Ravens of Avalon (16 page)

“I still don’t like this,” said Boudica as they rode across the pasture.

“What, are you afraid of the elephants?” asked Lhiannon.

Boudica snorted. “No—it’s just that I thought I was going home!” As they journeyed across Britannia and her limbs remembered the joy of riding, she had begun to dream of the rolling pastures where the Iceni bred their horses. “But it is an evil homecoming when I arrive just in time to see my father submit to Rome!”

The Roman troops in Camulodunon were a spear aimed at the heart of all the lands that had once been under Cunobelin’s sway. But would the conquerors be content with submission, or would she soon find herself in chains on a ship bound for Rome? However constricting life with the Druids had been, at least it was free. She had tried to convince the priestess to leave them, but Lhiannon seemed serenely confident. Or perhaps she was so determined to go to Camulodunon because Ardanos was still there.

They crossed the pasture and turned onto the droveway that led between the fields. The growing wheat lay trampled, with only a few clumps left to be harvested by the birds. The cattle, too, were gone. No doubt they had served the soldiers for a feast to celebrate their victory.

Another ditch, its rim crowned with hawthorn, surrounded the compound, but the roundhouses whose pointed roofs should have showed above the hedge were gone. It had been a month since the Romans burned them, but the acrid reek of smoke still hung in the air. And yet the pasture beyond the compound bore a bright harvest of tents, as if this were a belated Lugos festival. The chieftains who had not marched in time to defend Camulodunon had come to make submission to their conquerors.

After listening for four years to Druid diatribes, Boudica found it unsettling to see her own people baring their throats to the foe. She had known she would be returning to the bondage of marriage. Indeed, she and Lhiannon had spent much of the journey speculating on who her husband would be. She fought down anger as she realized that her tribe was to be bound as well.

As they rode into the camp, people emerged from tents to see who had arrived. Abruptly Boudica was aware of how she must look to them— a leggy, freckled young woman with a tangle of red-gold hair, dressed in an undyed linen tunica grimed by weeks of travel and grown ragged at the hem. Looking like a slattern had been a good guise for a traveler, but it was less so here, where men read who you were in what you wore.

The clusters of tents were marked by poles with standards. She peered upward, looking for the russet banner with the leaping white hare of her own clan.
Perhaps my parents will not recognize me,
she thought glumly.
Then I will have no choice but to return to Mona with Lhiannon …
Surrounded by so many brightly clad people, she had to stifle an impulse to turn around and ride back down the road.

Lhiannon saw her putting her hands over her ears and shook her head. “You cannot go through life like that, child—think for yourself a veil that only those sounds you want to hear can get through.”

Boudica shut her eyes for a moment and was rewarded when the sound level dimmed. When she opened them, she realized it was because her father had come out to meet her, with her mother scurrying to catch up as usual. He looked even more dour than she remembered, and there was entirely too much gray in his hair. Her mother, too, was silver-headed now. When had her parents become so
old?

“So you are here at last. You appear to have taken your time …” He looked his daughter up and down, but his expression did not change.

Boudica bit her lip. Surely whatever time they had lost at Avalon they had saved by making part of the journey by sea. But Leucu was mumbling something about delays to avoid the Romans, and she relaxed again.

“Never mind, man,” Dubrac said at last. “Go take some rest. I’m sure you’ve earned it. At least you got her here …” He turned to his wife. “Get her cleaned up, Ana. She must be fit to show to the princes by the evening meal.” He turned away.

“Is it a feast or a cattle market I’m going to?” Boudica muttered as she swung a leg over the pony’s back and slid down. She sent a beseeching glance to Lhiannon, but the priestess only smiled.

Then her mother was hugging her, stepping back to look up into her face, and embracing her again.

“Oh my darling, how you’ve grown! But you’re as brown as a berry, child, or is that dirt from the road? Never mind, never mind—oh how I’ve missed you! I have dreamed of this day.”

I haven’t,
Boudica realized with a stab of guilt. But it was curiously comforting to be clucked over as if she were eight, not eighteen years old, and for all her questions, her mother did not seem to expect much in the way of a reply.

“And to you, my lady, all my gratitude for your care.” Ana turned as Lhiannon also dismounted, ducking her head in a sort of truncated obeisance.

The priestess’s blue robes were a little dusty, but she appeared otherwise untouched by the stains of travel.
As if,
thought Boudica with a familiar exasperated wonder,
she used some Druid magic that directed all the dirt to me!

“My women have prepared a place for you.” Ana gestured vaguely toward the other tents as a serving girl came forward. “Whatever you need for your comfort, you have only to ask …”

Boudica had scarcely the time for a nod of farewell before her mother drew her into one of the tents, a roomy affair made by stretching a cover of oiled wool above wickerwork walls. Sighing, she allowed Ana to feed her oatcakes and mint tea, to cluck over her hair and her skin and discuss what she should wear. It had been like this, she remembered, when she was a little girl. As her husband took over the training of each son, all Ana’s motherly instincts had focused on this one surviving daughter, who in turn only wanted to prove herself a better boy than any of her brothers. But Boudica realized that among other things, her time with the Druids had shown her that there was more than one way to be a woman, and more ways than one to be a woman of power.

hiannon, having left Boudica to her fate, set out to find Ardanos. A few discreet inquiries brought her presently to a group of tents over which the boar banner of the Southern Iceni flew.

She found him sitting cross-legged, carving a piece of wood, and paused to taste the pleasure of simply seeing him there, alive and well. He had enjoyed carving when he was a boy. Was it a sign of contentment that he should do it now, or was he so frustrated by the situation that he could think of nothing else to do? Frustration, probably, she thought as she moved closer. He was carving birds.

“And when you have made them, where will they fly?” she asked softly.

For a moment he was utterly still, but she saw his knuckles whiten on the handle of the knife. Very carefully, he loosened his fingers and set down the blade. Only then did he look up at her.

What, my beloved, did you not want me to see in your eyes?
she wondered. They glimmered with water he was too proud to wipe away. She knelt beside him and picked up one of the birds.

“King Antedios has a little daughter,” he said, almost steadily. “They are water birds, and she will set them in the stream …”

“And from the stream to the river, and then they will float to the sea, and from there they may come at last to the Blessed Isles. I understand.”

“All went well?” Ardanos reached up to pluck a leaf that had attached itself to her veil; the touch became a caress that brushed a strand of hair back from her brow and lingered there.

“Very well, both for Boudica and for me, even though—maybe because—we were alone. Ardanos, this time when I climbed the Tor, I went inward! I have to tell you—”

“Not here!” he said harshly. “It would profane the memory. When we are on the road. Now that you have come, we can get out of here.”

“Ardanos!” she exclaimed, torn between annoyance and laughter. “I have been riding for three weeks. Boudica was born on a horse, I think, and has recovered all her old skill, but I was not, and not even for you will I sit on a saddle again until the bruises on my backside have healed. Besides, I must wait until Boudica—”

“Damn Boudica! I want to get you safely out of here!” He shook his head. “At least wear a band across your brow to hide that blue crescent while you are here!”

Lhiannon frowned. “That mark is borne only by those of our order who have been initiated on Avalon. The Romans will not know what it means.”

“Unless someone tells them …” His face was grim. “There are far too many here who would curry favor with those who bestow the luxuries of Rome. Wear a headband or a veil.”

“And what about you?” she said wryly. “It is certain they will know you for a Druid if they see that shaven brow.”

“Everyone already knows who I am,” he shrugged. “When there are Romans about I have a cap that I can wear.”

“See that you wear it, then.” She eased down beside him. “And since we must stay here for a time, suppose you tell me who has come to this disaster, and what you think will happen now.”

he festival of Lugos had always included a cattle fair, where folk sold off superfluous animals and bought beasts whose breeding might improve their own herds. To Boudica, standing in the middle of her parents’ tent while her mother directed a covey of clucking maids to scrub, oil, comb, and adorn her, the comparison seemed uncomfortably appropriate. All that kept her from bolting was the knowledge that if she should decide for Mona, Lhiannon and Ardanos were quite capable of spiriting her away.

“There now, my darling.” Her mother stood back, inspecting her. “Now you look like a woman of the royal kindred.” She held out her bronze mirror, its back incised with graceful whorls and tendrils, so that Boudica could see.

Admittedly the closest thing to a mirror on Mona was a still pool, but the face that looked back at her belonged to no one she knew. They had braided her hair back from her temples with scarlet ribands and allowed the rest of the mane to flow down her back in waves of copper and gold. An artful application of Roman cosmetics reddened her lips and defined her brows.

Her tunica was of thin linen that followed the lines of her body and fell in graceful folds, pinned at the shoulders with fibulae of gilded bronze and girdled with gold, and dyed as deep a red as the root of the madder would allow. Golden earrings and a necklet of twisted gold completed the ensemble, with a mantle woven in the reds and tans and yellows of her tribe.

“It will be too warm for this,” she said, and tried to hand back the wool.

“You can sit on it when you are not bearing around the pitcher of wine,” her mother replied tartly.

“I am honored,” Boudica said dryly, remembering the last time she had served kings. Of the rulers who had come to plot the defense of Britannia in answer to the Arch-Druid’s call, Togodumnos was dead and Caratac in hiding, and the kings of the Durotriges and Belgae were waiting to see where the Roman eagle would strike next. Of those whose cups she would fill tonight, only Prasutagos, whose brother’s death had made him king of the Northern Iceni, would remember.

“Well, you should be,” her mother said briskly. “Most of them have queens already, of course, but they have sons and brothers. I have no doubt we shall place you well.”

Boudica took a deep breath, grateful for Druid lessons in self-control. “And what if I choose not to marry? When you packed me off to Mona, wasn’t it the understanding that I might decide to stay?”

“But … you came back …”

Seeing her mother’s face crumple, Boudica put out a consoling hand. Two of her brothers had followed Togodumnos to the Tamesa, and died, leaving only Dubnocoveros, the brother next to her in age, and little Bra-cios. Her mother was still mourning, and did not need more grief from her daughter now.

“I promise you I will give it a chance. I will not disgrace you at the feast this evening, and I will listen to whatever offers may come.”

“We called you ‘filly’ when you were a little one, you were so wild.” Her mother shook her head with a sigh. “I hoped you might have changed. But at least you
look
as a royal woman should.”

With this qualified approval both of them must be content. In silence, Boudica followed her mother toward the fire circle where stretched cloths shaded an outdoor feasting hall.

oudica was not the only royal woman to come late to the gathering. That afternoon the Brigante delegation had arrived, and Lhiannon, finding herself superfluous among the Iceni, made her way through the welter of tents and wagons to the one where the black horse standard flew. By rights, the banner ought to have shown a herd of horses, for the

Brigantes were not so much a tribe as a federation of clans. The marriage of Cartimandua and Venutios had more or less united them. But Lhiannon had known the Brigante queen when they were both girls in the House of Maidens on Mona. She wondered if Cartimandua had changed.

Apparently not, for as she approached she could hear a crisp, rather high voice giving a flurry of orders. A maidservant popped through the door as if shot from a bow and dashed off, and in the moment of silence that followed, Lhiannon ducked inside.

“Welcome to Camulodunon, my lady,” she said softly.

Cartimandua whirled, her shining black hair swinging like the tail of the sleek pony that was the meaning of her name. Small and elegantly curved, she owed her royal blood to the tribes that had ruled this land when the Belgic princes first came over from Gallia.