Images from "These holes we dig", 2006 - Text working towards reimagining this performance.
(1)
A man dies…and as it happens he boasts. If only he might live another year, he could easily hand the whole island to the Emperor, on a plate. Some of us feel the need to exaggerate our importance when faced with that final moment, to insist upon our worth as we weigh up our own impact right there at the end of us. Perhaps this is a final act of vital energy, an attempt to stamp the last bit of us into the earth, to invite immortality in the hope of being remembered. At least his boast earns him that today. He is Quintus Veranius, The Second, Governor of Britain. At least…he was. And he didn’t live another year, so as far as the Emperor is concerned, there is more work to be done.
A new Governor is appointed.
He is Gaius Seutonius Paulinus.
He is a brave man by all accounts…including his own.
He has won many battles for Rome.
He keeps his records, he likes to write himself in.
Writing his/story as it happens, on his own terms.
He is gunning for the natives.
He is bringing them to heel.
His first act is to undermine the indigenous power structures by targeting native beliefs.
Rome is famed for absorbing local gods into its pantheon,
But this is war and he is a soldier.
This is war and he is a soldier.
He is the spear of the Emperor with the power of death in his hands, which in his own mind makes him a god to whom ever he aims the sharp end of that stick at.
Any integration comes after the bending of the knee,
Or alternatively after blood has been shed.
He is on the attack.
He is leading the attack on the sacred Isle of Mona (Anglesey).
Having trampled his way across the landscape east to west.
The feet of his legionnaires pounding along on the paths behind him.
Having conquered the shifting sands and the shallows of the Menai Straits
Incredible feats demanded of ordinary men
Just following orders.
His soldiers are greeted by a formidable and frightening sight.
Wild haired women wail at the top of their lungs,
Otherworldly Druids scream curses.
They are petrified.
The soldiers falter, move to flee but under their orders manage to pluck up the courage to fight, goading each other on into battle.
The people of Mona never stood a chance against the systematic approach of the Roman Army.
A bloodbath ensues.
The world here painted in a sticky red,
Metallic taste in the air.
Then,
But too late for some,
News is bought of a rebellion elsewhere in the province.
It is around 60 AD
(2)
Elsewhere in the province (Prasutagus) a King is dead. He is laid to rest on contested ground where once he had been a bridge between his own culture and theirs. In an effort of hopeful familial preservation and Romano-British goodwill (according to the law) he had bequeathed half of his estate to Rome and the other half to his daughters to help them support their Tribe. A substantial tribute from one King to another. But he fails to understand himself as barbarian, shepherd king, inferior. And before he is even cold.
The Emperor is persuaded that this is, in fact, an insult.
The Iceni are stripped of their lands.
His Widow, their Queen, is stripped of her clothes, and flogged.
In full view.
In public.
As a warning.
Their daughters are raped by common soldiers.
A flexibility is tested beyond its limit,
Joints once willing to bend are ossified by damage.
A people begin to see the coming tide as a fearful tsunami set to tear them to pieces,
Rather than a storm to be weathered,
Or, as once perhaps hoped, a rising tide to lift all ships.
They begin to feel their own weight upon the ground again.
Fearing worse to come and furious at these acts of intimidation and insult the Iceni rebel with their Queen at their head.
Boudica takes the lead,
She leads them on…
South
They gain momentum,
And the support of the neighboring tribe,
The Trinovantes.
Heading south To Camulodunum.
Colchester.
The capital of Roman Britain.
Colchester, at this time, is like a retirement village for Roman soldiers. It has long been a military town. Men with just enough fight left in them to keep the locals at bay.
To keep the locals in the desired place.
To keep the peace.
So confident are they of their grip on the place that no noteworthy defences are constructed. Rather, a grand and opulent temple is built,
Is dropped on the place,
Dedicated to the Emperor,
Of course.
This confidence and complacency is their achilles heel. They underestimate the confidence that comes with belonging to the land, the ownership bestowed by being born of a place.
With Boudica at their head the natives easily storm the town, burning everything in their path.
And with only 200 soldiers sent to help the “townspeople” they are outnumbered.
And with these soldiers they flee to the sanctuary of their glorious temple.
To no mercy.
To a terrible fate.
Trapped inside they are burned along with the building.
Only the charred foundations remain.
The rescue party arrives too late.
A tree now grows out of the top of the Temple of Claudius,
Rebuilt as a temple to another war for another Conqueror,
Red bricks and honey stone retain warmth even in the quenching rain or the winter grey.
Some small towns in Essex have their own special kind of grey. It lives in and on the outskirts of these places. It is stale and industrial, tasting of petrol fumes and electrical dust trapped amongst boxy buildings and warehouses. Sun baked concrete and patchwork tarmac. Layers upon layers upon the heavy soil. It smells rusty and soiled when the rain comes. But sometimes the mist hangs lingering and wipes the slate clean.
This place is not operating on a clean slate
Castle walls emitting residual heat,
Tinged with smoke and fire,
From the foundations up
To the rooms where “witches” were questioned before being sent to burn.
To the layers on layers of brick born baking in the kiln,
That pepper these walls,
Which have seemed to be just on the verge of crumbling
At imagined threat of tumbling down
For at least my lifetime.
I was born from land that proudly proclaims it’s Roman descent. But first it was dwelled upon by the Trinovantes who were swept up into Boudicca’s rebellion. I have made pilgrimage after pilgrimage to this Castle at Colchester, standing atop the foundations of that great temple that she burned to the ground. It is the town where I first emerged into this world. It is the town where her story began to be written and the town I return to now.
My Essex smells of hay, rapeseed and warm bread. Hazy summer mornings with nothing but powder blue in the uninterrupted heavens. Land so flat in places that you can nearly see tomorrow, even on those days when the clouds seem to float down and kiss the stubbly earth.
I spent lazy Hazy summer days running through Chalkney Woods, imagining roller-coasters in the root riddled paths and chasing my cousins down ancient trackways and the remains of the old roman road. It still cuts though there before heading off though the county. Straight as a die, Just as intended. The frantic pounding of our smaller feet echoing between the banks of trees, ghosting the pounding of the feet of the legions, of travellers, of passers-by and perhaps even a raucous and furious rabble feeding and sharpening the teeth of rebellion. Howling like wolves on the hunt.
I am Essex through and through. The flat arable land, fields stretching as far as the eye can see. Every so often a church steeple punctuates the big sky, each one sentinel over this village or that market town. Perhaps in their position I might also have sprinted towards one of these beacons of sanctuary, hoping to be spared at least, if not saved.
And I do wonder…Was my longing to be close the sea triggered by the salt carried on the breeze from the salt marshes? Or am I staring out across the ocean forever searching the water, seeking sight of roman sails, for purposes unknown. Watching for the sailcloth blown out by the wind. To welcome, to flee from or to fight.
In the same breeze now blowing through from those marshes
Long since bereft of such visions
A Union Jack flutters near to those branches
Reaching up from those walls.
A symbol that may disintegrate with time also
Until we are just as tribal as those from that time when the first stone temple was brought to ashes
Low on the ground
Embers in the sky
It is easy to forget that this museum
Is also a mausoleum.
Not in the sense of critical curatorial theory
But in fact.
In the real sense of the word.
Of a whole townspeople
Left trapped inside
To smolder into the next life together.
But I digress…
It is long long long ago
It is before living memory
It is told in the flickering of firelight
It is spoken by my lips and taken by your ears
It has been handed down
It is still important
It is ancient history
It is a lesson we still haven't learned
It is all out, fists flying, beserker screaming, war
It is written in the burnt earth
It is blue blue blue, on the skin, a mask, an invocation
It is women and children first
It is the turning of the dusty page
It is visceral
It is the memories of others
It is the ideas of others
It is the untold that is made clear by its absence in the telling and re-telling and re-telling
It is the real made imaginary
It is a woman written out of her own story by the power of the written word
It is judged on the prevailing ethics of the present
It is a score we have written and our bodies are the instruments
It is live and happening right now
It is in the blood
It is in the bones
It is muscle memory
It is an act of rebellion
It is carbon dated
It is an attempt to hold on to the lives we hold dear
It is red red red
It is in the turning of the seasons
It is written by the victors
It is written by the opposition
It is written by the powerful
It is about taking the power back.
It is around 60AD
(3)
One down,
Where to next.
London/Londinium
Both factors drive their feet in that direction.
It is the next most significant place on the foreign map of Britain. Rising out of the mud of the banks of the Thames to feed trade and commerce.
Feeding ships in from and out to the ocean.
On arrival, it is clear to the general (Seutonius), that his army is severely outnumbered by the natives.
Unable to risk confrontation on these terms he holds back.
He stands back.
He keeps his distance.
An evacuation is recommended but then as now as always some Londoners are too fond of their home to leave.
Still
He stands back.
He keeps his distance.
He sends no help.
He sacrifices the town to the rebels along with any of his own that have chosen to remain.
London
Londinium
Is Razed to the ground.
Perhaps some folk are taken up in the arms of the Thames
When given a choice between Fire and Water.
Perhaps some escape,
I’m sure many don’t,
Maybe some are enlisted
But one thing is certain
London Town
Is taken back to the mud.
To the clay,
To the clay earth that is burned and is baked.
To the clay that testifies to the transformative touch of the flames becoming the next foundation for the next London but for now smolders and smokes, a blank slate brutally burned and beaten down to its basic topography by fire and by the feet,
By the feet of the Rebels
By the feet of the Natives
By the feet as they trample through,
and then on.
Days pass and strides are made.
A hungry vengeance grows
Insatiable on both sides,
Set now in irreversible opposition,
Two sides,
Unable to find a common tongue,
As they wade on through its gaping maw,
And too far over the line in the sand,
Drawn way back where,
They don’t remember,
To compromise now
Or to surrender.
There is no time for fatigue and no time for regret
Not yet
Not while they all fall into place
Sentient cogs in this machine of War and Rebellion.
It grinds on under it’s own terrible momentum.
It is around 60 AD
(4)
Two down,
Where to next….
Verulanium. This one sounds nothing like St Albans but it feels delicious to say. Verulanium.
Again he is outnumbered.
Again he is holding back.
Again he stands back.
Keeps his distance.
Sends no Help.
Makes his sacrifice.
To the gods to the gods to the gods and the empire.
To the prayer for reinforcements. To the memories of home
That blow in from some where warmer.
To the heat and the smoke and the ashes that dance up
to the gods to the gods and the clay as it cracks and bakes harder
stacked in the storeroom its contents boiling and bubbling imbibed by the flames and the fury and so closely by now tied to the fate set out for the natives for the boots on the ground by the gods by the gods who knows whose our gods their gods all the same and yet so different it will start many more wars and light many more fires but these flames they rage then they falter and die laying down their deposits in black and in red and in carbon for dating and for telling of stories conjecture and memories of the terrible warmth of a town wide afterglow and embers floating and flying and filling the air and your lungs as you walk away whatever side you are on coating your insides with the violence of an irrevocable act.
And
Where
is
She?
She runs,
She runs just to feel what it is to breathe again,
The pumping of her blood around her body as she feels her heart thump in her ribcage,
The beating of her feet against the world as it turns beneath them.
She runs until the air cuts her lungs as it fills them and the muscles in her legs start to burn,
And then she breathes deeper and runs back home,
Wherever that is.
And she loves to dance,
Even though she is no good at it.
To feel the air disturbed by the movement of her limbs as she runs them through space and through time,
As is her want.
A soft touch
A firm touch
A light touch
A thud and a clatter of bones and flesh against the floor
Leaping and rolling
Eyes closed
Eyes open
Eyes directed at you
Eyes directed elsewhere.
And to speak is a luxury.
To speak and to be heard is her deepest desire.
To speak and to be heard
Her own words in her mouth
Pushed out by her own breath
And not forced in through some literary feeding tube
Not the words of another rolling leaden around her mouth like ink and mercury.
Dissolving the structures of her larynx and seizing up her lungs.
5. And this,
This is where things really begin to get sketchy…
It is around 60 AD and
It is told like this.
They meet for the final time somewhere north and west of here.
They meet and they lock eyeballs for the first time.
They meet and they give grand speeches
The warrior Queen and The Courageous General
They cry to their gods calling down immanent and inevitable victory.
One side has already inflicted great losses upon the other, teeth sharpened and appetites fattened by the battles won and the buildings ablaze/ by the cities razed to the scorched and blackened cracking earth.
They stand each facing the other over the scars of a terrible schism.
Two snarling wolves racing towards one another tasting the blood on the air just before it begins to be spilled.
And the children's children of Romulus and Remus
And the children they have stolen and paid for and owned and freed and welcomed in/according to conditional traditions
Stand behind their shields as Grown Men
Across from the Grown Men and Women and Children who have fought for life on their own terms since birth,
And have learned to wield weapons from the day they could stand, pups fighting in the dust backs to their wagons according to tradition.
This is how the game is played and
It is told like this.
This time she is outnumbered.
But this is no time for holding back.
She charges forward.
Closes the distance.
Prays for victory.
Makes her sacrifice.
To the gods/ to the gods/ to the gods of the homesteads.
To the prayer for reinforcements. To the memories of home
That blow in from some where kinder.
He is not outnumbered.
He does not hold back.
He charges forward.
Closes the distance.
Shows no Mercy.
Takes his sacrifice.
For the gods/ for the gods/ for the gods and the empire.
For the useless prayer of the opponents. For the memories of home
That blow in from some where warmer.
Are there seventy thousand dead? Do the numbers stack up like the blackened amphora piled one upon the other a wall of spent vessels heavy heavy on the floor.
But this time it is not fire that takes them but the cold sharp ice of the blade and the spear. Drawing warmth and blood from the body, the numbing chill driving into the flesh, life pouring forth onto the soil. That same nameless soil where we may or may not find her.
Or more of her than the deposits she created as evidence of her rage and her determination to survive.
But where?
Where is she now?
Where dies she remain?
Where is she?
She is cast in bronze/ her fierce eyes burning a blazing gaze along the embankment.
She is a shining model of Victorian behavior built to reflect contemporary virtues and attitudes and ambitions towards Empire building.
She is woven through my dreams and perforates my waking days.
She is a wife but likely not in the same sense that we understand that role.
She is against the established order.
She is upending the bottle of poison into her own mouth.
She is a heritage attraction.
She is unwilling to be paraded though the streets of Rome after Caractacus.
She is a queen but likely not in the sense that we understand this role.
She is a fashion label and a perfume.
She is foaming at the mouth.
She is more widely known than Cartimandua, and I often allow myself a fanciful conjecture of the turn of events had there been a meeting of those minds.
She is resting but we know not where.
She is angry.
She is a massive pile of books that she did not write herself.
She is covered in blue tattoos.
She is a Mother.
She is a Fighter.
She is standing at the front.
She is walking over broken pots, playing with my child in the sand and trying to dig a hole for herself in a pit that is too small.
She is riding a chariot, horses chewing at the bit and wheels sporting blades.
She is embracing her fate.
She is evidenced by a layer of burnt earth.
She is carried down through a story that she did not write herself.
She may have the body of a weak and feeble woman but she has the heart of a king, and a king of England too.
She is lighting the fire.
She is frightened.
She is in the museum film wearing wool and a twisted golden torc.
She is doing what she needs to survive/ through the night into tomorrow.
She is home but it is a foreign land after all that has happened.
She is chasing her freedom.
She is made out of embers, clutched at by ash-covered fingers, grasping for something that is no longer here.