Myths of the Modern Man (10 page)

Eleanor knew instantly he was just placating her with the opportunity to let her blow off some steam, to let her tell him her side, but she took it anyway.

“
Cassius, this department is no longer the joke it once was. I’ve worked for eight years to make that happen. This department is finally being taken seriously. I’m being taken seriously.”

“
And you enjoy your power,” he nodded, casually smiling that cocktail-hour expression that meant he was relieved and happy to be discussing comfortably vague theory again and not butting heads on cold hard facts.

“
It’s not a matter of enjoying it. Power is what it is all about. It devours and is devoured by others even more powerful. She knows that. So do you. Why don’t you help me fight her?”

He raised his eyebrows, “Fight her? Eleanor, all she’s done is present an opposing opinion.”

“
Which is more than I get from you. You never offer me any opinions.”

“
Stop it. You sound like a nagging wife. Next thing you’ll be saying is that I never take you anywhere.”

She said nothing at this, just looked at him with a world-weariness that belied her surprise.

“
Look,” he said, backpedaling, “I’m not for cloak and dagger stuff. I’m not good at that.”

“
I think you’re better at it than you realize, or at least more than you’re willing to admit. You are quite maddeningly disingenuous at times, Cassius. Yet I think you think it’s your most endearing trait. What a joy it must be to have that luxury. What are you doing here, then?”

“
Are you asking me to leave?”

She could not tell if he were really affronted, or just stalling.

“
No, because then you wouldn’t have to answer the question.”

Dr. Ford started at the low, tinny buzzing sound from the compressor, and Dr. Roberts jerked her head towards the far bank of panels, fanning her expert gaze across the board.

“
Is something wrong?” Dr. Ford asked.

“
No, don’t be ridiculous. That’s the half mark. The mission is halfway through its cycle.”

“
Then everything is status quo with Colonel Moore, to the best of your knowledge?”

“
Status quo?” she scoffed, “He’s alive and still working. That’s it. I don’t think anything’s ever been status quo with Colonel Moore.”

“
Speaking of disingenuous….”

“
Colonel Moore? Of course….”

“
No, you. You keep him at arm’s length to make him want you more.”

“
Cassius!”

“
You know Moore can’t resist a challenge, a dare. You’re manipulating him for the fun of controlling him and knowing you have him all the while.”

“
I might actually be flattered if you were really jealous, Cassius. But, that ridiculous accusation is nothing but another one of your chess moves.”

“
You know you want him. You know he wants you. He’s a hero, Eleanor, with more cache than perhaps either you are willing to admit. But, he knows it. He knows his value. Maybe he can keep you on top. So to speak.”

CHAPTER 8

Colonel John Moore’s narrative:

Are you getting all this, Milly? I’ll speak more slowly. Don’t let Eleanor push you. This is important. Lay off her, Eleanor.

The days grew longer and a little warmer, and I got used to the tapestry of voices around me. I wouldn’t say I was becoming fluent in the language, but I knew when I was called, and I came when I was.

Cailte took charge of me, though if that was on his own initiative or at the command of his queen, I don’t know. We shared a hut just beyond Boudicca’s inner circle, but still well within a location of prominence in the village. Cailte had three servants of his own. One was a man, who groomed his horse and kept his small garden and his pigs. One was a boy, who was learning to do the same, and who also served as a Cailte’s personal valet.

The third was a young woman, who did the cooking and the cleaning, the weaving, and the sewing. A man, a woman, and a child, yet they were not a family. They were not related to each other. They had each come from other Celtic tribes. The man was a slave whom Cailte won, or stole, in battle. The woman and the boy were slaves too, but they were sold to the Iceni by their poverty-stricken families. Most debts were paid off in this way, not only in Britannia but all over the known world. Bodies were better than cash, and women often drew a higher price than men. They had more uses.

I did not know the servants’ names, for Cailte always called them man, woman, and boy. Fear, Boirionnach, Bouchal. Sometimes he called the woman “girl” or a gradh, “my dear,” if he was half drunk.

They served me with eyes downcast, just as automatically and stoically as they did Cailte. They made no distinction between us. It gave me prestige, but also made me feel like crap.

“
What are you called?” I asked the woman when we were alone. She put bread and beer before me, and except for a brief glance at my chest, no higher, she seemed not to hear me.

“
I be Sean.”

She did not answer.

The man and the boy slept in an animal shed out back, and she slept in Cailte’s hut, on a bed of straw by the door. Like a dog. She stirred his fire.

I’ll bet she stirred his fire.

The boy seemed no more friendly than the woman, but he displayed a bit more curiosity about me. He could have been about ten or twelve years old. I couldn’t tell, for he had a small, undernourished body, but the expression of an old man. I knew I was talked of in the village as a stranger who was an Iceni and yet not an Iceni. I smiled for the boy, and once tousled his hair, but he drew back sharply, not having had this done to him before. Perhaps not even by the woman, though I noticed she spoke softly to him, and would not let the man slave take out his anger on him.

The man was resentful at his fate as a slave, and unlike the woman and boy, did not seem resigned to it. He was rough, and snarling, but that was all. He did no real damage. He only simmered beneath snarls. In such moments when he abused the world with his cursing, or threw a stick of kindling at imaginary Cailtes, she stood bravely between him and the boy.

I never saw Cailte physically abuse these people, but he was the curt, dissatisfied master, a role he felt he had to play, I guess, to keep their respect. The same kind of role-playing most dictators, gentry, and Department Managers use to build themselves up in their own tiny little minds by behaving like asses.

His manner toward the woman alternated between leering and contempt. This morning it was contempt. He sat before the fire and rubbed his face with water from a wooden bowl. He handed her his dagger with a swift, sharp movement. She took it carefully from him, and turned its shining blade in her hand, and touched it to his cheek. Lightly holding his forehead with one hand while his eyes followed her, she held the dagger in her other hand like a straight-edged razor and shaved him. It was a quiet, tense ritual they played out two or three times a week. When she was finished, she offered the dagger back to him, but he gestured towards me.

“
When she is through with you, you will bring my dagger to me,” he said. Cailte did not hang around the hut much. He was off most of the day, practicing songs and stories, performing for the queen, trying to get closer to at least one of her daughters. I wondered which daughter, and if it was infatuation or social ambition that made the horny little rooster dance for them.

I had followed him in the village when he let me, and got lost when he let me know I should. It was in these moments I was able to observe the weaving of the women servants by firelight, in the open doorways of the huts. I saw them bathing their children in the cold running stream. They were roughened, long-haired children, starved for physical affection yet able to thrive without it. More than half the kids born in the world at this time did not make it past six years old. I thought of that as I watched The Boy polish Cailte’s long bronze shield, his skinny arm rubbing it over and over with a rag. At least he had scraps from Cailte’s table to eat.

“
Bouchal,” I said to him, “What is your name?”

He did not answer, but looked up at me with dark eyes and a vague expression.

I was patient. I could wait for an answer all day, which he sensed, and grew anxious in case that was my intention.

“
The Bouchal came to this place a small child. He does not remember.” It was soft, gentle voice of the woman. I turned. She looked expectantly towards Cailte’s seat by the fire, and the bowl of water, and the dagger in her hand. Evidently I was next.

“
What do you call him?” I asked, sitting in Cailte’s spot before her. I wet my face, and she wet the dagger.

“
Avic.” She placed her palm lightly against my forehead, and scraped the dagger slowly across my cheek.

She called him son. She was not allowed to give him a name, but decided to soften the name given him by Cailte. To his master he was boy, to his fellow servant, he was son.

“
Then I will call you A chara.” I said to her. My friend.

She did not answer, and refused to look me in the eye, but only dragged the sharpened blade up my neck, and carefully over my chin. She did not touch my upper lip, just as she had left Cailte’s mustache. It was a popular style among these Celts. When she was finished, she wiped the blade and put the dagger in my hand.

She turned back to the fire, and stirred it long and well.

I left the hut to find Cailte.

It was only a matter of days before Boudicca’s need for the protection of her war goddesses became real. The Roman Procurator came himself, along with an army, to deal with the little matter of the inheritance left by King Prasutagas.

The village women pulled their children from the stream and hid them in the fields.

Boudicca’s personal guard and the aristocrats of the village gathered in the long hall, as the Roman invasion manifested itself to the proud Iceni.

Catus Decianus, the Procurator of Britannia entered the compound behind a wall of legionnaires, their short swords, long javelins, shields, leather and iron. He read from a scroll like the host of a TV game show announcing prizes, but the stock and booty he counted were all for him and his colleagues, not for any charming contestants.

Most of the leading clans had already left for their hill encampments after the May festival, including the chieftain, Dubh. Some of the chieftains in the tribe had recently been evicted from their ancestral properties by the order of Catus. Cailte had told me Dubh was one to whom this had happened. He was planning revenge.

The Queen was attended only by her own small guard and servants. Even Nemain and Taliesin were gone, for she had sent her druids away for their own safety, knowing the Romans were out to get them. Her peasant people encamped beyond the long house, the villagers and farmers, were kept at bay by a cohort of troops. They knew why the Romans were here. The Romans were to inherit half Prasutagas’ kingdom. They wondered what that meant. They wondered if their own lands would be taken, or if half of them would be taken as slaves.

Boudicca met the Romans with disdainful tolerance. She knew the bargain that her husband had made. She was prepared to give over the shared inheritance, but did not know yet that the Romans intended to take it all.

She had dismissed her chieftains after the May festival, knowing there would be confrontation, because she believed that she could better handle the Roman tax collectors herself. She was either shrewd, or the most conceited person I had ever met. She purposely kept only her own household to see to her needs, her daughters by her side standing like emblems of the kingdom, and her retainers. That included Cailte and me, I guess. Perhaps she wanted the kingdom of the Iceni to seem poorer than it was, the way people in my day hid poker winnings from the I.R.S. The Romans were quite prepared to do the inventory themselves, and not take her at her word.

Decianus briskly announced his mission. He paid no deference or homage to Boudicca as queen. He seemed to concentrate instead on the jewels in the hilt of her sword. She held it in her hand, unsheathed, and stood. She looked at the Roman legionnaires in her banquet hall, and at the pasty little man who told her, in so many words, that she was queen of nothing.

She then dismissed the Romans with haughty finality. I almost smiled at her feminine bravado, but I was too edgy about this. Understanding at last the outrageous price Catus was demanding, she laughed off his demands and told them all to leave. They didn’t feel like it.

A knot formed in my stomach, stabbing me. According to the historian Tacitus, whose brilliant but achingly terse report of the matter was all I had to go on, Boudicca was then whipped by the Romans and her daughters were raped. She had given the Procurator attitude, and he didn’t like it.

It happened, like Tacitus said. They took her, unceremoniously, and to the surprise of everyone but me.

To punish her for her resistance, but mostly to drive home the lesson that she was nothing, they pulled her from her seat of honor, stripped her, tied her, and flogged her like a criminal her in front of her household. Her personal guard was held back or slain. Her torture was businesslike, loud and brutal.

Her daughters were the only ones not made to watch; they were pulled aside and repeatedly raped in turns by the rest of the unit. Catus took a few accountants and headed for the stores of silver, jewels, and horses.