Iceni

Chapter 9-2

Over the next lunar cycle, Boudicca increasingly left Lovernios watching the various stages of the destruction of the Temple to the Claudius god and went in search of inanimate objects upon which she might vent her rage. She felt, perhaps unreasonably, angry and grumpy, when really she thought she should be pleased everything had gone so well, but she attributed her emotions to her still late menses and dismissed the nagging tension. However, the idea of revenge upon Catus as a real possibility brought her a satisfied gurgle of pleasure which entertained her for days.

Then, on one day near to the full moon, when she was contemplating the things she might do to him, she took a large stick to a wall of one of the few remaining timber-framed houses and really started to work her temper off. The wattle and daub had been plastered with an attractive lozenge pattern. Neat and ordered and very precise patterning. Boudicca took especial delight in her wanton damage, hacking at the plaster as if it was Catus’ face.

The wall didn’t last long. The house had only been a loose shell and had never been constructed to withstand the worse the climate could chuck at it, let alone a thrashing from a tall and wrathful woman. Boudicca had built up quite a sweat. She felt a little better, but still inclined to destroy something else. All around her similar acts were being carried out, although less enthusiastically and perhaps more methodically, as her orders were adhered to. The hard slog of ensuring nothing was left for the Romani was considerably less fun than the first onslaught upon a civilian population.

Most of the labourers were not the sort of people one would have expected to have taken to such work. By their clothing and simple manner, Boudicca could see they were farmers, used to tending crops and breeding flocks to increase their wealth, nurturers and creators, procuring richness by working in harmony and understanding of the land. Boudicca would have thought such labour might have been against their very core of being, but she’d learned not to underestimate such folk. Here before her eyes was another example of the eternal resourcefulness of the little people who really ran this land, those who had to be able to turn their hands and minds to any task asked of them. Doing so was the only way in which they could ever survive.

She turned up her robes to hide her torc and watched them for a while, not wanting to betray her presence and enjoying the sheer pleasure of not having her status recognised immediately. Somehow she felt more real, another person rather than a mere title, despite the increased vulnerability. There were a lot of bodies around, she noticed. All Romani, dressed in their simple tunics or dresses, and lying where they’d fallen. No one had bothered to tidy them away, no one would. Here and there fingers had been chopped off to remove rings, or occasionally whole hands had been amputated. A few heads were missing, but not many. The spirit resided in the head and the taker would be imbued with the victim’s qualities. These Romani were cowards who’d run and not fought — no Celtoi wanted those characteristics. Slightly more disturbing were the pools of dried blood and gaping holes around the groins of some of the male bodies. Boudicca wondered what strange traditions the distant, outlying Celtoi tribes might perpetuate. Then she realised she’d have to accommodate such practices in the name of diplomacy, no matter how distasteful she might find them.

The other scavengers wouldn’t come until the Celtoi had left, the slinking creatures under Artio’s care would not venture too near the horde — they had been enemies of mankind for too long. The Celtoi would have to move on soon, though. The bodies had hardened more than a quarter ago and were now rotten and stinking. Despite the earliness of the year, there were flies and beetles and other small carrion, lacking the sense to comprehend mankind as enemy and desperate enough just to consider him as competitor.

Boudicca moved on, she’d come to the outskirts of the town and had passed through the west gate to the road which ran south-west for a short distance. A little way ahead, Boudicca could see stone markers and she made her way towards them, curious about what this place might have meant for the Romani. Dotted on either side of the road were blunt stone pillars, rising out of the earth like uneven teeth. Boudicca could see the stones were carved in beautiful detail and she bent to examine them more closely. This was an uneasy quiet place, the air cut only with the call of crows. Feeling within, Boudicca sensed death’s presence and she knew this ground to be a place for the dead, the atmosphere imbued with grief and sorrow where so many people had come to mourn. These pillars, then, were the Romani equivalent to the Celtoi stick markers they placed over their own cremation pits.

Such information aided Boudicca’s understanding of the images she saw encoded for eternity in the stone. The first picture she recognised as depicting a centurion. She noted his military equipment, which had been exquisitely detailed in stone, and compared it to the soldier whose head she’d taken earlier. This man was grim-faced, his left hand resting upon the pommel of his sword which swung elegantly by his side, whilst in his right hand he carried his vituus, or vine stick, the symbol of his office. There was something arrogant in the way this centurion was shown swaggering around with his vituus, obviously considering himself so very much better than everyone and everything else, even in death. Boudicca was intimately acquainted with such attitudes and her blood boiled at the sight. Suddenly, as if in a fit, she kicked the tombstone, felling it in one fluid attack, rendering it prone before her, split in twain.

Her anger had been aroused again. She cast about for the next picture she might be able to decipher. Those without images were meaningless; she just couldn’t understand the patterns of straight lines which told their own story if one only knew their language. She wondered if Lovernios might be able to read them; after all, the Druids had their own Ogham script. Did these marks serve a similar purpose?

The next picture she found froze her in her tracks. This was of a mounted legionary. She peered at the detail so she might be able to learn about him and feed her temper. Around the top of the tombstone were snakes and strange, fanciful animals, some of which fitted the descriptions she’d heard rumoured of the outlandish creatures brought to be slaughtered in the Romani’s amphitheatres. The rest resided only in the memories of her deepest nightmares. The snake though, she knew, was an image of death, although the Celtoi would portray the slithery animals as swallowing their own tails and thus symbolise the everlasting cycle of rebirth — a more positive message for soothing the grieving than these creatures being squeezed by the more fearful monsters. This was clearly a Romani officer, but what sort she could not discern. He was mounted upon a fine horse, shown with good, strong bones, which was poised, static, as if waiting for the stonemason to finish his carving before it would move. What was so hurtful to Boudicca about this image, though, was the strange cowering figure under the hooves of the horse. Desperately holding up its long shield in abject humiliation, the Celtoi warrior being subjugated was portrayed as more animal than human. The Romani, meanwhile, held himself so confidently upon his steed, raising his shield in his left hand and carrying a bronze lance in the other which was fastened into a hole in the stone.

Such triumph over her people, shown so insensitively, disgusted Boudicca. She tore out the little lance and snapped it into many pieces before tossing it to the winds. Then she took Andraste’s knife — quite calmly, all things considered — and prised off the stone where it had been worked to produce the soldier’s face. She twisted the knifepoint in the eye sockets, loosening grains of stone. Bit by gradual bit the dust came away until whole chunks fell off. She used the edge of the sickle to saw at the stone and then the handle to smash at the horse’s nose. She was quite absorbed in her task and satisfied, when she stepped back to review what she’d done, with her handiwork. Her blade hadn’t blunted at all.

Most of her immediate rage now seemed to have worked its way through her, both by the heavy physical destruction of smashing a town house, down to this more detailed obliteration of a personal memorial. Every tomb here, she reminded herself, would need to be destroyed eventually. Every trace of Romani would have to be washed from these lands. Celtoi and Romani differed in every way, even to their funereal practices, she realised. Worlds apart. She contemplated the sheer waste of resources invested into these monuments; the complete extravagance arranged before her, paid for by Celtoi sweat. Then she recalled what the Celtoi had been reduced to. Simple cremation pits marked by fragile stick-markers which crumbled to dust within years. Reduced from what? Why, from the fine chariot burials the Bards still sang of, where the feasting and games in honour of the dead would last three days and three nights and no one or nothing would go without during the mourning of the recently departed. How she had wanted to send Prasutagus upon his journey to the Isle of Rebirth in such a manner. She had known for a long while which of his chariots she would choose for him and exactly which possessions he would need with him. Circumstances had conspired to prevent her from fulfilling such plans. She swore, in revenge, that no Romani in Britannia would ever be able to aspire to such abiding sepulchres again. The highest honour such corpses could hope for would be a scattering of earth cast over a mass grave.

Horsemen were coming in upon the road to the north. Boudicca had been aware for a while of the irregular stream of people trudging towards Camulodunum. Some brought wagons full of the possessions of perhaps whole settlements, some rode chariots, others led pack donkeys or staggered under the weight of their families’ burdens. Quite a few brought ferocious dogs with them, trained for the hunt with wicked jaws. Already Boudicca knew there had been fights between dogs, staged for the owners’ delight, and the victors set to feed upon Romani corpses. The Druids had had to impose strict rules about the tethering of such beasts whose growling worried the children. Lovernios had been concerned the dogs might develop a taste for human flesh if it was encouraged, but Boudicca had reassured him of their tight obedience and indispensability upon the field. And anyway, surely Romani flesh would differ in taste from Celtoi?

All these newcomers entered the remains of the town, unaware the strange woman skulking amongst the tombs had been their inspiration. Perhaps, thought Boudicca, it might be for the best if things remained that way. So she let them pass by at a distance and without acknowledgement, merely monitoring them in her peripheral vision.

These horsemen, though, were different; they attracted more attention from her. Celtoi didn’t normally ride their horses; they were used for pulling chariots, occasionally wagons, and for breeding. They were one of the many ways in which the Celtoi measured their wealth. Not only were they too valuable to be ridden, but they were also too small. The Romani’s horses, on the other hand, were tall and bred to be ridden, and these particular mounts were Romani. Those foot-travellers whom they passed on the road recognised the horses’ stock and instinctively hurried to the run offs to let the horses pass. Such habits, thought Boudicca, take longer than two victories to diminish.