Red Queen, White Queen Page 17

  32: The Same Morning

  At the same moment that Quintus Petillius sank back on his hard army pillow, Gemellus and Duatha were pushed up the steps, past the caged hawks, into the summer pavilion of Boudicca. They were chilled to the bone and very hungry, for their captors had not thought it necessary to feed them, in case the Queen ordered their heads to be set on spikes on the domed roof. To have given them breakfast would have been a waste of good food. And at this time, with the tribes swarming across the plain in their chariots and wagons, every crumb of food was precious.

  Now the pavilion was empty, except for an old man who wore a shapeless woollen gown, very dirty at the hem, and a withering crown of oak-leaves, set slightly askew, on his head. He was pouring fat from a clay jar on to the altar flames, mumbling as he did so, and causing a great deal of oily black smoke to rise towards the domed roof.

  No one else was there, though the indiscriminate mess of the previous night, mutton bones, straw, discarded hide thongs, even a broken dagger blade, reminded Gemellus of the clustering crowd which had thronged in that dark place on his first visit.

  The Druid looked up as they entered, staring at them with the watery vacant eyes of a sheep. He pointed the forefingers of his two hands towards them and said a number of words which neither of them understood. Then he seemed to lose interest in them, and went back to his oil-libations.

  As they waited, a guard standing behind them, Gemellus thought of Eithne, and wondered if she was safe in the little hut where they had left her, the little shelter of boughs and bracken, where the clear rill flowed between two oaks, and the great moss-grown boulder acted as a wind-break…. He thought that he loved her dearly, more than anyone else in the world now…. He wished he were with her, and not here, in the stinking summer pavilion of Boudicca.

  Then he felt the cold touch of the little red-hilted dagger which he had to use on the Icenian Queen. It seemed to bum into his thigh. He wondered why he must do this work; why someone else, some common assassin, might not have been chosen. He did not know Boudicca; and though she had seemed a monstrous enemy of the State, when he had thought about her before, many miles away, now that he was about to meet her, she had become merely a woman, a dangerous one, perhaps, but still a woman, a human being,

  It was easy to kill human beings in the excitement of battle, When one was drunk with danger and when one must protect one’s own life anyway…. But here, in a place like this, with a doddering old man pouring mutton fat on a fire…. It was all suddenly stupid!

  Even his own masquerade was stupid, the game of a silly young fellow, not of a soldier, a Decurion, the son of a warrior father. Gemellus even forgot the Greek name he had provided himself with for an instant, and that made him very anxious. Then he recalled it—a stupid name! How could anyone believe that this was his name, that he was a Doctor? It all seemed like some comedy played by schoolboys, a charade to celebrate Saturnalia, for example….

  Only the little red-hilted dagger which burned against his thigh was real. Very real…. Perhaps too real,…

  Then there was shouting outside, and the rattle of chariot wheels and the clatter of horses’ hooves.

  The guard whispered, ‘She is here, the Queen is here. Fall to your knees now!’

  And he almost flung them down. Gemellus saw that the old Druid had also got on to his knees, with much groaning and a Creaking of sinews.

  Then as by a rushing mighty wind, the hide curtains were flung wide and Boudicca swept into her summer pavilion, attended by two scurrying women.

  She stood for a while surveying them, her golden hair wet and drawn back above her ears and tied with a red ribbon behind. Then, almost carelessly, she said, ‘Rise, strangers, I shall not eat you, yet!’

  And she flung her long heavy blue cloak to one of the women. The Druid began to take up his clay jar once more, but the

  Queen waved him away. He shuffled off, grumbling and shaking his head. The crown of oak-leaves tipped still further over his ear, making him look ridiculous to the eyes of Gemellus, who was used to dignified priests.

  Then Boudicca strode towards them a couple of paces and stood, her legs wide apart, staring down at them, from the Wooden dais by the altar.

  A short brown frieze jacket laced with thongs held in her

  heavy, breasts. From waist to ankle her legs were encased in tight-fitting trousers of deer-hide. Her feet were bare and rather large. Gemellus noted that they were very red and calloused, not like the dainty feet of the Lady Lavinia, for example.

  And as the Red Queen moved, the golden armbands that pinched in the thick muscles gave her an appearance of richness and of strength, of an immense power, hardly feminine, but yet not male. She resembled a statue Gemellus had once seen, of Minerva, the Goddess of War. Even the imperiously curved nose, and the firm rounded chin had something Greek about it, as though she was what the sculptors had been striving towards, but had never quite achieved.

  She said, ‘Stand closer, Thoramion Krastos, or whatever you call yourself. I am getting a little short-sighted and would like to see you better. ‘

  Her voice was strong and musical, despite its force, and came from her throat rather than from her mouth.

  Gemellus thought that she would have made an appropriate mate for Mars, and stood forward.

  Boudicca reached out suddenly and gripped his upper arm. Her fingers pinched him cruelly, but he stood and smiled at her.

  She loosed her grip and sat down on a low stool.

  ‘You have good muscles for a mere physician, man’, she said. ‘Not like the stringy things that hold the old fellow there together.’ She nodded contemptuously towards the Druid, who mumbled and wagged his head, more like a sheep than ever.

  Then suddenly Boudicca tore away the thongs of her short frieze jacket, letting it fall open, so that her breasts seemed to burst forth, unrestricted. A woman swept away the jacket, while another hobbled in with an oaken tub, which she set before the stool. With a complete lack of modesty, in the old Celtic fashion that Gemellus had heard of from his youth, the Queen bent and stripped off the tight leathern breeches, kicking them from her towards the women.

  Then she sat smiling, staring back at Gemellus, her sturdy legs planted wide on either side of the water tub.

  ‘Come here, Thoramion Krastos,’ she said slowly.

  Gemellus went forward, unsure of himself, wondering whether this was the moment when he should plunge the red-hilted knife into the place below the left breast.

  He heard Duatha give a little gasp behind him, and knew that his brother was wondering the same thing.

  Then Boudicca took his hand in her own strong one, and led

  Gemellus burst out into the sudden sweat of fear. Her eyes were fixed on him as she spoke. it to her body.

  ‘Feel here, Physician,’ she said with a smile. ‘I have a pain there. It has troubled me since the dogs of Decianus Catus came visiting me one night. Can you feel anything, Doctor? Hey, can you feel anything?’

  Gemellus shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘One cannot make a diagnosis so easily, Queen. All I can be sure of now is that you have been riding and are wet with sweat.’

  She almost flung his hand away from her, and the women ran forward and began to wash her body.

  Boudicca smiled then and said, ‘You are right there, Physician. And perhaps there is nothing there that one could feel yet. And perhaps the pain will go when I have killed that other disease within me, the disease of Rome.’

  As the women dried her, Boudicca said, ‘Still, you are perhaps’ a good doctor, Thoramion Krastos. You have a good touch and your fingers are strong. A doctor needs strong fingers, does he not, Thoramion? He might need to use the knife, at times, might he not!’

  He nodded, his mouth dry. ‘Yes, Great One,’ he said. ‘He may need to use the knife, at times.’

  The red-hilted knife almost scorched his flesh as he spoke. Yet something else spoke to him, a voice from within which said, ‘But not at this time…. N
ot yet, Gemellus, not yet!’

  He knew that it was his own fear, nothing more, which spoke, but he obeyed its command. This was not like running into battle, with comrades on either side, and a screaming enemy facing one with an axe. This was the cold-blooded murder of a naked woman without other weapons than her voice and her body.

  That voice and that body overwhelmed the soldier in Gemellus and in Duatha. The magic of the Red Queen disarmed them.

  Then, out of the daze of that magic, they heard her speak again.

  ‘Take them away, guard. They shall be present tonight when the tribes take the oath. They too shall take the oath and shall ride with us. A good doctor is too precious a thing to throw away lightly—especially one with such a touch as Thoramion Krastos of Alexandria! See that they are fed well. I shall need this doctor again!’

  Then she kneeled at the smoking altar. The Druid came from the shadows with his clay pot, still mumbling. This time the Queen did not send him away.

  33: The Legate and the Sword

  There came no warning before the Imperial Legate, Suetonius Paulinus, rode into Glevum on his way to face Boudicca. There was a sudden howling of Roman bronze horns, and then a strident voice shrieked out to the tired legionary who stood sentry duty to fling wide the gates before he was disembowelled and then cut into forty pieces to feed half the dogs of Britain.

  The man stamped to attention and then almost ruptured himself in drawing the rusty bolts. No troop had passed that way for a month, and the weather had been very wet, very British and wet.

  The Legate, a gaunt and stooping man who wore a blunt red beard and had lost three fingers on the right hand, rode under the archway with only two followers; impassive brown-faced cavalrymen, with the ribbons of a dozen campaigns floating from their shoulders.

  He paused a moment, glaring like a griffon from beneath his battered gilt helmet, and then shouted at the shivering sentry, ‘God’s little belly! But who inspected you last, you half-dead dog? Look at your cuirass, it’s an inch thick with rust! Look at your sword, it wouldn’t cut open a melon! Look at your breeches—there’s a hole there big enough to see India through it. Get it stitched up before I get you stitched up, you lousy little mountebank. And when you’ve done that, report to your Decurion and tell him I say he is to put you on latrine fatigue for a week. Have you got that?’

  The guard saluted and said, ‘Yes, sir! What name am I to say, sir?’

  The Imperial Legate’s neck throbbed with passion. ‘What name, sir?’ he repeated cruelly, ‘what name, sir? I’ll tell you what name, sir! It is Suetonius Paulinus, if you please, sir, nothing more and nothing less, sir! Now tell your Decurion to award you fifteen strokes with the rod for asking such a question, sir!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said the legionary, saluting again, and wishing he had gone sick earlier in the day when he had thought of doing so because of the pain in his back. Now there would be a worse pain in his back.

  The Legate swung his snorting horse round, but before he rode through the avenue that led to the parade ground, he yelled, ‘Where can I find the Prefect of this rotten cabbage-heap? Where, sir? Where?’

  The legionary directed him, pointing with a shaking hand. And when the three had gone, he wiped his steaming brow.

  ‘The Prefect,’ he said, ‘poor swine! I wouldn’t be in that poor devil’s shoes for all the denarii in Londinium! No, that I wouldn’t!’

  Then he handed over his lance, and went to tell the Decurion what the Imperial Legate had said. It would not have been safe to try to dodge that one. Not with such a man as Suetonius Paulinus. All the world knew that he was a monster—but just how much a monster no one seemed to understand, till they met him face to face.

  The Prefect was sitting in his office, his head in his hands. Lavinia had gone. Now he was truly alone. What did Rome matter, he asked himself, if one’s only child had gone?

  He was about to tell himself that Rome was a dying she-wolf with dry dugs, when the door was kicked open and Rome stood before him, with a red beard and a battered gilt helmet.

  The Legate, Suetonius, glared down at the old Prefect, who returned the glare with his mild eyes, remotely, without great interest.

  ‘Good day, Paulinus,’ he said quietly. ‘Sit down, you look tired.’

  The Legate in Britain, the Emperor’s own deputy, bent his head forward until his brawny neck would stretch no further. His red-rimmed eyes bulged with passion. Every bristle of his beard stood up like a spear-point. At first his voice would not obey him, so great was his fury; and that made him angry with his voice for refusing an order; and that anger made him speechless for a further half-minute. But just as the two veterans who stood behind him at the door imagined that the time had come when they must spring forward and catch him before he fell to the ground with a seizure, he spoke.

  ‘My god,’ he said, in a strangely muffled voice. ‘And you are the man who commands the Second Legion? You, an old dotard who sits for days on his backside and could not get into a decent suit of armour if the devil had him, his paunch is so large! The Prefect of the Second!’

  The Prefect looked up at him with a grey smile.

  ‘Yes, I am in command here, Legate,’ he said. ‘But I shall not be so much longer. Now that my daughter has run away, I have little left to keep me here.’

  The Legate heard the words the old man spoke, but could not understand them, they were so different from anything he had expected. He had imagined that the Prefect would defend himself, try at least to look like a soldier, try to explain why he had not marched to destroy the insurrection in the East. But this old fool just sat there and smiled and did not seem interested in being a soldier. There was that bit about his daughter, too…. What on earth had that to do with anything?

  The Legate, Suetonius, stepped forward and began to thump the marble table with his clenched fist.

  ‘Damn you,’ he said, ‘I do not come to hear of domestic matters. I don’t give a damn if your cat has kittened or the bathroom leaks, sir! I come to tell you that I will not tolerate your presence in this command a moment longer. I come to tell you that the Emperor himself is concerned by your ineptitude. I come to tell you that before tomorrow is out…’

  The Prefect rose wearily, holding up his thin hand to silence the threats of the Legate.

  Suetonius Paulinus, as bewildered as a pole-axed bullock, was silent, his mouth still open from the last word he had emitted.

  He watched the old man go to the cabinet and stand there a moment before he opened the door. He even heard the old man’s words, as he scratched his chin.

  ‘Hm,’ said the Prefect. ‘It will have to be the spatha after all, I am afraid. The other one is too short now for me to get down to it.’

  The Prefect of the Second Legion took the sword and, smiling to the Legate, went from the room with a slight bow to the two guards. ‘

  They watched him go without interest; but when he had been away for a minute, the Legate suddenly struck the marble table again.

  ‘Where the devil is he?’ he bawled. ‘Find him, one of you, straightway.’

  The man bustled out, his iron sword clanking against the doorpost as he went. He returned within the count of five.

  Saluting, he said, ‘He is outside, sir, in the corridor. He has … given up his command, sir!’

  The man’s voice was suddenly hushed and full of respect.

  The Legate’s eyes bulged. He swung round so violently that he knocked over a vase of Samian ware, shattering it to a hundred shards upon the mosaic floor. But he paid no attention to such a trifle.

  He stalked to the door, his face contorted. In the corridor, he stopped and drew back.

  ‘Mithras!’ he said, in a low voice. ‘So, he was a bloody soldier after all. The old fellow was a soldier!’

  He removed his helmet and walked back into the room slowly. Then he tugged at his left ear, the muscles of his face working strangely.

  At length he said, ‘Send for his body-servant. It
must be done properly. There was a spark of Roman honour left there in that old body.’

  Afterwards he said, ‘So that is that! I shall ride with the Fourteenth and the Twentieth, at dawn, to meet Boudicca as far to the East as I can manage it. You two will stay behind here for the moment. Call a meeting of the Tribunes; see that they muster all available men, anything on two feet, and march before mid-day tomorrow. They will form a rear-guard. The Second will be fit for nothing else after its long holiday here.’

  He mused for awhile. Then he said, ‘When this is all over, we must pay special attention to the Second. We must see that it has something a little more active to do….’

  The two veterans turned their eyes away from the strange smile on his face. But it was not their affair, anyway.

  They stood aside as the Imperial Legate strode from the room, letting his purple cloak swirl around him.

  In the corridor, he halted for a moment, and touched the spot where the Prefect had lain. Then he touched his own heart with the same fingers.

  It was the only salute he knew that was right for the occasion; a brave man is a brave man, though you may despise his organisation, or his figure.

  34: Afternoon of the Fifth Day

  The lady Lavinia was not accustomed to exercise. But now she had to walk, for the little white pony had left her. Near the edge of the midland forest country, they had halted in a broad glade where they saw that fires had recently been lit, and where many horses had trodden down the turf.

  It was here that the Lady Lavinia had tried to make a fire, with the help of the negro maid, Marissa; but her white soft hands, unused to any exercise more strenuous than that of smoothing her young Tribune’s hair, had failed her. Weeping with vexation, she had then tried to swallow the uncooked barley-flour, and had been rather sick. The maid, Marissa, had then collected certain red berries from the bushes in the glade, and they had eaten them. They were sick again, for the berries were those of the cuckoo pint, and not edible at all. It was at this moment that the little white pony, nibbling the grasses from place to place, had snorted with terror, and, kicking up its tiny hooves, had dashed away from the place, through the undergrowth, and into the far nightmare forest.