‘She? Her? You’re talking about this woman, Andraste?’
Jack paused, then spoke quietly, his voice tense with excitement. ‘Nobody has ever been able to find the location of her last battle. The Roman historian Tacitus tells us that forty thousand Britons died, that she survived but went off and poisoned herself. Dio Cassius tells us her surviving followers gave her a lavish burial, somewhere in secret. For centuries scholars have wondered whether her tomb lies under London. It would have been the perfect place, the city laid waste and uninhabited, returned to the state it was in before the Romans arrived. Site of the sacred grove of the goddess Andraste.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question, Jack.’
‘It all fits perfectly,’ Jack murmured. ‘She would have been a teenager when Claudius arrived in Britain as emperor in AD 43, in the wake of his victorious army. She would have been brought before him when her tribe submitted to the Romans, a princess offering her fealty, probably a dose of defiance too.’
‘You’re talking about the warrior queen Boudica.’
‘A queen who was herself a high priestess, a goddess, and had some connection with the Sibyls,’ Jack murmured. ‘Something that made the Sibyl order Claudius to come here in secret as an old man, to seek her tomb.’
‘Jack, you’re wrong about there being no Roman artefacts here. Looks like our lady had a gladiator fixation.’ Costas had moved back to the foot of the bier, and now gestured down. Jack slithered over and confronted another astonishing sight. It was a row of helmets, five elaborate helmets arranged in a row just below the level of the bier, facing the skeleton.
‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘But these aren’t gladiators’ helmets. They’re Roman legionary helmets, fairly high ranking by the look of it. Centurions, maybe cohort commanders. And they’ve seen some pretty brutal action.’ He reached over and carefully tipped back the nearest one, which had a deep dent across the top. It was heavier than he had expected, and it stuck to the timber. He pushed harder, and it gave way. He let it drop, and flinched in shock.
They were still in there.
Costas saw it too, and moaned. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’
Jack looked closely along the row of helmets. They were all the same. Each one held a human skull, leering, several of them grotesquely smashed and splintered. The skulls were white, bleached, from heads that had been exposed and left to rot before they were placed inside the tomb. ‘Battle trophies,’ Jack murmured. ‘Collected from the field, or more likely the heads of executed prisoners, the highest-ranking Romans they captured.’ His mind was racing again. The warrior queen’s last battle. He remembered the accounts of Tacitus, Dio Cassius. Living trophies of war, brought with her for sacrifice at the most sacred place, consigned with her in eternal submission.
Then Jack saw them. Huge, shapeless forms emerging from the far side of the tomb, forms that seemed to struggle and rear out of the earth like the sculpted horses from the Athenian Parthenon, only these were real, the blackened skin and manes still stretched over the skulls, teeth bared and grimacing, caught for ever in the throes of death as they had their throats cut beside the body of their queen. It was a terrifying sight, even more so than the line of Roman skulls, and Jack began to feel unnerved again, aware that he and Costas did not belong in this place.
‘Time to go,’ Costas said, looking apprehensively at the bier. ‘I’m remembering that shrieking again. Your grandmother’s nightmare. Maybe there really is a banshee down here.’
Jack tore himself away from the image. ‘We haven’t found what we’re looking for. There has to be something more here.’ He slithered back towards the bier, and peered down at the skeleton and the array of weapons and armour. Costas took out his compass and aimed it down the bier. ‘It’s aligned exactly north-south,’ he said. ‘It points directly toward the arena of the amphitheatre.’
‘The amphitheatre was built later,’ Jack murmured. ‘If this is who I think it is, she was buried at least a decade before work on the amphitheatre was started.’
‘Maybe the Romans deliberately built the amphitheatre on a site they knew was sacred, this grove to Andraste,’ Costas murmured. ‘A way of stamping their authority on the natives after the revolt.’
‘And the perfect place to conceal a secret cult, right under the noses of your enemy,’ Jack said.
‘Have you seen the chariot axle?’ Costas said. ‘It’s lying under her shoulders. With the chariot pole aligned north-south under her body, it makes a cross.’
Jack grunted, only half listening. ‘In Iron Age chariot burials, the axle was usually placed below the feet.’ Suddenly he gasped, and reached out to the shield. ‘It was staring us right in the face. He placed it right over the shield boss.’
‘Who did?’
‘Someone who was here before us.’ Jack began to reach for the object, a metal cylinder. Then he paused, and drew his hand back.
‘You must be the only archaeologist who has trouble taking artefacts from burials, Jack.’
‘I couldn’t violate her grave.’
‘I’m with you there. I wouldn’t want to raise this lady from the dead. In this place, it’s not as if we have anywhere to run.’ Costas paused. ‘But if you’re right, this cylinder wasn’t part of the original grave goods. I’m willing to take the risk.’ He reached over and picked up the cylinder, then passed it to Jack. ‘There. Spell’s broken.’
Jack took the cylinder and held it carefully, rotating it slowly in his hands, staring at it. A chain dangled off a rivet on one side. The cylinder was made of sheet bronze, hammered at the join to form the tube, and one end had been crimped over a disc of bronze to form the base. On the bottom was a roundel of red enamel, and swirling around the cylinder were incised curvilinear decorations. Jack saw that the decoration was in the shape of a wolf, an abstract beast that wrapped itself round the cylinder until the snout was nearly touching the tail. ‘It’s British metalwork, no doubt about it. There’s a bronze cylinder just like this from a warrior grave in Yorkshire. And the wolf is another symbol of the Iceni, Boudica’s tribe, along with the horse.’
‘What about the lid?’ Costas said.
‘There’s a lot of corrosion, bronze disease,’ Jack replied, peering closely at the other end of the cylinder. ‘But it’s not crimped over like the base. There’s some kind of resinous material around the join, pretty cracked up.’ He pushed a finger cautiously against the crust of built-up corrosion on the top, then flinched as it broke off. ‘Thank God our conservators didn’t see me do that.’ He angled the cylinder so they could both see the surface. Around the edge were the remains of red enamel, from a roundel similar to the one on the base. But here the enamel seemed to have been crudely scraped back to the bronze, which had an incised decoration. The incision was angular, crude, unlike the flowing lines of the wolf on the side of the cylinder, more like scratched graffiti. Jack stared at it. He suddenly froze.
It was a name.
‘Bingo,’ Costas said.
The letters were large, shaky, the name curving round the top, the other word below, like an inscription on a coin: CLAVDIVS DEDIT
‘ “Claudius gave this”,’ Jack said, suddenly ecstatic. ‘Claudius did come here, where we are now, and he placed this in Boudica’s tomb.’ He held the cylinder with sudden reverence, looking at the name and then at the fractured join at the lid, hardly daring to think what might be inside.