In the Tales of the Bards

At last the gods supplied a victim. He was a young man with just the beginning of a beard. When the lookouts brought him in he didn’t struggle or make a sound, but I could see the fear in his eyes. He must have had some idea what was going to happen to him. His hair was damp with sweat and stuck to his forehead, and there were bloodstains on his tunic. It turned out he was carrying messages from Camulodunum to Lindum, and being new at the job he had lost his way trying to follow the road by night. He had apparently been wandering around the fens for several hours—it was a miracle that he hadn’t stumbled into one of the bogs. Mariccus told the attendants to feed him and keep him under guard. Boadicea called the tribes together, but they hardly needed her summons. The news about Mona had spread faster than fire through dry fields on a windy day. She arrived at the meeting place in a chariot so she would be more visible to the crowd of thousands already waiting for her. Mariccus helped her step out. She got up on a rough platform that had been thrown together just a few minutes before and stood looking at the crowd as they cheered wildly. A new torque had been fashioned for her—Dumnorix had seen to that upon her release from Camulodunum. It could not match the beauty of the one Catus had seized from her, but its heavy gold and intricate design told their own story. She had on a new tunic with stripes of red and green, blue and yellow, the bright colors mixing and blending with those of the skirt she wore beneath it. Even so, she looked curiously small and alone up there. Yet I knew she was ready for the moment. Her cheeks glowed, and her hair reflected the sun. It seemed, as she stood there so isolated, that she had been sent by the gods. They had roused the words that slept in her. I listened with the rest, thrilled by the sound of her voice piercing the silence that had finally settled upon the crowd. I was swept away. My fears seemed small and foolish and deserved no further thought. Ten years have gone by since then, years filled with suffering, but I can remember that speech as if it were yesterday. “People of Britain,” she cried, her voice high and clear like a trumpet, “you have given me your allegiance; more than that, you have given me yourselves. In so doing you have made me one with all of you, and one with the land itself. If I bleed, it is Britain that bleeds. And I have bled, my friends. I have bled!” What she did next was startling. She turned her back to them and lifted her tunic over her head, pushing aside her thick mantle of hair. No one but Mariccus and I had seen those scars; now the rest of the Iceni saw them, and the Trinovantes, and the Brigantes, and all the others. A roar of anger rose from the crowd. Many people wept. She let them look for a moment; then she slipped the tunic back on and faced them again. She waited for the commotion to die down and then went on. “My friends, it is not only to avenge my wounds that you will go into battle against the Romans. Do not forget what you have endured at the hands of Rome: your loved ones sold into slavery, your lands confiscated, your possessions seized, your produce taxed so heavily you could barely make a living. And we are being plundered by cowards! They are weak and immoral, every one of them. They hold nothing sacred, not the old, not the young. Even my daughters….” There was a long pause. The crowd murmured. Everyone knew what had happened to Visucia and Brixia, who stood behind their mother, pale and still, looking like statues. Then she went on. “Will you let yourselves be ruled by those weaklings, those vermin, those creatures who call themselves men? Why, they must have warm water to bathe in, and their teeth are so rotten they can’t eat meat! And when they take their meals they must recline on couches. But we are close to the earth; we know the country; we can swim rivers; we can bear hunger, thirst, heat, and cold better than they; we know what grasses and roots we can eat, but they must have bread and wine and oil. And they are so weighed down by their armor that we can run circles around them; we will surround them and cut them down in no time.” I noticed Addedomarus raising his eyebrows, but he said nothing. “Their cowardliness will work in our favor. I’ll send in the Brigantes first. They’ll scare the Romans with their painted faces—and when they turn and run they won’t find hiding places in the hills and swamps; they’ll hide in their villas and temples, and we’ll trap them there.” She said a lot more along those lines—that the Romans didn’t have enough men to stand up to us; that they couldn’t fight without armor, walls, and fortifications; that just as we had thrown Caesar out of the country we could rid ourselves of Suetonius and Catus; that the only thing the Romans knew how to do was tax and steal. By now the people were beside themselves, and she could hardly be heard. I caught only scraps of what she was saying: “You who think we should wait and see if they change their ways, you have only to look at their actions so far.” And “Why is it that even when it is obvious that we have no more money they keep demanding more?” And “It would be better to perish than to live with a tax on our heads—but even if we were dead their demands wouldn’t stop; I hear they’re going to start taxing the dead as well as the living!” Finally I couldn’t hear her at all—everyone was shouting at everyone else, and no one was listening. So she simply stood and waited. After a few moments people began to realize that she wasn’t speaking, and gradually they grew quiet again. “My friends,” she said in a low voice, so they had to strain to hear her. “My kin—for we are all kin, since we live on a single island and are all called by the same name, Britons—let us make war on our oppressors while we still remember what freedom means. Then our children, too, will know what it means. Indeed, we have no choice. If things continue as they are, we’ll all be slaves. Some of you may have been deceived by promises of wealth and luxury, but surely by now you know how mistaken you have been—for the wealth the Romans offer is but bait to lure you into a trap, and once they have caught you there will be no escape.” She paused here, and the crowd watched in silence as she opened her skirt and released a hare. It ran to her right—the auspicious side—and everyone who could see it shouted. For the hare is sacred not only to Teutates but also to Andraste, goddess of victory. It was to her that Boadicea raised her arms in prayer, and the crowd was silent once again. She said quite simply, “I thank you, Andraste, and call upon you as woman speaking to woman.” But with her red hair loose to the waist, her slender neck encircled by gold and her bright tunic shimmering in the sun, it might have seemed to all who watched her that this was goddess speaking to goddess. “My friends,” she said finally, “the gods will favor us in our undertaking, for justice is on our side. Let us show the Romans that they are foxes trying to rule over wolves. Like wolves we will attack; like wolves we will tear them apart. Go into battle and show them the same mercy they have shown us!” At this the crowd roared, drowning out her final words: “We leave at dawn.”