And then it was time for the death of the Corn King, and the women made for the shock of barley high on its turf throne. Chanting, they hacked off the heavy-eared head, and the grain scattered in a golden shower. They tore cornstalk from cornstalk until nothing of the King was left. And the whirling dance was stilled and the music of drums and flutes fallen silent and the dark shapes beyond the torchlight were gone.
Then, as it always happens after the Corn King is dead, the young braves began to catch at the hands of the girls who pleased them, and the girls to hold out their hands to the warriors of their choice; and together they ran away into the darkness beyond the reach of the fires. Always it ends so, the Corn Feast, and ten moons later, just as it happens ten moons after the Beltane Fires that welcome summer in, there are many children born among the Horse People.
Two young warriors, bright-eyed and laughing and flushed with the barley beer and the dancing, came running to where the two Princesses stood side by side. Essylt cried out furiously, a sharp screeching cry like a hawk, and struck furiously at the boy who would have caught her hands; and I saw as though in a slow dream – all things seemed to have gone slow – how Nessan, caught by the other, silently bent her dark head with the magic vervain flowers braided into it, and sank her teeth into the hand that grasped her wrist. The young warrior yelped with surprise and pain, but flung his other round her and forced her head up. And he was laughing still.
It was a thing that I had known must happen soon or late. In the old days, before the Procurator and his men came to the Royal Dun, no one save those who were named for them at the Choosing Feast would have thought to lay hands on the Royal Daughter or her sister. They were taboo, the channel through which the unbroken line of life, the life of the tribe, flowed on. But the Procurator and his Red Crests had come, and all that was changed. And the Queen also must have known the thing that would happen soon or late, and known also that if men came to use the Princesses as any other girls of the tribe, then that indeed would be the end of the Royal Line; maybe the end of the Tribe as well.
I looked to see what she would do.
She had risen from her seat, and stood with arms upraised. All round the Royal Fire, though I could hear the uproar of the Corn Feast going on through the rest of the camp and the camps beyond, a stillness began to spread. When it was complete, and every face turned towards her, she lowered her arms. But still she left the stillness unbroken. And no one but she could break it.
At last she said, not overloud, ‘Seize them.’
And men of her bodyguard sprang forward to where the young braves stood with their hands dropped to their sides. Sober enough, they were now.
‘Bring them to me,’ said the Queen.
And they were brought, their arms twisted behind them.
The Queen looked them over. ‘For overlong we have made this pretence, this token of Offering to the All Mother at Harvest time. And it is in my mind that the Mother grows weary of the pretence. Now, therefore, we will return to the old ways, and the Offering shall be a true one.’
One of the young men licked his dry lips. The other swallowed thickly. Neither made any attempt to break away.
‘And this time we will make the Offering twofold.’
The wolfskin drums were speaking again; but in a different tongue, a darker tongue that called for blood.
‘Let them stand free,’ said the Queen. ‘They will not try to run.’
The Princess Essylt stood as still as her mother, looking on. Her teeth showed between her lips. Her eyes were brighter than love could make them. But Nessan came running to fling herself down at her mother’s feet.
‘No!’ she wailed, ‘Oh no, my mother, no! There has been enough of blood!’
And the Queen looked down at her with empty eyes. ‘Not yet. There has not even begun to be enough of blood. But soon that shall be set right.’
And she made a sign to two of the bodyguard, and they drew their swords.
The two young warriors stood side by side, unmoving. The death spell was on them. I remembered how the black goat had stood for her to cut its throat, at the time of sending out the Cran-Tara.
And then, into the last heartbeat of time, there broke the sound of someone coming; a shifting and a splurge of voices beyond the firelight, and the Queen made a gesture to stay the men with the swords; and the drumming fell silent.
Into the light of the Royal Fire, shining with the sweat of his long running, came one of those hunters who were the Eyes and Ears of the War Host. He made for the Queen, and stood before her with heaving flanks.
‘What word do you bring?’ said the Queen.
‘Lady, the Red Crests are making ready to break camp. They have already sent scouts on horses towards the upriver ford, and a strong party to hold for them the bridge at Londinos.’
So the waiting was over at last.
‘That is a good word,’ said the Queen. ‘The Corn Feast is ended, and we too will make ready to break camp.’ She turned back to the two young braves, and the men who stood with drawn swords beside them.
‘So, I lend you back your heads. The Great Mother says that she will wait. This, I lay on you instead, that on the day of battle you shall bring me the head of Suetonius Paulinus, who calls himself Governor of Britain.’
A long breath rose from the crowd about the fire. And the two young men looked at each other and laughed. They knew themselves still marked for death, by the task that had been laid on them, but it would be death in battle, which is better than to stand to have one’s head struck off. I knew that even though we had the victory, I should not see them again.
Already the news was roaring through the camps, on and on along the forest ridges; and all night long there would be the throbbing and thrumming of the War Host making ready for battle.
This may be the last that I write to you, Mother. By this time tomorrow night, in one way or another it will all be over. We waited as long as might be for the reinforcements from Gaul – until it became clear beyond all doubt that they were not coming; and the supply situation was getting hopeless. So Paulinus decided to attack with what men he now has; about ten thousand counting the native cavalry and raw auxiliaries. And a couple of days ago we broke camp, and marched, some for Londinium Bridge, the rest of us for the river ford above the town. We had a sharp skirmish with a force of tribesmen at the ford – set there to slow us up, I suppose; they could have had no hope of stopping us. Felix was disembowelled under me. We had only known each other a few months, but he was a good fellow and I shall miss him. I took personal pleasure in killing the man who did it.
We spent last night in the old transit camp north of Londinium, then pushed on about a mile, to the place I think Paulinus has had in mind all the while, as giving us the best chance (if indeed we have any chance) of victory against odds of something like ten to one. A defile opening to the south-east, thickly wooded behind us and on either hand – really dense stuff, damp-oak and yew and thorn. The kind of stuff even the Britons can’t attack through; though of course we have scouts out to guard against the impossible. Open scrub land in front. This is about the first time in history, I should think, that the Eagles have ever camped for the night without throwing up nice regular square banks and ditches. But as we shall fight tomorrow only just forward of where we sleep tonight, and we have the natural defence of the forest on flanks and rear, it seems better to leave the ground uncluttered. The Governor’s pavilion has been set up in the centre of the camp with the Eagles and cohort standards ranged before it; and we have piled him a turf look-out platform for tomorrow, and that’s all. Oh, and we’ve dug latrines. I think if the end of the world were at hand, we should prepare for it by digging latrines. Paulinus has been round from watchfire to watchfire talking to the men. The usual kind of thing, I should imagine. The honour of the Eagles, the honour of Rome, the whole future of Rome in Britain – remember that if they do outnumber us ten to one, they are an undisciplined rabble dangerous only in ambush and on gr
ound of their own choosing, while we are disciplined troops packing ten times their fighting power man for man; and the fewer there are of us, the fewer there are to share the honour of tomorrow’s victory. ‘So when the battle joins,’ says he, ‘keep close formation, and when your spears are thrown, out swords, and smash their faces in with your shield bosses.’ That bit got the biggest cheer.
That’s about all. Now it’s just the waiting. Not much use trying to get an hour’s sleep. Paulinus doesn’t sleep himself on the eve of battle, and doesn’t see why any of his staff should either. Well I suppose we wouldn’t anyway. The knowledge of Boadicea and her battle-host somewhere a few miles across that open country in the dark doesn’t act as a lullaby. What a woman! I suppose if she has the victory tomorrow, they’ll make a song about her to sing through Britain for a thousand years. They’re a great people for making songs about their heroes, the British. If she has the defeat, too, come to think of it; only then it will be a lament.
I think I was nearly asleep, then, after all. Better get up and walk around a bit.
15
Red Harvest
THE WAR HOST rolled out from the forest and turned south and west towards the ruins of Londinium. As many as though the leaves of the forest had fallen and turned into warriors. Men on foot and on horseback and in chariots, with their spears thirsty again after the long wait; and bringing up the rear, the great ox-wagons with the women and children and the Priest Kind; the Royal Wagon lurching along like a ship on dry land in their midst; and the Queen with the chariot columns at the head of all.
There is a place, where the forest comes down towards Londinium – towards where Londinium used to be. A valley runs up into it from the open scrub land; and the rising flanks and the high ground at its head are matted thick with trees; yew and thorn and dense dwarf oak, with scarce a deerpath to make a way through it. And when word was brought to the Queen that the Red Crests were camped there for the night, no more than ten thousand, counting the renegade tribesmen they call auxiliaries, and their cavalry which has always been a jest to the horsemen of the Iceni, she laughed, and said, ‘Surely their gods have made them mad, that they have set themselves down in a trap, and we not having to lift a finger to drive them into it!’
That night we made our own camp scarce three Roman miles short of the place. And next morning, when the sun rose and the mists scarfed the river valley, and the dew of late summer spattered from the bracken as the horses’ legs brushed by, we went forward on the last stretch. We were like a great shadow spilling along the land, the shadow of a vast storm-cloud, made up of men and horses, stretching back as far and wide as the eye could see. And out of the storm-darkness came the rolling thunder of wheels and hooves and tramping feet, and the lightning that the level sun-rays struck from spear-points and horse-trappings and the captured cohort standards that we carried with us.
So we came in sight of the valley, and our lightnings were answered by the sun-flash on Roman spears and helmets and on the great spread-winged eagle standards that waited for us. We seemed borne along towards them on our own spread-wings of storm; not fast, we could not move fast with the lurching wagons drawn by their straining teams of oxen in the rear. But there was no hurry. We held them penned. Corralled like cattle for the slaughter. And they crowed defiance at us with their silver trumpets as we drew nearer, and our great war-horns boomed hollow in reply.
The morning-shadows of men were still tree tall on the rough grass when we rolled to a halt, and spread out into a vast new-moon curve all across the open ground before the mouth of the valley, the Tribes ranged each under its own chiefs and war-captains; the foot-spears and the horsemen, the chariot columns in the midst, the great wagons drawn up in the rear, and the oxen turned free to graze. There was no hurry. It was close on noon before we were done with our ready-making. And all the while, the Red Crest ranks drawn up in the mouth of the clearing sat on their haunches or stood leaning on their spears, and watched us, their cavalry horses fidgeting and neighing to ours, who fidgeted and neighed back again. They were so few, the men in the Red Crest lines; so few that it scarce seemed worth unleashing the whole War Host against them, save that those held back would have risen up in fury at being denied their part in the kill.
And all the while, the Queen in her chariot, with the Princesses following in another, drove to and fro, taking the reins herself, and reining in her dancing team to speak to the men of this tribe and that: the Brigantes, the Cats of War, our own Horse People.
‘I would bid you see how few they are,’ she said. ‘But what are their numbers to us? We are a proud people fighting for our own. Think of the freedom they robbed us of, and that will be ours again, and I promise you the fight will be a short one, and before the time comes to kindle this evening’s cooking-fires, we shall have avenged old wrongs and be our own lords again!’
And everywhere the men laughed and shouted for her, ‘Boudicca! Boudicca!’ and brought their spears crashing down across their shields in salute.
Then she came back to the Royal Wagon, and the Princesses got down from their chariot to wait among the Women of the Kindred. They were not to ride with her into the battle, so that, if death came to her in the time of victory, the Royal blood would still be there and the Line of Life unbroken, and the Horse People not left without a Queen.
Chiefs and captains came and went about her; and the sun stood at noon; and the Prince Andragius sent her word, ‘It is time to give the Order.’
And she sent back word, ‘There is time enough before the cooking-fires. They have made us wait long enough; let them sweat a while.’
There was a little hillock to the far right of our battle curve; a few thorn bushes on its crest; and there the Priest Kind had gathered, with oak garlands on their heads. They stood with arms upraised and made the ritual gestures, chanting in the ancient tongue, their feet never moving, as though they, like the thorn trees, were rooted there. And Boudicca stood there also, looking out towards the enemy, while her red chariot ponies fidgeted and fretted just below, tossing their heads and swishing their tails against the gadflies that hung in stinging swarms above the chariot lines.
And I too was there. I would have been among the fighting men, my harp left safe in the Royal Wagon, but Boudicca said, ‘Na, na, my Harper. If you go down amongst the fighting, you will know nothing of the battle but the three men nearest to you; and like enough a spear in your throat. And how then shall you make me my great Song of a Queen’s Victories that shall be sung round our hearths for a thousand winters? Let you bide here, and see all things as they happen from the beginning to the end.’
And then a thing happened that was strange indeed. Out from the scrub close by broke a hare, just as I have seen them break from the corn before a line of reapers. The hare that is sacred to all the Tribes whether they be Stag People or Horse People or Cats of War. Close before the hillock it checked and sat up on its haunches; and I saw the beauty of it, the full, light-bloomed eye, the sunlight striking through its long quivering ears, that flushed them deeper than a dog-rose and showed every delicate branching vein within. For a breath of time it seemed to be looking at the Queen; then with a thrust of its powerful hind legs it sprang forward and went racing straight along our battle line.
A great roar of triumph went up from the waiting warriors; and the Queen cried out like a trumpet above the surge of their voices, ‘The Mother is with us! All our gods are with us! Now – forward and break them!’
She swung up her father’s sword, and it seemed to me that jagged shards of light broke from the blade in the heat-hazed sunshine, and with a bellowing of war-horns the charge broke forward.
And from the little hillock where she had bidden me wait, I saw, Grief upon me! I saw all things as they happened, from the beginning, far on towards the end.
The Roman trumpets were yelping, and far off in the Red Crests’ lines, the men who had been sitting or leaning on their spears, had straightened to become an unbroken wall of s
hields. And towards them our chariot line rolled forward, slowly at first, the ponies fighting for their heads, then gathering speed and power and terror. I felt the ground throbbing under my feet with the drum of hooves and the fury of chariot wheels as the great curved line swept on towards that waiting wall of Red Crests. I saw men and horses going down to right and left beneath the first flight of Roman spears, but the rest thundering on to crash into the ranks that stood like a rampart to receive them. I saw great ragged holes suddenly appear in the foremost rampart, and the chariots pouring through to hurl themselves on another that lay behind it. And the dust-cloud began to rise, and I could scarcely hear the roar of the joined battle for the baying of our own foot-spears, like hounds in leash who sight the quarry. In one place, two, maybe more, the chariots broke through again. Then came a check. There must have been a third line, and it must have held; and then out of the turmoil the chariots came again, heading back towards the Tribes. Something over half way, they wheeled about and hurled forward again, our horsemen flanking them, upon the Roman lines that had scarce had time to reform.
And the bright yelping of the trumpets and the booming of the war-horns rose and flung to and fro above the storm-roar of battle. And this time, I looked to see the chariots break clean through. Nearer and nearer they swept until they seemed almost upon the waiting Red Crests. And then in the last instant before the shock of meeting, their centre seemed to tear wide open like a horrible red wound. Horses were down and threshing, dragging their chariots with them; and the second wave of chariots, too close to pull clear, went crashing headlong into them, making a still more hideous confusion. The air above it was dark and thrumming with spears and sling-stones from the forward surging mass of our own foot warriors; and under the dark hail, suddenly the shape of the enemy was changing. From the straight three-fold rampart that it had been, it was becoming a wedge. A vast, terrible shield-flanked wedge, fanged and taloned with ripping sword-blades, driving into the gap that their spears had torn open for them, and thrusting on – and on. . . .