A Year of Ravens: a novel of Boudica's Rebellion Read online

  That should have chastened him, but it did not.

  Instead, he gazed upon me with naked longing. “I have not yet married, Cartimandua.”

  “But I have,” I replied upon a swallow, deciding that I could not stroll with him amongst the bridestones, after all.

  I went to meet the victorious Roman emperor under a banner of peace, but upon seeing Roman legionaries—their modest stature, their short but well-muscled bare legs—I began to reconsider the wisdom of it. These men did not seem so formidable. The plumed helmets of their officers did not frighten or impress me.

  How were these the soldiers that had smashed the army of Caratacus? Why, my own husband was a bear of a man who could have crushed the skulls of any of these Romans with one swing of his mighty fist. Shame blushed my cheeks for meeting the Romans in peace instead of leading my Brigantes into battle. I wondered, was it the wisdom of Prasutagus that had persuaded me, or was it something far less admirable? The pleasure of his company, the desire to be near him again, was strong. I did not like to think it was strong enough to lure me to folly. “You’re certain of this course?”

  “Yes.” Prasutagus offered me a hand down from my mount amidst the Roman soldiers who had come to greet us.

  “Why?” I asked, eyeing the invaders around me. They were clean-shaven men, their armor well ordered, with little to distinguish one from another. They spoke a language with hard sounds and moved with crisp efficiency. As I would come to learn, the Romans were an orderly people. Orderly in their architecture, in their ambitions, and in their thinking.

  That last bit, at least, the Romans and I had in common.

  Prasutagus’ hand warmed the small of my back when I dismounted, and he quietly said, “When the Romans last came to our shores, they did not stay. They left us to ourselves. Should we give them our pledge of tribute, perhaps they will leave again.”

  It was a thin hope, and it did not go down easily with me. Perhaps I had the orderly mind of a Roman, but I still had the passionate heart of a Brigante. Every step toward the elaborate tent in which the emperor awaited us, seated upon his strange, backless curule chair, was an agony of the spirit. That agony doubled when I saw that the ruler of the Romans was a balding man lacking in all obvious majesty despite the trumpets blaring in his honor and the herald announcing his impressive list of titles. He wore white with a sash of purple, and atop his head of thinning hair rested a wreath of laurel.

  “I greet w-warmly this delegation of k-kings,” said Emperor Claudius, with a slight stammer, before his curious eye turned to me. “And a queen?”

  Amidst the humiliated chieftains, I felt more acutely my shame and our devastation. Perhaps that drove me to the folly of saying, “Surely you know of queens, even in Rome. We have heard stories of one named Cleopatra.”

  It was a testament to my nerves that I was careless enough to mention one of Rome’s greatest foes. But the emperor’s eyes brightened with amusement rather than offense. “You’ve heard of her?” I nodded because everyone who had heard of Julius Caesar had heard of his paramour, the queen who was rumored to have been the cause of his assassination. “How splendid. I usually make a point not to mention it, but I am descended of Cleopatra’s f-famous paramour, Marcus Antonius.”

  The emperor had apparently taken a liking to the subject . . . and to me. Sweeping his arm in welcome, the emperor said, “Tell me, Queen Cartimandua, are you to be my Cleopatra of the Celts?”

  He was the first to call me that. And if I felt shame before, now it seared my insides; for it seemed as if his question carried a hint of salaciousness. Beside me, Prasutagus clenched his jaw. But both of us quite misunderstood Emperor Claudius, who was a different sort than the emperors before or after him. He liked women. He appreciated them without seduction. And he swiftly charmed me by setting out terms that were startlingly generous.

  “You are not to be s-slaves, but honored Friends and Allies,” he said, explaining that we were each to be given a gold crown, an ivory scepter, a purple robe, and a curule chair like the one upon which he sat. We would be granted Roman citizenship as well, to which various rights and privileges were attached.

  The Roman concept of alliance was not easily broken. This alliance would require mutual responsibilities and shows of loyalty. Tribute, yes. Grain, yes. We would have to honor Claudius with shrines, as if he were a god. That stuttering little man, a god!

  But there were benefits for us as well.

  Roads to facilitate trade. Loans to bring about new settlements. Advisors to teach us of warfare and architecture. All things that would mean a better future for my people. And that was a vision that shook me anew.

  That night, Prasutagus and I climbed a hill to overlook the Roman tents and all the stunning weaponry they’d brought with them, including siege engines that could be used to defend our lands or to subdue them.

  Sitting next to me in the tall grass, Prasutagus whispered my name as if he loved the sound of it. “Cartimandua. Sleek pony. That is the meaning of your name, is it not?”

  I nodded. “It is as if my parents knew that even though I was born to be queen, I would strain against the reins of that responsibility every day of my life. I am straining still.”

  He nodded. “Will you make an alliance with Rome?”

  Knowing that he had been elected by one of the Iceni tribes to lead them in this, I asked, “Will you?”

  “Yes. And my fellow Iceni chieftains, too. Though we will all be hated for it. You will be, too.”

  No, I thought. My people loved me. I could make them understand this was the only way. They had loved me in the bloom of my maidenhood, and now I was more like a mother to them, making difficult choices for their protection. They would love me still.

  But Prasutagus went on grimly. “Be prepared. The pride of the tribesmen will make them hate us until the day we die, alone and unmourned. And even if the dictates of our gods insist that we be given funerals, no one will come except for the children who want to spit upon our graves.”

  I thought he needed to have more faith in our people. Nevertheless, the torment on his face was such that I humored him. “If you should die before me, I will come to your funeral, Prasutagus. You have my word in that.”

  He barked a bitter laugh. “Well, that does console me. I return the vow.”

  Drawing my chin to my knees, I reached my decision. “I will make the treaty with Rome. There is no other choice; my people will understand that. And even if they don't, and children of the Brigantes one day spit upon my grave, I will rejoice that they are free to spit upon me instead of perishing in some faraway slave ship.”

  How lightly I said it . . .

  Prasutagus sighed bitterly. “Now that’s certainly something to celebrate.”

  I knew we would cry if we did not laugh, so I teased, “Yes! If we had wine, we could toast to attending one another’s funerals and all the little children who will live to spit on our graves for making peace with the Romans.”

  “I would rather celebrate that we have finally made a promise to one another,” he replied.

  He was wrong, of course. Our bodies had already made a promise—a promise I couldn’t keep. A child I couldn’t keep. And so I was silent.

  “My heart breaks to surrender to the Romans,” he finally admitted, looking up at me with both sadness and longing in his expression. “But then . . . my heart is already broken. As I said, I have not yet married.”

  I did not ask why. I had seen the heated looks exchanged between him and a spirited Iceni girl in the camp. Boudica was her name, and she was only a few years younger than me. Tall like me, too. Hair of flame, like mine, and cunning in the sparkle of her eyes. A girl he could marry, I thought. A girl he could love . . . unless I gave him reason not to.

  With the world as we knew it at an end, it would have been easy to lie down in the grass and find comfort in one another. But I have rarely done the easy thing, the thing I wanted, the thing that wou
ld please me. So I did not play my husband false. Not even for Prasutagus. For whatever else may be said of me, I am no one’s whore.

  I have been married three times. Once by sacred rite to my people. Once by vow to my husband. Once by treaty to the Romans. And in spite of what is said about me, I have been a faithful wife to all.

  DECIANUS

  Roman Fortress near Durobrivae

  Winter, 60 AD

  “I thought you commanded Queen Cartimandua back to Brigantia?” Valeria sputtered.

  “I asked her to return to Brigantia,” Decianus replied evenly. “I did not command it. Not precisely, anyway.” He could have commanded it, of course. But something in the queen’s story had touched him. It was not her brazen confession that she had taken a lover before marriage with the same freedom a man might. Nor was it any sentimentality for the fact that she had once lain with the dead king. Their love affair was long ago. Nearly twenty years by his reckoning, and when it came to such calculations, he was invariably correct.

  No, it was not her shameful lust that moved him.

  It was the grief in her voice as she spoke of the child that died in her womb. A child that—were she a Roman matron—would have been cause for her family, or her husband, to kill her.

  Or to demand that she kill herself for honor.

  Yet Queen Cartimandua had expressed no relief at the loss of the child that could have been her shame and ruin. Only grief. Grief for the man who gave that child life, grief for the death of that child, and grief for her childlessness . . . a grief Decianus knew all too well. So he had, in the end, agreed to accompany Queen Cartimandua to the funeral of Prasutagus in spite of the risks.

  But of course, he told his wife none of this.

  In the quarters given over to him in the fortress, Valeria reached for her hair as if to let it down for the evening, but she was too steeped in propriety, even in her husband’s presence, to relax in such a way. “Still. For this Cartimandua woman to refuse even a request from the emperor’s own agent—I do hope an unfortunate precedent has not been set.”

  Decianus knew what his wife was thinking. That he was too soft on the tribesmen. That he was supposed to enforce the might and majesty of Rome and preserve the honor of the empire in all his dealings.

  But frankly, he was not very good at that.

  He was meant to be closeted away with scrolls and ink, tabulating. Numbers made sense to him. They were predictable. But people? People were mercurial and puzzling. Like Queen Cartimandua. And his wife. His wife, who, given her movements upon the bed, seemed to be trying to discern how to share a blanket without actually touching beneath it, skin to skin. It was not their custom to sleep together at night. They kept to their own chambers, as was only fitting and proper.

  But when in Britannia . . .

  Decianus girded himself to climb under the blanket with her, and for the briefest moment, wondered if there had ever been another man in Valeria’s bed. Her family’s pedigree vouched for her purity, but there had been no blood on their wedding night. That meant nothing, he knew. And given Valeria’s rather chilly conjugal embrace, he never imagined she might give herself to any man except for duty, much less one who was not her husband.

  But Cartimandua’s tale made him wonder . . .

  . . . until his wife caught him staring and laid back in surrender. She had mistaken his intention but remembered her duty. That was Valeria, whose delicate bones, tiny fingers, and girlish body comprised the most unlikely vessel for the iron-willed creature he knew dwelled within it. And that body had been, thus far, unable to provide either of them with the comfort of a child they both so desperately wanted. He assumed that was her fault, of course. But a tiny voice worried at the back of his mind that the weakness was in him.

  “Take the blanket,” he said at last, tucking it up under her chin tenderly, a gesture so little practiced that it must have felt as awkward to her as it seemed to him.

  “Won’t you be cold?” she asked, obviously confused.

  But he saw, too, a bit of hopefulness in his wife’s eyes that he would do something terribly manly, like claim that he was too tough of a Roman to need a blanket on this icy winter night. She would like that, he thought. He knew that now. Too bad that his younger self had not known it when he was still capable of suffering to impress a woman. “I have my cloak, and I’ll send the servants to fetch another blanket.”

  Her sigh of disappointment was scarcely audible, but she shifted away from him, onto her side, so that he was left only with the sight of her back. Which of course, prompted him, in a huff, to do the same so that they would sleep with the blades of their shoulders pressed together in silent battle.

  “It will be much warmer in Gaul,” Decianus muttered, thinking again of his villa in Narbo, where he imagined he would roam the hills with a flock of sheep, a crook in one hand, a loaf of flat bread in the other. “I should like to retire there this summer, if possible.”

  “This summer?” Valeria asked in the tone that always presaged that imperial arch of her brow.

  To which Decianus replied, “I can’t imagine that you’d want to stay. Haven’t we toiled long enough in this accursed place?”

  Her silence told him that she was struggling against her temper, and he almost wished that, just once, she would let it fly. Instead, she sweetly said, “Of course. But after more than ten years here . . . to return empty-handed? To spend more than a decade of our lives here and achieve neither honor, nor glory, nor even the wealth my family—”

  “You may put aside your worries on the matter of wealth at least,” he snapped. He was a careful manager of money. They would never go hungry. But he could not make her a great lady in Rome—could not make her the wife of a great man. He had not advanced himself. He had not served very long in the military before retiring to civilian life. He had not politicked in Rome, nor even here, having declined to stroke the ego of Governor Paulinus. He would never lead an army, and no one would ever erect an arch to him.

  But money he had, even though he had never skimmed so much as a copper from the emperor’s share; he took some foolish pride in that. He’d never administered any grand enterprise that would enrich him before, but that was about to change, whether he wanted it or not. “There is a very good chance that our financial situation may improve quite markedly after the funeral of King Prasutagus.”

  He had told no one of his anxieties regarding the emperor’s inevitable command that the dead king’s lands be seized and added to the empire. He had not meant to tell Valeria, either, but she was too shrewd to miss the implication.

  “So the Iceni kingdom is to be dissolved,” she deduced at once, sitting up in the dark. “And you’re to oversee their annexation to the province of Britannia?”

  Decianus sat up, too, holding out his hands to fend off her excitement. “I have received no official word from the emperor as to the fate of the Iceni yet. Or his judgment on the king’s last will.”

  Valeria was now animated, eyes bright even in the shadows. “What is there to judge? The king left his kingdom to the emperor, as is customary, did he not?”

  She was curious about something Decianus had to say for once, so he found himself confiding in her. “The Iceni king left his kingdom and his property to the emperor and his young daughters, as joint heirs.”

  Valeria’s eyes widened. “How irregular.”

  “The Britons do not distinguish between the sexes in choosing their leaders.”

  Queen Cartimandua was living proof of that.

  Valeria gave a disgusted shake of her head. “Savages.”

  Decianus was inclined to agree. But the king’s will was, he thought, the desperate gambit of a dying man who hoped to build a dynasty. Ultimately, a doomed gambit. Even if Rome were to approve the plan, it had been Iceni custom to elect their leaders. More importantly, Rome would not approve the plan.

  Even under the best circumstances, Emperor Nero was prickly about promine
nt men who died without leaving him the better portion of their fortunes. He would never settle for half. Especially when the other half was to go to two unmarried girls.

  “Surely the Iceni suspect what is coming,” Valeria said. “Will you need more soldiers?”

  By which she meant, You will need more soldiers.

  “With the governor on campaign, there aren’t any more soldiers to be had. I hope the emperor’s order does not come until after Governor Paulinus returns to execute the matter himself.”

  Valeria actually touched her hand to his arm. “But there’s an opportunity for you if the order comes sooner. If you orchestrate this effectively, you will not only get a share of the wealth but commendation for it in Rome.”

  His wife was touching him. Willingly. She was staring at him with more interest than she had since the day they married, and it was more intoxicating than he remembered. Valeria giving her full fierce attention was a head-spinning thing. And he began to think that perhaps she was right. Perhaps he could settle this matter with Roman gravitas. Perhaps he could do this better than the governor could and be the great man of Rome that his wife wanted him to be.

  But he doubted it.

  CARTIMANDUA

  I keep my promises, I thought, staring down at the husk of a body that was once my beloved friend.

  Men and women are so different in life. We are locked in battle from birth but cannot create life without each other. So we must forge a treaty and join together for one ecstatic moment in which we become one. Then, when we unravel after, it is only a kind of magic that lets us keep the promises we made in the first flush of joining.

  Yes, men and women seem such different creatures in life, but in death we are all the same. Withered husks in a grave with nothing but our legend when we are gone. And I wondered what the legend of Prasutagus would be. For myself, I feared I knew already the reputation that would follow me to my death. But would the Iceni honor the memory of Prasutagus and his practical wisdom?