Belis Before 6
Belis Before
She is twenty-one years old and her family is broken.
They are camped in the fens, close to where the Nene meets the sea.
Belis sits at the edge of the tents, staring out across the pale yellow reeds, still gilded by the early-morning frosts.
Behind her slumber perhaps four hundred men, women and children.
They have been gathering slowly since she and her mother first arrived, two weeks ago.
Mostly they are Iceni but a few from the Trinovantes have come, and there are at least four huge old Catuvellauni warriors, still bitter from the Roman defeats some twenty years ago.
The queen welcomes each one, embracing the adults and bending to pat each of the children on their heads.
She walks through the encampment in a robe open at the back and her hair pinned high so that all may see what the Romans have done to a British queen.
In the evening she gathers the oldest and fiercest fighting men and women in her tent and talks strategy late into the night.
Belis joined her at first but for all the training and practice she has no experience at war and her mother sent her away. Now she spends her nights lying in the sedge grass and watching the secret paths for more pilgrims, more blades to pledge to this sacred endeavour.
Cati is half ghost, rarely straying from their mother’s side.
She flinches if men come too close, hands creeping to the knives she hides under her robes.
The men of the camp are understanding; they don’t take offence but Belis hates seeing the death of youth in her sister, the innocence that faded as she huddled in her barrel, listening to the world end around her.
So she sits and watches the wind blow through the marshes and watches the herons fly low over the horizon and watches another day in her life pass away.
In another week they are a thousand-strong, in two there are more of them than can be supported by the fenlands and Boudica gives the order to move out.
A band of warriors meet them south of Elge with chariots and ponies and from then on Belis and Cati ride beside their mother, wielding spears and shortswords.
Hundreds are coming every day now, the lands of the Iceni and Trinovantes emptying of all their warriors, all their rage focusing on this one point.
Even the queen cannot greet each one individually, but she drives the chariot up and down the line, showing the still raw scars on her back, talking of the wrong done to her daughter.
Belis stands silently next to her; every day her fury grows and she longs to quench it, to drown it in Roman blood.
She has barely practised with the spear since Icenorum but now as soon as the army stops – for it is an army, there can be no longer any doubt about that – as soon as the army stops she leaps to the ground and calls for a sparring partner.
She fights with her battle tip, scorning the blunted wooden staffs used for training.
She drills daily and has defeated every man who dares face her.
This time, Belis promises herself as she runs laps of the encampment and sharpens her long knives, this time she will fight back. This time they will do the screaming.
They approach Camulodunum at midday. The lords of the Trinovantes know the city well for it is their own capital and they have come up to the front of the column to speak with the queen.
Belis listens eagerly as they explain the layout of the city, the earthworks built by the occupying forces, the new temple to the last emperor built on ground sacred to Adraste.
Boudica arranges her forces around the city.
She calls for the Romans to come out and fight her.
Word comes that there are less than two hundred soldiers left in the city.
The queen grinds her teeth. There is little glory in that, but the messenger continues.
The soldiers are the personal guard of the Procurator.
A howl goes through the ranks; the Procurator is hated above all others.
He has been the personal ruin of many of them, his soldiers are the ones who came to Icenorum and tore Belis’s world apart.
She stares at the city. She can taste metallic battle lust in her mouth, sees the same madness reflected in her mother’s eyes.
Even little Cati grips her knives and gleams with anticipation.
They are going to drive these wolves back into the sea.
The queen calls for the charge and suddenly they are flying towards the city, blades flashing at their chariot wheels. Belis barely has time to take a breath and then there is nothing but blood and fire and death.