‘To face the enemy without fully understanding them is like facing them without a sword or a shield. It gives them a precious advantage. Hate the Romans if you must, but do not allow hate to cloud your judgement.’
Caratacus had listened. Togodumnus had sneered that he wanted nothing to do with the Romans but killing them. That was the night, Caratacus knew, when his father had decided he should be king.
He brought his thoughts back to the present. The Druids were pushing straw and thin branches that would feed the fire into gaps in the structure, and the tinder-dry gorse bushes that burned so fiercely when they were in yellow flower. The shrieks of fear were an assault on his ears and he vowed to close them when the flame was lit. A pity he had been unable to spend longer with the young man in charge of the elephant. It had been a very revealing conversation. Now he was sure the beast was no physical threat he could concentrate on combating the power of its symbolism. Togodumnus, the fool, was still determined it should be destroyed. Would he never learn?
The attack on the column his brother had ordered without his knowledge had infuriated the British war leader. How many men had they lost? How many irreplaceable warriors cut down for nothing but one man’s vanity? Three hundred, perhaps four. And worse, every man who escaped the carnage was now convinced of the Romans’ invincibility and spread whispers about the power of the ‘monster’. The damage was incalculable.
At last, Nuada was ready.
Rufus watched the Druid come forward with the flaming torch in his left hand. His mind threatened to freeze with terror, but he knew he couldn’t allow it. He must find the strength. Think! The boar. There was something about the boar. Then the words came to him as clearly as if he was hearing them spoken inside his head: ‘I have faced charging boars the size of a small bullock, but I doubt that I would stand before this.’
He forced himself to concentrate. The nose. Yes, the broken nose. That noble, who must be Caratacus, was the Gaul, the Gaul who had questioned him about Bersheba! He had only one chance. He opened his mouth wide to shout for the British king’s attention. But he had drunk nothing for more than a dozen hours and it was as if his throat was filled with pebbles. All that emerged was a pale imitation of an elderly crow that was drowned by the moans and screams of those trapped with him.
Nuada was mere feet away, his hand reaching forward to push the torch into the straw, where it would flicker, then burn, then consume. Rufus swallowed desperately, working his mouth in an attempt to find something, anything, that would lubricate his throat. He tried again. If he failed, he was dead. ‘Lord,’ he croaked. ‘Lord Caratacus. Bersheba. The elephant.’
Nuada’s winged brows knitted in puzzlement at the words, but he shook his head and forced the flaming torch into the straw beside Rufus’s head. The young Roman screamed in terror as he felt the first heat of the flames on his flesh.
‘Hold.’ The voice was firm and commanding and it was accompanied by strong hands beating out the fire.
‘What is this?’ Nuada’s voice was thick with righteous outrage. ‘It is sacrilege to deny Taranis his gift.’
Caratacus stooped to wipe his blackened hands on the grass at his feet and looked up at the Druid. ‘Do not oppose me in this, Nuada,’ he said quietly. ‘It is the will of the gods.’
He straightened and turned to the kings and war chiefs, who were staring at him in astonishment. ‘This man is a gift from Taranis to me, Caratacus, and I accept his gift. Does any man deny my right to it?’ He stared at each warrior in turn, daring them to challenge his authority. None would meet his eye.
‘I say burn them all.’
Togodumnus, of course. So be it.
He turned to his brother with his hand on the jewelled hilt of his sword. Togodumnus glared at him for a few long seconds, but recognized a deadly intent in Caratacus’s eyes. He calculated his chances. ‘Keep him then, but the rest burn.’
Axes chopped at the slim branches holding Rufus within the wicker figure and willing hands bent them aside, creating just enough space for him to fall clear, but not enough to allow another captive to follow. Barely understanding what was happening, he was dragged naked before Caratacus with the pitiful pleas of the men he left behind torturing his ears. He didn’t dare look back for fear that what he would see would unman him.
‘You are Rufus, keeper of the monster?’
Rufus realized his face was covered in dried blood from the wound he received when he was struck down in the forest, and that his hair was wild and matted. He must be barely recognizable to this man he had met only once. ‘Yes, lord,’ he replied, his voice shaking with emotion. He knew a single wrong word could put him back in the wicker cage. ‘I am the keeper of Bersheba, the Emperor’s elephant.’
‘And you have met this Claudius, whom we owe nothing, but who would have us pay homage to him?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Then truly, Rufus, you are among the fortunate.’ Caratacus unpinned his heavy green cloak and shrugged it from his shoulders, then draped it over Rufus’s nakedness. In the same movement he turned the young slave towards the sacrifice. ‘See how fortunate you are.’
For the first time Rufus looked upon the full horror of the Wicker Man. Taller than five men standing upon each other’s shoulders, it dominated everything on the bare hilltop where they stood. It was constructed from a framework of branches and its shape was that of a broad-chested male, his gender instantly apparent from the crude sexual organ protruding from between his legs, each of which was filled to overflowing with tinder-dry straw and branches. The head was a featureless ball, but the blank, pitiless face only made it all the more terrifying. Thrown haphazardly together within the chest cavity was a writhing mass of naked human figures. He could see Paullus, who had shown so little mercy to the village elder, now pleading for it with the last of his strength. Agrippa would be there in that pale jumble of limbs, Agrippa who had seemed too gentle to be a soldier, but who had participated so willingly in Paullus’s atrocity. The interpreter. Slaves he had called his friends. He glimpsed Veleda, the British woman who had led them to the cache of stores, and the two elders captured with her. Presumably they had been tainted by their contact with the Romans. Some of them screamed, some of them, like Paullus, pleaded, others appeared to be shocked into silence. The more fortunate were unconscious or dead, smothered by the weight of flesh above them.
Nuada looked to Caratacus and the Briton nodded. Taranis received his sacrifice.
Rufus’s eyes recorded every detail. As the flames licked the lower layers of bodies he saw mouths opening wider than any human mouth should be capable of, the bulging, disbelieving eyes, and the arms stretching out for assistance from the Roman gods who had forsaken them. Strangely, now, he heard not a sound. Perhaps his mind was protecting him from something that would ultimately destroy him. He felt twin streams of tears on his cheeks as the flames did their work. The gold and green gorse bushes burned quickly, the wood less fiercely. Quite soon the only movement within the giant wicker frame was of blackened corpses contorting and shrivelling in the intense heat at the golden heart of the inferno. The terrified faces of individuals were replaced by a wall of grinning skulls, white teeth stark against charred flesh, which demanded to know why he deserved life when they did not. He had no answer.