heart-fire and hearth-fire witness your vows.” The old Druid stepped
back.
Still bound together, Prasutagos and Boudica circled the fi re, once,
twice, and a third time, to stand before the Druid once more. Had it
grown hotter, or was it the heat of Prasutagos’s body that was kindling
her own?
“Now it is done. Now you are bound in the sight of earth and
heaven. King and Queen, Priest and Priestess, Lord and Lady you shall
be to each other and to your land.” He turned them, and together they
crossed the gap and left the earthen ring with the others falling in be-
hind them. As they emerged, the boys and men began to sing—
“You are the breeze that cools the brow,
You are the well of sweet water,
You are the earth that cradles the seed,
You are the oven that bakes the bread,
You are the beloved.”
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And once more the women replied—
“You are the wind that shakes the oak,
You are the rain that fills the sea,
You are the seed within the earth,
You are the fire upon the hearth,
You are the beloved.”
Did you think all this was in your honor?” Cartimandua turned to
Boudica, gesturing toward the bonfire around which a circle of young
men were dancing, their coordination only a little impaired by the
quantities of heather ale they had drunk this eve ning. As a ruling queen,
she had been given the place of honor next to the bride.
Food in plenty was set out on the long cloth spread before the royal
guests—roasted venison and wild boar, beef from their pastures and
salmon and eels from the river, bread and beans and barley, fruit dried
and fresh, and pungent cheeses. If the purpose of the wedding feast was
to imprint the event on people’s minds, this marriage would be well
remembered.
“The Romans have come,” the queen continued. “And despite all
those fine words at Camulodunon, no one really knows what will hap-
pen to Britannia now.” For a moment her dark gaze rested on young
Epilios, who had dragged Boudica’s little brother, Braci, into the dance.
So far everyone had conspired to keep the Romans ignorant that
another son of Cunobelin still lived. But now that they were Roman
clients, he might not be safe in the Iceni lands, and he would make far
too valuable a hostage for Caratac’s good behavior. At the thought,
Boudica remembered her other brother, now on his way to Rome. Her
father was already beginning to groom little Braci as his heir. Dubno-
coveros might never return, and if he did, he might be more Roman
than Celt, like that priggish boy Cogidubnos whom Boudica had met in
Camulodunon.
Cartimandua shrugged. “A wedding is a promise that life will go
on, and getting drunk is a safe way to release the frustration of not being
able to come to grips with your foe.”
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Boudica put down the piece of roast boar she had been pretending to
eat and took another sip from her silver cup. They had been served mead,
fiery as the wedding torch and as sweet as love was supposed to be. A
gabble of conversation rose around her in which from time to time she
would catch a name—Morigenos . . . Tingetorix . . . Brocagnos—that
she supposed she ought to know. These were the chief men of the Iceni
kingdom, with whom she would have to deal as queen.
And what about my frustration? she wondered.
Prasutagos was talking to the king about breeding cattle. Indeed,
since their vows in the earthen ring he and she had exchanged scarcely
a word. And yet, though the braid no longer tied them together, she was
acutely aware of the mass and heat of his body next to hers.
I am bound, she thought resentfully. But is he ? She held out her
cup to be refilled and drank again. Halfway up the sky a full moon
fi re.
“And how do they celebrate weddings in your land?” she asked the
queen.
Cartimandua’s glance flicked down the line of feasters to her hus-
band and she laughed. “Not so tamely as you do here! There are vows
and blessings, to be sure, but first the man must carry off his bride from
among her kindred. They come to her home and she pretends to hide,
or they attack the bridal procession, and she sets heels to her horse and
he must run her down.”
“Even at the wedding of a king and a queen?”
“Especially then.” Cartimandua smiled reminiscently. “In my coun-
try we are very proud of our horses. The stallion is not allowed to breed
unless he can catch the mare.”
“The Iceni breed fi ne horses, too!” Boudica exclaimed.
“Indeed they do.” Cartimandua gave her a speculative look. “I would
wager that red filly your husband gifted you has a fine turn of speed . . .”
The servants had at last ceased to bring out new dishes, but they
were still replenishing the mead. The musicians fell silent, and the mur-
mur of conversation stilled as King Antedios rose to his feet.
“Let us drink to this happy occasion—a toast to the bridal pair!” He
raised his goblet. “The two branches of the Iceni are once more united!
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To seal the bargain, Dubrac gives his new son forty white ewes and six
breeding mares.”
“And the finest of them is that filly who sits at Prasutagos’s side!”
The comment was just loud enough to carry. There was a general rum-
ble of masculine laughter, and Boudica felt her face heating. She had
resented being ignored, but this was not the kind of attention she craved.
She held out her cup to be refi lled.
Where now were the noble vows they had exchanged in the circle?
No matter how you dressed it up with ritual, the truth was that she had
been married off to a man almost twice her age to cement an alliance,
last if not least in the tally of livestock with which Prasutagos was being
paid to take her on. In exchange, Dubrac would receive cattle, and sev-
eral farmsteads up on the northern coast would be Boudica’s own.
She blinked hazily as retainers carried in the gifts from the other
wedding guests to be admired—rolls of wool and linen and a beautifully
carved loom so that she could stay busy making more, a set of ruddy
Samian ware dishes made in Gallia, several amphorae of Roman wine.
Very pretty, thought Boudica, but were they worth our freedom? At least
the red mare, adorned with her rich harness and sidling nervously as she
was led among the feasters, was home-grown. Boudica drank down the
last of her mead.
The queen’s women were forming up in front of the house that had
been prepared for the bedding of the bride. “It is not day nor yet day,”
they sang. “It is not day, nor yet morning: It is not day, nor yet day, for
the moon is shining brightly . . .”
It was, too, thought Boudica, squinting as she tried to bri
ng it into
focus. There seemed to be two moons dancing up there, or maybe it was
three. Plenty of light for the drunken fools who would bang on pots
outside the door and shout ribald suggestions as to how Prasutagos
should serve his new mare.
“Time to get you ready for your wedding night, my child,” said
Cartimandua, putting out a steadying hand as Boudica tried to rise.
“And a pity it is to waste such a night beneath a roof. With the moon so
full, ’tis nigh as bright as day.”
Boudica gained her feet and swayed as the world spun around her.
“Oh dear,” said the queen. “Well, it’s only the husband who dare
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not risk being made incapable. If you’re a virgin you might even prefer
to be drunk your first time . . .” Boudica’s mother started toward them
and Cartimandua waved her away.
“I need . . . the privy,” Boudica said with as much dignity as she
could muster.
“I’m sure you do, my child,” Cartimandua set a hand beneath her
elbow and steered her away from the fi re.
To accommodate the numbers of guests they had dug new privies
down by the horse lines. The red mare, still wearing her embroidered
blanket, was tied to a fence post by her halter. She threw up her head
and snorted as Boudica and her escort passed by.
The walk through the crisp air had cleared Boudica’s head enough
so that she could go behind the wicker screen alone, and by the time she
had relieved herself of as much of the mead as possible, there was only
one moon in the sky. A pity, she thought glumly. Cartimandua was
right. She was about to be deflowered, practically in public, by a man for
whom she was just another broodmare. It would all have been much
easier through a haze of mead.
At last she stood, adjusting her skirts and pinning her wool cloak
more securely. Now that the alcohol was leaving her system, the air felt
cold. Cartimandua was waiting. In silence they started up the path.
“Wait a moment,” she said as they came to the place where the mare
was tethered. “The horse is mine, and I’ve not yet given her a name.”
She moved quietly forward.
The mare bobbed her head and snuffled as Boudica reached up to
rub the place behind her ear where the headstall pinched. She brought
her hands down to cradle the horse’s head and blew into her nostrils.
“Hey there, my lovely lass. Shall I call you Roud then, my red one?
And have they left you bound?” She slid her hand along the shining neck,
and the mare rubbed her head up and down her shoulder. “It seems a pity
on such a night, when you should be running free over the hills . . .”
From somewhere near the fire men were shouting, “Bring out the
bride!” “Bring out the mare—the stallion is ready!” “Where is she, lads?
Let’s go find her! Show us the bride!”
“Do you know . . .” Boudica said over her shoulder to Cartiman-
dua. “I do not care to be everyone’s entertainment this evening. Your
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people are not the only ones who believe a queen ought to be re-
spected.” She sighed, remembering Lhiannon’s counsels at Avalon. She
ran her hand along the saddlecloth and found that the cinch was still
tight.
“But I find what you’ve told me about Brigante customs quite ap-
pealing. King Prasutagos ought to earn his bride, don’t you agree?” She
reached under the mare’s neck and gave a tug to the knot. As she had
hoped, it was the sort that released quickly. The horse took a step for-
ward as the rope loosened, moving between Boudica and the queen.
“Oh indeed,” breathed Cartimandua, her voice shaken with con-
sternation, or possibly laughter.
“Prasutagos did not court me,” Boudica continued in the same even
tone, easing the horse around, “nor did he buy me.” She set her hands
on the mare’s withers and back. “Catching me is the least he can do.”
With a heave she got her belly across the smooth back, scrambling to get
her leg up and over, the halter rope still in her hand.
And then she was seated, her long legs gripping the mare’s sides, and
in the same moment the horse leaped forward. Boudica bent over the
shining neck, not much caring where they went, so long as it was away
from here. As they sped down the road, she heard the shouting begin
behind her, and above it, the ringing peal of Cartimandua’s laugh.
T E N
The mare’s first wild dash carried them out of the dun and splashing
across the ford of the Tas. As she came up the bank Boudica turned and
saw the dun alight with moving torches. Prasutagos would have to fol-
low or be forever shamed, but all the other horses were loose in the
pasture, and by now most of the men would be too drunk to catch
them. Several roads rayed out from the ford, white in the moonlight.
Laughing, she gave the mare her head, wondering which way the horse
would choose.
It was north. As the miles fell away behind them, it was clear that
the mare was heading for the fields she knew. By the time Prasutagos
found them they would be halfway home. From time to time she pulled
the horse back to a walk, listening. But except for the occasional bark of
a dog as they passed a farmstead, the land lay quiet beneath the moon.
The Druids had spells to confuse a pursuer or blind a trail, but Boudica
had not learned them. And in any case, she did want Prasutagos to fi nd
her . . . just not . . . yet.
There were two more rivers to be crossed, the last one deep enough
that the mare had to swim. By the time they reached shore, Boudica was
shivering in the predawn cold. Still, she was warmer on the horse’s back
than she would have been on the ground, and her Druid training had
taught her to ignore the body’s discomfort. By now the mare was will-
ing to go at a walking pace, and they continued until the autumn sun
had steamed Boudica’s clothing dry.
By the time she reined her mount off the road and into a wood
where a spring offered water and grass grew thickly among the trees,
they had covered nearly twenty miles. She rubbed down the horse and
used her belt to fashion hobbles so that the animal could graze, then laid
the saddle cloth on the ground for a bed and rolled up in her cloak to
rest, wondering how long it would take Prasutagos to come.
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When she woke, it was well past noon and she was regretting hav-
ing eaten so little of the wedding feast. The mare, on the other hand,
had made the most of the rich grass, and was very willing to be off once
more.
The land here was gently rolling, a mixture of woodland and heath
broken by scattered farmsteads surrounded by long rectangular fi elds.
By this time Boudica no longer feared to leave a clue for anyone who
followed, and ventured to stop at one of the farms and trade some of the
ribands from her hair for a meal and a bed by the fire. She had dreaded
having to find answers for their questions, but the folk here were slow-
speaking and patient, keeping their own counsel and seemingly willing
for her to keep her own. It was only later that she remembered the ges-
tures of warding she had been too tired to notice at the time, and real-
ized they must have thought her some creature strayed from Faerie.
Boudica was surprised to wake the next morning and see no sign of
the king. At this rate, she thought in exasperation, she would reach his
dun before he caught up with her and be waiting to welcome him—if
they would admit her. To be captured in the wilderness might be ro-
mantic, to greet him as a beggar at his gate would be embarassing.
She set out with enough apples and bannocks in the fold of her
gown to last a day or more, letting the red mare go at her own pace
along the road. This was a wider and more open land than the country
around Antedios’s dun, and to judge by the many stubbled fi elds, better
drained and more bountiful. The anxieties and resentments that had
plagued Boudica at the wedding seemed very far away. This was a new
land, and as she had done on Mona, she would have to learn its ways.
Unless, of course, Prasutagos repudiated the marriage and sent her
home to her father in disgrace. The thought was enough to plunge
Boudica into glum contemplation for most of the afternoon. That eve-
ning she had no heart to seek shelter at another farmstead and lay once
more in the woodland, gazing through a net of branches at the starry
path across the heavens that seemed to be pointing the way.
She was awakened by the smell of roasting sausage. For a few mo-
ments she thought it was part of a dream, but now she could hear the
crackling of a fire. She frowned and turned over, rubbing her eyes.
Morning light turned the smoke to a golden haze in which she could
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make out only the shape of the man who knelt by the fire. But she knew
his height and breadth of shoulder. A rush of emotion brought her to
full awareness, composed equally of relief, exasperation, and dismay.
“Two days . . .” she said, sitting up. Her brothers had always told her
that attack was the best defense. “You took your time, my lord.”
“There was no hurry. The land is at peace, and I knew where the
mare would go.” Prasutagos turned the sausages and looked back at her.