Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

Daniel transliterated and Ted transcribed. But as he looked at the text, a sense of awe and amazement broke out over his face. He looked at Daniel and Dubois in silence, as if unable to trust his voice.

“What is it? asked Daniel.

Ted started to speak, coughed to clear his throat and then spoke… even more slowly and deliberately than his usual cautious academic style.

“And so we… received… their God. And Simon… thought or decided or resolved… to fight the Romans in their house.”

Daniel looked at Dubois, then at Ted, then at Dubois again.

“To fight the Romans in their house?”

The Catholic scholar explained.

“Taking the fight to the enemy. Not an unusual tactic in modern warfare. But almost unprecedented in those days.”

Ted stirred uneasily at this.

“Actually, as a tactic in war, it’s not quite as modern most people think. It may not go back to the first century, but in the American revolutionary war — over two hundred years ago — John Paul Jones attacked the port of Whitehaven.”

“It was a bit of a damp squib, if I remember rightly.”

“Technically yes. He had a problem with a mutinous — or at least avaricious crew. But it did undermine British morale.”

“Does the manuscript give any indication of what they did specifically?” asked Dubois, his tone mildly impatient.

“Let’s see,” said Daniel.

Ted nodded and muttered a pale “Okay.”

Daniel transliterated another sentence or two, Ted struggling to keep up with his phonetic rendition and to distinguish between continuations and alternative pronunciations. After about half a minute, the Cambridge professor had another go at translation.

“And I was given to Simon in marriage and then we hid from the Romans. And after a time we went by the way of the sea to the heart of the enemy to cause pain in her. But Aristobulos said we must fight not with swords but with… the Holy Spirit.”

Again, Ted had to pause.

“ ‘So he went instead to Mona to tell the dru the word of one God so that they might be healed and made strong.”

“The dru?” echoed Dubois. It was for Ted to explain.

“I think that must be the druids.”

Again the three faces met.

“Preaching the Gospels!” said Dubois, excitedly.

“So what does this mean?” asked Daniel. “Putting it all together. Aristobulos, and possibly Simon also, convinced Boudicca and her daughter — or daughters — that the pagan religion of the druids had failed them.”

“The druids were a very powerful force in Romano-Britain until then,” said Ted. “But Boudicca’s defeat and the massacre of the druids at Mona may have led to a desperate reappraisal. And if some one came along offering a plausible alternative, that explained the defeats and setbacks, without giving too much credit to the victors, then the time and conditions were ripe for a religious conversion.”

Daniel had a question.

“This sentence about Aristobulos going to Mona…”

Ted let Daniel’s unfinished question hang in the air for a while before answering.

“There are several traditions associated with Aristobulos of Britannia. That he went somewhere in Wales is one of them.”

Daniel was cogitating.

“Okay, and that line ‘we resolved to fight the Romans in their house,’ I’m wondering who is ‘we’? Is it just Boudicca, her daughter and Simon or could be some small faction of survivors?”

“It probably refers to a small band of followers. It’s unlikely that the three of them alone decided to take on the might of Rome — even in the form of guerrilla warfare.”

“Let’s try the next bit,” Daniel suggested. Again he transliterated. Ted transcribed the words. But there was a change in his mood as Daniel transliterated. At first Ted’s pace was almost leisurely. But at a certain point it turned frantic.

“What is it?” asked Daniel, sensing Ted’s contagious excitement.

“What you just said… what it means.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means… ‘And we hid in the hills outside the city… and in the houses of those… who hated the emperor. And we hurt the Romans in many ways… but we did not fight them in the daylight.’”

“That’s it?”

“No Daniel, that’s not it. That’s the first sentence. But the next sentence reads: ‘And then… we made a great fire… in their city.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped. He turned to Dubois.

“The Great Fire of Rome?”

“Let us go!” shrieked May as the was dragged along down the corridor by one of the men.

“My daddy will kill you!” Shir threatened the man who was dragging her. He was about to hit her when the third ma who had just closed the door behind them, shook his head. He seemed to be the leader and the girls realized that he was the one they had to watch and be careful of.

They were taken to a room at the end of the corridor. At first it looked to them as if the room had no windows, but then they looked up and saw that very close to the ceiling there was a wooden board nailed to the wall, and they both realized in that instant that there was a window behind it, but a small window and one that would be very hard to reach, even if it were not covered. The fact that there was a board over it, meant that if they shouted for help it would be hard for anyone too hear them.

The one strange thing about the room that they also noticed was that it had two small beds and a lot of toys, almost as if it had been a children’s room. They wondered where were the children who used it. Had they grown up? Run away? Maybe they had died and these people had kidnapped them to replace them.

The two men let go of the girls, but stood close to them in case they tried to run away. The third man stood in front of them, looking down at them.

“Okay first of all I want to tell you that we won’t hurt you if you don’t try to escape. We’ve brought you here because we want to get some one to talk to us.”

“Who?” asked May.

“Your uncle,” said the man who had been holding Shir.

The man who was the boss looked at the other man angrily. The twins noted this and realized that the man who had spoken wasn’t supposed to tell them.

“But why?” asked Shir. “I mean why didn’t you just call him on the telephone.”

“Or send him an eMail?” added May.

“He always answers his eMail,” said Shir.

“Or you could call him on Skype,” May suggested.

“Or you can send him a text,” Shir explained.

“Enough!” the man shouted. The huddled together frightened, both wanting to cry, but neither wanting to give in to tears before the other did first. “As soon as we are able to speak to your uncle, we will let you go.”

“Promise?” asked May.

The man hesitated.

“I will promise to let you go, if you promise not to try to escape…”

The girls looked at each other. Then one of them put her hands behind her back, remembering something that they had learned in America from other children they met in Disneyland.

“I promise,” she said.

The other did likewise, also putting her hands behind her back, unseen by the kidnappers. In England, crossing ones fingers meant that one was hoping for something to happen. But in America, if you made a promise with your fingers crossed, it meant that you didn’t have to keep the promise.

“Promise,” she said when finally managed the tricky operation of crossing her fingers.

“Okay,” said the man. “And I promise too.”

They smiled.

“Will you give us food if we get hungry?”

“Yes of course we’ll give you food. We won’t all be here all the time. But there’ll always be one of us here if you need anything. In the meantime, there are lots of things to do here. Look…” He pointed. “Lots of toys. You can play with them.”