Chapter 32: Eadweard
I am lost. All of my certainties are gone. All I know for sure is that the Roman gods are stronger than ours. All of our prayers, all of our offerings, my mother's life, have been for nothing. My life, all the years I gave to my training, have been for nothing. When I call upon the gods and the spirits of this place, I am shouting into the wind. No-one hears. No-one answers.
I lie in my little makeshift shelter, hoping to die. But the gods do not hear even this prayer from their faithful servant. I wish to return to the earth, to find peace, to mingle my dust with the dust of the ancestors, but I must do it for myself, it seems. There are no gods.
The night is cold and clear. I look at the stars. There were more Celtic warriors than stars in the sky against two Roman legions, and yet they won. They cut us down. They killed the women and children. By the time they got to the baggage carts, the bloodlust was upon them. What gods permit the killing of children? The Roman gods are harsh and pitiless. I don't think I can serve them. I don't want to.
I seek Cador in this place, up on the hill, but he is not here. I seek his forgiveness. We quarrelled the last time we spoke, and parted on bad terms. Many times I have wanted to punch him, and a few times I have. I wish I had laid him out that night, and stopped him from going forward towards the Roman lines. I wish with all my heart I had brought him home safe to our father's house. It would have been worth a broken hand. Bearchan and I were already getting sick feelings about the coming battle. I thought the omens were not good, the crows were circling, but mine was a lonely voice. The Iceni and the Trinovantes were so confident of victory that they brought their women and children to watch.
And it should have been a magnificent victory. It should have been the end of the Romans here, in a country not their own. The Governor and the two legions should have perished, but it was we who perished. I have never seen such numbers of the dead. The smell of blood and of flesh cut open, of entrails spilt, was overpowering. I am used to blood: I have been dealing with it almost every day from a young age, from the day I cut my first throat, the day I stitched my first wound, but this was unlike anything I have ever come across. Blood has a particular, iron tang to it, but the tang that hung over the killing grounds was strong enough to make me heave.
Separated in the confusion from Bearchan and Jori, wounded, bleeding and in pain, somehow I ended up by the baggage train, crawled under a cart and collapsed there, my ears filling with the screams of terror and panic of the women and children, the shouts and yells of the few warriors trying to defend them, their cries and shrieks as the swords struck home. I could only pray that they would be clean, quick kills, but many were not. I could not have saved them, even if I had been able to move. They haunt me, those screams. I hear them crying down to me from the stars. Why are you alive and we are not, they cry. The cries fade slowly, as they did that day. Trying not to cry out myself, I had to listen as the screaming and sobbing got quieter and stopped, one by one, as the wounded realised no help was coming, and gave up their souls. A battlefield after a battle is an eerie, haunted place, the silence broken only by the sound of the wind and the cawing of crows. Up here, the wind sighs through the trees, and chills me.
After a day, perhaps it was two days, I became aware of Bearchan and Jori beside me, talking to me, bringing me round, dragging me out from under the cart. I was lucky that did not start the bleeding off again. I am not ashamed to say that tears were shed because we had found each other, and we clung to each for a few minutes, thankful but for what, we were not quite sure. I was hours away from death at that time. Sometimes now, I wish they had not found me, but in the moment, I was so pleased to see them. At least I would not die alone.
But Bearchan was having none of it. We had survived this far, and now we needed to do whatever we had to in order to make it back to the village. He felt we owed it to those who did not survive. We had to take their bodies, their stories, home.
They needed my knowledge. Somehow I managed to instruct them in making bone needles and gut thread – there were enough dead horses about, there was no need for Jori to go far to scavenge what we needed. Then I had to talk Bearchan through stitching first his leg, then my side. My hands were shaking too much to be of use, and I couldn't see my own wound well enough. I could not think straight because of the pain. Water was a bigger problem, but somehow we managed. There must have been water in the baggage train, in the wrecked carts.
They wrapped me in blankets, lit a fire and kept me warm while Jori scoured the battlefield, searching for our people. Hope requires energy, and I was in too much pain to hope, but when he returned, his eyes full of tears, to tell us he had found Cador, my heart broke. My brother, dead in battle, was something I had shut out of my mind, to be dealt with only if it happened. Somehow – something else I had tried not to think about – I had felt that, of the two of us, it was always going to be me who died. He was always the much better fighter. I was not prepared, and it completely unmanned me.
I learned to walk with death and to sit beside it from the age of six. It holds no fear for me; it is part of the natural cycle, and I know we go beyond the sunset to the other world, so it is not the end. We live in hope that we will be reborn. But I have not lost someone so close to me before. I was not at home when my mother died, and although I grieve for her, I know now that I really grieve the lost time I was not allowed to spend with her, growing up, because I was so young when I was sent away from her. I have never before felt that searing, unbearable pain of such final separation.
Bearchan and Jori searched and I helped as much as I could, once my wound was stitched, but there were just so many dead, so many entrails spilt, so many limbs severed, so many becoming unrecognisable already, heaped up together, it was an almost impossible task to find everyone. As well as Cador, we were lucky to find the two we did. I could not walk far, I was in a huge amount of pain, so I would stop searching and return to the task of releasing the spirits of the children as best I could. At least by this they might have a chance of rebirth, to make up for this life, so cruelly taken. But I would sink to my knees after a short time, helpless in the face of the number of bodies stretching away from me, distressed that I could not give even the barest of last rites to them all.
I do not know what happens to the spirits of warriors killed in battle. I do not know if they come home to their villages, or whether they can only return to the place where they fell, where their blood was spilt. If I was taught that, either I didn't want to listen, or I have chosen to forget. It is something too painful to think about. But now I am finding out for myself. Although in that place I released his spirit to the best of my ability, with what little I had to work with, and we have brought home his body, I have had no sign that his spirit has followed. We did not know each other very well, the gods saw to that. We had so little time together. And now he is gone, and the gods will not let me follow. Because I did not save him. Because I did not fight well enough. Because I am disgraced.
As well as the pain of losing Cador, of being unable to bring home the bodies of all the fallen, Bearchan and I live with the knowledge of dishonour. Now we are home, and we have time, too much time, almost, to think about things, in our eyes, we are disgraced. We did not die in battle. These are the stories we are brought up on, the noble warriors who fight and die for the tribe. I even cut off my amulet and threw it away, so I could not be identified as a druid. I have dishonoured Mona, and all the druids who died there. When we drink and smoke, we talk of killing ourselves as the only way to purge the stain. No-one says anything to us, no-one avoids us, but we imagine they are thinking it. We are thinking it – that is enough. But we also know that there was no point fighting on. Our deaths would not have brought the Romans to the point of defeat. They would not even have noticed us among so many dead. And while I carry this burden, I have no room, no energy to feel anything else.
The third time I come to the shelter on the hill, she follows me, my Roman girl. She can put salve on my wound, but she cannot put salve on my heart. She is Roman but I don't hate her; I don't know what I feel any more. I don't want to feel: it is too painful.
We lie close to each other in bed, I need to feel her near me, but I do not desire her. I do not desire any woman. I don't know if I ever will. I think I am pleased she has followed me, like the good shepherd she has become, looking for her lost sheep. I am no longer a wolf. I am a sheep, needing to be led back to the field.
I have been cruel to her, I know that. She shows me a new face, her resigned face. When she thinks I can't see, that I am not paying attention, sometimes I glimpse a despondent face. It should break my heart, but it does not. My heart is already shattered into a thousand pieces: there is nothing left to break. I should want to enfold her in my arms, cover her face in kisses, and tell her I am sorry, I am sorry, and beg her forgiveness for giving her so much pain. But until I can tell Cador I am sorry, until I feel I have his forgiveness, I cannot beg hers.
I have tested her patience, her feelings for me, whatever they are. Almost as if I want to drive her away, to add to my misery. I do not deserve happiness, and she deserves someone better than me.
But she has surprised me, my Roman girl. She has stuck it out, she has taken everything I have thrown at her. If she has complained, it has not been to my face. If she has cried, it has been out of my sight. Normally she is passive, she waits to be told, to be given permission. But here she is, taking charge, telling me what's what. She tells me she will not allow me to kill myself. She takes my silver knife, which no-one touches except me. She still believes in me. She tells me she loves me, which makes her cry. It should make me cry, but it does not. I wish I could feel the warmth of her love. She thinks I am still the man I was when she first saw me in the pool. She reflects me, the old me, back to myself. I have forgotten what he is like, that man.