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Authors: Barbara Erskine
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She hadn’t meant it to come out quite so baldly as she sought for a change of subject, but he didn’t seem put out.
‘Only Aunty Beeb at the moment – the goddess I work for. There was one once, but she buggered off too.’ He paused reflectively, taking another deep drink from his glass. ‘You are not offering, I take it. Flattered and tempted though I would be by such a possibility, I think it would be bad for both of us.’
‘I’m not offering. But I need a friend. Someone who will walk through the woods now and then and drag me to a pub for a curry.’
‘Done. But not alas for a while after today. I’ve got a tight schedule until Christmas.’
She was astonished at how devastated she felt at his words. She had known he was going back to London and yet somehow she had counted on him being there again next weekend.
‘Want another Scotch?’ He had been watching her face closely and saw something of the loneliness which had shown in her eyes for a moment.
She nodded and held out her glass. ‘Then we can drink to Lord Byron. By the time I see you again, he will be, with a lot of luck, several chapters long.’
After dropping Bill at Colchester station she took the opportunity to drive on into the town, curious about the place which would be her nearest large centre for the next few months. Pevsner, in the edition of the book she had briefly consulted in the London Library, had waxed lyrical about it, but nineteen-sixties red-brick shopping centres now seemed to vie with nineteen-eighties glass and concrete where much of what he had described must have been. Saddened, she turned her attention at last to the castle museum.
The huge squat building was shadowed already from the late afternoon sun as she made her way across the bridge and inside the great door to buy her ticket. The place was strangely empty. In the distance she could hear the disembodied, dramatic voice of a video loop – the sound effects and urgency of the narrative strangely out of place amongst the glass cases beneath the high-beamed roof of the castle. She walked slowly around the ground floor exhibits gazing at Bronze Age and Iron Age artefacts, gradually growing closer to the sound.
For several minutes she stood watching the video – which told of the Romans in Colchester – then turning away, she began slowly to climb the stairs. At the top were Roman exhibits, life-size models, colourful, larger than life panoramic pictures on the walls, and then another video enactment, this time of Boudicca’s attack and the sack of the town.
Poor Boudicca. Kate wandered round slowly studying the exhibits, piecing together her life: the wife of Prasutagus; her children; the political background of first-century Britain; her husband’s death; the rape of her daughters and her humiliation as she was flogged by a Roman – the final insult after years of unrest and dissatisfaction in a country under foreign occupation, which caused the revolt which had nearly ended the Roman occupation of Britain. What a story her life made. Suddenly Kate found herself watching the video with heightened excitement. What a biography it would make; what a book, when George Byron was finished … The burning of Colchester, the rampage of Boudicca’s forces across Essex and Hertfordshire as they made their way towards London, and the final hours when she realised that all had failed and she took her own life. And Colchester was the centre of it all – a city where the flames had burned so hot that nearly two thousand years later a layer of blackened death was still clearly visible in the foundations of the town.
She watched the video through twice, alone in the darkened booth – seeing the huge sketched shapes of the warriors, hearing their shouts and screams, then she stood up and left, intensely aware suddenly of the vaults far beneath the castle which were all that remained apparently of the Temple of Claudius – the temple Boudicca had burned to the ground
‘Only Aunty Beeb at the moment – the goddess I work for. There was one once, but she buggered off too.’ He paused reflectively, taking another deep drink from his glass. ‘You are not offering, I take it. Flattered and tempted though I would be by such a possibility, I think it would be bad for both of us.’
‘I’m not offering. But I need a friend. Someone who will walk through the woods now and then and drag me to a pub for a curry.’
‘Done. But not alas for a while after today. I’ve got a tight schedule until Christmas.’
She was astonished at how devastated she felt at his words. She had known he was going back to London and yet somehow she had counted on him being there again next weekend.
‘Want another Scotch?’ He had been watching her face closely and saw something of the loneliness which had shown in her eyes for a moment.
She nodded and held out her glass. ‘Then we can drink to Lord Byron. By the time I see you again, he will be, with a lot of luck, several chapters long.’
After dropping Bill at Colchester station she took the opportunity to drive on into the town, curious about the place which would be her nearest large centre for the next few months. Pevsner, in the edition of the book she had briefly consulted in the London Library, had waxed lyrical about it, but nineteen-sixties red-brick shopping centres now seemed to vie with nineteen-eighties glass and concrete where much of what he had described must have been. Saddened, she turned her attention at last to the castle museum.
The huge squat building was shadowed already from the late afternoon sun as she made her way across the bridge and inside the great door to buy her ticket. The place was strangely empty. In the distance she could hear the disembodied, dramatic voice of a video loop – the sound effects and urgency of the narrative strangely out of place amongst the glass cases beneath the high-beamed roof of the castle. She walked slowly around the ground floor exhibits gazing at Bronze Age and Iron Age artefacts, gradually growing closer to the sound.
For several minutes she stood watching the video – which told of the Romans in Colchester – then turning away, she began slowly to climb the stairs. At the top were Roman exhibits, life-size models, colourful, larger than life panoramic pictures on the walls, and then another video enactment, this time of Boudicca’s attack and the sack of the town.
Poor Boudicca. Kate wandered round slowly studying the exhibits, piecing together her life: the wife of Prasutagus; her children; the political background of first-century Britain; her husband’s death; the rape of her daughters and her humiliation as she was flogged by a Roman – the final insult after years of unrest and dissatisfaction in a country under foreign occupation, which caused the revolt which had nearly ended the Roman occupation of Britain. What a story her life made. Suddenly Kate found herself watching the video with heightened excitement. What a biography it would make; what a book, when George Byron was finished … The burning of Colchester, the rampage of Boudicca’s forces across Essex and Hertfordshire as they made their way towards London, and the final hours when she realised that all had failed and she took her own life. And Colchester was the centre of it all – a city where the flames had burned so hot that nearly two thousand years later a layer of blackened death was still clearly visible in the foundations of the town.
She watched the video through twice, alone in the darkened booth – seeing the huge sketched shapes of the warriors, hearing their shouts and screams, then she stood up and left, intensely aware suddenly of the vaults far beneath the castle which were all that remained apparently of the Temple of Claudius – the temple Boudicca had burned to the ground
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