Myths of the Modern Man (20 page)

“
For some of very same reasons you’ve just mentioned. And one other. I haven’t your expertise in this field.”

“
We may cover different aspects, Cassius, but we’re on the same team. You should have no trouble speaking freely with me.”

“
But I do.”

“
Go ahead and tell me why.”

“
Our positions on the team are well defined. We are both professional enough not to overstep our bounds. Our personal relationship is…well, quite another thing. We are a team, but we are complicated.”

“
The addition of Dr. L’Esperance makes our relationship more complicated.”

He sighed, and smiled a little, rolling his eyes briefly to the ceiling lights.

“
I’m sorry you saw that. I’m sorry to have hurt you. It was unintended.”

“
I know the routine.
She
was kissing
you
, and you couldn’t stop her. Right?”

“
No, I the fact is, we were only talking, when I put my hand on her arm. She became immediately affectionate, to my surprise, and I was very attracted to her. We kissed because we both wanted to.”

Eleanor found herself searching his face as he spoke, and she was very impressed with him, more than she had been in a long time.

“
Thank you, Cassius, for being so simple and honest.”

“
I am sorry. And I don’t want our relationship to be hurt by it.”

That was as contrite as he was going to get, but she knew she had won. She glanced down again at the main panel, feeling unaccountably foolish, as he had often made her feel, playfully in his superior way. In an effort to put the embarrassing and exhausting business behind her, and to claim her prize, she drew herself to him, and after a few searching nibbles, kissed him long and deeply. He put his arms around her, and when she had placed her head on his shoulder, as Dr. L’Esperance had done, she said, guardedly,

“
Tell me what you think your theory will accomplish. In a nutshell.”

“
In a nutshell, if we just kept turning back time for one day, every day, our worst fears of entropy would be solved, and our immediate crisis of staving off the burnout of this planet would be over.”

“
That’s intriguing. I grant you that. But, there are numerous problems, not the least of which is it would need constant monitoring. I’m not sure people can be exactly programmed to be exactly the same every day. Besides, what if this day is a horrible one for some people? Possibly many people? Right now, people are very ill, in pain. Some people are being hurt, by accidents or by deliberate abuse or torture. Do we want to make them re-live that in perpetuity?”

“
This is a new side of you, Eleanor.”

She was hurt at that thought, and added defensively, “And Colonel Moore will be unable to return if we do that. He will be lost in the time he’s been sent to.”

“
And I can think of no one better capable of coping in that time that Colonel Moore.”

“
You’re serious.”

“
Why shouldn’t I be? Tell me again, why you preferred Yorke to Moore?”

CHAPTER 16

Colonel John Moore’s narrative:

Between the cycle of killing and love making there was yet an undefined goal for Boudicca and the Iceni. If the tribes of the Trinovantes and Cartimandua’s crew joined us, and if we prevailed over the Romans, what then? Would they unite, these rival Celts, and form a new nation with Boudicca as everyone’s queen?

Not bloody likely, mate.

They never thought that far ahead. It was only “on to Verulamium.”

Verulamium would one day be called St. Albans, where King Offa of Mercia founded a Christian abbey in 793.

It’s an interesting coincidence that with the spread of Christianity in the later centuries of the 1st millennium AD, around the 700s and 800s, there occurred the waning of the age of warrior women. Their place in society altered when the influence of a male-ruled clerical world would come to dominate Renaissance Europe. Despite examples of remarkable women who came into being in the next millennium, it was not until near the end of it that warrior women emerged again, taking up arms either because of equal opportunity laws or frank necessity for the survival of their people. It was manifest even in the simple attitudes of self worth, self discovery and self-empowerment made by my grandmother’s kick-ass generation. Now, in the 3rd millennium AD, as the world serenely atrophies there are only half as many men as women, so, what to do?

And who to do it to?

So my mission, and my purpose, and perhaps even like Boudicca, was my destiny.

Was Dr. Roberts, who from the safety of her lab shared my mission, such a warrior woman? The civilizing factors of evolution aside, I didn’t think so. She had intelligence, wielded a small amount of power. She commanded respect in her field. But, she had no guts, no passion. Strangely though, in her way, she seemed as single-minded and without conscience as Boudicca.

Boudicca attacked again. The tribe of the Catuvellauni who lived in and around Verulamium, fellow Celts all of them, were slaughtered. Their city, Verulamium, which had been sponsored by the Romans as a municipum of the Province, was destroyed. The third city taken, the third laid waste. Fires raged everywhere. What was not worth stealing was destroyed. This included people as well as objects.

Paullinus and his legions waited it out beyond the ruins of Verulamium, planning his one great battle to finish the Celts once and for all, like a director reviewing stage directions, choosing the terrain, assembling his units, setting the scene.

His main force numbered around 10,000 men. It included the XIV legion, and parts of the XX. The II legion was supposed to have joined in, but its temporary commander, Poenius Postumus, refused orders and stayed where he was in the west. Either he didn’t want to get into the scrape with the profanum vulgis, the vulgar herd of Boudicca’s people, or else he was truly concerned with being hit from behind by other tribes which might join her. The result was the same, no II Legion, but Paullinus forged ahead with the force he already had.

They waited, these Roman legionnaires, in tight ranks with the discipline and strength of an empire behind them. The Celts ran wild in the city, gone half-mad with their victory and the taste of revenge. They were ecstatic, the rush of their immortality upon them.

Only Cailte and Taliesin looked somber. They approached me as I watered Boudicca’s horses. I no longer had the favor of their queen. She withdrew from me. Unlike them, I had not regained my honor. I waited out the attack of Verulamium with her servants, who kept me busy packing up camp and loading carts.

Nothing needed to be said, except my thanks to Boudicca for saving my life in the nick of time before Dubh slit my throat in Cailte’s tent, but she was still too proud and too angry to accept it from me.

Nick of time.
Listen to me.

“
You will have much story telling of this rebellion, Cailte,” I said as I saw him approach. He did not answer, but looked at Taliesin, whose robe was not stained with sacrificial blood today. His dagger had been taken from him. Evidently, he was in the doghouse, too.

“
What shall I tell of you?” Cailte said, fingering his sword, while his lyre hung lonely on his back, “That you hold the garments of a queen, waiting out battles to become pretender?”

“
Be plain. Not full of trickery as you were that night.”

He laughed and sneered at the same time, making indiscriminate faces that told he searched for the best words to slay me. His power as a bard diminished and left him impotent. He should not have had to search for the words.

“
If I wanted to kill you I would do it myself, not assign that work to another.”

“
Then you did not know I was to be slain?”

He did not answer.

“
You knew.” I said, my accusation quiet, and tinged with enough humor to make him not dismiss me yet.

“
You will not take Prasutagas’ place. Even if Boudicca wishes it.”

“
She does not wish it.”

“
She does not love you?” Taliesin asked.

“
No.”

“
Of what matter is love to Boudicca?” Cailte said, “She would wage war, make passion, make treaties with no concern to love. How much power do you intend to have?”

“
You’re right, truly,” I said, “Had she been in love with me, it would not stop her from reigning in her own manner. As it is, there is only the company I give her.”

“
I know her mind. I want to know yours.” Cailte said.

“
I will not be king.”

“
What will you be?” Taliesin asked.

“
A friend.”

Cailte scoffed, shaking his head.

“
Cailte,” I said, “let this wait until after we defeat the Romans. Until that day, this is only talk and means nothing.”

“
When will this happen?”

“
I don’t know if it will.”

“
Traitor.”

“
A word you should know well.”

He bristled, and Taliesin looked away.

“
I am a man afraid for the Iceni, that is all.” I said.

“
A coward, a traitor, and slave. I should kill you now.”

“
Shall I tell you something to save your life?” I said, “Both of you. The Romans fight not with the lust of men yearning to be free, but with organization, and deliberate thought. While you push forward the only way you know how, with the long sword and the blue woad and the shouts, they will shift, pause, turn, push according to several different choices. They have rehearsed by killing thousands of others in other lands. They know their work well. You have only your passion to guide you, and it pales beside an army of thinkers.”

Cailte belted me in the face. I dropped to the mud.

He pulled his sword, evidently not hesitating to do the job himself this time. I pulled his legs out from under him. Taliesin wanted to finish the talk, but he stood by quietly, not committing the social error of interrupting a fight. Cailte was down now, but I had no weapon. I didn’t really need one. He’d never seen any of the martial arts. I knocked out two of his teeth and broke his nose with one kick. He fell back with a face full of blood and a groan in the mud.

“
Crippled in the morning, a god in the afternoon.” Boudicca said somewhere behind me, “I think you are as full of trickery as Cailte says.”

Cailte spit blood.

“
Why are you here?” she finally asked me.

If I could have answered that, I’d have the answer to a lot of other questions.

“
Don’t underestimate them, your enemies, Boudicca.”

“
I have underestimated you. Why are you here?”

“
To survive.”

She drew her own sword. It was long and heavy in her hand, but she handled it well. She was accustomed to its feel.

“
At what cost?” she asked.

“
I might ask the same of you.”

“
Come.” She said, measuring the distance between us with her sword. “Walk onward.”

She spanked me once, hard, with the flat of the blade, and drove me with the point of her sword like a sheep to the hilltop behind the camp. An odd tactic, I thought, to remove me from camp, since she could have demanded and gotten privacy anywhere, from her tent to the most crowded marketplace.

When we were alone, and far enough away to suit her, she lowered her broadsword, but still held it in her cold, chafed right hand. I could tell Dr. Ford she was right handed. That was all I really knew about her. That and the mole on her thigh.

She reached behind my ear and grasped a handful of my long hair, and sifted her free hand through it.

“
Boudicca….”

“
Don’t….” she said. “Will I die today?”

“
You think I have such knowledge?”

“
Will I die today?”

She was more courageous than Cartimandua.

“
I don’t know. But, your rebellion will die today. Your people will die today.”

She looked into my eyes with deliberation, and need.

“
Unless you change your force,” I said, “you will flow into their mighty power like the rush of water through one of their aqueducts, and they will bend you where they want. They are Romans, Boudicca, they have done this many times before.”

“
And Cartimandua? What did she say?” Her pride had prevented her from asking me earlier, but she still wanted to know. She was not as stupid as Dubh, Nemain or Cailte, who were too proud for knowledge.

“
She will not join you, Boudicca.”

She pulled her hand away, and pushed me.

“
I could have loved you.” she said, disgusted. She walked away.

But, I knew it wasn’t any love she could have had for me which cemented her plans, nor her considerable pride. The threat of crucifixion was too strong for her to change.

Nearly 100,000 Celts sure of their coming victory could not be managed, let alone changed. They did not even need Cartimandua’s tribe to help now, they thought, for the Romans assembled on the battle site were only about 10,000 to 13,000. It would surely be a romp, they all felt this.