Song for a Dark Queen Read online

  In the heart of the chamber, the bedplace was piled deep with fine wolf and deerskin rugs against the icy draughts that whistled along the floor; for the wind was rising, and would be blowing a full gale from off the sea by dawn. And standing at the foot of the bedplace, the women took the silver moon headdress from Boudicca, and stripped her naked, then flung a cloak round her against the cold; while the young braves did the same for Prasutagus the King. And then it was time for the last ceremony of all. For drinking the Bride Cup of apple wine and honey and certain herbs. And Boudicca looked to her women, for Rhun to bring it to her. But before the old nurse could make any move, Prasutagus crooked a finger to Cadog, his armour-bearer, and the boy stepped out from the shadows, bearing a cup that was certainly no Bride Cup of the Iceni. A cup such as I had never seen before; and strange, very strange.

  It was a glass calyx, I judged of Roman workmanship; but I had seen Roman glass before, none like this; an inner cup held within an outer; yet the outer was indeed no cup at all, but an interweaving tangle of figures that seemed to stand clear away from the glass behind them. Later, when I came to know it well, and had more than once held it in my hands, I knew that the figures were strange indeed; half-man and half-horse, with struggling girls caught among them, and all linked and laced together with the twisted branches of trees, and that they touched the inner calyx nowhere but at the rim and the base. Surely, even among the Romans, there must be some who have the secret of magic-making. That night, I knew only that it was strange and beautiful, and that it was green. The dark, lifeless and lightless green of forest depths in late summer.

  Prasutagus took it from his armour-bearer, and held it to Boudicca. She looked, but made no move to take it. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Your Bride Cup,’ he said.

  ‘It is no cup of mine.’

  ‘It is now,’ Prasutagus said in his level voice. ‘It is my third Bride Gift to you.’

  And his voice was gentle, but the set of his mouth was that of a man who will wait a very long time, but will not in the end be denied.

  There was silence. No more laughter in the Royal Chamber, only the soughing of the rising wind across the thatch, and somewhere the mocking cry of an owl. And in the heart of the silence, I watched the battle of wills between those two. And I knew what it meant to Prasutagus that she should drink the Bride wine from that cup of his giving. She was among her own kind in her own world; he was the stranger, coming in from outside. For two years he had been broken and trained like a chariot pony, and had not found it easy, even as I had said to Boudicca in the apple garth. He was nothing in his own right, only because he had been chosen to marry with the Queen. He was young and proud, and to make the matter worse for him, he loved her. Therefore he had given her this third gift; the most beautiful thing that he could find, a lover’s gift; therefore he was determined that she should drink the Bride drink from it. In this one thing he would be her Marriage Lord indeed.

  At last, Boudicca gave a little sigh, and put out her hands to take the cup. She held it so lightly, looking down into it, that for a moment I wondered if she were going to deliberately part her hands and let it fall and shatter on the flagged floor. But she raised it and drank. And as she did so, the full magic of the cup appeared; for as the light of the pine-knot torches caught and shone through it, it flamed from its dark shadow-green into shadowy fires, glowing with the furnace colours of a winter sunset over the marsh. There was a murmur, a breath of startled wonder, from those of us looking on. But Boudicca made no sign, only drank, and gave the cup again to Prasutagus. His hand enclosed hers for an instant as he took it back; then he drained the cup and turned to give it to Old Nurse, who was hovering near. And again, now that it had lost the torchlight, it had returned to its dust-dark forest green.

  Then as the women pulled back the heavy bed-rugs, Boudicca went to her clothes’ kist, and took up from it and unsheathed the old King’s sword. Some of the men drew a whistling breath through the teeth, but I am thinking that the women knew already what was coming now. She knelt beside the great bedplace and leaned far over, to lay the naked blade down the centre of it. I mind how the torchlight played with the grey burnished iron.

  Boudicca came back to her feet, and stood looking at her red-haired Marriage Lord.

  ‘My Lord Prasutagus, over there is your sleeping place, and over here is mine. Let you bide on your own side under your own cloak, until maybe I bid you come closer.’

  And he stood looking back at her, rocking gently, with his hands on his hips, and the corners of his wide mouth twitching into laughter. ‘No hurry,’ he said. ‘Boudicca, Honey-sweet, you are not the first girl that was ever under my cloak; but I never yet had a girl that did not come warm and willing; and I’ll not begin with my own Queen.’

  4

  The Sword on the Threshold

  LATE INTO THE next spring, when the swallows were at their nesting under the thatch, the thing happened that changed all the world.

  The Red Crests came again.

  Word of their coming reached us along the trade routes in the usual way of things; and suddenly the Catuvellauni were gone from our borders, as King Togodumnos gathered his War Host and swept south to meet them. There was a great battle, and the Catuvellauni were driven back to the Father of Rivers, and another battle for the ford above the trading post of Londinos and again the Catuvellauni were forced back, and Togodumnos was slain, so that Caratacus his younger brother was after that the lone leader of the War Host.

  A strange thing it must have seemed to the Cats of War, to be driven back in defeat; they who for so long had trodden the conqueror’s path.

  Then the chieftains and nobles and the mightiest warriors of the Iceni gathered to the Council Fire, and some among the young men, the hot-headed and hot-hearted, were for over-running the lands of the Catuvellauni while their spears were busy elsewhere; and some were for joining them to hurl the Red Crests back into the sea.

  But for the most part, the chiefs and the older men were of another way of thinking. And Gretorix Hard-Council stood up before the rest, twisting the ends of his badger-streaked beard round his fingers in the way that he had, and said, ‘If we swarm into the Catuvellauni’s hunting runs, and their spears prevail against the Red Crests, then we shall have them to answer to afterwards, and they will still be a Tribe many times greater than we. And if the Red Crests prevail, then we shall have gained nothing, and may have lost much. If we join spears with the Catuvellauni to drive the Red Crests out, then we shall still have the Catuvellauni on our frontiers afterwards; and if it is we are driven back, then we shall join them under the Red Crests’ heel. And why should we risk that, we who owe nothing to the Cats of War? My counsel is that we bide quiet by our own hearths. And if the Catuvellauni have the victory, then at least the gaining of it may weaken them for a life-time or so, and we shall have lost nothing. And if it is the Red Crests who have the victory, then let us seek to make an alliance with them – so we may not stand alone against the War Cats in years to come.’

  Then there was much talk and argument round the Council Fire. Hot hearts against cool heads; until it came to the time for the Queen to speak. And she rose from her High Seat of piled bulls’ hides, and stood before all her chiefs and elders. And the silence was so great it seemed to me I could hear the air passing through my harpstrings. She was very white, and her eyes darkened as I had seen them do before; and said, looking round at them all, ‘Gretorix Hard-Council has said that we owe nothing to the Cats of War. That is not a true word. We owe them the death of the King my father. Let us bide by our own hearths, and let them rot beneath the Red Crests’ heel!’

  I thought, ‘What a woman’s way, what a vixen’s way, to set the fate of two tribes and maybe many more, over against the death of one man!’ And I looked at Prasutagus sitting beside her with his sword across his knees, and saw the thought in him also – and in Gretorix Hard-Council and others about the fire. And then I saw the face of Merddyn Oak Priest, his
dark gaze turned upon her, and the shadow of a smile on his thin lips; and I knew that it was the Priest Kind, before ever the Council Fire was lit, who had put that way of thinking into her heart. That seemed to me an ill thing. Yet the ruling, which in its way bore out the words of Gretorix Hard-Council, seemed to me good; though it was not the kind that great songs are made of.

  So the thing was settled, and Prasutagus’s hand fell gently away from the hilt of his sword.

  And we bided quiet by our hearths for that time.

  We waited, while the Catuvellauni lay up in the refuge of the forest country north of Londinos; they and the Red Crests watching each other like beasts over a kill. And then in high summer, we heard that the Emperor of the Roman people had come himself, and with him many more Red Crests, and magic war-animals, many times bigger than the biggest horse that was ever foaled, whose voice was the bellowing of many war-horns, whose hide was tough enough to turn a spear, and who made the earth to shudder when they charged, scattering and trampling on all that came their way.

  Then there was a battle greater than any that had gone before, and the Catuvellauni were hacked to pieces; and Caratacus escaped with nothing but his life and a handful of his sword-companions, and fled to take up arms again, with the Silures of the western hills.

  And then there was quiet. And in the quiet, word came that the Emperor had taken Dun Camulus without a blow, and sat himself down there to receive the surrender of the Catuvellauni. And while he was there, other Kings began going to him under the Green Branch, seeking a good peace. Then the Iceni held council again, and determined upon following the same trail. And at that Council it was also decided that, both because the Romans were not used to Woman’s rule and might not understand, and because it might be a trap to get the rulers of the tribes into their hands, Prasutagus alone, with a company of chiefs and elders, should go to the gathering at Dun Camulus, while Boudicca bided safe in the heart of her people.

  She raged at this. Half, I expected her to follow until her feet were bleeding, as she had done that time before. But even for Boudicca there could be no going against the whole Council when its word was spoken.

  I rode south with Prasutagus, for at all the great happenings of a tribe, the Chief’s Harper must be there to make of it a harp-song that may pass into the history of that tribe.

  So we drove south, between the marsh and the upland forests with the cornlands ripening to the harvest, and the dustclouds of late summer rising from the horses’ hooves and the chariot wheels. And I saw the great Dun of the Catuvellauni, with the King’s palace in its midst, many times larger and finer than the Royal Dun of the Iceni; and set about with its wide forecourts and chariot courts, its craftsmen’s quarter and its Women’s Place. And I saw the Emperor of the Romans sitting in the High Hall of Togodumnos. Claudius, they called him. He was a sight to make a cat laugh in his gilded armour (but the Cats of War would not be laughing anymore). A man with a big paunch and a little head on a long neck, who stammered like a midsummer cuckoo in his speech, and limped when I saw him walking. He seemed well pleased with all things, himself included. And yet I saw that like young Prasutagus, he had a thinking face. And so far as might be, across the gulf between us, I warmed to the man.

  There were as many Kings gathered there as there are fingers on my two hands, counting the small with the great. And each had a man, most often a merchant, to stand beside him and the Emperor when they spoke together, and turn their spoken words to and fro, from the tongue of the tribes to the tongue of Rome and back again. Only one or two of those from the south, where there had been coming and going for many years between themselves and Rome, could speak the Roman tongue, and carried themselves tall, accordingly. Cogidubnos of the Regni was chief among them, having been almost a Roman princeling before ever the Red Crests came. It is in my mind that if he had chosen, Prasutagus could have been another, for the Parisi have ever been strongly linked with Gaul, and in Gaul all men speak the Roman tongue. But he was there to speak for the Iceni, and he had his merchant to stand beside him like the rest.

  Three days we remained in Dun Camulus – Camulodunum, the Red Crests had begun to call it, in their own tongue. And I saw the great war-beasts that Claudius had brought with him. Elephants, they are called; and they are not magic, only strange to us. Mighty indeed are those beasts, and their drivers sit astride their necks behind their great flapping ears; and on their backs in battle they carry things like wheel-less chariots in which archers and javelin men ride. Yet out of battle they are oddly gentle, and if their driver lies down in front of them, they will feel for him as delicately as a maiden picking flowers, with the tip of the long waving thing that grows from their heads where their muzzles should be, and step over him not harming a hair of his head. And I have heard it said that their great hearts fail with fear at the barking of a little dog. Sad it is for the Catuvellauni that they did not know that thing.

  So the days of the great Council went by, with feasting at each day’s end; and the Kings and chiefs made their peace and swore alliance with Rome.

  And then we took the road north again.

  Boudicca stood in the gateway of the Weapon Court to greet her Lord. ‘Are we a free people yet?’ she asked, as he reined in and dropped from his chariot.

  He said, ‘While we pay a yearly tribute of gold and horses and young men to serve beside the Red Crests.’

  ‘Then we are not a free people.’

  ‘We are what the Emperor and his Ministers call a free state. Gretorix Hard-Council will tell you what that means; and Cadwan of the Harp will make you a harp-song of the splendours that we have seen in Caesar’s camp. I am very tired, my Queen.’

  The Emperor Claudius went back to Rome at summer’s end, leaving behind him orders for Dun Camulus to be rebuilt as a Roman city, and giving it all the special rights of a colony, a place for his Red Crests to settle on the land when their years with the Eagles were over. Leaving also men to see that the work was done.

  But up in the horse country, we had other things to think of; for with the harvest over it was time to be rounding up the herds, and cutting out the yearlings for branding and the half-wild two-year-olds to be run up to the corrals for breaking and making.

  And on a day of soft fitful wind and the changing lights of. early autumn weather, Boudicca and Prasutagus with some of the companions rode out to see the first of the herds brought in from the upland pastures. The thunder that had been muttering low over the marshes all day, had begun to circle to the south, where the land was shadowed under banks of flat-topped anvil-cloud. And as we came down towards the place where the oak scrub fell back, and the droveway broadened and ran out into open pasture, there came a flick of lightning bright enough to make a blink in the daylight, and then from above the woods inland, a whip-crack of thunder that boomed and rumbled away hollow over the marshes towards the sea.

  We were riding well strung out, and, not aware of it, I had drawn some way ahead of the rest. My horse, who was young and nervous, began to dance and sweat, and I reined him aside into the woodshore tangle of goat sallow and brambles and tall-growing marsh ragwort as I heard the others coming up behind me. Prasutagus and my Lady Boudicca passed close by me; and it seemed that there was war between them – there was often war between them at that time, the attacking for the most part on her side – for her colour was up and her eyes overbright, and as they reined in just ahead of me, looking out over the open valley and the droveway, he was saying in the tone of a man goaded to the quick, ‘Do you think that it was joy to me to kneel before the Emperor of Rome, and swear faith to him? I carried out the Council’s orders – which were your orders above all, my Queen. If the thing seems ill to you, now that it is done, let you speak of it to Gretorix and the greybeards, and do not come laying the thing at my threshold!’

  Far up the droveway, where it curved from sight among the oak woods, I thought I heard something: a flurry of shouting; but the soft gusts blew the sound away.

 
‘Had you no voice of your own at the Council Fire, then?’ Boudicca flung at him over her shoulder. ‘You are the King, do you count for nothing?’

  Aiee! The unreason of women!

  They must have known that I was there, but truly I think they did not care.

  Prasutagus took a deep, slow breath. ‘We all know how much the King counts for among the Horse People until he has proved himself a War leader; until he has given daughters and sons to the Queen.’ But he did not give his anger free rein even then, but spoke steadily and with hard-held patience. ‘You know what chance I have had to prove my spear hand; and for the rest – Boudicca, I have kept my promise to you, and your father’s sword yet lies between us.’

  And in my heart I cried out to him ‘Listen now! the time for patience begins to be over! The time comes when pride will not let her set that sword aside, even though she long to do it, if nothing comes to force her hand!’

  Then as the rest came up, she struck away his hand that was resting lightly on her bridle, and drove her heels into her mare’s flanks and broke forward and down towards the droveway.

  And then – it seemed as though all things happened at once, with no before or after, no order to their happening. The light was going as the storm clouds spread up against the sky, and there came another blink of lightning and a thunder crack almost upon us; and round the curve of the droveway and spreading out over the open ground, came the herd, like a dark river in spate. They ran wildly, terrified, stampeding as driven beasts will from what would have done little more than startle them if they had been at graze. They were almost upon Boudicca as she saw the danger and wrenched her mare round. The turf was slippery from the long dry summer, and – there was no time to see how it came about – the mare lost her hind legs and went half down; and the Queen was lying against the rotten trunk of an alder tree long since fallen into the grass beside the way, while the poor beast, with a shriek of terror, gathered her legs under her again and fled on from the dark flood of her own kind.