Iceni (eBook)

Helen K Barker (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2004
Mushroom eBooks (Verlag)
978-1-84319-026-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Boudicca - Queen, Priestess, mother, woman...
Emerging from her recent widowhood, Boudicca is unwillingly plunged into a maelstrom of intrigue between the Celtoi tribes and the conquering Romani. Victim of her own still raw emotions and Romani greed, Boudicca is approached by an elusive Druid to lead the Celtoi in rebellion.
As the rebellion unfolds it gathers a momentum of its own, sweeping Boudicca along with it. But she finds that she must make many sacrifices in order to fulfil the role demanded of her. As the sacrifices increase, so does Boudicca's descent into madness. Will too much be asked of her?
Iceni draws on known Iron Age archaeology, Roman history, elements from Celtic mythology, paganism, Goddess-spirituality, and witchcraft, to paint a vivid and disturbing picture of life and war in Roman Britain.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Imbolc

It was a good day for change. Boudicca could feel the earth responding to the stronger surge of life pulsing up to warm its roots and excite its creatures to song. The icy freshness chilled things to their essence, leaving them naked and stark and without pretension, almost as if nature could be seen with a true eye. As she watched the day unfold, she counted two pairs of magpies sprint to the shelter of the nearest fringe of trees. She greeted each of them in turn and smiled for the fresh pairing which heralded the turn of the seasons.

Today was Bride’s Day, a portal day, when the land lay prone beneath the equal grip of spring and winter. She felt it as less a battle of the seasons and more an easing between old adversaries. Welcoming in the dawn, she felt the lust of her Goddess enticing the young God and imagined the scent of Their sexual heat. He was bringing energy to Her, energy and determination, and together Their mating frenzy would clear away the old and the tired and usher in growth and fertility. Despite her regret at having no partner with whom to emulate her Goddess, Boudicca Blessed Their coupling — any change would be welcome.

She hadn’t slept too well throughout the winter, not yet accustomed to sleeping alone, and had woken this morning in the small, quiet pre-dawn of utter isolation. She had felt the stirrings of a great day from the moment she wrapped a woollen blanket around herself and crept out into the fields, where she watched the dawn throw its rose tinge across the horizon. Instinctively, she knew that vast repercussions were carried in its wake.

These slices of privacy had become like a gift in this bustling life where there was precious chance for contemplation and everyone seemed to depend upon her. A few moments when the world moved at a slow enough pace for her not to have to struggle to keep up, and when she no longer felt different or set apart, for there was no one to compare herself to. These insights came with the grief as a mixed blessing, as unbidden as the memories.

In an instant she was back at the start of winter, to Samhain, when she was last with her husband. Her unfocused starring had stilled her mind to invoke a reminiscence as clear as a vision. Her powers of recall were strong enough to feel the lick of flames upon her wet cheeks and the smell of sickness through the wood smoke. Tears welled gently to mist her sight, reproducing the image etched indelibly upon her mind. She tensed, reliving being torn between staying put and going to him. She had stayed put, in the end, tucked away in the darkest spot of the hut, where only the brightest flames illumined her torc and no one could get at her. Stayed put, with an arm around each daughter, making them stay put too. Three shiny mahogany heads with angry, mad eyes that must have seemed like feral creatures to the doctors and diplomats who enclosed the dying man on the pallet by the hearth.

Despite the crackling of the dry timber and the murmurings of the professionals which accompanied death, she was sure he was whimpering her name, ‘Boudicca, Boudicca’. He was coughing blood and fighting for each breath, yet still he called her to him. She was rigid with fear and anger, unable to push through these quacks and sycophants with their formal, defined roles. They had tried to take everything from her and her husband and now they robbed them of their last opportunity for intimacy. She was the only character in this bizarre play with no part, no lines, and so very frightened that if she went to him she would lose her composure, would break down and would keep him here, trapped in limbo, between worlds.

So he had died without her, giving one last shuddering sigh like peace itself and surrounded by the faces of strangers. She had berated herself for it ever since. She had approached the bed at last when only the healers’ assistants remained to tidy the body. She had crept stealthily as if afraid to wake him and melted into his eyes, which were already glazing over.

There was no rest. He looked in shock. She had looked up to where he had been staring, to see what he might have seen as his last sight. She was half expecting to see some shining spirit, especially on this day, their New Year when the gates between the worlds were at their thinnest. But there was nothing, just the roof struts. His lips had curled back to bare his teeth in a tight grimace. She made herself bend to kiss him, brushing her lips to his, because she knew that was what she was meant to do. This last picture of him, she realised, would be carved in her heart for eternity, to corrupt any future moment of pleasure which she might have the audacity to enjoy.

Death, she decided, was cruellest in its simulation of life. He had looked so much as he had the instant before, yet with just one vital essence missing. Now here, now gone. And this, showing her tenderness to him too late, with only the slaves to note her compassion, was all she had been granted. Excluded from the pomp and ceremony of death to pick up the rags of their life together from the leavings of others. She couldn’t remember how long she had stood transfixed, keeping vigil by her dead husband. Only that, after a period which had seemed both like moments and eons, her daughters had come back and with strong, insistent, supporting arms had led her outside where the wailing had started and the tears had never stopped.

‘Mother? Here again? You should go back. Don’t you know bears have been sighted in the woods recently and the wolves are still south this early in the year?’

She looked at her daughter as if seeing through her. Being mauled didn’t seem so bad when your insides were in such turmoil. ‘I have my spear.’ She tapped the weapon at her side. Then held her hand out to interrupt her daughter’s further remonstration. ‘I could hunt wolf and even bear single handed before I reached your summers. I haven’t forgotten yet. There’s very little I forget, Grania mine, and I don’t think I’ll be troubled by the wild creatures when I sit so softly and think on your father.’

Grania put her head in her hands in frustration. ‘Father was a good king. Prasutagus will be remembered by the children’s children’s children of both Iceni and Romani for the peace he brought our peoples in difficult circumstances. Now we need a Queen, remember? We need you as you were before you took him as consort and shared your rule. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that, or the fact that if the Romani catch you with your spear, there’ll be trouble for all of us.

‘Oh yes, mother-mine,’ Grania continued. ‘Our “guests” have been especially busy today, despite the earliness. Something’s going on, they’re anticipating something and have tightened up their act. Everyone seems very tense. Come to think of it, out here you can sense a keen sort of “motion”, like nervous energy.’

‘So, you haven’t managed to shut your Gift out completely then?’ Boudicca teased Grania, enjoying seeing her daughter squirm just a little. ‘No, don’t sulk, it’s your birthright and you’ll come to treasure it one day, but I don’t want to argue with you. Just help me up and we’ll say no more, the dew has seized some of my aching joints.’ Grania reached down, bracing her legs and extending a supporting arm.

Boudicca flicked her hand up, catching her daughter not by the hand but by the elbow. Rolling back she pulled Grania over her head and used the momentum to spring into a fighting crouch. There was no need — Grania was doubled with laughter and surprise and quite incapable of retaliating.

‘Don’t tell me I can’t even trust my own mother!’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve studied so much war you’ve forgotten the basics! Just wanted to remind you that I haven’t forgotten anything. Everything is crystal clear, by Mother, occasionally it would be a mercy if it wasn’t. Perhaps it’ll fade in due course, but I’ve delayed too long already and I betray our tribe for ever thinking I did not. So today, daughter-mine, I move on, despite the binds which bid me still. Today is the dawning of a new spring and a fresh start and a day of many changes. I feel it too, perhaps more acutely because I want to feel it, but these Romani with their ordered psyches confuse the land for reading, and I can’t Scry what today brings. I feel it will change us all irrevocably, though, in its passing.

‘Now I may still need my dawn forays to exorcise these moods which plague me, but I’m still capable of placing a Ward for wild creatures around me and a Glamour upon a stick to make it a spear. Can you imagine the Romani’s evidence melting before their very eyes? Now, perhaps one of the most welcome changes would be for you to stop underestimating your mother? After all, I’m not so old; I was only a summer or two older than you are now when I birthed you.’

The two women embraced, their differences accepted, and started back down the slight slope towards the timbered enclosure they called home. They crossed newly tilled fields, each neat square of land forced to expose its rich black tilth furrow by furrow. Plough teams were already harnessed and working the fields nearest the forest edge, freshly cleared to provide work — and grain later — for the many refugees who had fled for royal sanctuary. It was fertile land; by mid-summer it would be a rippling mass of spelt, broad wheat and bere barley. For once Boudicca couldn’t bring to mind the image of the maturing yellow wealth, despite it being such a familiar scene. Perhaps the particular field she was concentrating upon would experience severe storm damage and not come to fruition. She paused, shifting her gaze to another patch of...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.4.2004
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 1-84319-026-5 / 1843190265
• ISBN-13: 978-1-84319-026-4 / 9781843190264