Ravens of Avalon (49 page)

he embers of Colonia were smoldering. From time to time a charred roof-beam would fall in, or a last bit of wicker fencing would burst into flame. It had taken nearly twenty years to turn this Trinov-ante hilltop into a crude imitation of Rome. The Britons had destroyed it in two days. Colonia Victricensis was victorious no more, except for this final symbol of imperialism, this ultimate hubris, the temple of the deified Claudius, that stood surrounded by devastation, stone columns glowing as men held their torches high.

Boudica felt a flicker of amusement from the goddess within as she reflected that she was the last person to deny that a human could be a vehicle for divinity, or even that each human soul held some spark of the divine. But it was the god that ought to be worshipped, not the man. Even the ancestors at whose barrows her people left offerings took time to grow into their godhood. Let the Romans pay their honors to the Deified Claudius at his own tomb and build him a temple there if their prayers were answered. To worship him here was an insult and a blasphemy.

The building was unscathed except for the scars on the bronze doors where the battering ram had failed. In a detached way Boudica could appreciate the elegance of its proportions. She supposed that Prasutagos would have wept at the thought of destroying it—one more thing she could be glad he was not here to see. She herself had no such compunctions. The only way to get to the meat of an egg was to crack the shell, and this shell still sheltered half the population of Colonia—men, women, children, the soldiers from the fort, and the paltry two hundred the procurator had sent them from Londinium.

“There’s no way to burn it from the outside, see,” said a gnarled little man with a missing front tooth who had been forced to help build the temple. Boudica turned to look at him, vaguely aware that he had been talking to her for some time. “Outside’s all faced with stone, aye? And bronze all over the doors. But the roof, now—” he glowered upward, “—over the roof-beams there’s just tiles. I should know, Lady, half broke my back helping to put ‘em there. Tear those loose and you’ve fine stout wooden beams to burn. We can smoke ‘em out, just like putting fire down a badger’s hole. They’ll open the doors themselves and come out when it’s a choice between facing us and not breathing!”

The men around them were nodding. Boudica sensed anticipation from Cathubodva. A raven called, settling atop the bronze eagle attached to the peak of the temple’s roof as if to show them the way.

“I hear you,” she murmured, then turned to the men around her. “Yes—do it now!” As men dragged out the ladders they had been building and swarmed up the side of the building she told herself there was no work of man that other men, with sufficient motivation, could not destroy. Tiles clinked as men hammered to loosen them and then began to pitch them down, nibbling at the expanse of terra-cotta until the roof began to look like a moth-eaten wool cloak. Soon she saw the long beams laid bare.

Shouts echoed from within as some of the men began to shoot through the openings. But now men were hauling up jars of olive oil and pouring it over the wood, hammering stakes smeared with pitch and flax into the beams and setting them alight. They dropped the remaining jars through holes and followed them with flaming arrows as a promise of what was to come.

The attackers scuttled down the ladders as tendrils of white smoke changed to black, followed by tongues of flame.

“Burn, Claudius,” whispered Boudica, “for surely your own people never made you such a noble pyre or gave you so many offerings!” This was a midsummer bonfire such as Britannia had never seen.

Above the mutter of the flames she could hear screaming.

“Not long now,” said one of the men.

Inside it would be getting hot and dangerous, as flaming fragments of roof began to shower down. Black smoke billowed through the roof, but as much again must be swirling inside as fire worked its way along the undersides of beams. Those who died from lack of air would be the lucky ones.

A shout brought her attention back to the front of the temple. The bronze doors were opening.

“At last!” exclaimed Bituitos, striding forward. “They will come out to die like men!”

Soldiers appeared in the doorway, each man’s shield protecting half his body and the sword arm of his neighbor. Their blades flickered in and out like an adder’s tongue. For a few moments they held off the attackers, but the pressure of people behind them was pushing them forward. Now she could see space behind them, and in the next moment the Britons had flowed around to attack them from in back and by sheer weight bore them down. Others tore into the massed bodies behind them. Some tried to retreat, trampling those behind them, only to be thrust out again.

“Pull back,” cried someone. “We can’t kill them unless we give them room!”

Clouds blazed in the light of the setting sun as if the heavens, too, were aflame. Even at the edge of the square Boudica could feel the heat as the flames rose higher. The attackers began to edge away, leaving a tangle of bodies behind. The blood that covered the temple steps glowed an even more vivid crimson in the light of the fire. A few more Romans emerged from the doorway. For a moment a woman with a child in her arms stood silhouetted against the flames, then turned back again.

After that, no more appeared. Boudica fought to clear her mind of the image—they were Romans! They deserved to die. The shifting wind brought her the reek of the smoke and the choking scent of burnt flesh; she pulled her cloak across her face to filter it, and for one horrible moment she was back at Dun Garo, watching Prasutagos burn on his pyre. The men and women inside the temple were wives and husbands … they were Romans … anguish seized her, but in the commotion no one heard her moan.

A cheering crowd surrounded her. She could not run away. “Help me,” she whispered, but even Eoc, who stood beside her, could not hear.

Only the goddess, rising like a dark tide within her, recognized her agony, and shared it, and absorbed it, drawing a soft veil between Boudica and the world. As one who watches from a far distance she saw slabs of stone crack and pop outward from the walls, leaving a skeleton of burning uprights within. And then even that was gone, and she was in a golden country watching Prasutagos building a wall.

In Colonia, Cathubodva watched the Temple of Claudius burn. Now only the building’s facade was still standing. Men began to cheer as it wavered. For another moment the eagle on the rooftree showed stark against the flames, then a gout of smoke swirled around it and it fell.

Celtic horns blared in triumph, but their music was overwhelmed by the shouts of the crowd. Standing in the midst of them, the goddess wept Boudica’s tears.

hiannon woke with a start. She still lay beneath the thorn hedge. Heart pounding, she tried to identify what new danger had startled her. It was day, but the sun had not yet lifted above the mountains on the mainland. From the direction of Lys Deru she heard shouting, and then the harsh music of a Roman trumpet. Again and again it blew. Wincing as the movement woke a host of pains, she peered through the leaves.

Black smoke still drifted from Lys Deru and the Sacred Grove. On the students’ playing field legionaries were gathering, more and more of them as the trumpets continued to call. Lhiannon shrank back into her hole as a pair of soldiers jingled by at a swift march, perhaps the same two who had nearly found her the night before. They were not hunting now. From the sound of their muttering they were as puzzled as she.

There was a disturbing beauty in the speed with which the confusion of men settled into orderly ranks. You would never see Britons bracing to attention like so many images as an officer came by. As she watched, men continued to arrive. They must be pulling in the perimeter guards as well. But why? Surely they would want to do another sweep for fugitives in the light of day.

Lhiannon watched throughout the morning, but no more soldiers came near. A little before noon the trumpets blew once more, and still in their precise formations, the Romans marched back to the shore. As the last of them disappeared, Lhiannon began to weep, releasing all the tears that through that long and terrible night she had locked within. And when she was done, she wriggled out of her refuge and started across the fields toward what remained of the Druids’ sanctuary.

The reek of charred thatch lay heavy on the air. Lhiannon tied her veil across her face, but it did little good. As she got closer she could smell a sickening hint of burned flesh and the iron tang of blood. The timbers of the gatepost lay charred, but before they burned, someone had hacked at the swirling sigils that had given them magic. The devastation beyond made a mockery of the bright day.

Sweet Goddess have mercy,
she thought numbly,
am I the only one who survived?
She stiffened as something moved, but it was only a raven lifting from the corpse of one of the community’s dogs with a flick of black wings.

As she let out her breath, something stirred in what she had taken for a pile of rags. It was Belina. Slowly the older priestess focused on Lhiannon, and humanity came back into her eyes. There was a bruise on her cheek and the livid marks of fingers on her arms.

“Lhiannon … you are alive …” Her lips twisted in what was intended to be a smile.

“How is it with you?” Lhiannon knelt at her side.

“No worse than one might expect, save for a knock on the head.” Belina winced as Lhiannon helped her to stand. “Help me to wash their filth away. Thank the Goddess I was no virgin.”

And what of those who had been? wondered Lhiannon. Was a quick death the best fate she could hope for them?

A dead cow lay half in and half out of the stream, but the water above it ran cold and clear. Both women felt better when they had washed and drunk. Lhiannon was even beginning to wonder if any food had been left unfouled. They returned to the houses and began the grim work of identifying the dead. Some of the older Druids had chosen to burn in the houses. Elin had died beside the hut where she kept her herbs. Mandua seemed to have found a knife and killed herself after the Romans were done.

And astonishingly, some were still alive.

Lhiannon was binding up a long gash in the leg of one of the younger Druids when a new sound brought her around. The blood left her head as she looked up and saw Ardanos, leaning on Bendeigid’s arm. Or perhaps it was his spirit, for she had never seen such grief in the eyes of a living man.

He had bruises and scrapes, but otherwise seemed unharmed. His lips opened, but no words came.

“Sit down, my lord,” said Bendeigid gently, leading him to a bench that had somehow escaped destruction. “You see, you are not the only one to survive …” His bleak gaze met the women’s stares. “And it is a wonder he did,” he said. “He would have thrown himself on the Roman swords. I hauled him away from the fighting—we spent most of last night in the water. He was cursing me, but I made him live. We will need him to lead us when we fight again …”

“No …” Ardanos whispered. “Never again. We cannot fight Rome.”

“When you are recovered, sir, you’ll feel differently,” Bendeigid replied, but Ardanos continued to shake his head.

“The soldiers are all gone?” asked Lhiannon. “I saw them forming up and marching away—”

Bendeigid nodded. “Just past dawn another boat crossed the strait with a courier clinging to the rail. He went haring up the road as soon as it touched sand, and soon after we heard the trumpets. They are gone, though the Goddess knows why.”

“Something has happened …” said Belina in a still voice. “Our magic worked. Only not … in time …”

“In time for us to save something!” said Lhiannon as briskly as she could. “They would have found the rest of us by the end of the day.”

“Where
are
the others?” Bendeigid’s face grew grim as he saw the row of bodies. “Where is the High Priestess? The Roman scum took no prisoners with them—they cannot all have died …”

hey found Coventa behind a screen of willow branches at a bend in the stream where the girls had made a shrine to Brigantia. She was naked, curled against the altar, shivering. At the sight of the blood on those white limbs Lhiannon put out a hand to stop Bendeigid.

“Go back and find something to cover her—”

Softly she knelt at Coventa’s side.

“It is all right, my dear one, you are safe—we are here …”

Coventa’s eyes opened, and somehow she managed a smile. Belina held the water flask to her lips. She drank eagerly, then lay back with a sigh.

“Why did they do it?” she whispered. “I never wanted a lover, but I saw how eagerly women went to the Beltane fires … I thought that when men and women came together there was joy. This was like being attacked by
animals!”

“Coventa, that’s what they were—”

“When they hurt my body, I willed myself not to feel—but I couldn’t close my mind to their rage and their fear. And all the time they were shouting—animals don’t curse, Lhiannon!” she exclaimed. “It is not true, what they say about the ability to see visions depending on virginity …” she went on. “Since then I cannot stop seeing images, but they are all evil—blood and a burning city, bodies everywhere …”

Lhiannon winced. Was this why they said the Oracle must be virgin, not because of the intimacy of the body, but because for an adept, intercourse must also bring intimacy of the mind?