Boudicca, page 9
From her forehead I moved to Arianell’s chest, where I painted Brigantia’s symbol, the head of a stag, in the center between her breasts, with massive antlers that covered each of her shoulders, the tips of which would decorate her pale neck.
As I painted the elaborate image, a great sense of peace came over me. Anointing my mother’s body was an intimate thing, a beautiful thing—a thing that I did with love and care and the bittersweet understanding that this was the last time I was going to touch her, care for her, be a daughter to her. I worked slowly, patiently. I was not the artist my mother had been, but I did have some skill in creating the symbols that were such an important part of our lives, and as they took form I felt as if Arianell was close by, watching with approval.
“She is, you know.” Rhan had returned to braiding my mother’s hair.
“Can you hear everyone’s thoughts now, or still just mine?”
“I remember telling you many times that I could not truly hear your thoughts; I could only guess them as I studied your face. But, yes, my skill has improved over the past years.”
“She is really here?” I asked the question with a voice that was soft with seeking.
“Your mother is close. I can feel her presence. As we get nearer to Beltane the veil between the Otherworld, Annwn, and our world, Arbred, becomes thinner and thinner—and Arianell is of the newly dead. She will remain close until her pyre is lit, and perhaps even after, be it the will of her goddess.”
“I want to make her proud.”
“If you do what is best for your people, you will make her proud.”
“But how do I know what is best for us? My husband thought he knew, and he gave us away to the Romans. He was older, wiser, and had led us for decades—yet still he chose poorly.”
“Prasutagus did not heed the signs sent to him by Andraste.”
I looked up from my work to see Derwyn standing just inside the open front of the preparation room. I met his gray gaze and spoke the truth.
“The hare was the first omen. Its death was meant to show Prasutagus what would happen if he made Rome co-regent with me.”
“Indeed.” Derwyn nodded slightly. “You see the proof of that before you.”
I turned my gaze back to the symbols I was drawing on my dead mother’s body but continued to speak to the high Druid.
“Andraste sent Prasutagus another sign. Just before he made the treaty with Rome, an eagle slew a raven and dropped it at his feet in this very field, almost exactly where the procurator tied me to the post and flogged me. Mere paces from where our girls were brutalized.”
“Prasutagus did not tell me of this second sign, but I observed the first one.”
“I remember. I was there that day. Could you not have warned him?”
“I interpreted the omen accurately!” The Druid’s voice filled the hut, raising the hairs on my forearms with its power. “It was Prasutagus who would not listen, who refused to see and only believed a truth he had already chosen!”
I lifted my head and met the Druid’s gaze again. It took all of my will not to flinch and allow my eyes to dart away. I am queen of the mighty Iceni, consecrated by the Druids, chosen by my people, blessed by our goddess. I will not be cowed by any mortal man. But Derwyn was not a normal mortal, and it was all I could do to meet his gaze. I could not form the words to defend a husband who had been so purposefully blind, no matter how much I had loved him.
The Druid sighed and the small structure returned to normal. Derwyn was, once again, familiar and kind. “You forget yourself in your grief or you would know that I have always spoken truth to the chiefs and queens of the great tribes.”
“Andraste showed it to me. My husband ignored the goddess’s signs.”
“So you did visit Annwn today,” Rhan said.
I glanced up at her. “I did. I was compelled there by Andraste and led by Brigantia’s stag.”
“The queen of the Iceni was named Victory by the goddess of war at her birth.” Derwyn nodded slowly. “I have known you were to be queen since that day. And now I know that you will also lead us against the Romans.”
“I will right the wrong my husband did,” I said.
“The goddess will send sign to show the people you are her choice to lead them into battle,” said Derwyn.
Silently, I returned to painting my mother’s body, but the weight of my husband’s torque hidden in the bag that rested against my hip reminded me that Andraste already had sent sign.
“It is late. The village has settled for the night,” Derwyn said. “The Druids and I will keep watch over the dead and finish the preparation of the pyre. Rest tonight, Boudicca. Tomorrow the warriors will arrive.”
I almost said that I wasn’t sure I could ever sleep again, but Rhan’s question interrupted my thoughts.
“Derwyn, has Gar returned from the fen yet?”
“I do not believe so,” Derwyn said. He cocked his head and studied Rhan. “What have you seen?”
“It is more a feeling than a vision, but he will return with news that could change everything.”
“What do you mean could change everything?” I asked my friend.
Rhan moved her shoulders restlessly. “That is all the goddess has allowed me—and the knowledge that the rest will be up to you.”
And suddenly I felt unimaginably weary, so much so that my hand trembled as I painted the last line on my mother.
Gently, Rhan took the brush from me. “I will finish the queen’s preparation. As Derwyn said, you must rest.”
“Rhan, there was a servant whose body lay beside Mother’s when you found her. I would ask that she be anointed by you as well.” I wiped a shaky hand across my brow.
“Ancient Dafina? I remember her well. She was ever at your mother’s side,” said Rhan.
I nodded. “She died at her side.”
“Then she shall be anointed as I would another queen mother, and she will be close beside Arianell on the pyre. Now, my friend, go. Rest. You must ready yourself for tomorrow,” insisted Rhan.
“But you need a dress for Mother and . . .” My mind was a muddle and my words faded.
Derwyn’s voice took up the thread of my weary thoughts. “I shall walk with you to the lodge. You may give me your mother’s robes. I will return them here.”
“Yes. Thank you.” I turned to Rhan. “She looks beautiful. Your preparation of my mother has been perfect.”
“Our preparation,” Rhan said, and bowed her head to me respectfully as Derwyn escorted me from the silent tent.
* * *
“How many are dead?” I asked the Druid as we walked through the quiet village.
“Seventy elders, three children, one mother, and twenty-five warriors in their prime. The healers say that three more mothers are likely to enter Annwn before dawn.”
“They will be good company for my mother and the others.” I tried to sound strong and sure, but my voice shook with grief and exhaustion. So many daughters and sons had been made motherless today.
“They will, indeed. There will be feasting and merriment in the Otherworld tomorrow.” Derwyn rested his hand lightly on my shoulder as we walked. “Do not despair, Queen Boudicca. They fought well and died protecting their queen and their people. Their welcome to Annwn is assured and eventually they will be reborn new again, with the pain of their violent departure from this lifetime left behind.”
“I know all of that. It is just so much loss . . . so soon after . . .” My words faltered and then trailed away as grief usurped my voice.
“Focus on the living. You have much left to do.” Derwyn stopped, and his pressure on my shoulder halted me as well. “I found this not far from the stake in the practice field. I thought that you should have it as I believe you will make good use of it.”
From inside his white robes Derwyn brought forth the procurator’s pugio. The blade gleamed in the dim light. I stared at it and for a moment was unable to move. And then I took it from the Druid and gripped it with enough strength to whiten my knuckles.
“I believe I will, too.” I opened the flap of my leather satchel and slid it within, where it rested next to the heavy golden torque.
Silently we continued our trek through the village. Soon we’d come to the doors of the lodge, which had been closed against the night. I was surprised to see Briallen, dressed in a fresh Queen’s Guard tunic, holding a spear and shield and standing at her post beside the doors.
“Briallen! You should be resting with the girls.”
“The bairns sleep. Adara said they will not stir until after dawn. I will stand here until the rest of your guard relieves me.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and then thought better of it and replied like a queen worthy of such loyalty. “I will sleep well knowing that you watch over us.”
Briallen’s one good eye shimmered with tears, but they did not fall. The warrior only bowed stiffly and then returned to her watchful stance.
“I’ll have my servant, Phaedra, bring Mother’s robes to you. Thank you—for all of this,” I said to Derwyn.
Derwyn inclined his head but said nothing. My body felt leaden and I had to move slowly through the lodge so as not to stumble. The main room was littered with pallets that held the most gravely wounded. I stopped and spoke to each person who was conscious, and touched the foreheads of those who were slipping toward Annwn. The Druids in their forest-colored cloaks were night birds, flitting silently from person to person.
In my bedchamber, Phaedra rose from her pallet instantly, rushing to me. “It is so late! I was afraid you would never rest. Let me undress you and comb out your hair. I brought cheese and bread and smoked meat for you. Have you eaten at all?”
“Go to Mother’s room—quietly, so that the girls do not wake. Gather the green plaid dress woven with the blue that matched her eyes and also the cloak of green with the stag stitched in gold on it. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“Take her favorite cuffs, the ones decorated with Brigantia’s flames, and the necklace with the largest emeralds set in gold. Give them to the lead Druid, who waits outside the lodge.”
“I will do as you command. Then I will return to help you.”
“Thank you, Phaedra.” On impulse, I hugged the girl who had served me for more than a decade, and Phaedra clung to me as she sobbed quietly. “Go now.” I gently unwrapped myself from the young woman’s embrace and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Arianell is waiting to be dressed.”
“Yes, my queen.” Phaedra bowed deeply to me before she hurried from the queen’s chamber.
Adara’s salve still numbed my back enough that I was able to unlace the dress without help and slip on a soft tunic to sleep in. I meant to eat and to wait for Phaedra to return to brush out my hair but instead sank onto my bed. Unable to keep my eyes open a moment longer, I finally was able to allow sleep to take me away.
Chapter X
It was a dream, but it was also a memory—so clear and real that to my sleeping mind it seemed I gazed into a mirror that reflected the past.
The scene my dream conjured was one from my youth. I was almost seventeen, near to the end of the time I fostered with the Trinovantes. Children of royal families often fostered with neighboring chiefs or queens as a way to solidify alliances and strengthen the ties of trust and friendship among tribes. A friendship between the daughters of Tribe Trinovantes and Tribe Brigantes, future tribal leaders, was an important relationship to forge, and Rhan and I happily did become close.
In the dream she and I were at our favorite spot in the woods outside Camulodunum, which was then a village still in Trinovantes territory and as yet not usurped by Rome. We had woven vines and twisted them into torques, which each of us wore proudly around our neck. I brandished a wooden sword and Rhan held a long branch she’d carved to look like a spear. We stood side by side on a high bank above a stream that had been dammed by a family of industrious beavers. As my dream began, we were speaking to the hawthorns that lined the stream as if they were an elder council.
I remembered the day clearly, though I hadn’t thought of it in over a decade. The dream was so vibrant that I could smell the fragrant hawthorn flowers that crowned the trees. Rhan and I were the eldest children of our fathers, though Rhan did have a brother, younger by two years. He would not automatically succeed her father; succession was always the choice of the gods and the tribe, and never as simple as blood or gender or birth order. Unlike Romans, we value our daughters equally to our sons and give little thought to birth order, which allows us to choose the best person to lead each tribe instead of being mired in the nonsense of patriarchy and birth order. So, Rhan and I were being raised to be queens, and our play was more practice than a child’s game.
My sleeping mind followed the events that lifted sharply from my memory. Rhan and I had finished addressing the “council” behind us, and we had turned to face the new set of boughed and flowered “elders” before us, across the clear pool the beavers had created. I had just raised my sword and declared that there would be more generous portions of pork haunches in everyone’s stew henceforth when something in the pool below caught Rhan’s attention.
“What is th—” Rhan began.
But her words were cut off as she leaned forward and stared down into the quiet crystal pool. Rhan’s body had gone rigid at the same time the birdsong in the trees silenced. I stared down into the water too, trying to see what had so captured my friend’s attention, but saw nothing except water, river rock, and fallen branches. I turned to ask Rhan what I was missing and felt a shock of understanding when I realized her face had lost all of its color and her dark eyes had rolled to show only their whites.
Then Rhan’s body seemed to turn boneless and she began to fall. Had I not moved quickly—and not been taller and physically stronger than my friend—Rhan would have toppled headfirst into the pool and drowned.
I carried her to the hawthorns and laid her on the carpet of moss under their fragrant boughs. I held her tightly, cradling my best friend—the friend who had made my five-year separation from my beloved family bearable—and murmured softly to her, beseeching her to come back to me.
Soon, Rhan’s eyelids fluttered, and though her face was still white as milk, her eyes had returned to normal.
“What is it? What happened? What did you see, Rhan?”
Rhan stared up at me, and when she spoke her voice sounded decades older than sixteen short years.
“I saw you. You were queen. You wore a golden torque.”
I smiled and hugged her tightly, feeling great relief that Rhan seemed herself again. I was pleased by her vision. When I was seventeen, becoming a queen was a fantasy that brought with it daydreams of rich clothes and loyal attendants, and the childish belief that a queen answered only to herself.
“Well, of course I will be a queen. You will be, too. We’ll commission our torques from the finest jewelers. I want mine to be delicate and beautiful and decorated with—”
Rhan touched my cheek with fingers that were bloodless and cold. “No.”
“But do not tell me what you saw; not now. You can tell me when I become queen so I choose the right decoration for my torque.”
In my dream memory I watched my seventeen-year-old self chatter as Rhan and I collected our things and returned to the Trinovantes village. But this time I focused on Rhan and noticed now what I hadn’t had the wisdom to see then.
My friend had remained somber and pale. Rhan only spoke enough to keep the young version of me from asking her more questions about the vision. Then, I had believed Rhan had been shaken because the vision was proof that she must leave to train with the Druids, which meant that she would never be queen of the Trinovantes. Not long after that day, I returned to the Iceni and Rhan began the journey to the Druid stronghold on the isle of Ynys Môn. Until the dream, I had forgotten about Rhan’s first true vision.
Rhan was so quiet, so pale, because she had seen the truth. She spoke literally. She saw me wearing a golden torque. But which torque? And what else did she see that day?
“Boudicca, you must wake.”
Like a memory swimming up from the past to surface in the present, Rhan’s voice intruded on my dream. I opened my eyes to see my friend, no longer a girl, leaning over my bed and shaking my shoulder.
“What? What is it?” I sat up abruptly and then winced at the pain in my back.
Phaedra was suddenly awake as well. “Oh! I did not know the Druid had entered! I am so sorry, I was—”
“Ssh, Phaedra. All is well. This is my friend Rhan the seer. She has long had the ability to move unseen and unheard.” I ignored the pain and stiffness in my back and swung my legs off the side of the bed as I smoothed the hair from my face. “It is dawn?”
Rhan nodded. “Just so. The warriors have returned, and so has Gar.”
“Gar? He is just now returning from the fen?”
“He is, and he did not come alone. He brings with him a captive, the reason the Romans found their way through the fog and the sinking sand.”
I felt a flush of anger, and as it receded, it left clarity and calm in its wake. I knew exactly what I must do. “I will dress quickly. Tell Derwyn to assemble the warriors and the tribe at the practice grounds around the pyre. Have Gar bring the intruder to me there.”
“As you ask, so will I do.” As silently as she had arrived, Rhan slipped from the chamber.
“I will get you fresh food and ale. Then I can—”
“There is no time,” I interrupted. “Help me dress. There is still bread and cheese from last night here. I shall eat while you comb out my hair.” Phaedra helped me into the beautiful gown that had been my mother’s last gift.
“Should I triple-plait your hair in the style your mother preferred?”
“No,” I said around bites of unleavened bread and thick goat cheese. “Brush it out and leave it unbound—as all Iceni should be.”
