Song for a Dark Queen Read Online Free PDF

War. That is not a true word. We owe them the death of the King my father. Let us bide by our own hearths, and let them rot beneath the Red Crests’ heel!’
    I thought, ‘What a woman’s way, what a vixen’s way, to set the fate of two tribes and maybe manymore, over against the death of one man!’ And I looked at Prasutagus sitting beside her with his sword across his knees, and saw the thought in him also – and in Gretorix Hard-Council and others about the fire. And then I saw the face of Merddyn Oak Priest, his dark gaze turned upon her, and the shadow of a smile on his thin lips; and I knew that it was the Priest Kind, before ever the Council Fire was lit, who had put that way of thinking into her heart. That seemed to me an ill thing. Yet the ruling, which in its way bore out the words of Gretorix Hard-Council, seemed to me good; though it was not the kind that great songs are made of.
    So the thing was settled, and Prasutagus’s hand fell gently away from the hilt of his sword.
    And we bided quiet by our hearths for that time.
    We waited, while the Catuvellauni lay up in the refuge of the forest country north of Londinos; they and the Red Crests watching each other like beasts over a kill. And then in high summer, we heard that the Emperor of the Roman people had come himself, and with him many more Red Crests, and magic war-animals, many times bigger than the biggest horse that was ever foaled, whose voice was the bellowing of many war-horns, whose hide was tough enough to turn a spear, and who made the earth to shudder when they charged, scattering and trampling on all that came their way.
    Then there was a battle greater than any that had gone before, and the Catuvellauni were hacked to pieces; and Caratacus escaped with nothing but his life and a handful of his sword-companions, and fled to take up arms again, with the Silures of the western hills.
    And then there was quiet. And in the quiet, wordcame that the Emperor had taken Dun Camulus without a blow, and sat himself down there to receive the surrender of the Catuvellauni. And while he was there, other Kings began going to him under the Green Branch, seeking a good peace. Then the Iceni held council again, and determined upon following the same trail. And at that Council it was also decided that, both because the Romans were not used to Woman’s rule and might not understand, and because it might be a trap to get the rulers of the tribes into their hands, Prasutagus alone, with a company of chiefs and elders, should go to the gathering at Dun Camulus, while Boudicca bided safe in the heart of her people.
    She raged at this. Half, I expected her to follow until her feet were bleeding, as she had done that time before. But even for Boudicca there could be no going against the whole Council when its word was spoken.
    I rode south with Prasutagus, for at all the great happenings of a tribe, the Chief’s Harper must be there to make of it a harp-song that may pass into the history of that tribe.
    So we drove south, between the marsh and the upland forests with the cornlands ripening to the harvest, and the dustclouds of late summer rising from the horses’ hooves and the chariot wheels. And I saw the great Dun of the Catuvellauni, with the King’s palace in its midst, many times larger and finer than the Royal Dun of the Iceni; and set about with its wide forecourts and chariot courts, its craftsmen’s quarter and its Women’s Place. And I saw the Emperor of the Romans sitting in the High Hall of Togodumnos. Claudius, they called him. He was a sight to make a cat laugh in his gilded armour (but the Cats of War would not be laughing anymore). A man with a big paunchand a little head on a long neck, who stammered like a midsummer cuckoo in his speech, and limped when I saw him walking. He seemed well pleased with all things, himself included. And yet I saw that like young Prasutagus, he had a thinking face. And so far as might be, across the gulf between