AUTHOR’S NOTE

There is very little left to say now, at the end.

This final part of the Boudica’s story is the simplest and the best known. It is almost the only episode of early British history with corroborative archaeological evidence: Colchester, Chelmsford, London, St Albans and a host of smaller towns did all burn to the ground some time in the first century AD.

The detail of how and why and in what order comes from Tacitus and is as plausible as the rest of his writing, which is to say it seems likely that the base facts are correct, if one allows for the hyperbole of the victors’ side.

I have deviated from the customary accepted reading of his account in a few places. Most notably, I have the IXth legion march straight down Peddar’s Way in their effort to relieve Colchester. There seems reasonable evidence that the Wash did not extend as far inland as it does now and this was therefore by far the most direct route.

Beyond that, I have the Boudica’s forces divide to assault Lugdunum and Verulamium (London and St Albans) rather than looping back on themselves simply because it seems to make geographical sense. More controversially, I have set the final battle rather further west than is the currently accepted location of Mancetter, near Leicester.

Of all the myths and suppositions surrounding the Boudica, it would seem to me highly unlikely that tens of thousands of warriors did meet ten thousand legionaries in the particular valley the historians have identified; if they had, the metal detectors would have recovered at least a belt buckle or a harness mount by now.

Finally, I have given the Boudica an ending in war as befitted her spirit; neither the poison of Tacitus—the standard means by which a good Roman matron might take her life—nor the “illness” of Dio Cassius were worthy of her, nor did they seem particularly plausible.

The other characters are largely fictional, although the two Roman commanders bear mention.

Petillius Cerialis, the impetuous legate of the IXth legion, did, apparently, survive an almost total annihilation of his forces and escape with his standards and a small company of his cavalry to take refuge in his fortress. He later became governor of Britannia, which suggests his action was not condemned in Rome.

Suetonius Paulinus’ actions as governor are more or less as described: he was in the process of assaulting Mona when he heard news of the revolt. He took ship south and rode inland to view the situation in London, decided it was hopeless and rode away again, leaving the population to face the Boudican war host undefended.

In the wake of the revolt, he scoured the land in apparent vengeance. Nero finally recalled him on the grounds that he was treating the natives too harshly, and installed a more moderate governor, Turpilianus, who dealt with the remaining tribal leaders by more diplomatic methods—or as Tacitus would have it, “veiled [his] tame inaction under the honourable name of peace.”

On the native side, Dubornos’ fictional life and death are based on the discovery in a bog of the corpse of a young man described as a “druid prince.” He had undergone the threefold death of a blow to the head, strangulation by a cord and drowning in the peat bog. He was naked, but for a band of fox fur round his upper arm. He was well fed and fit and had the remains of a burned bannock in his stomach.

All of these have led archaeologists to assume that he was a sacrifice to the gods of the place and time. Our culture tends to deride that but it has always seemed to me that the willing gift of a life, to take a message directly across the river to the lands of the dead, provided no-one else is harmed in the process of sacrifice, is quite different from the mindless slaughter of beasts or of unwilling victims and is not necessarily something to abhor.

The writing of this series has been an extraordinary personal odyssey in which almost every aspect of my life has changed, almost all of it attributable to the deepening dreaming brought about by the Boudica and all who surround her. I doubt very much if the characters who inhabit my dreaming will choose to leave quietly and already they are knocking at other doors in other ways. If life and times permit, I will look back first at the pre-history to this series in Alexandria and on Mona and then forward a little towards Rome in the aftermath of the revolt and then forward further to the end of Rome in Britain. Those readers who are already familiar with the Arthurian legends will have seen the seeds of something similar threaded through the narrative since the first book of this series. I have no idea where that might lead, but it would be interesting to find out.

The wider world has changed in ways far more dramatic than my own. When I began writing Eagle, the new millennium had just begun, full of hope for a different future. Since then, war and natural disasters have plagued the earth. In particular, I have watched the governing powers of my country launch a war against a distant state that, whatever one thinks of its legality, bears remarkable resemblance to the Roman invasion of Britain nearly two millennia ago. From the shifting reasons for invasion to the attempt to harness local resources for distant profit, to the failure to imagine insurrection amongst the native population, the invasion of Iraq has in my view mirrored the legions’ progress in Britannia.

We don’t, of course, have to follow the path laid down two thousand years ago. History does not have to repeat itself unless we choose it, or allow it to happen by default. Our land may be ruled by the natural inheritors of Rome. They may have spread their influence across the globe, with their need to control all that they do not understand. But those of us who dream with and of the land can believe that their grip is beginning to loosen, and that there is hope that a different way of seeing the world might emerge; that we could learn from who we were and so change who we might be.

The world would be a very different place if Boudica had won her final battle. She lost and we live with the consequences. It is too late to go back and remake history. It is not too late to go forward differently.

Suffolk, Autumn 2005

For those interested in the dreaming, the author’s website, http://www.mandascott.co.uk, carries details of contemporary dreaming workshops, recommended reading and other resources.