Song for a Dark Queen (12 page)

They made the wagon-park where the elephant lines had been, that other time. And when the dusk came down their great humped outlines against the sky brought past things very near. And dead men, too; dead men, too.

The Queen did not sleep with the Princesses and her
women in the Royal Wagon; but as she had slept every night since the setting out, between the wheels of her chariot, her warriors sleeping on their spears around her, and she lying with her cheek on her father’s sword.

There was a restlessness in the air; comings and goings between the watchfires, ponies stamping and fidgeting as though they smelled tomorrow’s wind. Faint sounds from the city, awake and restless also; waiting as we were waiting. I could not sleep. I went and walked in a little wood in the loop of the river below the camp. A small wood, but a dark one, of ancient trees, oak and yew. A little earlier in the year I might have thought to hear the nightingale as I passed in among the first of the trees. But the further in I went the more it seemed to me that no bird would ever sing in that wood. Silence held it; silence that hung like mist among the trees, allowing not even a rustle among the undergrowth, and I found myself moving with care not to break it. The Grove of the Mother, the Trinovantes call it, a sacred wood. And suddenly it came to me that the whole wood was waiting; waiting for something that was not mine to see; and also that I was not alone in it. And I would have turned back, but in the same moment, I came upon the edge of a small clearing, where the moonlight plashed through the branches on to a circle of open turf; soft short turf for a dancing floor, among the crowding trees.

And then I knew why I had felt that I was not alone. For in the centre of the clearing, the red of her cloak quenched almost to black by the moonlight, stood Boudicca, who I had thought asleep between the wheels of her chariot. Tree-tall and straight and still, her arms stretched wide to the moon in an agony, an ecstasy of prayer.

I froze among the trees, like an animal when it scents danger. And she dropped the cloak from her shoulders. And under it she was naked. And naked, she began to dance, treading a circle of strange small steps round and round; and as she danced, her head tipped far back, she drew her hands again and again down her breasts; gently, it seemed, almost as though she caressed herself; but behind each stroking movement, the track of her fingernails showed dark on her white skin, like the claw marks of a cat. A low crooning came from her; and I knew that the web she wove was one of those that are not for a man’s watching. And I covered my eyes and crouched back into the deepest shadow, and stole away, having more care than ever, not to break the silence.

When the horns sounded at first light to rouse the camp, the Queen rose from where she seemed to have slept all night between the wheels of her chariot with her bodyguard about her. And the wild beast marks were hidden beneath the bright checkered stuff of her gown; and almost, I wondered if I had been dreaming.

Men ate the morning barley cake while they harnessed up the chariot teams that had been picketed close all night. And the sun had not yet cleared the rim of the world to touch the proud roofs of Camulodunum, when the war-horns began snarling for the attack.

We were half round the city, covering the two sides that were not held by the river; and certain war-bands thrust forward between the city and the riverbanks to complete the circle and swarm up from the shipping quays. But we thrust in our main attack along the broad ridge that made level going from the old Dun. The Princesses had been left with the other women and the
children and the Priest Kind among the wagons. But the Queen’s chariot led the foremost column. Her war-captains had sought to make her wait in safety, but she said, ‘The Mother will let no harm come to me until it is time. I am the spear in her hand; I am the people’s freedom. How shall the warriors follow me if I do not lead?’ And so again we followed the red flame-lick of her cloak. Again I rode close behind her chariot, among the horse warriors of her bodyguard; and among us also, behind the standard-bearer, rode one carrying aloft on its spear-shaft the head of the old man we had killed yesterday. Morning sun under a low sky caught the sour-white horse-skull and streaming saffron tassels of the standards; and the ground shivered under our hooves and wheels, and the dust-cloud rose, and the clods flew back from our horses’ hooves.

And so we crashed in through the sunken wreck of old earthworks, and between the first neat white houses of the city fringes, giving tongue like the Wild Hunt, to crash into the first barricades, the first lines of those gathered to defend the place against us.

But save for the Queen and her following column, we did not carry the chariot charge beyond the city boundaries, for the narrow gullies made by the streets would not serve for chariot warfare. So after the first shock, the first crumbling of the outer barricades, while the horsemen thrust on, the charioteers reined back according to custom, and the chariot warriors leapt down and rushed ahead on foot.

And then we found that the men of Camulodunum, who were fools and tyrants, were not also cowards. They met us, old men and boys in greasy leather tunics, with short Roman swords in their hands, and fought us for every street corner, every garden wall and shop
doorway, every spear’s-length of the way. We were glad, for it is not good to fight cowards; it sets no fire to the blood.

There was fire enough in our blood, that day!

I took little part in the fighting. A harper is not a warrior. But no man should go into battle leaving it to other men who have work of their own to do, to protect him. I had my old sword, and I used it when need arose, and found that my hand had not altogether lost its cunning.

All day we fought them slowly back, while they rushed us down every side-street and made of every building a fortress; back and back from one barricade of piled grain-sacks and upturned carts to the next, until our feet slipped in the red gutters, and the dead lay piled at every corner. Their dead and ours tumbled together, but they had no more living to take the place of those that fell. . . .

Even so, in narrow ways four men may hold back many, and the day was close to noon before we cleared the outer quarters of the city and thrust on towards the fine tall buildings and open spaces at the heart. And always, in the forefront of the fighting, we followed the red flame-lick of the Queen’s warrior cloak and her bright hair.

By sunset, the city was ours. A wild, fiery sunset half lost behind drifting smoke, for in half a score of places, Camulodunum was burning – and most of the defenders yet alive had fallen back on the great temple to the Divine Claudius and made their stronghold there.

All next day, while we flung in attack after attack, they held the temple against us. It was good to have an enemy worth the killing. It was dusk when they made
their last stand. But the dusk was swallowed up in the furnace-glare of burning Camulodunum; and the steps were slippery with blood and filth, and the white columns splashed with it. They stood shoulder braced against shoulder, and I saw the light of the flames in their eyes; and they did not give back any further, for there was no further to go, but died where they stood; the old men and the boys in their worn leather tunics and battered armour. I have held a warmer heart for the Roman kind since that night than ever I held before.

The War Host was drunk with bloodshed as well as wine from the wine-shops that they had broken into, and with vengeance and with victory. There were women and children packed close in the inner part of the temple; some still living, though many of the women had killed their children and then let out their own lives before the warriors broke in. The still living children they hacked down and were done with quickly. But the Queen had ordered that all captive women were to be brought to her. So they gathered up the women – the screaming, terrified, foolish women – who had not the sense or the courage to kill themselves while there was yet time, and brought them to the Queen, where she stood in her chariot behind her tired team, in the open space that the Romans call the Forum, clear of the rags of fire dropping from the burning city.

Some of them were young and fair. I saw them. They fell on their knees, crying out to her for mercy, because she was a woman like themselves. She looked down at them. And as the light of the Council Fires had never reached the darkness within her eyes, nor did the flames of burning Camulodunum. And she bade the men who held the captives take them to the Grove of
the Mother, outside the town; and she sent back word for the women who waited with the wagon train to come to her there. And word also for three chiefs from every tribe of the War Host; which was a strange thing indeed. . . .

I will not tell, I will not remember, how they died, those women. But after all was over, I saw their bodies hanging there, like dreadful white fruit hanging from the branches of the dark and ancient trees, and I knew what Boudicca had promised to the Great Mother when I saw her dancing there, two nights ago. And I knew why the wood had grown full of fear.

Greetings, my Mother. I have no means of knowing how, or when – or if – I shall be able to send this off to you. The whole country is seething like yeast beside the fire. And at least in the part of the Province that we have covered in the past few days, the official Government despatch riders have either been killed or run for it. The whole road from Deva has made cheerless riding; mostly through ‘sub hostile’ territory, which is to say that the tribes would have come for us if they could, but most of their best warriors are out with the Iceni. We have had a few arrows out of the woods; one horse killed and a couple of troopers wounded. But for the most part we seemed to be riding through an empty desolation; the posting stations burned out, and the odd corpse in the ditch along the way. They have cut the road more than a day’s march from Londinium; simply uprooted it and left raw ground and felled trees across where it used to be. So not caring to ride straight into an ambush, we cast round to the south, forded the Thamesis and finally came up on the city from the south side. The gods alone know if the legions will get through behind us. Anyhow, Paulinus has sent in messengers and we enter Londinium tomorrow.

Before we had to leave the road, we got word from Lindum that Petilius Cerialis was heading south with a vexhilation of the Ninth Legion, two thousand strong, in an attempt to save Camulodunum, which lies
directly in the path the rebels are taking. But there seems little chance of his getting there in time to head them off. Probably the town has already fallen. Now, we hear nothing. Paulinus says that is always the way of it when you get close in to the heart of things – like being in the heart of a dust-storm. Everything shuts down.

FROM THE FIRST,
on the word of Gretorix Hard-Council and his kind, it had been determined that when we had dealt with Camulodunum across our path, we should thrust straight on for Londinium and the supply base there; the only place where we could come by all the weapons and war-gear that we needed, without having to waste time in storming Roman forts to get them. That made good sense to the head; also Londinium was the place of officials and money-lenders and fat merchants, and the tribesmen who had become lap-dogs of Rome. And that made good sense of another kind, to the heart. But before we could head for Londinium, there must be a day or more for seeing to our wounded and burying our dead. And while that was still in the doing, and while parts of Camulodunum still burned, and the warriors were still questing like hounds through the smoking ruins after food and gold and gear, anything that had escaped the fire and yet remained, it was found that the three war-bands of the Brigantes and a scattering of men from the Coritani and Cornovi, having gathered all that they could carry, had taken their horses and melted away in the night.

When the word was brought to Boudicca the Queen, she called her chiefs and war-captains together, and said to them, ‘It has been told to me that certain men of the War Host have stolen away without leave taking. Therefore I would have you tell me the meaning of this. Speak first, Tigernann of the Brigantes, since most of them are of your following.’

And Tigernann of the Brigantes, who was a prince in his own right, stood swinging to and fro on the balls of his feet with his thumbs stuck in his belt, and said, ‘It is the custom of the war-trail. The raid is finished and the spoils are gathered and the warriors are away home.’

‘You also? And the rest of your following?’ said the Queen.

‘Not yet. Londinium should be worth the sacking. But we are no vassals of yours, Lady, when we choose to go, we shall go.’

‘That was not how it was agreed round the Council Fire,’ said the Queen. ‘You speak to me the customs of the cattle raid; but this is no cattle raid. Are you grown witless that you do not understand? If we scatter and go streaming home with a few gold cups before we have driven the Red Crests into the sea, none of us will ever be free of them! Nor will the Mother forgive me if we turn back from the full vengeance that she demands!’

‘As to the vengeance, that is for you to take, go you and take it,’ said Tigernann. ‘As to the freedom – we have freedom enough beyond the frontier, while we have our hills and our high moors and our peat bogs among which the Red Crests do not know their way. We will join with you in tearing Londinium to rags, if it pleases us, or we will go home now, if that pleases us better.’ He grinned. ‘Or it may even be that we will go and offer our spears to the Red Crests, for I am thinking that they will be grateful for every spear-arm that they can get just now.’

‘Grateful enough to forget the sacking of a Roman city?’ said Boudicca, and her lips lifted back from her teeth. ‘Or do you think they will not know whose standard you have followed in these past days? Fools!
From this trail, there can be no turning back!’