She turned to the two girls and they were surprised to see her eyes damp with tears; it was the first time she had wept since the Romans came to Venta. Neither of them had shared her frightening hunger for vengeance, but they had never left her side. Now they prepared to share her fate.
She reached for the vial which hung at her throat below the golden torc. It was blue and made of fine Roman glass, but she found no irony in that. The contents were a poison of her own manufacture, tested on Roman prisoners who were among the fortunate few to meet a quick and painless end. She found her hand shaking as she raised it to Banna’s mouth, but the blond-haired girl raised her own hand to steady her mother’s before swallowing deeply from the container. Rosmerta swiftly followed suit, her face a mask of determination belied by the frank terror in her eyes. Boudicca’s heart swelled to bursting. How she loved them.
Gwlym looked on emotionless, untroubled by sorrow or pity or fear. Like him, they were all tools of the gods. Victory or defeat had never been of consequence. What mattered was that Boudicca’s name and deeds would live through the ages. Before she consumed the last of the poison Boudicca called him to her. ‘When it is done, take us to a place they will never find us. Bury us deep. If I cannot defeat the Romans in life, I will defeat them in death.’ She put the vial to her lips and drank, then raised her hands to touch each of her daughters on the cheek for the last time. ‘Farewell,’ she said. ‘We will meet again in the Otherworld. Life will be better there.’
The sun dipped low towards the western horizon as Valerius allowed his horse to pick its way warily through the dead. He didn’t know how many there were, only that a man could walk from the top to the bottom of the slope and from east to west across the valley without ever placing his foot upon the earth.
He rode like a blind man, the memory of a single face anchoring him to reality. His senses had long since been overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells of butchery on a scale beyond the imagining of any who had not witnessed it. A spectral miasma hung over the battlefield, like a low, thin fog, and he imagined he could taste death on his tongue and feel it clogging his lungs.
The slaughter had continued all through that long, hot afternoon and Paulinus’s thirst for revenge had proved as unquenchable as that of Boudicca. When his officers reported that their men could no longer go on killing because they lacked the strength to wield their swords, he had replied: ‘Let them use their daggers.’ And when the last Celtic warrior bled out his life beside his comrades and the exhausted legionaries lay down thankfully to rest among their victims, he had stormed from his tent and pointed to the thousands of women and children cowering where they had been rounded up by the cavalry. Soon the screaming began again.
Valerius realized the futility of his quest when he reached the thousands of abandoned carts and carriages, their contents strewn about them in a frenzy of looting by the auxiliary cavalry. But something, stronger even than the knowledge that his own sanity depended on the outcome, kept him in the saddle.
It was near dark when he recognized the long chestnut hair fluttering like a fallen banner below the overturned ox cart. In the distance, he imagined he could hear the cry of a hunting owl.
