There was a sudden stirring throughout the woodland, as though all the trees were sighing and groaning and shifting their deep roots to gather as a great army and to come to a meeting before battle. Or as though all the creatures—the foxes and wolves, the deer, the sullen bears, the wild dogs, the sly lynx—were on the move, seeking pasture or berries or prey.
Marcus felt the hair standing up on his neck. His eyes darted to left and right, and at first he saw nothing in the dimness of the thickly-columned woodland. Then, like the figures in some horrible vision, lit by torches, he saw what was coming into the trodden glade where he and the others lay bound.
Men in the stiff painted leather masks of hawks and eagles, their feathered cloaks floating behind them, came first, flapping their wings and shrieking out as though they poised for the swoop. Then came devil dancers, their thin bodies daubed with white clay, their faces hidden by long shield-like masks of dark wood. Behind them swayed forty young men, dressed as for war, swinging bone bull-roarers in a surge that pained the ears. They came on like men in a trance. Then came the young girls, their long hair white with ashes, their faces blackened with soot, their eyes ringed round with blood-red. Each one carried a skull in her left hand and a short spear in her right; and with every step each one beat on the skull with the spear-blade, as though on a drum, setting up a ghastly clacking counter-beat to the bull-roarers.
Tigidius said grimly to the Tribune, “For this we Romans have wasted our lives over a hundred years. Only for this.”
Marcus drew in a deep breath, the pain of his arm stabbing at him again, and said, “They have gone back to the childhood of their people. They have forgotten all we have tried to teach them. If anyone is to blame it would be two fat men—called Decianus Catus and Nero. Now we are reaping the crop they sowed, and the bread it makes needs some chewing.”
Cynwas was sitting with his head bowed and his eyes shut. His shoulders and legs were shuddering. His lips were moving all the time, like those of a man praying to be guarded against evil spirits.
Then all at once Marcus saw what came next, and turned towards the Celt and said, “Look, brother. Look!”
Cynwas raised his head and opened his eyes. Less than a hundred paces away, well lit by torches, six young men dressed in green cloth and wearing headgear made of oak and alder and ash leaves carried a wattle-hurdle on their shoulders. Sitting on it, her arms and legs bound with thongs, was Aranrhod. Cynwas saw the ash on her head and the black streaks down her face. He saw the white linen shift they had dressed her in, even the Roman medallion that still hung round her slender neck.
He said, “No! No! Look, Marcus, they have chosen her for the sacrifice! They cannot do it. They cannot do it.”
The young girl’s face was calm and showed no terror at what lay before her. She too was like someone in a deep sleep. Her eyes were closed and their lids stained a deep blue. Marcus had trouble in recognising the little girl who had tricked him so gaily in the wood when he had ridden in with his squadron.
He said to Cynwas, “Take courage, brother. They are only trying to make us afraid. She will come out of it.”
But he knew that he was like a man who whistles to keep his heart up in the dark. As for Tigidius, he was looking away now, trying to shut the scene from his mind.
Then suddenly all stopped; all the prancing and roaring and clacking, all the wailing and groaning and deep sighing. The forest glade was silent again. And the many dancers seemed to fade to left and right, so as to leave a space along the central aisle for some great one to travel down.
It was the queen on the cart, dressed as they had last seen her, but now surrounded on every side by her counsellors, wearing deerhide robes slung over their shoulders like Roman togas.
“Look, Tigidius,” Marcus whispered. “They even have wreaths of laurels on their heads. We have taught them something, after all—though to see what they make of our teaching is enough to bring tears to the eyes.”
The centurion stared before him, but did not answer.
Then the horns began to howl, from somewhere deep in that dark forest. And when their howling had grown almost unbearable, they stopped all at once. And Boudicca stood upright in her chariot and called out in a dreamer’s voice, “See, we have come at last; and we have brought the offering for the green gods. We have brought the one who will speak our words to Diana the Maiden, when we have set her free of the body that hampers her pleadings now.”
Then the bull-roarers started and the white skulls began to clatter. Cynwas dropped his head and tried to shut out the sound.
Boudicca spoke again, above the din, and called out, “Have you anything to say, Aranrhod the Blessed? Have you a message to leave to kith and kin, my child?”
Now Cynwas looked up, his eyes fixed on the young girl. But Aranrhod did not even open her eyes. She shook her head gently from right to left and then sat as still as an image.
“See,” called the queen, “she is ready for the journey. She knows no kith and kin on earth, now that she has been chosen. Light the fires, set the stakes in the earth. Let the young one fare forth while her heart is with Diana.”
Now some of the women ran forward, bringing stones to set in a circle, while others flung brushwood and ferns into a great pile in the middle of the stones. Then four counsellors brought ash stakes, sharpened at one end, and set them in a ring about the fire.
Tigidius said sharply, “This has gone too far. This is an insult to us all. It cannot be allowed.”
Cynwas was still frozen. His lips moved but no words came from him. Then all at once he turned his head towards Marcus, and the expression on his face was the saddest the Roman had ever seen.
The Tribune struggled at his bonds and tried to stand upright, but the tough deerhide dragged him down again. He shouted out, as though he was back on the parade ground at Lindum, “Stop this, you barbarians. This has gone too far.”
A man wearing the eagle-mask with its curved bronze beak ran forward and thrust a short stabbing-spear at the Roman’s face. He did not flinch, and before the eagle-dancer could do him harm, the queen called out again, “Wait a while, my people. The gallant Roman wishes to speak a prayer over the girl before we send her to the green goddess.”
Marcus sat back and tried to stop the shuddering of his limbs. Then in a clear voice, so that all could hear, he said, “Boudicca, Lady of Victories, the prayer I wish to make is to you and not to the green goddess.”
The forest glade was suddenly heavy with murmurings, as though some wrong had been done, some mistake made in the ritual. But the queen held up the spear in her right hand and all was quiet again. Then, in a gentler voice, she cried out, “Take the Roman to my bower. Let him speak to me face to face, alone, if he dares. Let him make his prayer as a man should in the secret darkness.”
She turned her cart about and went back among the clustered folk. Then, before he had seen the last of her, Marcus was lifted up bodily and carried away, as roughly as though he were a sack of grain.
They bumped him painfully among the oak boughs, but at last, beyond the light of the torches, he felt that they were going under some sort of doorway, then down into the darkness. Everything now had a dank scent as though they were in a low cavern.
And suddenly they flung him down on to the hard rock. He felt damp mosses against his face, and the chill of water by his feet. And then for a time all was silent, except for the trickling sound that seemed to come down the wall away to his left.
He lay a while then said, “Is there anyone here with me?”
And after a space, the queen’s voice said softly, “Yes, Marcus. There is one here with you who will be in your mind all your life however long you live. And that might be one hour, or fifty years.”
He said, “Why are we in the darkness, lady. Do you fear to face Rome?”
He heard her laugh, about three paces away from him. Then she answered, “I am beyond fear, Marcus. Consider what has happened to my family—I have no more to lose. Then consider what is to happen to those who stand against my great army. I have all to gain. So, I do not fear.”
He said again, “Why are we in the darkness, my lady?”
Her voice was even gentler than before. She said, “I am pleased that you still call me ‘My lady’. You have not forgotten the little lesson I taught you in that sunken lane when you were a child. And Rome will not forget the lesson I shall teach her now, and Rome is not a child.”
Marcus sighed with weariness and said for the third time, “Why are we in the darkness, woman?”
This time Boudicca answered almost before the question was asked. She said, “Because I do not wish to hurt your pride, Tribune. That is all. In the darkness, words can be said that would not come to the lips in the light. You are a proud young man, just as you were a proud boy—ah, I saw it even then, and I would have loved to have taken you to be my youngest brother at that time. . . .” She paused a while, then went on quickly, “Look, Tribune, I am speaking to you in confidence now, as great ones should. My folk are simple field-diggers and herdsmen, they cannot understand what great ones must suffer. For them all is black or white, winter or summer, pain or joy. But we who rule others know that life is not so simple—and yet we have to make it seem so to their weak wits.”
Marcus groaned as the damp took hold on his wounded shoulder. The queen said, “We must see to that arrow-wound. The flint barbs that the older tribes use are not clean. They are dipped in unclean things and so, however shallow the wound, bring sickness.”
He said quite firmly, “We are not here to talk of arrow-wounds, Lady. Say what is in your mind.”
After he had spoken, he felt almost afraid to have raised his voice against this queen.
But her own voice came back as calmly as before. She said, “Marcus, all has its season—crops, fruit-trees, empires. Every man’s life has its time of growth, of fulness, of decay. Rome is dying fast, dying on her feet like a drought-starved old cow. This has become plain to me in the last weeks. Once I had the courage to move out from Venta your legions could not stop me—yet, for years we have thought they could stop the sun from crossing the sky if they wished! It is strange! The great Ninth Legion, your own legion, has run screaming back into its kennel, half of its men stark. The Second sits shivering at Glevum, under the coward, Poenius Postumus, afraid to move an inch outside the camp walls. The Fourteenth and Twentieth are stuck in Mona, or in the hills of the west among savages, and could not get across the land to me even if they had eagles’ wings!”
Marcus said drily, “Suetonius could make them cover a hundred miles in three days, Lady. And in a week, they could be tearing at your throat. They would show no mercy, Lady. Of that you can take my word.”
He sensed that she had come closer to him. He even thought he felt the little draught of air as her skirt brushed by him. She said, above him now, “In a week, my Tribune, I shall have done all my work. They would come back to a desert land. They would come back only to drag their weary, starving bodies down to the shore to look for ships. But, my young counsellor, there would be no ships. We should have burned them all. Then how would your brave Fourteenth and Twentieth go on, with no ships? Would they swim across to Gaul or Germany? Or would your fat emperor fly out on his gilded wings and waft them across the seas to safety?”
Marcus thought a while, then said, “At the moment you are in a strong position, Boudicca. But . . .”
Her voice was sharp now. “Do not use my name,” she said, “until you have the right to. Only my chieftains have that right.”
The Tribune held back the words he had meant to say. Instead, he asked as simply as he could, “Do you expect me to become one of your chieftains, Lady?” He tried to make it sound as bad as he could.
Her answer came back in a very low voice. She said, “Yes, Marcus. Of course you will do as I say. You will forget Rome, because Rome no longer matters, Rome is no longer alive in this Province. But you will forget Rome for a better reason than that—because if you do not join me now, I shall soon have you taken back to the glade, where you will see Aranrhod go to the goddess Diana. We shall place you beside the stakes so that you will miss nothing, I can promise you that, Tribune. And what you see will stay with you all your life, because you will know, as you hear her screaming, that with one word you could have saved her from that suffering. I can tell you, friend, it is not a pleasant thing that happens, and few of us who have seen it, we of the noble folk, ever forget it.”
For many breaths now Marcus listened to the water dripping down the walls of that cave. He thought of his own sister. At last he said, “I think that I have become a coward, like poor Poenius Postumus at Glevum. I cannot stand against you. I cannot let Aranrhod die; she has hardly begun to live.”
The queen whispered through the darkness, “She will not die, Marcus, if you will allow her to live. I swear on my husband’s bones, I will never lay a hand on her if you will come with me and promise to help lead my armies against Rome. Only give me your promise, I ask no more.”
Marcus prayed silently to his father, asking advice, and it seemed to him that he saw the gentle sad face of Ostorius the Tribune, nodding quietly, as though in agreement. He said, “Very well, Lady, I promise to march with you until I might change my mind. I trust that my centurion will march with me, and that Cynwas the Briton will be with his sister and free.”
The deep voice laughed above him, patiently now, even with understanding. She said, “You shall have your wishes, Marcus. But do not grow to be proud. Do not think, ever in your life, that I do what I do because of your Roman logic. I save your life now, and the little girl’s, only because of one thing—that once, long ago, when you crossed my path before, I gave you my brooch and said it would keep you safe. I have not gone against a promise in my life, and now is the wrong time to begin, now that I am almost the Queen of Britain.”
Marcus said, “Is that all, a bronze brooch? Does great Rome depend on nothing but that, a piece of twisted metal that I have almost thrown away a score of times?”
She said, “Not that alone, Tribune. Life is never as silly as that, even for a Roman. But ever since I first met you, a little boy sitting on a horse too big for him, I have wished to have a son such as you were then; a proud boy who would not budge even for a warband with swords and spears. And I never had a son. Two daughters, but not a son. Now do you begin to understand?”
But before he had begun to understand, he felt the wafting of her heavy skirts beside his face and then he was alone in that dark cave.