night long. They had to check everywhere then, though not anymore.

But anyway, that night this other beadle was by the steps up to the bridge. And all of a sudden he heard a girl scream. There is a little alleyway by the side of the church, inside the railings, and it was coming from there. Now he was the sort of man who had no sense of danger, and so he ran up and jumped over the railings and had a look. But he couldn’t see anything. He went all round, but there was no one there. So he came back out and onto the pavement, and while he was walking down the street they call Winchester Walk, he heard it again. ‘He told us, you know, there was nothing. But he heard it. They were laughing at him, the other lads – we all were – but it was serious. He meant it. It makes you think,’ the beadle said to me. It did.

It has made people think each time they rebuilt the bridge as well. Which they had to do a lot because it was always falling down, just as the songs says.

Wood and clay will wash away,

Wash away, wash away,

Wood and clay will wash away,

My fair lady.

London Bridge is falling down …

It must have been a nuisance for most Londoners. But what is bad news for some is usually good news for others; it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

In the time of King Edgar the Peaceful, the River Thames refused to take notice of the peace specified by his majesty. It swelled and swirled and rose so high from the gales and sea storms and moon-dragged tides that London Bridge was all but swept away. As it was, and continued to be right until the eighteenth century. Being the only permanent link with the other side of the city, people went to terrible trouble to try to cross the Thames by other means – and usually failed. Others tried to get across the remnants of the now very rickety bridge. And usually failed, too. Frequently fatally.

King Edgar himself had a flat-bottomed royal barge with at least six men to row it to and fro. He was extremely proud of it, but reluctant to lend it to anyone else. A few well-to-do nobles followed his example, and had barges built. But most individuals could not afford to pay six people to just row one across the river. However, one or two were very canny, and found a way of building something that was in between a boat and a barge, and was large and flat and fairly light, but heavy enough to be steady when several sat inside. And these could be rowed across the river by just one strong man – when the tides were right, of course. Sometimes with ropes tied to the other side for extra support. They called them ferries, and you’d pay a levy to be ferried across. So when times were bad for the bridge, they began to be good for the ferries and the ferrymen.

One such man was John Over, named after his trade, as everyone was in those days, for he carried passengers over the river to one side, and then back over again. Over and over all day long, and all week too and he started to make money, and from one ferry he’d now got two. And so it went on very nicely. Before long he had a team of ferrymen rowing for him. And a little house, then a bigger house, and then a grand house. On the north side, now. That was where everyone who was anyone lived. And now that he had made a fair bit of money, a fortune in fact, he felt that he was someone too. And it was time to forget about his roots, and Southwark, the place he’d come from, which was the poor side of the river, the poor side of town.

That might have been fine if he’d been on his own, but he wasn’t. He had lost his wife, but he had a lovely daughter, and her name was Mary. And Mary had been happy in Southwark. Because she had her eye on a nice young man, and he’d had his eye on her. His name was Gerald, and his father was a cobbler, and he was learning to be a cobbler too; and even a shoemaker if he could be, for they are the ones who make, rather than merely mend. And Gerald set his sights high, and meant to do as well as he could.