Song for a Dark Queen Read online

  It had taken the full three days to make the Choosing; and even after it was made, there were growlings and murmurings, for never before had we followed a King who was not pure bred to the Horse People; and not all men thought well of the new way of things.

  Not all women either.

  In the noontide after the Choosing Feast was ended and the chiefs and nobles had gone their ways, I was walking to and fro in the apple garth, for there was a new song on me, and at such times I need always to walk. And Boudicca came up through the old wind-shaped trees, with her skirts kilted through her belt, and a pair of throw-spears in her hand, just as she must have come from the practice ground. We are not like some tribes whose women go to war with the men in the usual pattern of things, only in times of sorest need our women follow the war-trail with us and we lead our mares under the chariot yoke; yet our mares are broken to harness and our women learn to use their spears, lest the need be upon us.

  ‘I heard your harp,’ she said, ‘and so I came.’

  I had no need to ask her why. Ever since the day of the willow-wood sword she had come to me in time of trouble, before ever she would go to Rhun her nurse.

  There was an old tree at the head of the garth, half-fallen into the grass, but with its little hard apples already russet-gold among its grey wind-bitten leaves. She sat herself down on the sloping trunk, and I settled in the long grass at her feet, and looked up at her, waiting for her to tell me what she would be telling me, in her own good time.

  And because of the Choosing Feast, all at once I saw her with a freshly opened eye, and knew with a small ache of loss, that it was not a child I looked at anymore, despite the small white scar on her temple where she had fallen out of a tree when she was ten. She was tall; taller than many boys of her age; and held herself that day like a Queen, her head braced upright as though already it carried the weight of the moon headdress. Her mane of strong straight hair sprang from her head as though with a life of its own, yellow as autumn birch leaves. Soon now, I thought, she would have to braid it after the manner of the Women’s side. Her eyes under their winged and feathery golden brows seemed darker than their usual blue, as the saltmarsh darkens when a cloud shadow passes over. I had seen them darkened like that before; I had seen her in a rage often enough; it had never lasted, and ended as like as not in laughter. But looking up at her now, I saw that this was something else than rage, and would not end so soon nor so easily. And I hoped in my heart that the Lord Prasutagus would know how to handle it, for assuredly no one else could.

  She sat so long, the spears in the crook of her arm, looking down between the apple trees, that I began to think she had forgotten I was there. Then she said, ‘They have sent for Prasutagus, already.’

  ‘They would be doing that,’ I said. ‘As soon as the Choosing was over.’

  ‘Why should they be in so great a hurry? There is time enough.’

  ‘He is an unbroken colt – like the colts that our horse-masters break in to harness in their second winter. He must be broken in to the Kingship, and in this world, who can be sure how much or how little there is of time.’

  ‘There is time enough,’ she said again, as though clinging to the words for a talisman – or a weapon. ‘I hate them all! The King my father is still young and his sword-arm strong.’

  It was in my mind to say ‘Surely. And tomorrow he may ride hunting and come home on a hurdle.’ But instead, I said, ‘This Prasutagus is seventeen, already two years past his manhood-making. If he is to be trained to a new life, the sooner it is done the better. Let you remember it will be no easy thing for him; no easier than for the two-year-olds when they are brought in off the freedom of the far-runs and trained to run under the chariot yoke.’

  ‘Why should it be easy for him?’ she demanded. ‘It will not be easy for me, to be mated to a man I have never seen before.’

  ‘You will have come to know him well enough, long before the women make the Bride Song for you.’

  But she was not listening. ‘Why should it be a stranger, and not Vadrex or Cassal?’

  ‘Does your heart go out to Vadrex or Cassal? I have heard you say that Vadrex has only spots where his beard should be.’

  She laughed at that. But the laughter cracked in her throat. ‘Na,’ she said, after a moment. ‘But at least they are not strangers. Why must they choose a man out of the Parisi?’

  ‘You ask so many questions, my head goes round,’ I said, trying to keep the thing light. ‘The Parisi are great warriors.’

  ‘So are we.’

  ‘And so are the Catuvellauni who press ever closer along our borders. It may be that a day comes when it will be well for the Iceni that the Parisi are bonded to them by marriage with the Royal Daughter – with the Queen.’

  She was silent again, a long time. Then she said in a small breathless voice, ‘One day I must take a Marriage Lord, that there may be a chief to lead the tribe in war, and another Royal Daughter to carry forward unbroken the Life Line of the People. But not yet. I would not take him yet. I would take my sword under the covers with me at night, as the young braves do, and have my freedom still. And if the Catuvellauni come against us, and – and my father is not here to lead the War Host, I would lead them myself. It would not be the first time that the People of the Horse have followed a woman on the war-trail – and she not needing any prince of the Parisi to bear her weapons for her.’

  And then at last, she brought her gaze back from the distance between the apple trees, and looked down at me. ‘Cadwan of the Harp, do you remember how once you promised me I should have a great sword like my father’s, and you would make me a great song of a Queen’s Victories?’

  ‘I remember,’ I said, ‘and then I made you a toy sword of white willow wood, and a small foolish song to go with it.’

  ‘I have the sword still, and the song. Do you mind how often I begged it of you when I was a child – long after I had it by heart. But still, I would be having the great song you promised me, one day.’

  ‘One day,’ I said.

  ‘And the sword, too.’

  A little chill wind came up through the long grass, and for a moment it was as though a shadow passed between us and the sun.

  3

  The Bride Cup

  FIVE DAYS LATER the Lord Prasutagus drove into the Royal Dun.

  The watchers on the gateway saw his dustcloud on the track from the north-west, and at the heart of the dustcloud a seed of dark that grew and flowered into a chariot drawn by a four-horse team in the Roman manner. He had been driving at full gallop on the last stretch, far out-distancing his companions and the pack beasts that followed behind. But at the foot of the slope where the track begins to climb through the Royal Village, he reined back, and came in through the gate at last, not in a thunder of hooves and iron-shod wheels and spun clods, as most young men would have done, for the show of the thing, but at a gentler and more courteous pace.

  He held the reins himself, though his charioteer stood beside him – I came to know him later for a man who liked best to be his own driver, which sometimes his charioteers found hard to bear – and for sure he handled the dun team as well as a man could do.

  Beside the weapon-stone he brought them to a halt, tossed the reins to the charioteer, and sprang down before the wheels had ceased to turn, and came on towards where the King waited for him in the doorway of the Hall. And as he came, a pair of brindled wolfhounds, the finest that ever I had seen, came bounding from behind the chariot, to follow at his heels.

  And so we took our first look, all of us gathered there, at Prasutagus of the Parisi, who was chosen to be Boudicca’s Marriage Lord and our next King.

  He was short, but strongly framed, and his shoulders under his blue and russet cloak had broadened before the usual time, so that at seventeen he was already built like a man. His hair was darkly and fiercely red, with the same metallic golden glint at the ends that a bay horse shows in the sunlight; and under it, his eyes were sombre, but his m
outh wide and, I judged, well used to laughter. He had a fighter’s face, but a thinker’s also; he would be a hard councillor as well as a warrior, by and by. ‘The gods grant,’ I thought, ‘that his council be good.’

  He came up to the King, and gave him the spearsalute.

  ‘You sent for me, my Lord the King, and I am come.’

  ‘Welcome is your coming,’ said the King. ‘You know for what purpose you are called?’

  ‘I know for what purpose I am called.’

  ‘And are you willing in your heart to answer the Call, and to follow the way that lies before you?’

  I wondered how many times those ritual questions had been asked and answered since first the Iceni were a People. And suddenly I wondered what the Priest Kind would do to any man who, having once been Chosen, refused the Call. It was a foolish thought. The sun does not take a whim to rise in the west. The pattern of things is the pattern of things.

  Prasutagus said, ‘In my heart, I am willing.’

  But his voice had quickened, and he said it, not as one making the ritual answer, but as one speaking his own mind; and his eyes had gone past the King, to where Boudicca came out from among the maidens in her father’s Hall, bearing the Guest Cup in her hands.

  And truly, she was worth the looking at; a figure all of gold, in her best gown of saffron wool, her hair braided and shining, the gold torque of the Royal Daughter circling her long neck. ‘Drink,’ she said, ‘and be welcome.’

  But she made it very clear that her words were the ritual ones, and nothing more.

  He took the cup from her and drank. They looked at each other across the rim, their eyes nearly on a level. I have said that she was tall for her age; I have said that he was short for his; and I saw that she knew it, and was trying to make herself taller yet, and that he knew it also. There was a sudden fiery flush along his cheekbones, as he gave the cup back into her hands.

  The coming together was not going to be easy, between those two.

  ‘But there will be time,’ I thought. ‘Time for them to grow towards each other, if the gods are kind.’

  There was two years of time. Two years and a little more. While still Boudicca was the Royal Daughter in the women’s quarters, and Prasutagus had his place among the young braves of the household, sleeping among them in the long half-loft above the Hall at night, and learning the ways of the Iceni and the ways of kingship.

  And then the time for the marriage feast drew near. And Merddyn and his fellow priests traced strange patterns in red and yellow sand by day, and looked up into the wheeling stars by night, and chose a day not long before Samhein, the feast of in-gathering when the flocks and herds are gathered in from the far grazing-runs and folded close against the winter storms, and when the souls of the dead also come homing to their own firesides.

  Then, as always when a great marriage feast is in the wind, there began to be a constant coming and going of merchants and swordsmiths and workers in precious stones. For the King must give fine new weapons to the man who wed his daughter; and Prasutagus must choose out three bride gifts for his wedding night, according to the custom. There was much whispering among the women as to what those would be; for Prasutagus’s father was among the richest of the chiefs of the Parisi, and his gifts would be worth the having.

  But less than half a moon before the appointed day, word came of a raiding party of the Catuvellauni laying waste our borders to the south-west. It was word that came often enough, but this was a greater war-band than the usual run of such things, and pressing far in along the High Chalk that makes a ridgeway linking us to the outside world. Always the traders have come and gone along that way, and our horses have followed it to the markets of the south and west; always it has been our place of greatest danger from attack, and we have kept the turf walls up and the guard bands alert, so that few raiders came that way. But this was no cattle raid half in sport. This was a strong war-company, leaving a trail of burned-out steadings behind them, and driving off all living things that came their way.

  And again, the war-horns sounded to call in the fighting men, and the chariots were harnessed, and the King with his household warriors, Prasutagus among them, drove out to clear the borders, under a raiding moon.

  They were gone seven days, and returned at the twixt-light hour when the first owls are crying and the flare of torches has begun to bite. There was a first thin crackling of ice in the chariot ruts, and the breath of the horses smoked in the air as they came up between the tall gate-stones of the Weapon Court. And there were captured horses among them, and the heads of slain raiders swinging by their long hair knotted to the chariot rails. But there were gaps in our own ranks, too, and they came without shouting or triumph. And Prasutagus drove the King’s chariot; and on the chariot floor, bound down that it might not jolt out, lay the body of the King, under his shield.

  In the gathering throng, the women had begun to keen: and men came running with torches, as he was lifted out and laid on the cold ground before the threshold. And then the crowd parted, and the Princess Boudicca came through. She stood long and long, looking down at her father’s body; and once she swayed a little, like a lone cornstalk in a breath of wind, then steadied herself. ‘Bring him into his Hall,’ she said in a small level voice. And then she looked up and met Prasutagus’s gaze; and she cried out on him, sudden and wailing, ‘Why must it be him instead of you?’

  And Prasutagus looked back at her, with a great smear of dried blood across his cheek, and said, ‘Because the mark was on his forehead, not on mine.’

  And they bore the King into his Hall.

  So the death-fires burned for the old King; and when they were cold, his ashes were laid away in the Royal House of Sleep, with his finest spear and his great bronze-faced shield and his sword with the goldwork on the hilt, that he might be armed as befits a High Chieftain for his journey beyond the sunset. And when all was over, and the proper sacrifices made, the Oak Priests led Boudicca up to the crest of the long grave mound, where our Queens have been made since first we were a People, and showed her to the assembled chieftains on the north and the south and the east and the west; crying out to each quarter, ‘People of the Horse, here is your Queen to you. Do you accept her?’

  And from each quarter the chieftains gave her the royal salute, their spears crashing on their shields. ‘We accept her, we accept her, we accept her.’

  And in the sight of them all, Merddyn the Chief of the Oak Priests set on her head the tall silver headdress of the moon. And so she became our Queen, Goddess-on-Earth to us; the Life of the Tribe in her keeping. And all the while her face was like a painted mask in the torchlight that sprang towards her up the grave mound; and her eyes in it only dark holes with the night sky showing through. And I thought, ‘She is too young – too young – too young. . . .’

  Late, late that night, Boudicca went to the great weapon kist in the Royal Chamber, and brought out the plain long sword with the hilt of age-darkened nawhal ivory that had been her father’s when he was young, before ever he came to be King. And she took it beside her into the broad rug-piled bedplace where she had never slept before.

  The nine days of mourning were accomplished, and the fires that had been quenched on the hearths were kindled again. And then it was the appointed time for the Bride Feast and the making of the new King. And before the assembled chiefs and great ones of the tribe, Boudicca and Prasutagus stood together on the threshold of the Hall – all thresholds are sacred places, the royal threshold above all others – she in her mantle of curd-white mare’s skin, the silver plates of the moon headdress that hung down against her cheeks catching and losing the wintry light; he in the King’s great cloak of red stallion’s hide. They spoke the words that Merddyn demanded of them, and held out their hands while he made the marriage cut first on her wrist and then on his, and bound them lightly together with a rawhide thong. They stood so joined while a few bright drops of mingled blood spattered down upon the threshold. Then Merddyn lo
osed off the binding, and another priest brought forward one of the old King’s spears and touched Prasutagus with it, first on the forehead, then on the breast, then gave it into his hand. That is all the kingmaking ceremony there is, among the Horse People. Marriage to the Royal Woman, that is the real kingmaking ceremony. And so when they turned and went back together into the Hall, he was the King.

  Then the cooking-pits were opened, and the feasting began. And midway through the feasting, Prasutagus brought from the breast of his tunic a necklace of amber and red cornelian and curiously twisted gold wires, shining like the sun, and put it round Boudicca’s neck. And that was the first of his Bride Gifts to her. And later, his charioteer brought into the Hall a young riding mare, mealy of mane and tail, and dark golden as heather honey, so light in her moving that her hooves seemed scarcely to touch the fern-strewn floor. And that was the second of his Bride Gifts.

  And all the while, I watched Boudicca; on the threshold, at the feasting, when Prasutagus hung the fiery jewels round her neck, when she reached out to touch the mare’s forehead in token of acceptance. I watched her when I woke my harp and sang her the marriage song that I had made for her; – much thought and much love and much walking in the apple garth, that song had cost me – and when she stepped out with him on to the paved dancing-floor, she with a long trail of ivy in her hand, he with a barbed and whippy branch of holly, to lead the Man-and-Woman dancing. And all the while, I thought, ‘She is too young! Grief upon me! She is too young. They should have given her more time.’

  And yet I knew that with the old King dead, there was no more time to give.

  Far on into the night Boudicca and her Marriage Lord went together to the Royal Chamber. I mind he held out his hand to her. But she walked beside him not touching it. In the doorway the women threw corn over their heads to bring them many children; a golden shower in the light of the spitting pine-knot torches. And there was laughing and jostling, and as many as the chamber would hold thrust in after them while the rest hung about the doorway.