Adam Palmer: The Boudicca Parchments

“Give me the dagger and I will spare you from the gravest of sins.”

A handful of cubits from where they stood, she could hear the heavy thud of the Roman battering ram pounding on the solid wooden inner wall, its destructive force aided by the all-consuming power of the fire. It was only a matter of time before the wood gave way to the invader. No fortress is impregnable and she knew that this one too would fall to the might of Rome, just as her mother’s kingdom had fallen a decade earlier.

Eleazer Ben Yair, proud in his warrior bearing, stood tall over this woman, who was almost young enough to be his daughter. There was strength in his stature and posture, the look in his eyes was one of hurt, as if she were in some way responsible for this debacle that had befallen his people. He had warned Simon to divorce the daughter of the stranger. But Simon had disregarded his counsel, as he disregarded the counsel of others on all matters, be they affairs of state or affairs of the heart.

The young woman herself had not gloated at her victory. Rather, she had been conciliatory, pledging allegiance to their God. And Simon himself had been the descendent of proselytes. But standing before Ben Yair now, sharing this final moment of vulnerability, she knew that he felt at best ambivalent towards her. He had kept his promise to Simon and protected her when the mob of Sicarii had wanted to lynch her. But on the other hand, he had stood idly by when they cut off her long flaming red braids in an act of defilement, branding her not just a foreign woman, but a prisoner.

Simon would not have stood idly by while they did that. Simon would have drawn his sword and fallen upon them, cutting them to shreds — or died trying. On one occasion, when his rivals for power had kidnapped her, he had threatened to kill every man, woman and child in Jerusalem unless she was released unharmed. And those were his own brothers and sisters.

Simon had been a zealot for love. But Ben Yair was a zealot for his faith. So when she stood before him now, she knew that there was an element of hostility between them, despite all that she had done for them. She suspected that he even blamed her for the change in the direction of the wind that was now blowing the fire towards the wooden walls of the fortress.

For all that they had been through together, she was still an outsider, the proselyte, the stranger who was within their gate. And she was also a woman — a woman who had stood up to men and fought against them on behalf of her husband’s people — a people who marginalized women every bit as much as the Romans did, despite their pious protestations to the contrary. But she had no regrets about standing up for herself. She had learned from her mother that even a woman — especially a woman — must stand up for herself.

She was leaner than their local women, though not thin. Indeed some of the men — the younger ones especially — mocked her for her physique, comparing her musculature to that of a man or at least a male youth. But she had always answered their mockery by pointing out that their own women could carry heavy loads too.

When their taunting aroused her ire and pride beyond her powers of self-restraint, she retaliated by challenging them to unarmed combat, a challenge to which none had risen but which humiliated them by its mere utterance. However, that merely made them change the form of their goading. In the face of these humiliations, that they had brought on themselves, they accused her of sorcery. They said that witchcraft was the source of her strength.

At one point it had nearly cost her life, had Ben Yair not interfered. He had saved her from the mob but also chided her for her recklessness and immodesty.

“You cannot fight your enemies if your time is consumed by fighting your friends.”

How ironic that it had taken his own people so long to learn that lesson. But she realized that he was right. So she bowed her head and apologized. But she would not bend her knee. Just as her mother — or indeed these people so akin to her mother in their proud, stiff-necked spirit — would not bend the knee before might of Rome.

But now the battle was over and they were the last ones here in this mountain fortress. She could have escaped through the sewers with the others, but she elected to stay with Ben Yair, reciprocating Simon’s loyalty and courage. And now there was no possibility of escape. Now all they could do was wait for slavery… or elect for death.

As the sound of the battering ram grew more intense and the flaming heavy wooden walls began to give way, Ben Yair made his decision.

He elected for death.

Perhaps if Martin Ignatius Costa had been afraid of the dark, he would have been a little more cautious. But he wasn’t afraid of the dark and consequently didn’t know that he was being followed.

The darkness was just something he had to contend with. It wouldn’t even have made any difference if the dig had taken place in spring or autumn instead of summer. The problem would have been the same. They stop digging towards sunset, but he had to wait till well after dark to avoid detection.

There were no guards around the dig site and no houses by the surrounding corn fields with a clear line of sight. But to get here, he had to walk through the heavily overhung bramble, path past several houses. And that might have aroused the suspicion of the locals. It was bad enough that a dog had barked loudly and aggressively as he walked stealthily, across an open stretch of pathway, towards the last sheltered stretch of the path before the right turn to the open field. Fortunately the dog was secured behind a high fence and closed gate. Even if the owner had peered out to determine what was agitating his canine friend, all he would have seen was a man of average height and build, with seventies style long hair, walking along with what looked like a workman’s piece of equipment.

Now, at eleven o’clock at night, he was inside the perimeter fence, on the grassy dig site, armed with an Grad601 Single Axis Magnetic Field Gradiometer System. This was essentially a one-metre square, white-painted metal frame in the shape of a rugby goal, with small box packed with electronic gadgetry attached to the cross bar. He “wore” the apparatus in front of him, using a strap slung over his neck, the vertical bar in front of his waste and the horizontal bars — the gradiometry sensors — pointing down towards the ground surveying the site as he walked and stepped across it by the moonlight.

Amateur archaeologists and casual treasure hunters almost invariably use metal detectors, which rely on electrical conductivity, to detect many different types of metal beneath the surface, but not to any great depth. Magnetometers, gradiometers and magnetic susceptibility systems, in contrast, measure magnetic flux. They can only detect iron or its alloys, but are highly sensitive and can detect large concentrations to much greater depth, or alternatively find minute quantities nearer the surface.

This did not mean that such methods were only good for detecting swords and spears however. Because iron is to be found in soil, and because the equipment is so sensitive, it can be used to discover and locate disturbed soil, compact soil, ditches, bricks and stones and even traces of fire. It can even be used to detect and identify different types of soil, liquids and powder. That was why both magnetic susceptibility systems and gradiometers were used for archaeological surveys.

Such a survey had already been done here at Arbury Banks, originally a late bronze age English site that was now being considered as the possible location of a major iron age battle — with the Romans. The archaeologists had also gone over it with metal detectors, hoping to find another horde of gold and silver, and also with ground penetrating radar, in search of large bones that might indicate a burial site. They had found neither. But as they were operating on the premise that this was the site of a great Roman military victory, any treasure would have been carted away as war booty, whilst bodies would have been put to the torch. Mass burial was not practical and cremation was an expedient alternative for the victors.