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Legends, Love, Loss, and Surrender

Chapter Nine
Biography

"To make a long story short, he seduced me," Boudicca broke in.

"Excuse me! Have you lost your bloody mind?" Methos demanded. Looking to Macleod, he said, "I was vicarius to the proconsul of Britannia. She was the widow of a client-king. I had nothing to gain from seducing her." Turning back to Boudicca, he said, "If anything, you seduced me with your story so that I would help you negotiate with the Romans."

"And look where that got me," Boudicca sneered.

"Is it possible you just fell in love with each other without any ulterior motive?" Macleod asked, hoping to get them to some common ground.

"Absolutely not!" Boudicca snapped.

"Not bloody likely!" Methos agreed.

Macleod sighed. It was not the common ground he had been hoping for.

"I warned you that the Romans could be greedy, cruel, and unyielding," Methos reminded Boudicca. "I am sorry for what happened, but it was your choice to proceed." His sympathy was sincere, but then his expression became cold and his tone dangerous. "Given our relative positions at the time, if you had possessed anything I wanted, I could have just taken it from you."

Boudicca's green eyes glittered with fury. Methos had just enough time to wonder what had possessed him to antagonize her before she pulled her dagger out, and with a ululating cry, shoved it up under his ribcage, lacerating his spleen and puncturing his lung. He cried out in agony and coughed up blood. Then he fixed her with a defiant stare and resumed where he left off when she had interrupted him.

"I listened with rapt attention as Boudicca told me how she became Immortal," he said, wheezing a little and grimacing as the blue lightning raced to heal him before his slit-open spleen could bleed him out like a slaughtered hog or his punctured lung could drown him in his own blood. The hell of it was, every breath he took reopened the wound a little, causing him more pain than he would have felt if she had given him a fatal wound from which he could revive. Boudicca had said she wanted him to suffer, and she was making sure he did.

"In my thirtieth year, the spring rains came over the mountains as they always did," she said. "They drove away the chill of winter, flooded the plain where we grew our crops, enriched the soil with new silt, and, most years, brought the desert to our north to vibrant, flowering life for a few weeks.(1) That year was different. The rains carried on through most of the summer, long past planting time, and into the harvest of first fruits. The few seeds we did manage to plant were either washed away or rotted in the ground. It was as if the gods meant to wash us from the face of the earth as our stories said they had tried to do in the early days when our people were wicked and greedy and selfish.

"The wild fruits and berries that we normally harvested and dried did not grow in sufficient numbers because the bees did not fly from blossom to blossom when they were in bloom. Those that we did manage to pick could not be dried because of the constant damp and would rot if not consumed within a day or two.

"Our grazing land turned to swamp, so we moved our sheep and goats to higher pastures. There was something bad about the grass up there, and only two out of every ten survived the first cycle of the moon. Some families lost their entire herds. Those that remained were too important for milk and wool to be slaughtered for their meat.

"We could not fish because the current was too swift. Lines, nets, traps, and boats alike were swept away by the river. Spear fishing was equally impossible because the water was simply too muddy to see the fish. The marsh seven days journey to our east was flooded so deeply that we could not harvest the mussels we usually gathered there. The deer, the boar, and the bear left our valley seeking drier habitats. Even the wild hares were flooded from their homes and moved into the mountains more than a day's walk from our village.

"We all grew lean that year on a diet of wild greens, lizards, snakes, frogs, eggs, and doves, but we worked together, shared what we had, and none of us starved. Then, as the weather warmed into the hottest part of the summer, mosquitoes blackened every standing pool. There were millions upon millions of them, and they brought the fever with them. A third of the village died. Children were orphaned, mothers buried their babies, and elders lost the adult children who would have cared for them in their old age. Some entire families were wiped out.

"With the cold season coming on, and nothing laid by for winter, we began to plan a hunting expedition following the bear, the deer, and the boar. We had no idea how far the hunting party would have to travel, what, if any, luck they would have, or whether they would ever come back. They would not return unless they found enough meat to feed the entire village, so choosing which and how many hunters to send was a momentous decision for each household.

"Like the Iceni, our men and women hunted, fought, cooked, cleaned, cared for the children and ruled side by side; no responsibility was considered too important for a woman or too menial for a man. My husband's sister, Kronse Mit (2), was recently widowed by the fever and great with child. So it was decided that I would be the one to go from our household, and my husband, Tsirauñe Knan (3), would stay behind to look after his sister.

"For the next seven days, Kronse and Tsirauñe helped me to prepare my weapons, sharpen my axe and my knife, pack my bedroll and my meager rations. We had been living with the storms for so long that we were quite used to the voice of thunder and none of us feared it anymore. I don't remember any screaming or running. I don't remember being afraid. By the time we realized the noise was not the arguing of the sky gods, half the mountain had come down upon us.

"I woke up in a dark, wet hole, sheltered somewhat from the crushing weight of the landslide by the protective cocoon of my husband's body. It must have taken me several days to claw my way out, mud filling my eyes and ears, my nose and mouth, tree trunks and boulders blocking my way, and what I thought was my falling asleep from fatigue was more than likely my repeated dying of suffocation.

"I finally broke out of my tomb under the light of a full moon. For the first time in seven months, the sky was clear. Such a great pile of earth had fallen on my home that it had blocked the river, creating a lake to the west and causing it to flow northward away from the village when it used to flow east not a morning's walk from our hut. I saw a herd of deer out grazing on the plain, and a lion stalking them. I could hear wolves in the distance, and something large snuffling through the debris that had come down off the mountain. I didn't have a flint to strike a spark even if I could have found tinder and dry wood for a fire, and without fire to frighten the predators, I was just meat. I climbed back into my burrow and waited for dawn.

"When I came out in the morning, there was literally nothing left of my home. Not one stick or rag or piece of thatch, not one of the little desert cats that chased the mice that stole our grain, no familiar voices calling good morning, not one thing to say my people had been there except for the hole I had crawled out of and my footprints in the mud where I had searched all day for any sign of them. If not for the ache in my heart, I could have imagined it all had been a dream.

"I don't know whether I lingered for weeks or months. Looking back, I think I died of starvation and thirst more than once simply because my grief was so sharp that I didn't recognize the pangs of hunger or the ache of a parched throat. Eventually, I had mourned until my heart could hurt no longer, and then I began walking.

"I found a teacher in a wise and benevolent old Sovereign named Shun who caught me stealing rice dumplings stuffed with pork and red bean paste from a market stall. When the vendor would have had me punished, Shun paid for stolen meal and admonished the vendor to have mercy for it was clear that I was starving. It was a blessing that Shun was a kindly man who didn't want my head, for I didn't recognize his Presence then for the warning that it was; I thought it was just my body struggling to cope with the first nourishment it had received in days.

"Shun taught me what I was, the rules of the Game, what the Presence meant, how to fight, and more importantly, how to make peace. From him I learned there were ancient stories of great floods in many different cultures; and I decided then that bad things happened not because the gods were angry with us, but because they became bored and inattentive.

"I studied with Shun for nearly a hundred years. His people believed him to be a benevolent sorcerer. They were all short and stocky with straight black hair, yellow skin, and almond-shaped dark eyes; so when I stood a head taller than my mentor with my red hair, ivory skin, and green eyes, it was easy to convince them that I was a witch. There was no need to explain why we never aged.

"Then a warrior named Sun Tzu came to our village. Shun sent me to the temple, and from the top of the steps, I watched Sun Tzu take his head and receive his Quickening. Hardly had he regained his footing when I charged him, screaming in rage. I would have had his head in revenge had he not in just that moment acquired Shun's countenance and spoken to me in my teacher's voice.

"'You do not need to avenge me,' he said. 'As the fox preys upon the hare, so among our kind do the strong prey upon the weak; but this warrior, he is a mighty lion who challenges only those who can threaten him.'

"'But you are a threat to no one, master,' I told him. 'You are neither a fox nor a lion, but a stately old tiger who would spend his days basking in the sun if he was just left alone.'

"'And now this warrior knows that,' Shun said. 'If you let him live, he will teach others as I have taught you.'

"I howled in rage and frustration. Every fiber of my being wanted to hack off Sun Tzu's head, but my ears had heard my master's words and stayed my sword. Then Shun's image vanished and Sun Tzu's face appeared before me once again. I began to tremble with bloodlust and a thirst for revenge.

"'Remember, a warrior's greatest battle is with himself,' Sun Tzu told me in my master's voice. 'The greatest victory is won without a fight when two enemies can part and go their separate ways and live in peace and never raise their swords.'

"Then Sun Tzu threw down his sword. 'Take my head if you must,' he said, speaking with his own voice now. 'With it, you will acquire all of your master's knowledge and all of mine. You will finally understand the horror of taking a life, and you will feel the compulsion to teach others to avoid bloodshed when possible. Or you can let me live, and we can both teach the wisdom of Shun.'

"I screamed until I ran out of breath. My insides boiled with grief and anger burned in my guts like pitch. Like a fool, I turned my back on him to compose myself, and he did not attack. When I faced Sun Tzu again, he knelt before me.

"It would have been easy to take his head then, but my master had taught me better. If my opponent would not or could not fight, the battle was already won. There was no need to raise my sword against him and I would find only shame in doing so.

"'Leave this place,' I commanded Sun Tzu. 'Fight only to defend your head or the lives of those who cannot defend themselves. Teach my master's wisdom to all who would learn from you, and do not cross my path again.'

"Sun Tzu got to his feet, picked up his sword and sheathed it, and bowed low before me. Again I quivered with the desire to take his head, but I restrained myself out of respect for my master.

"'Thank you for my life,' Sun Tzu said. 'I will forever honour your master's memory.' Then he bowed again and walked out of the village.

"I stayed with Shun's people for perhaps another fifty years, teaching and farming beside them until the thirst for revenge subsided. Then it was time for me to walk the earth again. The last I heard, Sun Tzu was teaching in a monastery in the mountains at the roof of the world.

"Thirty-odd years ago, I was living in Capernaum when a donkey cart broke loose on its way up a hill and ran me over. When I revived, I fled westward only because I hadn't been that way before. Most recently, I lived among the Druids on Mona for nearly twenty years before wedding Prasutagus. The Iceni think I am of Druid origin and know their magic, which is why they have not questioned that I do not seem to age. And that is how I came to be Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni."

For a long time after she finished talking, I kept silent. Her story could have been mine; the broad strokes were so alike that the details didn't matter. Instead of a desert oasis, she had lived in a village along the river. Instead of wind and dust, her world had ended in rain and mud. She had studied for nearly a century with Shun, whose wisdom filled Sun Tzu when the philosopher-warrior took his quickening. Then she spared Sun-Tzu, who later became my teacher for more than a hundred years. We had followed in one another's footsteps for nearly two thousand years. We probably stood within one hundred yards of each other when we heard Jesus teach at Capernaum.

I had come of age in a culture that had not yet invented religion, so I never was a religious man. I had seen gods and goddesses, heroes and legends, myths and spirits, philosophies, doctrines, and dogmas come and go in and out of fashion for some two or three thousand years already. As much as I enjoyed the current life the Roman Empire had granted me, I was weary of Roman greed and the thirst for conquest and glory. It had sickened me to see that lunatic Caligula fornicating with his sister and then deifying her corpse and himself. It grieved me now that Nero grew fat on rare and exotic delicacies and played his lyre while citizens and subjects alike starved, and then he murdered innocent Christianos and other non-conformists to entertain the masses and make them forget their own plight.

I had seen too many noble cultures crushed beneath the heel of Rome: the Greeks, Cleopatra's Egypt, the Iberians, the Gauls, the Britons. At that very moment, Seutonius was on his way to Alba to exterminate the Druids. And now, here was Boudicca, this fierce woman, an Immortal like me, who was determined that her people would not bow beneath the yoke of Roman tyranny. I could not help but think that some force, some higher power, had brought Boudicca and me together at that time and place.

I decided to tell her my story.

TBC

(1) The Boudicca in this story is almost as old as Methos. She grew up in the Tarim Basin, in the Taklamakan Desert of Western China, and her people, in my imagination, spoke a language called Tocharian A. The Tarim Basin is a high, cold, arid region, surrounded on all sides by mountains with the Lop Nur Marsh at the easternmost end. Beginning around the 200s BC, the Silk Road skirted the basin on both the north and south, but Boudicca would have been long gone by then. In the early 20th century, European explorers found Caucasoid and Mongoloid mummies in the region dating back to about 1,900 BC. Among the various mummies found were two with red hair and at least one wearing tartan. The Wikipedia article "Tarim Mummies" makes an interesting read if you are into that kind of thing.

(2) Honey Bee in Tocharian A.

(3) Power to Know in Tocharian A.