Page 26 of Boudicca

“The bairns sleep. Adara said they will not stir until after dawn. I will stand here until the rest of your guard relieves me.”

I opened my mouth to protest, and then thought better of it and replied like a queen worthy of such loyalty. “I will sleep well knowing that you watch over us.”

Briallen’s one good eye shimmered with tears, but they did not fall. The warrior only bowed stiffly and then returned to her watchful stance.

“I’ll have my servant, Phaedra, bring Mother’s robes to you. Thank you—for all of this,” I said to Derwyn.

Derwyn inclined his head but said nothing. My body felt leaden and I had to move slowly through the lodge so as not to stumble. The main room was littered with pallets that held the most gravely wounded. I stopped and spoke to each person who was conscious, and touched the foreheads of those who were slipping toward Annwn. The Druids in their forest-colored cloaks were night birds, flitting silently from person to person.

In my bedchamber, Phaedra rose from her pallet instantly, rushing to me. “It is so late! I was afraid you would never rest. Let me undress you and comb out your hair. I brought cheese and bread and smoked meat for you. Have you eaten at all?”

“Go to Mother’s room—quietly, so that the girls do not wake. Gather the green plaid dress woven with the blue that matched her eyes and also the cloak of green with the stag stitched in gold on it. Do you remember?”

“I do.”

“Take her favorite cuffs, the ones decorated with Brigantia’s flames, and the necklace with the largest emeralds set in gold. Give them to the lead Druid, who waits outside the lodge.”

“I will do as you command. Then I will return to help you.”

“Thank you, Phaedra.” On impulse, I hugged the girl who had served me for more than a decade, and Phaedra clung to me as she sobbed quietly. “Go now.” I gently unwrapped myself from the young woman’s embrace and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Arianell is waiting to be dressed.”

“Yes, my queen.” Phaedra bowed deeply to me before she hurried from the queen’s chamber.

Adara’s salve still numbed my back enough that I was able to unlace the dress without help and slip on a soft tunic to sleep in. I meant to eat and to wait for Phaedra to return to brush out my hair but instead sank onto my bed. Unable to keep my eyes open a moment longer, I finally was able to allow sleep to take me away.

Chapter X

It was a dream, but it was also a memory—so clear and real that to my sleeping mind it seemed I gazed into a mirror that reflected the past.

The scene my dream conjured was one from my youth. I was almost seventeen, near to the end of the time I fostered with the Trinovantes. Children of royal families often fostered with neighboring chiefs or queens as a way to solidify alliances and strengthen the ties of trust and friendship among tribes. A friendship between the daughters of Tribe Trinovantes and Tribe Brigantes, future tribal leaders, was an important relationship to forge, and Rhan and I happily did become close.

In the dream she and I were at our favorite spot in the woods outside Camulodunum, which was then a village still in Trinovantes territory and as yet not usurped by Rome. We had woven vines and twisted them into torques, which each of us wore proudly around our neck. I brandished a wooden sword and Rhan held a long branch she’d carved to look like a spear. We stood side by side on a high bank above a stream that had been dammed by a family of industrious beavers. As my dream began, we were speaking to the hawthorns that lined the stream as if they were an elder council.

I remembered the day clearly, though I hadn’t thought of it in over a decade. The dream was so vibrant that I could smell the fragrant hawthorn flowers that crowned the trees. Rhan and I were the eldest children of our fathers, though Rhan did have a brother, younger by two years. He would not automatically succeed her father; succession was always the choice of the gods and the tribe, and never as simple as blood or gender or birth order. Unlike Romans, we value our daughters equally to our sons and give little thought to birth order, whichallows us to choose the best person to lead each tribe instead of being mired in the nonsense of patriarchy and birth order. So, Rhan and I were being raised to be queens, and our play was more practice than a child’s game.

My sleeping mind followed the events that lifted sharply from my memory. Rhan and I had finished addressing the “council” behind us, and we had turned to face the new set of boughed and flowered “elders” before us, across the clear pool the beavers had created. I had just raised my sword and declared that there would be more generous portions of pork haunches in everyone’s stew henceforth when something in the pool below caught Rhan’s attention.

“What is th—” Rhan began.

But her words were cut off as she leaned forward and stared down into the quiet crystal pool. Rhan’s body had gone rigid at the same time the birdsong in the trees silenced. I stared down into the water too, trying to see what had so captured my friend’s attention, but saw nothing except water, river rock, and fallen branches. I turned to ask Rhan what I was missing and felt a shock of understanding when I realized her face had lost all of its color and her dark eyes had rolled to show only their whites.

Then Rhan’s body seemed to turn boneless and she began to fall. Had I not moved quickly—and not been taller and physically stronger than my friend—Rhan would have toppled headfirst into the pool and drowned.

I carried her to the hawthorns and laid her on the carpet of moss under their fragrant boughs. I held her tightly, cradling my best friend—the friend who had made my five-year separation from my beloved family bearable—and murmured softly to her, beseeching her to come back to me.

Soon, Rhan’s eyelids fluttered, and though her face was still white as milk, her eyes had returned to normal.

“What is it? What happened? What did you see, Rhan?”

Rhan stared up at me, and when she spoke her voice sounded decades older than sixteen short years.

“I saw you. You were queen. You wore a golden torque.”

I smiled and hugged her tightly, feeling great relief that Rhan seemed herself again. I was pleased by her vision. When I was seventeen, becoming a queen was a fantasy that brought with it daydreams of rich clothes and loyal attendants, and the childish belief that a queen answered only to herself.

“Well, of course I will be a queen. You will be, too. We’ll commission our torques from the finest jewelers. I want mine to be delicate and beautiful and decorated with—”

Rhan touched my cheek with fingers that were bloodless and cold. “No.”