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

  Decianus pointed at her accusingly, sloshing wine from his cup. “That is not an answer!”

  His wife recoiled as if he had run her through with a sword. “You know the answer. If you did not know it already, you would have killed me or demanded that I kill myself. Even asking the question is such a stain on my honor that I shall be forced to find a dagger!”

  With that, she lunged for the chest at the foot of the bed, and he grabbed his wife’s arm. “Don’t,” he whispered hoarsely, unnamed dread coursing through him. “Never say that. I would never want that, Valeria. Never.”

  “You believe I am an adulteress!”

  “No,” he said, feeling the pressure of tears stinging behind his eyes. Tears he could not shed lest she loathe him for a weakling. Loathe him even more than she already did. “No. I am sorry. I should not have said it.”

  “But you did say it.” Valeria made a soft sound that was nearly a sob. “And now you have stained me.”

  “Stop,” he said, though whether he meant it for her or for himself he could not say. “Stop. Enough. It does not matter. It did not happen. I am sorry. I am foolish. A foolish man. I am sorry. Forgive me.”

  She stood there, her chest rising and falling as she struggled to get her own emotions under control. And at the sight of that pale, delicate bosom rising and falling, he could not bear the thought of a dagger pricking so much as a drop of blood there.

  “I knew a woman once,” he whispered, thinking to console her. “A woman who took her own life for honor. I was only a boy then. I came upon her in my father’s kitchen, where she lay sprawled upon the floor. One pale arm cupped around a slightly rounded belly that may have been her shame. Her hot red blood still flowing in a line from her heart to where it pooled beneath her body.”

  Valeria's hand flew to her own heart and pressed there. “Oh, dear gods, how ghastly.”

  Ghastly. Yes. Decianus nodded. That was all he was capable of doing in his drunken state, the god of revelry having turned his inebriation into jagged memories that tore at the very center of his being. So he just kept nodding. “Ghastly.”

  “Who was she?” Valeria asked softly. “Did you know her?”

  “In a way,” Decianus allowed, his gaze falling away. “She was my mother.”

  “Oh.” Valeria gasped, then stroked his arm in what felt like true sympathy. “Oh, Decianus. Your mother. How terrible.”

  “Yes, terrible,” he agreed, realizing he had never told anyone this before. Half wishing he was not telling anyone now. “I never knew why. Perhaps she was violated. Perhaps she was an adulteress. Perhaps she would not have done it if a child had not come of it. As I said, I never knew why. It was merely agreed by everyone that she had done the right thing to restore honor. And then no one ever said her name again.”

  It was all very noble, or so he had been told. But as a motherless boy, he had thought it an abomination. Some part of him still did.

  Valeria touched him more tenderly than she had ever touched him before, bringing her lips softly to his cheek, stroking his hair. “Oh, Decianus, of course she did the right thing. For a woman’s honor. Family honor. Roman honor. What a sacrifice she made so that her son could become a great man of Rome. You see that, don’t you?”

  He did not see that, but he was lost in the nearness of his wife and the softness of her kiss. At least until she whispered, “Every moment of your life has led you to this opportunity to impress the emperor and make your name. Here and now, in subduing the Iceni, you can give meaning to your mother’s life by making something of the family name that she died for.”

  You’re too soft with these savages, she meant. It reflects badly upon the emperor. And if you are a real man, you will do what needs to be done.

  CARTIMANDUA

  “Caratacus killer,” someone hissed at me from the darkness.

  And though it was my practice never to reply to indecorous hecklers—not even when they awakened me at knifepoint—I managed to snarl, “He isn’t dead, you imbecile.”

  A hand slapped down over my mouth then, pressing me back into the bed furs, and I realized that this was one situation I was unlikely to negotiate my way out of. Even if one could negotiate with a shadowy fanatic who clearly wanted revenge against Cartimandua, Betrayer of the Britons.

  Thus, while the drunken Iceni tribesmen and other notables slept beyond the wicker partition that divided my chambers from the Great Hall, I began the fight for my life. Venutius had taught me to defend myself when we were first married. We made a game of it, wrestling in our marriage bed as a prelude to a more pleasant kind of wrestling. So I knew how to bring my knee up sharply into my attacker’s side, and it made him lose hold of the knife.

  It was a man trying to kill me, wasn’t it? I couldn’t know, but as I cried out for help, I thought I caught the scent of a mistletoe potion and burned bread. Druids, I thought. So that’s why I was not simply stabbed to death in my sleep. Sacrificial killings are complicated and rare. Not a simple slit throat in the darkness. Perhaps something more than murder was intended here.

  These were the nearly incoherent thoughts that flew through my mind as I pushed against the weight of my attacker, groping for my own blade in the dark. That’s when the fiend wrapped his hands around my neck. I couldn’t call out again for help. I hadn’t the breath for it. As the blackness closed in on me, my fingers caught the edge of a hilt, and I held on. I had survived before, after all, by holding on. Maybe I could survive again. Or at least draw the villain into death with me.

  What happened next was a blur. I remember thrusting blindly with the blade. The man atop me howled in pain, then crashed backward into a support beam holding up the thatch roof and sent the pots tied to the beam above his head clattering to the floor. My limbs, which were going cold as they had once done in the river, were suddenly warmed by a rush of hot blood. I was gasping sweet breaths of air when Romans burst in with swords drawn. And as the space filled with the torches of people roused from their slumber by the commotion, I saw that I was covered in blood. Was it my blood? I couldn’t tell.

  “Assassin,” I choked out, my throat raw.

  “He’s dead, Queen Cartimandua,” said the irritating Centurion Helva, who had moved up in the ranks since he paid call upon my kingdom all those years ago to tell me that the Iceni had rebelled against Rome. He looked baleful, as if he thought I should have more properly let myself be strangled than do something so unfeminine as to stab my own attacker.

  The corpse was on the floor, and the Iceni Great Hall was in an uproar. Dogs barked madly. Warriors rushed in and out. Even the grieving widow of the king we had come to mourn was drawn from her quarters to demand answers as to who would dare to violate the protection given to a guest under her roof. Sweeping in with an ageing warrior at her elbow, Boudica said, “Find who is behind this. Question every Iceni nobleman.” Then to a slave girl, she snapped, “Fetch Queen Cartimandua some water for washing and clean garments.”

  I was impressed with Boudica’s sense of command at a time when her heart must have been broken and her anxieties keen. Impressed enough that I couldn’t allow her—or anyone—to see that my hands were shaking, so I tucked them behind my back as she made apologies that such a thing should ever befall a guest of the Iceni royal family.

  “There is no need for apologies.” I glanced down again at the dead man, and then forced myself to speak over the lingering pain in my throat. “I know him. He is not Iceni. He is a kinsman of my husband. Which makes it no great mystery who is to blame.”

  My husband was to blame. He was trying to kill me.

  And not for the first time.

  CARTIMANDUA

  Twelve Years Earlier

  The motley band of rebels was brought before me, tied at the hand and foot. Some of them had wiped the dirt from their faces and made themselves neat and presentable.

  Others were still smudged with blood and dirt.

  They were Brigantes. My p
eople. My children.

  One of them, a chieftain of my own council, spat at my feet. “I will not be judged by you, Cartimandua. But you will do as you will. That is your way.”

  “Because I am queen,” I said, reassured by the sensation of Brigantia’s white snake twining between my fingers. I didn’t need anyone’s permission to punish the rebels for leading an uprising in my kingdom. The uprising had so alarmed the Romans that they felt forced to turn back from their campaign against Caratacus to ensure that mine wouldn’t be a hostile kingdom at their flank. That was, I guessed, the real reason for the disturbance. The security of my kingdom was threatened to buy some breathing room for the Hero of the Britons.

  But still, I had to know. “Tell me why you’ve risen up in defiance of your queen.”

  None of the rebels answered, but I saw the eyes of the ringleader flicker toward my husband, then away again. Chilled to the bone, I asked, “Have I abused you in some way? Cheated the craftsmen building this stronghold? Have I brought our kingdom low, or are we more powerful now than ever before?”

  They remained silent . . . and insolent.

  But later, once I’d had the rebels dragged away, my husband spoke for them in the quiet of our bedchamber. “We are more powerful, Cartimandua. You’re right. And we still have our weapons. Which means we can still join the fight against Rome and win.”

  “Not this again,” I said, turning to pace. “I have emphasized to every chieftain in our federation the benefits of our treaty with Rome. Have we suffered for it? No. We are left to our own governance. We are left to our own ways. We are not only surviving but thriving.”

  My husband took me by the arms and made me look into his fierce warrior’s eyes. “There will come a time, Cartimandua, when you must choose.”

  “I made my choice years ago. It is still the best one for our people. Not just the warriors with their pride. I understand that I will never again have the love of all the people,” I said, though it hurt to say it. “I will content myself with the love of most of them. I will not be undermined in this. I will not tolerate opposition in this. Not from those men I arrested, and not from you.”

  Venutius touched my cheek tenderly, as if it might be the last time he ever would. “If you execute those men, you will be hated by most of the people. And I will leave you. I will not be tarnished by your doings. That is the choice you face. I will leave you.”

  I could not fathom what he meant. We had spoken sacred vows. Oaths that could never be broken lest we truly live in dishonor. “We are married,” I said, stunned.

  To which he replied, “What is done can be undone.”

  He should never have said that to me. He should never have put that thought into my mind, where it would fester. He should never have provoked me so. “Leave, then,” I said, for it felt to me as if his heart was already gone. “I am the queen, Venutius. You are the consort. We will see if anyone even notices that you are gone!”

  I executed the rebels.

  Not all of them, of course. My heart was not hard enough for that. But the man who spat at my feet I killed with a knife to the heart. I did it myself. My blade thrust deep beneath his ribs. He collapsed forward, and we danced a final farewell, surprisingly intimate as I breathed in the last breath he took. As his warm blood stained my clothes, my hands, my very self.

  He was the first man I ever killed. But I did it to remind my resentful audience that if I would not be universally loved, I must still be feared. And I was not sorry for it, though I would make an offering to Brigantia that she might spare me from making such a dreadful choice again.

  It was, of course, a hopelessly naive prayer.

  Two years after my husband left me, another prisoner was brought before me.

  One whose visage was weathered from hard fighting, but whose gleaming grin was still familiar to me. “Caratacus?”

  He held up his fettered wrists with a shrug of apology. “I would offer an embrace to greet you properly, my old friend, but . . .” Every spare ounce of flesh had been burned away during his years of harrying the Romans from the mists. But still, he wore that cocksure smile in spite of his peril. “This is not the reunion between us that I envisioned, Queen Cartimandua.”

  “Cut him loose,” I said to my bodyguards because it was painful to see the man in fetters. But I did not send the bodyguards away, for I knew Caratacus to be desperate and dangerous. “You envisioned a reunion between us?”

  The moment he was set free, Caratacus took a step toward me while rubbing his sore wrists. “Why else would I be here, my beautiful red-haired queen of the mists? I have come again to offer an alliance between us. Years ago, I promised that we could unite all the tribes. You asked time to think on it. I think I have given you enough time.”

  “You have come to court me again?” I jested, charmed by his hubris in spite of myself. He still had the bearing of a bard and the theatrical voice of a singer. I could not help wanting to hear what song he would sing, even though I knew it would be only a song.

  “Yes, I have come to court you and ask for your hand in marriage once again,” he said quite seriously. “But this time without gifts to offer. Except for freedom, the most precious gift of all. It would make a fine dowry for our marriage.”

  Freedom for who, exactly? I wondered, for though the nobles chafed under Roman taxes, and the warrior class resented our client status, my people were freer in some senses than they had ever been. “I am already married, Caratacus. And so are you.”

  “Your husband has abandoned you,” he replied evenly. “Divorce him. As for me, my wife and children have been taken captive by the Romans and are lost to me forever.”

  It was then that I was no longer charmed by his hubris. This was his pattern—had been his pattern all along. Lead an army against the Romans, then escape to leave his followers to the consequences. I understood it as a matter of survival. I admired it as a matter of strategy. But I had been castigated for building alliances and stone walls to protect my people, whereas he was celebrated for leading other men to stand and die while he ran free. First from the Catuvellauni. Then from the tribes of the west. Now from his own family—and he was already speaking of them as if they were dead.

  My heart hardened, and I no longer wished to play this game. “You did not come to my kingdom to propose an alliance, Caratacus.”

  He chuckled ruefully. “Why else would I venture into this wintry north? I have nowhere else that is safe for me to hide.”

  “If you wanted to hide, you’d have adopted a new name and taken up farming. So large is my kingdom that I would never have known you were here.” I stood up to say the next part, for indignation drove me to my feet. “You did not come here to hide, and you did not come here because it was safe. And you did not come to see me at all, or you would not have been caught miles north of my stronghold.”

  “Even a man of my experience can get lost in the mists—”

  “Let’s not lie to one another,” I said, closing my eyes upon a sigh, then opening them again. “We both know you’re here to start a rebellion in my kingdom, to take my people, if you can, and make them your own. Anything in the service of fighting the Romans.”

  He opened his mouth as if to deny it. As if to say something clever. But our eyes met in flame and fury until the fire dimmed in his. His bright smile fell away, and weariness finally showed itself in the slump of his shoulders. Seven years was a long time to fight from the mists.

  To live as a legend and not a man.

  “Who was it that betrayed me?” asked the Hero of the Britons.

  “You were only betrayed by the predictability of my enemies. The men I pardoned in the recent disturbance—I had them watched. Like will always seek out like, and so your attempt to meet with disgruntled Brigantes came to my notice. I am only surprised that my husband was not amongst them.”

  Caratacus said nothing to that.

  A lump lodged itself in my throat. So then, my
husband was behind this, too. Twice now, I had survived attempts to remove me from power. Attempts that would have meant my death.

  My husband wanted me dead.

  Perhaps Venutius had been right to say that strong things bend because inside me, I felt my heart shatter and I sank down into a chair.

  Caratacus motioned to the seat beside me. “May I?”

  He did not wait for permission and settled down into it. We were quiet for a long moment. “Bring wine and refreshments,” I finally said to a servant, for I realized how tired and thirsty he must be. Or perhaps it was only my own mouth that had run dry. When the wine was poured, Caratacus drank sparingly. But I emptied my cup.

  “This is a fine stronghold,” he said, breaking off a piece of bread. “All this stone. Very Roman. Strong but inflexible. Our roundhouses are made so that we can up and move whenever we like.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, I intend to stay awhile.”

  Caratacus smirked. “It must be quite an expensive undertaking, even with Roman gold. You know . . . the Druids would ransom me. You have few friends left amongst them in Mona. Freeing me would restore your reputation, the love of those who—”

  “Please.” As I set my wine down, my voice was quiet but firm. “My reputation is nothing when weighed against the good of my people . . .” I trailed off there because I said it more to convince myself than him, and it had opened the wound wider to speak aloud something I could not seem to make myself believe. “I did not capture you for a ransom, Caratacus.”

  “Didn’t you? Surely you are anticipating some manner of reward for turning me over to the Romans.”