Ravens of Avalon (34 page)

“Cartimandua seemed to have a kindness for you at the wedding,” the king observed dryly. Boudica realized for the first time that he was aware that the Brigante queen had encouraged her to ride away. “She is a wily one, but perhaps if you are together for a time she will speak freely.”

It was only after they had been on the road for some days that it occurred to Boudica that the reason Helve had invited her was the same.

Three days’ journey brought them to the small port on the Wash, on the north coast of the Iceni lands. There they found two wide-bottomed boats that could take the women and their escort four days’ sail up the coast and into a great estuary. At the landing they bought rough-coated ponies to carry them upriver until they came to Lys Udra, where Queen Cartimandua made her home.

ne sympathizes with Caratac, of course,” said the queen.

She was still the sleek, wry-tongued creature Boudica remembered, with her black hair shining in the morning sun. Coventa was spending the week with her brother’s family, leaving the Brigante queen to entertain her unexpected guests at her hall by the river. The land here was good for farming, but to the west rose moors and mountains where only shepherds could make a living.

“He and his brother were in a fair way to unite most of the south, had the Romans not come.” She poured wine into cups of ruddy Samian ware and passed them to her guests. “He is a fine-looking man, too, though depressingly faithful to that Ordovice woman he wed.” She smiled.

Boudica raised an eyebrow.
Did you try him, then, and get turned down?
Cartimandua was known to have an eye for a handsome male. Her husband did not object, but then Briga was a wild land, where folk held to older ways than those of the Celts of Gallia who had conquered them. King Venutios was spending the summer at Rigodunon, near the Salmaes firth on the northwestern coast. Clearly his relationship with

Cartimandua was very different from the union she and Prasutagos had finally found. Boudica wondered if he had played any role in the rising there.

“They say that Caratac has taken his war band back to the Ordovice lands,” said Helve.

“He may take them anywhere he likes, so long as they stay out of Briga,” Cartimandua said with sudden venom. “I’ll not have him persuading any more of our clans into a rising that could only be put down by bringing the Legions in.”

“I, on the other hand, can only be thankful they did. That rebellion saved Mona,” observed Helve.

“Do you expect me to say that you’re welcome?” Cartimandua answered her unspoken question. “I have no quarrel with your Order, but I like the Romans much better when their tax collectors, annoying as they may be, are the only representatives they need to send into my land.”

Helve’s lips tightened, but even she could hardly object to the queen’s words while she was drinking her wine. It was good for the High Priestess to have to be polite to a fellow sovereign, thought Boudica. She wished that Lhiannon had been here to see.

“They say that Caratac has a priestess of your Order with him, a White Lady with magic powers,” added Cartimandua, as if Boudica had spoken her thought aloud. Coventa had told her that Lhiannon had gone to help the rebels. She was glad to have confirmation for her dream.

“Indeed?” Helve said stiffly.

“No doubt the Romans have heard this also. It will not make them more tolerant of your power.” Cartimandua sat back and signaled to one of her women to bring more wine.

“If we do not stand up to them we will
have
no power,” said Helve with more honesty than Boudica had expected.

“Ah well, we each play the game in a different way,” said Cartiman-dua, smiling. “It will be interesting to see who wins …”

he evening before they were to leave Lys Udra, the Brigante queen held Boudica back as the others were seeking their beds after dinner in the great roundhouse that was the royal hall.

“What did she want?” Coventa asked when Boudica returned.

“To warn me against you!” Boudica tried to laugh. “She believes that the Romans will seek to destroy the Druids as soon as they have pacified the tribes.”

“I know that you cannot do much to help us, placed as you are,” Coventa said seriously, “but it will be a comfort to know that you still hold me in your heart …”

“Oh my dear one, how could I not?” exclaimed Boudica. “But will you not rethink your own decision? I believe you will be safer with me than with Helve.”

Coventa shook her head with her usual sweet smile. “I know you do not like her, but indeed she does desire to serve the people and the gods. And she has been kind to me.”

She has used you,
thought Boudica, but it would do no good to say so aloud.

“This journey has shown me how unhappy I would be if I had to live among people who see and hear only with their ears and eyes. Safe or not, being a priestess on Mona is the only thing I am fit for,” said Coventa.

“Then do it, and be happy—” Boudica hugged the thin shoulders—
-for as long as you can.
But in truth could she, could anyone, hope for more?

arvest was the most hopeful time of the year. In the old days, warfare ended when it was time to get the crops in. But now, except when it was necessary to pursue an occasional cow that somehow ended up on the other side of a tribal border, they no longer had to worry about fighting—perhaps the only one of Rome’s promised benefits that had actually been welcome. When the grain turned golden, everyone, high or low, turned out to help in the fields.

Boudica bent, scooped up the piled stalks before her, and added them to the bunch in the crook of her arm. Ahead, the line of reapers moved in rhythm to the beat of the harvest drum, grasping, cutting, and casting aside the stalks of grain. She squatted down to gather more into her armful, bound what she held with a twist of straw, and started the process all over again.

So much of the Iceni country was pasture or fenland. The places where grain would grow well were doubly precious, and the best were to be found in the high rolling land around Danatobrigos. Boudica had come here after her visit to Cartimandua, and the king had brought the girls up to join her while he traveled around his kingdom. They would all go back to Teutodunon when the harvest was done.

She always looked forward to the season and its festivities, but just at this moment she wished they were over. The sun burned bright, and sweat was running down her back, sticking the linen of the old tunic to her skin and itching where the omnipresent chaff had gotten in. Long sleeves protected her arms from the sun, but by tonight her face would be red and tender despite the oil she had slathered on it before she began and the broad straw hat she wore.

But they could not stop now. Clouds were building over the waters of the Wash, and they would lose most of the wheat if it rained. The families whose farms were near the Horse Shrine harvested together, moving from one steading to another as the fields ripened. Today they were at Palos and Shanda’s place. Earlier in the summer Palos had been ill, but he looked healthy now, his skin darkened and his brown hair bleached by the sun.

Next to him, Prasutagos cut and cast another handful aside. The king had stripped off his tunic. For a moment Boudica paused, appreciating the ripple of muscle across his back as he reached again, then took up the stalks he had cut and tied off another sheaf of grain.

“Here’s water, Mother,” said Rigana. Boudica stretched to relieve the ache in her back, then took the full skin. It tasted better than Roman wine. At least this was the last field. From the farm came the scent of cooking food—they would be feasting soon.

Very soon, she realized, for the reapers were approaching the end of the field. A ripple of anticipation swept through the onlookers. Sickles flashed as the men raced to finish, then halted, drawing away from Pra-sutagos, who was reaching for the only clump still standing in the field. Hearing the silence, he stopped, realized he was the last, and looked around him with a rueful laugh.

“The Old Woman!” “The Corn Mother!” “Watch out, she’ll get you!” came the cries.

“Palos, this is your field—I’ll let you do the honors,” the king said hopefully, holding out the sickle to the other man.

“No, my lord.” Palos grinned. “It’s you she’s been waiting for. I’ll not stand in your way!” His golden-haired wife took his arm as if to make sure of it.

Prasutagos gave a dramatic sigh. “Well, you’ve been sick, so I’ll take her on—” Drawing himself up, he took a stride forward, grasped the stalks in his left hand, and with a swift slash cut them free. As he stepped back something brown and swift burst from the stubble and went bounding across the field.

“A hare!” whispered someone, making the sign of warding. Boudica felt her arms prickle. Suddenly the king’s laughing offer to protect the farmer from the Corn Mother’s resentment at being cut down had a deeper meaning. Hares were uncanny beasts, sacred to the Goddess and not to be harmed. His gaze met that of the farmer, who had gone a little pale.

” ‘Tis the duty of the king to stand between his folk and danger,” Prasutagos said gently, and smiled.

“A neck! A neck! He has the Old Woman!” the others were shouting now.

Prasutagos handed the sheaf to Shanda, who set swiftly to work to tie off sections into limbs and braid the figure a girdle and crown. As soon as she had the grain the other women seized the king, sticking straws through his clothing and into his hair. Then they hustled him down to the river and pushed him in.

When times were truly evil, thought Boudica a little grimly, the ruler, or his substitute, would die for his land in truth and not in play. Would that be required of Caratac? But despite his ambitions, he had never been king for all Britannia. The acceptance must come before the sacrifice.

Now they were pulling Prasutagos out again. Across the tops of their heads his laughing gaze met hers.
They will take him back to the farm for the feasting,
she thought as she managed an answering smile,
and make him dance with the Corn Mother, and eat as much food as Devodaglos, and promise everyone more beer. That’s not so great a sacrifice …

“Way-yen, way-yen …” As the Corn Mother was borne back to the farm the call echoed triumphantly across the land.

As Boudica followed the crowd it occurred to her that the rough treatment given to the reaper was only a symbol, but each spring, the Corn Goddess, in the grain that made up last harvest’s image, was dismembered and scattered to bless the fields.

EIGHTEEN

t had been a long war. From the doorway of the command tent, Lhiannon watched the campfires flickering in the meadows that edged the river, where the men of the great coalition Caratac had forged had sunk their own past rivalries in hatred of a greater foe. Silures who were veterans of the southern fighting of two years ago and Durotrige survivors from Vespasian’s campaign lay by Ordovices and Deceangli who had borne the brunt of the more recent battles, along with a scattering of men from other tribes. The last time so great a British host had been assembled had been on the banks of the Tamesa.

Behind her, Caratac sat with the war leaders, drawing maps in the dirt. Brangenos had settled in the shadows beyond, playing something sweet and meandering that eased the soul without requiring attention.

“They say that the governor was a sick man when he got here, and I don’t think his health has been improved by hunting me all around the hills. By all the gods, I am as tired of running as he is of chasing me!”

“So you mean to face him?” asked Tingetorix, an Iceni champion Lhiannon had known when she lived with Boudica.

“I mean to offer battle—at a place of my own choosing.” Caratac bared his teeth in a grin. “I doubt he will be able to resist the invitation.” Eight years of warfare had transformed the fox of the Cantiaci to an old wolf, the red hair gone brindled roan, his weatherbeaten skin seamed with scars. But the fire in his eyes burned as hot as ever.

Did Lhiannon’s? She, too, had left her first youth in these mountains. To the men of Caratac’s army, whom she had nursed and comforted through illness and wounds, she was the White Lady. These days she wore undyed homespun. Her robe of priestess-blue had worn out long ago. But her true appearance no longer mattered—although she was not the only Druid with the army, like Caratac she had become a living talisman. And there were times, even here, when the trance of vision came upon her, not as in the ordered ritual of Mona, but as a sudden intuition that left her in a confusion of hope and fear.

“Our scouts report that the governor has brought the Fourteenth Legion down from Viroconium and the Twentieth up from the south,” said one of the Ordovice men.

“The Twentieth, which used to be at Camulodunon?” echoed Epi-lios. “I look forward to seeing them again …” His grin was a youthful reflection of his brother’s—the last two sons of Cunobelin were together, leading the men of Britannia to war.

“They lie in marching camps down by the fords where the rivers join. Close to twenty thousand men in one camp, and the cavalry in the other.”

“We have nearly their numbers, and cavalry won’t be much use where I mean to bring them.” Caratac gestured to Lhiannon. “Tell them, maiden, the vision you shared with me—”