Iceni

Chapter 4-3

Adjusting a little more to the available light, she could just make out, as various shades of grey, several side caverns inside the tomb, separated off by low walls of stones, piled flat, each upon the other. Inside each cavern was impenetrable black. She edged a step forward, further back, away from the only available light, towards the thick breathing, but so quiet as to ensure the sleeper wouldn’t be woken. She slipped her other foot forward, convincing herself she was meant to separate from the things she clung to. Right now, the only thing offering any comfort was the light from the entrance, so she kept on moving, consciously shunning her security and the man who awaited her outside. She had to challenge her structures, the things she relied upon, face all her fears.

Nothing was happening. All that was going on was that she was terrifying herself out of her wits and walking into a bear’s den to receive a mauling. And that only if she was very lucky and was going to get off lightly. Perhaps the bear had eaten recently. Perhaps it just sounded like a bear snoring. Perhaps it was really the sleeping of the royal ancestor who slept here. No. That was worse. Don’t think thoughts like that. This was a place of death. There would be many, many remains here of, perhaps, hundreds of people. People of her bloodline. Spirits who knew her. Who watched her. It smelt of death here, musty and damp. It was cold. Was it getting colder? Had the dead awakened?

Boudicca backed herself against a wall and slid down until she was sitting on the wet earthen floor. She reminded herself that the jagged edges biting into her buttocks were jutting flints and very unlikely to be bones. She drew her knees up to her chest and sat, rigid with panic, glaring into the ebony which was all she could see, defying the murkiness to send forth its test. Waiting was worse. Keeping alert, looking all around, convinced of movement where there was none. Her eyes were tiring, darting all around at the imaginary threats she was certain were waiting for her just to drop her guard for a moment. Yes, a split instant would be all they would need for her to lower her vigilance and then she would be at their mercy. So, just as long as she kept up her watching, watching, they would not attack and she would be safe. Eventually Lovernios would come for her and she would be safely outside again and they could laugh about the phantoms she was sure she had seen.

Then, in the stillness, she remembered her husband and his last illness. She remembered the love they had shared over the years, their joys, their tears, their arguments. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, his kindness, his touch. How those glinting eyes had turned to pain, then to agony as the illness had eaten into him bit by tiny bit, eroding him from inside, gnawing at his body and his spirit and taking him from her a little more each day. His brave smile as his failing body heaped indignities upon him, and a little squeeze of her hand to tell her he still loved her and appreciated her presence.

Was it any wonder, then, that other more worldly concerns had been pushed aside to care for themselves? That her most fierce priority had been the welfare of Prasutagus? That occasionally she had snapped at others or made rash, unconsidered decisions? No, she wasn’t about to criticise or punish herself for some of the unfitting ways she’d behaved when she was under so much pressure. No. People could understand or judge her forever; she had done what was best for her husband and had survived herself.

Death had taken hold very quickly when it had finally come. Quick and sudden, although the preceding days had seemed drawn out and stretched, she remembered. In hindsight it had all been over so fast. He had pushed away the healers, wanting release, not realising they sought to soothe, not to extend, his sentence. She had comforted him in those moments, like with a frightened child, promising that treatments wouldn’t hurt and poultices wouldn’t sting. Some had. Some had seared and racked his thin, weakened body and she’d caught the accusation of betrayal in his eyes, deducing he could no longer trust even her in a world where everything seemed set to destroy him.

Back then and in the days following she could only flash in return a shamed glance full of apologies at the way of things and whisper, ‘Sorry’.

The funeral had been worse in many ways. On the one occasion when she needed him there beside her, even if just to be, he was gone. There was so much to organise, so much to endure, his mere presence would have been a comfort. Many things had been taken out of her hands by formalities and traditions, but her role had never been explained. Perhaps the part of the widow, the chief mourner, was only felt so acutely by her because of her sensitivities. Perhaps what she had felt was unexplainable and no one could have forewarned her.

They came for her when the body had been readied and the pyre stacked. She’d been left with her daughters, alone and undisturbed. She felt like an embarrassment to the tribe, as if her associations with the deceased rendered her so close to death that she had partly crossed the border out of life herself. Had she belonged with the living or the dead that day? She’d felt set apart by her people, familiar faces would not meet her eye; she was other, the focus of their grief. For one day she was not Boudicca, she was Prasutagus’ widow, her personal identity swamped in her tribe’s sorrow.

The weight of her people’s grief had hung heavily upon her as she walked behind the wicker chariot upon which her husband’s remains lay. It jerked slowly forward to the cemetery of the Iceni. It was a burdensome responsibility where the pressure of so many strong emotions seemed to suffocate her. She felt the collective feelings from those attending the funeral like a blanket. Somehow she coped. Somehow she got through the experience. Somewhere deep within provided some inner strength to draw on to see the day to its close. But it was an alien strength, it hadn’t felt at all like a part of her. She had felt as if she’d been in a trance all day, drugged by a pervading numbness that was surviving not living, lending an aura of unreality to the whole proceedings.

Images invoked themselves unwillingly. Of taking a shaky place amongst the women folk who shrieked and howled to eject their grief, whilst on the opposite side of the pyre stood the men, bedecked as warriors and sounding war trumpets. A cacophony of noise to disguise any unqueenly sobs. Someone lit the pyre and cheery flames licked over and round the body as if tasting and scenting its meal before devouring it completely. It was as if the glowing fire delighted in the sacrifice it had been given. How Boudicca hated those flames then, how she resented their amber warmth which stole her husband before her very eyes. She watched the pyre with pure hatred until it burnt out, seeing abstract shapes of torment in the flames which she took a savage delight in, using the images of cruelty as an unexpected outlet for her anger. Then the ashes were raked in and placed in an urn which was buried amongst the urns of their forebears. The earth was marked with a wooden stick-man who took his place bravely amongst the other male and female markers which pitted the burial field.

And during the whole ceremony no one touched her or spoke to her, too embarrassed she might break, or too frightened of her associations with the dead. Whilst everyone else had seemed to have someone to comfort them, she was different, she was utterly alone. Yet, despite this almost avoidance, her presence had been intrinsic to the whole ceremony; without her, there would have been no focus for Iceni grief. She had been their figurehead for the day. Despite her own very real bereavement needs, her tribe had placed the onus upon her to lead them through their grief: to put the needs of the whole before the needs of the individual. And now, although others might be able to leave that place, part of her would be remaining there forever.

Here in the cave, the whole episode seemed so distant; it was like remembering someone else’s memories.

The front of her tunic was wet. She’d been crying. Had she woken the bear? She listened carefully. Nothing, then the sound of rhythmic, gentle breathing. She sighed with relief, then wondered if Lovernios really was waiting for her outside. What good would he be against a gigantic bear? He was no warrior, that was certain; his lean body was definitely toned although it lacked the muscular definition and scar patterns of a seasoned fighter. Could he work his magic quickly enough to fend off an attack by a raging bear? She still didn’t trust him totally, she realised; she was coming to depend upon him, but she still lacked the essential trust.

She couldn’t explain the strange attraction she felt for him. He looked nothing like her late husband; he was of a longer, less stocky, build with a beard instead of drooping moustaches, but he smiled with his eyes as Prasutagus had. His smell was unfamiliar but safe and musky; she had liked his body smell, wafting from his strangely unblemished skin. It was a good, man’s scent. Certainly, he didn’t possess the usual looks which would normally draw a second glance from her, but there was a fascination with him that she could not deny, some sort of binding she could no longer resist.

How much, then, of her distrust was linked to these strenuous efforts to stop herself falling in love with him? For that, she realised now, was what she had been striving to do. What of her husband, her late husband? What of his memory? Would she be betraying him? Lovernios had already reassured her he didn’t seek to replace Prasutagus. Did she have enough love within herself to love them both? Since when had love been finite? If her intimate relationship with the Goddess had taught her anything, it had been that there need never be any constraints upon the quality or quantity of love.

And how much of her distrust centred upon his strange and incommunicable wisdom, with his secret plans to be hinted at just enough to keep her in line? She realised that in many ways he was right. No matter how much she might resist change, she did have to move on and somehow she would have to find the strength to do so. She understood now that she and the Iceni, even the other Celtoi, had been fools in their dealings with the Romani. Even she had been seduced by the promise of luxuries like sweet wine and pretty trinkets, cosseted by the lure of comfortable town living, civic amenities and soporific pleasures such as under-floor heating. They had paid with metals and dogs, hides and grain, even slaves. How many nameless faces had she personally sent, chained and whipped into vast, creaking ships never to see the shores of Britannia again? No hope for those captives that a raiding party might bring them home. And what had she got in return? Some amber beads, glassware and some empty amphorae, the wine long guzzled in an orgy of waste, to boast to the other Celtoi of Iceni riches.

She’d been tricked. The Romani had demonstrated their consumable commodities and encouraged the Celtoi to procure them. The Romani had funded Celtoi bragging, interpreting it as greed and not tribal pride in displays of wealth. They’d bought all the Celtoi offered for barter, and then they’d taken even more, more that was not on offer. But these Romani were conquerors, not traders, and their promises were nothing against the price of freedom.

Had Lovernios seen this? Would she have listened to him back then if he had tried to explain? She doubted if she would have done; she was too headstrong, she needed to have worked these things out for herself. In his wisdom, with his broader view, he must have understood all these things and known how useless it would have been for him to try and explain. But now it seemed to her as if Lovernios was asking her to do the same as she had had to do at Prasutagus’ funeral: to put the whole before the individual, to preserve and k****e the atrocities performed upon herself and her daughters — not to let the memories heal, but to use them to rouse the Celtoi of Britannia into a frenzy of nationalistic fervour against the Romani. There was reason aplenty for revolt, piled up like so much dry wood; all it needed was one spark to set it alight.

She was intended as the tinder. A sacrifice in a way, but a sacrifice of identity not of life. That other price would come from the warriors she’d lead, some of them, inevitably, to their deaths. If she did as Lovernios asked, if she provided the figurehead to his scheme, she would be seen by many thousands not as Boudicca the woman, but as Boudicca the Queen, Priestess, and Destroyer.

‘And as Boudicca the Incarnation of Andraste.’

Boudicca sat up, alert. She had started to drift away into the realms of her thoughts and imagination, where she was unaware of the present material world. She could no longer hear the bear’s breathing, but she had distinctly heard the voice which had spoken to her from within, the voice that she now recognised as belonging to the Goddess.

‘Is that what is required?’ She asked tentatively.

‘At last, little one, you acknowledge Me. Just a slight shifting over should do.’

Boudicca felt a strange sensation in her skull, like the tension before a thunderstorm or before a headache, then her thoughts seemed to converge into one place, into one side of her head, and then suddenly it was as if she was sharing her psyche with another. Concepts seemed crowded at first as her mind filled with wobbling images, then her thoughts settled like ripples in a well after pebbles have been dropped into it. Clarity returned, but with a sense of compactness as if mentally things were still a squeeze. Clarity yet with the benefit of a perception beyond her own.

She sensed the shared aspect of herself make itself aware of its surroundings, the cave, the forest, the wider land. She shuddered. ‘We would be rid of these Romani, they have no feeling for this land. They have no feeling at all. Everything falls before their order.’ Then she desired to leave the barrow and see Lovernios. Her need of Lovernios was strong.

Almost tripping over the rough floor, she stumbled outside into the warming spring air. The world had depth to it now. Boudicca saw significance where before there had been none; the emphasis of importance had shifted in nature. Lovernios was ruffling the neck of the great bear, lying prostrate before him.

‘Lovernios!’ She called. ‘What have I done? What have I unleashed?’

He looked up. The bear turned and dropped in supplication to her.

‘Beloved.’ Boudicca felt her arms open to sweep Lovernios to her. ‘At last we are together again. How long has it been?’ Then as Lovernios cradled her to him and kissed her forehead, the pressure waned and the Goddess left her once more.