UMA

Stonehenge was a major stop on the Boudicca Tour of Ancient Britain 2003. I approached it with some trepidation. Let's face it, Stonehenge attracts its fair share of loonies these days and most of the people at this time of year will be New Age nutters planning to get in tune with their inner selves and feel the 'ley'. Sorry about my cynicism but I get tired of the bullshit about historical sites that are in reality complex and uncertain. Along comes some 'guru' and thinks he can reinterpret scholarship after reading half an article in a magazine. I just hoped Bou would not be disappointed at some of the wacko stuff that surrounds what must be, to her, a very sacred place.

Personally I was more interested in Avebury (another mysterious ring circle 18 miles north of Stonehenge) - not this circle itself, but the Ancient British village experiment that has been set up there where a group of complete nutters from Living History live in a ancient British village and enact life as it was then to learn from the experience. Bou was little interested in that- she had done it for real and thought it looked too pretty and clean. Of course, she was right. No modern person could stand the lack of hygiene of the real past - even Rome had taken its toll on me and the Romans were more sanitary-inclined than any people known to history until very recent times.

At the Henge, Bou wandered around in reverential silence and Arthur and I trotted after her trying to be suitably well behaved but he was bored and I was having hysterics at some plonkers who were trying to work out if their could be a link between Feng Shui and Druidism. Jesus, where do these people come from? I suddenly wished Terry were here. He is such a scream about stuff like that. I guess we both feel the same about belief systems- we treat them like as if they a plague. Time and experience have taught him that the more rigorously you hold to a philosophy, the more likely you are to see little of the truth out there. He believes in the power of the rational mind and the innate sense of what is right and wrong from a humanistic point of view. So do I.

We used to spend hours talking about things like that. I mean- we are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum on the surface but underneath, our views dovetailed. Both of us with similar backgrounds- Catholic, Irish working class scholarship kids who had rejected our religion but not the context in which we absorbed it. We both like to learn the facts and work our opinions out ourselves- not be drawn into an easy black and white view of the world in which we live. God, I miss those talks. I miss his biting wit and his ability to pierce straight through to the heart of a problem. I miss his baiting of me when I get too pompous. I miss his amusing comments when he hears some pretentious fool postulating about an issue that he has no real knowledge about. I miss...God, I just miss him. Every day. Every minute. Every second.

"So, did Bou's lot build this then?" Arthur interrupted my morbid train of thoughts.

"What, Stonehenge? Dunno. Nor does she, whatever she says. It is really old, Arthur, older than she is, actually. The building started almost 5,000 years ago. Her people used it, I'm sure, but it belongs to a far off time and she knows less about the past before her age than I do. People of her day had no historical studies- they just had mythology of the past."

"So who did build it?"

"Dunno. Some say Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians - there are even those who reckon the man from Atlantis or spacemen! It is way beyond Ancient British prowess and the maths of it alone defy understanding- the Greeks and the Egyptians had the knowledge but why would they be there? We don't know it all and until there is firm evidence, a historian won't go for speculation. It is a mystery but there will be a logical answer even if we never find it out."

"What was it for. Did they sacrifice people here?" Arthur likes a bit of blood and guts. He adores those awful cheap horror films where people get chopped up by mad killers.

"Possibly at some point- certainly Druids did dodgy stuff like that- that's one of the reasons the Romans had it in for them. They might have liked gladiators chopping bits off each other but they wouldn't stand for human sacrifice. The Romans were a strange lot. No, it looks more and more as though the real point of it was astronomy. Some sort of giant observatory for taking readings and predicting the dates of the solstices and eclipses, much as the great buildings in the Mayan civilisation were...not that that means they are connected...two people can come up with similar discoveries without collusion being necessary...." I looked at Arthur's face and thought I'd better stop. He was losing me.

Bou looked as if she were in a trance. Arthur and I exchanged glances and, I have to admit, we did muck about behind her back. We pretended we were devotees in a trance and our eyes glazed over and we started waving from side to side and then up and down as if worshipping some idol. "If you build it...he will COME!!" I intoned in a fake deep voice. Bou shot me a look and I shut up and folded my arms to pretend I had done nothing...but Arthur was just cracked up and she knew we were laughing.

"Have you no respect?" she snapped. She was right. We both knew it. I might be the world's worst Catholic but I would go ape-shit if someone was in a church and making fun. So would Terry, he would probably throw them out...shit- get out of my head, will you?

"I'm really sorry, Bou. I didn't mean it...honest...it was thoughtless and immature."

She suddenly smiled. "No, it was quite funny. I was waiting for you to suggest re-enacting the Sun mating with Earth ritual on the mother stone. Surely you and Arthur are up for it?" We both gaped. A Bou joke? Or did she mean it? Not sure I can tell.

"Er...naw, we'll get arrested. They'll think we are pagan head cases. The police are very sensitive to that here. But...it has its erotic angle, you have to admit. Bet we'd look great naked in the sunlight on that stone, Art? Bit hard on the bum though... and your knees...."

We all burst out laughing and peace was restored. Arthur browsed through the guidebook. "Says here that the first archaeologist to excavate the site was called John Aubrey..."

"Jack? An archaeologist? Can you imagine it? He'd wreck the bloody place. Not exactly the most delicate of touches, our Jack. Except when he's..."

"I think that's enough, Uma. We do not need intimate revelations of a personal nature..." Bou reminded me.

I pulled a face. "We're bloody perves, Bou! That's what we do!" But she waltzed off and refused to commit to battle.

"I thought she and Jack, you know..." Arthur gave a knowing nod of his head.

"They did. She can't fool me. Let me see that guide book?" I read through the entry. "John Aubrey, hey? Perhaps it was his great granddad...1663...further back than that but...Ashgrove's not that far. No, he wasn't from these parts originally...must ask him though. This must be a descendant of the famous Aubrey... the diarist...ha! Coincidence upon coincidence!" I mused to myself as we tagged along behind her Majesty.

It's a long drive from Wiltshire to Cornwall but we did it in one- Arthur and I shared the driving. It was late when we checked into a guesthouse near the castle and we ate a late meal and flopped. Even Arthur seemed uninterested in hanky panky for once and we both fell asleep in seconds, worn out.

I'd better tell you where we are, hadn't I? We were at Tintagel, in Cornwall, the reputed birthplace of the legendary, or perhaps not so legendary, King Arthur. We had to take him down there- he was dying to see his namesake's castle.

Artorius Rex. The boy with the Sword in the Stone. I can see the similarities. After breakfast the next morning, we explored the twelfth century castle which stands over the foundations of the earlier earthworks which do go back to the fifth century and give the legend some credence.

The castle is situated on a cliff top over a beautiful rugged Cornish coastline, the type of setting so perfect for smugglers that you can almost hear the barrels of cognac being rolled up the beach, It towers over the lovely cove below where lies the cave of Merlin where Arthur, in one version of the legend, was supposedly washed up by the waves as a tiny babe. I was regaling our Arthur with this when Bou took over, a little tired of my story telling and eager to tell him the truth.

"There are other legends too, which hold a grain of truth," she interjected. "There was a governor of my acquaintance, a man by the name of Lucius Artorius Castor, an ancestor of the chieftain believed to be Arthur Rex, who was legend, in my own time. He was a peaceable man, fair, but had a hand of iron, against rebellious tribes and even his own army. The tribes respected and liked him, because he listened to their concerns, and did what was within his power to seek solutions that both sides could live with. But he was away, to put down the uprising in Gaul, by Severus. They say the uniting of Britannia with Rome started with him."

"I take your point, Bou, but a legend grew up all the same. The Arthur of the legend is a composite of many things. I reckon the name comes from your Roman, but the mythology comes more from a later tribal Chief and his struggles against the marauding Saxons. Add to that a bit of mystic medieval Holy Grail quests and courtly love and knightly tourneys and you have a real juicy bit of epic...someone tell me to shut up, will you? I'm lecturing again...."

But they seemed interested so I babbled on with tales from Mallory and the full-blown Arthurian epic. I reckon we were all rather enchanted by the place for it has a certain magic. It might have been the romantic beauty of the setting, the riveting poignant legend itself or perhaps there were ghosts from another age still clinging to the dank worn stones- but all of us seemed affected in a way I cannot describe.

We ate that evening in a restaurant in the shadow of the castle, built in an old deconsecrated chapel and the feeling lingered on. Something ethereal was in the air. After dinner, I enticed them all into a quaint boozer on the castle walls and we sat and drank all night, talking and laughing, closer than we had ever been before. I felt a strong sense of kinship to them both, a bond of old, of unspoken loyalties and shared experiences, battles fought, won even lost.

Arthur drank too much- we all did- but he is less used to binges than I am and we ended up by supporting him back, as he vowed undying love for both of us, and made some very improper suggestions- which would really have blown a hole through Perve World had we acted upon them- and we both stripped him off, tucked him in and decided to share a room while he slept off the after effects.

Neither of us seemed inclined to sleep ourselves so we sat up in our pajamas and chatted like two girls on a sleepover. How bizarre! The talk finally came round to the legend and the curious affect the castle and the town had made on us.

"You know, I might be a cynic, but I am not a compete unbeliever. I know there are things that are beyond our ken...Jesus, I've been through the portal! I inhabit this surreal world of ours. I wonder if there is a trace of the past infecting us tonight? What would we learn from the story of Arthur and Guinevere? Who is the Lancelot in our lives? And what of the Holy Grail? What are we really searching for that will bring us the answer to all and utter peace?"

Bou smiled. "What indeed? We must continue on our quests and, just as some of the knights conflicted and were at odds at times, loved the same lady or opposed the other's journey...they were always united by the table and the magic that had brought them there..."

"Wow, Bou, that is spooky, isn't it? You're not just a fearsome warrior queen, are you?" I giggled. She giggled too. I found a big bar of chocolate and we ate it with a couple of slugs of malt whisky to wash it down.

"Hope Arthur's all right in the morning," Bou observed as we lay back on the pillows and I smoked a joint. (I told her it was Indonesian clove tobacco. I don't think she really believed me)

"Hey...I've got an idea..."

"Why does that worry me all of a sudden?" Bou observed.

"Let's set Arthur up."

"What?"

"Remember what he suggested on the way home?"

Bou tutted. "He's just a drunken boy..."

"Yeah- but let's tell him we did."

"That's too cruel."

"No, it isn't! It'll be a laugh. Come on ...where are the clothes that you wore...and your knickers...let's chuck them around his room. Then in the morning...."

Arthur slipped into the table beside us the next morning for breakfast. He looked green.

"Fancy some bacon and eggs, Artie?"

"No, I don't. Just get me a nice cup of tea, please." He was in a grumpy mood.

"Who got out the wrong side of bed then, this morning? You were in a very good mood last night as I remember, wasn't he, Bou?"

"Oh yes he was. I certainly saw a side to Arthur I had never seen before."

Arthur looked from one to the other with a confused expression. "What do you mean?"

"Arthur...after breakfast, make sure you gather up all our clothes...they are all over your room. You certainly enjoyed that show..." Good old Bou, she was getting the hang of it.

"What show?" Poor bemused Arthur asked.

I pinched him playfully. "Now, don't tell me you have forgotten! After all we did for you last night..."

"Huh? What did you do?"

"Do...do you really want me to go through that list of sexual depravity? Not to mention the girly show we put on for you. I know how you boys like to fantasise about girls getting it on..."

At that, Arthur choked and spilled his tea. "You did what?"

Bou and I simpered and giggled at each other. She can do it when she tries.

"Don't tell me you don't remember! You nearly shot across the room when you came..."

Bou choked on her tea at that point.

"You are having me on...I would remember that...I'm sure I would..."

"You don't remember being the meat in the sandwich? And when you couldn't make your mind up which honey pot you preferred so kept going from one to the other..."

Bou kicked me under the table. Arthur was now white. "I think I need to lie down..." he gasped and made a sharp exit.

"Don't forget to give us our knickers back!" I shouted after him. Bou groaned. The hotel restaurant went deathly quiet and all eyes were on us. I howled with laughter.

"God, that was funny!"

"They will all think we are sex maniacs, Uma!"

"We bloody are. Well, I am anyway. Speak for yourself. And we're checking out in half an hour. Let them wonder. Do them good- spice their lives up a bit!" As all the other guests were about seventy, I reckoned I might have done them a great service by giving them this little fantasy of ours. We never did tell Arthur that we made it up. Don't tell him. Once he recovered, he was very proud of himself- even if he couldn't remember what the hell he'd done!

BOUDICCA

Certainly Uma can identify that childish antics change little from century to century, because the tendency to mock the reverent is present in all of us, even as we age. It was no different when I watched the young apprentices of the artisans and craftsmen and those of the priests and the scholars of my own time, than it would be for Uma, had she one of her classes in tow, at the places we stopped at. We all think we know everything in our adolescence, either physical or mental. So I chose to forgive Uma and Arthur their irreverence. I do not recall that I ever behaved in such a manner, myself. Impossible. I am so serious about everything, you know.

And I feel the need to point out that some historians often overlook the tales and mythology of ancient peoples as simple stories, the creative imaginings of primitive minds. When my people were still one of the dominant cultures of the age, those stories were our history, however embellished with fantastical feats they became, through retelling. Some Druids, the bards, were required to memorize hundreds of such stories, that our origins and the things we had to be proud of as Celts were never lost. If you listen to the tales that the Irish Celts of today tell, you will still hear the voices of my people in the dead of winter, as we remembered our ancestry around the warmth of fires with family and friends, strangers and honored ones.

Within the walls of Tintagel Castle, I listened with rapt attention, while Uma wove the wonderful story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and Merlin the Sorcerer. I might have known a little of where that legend began, though I suspect that it began long before Artorius Castor walked the earth, and he only brought to mind a hero of legend in my day. Eventually, that story became the tales of Chaucer and Mallory, and others. Maximus had been reading a series of books by Jack Whyte that he felt was quite a more realistic approach to the legend, though I think the Roman bent biased his opinion, somewhat. Listening to Uma, I was brought forward in time slowly, wandering a Britain I had not known, but Max' and my descendents trod century after century, up to the present. However difficult that week we spent studying and observing the wonders of the land we shared was for me, I felt an intense pride for the people who came after me, and kept our heritage alive and strong.

I needed those days spent with Uma and Arthur at Stonehenge and Tintagel after leaving Mona and trekking over what had been mine and Maximus' home, to liven my spirits. The blessings of the gods, and the joy and comfort of conversation and fun with Maximus before, had given me the strength I needed not to do away with my plans altogether. But after I left it behind, the love and camaraderie of my friends helped me categorize my pain, and put it in perspective. As much as possible, anyway. There is a particular pain I harbor that no rationalization can ever dull, or erase.

It began on the boat from Holyhead on Anglesey, to Whitehaven, where we disembarked and drove to Carlisle. While Uma and Arthur talked and cuddled, I found myself on an army transport, the first time I crossed the Erse Sea, the cold maritime winds freezing me through the layers of warm clothing I wore, and promising a harsher winter than normal. It was the first of several trips I would make between Britannia and Hibernia (or Eire- Ireland, as it is known today), through various seasons, and for disparate reasons. And always, Maximus was with me. If I had not known from our chat the night previous, I knew by the time I left Cumbria, the land I had known as that belonging to the Carvetii and partially to the Brigantes, that my past and future are as entangled with Maximus', as his are with mine. I cannot escape the truth of that, no matter how hard I might try. He is who I have been, and who I am now. What the gods have brought together... So when Uma gently woke me from memory and daydreaming, I felt I had to try to reconcile the two of them, she and my husband, so that the circle would come to full, and life could move on, out of the past, both ancient and recent. But it went badly, because she is not ready. I suppose it could be considered meddling on my part, and rushing the will of the gods (whether Uma believes in them, or not), but I love both of them enough to set them on the path they must take, to whatever end it leads them. And in doing so, perhaps I can help her and Terry, as well.

I do not know if any who read these words of mine can understand the state of mind I was in, as I stood on a lonely piece of ground behind a farm house fifteen miles south of Carlisle. Around about were raised humps and lines of what should have been walls at least twenty feet high. Luguvallium had been built upon a hill-fort seized when the Romans came among the Britons, its boundaries raised and fortified by the legions that took over. Stepping through the north gate, where blocks of soldiers' quarters should have greeted my gaze, I met thin air. Even the causeway itself was hard to detect, other than I knew exactly where it was located. As we walked to where the south gates had been positioned, I pointed out to Uma and Arthur the precise areas of the granaries, the hospital, and the assembly hall. Maximus' quarters, the praefectus, where he attended army business, lay under several feet of soil and farmland (how appropriate for a man who is a farmer at heart!)

"Is this where you lived?" breathed Arthur, as I stood in the middle of what should have been our private rooms at the northwest corner of where the walls of the building were located, hearing voices that only I can.

"Sometimes. I spent more time south, where my village was, and in council chambers in the city itself. This is the garrison post. The city was over there," I pointed to another grouping of raised clumps of earth, where the Maglonenses clan and Roman civilians had inhabited.

"Kind of hard to juggle the time, wasn't it?" Uma was examining me while I answered Arthur's question. I wondered if I looked as sick as I felt. Scarce three months had passed since I had stood on this tract of land inside the portals, as it teemed with soldiers and civilian life, intact and formidable, rather than the haunting dream embodied by the silence of a modern wasteland. For all that Luguvallium had stood for to me- war, control, peace, neutrality, and in the end, sanctuary, it was something familiar that again was lost to history.  And we had yet to walk the Wall.

"We managed. When he could get away, he came home to me. When I needed to be in the city, I stayed here with him. Sometimes, we only saw each other across a treaty table. We took what moments together we could get, and they kept us going, because we made sure the time was filled with love and laughter. We wrote many, many letters to each other, when we were apart," I smiled.

Arthur was quiet a while longer, looking out over the landscape, taking in the earth-covered ruins. The faraway gaze, seeing everything and missing little, whether or not he chose to acknowledge it, brought to mind the man whose name we had no need to speak. And one other, but I will talk about him some other time. "Do you wish you could be there, again? And not come back? Was it easier?"

"You ask hard questions, love."

"I'm just curious. If it hurts, you don't have to talk about it."

I slipped my arms around him and hugged him tight. "I know. For you, though, I will answer the question." And for Uma, who was still trying to read me. "Yes, and no. You in this time think it was a difficult thing to live in mine, that life was hard, yet we were so used to it, I don't know that we really noticed how tough it was. We just did what we had to do to survive. I'm sure that my contemporaries would consider life here even more difficult to adjust to. Maximus and I still are, and will be for some time, yet. Each age has its own problems and its simplicities. But I have friends and loved ones that it would be hard to let go of now. I had my chance to stay but I came back, as much as it hurt to leave. I just knew that my past was gone, and I belong in this age now."

"I know how you feel," his voice was so low, I could barely hear him utter the words. He shook himself and grinned sheepishly, his own set of blue-and-green eyes merrily flashing in the late afternoon sun. The spell was broken by Uma.

"You plonkers are giving me the creeps," she announced, and herded us back into the car and away from the phantoms that beckoned to me from millennia past. I never told either of them that I had been looking for the burial grounds, to say a prayer for the souls entombed there and to mourn them. I really do not think I had to.

The last time I stood at the top of Hadrian's Wall, I was all of seventeen years old and evading soldiers while meeting with Caledonii warriors in the middle of the night, as we made plans to ambush a cavalry patrol. We chose a spot between two of the mile-forts known to be a bit lax in their watch, and I remember standing under the stars, looking up and thinking how weightless I felt to be up that high, looking down upon the land around me.

That piece of the wall is crumbling and in ill-repair now, but Uma and I stood upon a section like it, surveying the countryside while she regaled me with tales of taking students on a tour similar to this one.

"When the kids and I were on the Wall, we acted out a scene from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It was filmed here and we found the exact place. Dave and Helen, the other teachers, said I was the world's worst history teacher, because they'll only ever remember the Costner film now, not the Romans. I didn't care; I was having a laugh. So were the kids."

"Some people just have no sense of humor," I agreed. "How old were your kids?"

"Thirteen to sixteen."

"Young minds. Lots of room to fit many types of knowledge. And not all of it needs to be serious, to be remembered."

The wall is not near as high as I remember, and the mileforts as well as the turrets are in disrepair or gone altogether. We sat at top, kicking our feet against the stones used to fortify it, while we waited for Arthur to finish answering nature's beck and call. Uma had been quiet most of the day. Impulsively I hugged her. If not for her, I would not be here. So much I wanted to say to her, but there were no words. She hugged me back, then dragged Arthur and me to a fun little pub in Bardon Hill, called the Once Brewed.

Why is it that when we were drunk, we warmed up to the vacation better? Or is it that when we were inebriated, nothing else mattered but the time we spent together? Whatever the reasons, I was glad to be away from the north country. Too many images of a life gone reside among the monuments that were landmarks on a frontier I called home.