“I should do the same thing, too: stop using the same furniture over and over again.”
I don’t know if now is the moment, but—why not?
“Dana, what if we were to look for an apartment or a house together when I get back from this trip? Somewhere new that has nothing to do with the past.”
“Are you suggesting we should live together?” she asked cautiously.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. What do you say?”
“I don’t know if you understand what you’re getting yourself into. The last time I lived with someone, I ran away. All my affairs tend to end with me abandoning them.”
“You’re not going to intimidate me with your bad reputation.” I laughed. “All of mine end with abandonment or death.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to see how this one finishes.”
“That’s what I’m asking of you.”
“Okay, then,” she said, smiling for the first time in days.
“The only thing I ask is that we be able to see the sea from our house—because of my eyes. You already know what my mother’s clan believed.”
“Of course. That they might change color.”
“Exactly.”
“And that must never happen,” she declared.
I carried her to the bedroom with the speed of lightning, and her happy face was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep.
The summer months flew by, as if a wind were blowing them off the calendar. They were pure, unspoiled days, as natural as breathing. I discovered that Dana had an easy laugh, a laugh that went straight to my soul. But our first few months as a couple were not naïve like those of the usual happy lovers, who believe they are the only inhabitants of the earth. If only we could have had our primitive Eden, with its tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where there were no names for things yet and there was no rush to give them one. No, we never had that, but I saw that as the price we had to pay.
That fall afternoon, Dana and I headed for the Esperanza Market like any other couple in need of supplies for the weekend. We walked inside, ready to do battle with the shopping carts of our fellow shoppers, the day’s specials being yelled out by the fishmongers, and the incredible smell of pickled goods mixed with recently baked pastries. The same smells, with local variations, I’d smelled so often in every market, bazaar, fair, or square the world over.
“Next week is Halloween,” she said, sounding me out casually. “Are you in the habit of organizing a party for the staff like the one for carnival?”
I hid my annoyance. I don’t think she noticed. “The Halloween you know and which has recently become so fashionable is a grotesque reminder of the Celtic Eve of Samhain that marks the end of summer. And to answer your question, of course my family and I celebrated it throughout the centuries we lived as Celts. Don’t worry, we’ll celebrate Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day. They even mispronounce the name these days,” I couldn’t help saying with a growl. “Prepare yourself for a trip, but don’t ask me to give you the full-blown version of events now. I don’t want to ruin my day.”
“If you’re talking about a trip somewhere far away, I won’t be able to go,” she said. “The first of November I have to go to the cemetery. I want to take some flowers to my mother.”
“Kyra plans to do the same, so don’t worry. We’ll be traveling some distance, but it’ll be a quick trip, and we’ll be back for the first. I respect your rites, too. And now can we change the subject?”
Dana nodded. And just at that moment I thought I caught a glimpse of something among the people leaving the market—a head with dark hair combed back. Dana noticed my reaction.
“What’s the matter, Iago? What did you see?”
I wasn’t sure, so all I said was, “Nothing, a ghost.”
I assumed she believed me, because she didn’t insist, and there was no sign of surprise on her face. So we made our way back home, chatting as if nothing had happened.
66
ADRIANA
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Halloween
The warm sun was already elongating the shadows of the buildings when we reached the center of London. Héctor confidently drove the car we’d rented at Heathrow. Kyra, seated to his left, acted as his navigator. Iago and I sat behind them, completing the list of travelers.
I have to admit this wasn’t what I was expecting. When I saw that we were flying to England, my initial conclusion was that I’d be attending a ceremony in the clearing of some oak forest, with white tunics similar to the ones in those neopagan rites involving standard-bearing druids getting high on mistletoe. But not right in the middle of the city—definitely not that.
We left our few pieces of luggage at The Lanesborough, in the heart of Knightsbridge, and headed slowly toward Buckingham Palace. We left Green Park behind us, which was displaying every color imaginable that night but green. Londoners had taken over every inch of the city center, including its extensive parklands, in the manner of an overactive virus. Colorful covens of fake witches, herds of crudely made-up zombies, legions of vampires—it was all mockery, all bogus. The Western collective subconscious was making fun of its ancient myths. London was displaying its most grotesque face. There was only one costume that managed to disturb me. Several times. Tucked away in the sea of fake blood and costumes hired at forty pounds for the evening, I thought I caught sight of the figure of Death. The same one I remembered seeing in that film by Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal; the figure that played chess with the knight. I recognized the black cape, the hood and, most disturbing of all, the same white face of the actor who decades earlier had played the role. He wasn’t carrying a scythe, but I could swear the people who crossed his path gave him as wide a berth as they could, as if, uneasy, they sensed that the barest contact with him would cause them to fall down dead on the sidewalk.
I allowed myself to be led past Westminster Abbey, which at that hour looked like a gigantic tombstone, and we finally came to a halt at the foot of Big Ben. We crossed over toward Westminster Bridge—seven arches of green die-cast metal—and stopped by the steps leading down to the embankment, in front of a dark bronze monument. A statue of three women in a chariot being drawn skyward by two rearing horses rose from the top of a rectangular block of stone. The women, I could tell, bore the blood of TAF. The figure that dominated the group was wearing a crown and bore the resolute expression I knew so well. She wore the same classic tunic as the two young girls who accompanied her. A series of gold letters were engraved along one side of the rectangular stone, which I mentally translated into Spanish as I read them.
REGIONS CAESAR NEVER KNEW THY POSTERITY SHALL SWAY
Héctor came and stood beside me, his eyes never leaving the tall figure.
“You’re standing before the monument to Boudicca, the queen of the Iceni. I imagine that in your textbooks she would have appeared as Boadicea.”
I didn’t say a word despite the fact that at that very moment, one of my uncertainties was being clarified. For several months now, whenever Iago had referred to Boudicca, I’d begun to suspect that he might well be referring to the leader of the Britons. A search through Iago’s extensive collection of classical books turned up Cassius Dio’s A Roman History and the Annals of Tacitus. I’d had time to reacquaint myself with that bloody period of history, and I swallowed hard as I realized that I was going to hear that two-thousand-year-old story from the mouths of some of its protagonists. People milled around us, crossing the bridge in search of a party and ignoring the four people not in party mode who were looking up at yet another tourist attraction.
“I don’t think we ever told you her story,” Héctor continued, “but this is the appropriate night to do so. Our family has been celebrating All Hallows’ Eve since Neolithic times, which is when the human race began to celebrate it. It was the night when summ
er was deemed to be over and the livestock was brought back to the stables under the houses. That night has always been considered the one when the living and the dead are closest, hence its name: the Eve of All That Is Sacred. The Celts called it Samhain, and the celebration actually went on for ten days. During that time the tombs of the ancestors were opened and people talked with them, because death was not as distant from life as it is now. Death wasn’t a taboo topic.
“Nowadays, Halloween is considered an amusing pagan ritual—costumes, trick-or-treat, lights inside pumpkins . . . As you know, every custom starts with a myth, but there are some myths that don’t deserve to be remembered, because they have nothing good to offer subsequent generations. That’s why it hurts that this day is remembered time and again, because Samhain should be forgotten, and it refuses to disappear.”
He sighed, and I had the impression he was forcing himself to go on. “Boudicca was my fourth longevo child. From the moment she was born, she was, in her own way, different. She was a big child, and by the time she was an adolescent, she was almost as tall as we were. When she reached maturity, she was practically as tall as Iago, and much more imposing. She always wore her red hair in braids, which she refused to cut off, despite the fact they might reveal her true age. At times she let them grow until they were sweeping the ground, and she would only trim them when they became a nuisance if she was on horseback. Boudicca was born after twelve lunar months, and by the time she reached her fifth decade, it became clear she was like us and wouldn’t age. By that stage we had become fully integrated into the Celtic way of life. Their territory was extensive and controlled by tribes with customs that were more or less like ours, and that enabled us to change our identities over the decades, and move about as we pleased. For the first time ever, the five of us lived together for centuries, enjoying a sense of stability. Boudicca had a strong sense of family. Despite her incredibly fiery nature, she was a very maternal woman, and I think that was the role she fulfilled for us. She was the glue that held us together despite all our differences. But nothing lasts forever, not even a family like ours.
“In the year 61 of your Christian era, we had been in Britannia for almost a century. We were living in the eastern part of the island, in what is now Norfolk. Boudicca, who by then had been alive for more than two hundred years, was left a widow after the death of her last husband, Esuprastus, the ruler of the Iceni—referred to as Prasutagus in the chronicles. He left behind two daughters, whom Nagorno raised as if they were his own, teaching them to ride in the Scythian way and preparing them for combat, as was done with male children. In an attempt to preserve part of his patrimony, and as was the custom in that era, Esuprastus had named Boudicca and their daughters as his successors, together with Emperor Nero. But the Roman procurator’s subordinates disobeyed the orders to take control of the province peacefully, and they were extremely brutal with Boudicca and my granddaughters.”
When he’d finished this last sentence, Héctor was silent for a while, and I doubted he’d go on with his tale.
“I’ll continue,” said Iago, taking over. “It happened during the preparations for Samhain. Tacitus won’t tell you that, because the Romans despised and ignored our rites. We’d gone to round up the cattle in the pastures and bring them back to the village by nightfall, leaving Boudicca and her daughters with a few of the villagers. But when we got back, we found my sister and the villagers tied to some poles erected by the Romans, but still alive. I remember that no one was capable of telling us what had happened. I still don’t know if they couldn’t find the words, or they just didn’t dare tell us. Our nieces—or what was left of them—were lying on the ground in the middle of the village.” He swallowed hard, but his voice didn’t waver. “The girls had been raped to death, and their bodies had been destroyed. They’d tied up Boudicca and the villagers beforehand and forced them to watch. Once her daughters were dead, they lashed Boudicca savagely until she was barely recognizable and left her for dead.
“When we arrived, we knew the mass of raw flesh was her from the mane of red hair that surrounded it, and despite her state there was still a breath of life in her. Rage is a powerful force. I carried her inside my cabin and applied all the healing skills I had acquired over eight thousand years to saving my sister. Boudicca recovered quickly and organized the Iceni to exact revenge on the Romans. It wasn’t hard. Many of the women had suffered the same fate as my nieces, and the people had endured, with outrage, the sacking of their villages, the ever-higher taxes, and all manner of unjustified acts of violence. Boudicca had a way with words and incited other neighboring tribes, such as the Trinovantes, also tired of decades of abuse, to join our cause against the Romans.”
Iago was holding my hand, but that night the warmth in it had disappeared. As he’d been speaking, his hand was becoming progressively colder, as if the blood was abandoning it.
Kyra took over and carried on with the story. “While Boudicca organized revenge, Nagorno took care of our nieces’ remains. He washed them, combed their hair, and covered them with flowers. We buried them according to the customs into which they’d been born. Then we left, heading for Camulodunum, or Colchester, the ancient capital of Trinovantia, which had been converted into a Roman colony for veteran soldiers. We devastated it; no one was left alive. Then it was the turn of Londinium. What you know today as the City of London was a commercial port inhabited by unprotected Romans. We converted it into a fireball, with the inhabitants caught inside it. If you were to excavate it, you’d find a ten-inch layer of burned clay, melted coins, carbonized bones . . . And even then it wasn’t enough, and so we also laid waste to Veralamium, or St. Albans. But by that stage, the governor of Britannia, Gaius Suetonius, had organized himself, and he and his troops were waiting for us partway along our road northward. Even though they were numerically inferior to us—we outnumbered them five to one, I’d venture to say—they gave us a lesson in military strategy.
“We were farmers and cattle breeders, we were tired from our earlier battles, and we had neither the weapons nor the appropriate equipment. They were the first professional army the world had ever encountered. On top of all that, we were marching with carriages carrying children, pregnant women, and the elderly bringing up the rear to bear witness to our victories. That proved to be disastrous for our people. We Celts had no alternative but to retreat. And that retreat became a stampede that flattened our own carriages and our families.
“It was a total massacre—eighty thousand of our people perished, and barely four hundred Romans. The wounded were slaughtered one by one right there on the battlefield, because this time the Romans weren’t interested in taking slaves, just in eliminating every last rebel. We were wounded on the battlefield, and once again it was Nagorno who saved us all. When none of us could even stand up, he carried us away from danger on his shoulders. Thanks to him we were able to flee into the forest and hide there, with the Romans hot on our heels. That was when we discovered Boudicca was in the worst state of us all, with the wounds from our more recent battles added to her recent flogging and, although she had kept this from her people, it was clear her body couldn’t keep up with us.
“For days we traveled, carrying her with us, looking for a safe place where we could hide, but Boudicca was slowing us down. We wanted to reach the Isle of Mona, in the west, a druid center the Romans had opted not to conquer, and where we knew we’d find protection. My sister persuaded us to keep going without her, so we hid her in the deepest part of the forest, where no Roman would dare venture. Lür and Urko built a small shelter, and we left her there.”
Iago took over, his voice hoarse. “I left with them, leaving my sister alone and making a mistake for which I’ll never be able to make amends. I was beside myself, like Nagorno, like Lyra, like Lür. I was in such a state that I accepted what I wanted to hear when she said to me, ‘Go with them, Brother, I’ll be fine,’ and refused to see that, in reality, she was saying good-b
ye.
“But as soon as we were out of the forest, I realized I was missing the yew tree seeds I always carried with me. I used to administer them to the wounded when they begged me to let them die; among the Celts it was customary to use them for the purposes of euthanasia. We rushed back full of despair to find Boudicca, but she had already dragged herself to a clearing in the forest. I have no idea how a human body could do that in the condition in which we’d left her, but I haven’t stopped asking myself since. We think that once she’d reached the clearing, she swallowed the seeds and allowed the wild vermin to get a scent of her blood and finish off what the Romans had begun. Her braids, some strips of flesh, and a few bones were, in fact, all that remained. Nothing else.”
“What happened to the rest of you?” I asked in a tiny voice. From the other side of the Thames, the blue London Eye was winking at me, but I was still in the clearing in that forest.
“After all that,” Iago continued, “the family fell apart. We scattered as far from one another as possible, sickened by our fate and ashamed of our contribution to that act of barbarity, too. Nagorno headed for Rome, in search of more battles and more revenge, although he ended up being part of the empire, selling antiquities, natural curiosities, exotic rarities, fossils, and the like to Roman patricians. They were already coveted in that era. It was the beginning of his fortune. Lyra went back to the European mainland, looking for a less warlike family than ours, where she could feel like a normal woman for at least a few years, with a husband and children who would grow old. I wanted to return to the mountains where I had been raised, even though news had reached me that the Cantabrian tribes had been fighting against Rome for some time already, and it was predictable that, after what had occurred in Gaul and Britannia, the Romans would subjugate the mountain peoples who carried both Lür’s and my blood. But I didn’t care. Maybe I was looking for death as well, and if it finally happened, I wanted my mountains and my sea near at hand.