The Eagle and the Raven (100 page)

Petilius Cerealis listened to his exhausted speculator, and even before he had heard all his suspicions confirmed, one by one, he was issuing the order to stand to arms. The Ninth had had an easy time of it over the last few years. The only action they had seen had been against Venutius, and when he had melted away into the west his wife had settled so firmly over her tribesmen that the Ninth had done nothing more in the north than patrol endlessly. Cerealis, like all the Romans in Albion that year, had had eyes for nothing but the governor’s campaign, and the tiny, almost unnoticed hints of trouble had blown toward him like leaves in an autumn gale, to pile up unheeded in the shadows of his mind. Complacency and blindness, he accused himself angrily. Now we all pay. He quickly dictated a dispatch to Paulinus; then he left his office and strode out under a high, windy spring sky. He did not know the strength of the rebels but he knew the direction of their thrust, the defencelessness of the city, and indeed the whole of the lowlands, and the impossibility of any engagement for the Ninth before Colchester was wiped from the face of the earth. Boudicca, he thought, standing for a moment to watch the gay glitter of the sun on the aquila in the center of the square. Who would have imagined it? If she makes her plans carefully the whole island could be in her hands before the autumn. I wonder if she knows it? He shrugged and moved on. Of course she did not know it. She was a barbarian, and as such could not think beyond a few severed heads and a wain piled with booty. In a week or two the Ninth would be back patrolling for Aricia, and the rebels would have scattered. He smiled at his moment of irrationality and went to meet his second.

“There it is!” Domnall called to her, and she reined in her chariot and stood looking down the valley while her horses tossed their heads, and all around her, in under the trees, her chiefs straggled to a halt. The country they had passed through with its small, neat fields, its fat herds cropping in lush meadows, had brought to her no memories of the journey she had made with her father nearly thirty years before, but she remembered only too well the low, snaking wall encircling the city, the brawling noisy sprawl of traders’ and laborers’ huts leaning drunkenly over it, the slow, gentle rising to treed streets, spacious houses, and the orderly wood-and-stone grace of the little forum. She shifted her gaze, her eyes narrowed against the sun, and thought she caught the dazzle of light glancing off the tall pillars of Claudius’s white temple. Prasutugas, my husband, she thought, allowing the memory to tug her with sadness. How pleased you were to stand with me in its cool depths and watch the incense rise. How flattered to receive an audience with Plautius and dine on white linen with Aricia and the other ricons who surrendered. Now I am about to destroy everything you worked so hard to achieve. She held out a hand to Aillil and he gave her the new bronze helm cast with the soaring wings of the Queen of Victory on either side, and she set it firmly on her head. Around her waist went her own iron-studded belt, and from it hung a great sword that had been her father’s, and his before him. Turning to Domnall, she smiled briefly.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes. The city is surrounded, although the last of the people, and the wains and children, are still some miles back.”

“Did the detachment march straight through the gates or is it quartering outside?”

“It went in, or so the scouts say. I do not think the Romans are aware how great a force has been mustered against them.”

She laughed once, scornfully. “It would make no difference even if they did know. There is no army south of Lindum as large as ours, and luck is with us.” She gathered up the reins. “No prisoners, Domnall. No mercy for any. Lovernius, where are the girls?” He glanced at her, his heavy horned helm glinting in the sun. “They rest far back, by the river. They will be quite safe.”

“Then let us ride. Sound the carnyx, Aillil. Vengeance is mine today.”

The shrill, haunting battle call floated far on the fresh morning, and out of the shade of the thick forest ten thousand chariots rolled, the sun sparking on their slender spokes, harness clinking as the little horses cantered over the green flat. Behind them the freemen came running, pouring from the dimness into the full glare of light like multicolored insects, and Colchester turned from its morning optimism to see a lake of death lapping at is feet. Shouts rang out, and the charioteers could see the crowded streets empty suddenly. Helmets bristled above the low wall.

Boudicca drew her sword and waved it above her head. “The House Icenia forever!” she yelled. “Andrasta, Andrasta!” and she thundered for the gate, red hair streaming on the wind, the rumble of chariot wheels and the cries and curses of the chieftains tingling in her ears. The gate loomed. She reined sharply and leaped down, and while the women of the town still screamed and ran hither and thither, shepherding their terrified, bewildered children, the rebel host flowed over the wall, the first onslaught carried by the sheer press of the thousands behind, and the new-forged swords of Icenia began their work.

It was a massacre. Only the two hundred soldiers sent by Decianus were active, serving legionaries. The men of the town were civilians or retired legionaries who lived in Colchester while their Trinovantian and Catuvellauni slaves farmed their allotted land. Most were unarmed, all were unprepared, and they fled from the carnage of the lowest circles to the stone-ringed safety of the forum. The civilians milled about in terror, but the veterans soon recovered and began to ransack the administration buildings and the homes of the first circle for weapons. Many were found, and the ex-legionaries pushed through the wild-eyed, screaming mob and ran to give battle.

For those who sought to jump the wall and run, there was no escape. The tribesmen were still coming, line after line, and all the land from town to forest was thick with men who had not yet given battle. The outer rim was already on fire as freemen looted, flung their booty over the wall to their friends, and set more huts ablaze, moving up the slope and killing anyone in their path. The detachment hurriedly retreated, met the now-armed veterans coming to join them, and managed to block off many streets so that for some hours the chiefs could not get through and were content to range about, tearing women and children from their hiding places and spearing them, broaching the wine shipments that were kept in the warehouses by the gate, and running with flaming brands in their hands to hurl at any thatch that had not caught. The lower town slowly filled with more freemen and fresh swords, and at the last, when nothing lived below the prosperous houses of the rich, they turned to battle once more. The soldiers fought grimly, back to back, but a spirit of insanity had entered the once peaceful Iceni and their cowed allies. It became an inferno of hate that burned up all pity and all mercy, and unleashed an orgy of bloodlust. The years of degradation and misery were being washed away in one howling, exultant moment of long-due retribution, and the soldiers looked into the red eyes of animals as they were slowly beaten back, closer to the packed, crazed citizens in the square.

Noon passed in a stinking heat of fear. Bodies choked the streets, the open gutters began to trickle red streams, and the gasping, staggering legionaries at last broke and ran, diving into the mass of unprotected civilians to be lost for a while. Then the tribesmen paused, and the terrified people on the fringes of the forum could see them standing in every street, swords wet, mouths grinning, agape. “Mercy!” someone screamed in a voice high and thin with fear. “Mercy. Ah, mercy!” And at that the attackers surged to new life. They rushed into the square, screaming, howling, cursing, their swords slashing, and the people went down before them like a crop before hail.

Boudicca lurched toward the administrative building, the din of slaughter battering her hearing. She kicked open the first door and reeled inside, but it was empty. She leaned against the wall for a moment, panting, then walked down the corridor and flung open the second door. A woman crouched in the farthest corner, sobbing, and as the vision of horror staggered toward her and raised a sword she sprang up, crying, “No! No! Boudicca, I am your friend! Look at me! Do not slay me, oh please let me live!” Boudicca slowly lowered her sword. It was Priscilla, pressed against the wall, her graying hair loose and disheveled, her stola filthy with blood and mire, and her face gray with fear and her eyes wide. For a long second they gazed at one another, not moving, then Boudicca closed her eyes and swallowed. Her throat was parched, and her breath was coming in quick, painful spurts.

She turned to the door. “Someone else can kill you,” she croaked, and she staggered out to where the bodies lay heaped, covering the square, and she walked ankle deep in a river of blood.

By the time a red evening light diffused through the town there was not one citizen left alive, and the drunken, satiated chiefs had to climb over bodies that were heaped in every street. The sunset passed unnoticed, for the conflagration burning in the lower circles roared into the darkening sky and obscured its last, placid light. But in the temple the men of the detachment from Londinium had gathered in a tiny, hopeless gesture of resistance, and much to the chiefs’ surprise they could not break the lines of stubborn men strung behind the smooth columns that fronted the steps. Boudicca and her men stood at the foot, looking up to where night’s shadows were swiftly multiplying. “We cannot leave them to spread and bring the legions down on us before we are ready,” Lovernius said, and Boudicca nodded wearily, her mind and body almost too dumb to think.

“I know,” she managed. “Domnall, have the chiefs tried to force a way through the rear of the building?”

“The doors have been barricaded as well as locked, but some of the freemen are trying.”

“Good.” She shook a trembling fist at its pristine indifference. “Citadel of eternal domination,” she said, her voice half-whisper, half-raven’s caw. “I will not leave until I have defeated you!” Turning to the chiefs she ordered them to determine if any sober freemen could be found, and to organize forays against the soldiers throughout the night. Then she laboriously picked her way through the now dark, corpse-riddled streets and the feeding fire to the gate, and the sweet, tree-filled silence beyond.

Brigid was asleep, curled up in blankets beside the little cooking fire, her face relaxed and full of dead innocence as her mother bent wearily over her. Ethelind sat wreathed in her voluminous cloak, leaning against the bole of a tree and staring into the tangled depths of the forest. Hulda and the young chief nodded, their heads full of sleep, and without a word, Boudicca cast herself down in the clean, dry grass a little distance from the fire and closed her eyes. Such cool, sweet-smelling grass, she thought. Such stupendous quiet, such unknowing peace. Andrasta, did you see? Did you clap your black wings together and dip your cruel beak deep into the entrails of my revenge? “More blood,” Subidasto grumbled in her. “You are only half-clad. You look wanton and unkempt without your honor. More blood, Boudicca, oh much, much more!”

“Leave me alone!” she hissed sharply at him. “Stay dead, old man, and trouble me no more!” But she tumbled into a deep, soaking sleep and dreamed that he squatted over her, his rugged face impatient, his gnarled, hot fingers tracing the crooked paths of the lash upon her naked back.

In the morning she ate a little stale bread, drank deeply from the stream, and left the clearing before her daughters were awake. The sun was just rising, tipping the trees in pink as she got down from her chariot and entered the town. The stench of decay smote her immediately, a fetid, thick miasma that reminded her of the cattle slaughtering of Samain, and she retched as she made her way to the obscene unmoving gathering in the square. The lake of blood had run down the gutters to the wall, there to pool out and find channels through the grass beyond, but the stone beneath her feet was sticky as she trudged to Domnall and the others. He greeted her in a parched whisper.

“They are holding. How, I do not know. I must rest now, Lady, but half the freemen have slept and are ready to fight again.”

She waved him toward the gate and drew her sword, struggling against the sick fumes of death and burnt houses. “Today we must kill them and be gone,” she said. “Aillil, the carnyx.” The strident, high bronze voice spoke, another wave of tribesmen assaulted the temple, and the soldiers formed their ragged ranks within its shelter and parried with no sound, and no hope.

Morning deepened into a cloudy afternoon, and the afternoon into windy evening, and at last the chiefs stood in the square and admitted defeat. Most of the forces had retired long ago to the forest, there to load the wains with booty and grain taken from the storehouses, but five hundred of them now squatted or stood loosely amid the already swelling corpses, looking up at the baffling imperiousness of the unsullied pillars. Boudicca cursed hoarsely, wiped her face on her sleeve, and sheathed her sword.

“There is no choice now,” she said. “We must burn them out. I do not want to do it, they have fought well, but they cannot be left alive. Domnall, bring wood. There are plenty of houses left. Aillil, make more fire. The stone will not catch but the interior is full of things that will burn.” They ran to do her bidding and soon a fire blazed up at the foot of the steps. Within the shadows there was a small flurry of movement as the soldiers knew that now they must begin to count the moments left to them. But Boudicca cared only to finish and be gone. At her word the chiefs began to cast flaming brands between the pillars, a shower, a storm of flame and shooting sparks in the cool dim air, and the men trapped inside ran back. The fire continued to rain into the darkness, then all at once a long tongue of yellow flame billowed out, followed by another, and a black smoke began to roll outward. For a few more minutes the people in the square stood silent, watching the fire take hold. Then the entombed soldiers began to scream and Boudicca turned abruptly toward the gate. “Fire the rest,” she ordered and she forced herself to pace away slowly, the death cries of the Romans loud in her ears.