Hair and mustache were neatly combed, even the silver strands glinting
gold in the morning sun. He was dressed in sturdy trews and a tunic of
dull green, appropriate for the road. And he was clean.
“I should hope so.” She picked a wisp of grass from her hair.
“You were not difficult to follow. The countryside is full of rumors
of a red woman on a red horse, though report disagrees as to whether
she is one of the goddesses or some refugee from the Roman wars, and
whether this is a good omen or a portent of doom.”
Boudica could feel the blush heating her skin beneath the dust and
grime. She cleared her throat.
“And which view is yours?”
“I think she is an autumnal deity,” he answered dryly. “I promised
to find her, and assured them that the magic of the king was suffi
cient to
counter any spell.” He lifted the sausages from the fire and stuck the
ends of the sticks on which they had been toasting into the soft ground.
“Excuse me,” she said with what dignity she could muster. “I am
going to the stream to wash.”
“Excellent idea. In the pack by the willow tree you will fi nd clean
clothes,” he said gravely. “Don’t run from me again. I don’t think my
reputation could survive losing my bride a second time . . .”
Boudica followed her new husband through the golden autumn
afternoon. In the pack he had brought for her she had found a sleeved
tunic of a light wool the color of the harvested fields. She suspected it
would be a long time before she dared to wear crimson again in Pra-
sutagos’s land. He had also brought the trews she wore for riding, very
welcome to her chafed legs after two days with no protection but the
folds of the linen gown.
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The king’s big bay had a longer pace than the mare’s, and she found
herself always a little behind him. She wondered how he had managed
to escape from his household. But then, as a younger son he had never
expected to inherit a war band, and perhaps he was accustomed to rid-
ing about this countryside alone. Certainly the folk at the steading
where they paused for a rest and a drink of milk fresh from the cow did
not seem surprised to see their king wandering the roads with his new
bride.
Prasutagos was accustomed to being alone, she thought as the miles
passed. Despite the morning’s embarassment, she had hoped that the
constraint between them would disappear. But she suspected now that
at the feast he had been quiet from habit, not from inhibition.
If Coventa had been here, she would have filled the emptiness with
her chattering. Boudica had never needed to do that, and just now she
hardly dared.
“Where will we spend the night?” she asked after an hour without a
word had gone by. “Or do you mean to ride straight on to your dun?”
“The horses need rest,” he said, reining in to answer her. “A little up
the road there is a holy well where folk come to pray to the Goddess for
healing and the granting of desires. I give the people at the farmstead
some support so that they may feed travelers. We will stay there.”
They came to the Lady’s well just as the first stars were kindling in
the sky. The water that flowed from the spring chuckled through a shal-
low valley between wooded hills. But the path was well marked, the
area below the spring had been cleared, and the grass was still green.
Thatched shelters used by earlier pilgrims stood among the trees. No
one else was here so late in the year, but clearly this was a popu lar
shrine.
Prasutagos left Boudica to arrange their bedding while he went up
to the farm for food. She wondered if that division of labor had been
tact, to allow her to choose whether or not to consummate their
marriage now. If he had pressed her, she thought wryly, she might have
resisted, but she had to face the fact that his remoteness was a challenge,
and the binding that had been set upon them in the sacred circle demanded
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completion. She laid out both sets of blankets full width, one atop the
other.
When her husband still had not returned by the time she was fi n-
ished, she picked up their waterskins and one of her remaining ribands
and took the path to the sacred spring. A pool had been dug out to catch
the water that welled from the slope of a little hill. The fading light was
just enough for her to see the fluttering bits of fabric tied to the hazel
tree whose branches shaded it. At its base a piece of wood had been
thrust into the ground, carved with staring eyes and the hollow of a
woman’s vulva below. Smiling, she tied her own ribbon to a twig with
the rest and knelt at the edge.
“Lady,” she whispered, “by whatever name you favor in this land
I honor you. Help me to be a good wife to Prasutagos and bear him
children . . .” And then, more softly, “Help me to win his love . . .” She
scooped up water in her hands and drank, then set the waterskins at the
edge to fi ll.
She sat back on her heels, sweeping the distracting thoughts from her
mind one by one as she had been taught on the Druids’ Isle, until pres-
ently there was only the sweet music of the spring. But from that simple
melody came an awareness that remained in her memory as words.
“You may call me Holy Mother, for the milk from my breasts is always well-
ing, always flowing, always poured out for my children in eternal love. Go in
peace. In your joy and in your sorrow, I am here . . .”
Boudica dipped up more water and touched it to the hollow in the
image, feeling an answering throb of anticipation between her own
thighs.
In peace she rose and took the skins she had filled. When she re-
turned to the shelter Prasutagos had a fire going, and by the hearth
there was fruit and new bread. Still entranced by the stillness of the
spring, Boudica found herself at ease with his silence. When he excused
himself after the meal she stripped off her clothes and slid between the
blankets.
He was gone for what seemed a long time, and when he returned he
brought with him the cool breath of the holy well. She wondered if they
had both prayed for the same thing. But it was a condition of such mir-
acles that they never be spoken aloud.
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The fire had burned low, and once more she saw him as a dark shape
outlined in gold. She tensed as he inserted himself into the blankets be-
side her. He raised himself on one elbow and with his other hand lifted
a lock of her hair and he murmured something soothing that she could
not quite make out.
She wanted to tell him she was not afraid, but he was still whisper-
ing, still stroking her hair, and she could not find the words. She re-
membered how he had gentled the white stallion at the off ering pool. It
was horse magic, she thought, to tame the red mare . . .
Prasutag
os bent to kiss her, and this time his lips were warm. His
hands moved across her body, caressing, commanding, until she lay open
and accepting, her whole being flowing to enfold him, welcoming as
the waters of the sacred spring.
Boudica!” Nessa’s voice came from across the yard. “Come now,
lovey—your lord has said you must not lift anything so heavy—do come
away!”
Boudica sighed and set down the armful of wood she had been
about to bring into the roundhouse. Soon after she and Prasutagos
reached Eponadunon, a caravan of wagons bearing all the gifts from the
wedding had arrived and with them old Nessa, sent by her mother to be
her servant in her new home. Or perhaps her guardian—by the begin-
ning of the new year it was clear that Boudica was pregnant, and since
then Nessa and Prasutagos had conspired to treat her as if she were made
of Roman glass. That had been all very well during the winter, when
freezing rain kept everyone inside the roundhouses, but the Turning of
Spring was nigh, and the fair weather urged everyone outdoors. In ret-
rospect, she supposed she ought to be grateful her mother had not sent
the old woman with her to Mona, although the image of Nessa facing
off against Lhiannon made her smile.
She missed Lhiannon, whose calm good sense would have been so
helpful as she settled into her new home. Eponadunon lay in a bend of
a small river half a day’s ride from the sea, or rather the marshes, for the
northern coast edged out gradually in bands of salt marsh and mudflat,
with a narrow channel where boats might come in to shore. To the
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south, another half day of riding would take them to the sacred spring,
though since she arrived she had been too busy to visit it again. She
would have liked to show it to Lhiannon.
“Come in now, dearie, into the house.” Nessa appeared at her
elbow.
Boudica turned on her. “I am young, healthy, and I never felt better
in my life! Nor will I melt in the spring sun!”
“One of the lads who watch the cattle has come in. He saw riders on
the road—you had better change out of that old gown.”
As Boudica sighed defeat and followed Nessa into the largest of the
three roundhouses she was aware of a prickle of excitement. Eponadu-
non was nearly as remote as Mona, and Prasutagos did not have the
Arch-Druid’s network of informants to keep him apprised of the news,
although now that the first shock of the Roman conquest was over, ped-
dlers and tradesmen were beginning to reappear.
And from time to time there was gossip. When Claudius returned
to Rome, it was boasted that he had received the submission of eleven
kings. Of course they said that his Triumph had also portrayed the con-
quest of Camulodunon as the capture of a walled city. Closer to home,
men said that the legion left to hold down the Trinovantes was building
a fortress on the hill above the ruins of the dun.
But the newcomers were no tradesmen. As Boudica was pinning her
tunica, one of the girls who had been washing clothes at the stream
came rushing up to inform them that a party of Romans was coming up
the road.
“The king rode off to the new dun on the shore this morning—we
can send one of the lads to find him, but we’ll have to entertain these
people until he arrives,” she told the girl. “Our bread is still baking.
Girl, when you’ve sent the message run over to the nearest farmsteads to
see what they have on hand. In the meantime our guests will have to be
content with meat and cheese.”
As the dun exploded into activity around her, she reached for her
jewel box to add necklace and bracelets to her attire. The king lived
simply here, and the dun would not impress their visitors, but at least she
could look like a queen.
By the time the strangers rode through the wooden gate, the house
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had been swept and the worst of the clutter tidied away. Boudica stood
waiting with a drinking horn filled with last of the wine from the wed-
ding in her hands. In times of peace Prasutagos kept no more than a
half- dozen warriors at the dun. Calgac, a lanky young warrior who had
been assigned her escort, stood with the three who had not gone with
the king as the Romans rode in.
Automatically she counted them—a contubernia of ten soldiers, es-
corting three men in civilian tunics and knee-length riding breeches
and one in checkered trews who must be their guide.
“Salutatio.” She offered the beaker to the best dressed of the riders,
eyes widening as she recognized the big nose and dark eyes she had last
seen in the purple shade of the emperor’s pavilion. Surely the taxes they
were supposed to pay the Romans were not already due! Her smile grew
a little stiff as she continued. “Lucius Junius Pollio, salve!” That was all
the Latin she remembered from her years at King Cunobelin’s dun.
“Greetings,” Pollio replied in her own language. “I drink to you,
my queen . . .” He had an Atrebate accent.
Boudica lifted an eyebrow. She had not expected that the Romans
would have the sense to send a man who spoke the British tongue.
The next few minutes were occupied with getting everyone dis-
mounted and arranging where to put horses and men. She directed
new to the king’s service, replacements for men who had fallen at the
Tamesa, and they glowered at the Roman legionaries. By the time she
had everyone settled and fed Prasutagos had still not returned. Rather
than sit staring at Pollio across the fire, she suggested a tour around
the dun.
Steps had been cut into the inside of the grass-covered earthen em-
bankment that surrounded it. On the outside, the bank was faced by a
palisade. “My husband’s family has held this dun since his great-great-
grandfather’s days,” she said as they gained the top, “but the clans here
have been at peace for many years.”
“Yet King Prasutagos is building a new place.” It was not quite a
question. “A new dun to guard the harbor where the ships that cross the
Wash come to shore?”
“I think he likes to build things.” She shrugged. She had ridden out
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once to view the massive rampart faced with blocks of chalk, but work-
men’s huts were the only lodging, and the king had been too focused on
the work to notice whether she was there or not, so she had not stayed.
“He does indeed . . .” Pollio agreed. His gaze moved briefly to the
swell of her belly and then away. “The bank gives you a fi ne vantage
point.”
She smiled a little, as she always did when she stood here and looked
across the fields. At this season the country was richly green with new
grass, broken by the corrugated brown of newly plowed and seeded
fields. A flock of c
rows had settled on the nearest, pecking for grain. A
child ran across the field shouting, followed by a barking dog, and the
crows exploded upward in a yammering cloud.
Cathubodva, take your chickens away, she prayed. There is neither meat
nor mast for you here! Although she would rather share with the goddess
than with the Romans, she thought, glancing sidelong at the man beside
her. Disconcertingly, he was looking at her, not at the fi elds.
“It is true that we have no steep hills on which to build our forts as
they do in the Durotrige lands,” she said blandly. Even out here they
had heard that the Roman campaign in the southwest had slowed to a
crawl as General Vespasian beseiged each hillfort in turn.
If that had stung him, he gave no sign. “You grow barley here, and
cattle?” His dark gaze fl icked away.
“And spelt, and sheep on the heaths,” she added, putting a little
distance between them. “Our fields are not so rich as those in the Tri-
novante lands but we feed our people, most years. In a bad winter there
are floods, and we are lucky to get a crop at all.”
“I understand,” he said smoothly. “But that is where you benefi t
from being part of the Empire. In such years we can make loans to tide
you over, and when you have a surplus you can repay. Nor do you need
to fear that some other tribe whose crops have failed will try to take
yours. Our general Vespasian has already taken many hillforts,” he went
on. “Soon all the west will be conquered as well.”
She would have liked to wipe away that smug smile, but unfortunately
what he had said was true. Goddess keep Lhiannon from harm! she thought
then. But surely they would keep the priestesses out of the war. She
made her way along the bank and he followed her.
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“You speak our language well,” she commented as they reached the
strong timbers that supported the gate.
“The emperor assigned me to be a companion to young Cogidub-
nos when he came to Rome and to learn his tongue as I taught him
ours. Claudius, of course, knows the language from his youth in Gal-
lia,” he replied.
How long had the emperor been thinking about the conquest of Britannia?
she wondered wildly. Had all their struggles to prevent the attack mat-
tered at all? She took a deep breath. “To speak the language of the