moment she could not remember their names. She felt as if an age had
passed.
“No. We must find a place to bury him,” she whispered, and Tilla
began to cry. “Have the holes for the gateposts been dug?” When the men
nodded, Boudica added, “We will lay him there, where he can continue
to guard us, and carve his head upon the pole.”
Drops of moisture sparkled on the dog’s white coat and she thought
it had begun to rain, but it was only her tears.
T W E N T Y
At Samhain, the doors are open between the old year and the new,
between the living and the dead, between the worlds. This year, the
new gate of Teutodunon was open as well, with torches set into the ground
before the posts where the heads of the cattle sacrificed for the feast had
been hung. The inner bank and ditch had been completed, though the
palisade was still going in. Now Prasutagos had gotten the idea of add-
ing another outer wall, with a forest of posts between them. Only the
Good God knew how long that would take to build.
This was the season when the herds were brought in to the home
pastures. Next week, when they began to cull those they could not keep
through the winter, the scent of blood would hang heavy on the air. But
now, as Boudica watched the sun fade into the west, the wind carried the
smell of roasting meat and woodsmoke and the promise of more rain.
“Mother, what are you doing? We are waiting for you! ” Rigana had
just turned eleven and with every moon, it seemed, she grew taller.
Along with the height came an apparent conviction that her parents
were inferior beings who alternately annoyed and amused. Boudica
told herself that the girl would grow out of it, but she recalled being
much the same.
Well, Mama, you have your revenge, she thought with an inner smile.
And perhaps tonight her mother’s spirit would hear.
“Yes, dear, I’ll come now,” she said peaceably, and followed her
daughter into the two-tiered hall.
Prasutagos was already seated in his carved chair on the other side of
the fire. Her stool was next to his, but then came two seats that would
be left empty for her mother and father. The king’s guard and the rest of
the household were settling into their places. There would be empty
seats there as well; one of the warriors had been killed when his horse
fell, and the wife of another was dead bearing her child.
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An ordinary year, she thought, not like the autumn after her mar-
riage when half the feast had been set aside for Prasutagos’s brother and
all the men killed at the battle of the Tamesa. If the gods were good, she
would never see a Samhain feast like that again.
Prasutagos looked at her with a worried frown and she managed a
smile. The feast was sacred, but most years it was not a time of sorrow.
The Druids taught that the Otherworld was only a breath away from
this one. The dead were not gone, and at Samhain, the veil between the
worlds grew thin.
Now the food was coming in on wooden trenchers—bread and
honey cakes and steaming barley, dried wild apples and ribs of beef
and slices of roast boar. They had been brewing for weeks to get ready,
and cups and horns were kept fi lled.
“I salute my mother, Anaveistl,” said Boudica. “Teutodunon has
changed a lot since you were lady here, but I hope you are not too disap-
pointed with our housekeeping!” That got a laugh from those who re-
membered her mother’s heroic bouts of spring cleaning. Boudica drained
her cup, and the toasting went on.
She bit off the last bit of meat that human teeth could remove from
a beef rib, reached down to give it to Bogle, then stopped, tears pricking
in her eyes as she remembered why he was not there. But surely the dog
had been as valued a member of the household as many of the others
they were hailing—with a silent prayer she set the bone on the earth
where he had so often lain.
The toasting continued, sometimes with a song or a story as the
dead lived again in memory. But as the eve ning drew on, Boudica saw
her daughters beginning to look more often at the open door.
“I think that someone wants to keep watch outside,” she said smil-
ing. “Eoc Mor, will you go with them to the gate?”
And because she was listening, even before the girls came running
back, Boudica caught the deep vibration of the distant drums.
“The White Mare is coming! The White Mare!”
The whole company poured out into the torchlit night. Overhead a
few clouds were playing tag with the moon and a little fog was rising
from the moist ground. Beyond the gateposts at the other end of the
enclosure she saw a glimmer of light. It was not the great bonfi re that
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burned beyond the gateway, for this light was moving. The misty air
lent a quality to that brightness that made the hair prickle on her arms.
It pulsed in time to the rattle of pebble- filled bladders and skirling of
birch flutes and the throb of the drums. Boudica felt her heartbeat set-
tling to that rhythm and laughed.
And now she could see the beings that bore those torches tumbling
into the enclosure, masked and caped to mimic the animals that were
the families’ totems, or fantastic creatures from the Otherworld. Capes
and sleeves fluttered with streamers of colored wool and metal bits and
clattering bones. Some had the shape of men, but had painted them-
selves like the warriors of the old race whose blood they bore. Some had
no disguise but chalk paste that turned their faces to skulls from which
eyes glittered with unnerving intensity.
And rising from the midst of that screeching, chattering mob was
the White Mare Herself, the bleached skull poised with clacking jaw
above the drape of the supple white hide. Copper discs had been set into
the eyeholes, polished to catch the torchlight with a baleful gleam. This
was not the lively, loving horse goddess whose mask Boudica had borne
at the kingmaking. At Samhain Epona showed the face of Life beyond
life, to which Death was the door.
At Samhain she walks with the Lady of Ravens, thought Boudica, and
that is an aspect no one in her senses would ask to bear . . .
The invaders formed into a rough semicircle with the White Mare
in its center and began to sing—
“Behold, here we are,
Come from afar,
Your gates, friends, unbar,
And hear us sing!”
Each district had its own variation on the festival. Teutodunon had
been Boudica’s childhood home, so it was for her to step forward with
the reply—
“Wise ones, tell me true,
How many are you,
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And give your names, too
That we may know.”
She probably knew the men who were responding, but through the
masks their voices sounded blurred and strange.
; “You must give us to eat
Both barley and wheat,
As the spirits you treat
So shall you prosper!”
As the girls ran back to the house for the bannocks and ale, Boudica
kept the interchange going. In a few minutes the food and drink were
being distributed to the masquers.
“The White Mare will sing,
The spirits will bring
New life and blessing
To everyone . . .”
The massive head dipped. Boudica stepped back, dizzied as if it were
she who had drunk the ale, seeing not a horse skull and hide but the
entire animal, limned in glimmering skin and bone.
“A gift from you gains a gift from me . . . What would you ask, Iceni Queen?”
Was she hearing that with her ears or with her heart?
“Give me back my little son . . .” she whispered in reply.
“He will return, but not to you. It is not through your children that you will
gain immortality. But I will give you back your guardian.”
Then the crowd surged between them and the connection was bro-
ken. Blinking, Boudica found herself at the edge of the throng.
“My Lady—”
She turned and recognized Brocagnos, a boar-mask dangling from
his hand. On his other side something white was moving.
“When you visited my dun last fall my white bitch was in season,
and that dog of yours—well you can see the pup is the spit of him. I
thought to keep him, Lady, but I think he belongs here . . .”
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Boudica scarcely heard. “Bogle . . .” she whispered as a massive
white head with a russet nose and one red ear appeared at roughly the
level of Brocagnos’s hip. “Bogle,” she said again, “is it you?”
The silky ears lifted. Then, with a joyful bark, the dog launched
himself into her arms.
The ripening grain in the fields around Danatobrigos rippled like an
animal’s pelt in the cold wind that blew in each day at sunset from the
sea. Prasutagos had gone down to Colonia for the annual meeting of the
chieftains, but it was five years now since Boudica had accompanied
him. She preferred to spend the summer here, on the land she had learned
to love, where the girls, now ten and almost thirteen, could run as wild
as the ponies they rode.
During the day she was too busy to miss Prasutagos, but when the
shadows lengthened and eve ning began to steal across the world it had
become her custom to whistle up the dogs and walk out to the track
across the downs. There were a good half dozen of them now, old Bogle’s
offspring by bitches all over the Iceni lands. After Brocagnos brought the
young dog, others had gifted her with puppies in which his blood ran
strong, and now her walks were attended by a frothing of white, red-
spotted hounds.
They coursed back and forth, giving chase to a hare that had been
hiding in the hedge, barking at the crows that rose in yammering fl ocks
and winged across the fields to their roosting tree. And yet beneath all
the surface noise there was a deep quiet in the land that soothed Boudi-
ca’s soul. Presently she came to the road and gazed southward, hoping
to sight the party of men and horses that would herald her husband’s
return.
Boudica could see nothing on the road, but the dogs had come to a
halt, heads lifted, scenting the breeze. She stood waiting, fondling fi rst
one and then another furry head as it pushed against her palm, and pres-
ently a single figure came into view. It was a man, young by the vigor of
his walk, in a worn tunic of undyed wool with a pack on his back and a
hat of woven wheatstraw pulled down over his brow.
“Well met, wanderer,” she said as he came to a halt before her.
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“Why it is Rianor!” she exclaimed as he swept off the hat. He was a full
priest now, she saw by his beard and shaven brow. “I hope you were
coming to see us at Danatobrigos. If not, my hounds and I will carry
you off anyhow.”
“So long as it’s not Arimanes’s pack you have there,” he said, still
smiling. “They look like Faerie hounds, but they seem friendly. But that
cannot be your old dog Bogle, unless he’s gone to the Land of Youth
and returned—”
“Very nearly. This one was born after the first one died, and as you
can see, his markings are almost the same.” The dog had settled into her
life so smoothly that even without the White Mare’s prophecy she would
have believed him to be the same.
“Somehow Lugovalos’s lectures never mentioned the reincarnation
of dogs, but I suppose it could be so.” Rianor grinned.
“Tell me what you are doing here?” Boudica asked as they started
up the path to the farmstead.
“Being among those still young and strong enough to do so, I
mostly carry news and messages. And when the soil seems favorable,
plant a few seeds that may sprout into rebellion when the stars are right.
All that practice in memorizing, you know.” He smiled. “Anyhow, that
is why I am here.”
“Not to persuade me to rebel, I hope—” she began, but he shook
his head.
“No. I’ve a message for you, from Lady Lhiannon.”
“Have you seen her? Where is she? Is she well?”
Rianor held up a restraining hand. “I traveled to Eriu, and I hope
never to do so again. The ocean and I do not agree. But indeed I did see
the lady, and she is well. She is living with a community of Druids in
the kingdom of Laigin, and truly they are a wonder, so numerous and
powerful they can afford to fight among themselves when they are not
using their magic to aid their kings. They are still as we were, I think,
before the Romans came.”
“And she sent word to me? You had best give it now. The girls are
just the age to think you a figure of great romance. Once they catch
wind of you the rest of us won’t get in a word until you have told them
the full tale of your wanderings.”
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“Very well.” They had come to the wood below the farmstead, and
Rianor seated himself on a fallen log and closed his eyes. “These are the
words of the priestess Lhiannon to Queen Boudica . . .” His voice ac-
quired a lighter timbre, as if Lhiannon had imbued him with her spirit
as well as her words.
“My dear, I take this opportunity to send word by one you know
well. He will tell you that I am well and happy. It was very hard to leave
Britannia, but I am glad to have come. I have learned a great deal that I
hope to share with you one day. But the chief news is that I have a
daughter—no, not of my body, but a little girl that I found weeping in
the marketplace one day, with hair as glossy as a blackbird’s wing and
eyes the blue of the sea. Her parents had a house full of little ones they
could not feed, and were happy enough to sell her to me.
“My little Caillean, which means ‘girl’ in the tongue of Eriu, does
not know when she was born, but I t
hink she must be nearly the age of
your younger girl. It is hard to tell, for she was undernourished when I
found her, though she is shooting up fast with good food and care. She
is a bright little thing, and eager to learn. I understand something of
your delight in your daughters as I watch her change from day to day.
“I think of you often, and hope to see you again, though I cannot
say when that will be. You may send a message through Rianor, who
says you were well and happy—and beautiful—when he saw you seven
years ago. If the gods are good, he will be able to bring it to me.
“You have my love always, dear. I remain your Lhiannon.”
For a few moments the Druid was silent, then he shook himself and
opened his eyes.
“Thank you,” said Boudica. “How much of that do you recall?”
“You don’t understand—when a message is set in me in trance I
don’t remember, and it’s frustrating when people want more informa-
tion, and I have no idea what it is that I’ve said.”
“That must be difficult, but I am sure you delivered the message
faithfully. It sounded as if she were speaking to me.”
“I’m glad.” He smiled warmly.
“Come now, our dinner will be ready and I am sure you must be
hungry. Did you come from the south? As we walk you can tell me the
latest news from Colonia.”
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Rianor was a good observer, with a gift for describing the things
he had seen. They had all wondered what would happen when the em-
peror Claudius was succeeded by his stepson Nero, but as far as the
Druid could see, the major local result seemed to be the temple being
built in the dead emperor’s name. It was strange that a man who in life
had been despised by many should in death be honored as a god, espe-
cially since it was widely rumored that his wife had poisoned him. But
only the good qualities of the dead were remembered, as if the divine
spirit to which they had off ered incense was all that remained. The an-
cient kings whose barrows were all over Britannia were still honored,
so perhaps the beliefs of the Celts and the Romans were not so diff erent
in that regard. But however benign the emperor’s spirit might be, it
seemed hard that the Trinovantes, whom Claudius had deprived of
king and kingdom, should have to pay for the deification of their con-