Two Prose Poems by Greg Patrick

 

Lady of the Dark Horses

 

By Greg Patrick

 

 A Legend of Boudicca

“‘We the Celts of this isle, are used to women commanders in war”, she cried. ‘I am descended from mighty men! But I am not fighting for my kingdom and wealth now. I am fighting as an ordinary person for my lost freedom, my bruised body, and my outraged daughters. Consider how many of you are fighting—and why! Then you will win this battle or perish. That is what I, a woman, plan to do! —let the men live in slavery if they will.’”

Tacitus, Annals (XIV.35)

Great stories are not supposed to begin with endings, but I was never truly meant to be a bard. And yet this was my final duty to my Queen. The Romans had made every effort to ensure that what had happened would be a song forever unsung. They vowed to sever the tongues and fingers of any bard who dared tell the story. Yet I am beyond their reach now, and so I un-dust my harp.

I am Amergin, Charioteer to High Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, and I recall now how the day of battle dawned in fiery crimson hues. The sky seemed alight from the flames of some resplendent pyre, like the vision of a mad artist who paints in wild red.

 The carnyx brayed, heralding her coming.

 “Make way for the High Queen!” they bellowed. The shout relayed throughout the mass of warriors, and they responded like a great parting of a tempestuous sea

.I drove her chariot, drawn by majestic dark horses, through the ranks of our great Celtic army. The stallions responded, as did I, to the resounding cheers and chants of her name.

When her smiths had asked her what she wished them to craft for the battle soon to be joined, she only said, “Make them fear me.”

And they did, applying all their skill to forge the poetry of her legend into objects of shimmering steel. They had inscribed ornate scenes of battles and hunts on the varnished surfaces of her chariot. They had wrought Celtic knots and spirals so painstakingly into her armour that, in the crimson dawn, each line appeared to be the pulsing vein of a heart pierced by a sacrificial dagger. They had constellated her shield with rare gems, as though crafting a celestial star map.

Boudica was beautiful and terrible to behold, both dream and nightmare. Our warriors whispered that she was the living incarnation of the Morrigan, the feared and worshipped Goddess of Death and War. When she stepped down from her chariot, she seemed to have stepped down from the fiery depths of the sun itself, radiant and resplendent.

“Hail Boudicca!” they cried out in a raptured choir, drumming the hilts of their swords on oblong shields. The throaty bray of the carnyx heralded her arrival, but it cringingly attacked my soul for the percussion was as jarring to me as it was to the stallions.

Boudica was flanked by armour-clad Hibernian war hounds that strained on the chains of their handlers. Behind her stood her great Celtic army, in rank after rank. Those who stood in an honoured place at the vanguard were great brawny warriors, women and men, whose hair was spiked to resemble the spurs of a boar. Their faces were dyed blue in serpentine patterns, like eels ready to swim in the blood of their enemies. They bore no shields but rather carried swords with human-shaped hilts. Piles of heads lay at their feet to be tallied for prestige, and they each eyed their rivals’ count with restless envy.

 Neither Boudica nor I basked in the adulation they lavished on her. Boudicca’s features were set and composed as a sculpted marble statue, betraying no emotion, and yet I knew under that her façade she harboured a terrible haunted anguish - a realization that for all the intoxicated furor of invincibility infecting her warriors, this was would likely be her last battle.

My breath steamed in the chill air almost in rhythm with the dark stallions, and as I drew rein before the Roman ranks, I steadied the team which stomped and bucked, unsettled by the presence of so many people around them.

There was much to vex both horse and hound. Sword hilts drummed rhythmically against shields. The carnyx brayed again, as did our dragon-faced bronze war horns. The clan called out the enemy with wild boasts, cheering and jeering.

I caressed the stallions, running my fingers through their manes. The Hibernian hounds growled, sensing the approach of the enemy’s sandaled tread. They bared their fangs and reared against their tethers as if the reek of wolves burnt in their nostrils. At a word from Boudicca they rested on their haunches, growling restlessly.

Like a ghost haunting ruins, I knew this place - this stretch of desolate moor. My mind strayed to the night I had become the charioteer of the High Queen, Boudicca of the Iceni, the scourge of Romans.

I looked aside at the ‘Queen’s Shadow’, the black-robed Druid, who clutched sacred mistletoe in one hand and his harvesting sickle in the other. The Druid painted the horses’ flanks with blue swirls, and then applied dark streaks of soil mingled with blood to Boudica’s face, creating a tigress' stripes.

I met the Druid’s cold blue eyes as he approached her chariot. I saw myself mirrored in his sickle’s blade. I felt ancient, as old as the standing stones arrayed in their eternal circle, as old as the hill that shuddered under thousands of feet and hooves.

Boudicca smiled at the howls of wolves pacing the tree lines, impatient for carnage to come. She closed her eyes and swayed as though she heard music, like some dark serenade, its primal rapture moving her. She bared her teeth, and then suddenly became alert in lycanthropic fury as if seeing the Romans for the first time. She became a force of nature as wild as the winter storms that swept the lands and froze lost men to death where they stood.

I spoke then in a whisper, “Epona Goddess of the Horse, extend your grace to shield our steeds from the enemy. Grant them strength and power. Lugh of the Long Arm fair God of the First Light, lend brightness and speed to my spear as you cast your rays of the dawn to vanquish the night. Blind the enemy’s eyes even as you enlighten mine.

“Oh Morrigan, dark Goddess of War,” I continued. “Whose grace is terrible and beautiful. Infect the ears of my enemies with fear. Favour our desire for victory this red day. May our swords be the hands of your wraith. May each foe we slay be a sacrifice to your name, and may they shudder in your terrible shadow.”

Even as I concluded my prayer, a glowering blackness cast upon me as flocks of ravens gathering from distant moor and wood amassed in streams of darkness, swirling cyclonically.

The air filled with their carrion screeches. Black feathers fell like tears of midnight hailing Boudica in dark tribute.

 “Hark!” someone gasped in awe.

 The great mass of ravens seemed form a towering figure hovering over the field of battle, like a black-gowned woman twirling in an aerial dance.

 “The Morrigan! The Morrigan is with us!"

  The ravens swirled faster like the dark currents of a stirred cauldron. As if mocking the crucifixion the Romans threatened to inflict upon her, Boudica spread her bronze torqued arms coiled with blue-painted serpentines.

 “Charioteer forward!”

 I charged the stallions, but though I meant to veer away from the ravens, for I knew the horses would instinctively shy, she bade me stay course. I urged the team into a gallop as the final frenzied mass the ravens swept over us.

Boudica laughed. I heard her do so seldomly, but now I watched her close her eyes and spread her arms in rapture of the dark caress of their wings, like sorceress reveling in some ancient rite. She caught some ravens’ feathers like black tear drops.

We burst through onto the Romans, who watched aghast. I saw fear flash in their eyes as they peered over the rims of their crimson shields. Boudica cast back her head, her hair flowing wildly. I imagined that the moment to her was like that of a falcon which soars and then descends suddenly, talons extended, screaming on its quarry far below.

 Boudicca's daughters hung from the sides of the chariot, ululating battle cries. They leapt off to lead the charge on foot. Our warriors felt invincible, and expected to sweep the Romans aside, and yet with a charioteer's keen eye for topography, I could see with sickening realization that we would be vanquished this day.

The Romans were arrayed with cruel ingenuity, their ranks positioned so that when our great horde blundered into them, they would clamp shut around us like the prongs of a trap ensnaring a lumbering bear's paw.

 I veered the chariot away with a sharp pull of the reins. It tilted precariously before I righted it with another turn. Seeing we were now parallel to the legions, I urged the horses on before our own army crashed into us. Our charging warriors were our worst threat, for they could crush us against the Roman shield wall, but even as I evaded the impending collision, the Romans counterattacked in a onrush of crimson shields.

I drove us clear as the great wave of howling warriors slammed into the Roman ranks. Against all their own expectations and heightened bravado, they reeled back from the red swords of Rome which began butchering their way through the avalanche of Celtic bodies.

Our warriors fled only to find themselves trapped by their own wagons, heavily laden with loot. They were penned in a terrible abattoir, crushed against the wagons while listening to the steady chop of Roman blades drawing inexorably closer.

 And yet the eyes of Roman commander were locked on only one of us.

 “Peltasts bring her down! one centurion howled.

 Legionaries lunged forward, twirling stone-loaded slings over their heads before letting them fly. Both stones and javelins streaked past us, glancing off our shields and helms. The Romans next wheeled forward great ballistas, giant crossbows which launched bolts that slaughtered three men at a time. Warriors fell to this machinery, their corpses skewered together.

 The flank of her chariot became riddled with arrows that quivered upon impact. We hurried past the Roman’s lightning-emblazoned crimson shields, racing the gauntlet. Roman knights rode toward us, their helms like sliver-masked executioners, their swords drawn. An accomplished huntress adept at bringing down stags and boars in the greenwood while evading antlers and tusks, Boudicca cast her spears at them powerfully, catching one in the chest and throwing him backwards, blood spraying from his mouth.

 Her hounds kept pace with our chariot, loyal beasts which, in a last act to save their mistress, brought down two horsemen before they could slay her. Their jaws frothed red as they mauled Roman flesh. Then I heard them yelp, and I knew they were gone.

 I pulled at the horse’s reins, but Boudicca was no longer with me. I glanced aside and saw her standing alone like a cornered lioness. Romans raced in to claim her head , and the royal bounty that no doubt came with it. Like a desperate gambler's throw, I made my move. It was almost certain to shatter the chariot and drag me behind the bolting horses, but I wagered my life to save hers.

Whispering a prayer to the gods, I urged the horses on faster, their flanks heaving their mouths frothing. I steered towards a rise in the terrain, waited for the right wheel to elevate, and then wrapped my hands and arms about the reins and wrenched them sharply to the left. The horses veered and the chariot tilted, threatening to capsize at any moment. I saw the green earth rush by ever closer to my cheek, but then twisted my hips to set my balance and when my perspective changed, I locked eyes on Boudicca standing only a short distance before me.

I pulled on the reins again and righted myself. The chariot tilted back into position, and I felt the wheels fall back into place, jolting me as it landed. I cried out euphorically, smiling into the sonorous rush of wind sweeping my hair as my helmet fell off as I urged the horses toward her.

Boudicca stood impassively before her would be assassins, her features set, statuesque and as oblivious as a Goddess of War is to the steel and the howling carnage about her. If the Romans expected a yielded sword or a cowering woman, they had chosen the wrong enemy. She was covered in gore like a lioness guarding her last kill. She held the head of a slain Roman by the hair before casting it at their feet. It rolled to them, looking up in an expression of final shock.

A lowborn soldier stepped forward to claim her, but I roared in like the chariot of Hades, and drove over him, sickened and yet satisfied at the sound of the bladed wheels lacerating his flesh. I tasted the coppery tang of his blood as it splattered my face.

“Come My Lady. Take my hand,” I urged.

She did, but as I pulled her into the chariot, I could see that she was wounded. I feared mortally, for I saw spreading dark stains beneath the fabric of her royal cloak. I fought back tears harder than I had any human enemy.

“Drive me to yonder lake,” she bade me.

I drew rein for her for one last time. At the lakeside, she shrugged off my assistance, for she held frailty in contempt, and dismounted. She stood looking out on the sacred waters, the sun mirrored on their surface. Her eyes were blinded by light and tears. She seemed lost, oblivious to time, ageless as the hills.

“Go,” she bade me.

“I won't leave you, my Queen,” I vowed.

“As your queen I command... No, as your friend I ask you. Tell all what has happened here before the Roman scribes do.”

I could see her intent, and I wished to join her. I prepared to sever the horses’ reins and bolt them, for I could not bear to think of them butchered by Roman blades, but Boudica staid my hand.

“I have not released you from my service, Charioteer. I saw the way you looked at my daughter.”

“Forgive me my Queen,” I beseeched.

 “If you do not go now and save them. I never will forgive you. This is the last command of your Queen.”

 I clasped my fist to my heart in salute, but then Boudicca said more tenderly, “Amergin, you have to let me go. Save my daughters, sing my story, and I will hold your service fulfilled.”

The Romans never found Boudica. They never took her alive nor found her dead. They never paraded her in chains through their streets or vanquished the cherished dream among her people that she would return one day to drive the Romans into the sea.

She turned away from my sad eyes. Head held high, she strode unwaveringly into the lake, her hair and garments rising as she waded into the depths. Her armour bore her down until she was immersed below the dark surface, like a flame enduring through water, till I saw the last of her.

 

Huntsman After Night

By Greg Patrick

 

His huntsman’s gaze was the more so a questing one, after the renewal of life not the

pursuit of another’s death and looking to the wild as kindred rather than enemy of man.

Like an astronomer casting sight to the heights to prove a theory of disputed brightness

only to find it yet elusive and confronted with a greater void of darkness than stars have

breadth between.

The vision of a wolf or the apparition of a stag in the green wood like a salve to

disenchanted heart to reconcile with the sights he has seen in war after which he can call no

man brother. He lingered as the belated stars at last appear over the tree canopies

where once they shone over the dunes and sea to his eyes. A vision of that beauty wrought

in eternal flame that did not guide one astray like the mirages that their leaders bade them

follow like a misled pilgrimage to broken shrines.

It was his turn to follow the stars in the path of Magi, nomad, and warrior kings. Whether

the march of caravans or armies…the way is lit…brightly so. The night of goodbyes before

distant fields of war is its own eve of battle. Its distant echoes become memories like dark

prayers across the sea.

Night cast its dark spell over the landscape as the ascending moon lit an apparitional

swathe over the waves before him on crushing brink of sea once and precipice another

time as past and present merged in a sigh like the waves at his feet. Pivotally he turned his

back on the end as he had once on the lives behind him. He turned away from” the game”.

The betrayal of a king of hearts shuffled away by an elite gambling away souls.

He seemed to have had dreams in his hands but for the duration of a sigh after a mirage, it

was if a nomad cupping the last oasis water, shimmering, and quaking brightly like a

foundling nestling thrush, up lifted by a Samaritan to the skies but its were broken wings,

and he gazing reflectively as the dream passing like a mirage’s embrace, fleetingly through

his fingers like a sieve dwindling before falling and mingling with the sand like the fallen

with the land. Eyes are up lifted to heavenless skies or overlooking oasisless deserts till eyes

and heart are drawn back to earth and homeward by a cry in night to a distant father, the

inevitable look back, before one can never look to the sunset with the same eyes twice or be

the same person again.

He closed his eyes at last like a sage on hermitage of loftiest peak, serenity intruded by

memories as if hearing the cries of circling raptors echoing from the mountainsides,

cringing at their shrillness. Memories of fire wrought smoulderingly into the psyche and

darkness of fitful sleep and night like Orion’s constellation, huntsman immortalised in

beacons of eternal flame and celestial gold upon the heights and when he looked to the

stars, he did not equate their glory with the unattainable nor did he see random

configurations but constellations of gods and heroes wrought in tapestries to

which he aspired.

Watching the cloud formations like a shepherdless herd of dreams astray adrift

over the night sky. Like a march of lost souls, shaping like nightmare’s castles across the

moon. The ghosts of lost dreams they seemed searching the heavens. Their path lit by

crossed stars. Overlooking the night sea all but invisible but for its sigh. Always a moment

alone by the sea.

Eyes uplifted to the stars to perchance be heard in some celestial vastness that some know

as the heavens on eve of battle by the desert stars and others know as an “outer space” in

the night walks among city lights back home, and for that a greater void below to the

earthbound befalls. For it is the star’s constancy rather than their ever- turning world

that lead one home from hunt and voyage. Huntsman’s and seafarer’s sigh bespoke a

greater eloquence than the moment would allow.

Leaves fell like red dreams and memories as the tidal sigh of the wind through trackless

glades and dark pillars of trees lulled his restless heart to some measure of repose and

solace like dark waves drowning out memory...cleansingly…healingly. Returning from

solitude as loneliness at last befell like night. The door opened of its own accord, and he

stood at the threshold as if shadows gathering at the door took form and face before he

strode in trailing shadows like a dark princes’ raiment. The shadow’s confines, unlike the

invader’s camouflage, does not hide truth but it is its dwelling place.

He presided like a shadow enthroned, detached while others made merry. Haunted by

war’s ordeals as each patron from the night ushered in their own darkness. Each absent

name remembered was the title of its own song. The lyrics their words of endearment and

anger…some of the song he struggled to recall… A song like a lost soul searching for an

angelic voice to give it justice , that one of many that can speak the words to offer the muse.

The shadows seemed to hover around his presence like a lordly raiment or dark halo

condemned to be worn by a rebel angel , one who turned away from light to seek others

among the shadows.

The old soldier from abroad returned, known by an aloof detached air. Alone in a throng.

Mingling the more readily with shadows and eyes looking through the window expectantly

though none come to his table. The unknown soldier in their midst. No familiar faces and

gaze at last averted to the hearth for his eyes know fire like an old friend, silhouetted

against the flames ere he turned away to the darkness like a consoling hand. To the

darkness where men are allowed to cry, and bards compose and learn to dream again.

Those around remain oblivious to what he endured in far lands and outcast even as he was

sent to light the horizon with fire. The old campaigner in the crowded room,

the one spoken respectfully to by the proprietor and answers in kind with a gentleman’s

air. For he knows no kind words are ever wasted or trivial and unkind words the seeds of

desolation that he knows to well. The one who tears up at that one song among many

played with the feeling of one walking the floor of an empty ballroom, the steps, and

echoes. His haggard and dishevelled countenance seemed rejuvenated of ages. Times of war

not measured in years but as if in centuries transpired as he leant to the harp like a slow

dance partner as the song drew them together and he closed his eyes into the song his lips

shaping a name like a song title wordlessly.

And the soloist drew dark poetry from the harp strings like a flight of ravens conjured

from a stage magician’s palms. The harp chords casting bar-like shadows on his

countenance as a wavering masquerade of intervals of firelight and shadow cast his face in

different lights and aspects. Flashbacks like a breaking film reel and like a lion’s eyes

glaring back to light. Touch drawn so sublimely at the strings like moon and moonbeams

upon the tide. Like a composer transcribing the language of the heart in notes.

Memories of war marched in nightmare’s dreamscape like a procession of dark horsemen

trailing raiment of night and singing their marching songs into the dawnfire. Lingering like

shadows by day to bedevil mind and heart as if in halls where no bard dares sing again.

A dark horseman beckons to the somnambulist…”join us brother…”

But they cannot outrun the dawn and banished by the rays through the windowpanes and

darkness must yield to light. Nightmares haunted his sleep like a revelling of dark ghosts

over a knight’s effigy in an un-consecrated cathedral. On second tour he heard behind the

enemy’s tread.

You can kill a man but not his words, not his soul nor it’s language.

He turned to face them…turned in the throes of nightmare-haunted sleep

like malarian dreams…eyes open…the dawn lit his face angelically…

The gift of a new dawn.

Peace…

Wake up.

Greg Patrick - A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man.  He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.