London Folk Tales Read Online Free Page A

Britons fought naked or in cotton trousers. They were farmers and family men as well as fighters and only a few had chariots, shields and helmets; in fact, most of them just had a single sword. ‘Amateurs,’ muttered the general under his breath.
    He clicked his tongue, strode out of his tent, assembled his men and began to bark orders. Explaining the lie of the land, he rehearsed them into arrowhead formations, zigzags, points and wedges until they were like one compact war machine made up of interconnecting parts.
    And while he watched them at their manoeuvres, he considered how the Britons were all spirit and no strategy. As unruly as leaves blowing in the wind, they were a collection of solo fighters and virtuosos, who dissipated themselves shouting, invoking the gods, beating clappers and singing random airs. But there were loads of them! He had only 15,000 soldiers whereas, if reports were correct, Boudicca had 200,000. The general raised his wrinkled brow to the horizon, wishing for more troops to arrive and fearing for his reputation in Rome. He paced and cracked his knuckles. No troops came.
    Even as they approached the battle site, Boudicca knew her tightly woven war cloth was beginning to unravel; the strings of the loom were beginning to bend and snap. She couldn’t keep a handle on the mass of warriors that were becoming out of control. Was she the only one that saw the whole war cloth? Her people devoted too much time taunting and torturing their victims and not enough time speaking to the gods of air and earth. There was too much drinking, too much boasting and now, with the prospect of victory, too much buffoonery around – imitating the blank expressions of their enemies, their mechanical marching, their excessive armour and mimicking their fat, mad Emperor Nero. Still she couldn’t demand only incite. They saw her as Andraste and she had played up to it, leading by example, raising her arms to the moon and the sun, making the most of sudden flocks of birds and flashes of light, but now that the war threads were spinning off, fraying in every direction, who knew where it would end?
    As the battle began, it was instantly clear to Boudicca that, unlike her, the Romans were leaving nothing to chance. First came the legionnaires, the front liners, each had a gladii, a short sword of around 30cm, and a smaller dagger; behind them came the infantry with their 3m javelins, followed by the cavalry on horseback with long lances. The Britons fell like corn, crushed by the threshing shields and swords of an army carefully orchestrated by Seutonius, marching ever forward, thrusting and slashing, using the dead as their pavement.
    As Boudicca saw her people falling to the left and to the right, she found herself thinking of the hare that had promised them victory. It had run to the left, but who knew what twists and turns it took when it got to the forest? That was the trouble with divination – it never saw quite far enough. With her impeccable timing, she threw her tartan cloak round the shoulders of her daughters and they disappeared into the forest. From her belt she took a leather pouch containing a combination of hemlock, yew, bryony, buttercup, belladonna and thorn apple. She shook back her own rough hair, smoothed the soft curls of her daughter’s and urged them to take the powder, rather than be at the mercy of their enemies.
    ‘Live by your own rules and die by your own hand!’ The poison threw them against the trees and on to the grass with such violence that they danced like maddened dryads in a grove.
    The Romans had a final piece of luck. The families of the Britons who had come to watch the downfall of their hated invaders, had lined up their wagons behind their own soldiers and had been cracking nuts and suckling their babies, watching the show. As the bloodbath commenced, the warriors found themselves hemmed in by line upon line of wagons. There was no escape for fighters or audience. Boudicca’s