In this piece, Esther Vincent Xueming writes about Boudica, inspired by figurines found in Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.
Esther Vincent Xueming was a National Centre for Writing virtual resident in collaboration with National Arts Council Singapore.
Fragments of paraphernalia. Gold, silver and bronze torcs. Silver coins. Horse bits. A roundhouse model recreating how you lived. Figurines of deities that you might have worshipped. Curated objects try to tell your story in the Boudica and the Romans gallery in Norwich Castle.
Little is known about you, yet you pique my curiosity, haunt my consciousness. Surely, you have come to me with a message I have yet to discover.
Woman, warrior, mother, wife. Boudica, Iceni queen. Leader of the rebellion.
Let me try to reassemble the pieces of your life as you reveal yourself to me. Let me try to make sense of the violence you had to endure, the violence you inherited, the violence you inflicted.
Your daughters, they were raped. And you were flogged. Could this have led to your revolt? Was it revenge you were seeking for the injustices you faced, after your husband died?
The Romans, they showed little mercy. They did not spare the women and children.
I am bathing in the blood of your memory.
//
Mother, you are so cold. Your heart is closed like a fist, unfeeling towards the baby kicking in front of you. Bringing the baby’s toes to your mouth, you suck on them like a pacifier, gargling with water, spitting out black bile.
Sister, why did you come and find me? Why won’t you chant with me, instead of spewing broken vowels? The wild lemur, the one I was afraid of, has mauled your arm, tearing deep trenches across the field of your forearm. Why didn’t it touch me, but harm you instead? I worry for your wounds, which need tending, your dress soaking up the blood.
Friend, it is dark, and even though I tell you to stay inside you disappear into the storm, not returning in the night. The next morning, I find a note filled with your senseless scribbles, and one that I decipher: ‘I’m on a boat’. There is no horror like yours: your body a shell, hollowed out clean on the inside, your face a screaming, petrified ghost. Then I receive a vision of how you died.
You were singing on a boat, spinning in the dark waters, when some flying men stumbled upon you. One of them ate a dagger and laughed, and I knew it was the end. I didn’t want to witness your rape and murder but I could not control this dream. They made you feel special and drugged you, then brought you into the woods and nailed your hands to the ground. Your soul and body defiled, they gutted you like a fish before displaying what was left on the ship the next morning.
Mother, sister, friend, why must you suffer? Why must so many women keep on suffering?
And I, a helpless witness, with no power to intervene or change the narrative. Why?
//
Image: Boudica and Her Daughters © Chris Karidis on Unsplash
Let me try to make sense of the violence you had to endure, the violence you inherited, the violence you inflicted.
We must drive out these demons from our land!
Force her hand, make her submit
to the Roman sword flog her rape
her daughters mark her body with our brand
Barbarian woman let us teach you fear
What is your body but a tainted vessel
for us to mark assault defile humiliate
We will force you to bow down
to us At our feet you will learn to submit
Let this be a warning a lesson in humility
It made her strong beyond belief
My strength comes from my pain, the losses
I suffered to my body, my daughters.
They carry the scars
of the violence of men and injustice.
Yes, the woman’s body was made to bear pain
but every woman has a breaking
point, every woman will protect
and avenge their daughter.
Andraste, give me strength. The hare runs
in the direction of certain victory.
Here, my two hands are lifted
in supplication. Avenge me
goddess, fill me with courage
and cruelty.
The thing that makes Boudica’s rebellion extraordinary is that it was led by a woman
The goddess Andraste has spoken. She is with Boudica, Boudica will lead us. We will pillage and plunder and take back what is rightfully ours. The Romans will choke on their own blood. We will bathe in theirs. We will capture the Roman women, hang them naked, cut off their breasts and sew them to their mouths. Run them through with sharp spears as we eat, drink and make merry at their suffering. We will avenge our own, teach them to fear us, to honour our gods. The warrior queen Boudica leads us in battle. She promises victory. We will win the war.
//
My strength comes from my pain, the losses I suffered to my body, my daughters.
An article called ‘Was Boudica a high priestess?’ offers new insight into the life of Boudica, her affinity with the goddess Andraste, and her communion with the supernatural. Was she the earthly counterpart to the spiritual goddess, sharing a name denoting ‘victory’?
While the article goes on to suggest the spiritual connection between Boudica and Andraste, another question is brewing in my mind. Does it matter if she was a high priestess? She was a woman subjected to violence, but it is believed that she also perpetrated violence towards other women. Violence begetting more violence.
Sifting through my Goddess Guidance Oracle cards, I try but fail to locate the Celtic goddess of victory, Andraste, who was omitted from the deck. Ironically, the primary source of information about Andraste is through a Roman historian Cassius Dio, who documented the revolt of Boudica and Boudica’s prayer to her, suggesting a cultural link between the goddess and Iceni people.
Andraste was associated with ‘victory, [the] preservation of life and liberty’ and was often depicted as a goddess who loved her people and land. Her name meant ‘invincible’ or ‘unconquerable’, and I interpret her warrior spirit to be one of a fierce protective mother.
What might a mother’s war cry be? The triumph of childbirth? Or the tragic loss of her child? I believe that Boudica’s invocation of Andraste signalled her own sense of motherly protectiveness towards her daughters who lost their innocence at the hands of Roman cruelty.
Boudica channeled Andraste’s warrior mother spirit to reclaim her power and regain control over what had been taken away from her by the Romans. The Romans, seeing Boudica as the physical manifestation of Andraste, feared this female power and sought to quell it.
Upon Boudica’s death, Andraste was erased from history. Unsurprisingly, the Romans did not adopt her into their pantheon of deities, choosing to expunge Iceni religion from their cultural memory. The violence of erasure, the tragedy of amnesia.
Thankfully, Boudica’s prayer to Andraste was documented in Dio’s historical accounts and translated into English from ancient Greek. In this prayer, Boudica calls on Andraste ‘as woman speaking to woman’, presenting us with a striking image of a woman finding solace and solidarity in the company of a female warrior goddess, female empowerment against male violence and oppression, and justice and freedom against tyranny:
I thank thee, Andraste, and call upon thee as woman speaking to woman… those over whom I rule are Britons, men that know not how to till the soil or ply a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war and hold all things in common, even children and wives, so that the latter possess the same valour as the men. As the queen, then, of such men and of such women, I supplicate and pray thee for victory, preservation of life, and liberty against men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious… Wherefore may this Mistress Domitia-Nero reign no longer over me or over you men; let the wench sing and lord it over Romans, for they surely deserve to be the slaves of such a woman after having submitted to her so long. But for us, Mistress, be thou alone ever our leader.
What was Andraste leading Boudica towards? In dramatic retellings of history, Boudica is represented as a feminist icon, a woman warrior who led three successful campaigns against the Romans. She fought against oppression and sought to bring about justice and liberty to her people. But at what cost?
//
She was a woman subjected to violence, but it is believed that she also perpetrated violence towards other women. Violence begetting more violence.
Our mother has suffered. She failed to protect us and blames herself for it. My sister and I are haunted by the men and what they did to our bodies. Sometimes, I wish to die to forget it all, but then my body remembers and I want to slit open the throats of the men who did this to us.
I remember screaming when they came for us. They dragged our mother out and tied her to a post. They tore open the back of her tunic and then they flogged her with no mercy. We screamed for them to stop and they came for us instead.
Now, my mother communes with the spirits and the goddess Andraste has sent her signs of victory in battle. My mother will lead the rebellion. She has roused our kinsmen to resist subservience, or what she calls slavery, to the Romans. Her words and spirit fire me with courage, and I believe that she can lead us to victory over our oppressors.
She is reminding us to fight for our freedom and not accept bondage as our inheritance.
I am my mother’s daughter. The Romans may violate my body, but that will only strengthen my resolve. I will join my mother in battle. I will slay Roman men and women and children, showing no one mercy for they showed us none.
My mother has rallied the Iceni people and kinsmen from other tribes; we will no longer live in servitude.
Once, I was a child. But I have lost my innocence. Now, I am a woman. Like my mother, I am a warrior too. And I will fight for my freedom.
//
In writing about Boudica, I am writing about women having to come to terms with violence inflicted upon their bodies, their psyches. I am writing about intergenerational trauma and how mothers sometimes turn into monsters when their daughters are violated and they are powerless to intervene. How children are forced into becoming adults when they lose their innocence.
I am writing about women who become warriors not by choice but by the cards fate deals them. I am writing about women who choose freedom over subjugation by selling their own souls in exchange.
I am also writing about the mothers and daughters trapped in warzones today, unable to fight, flee or protect themselves from the terrors that arise from wars they did not start, wars they have no control over.
Image: Queen Boudica © John Opie
Today, Boudica is depicted as a feminist icon, a figure of female empowerment against oppression, a mother, woman, warrior, queen who fights back and refuses to be cowed into submission by a more powerful tyrant. Described by Dio as a ‘Briton woman of the royal family… possess[ing] greater intelligence than often belongs to women’, her physical appearance inspires fear and awe:
In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire. She now grasped a spear to aid her in terrifying all beholders
But Boudica was also a tragic heroine who lost her own humanity to become a warrior queen in a time of slavery and disenfranchisement. In war, there are only casualties. According to Dio, Boudica tortured and mutilated captive Roman women with outrageous, terrifying cruelty. In fighting for freedom and justice, she met violence with violence.
Did she have any other choice? Can one violent deed erase another?
//
Now, I am a woman. Like my mother, I am a warrior too. And I will fight for my freedom.
My hands are covered in blood. My womb is filled with blood. I open my mouth, and blood sputters out instead of words. Roman blood, Iceni blood.
The goddess Andraste foretold victory. We have destroyed Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium. Next, to secure ultimate victory and drive the Romans out of our land.
My daughters cry for freedom. My kinsmen will die for freedom. As their mother and queen, I must lead the charge with a brave and steady heart.
Give me strength, Andraste, once more, to triumph in battle. Let me bathe in the blood of my enemies.
Esther Vincent Xueming
Esther Vincent Xueming is the author of two poetry collections: womb song (Ethos books, 2024) and Red Earth (Blue Cactus Press, 2021), and co-editor of two environmental anthologies: Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Ecowriting (2024) and Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore (2021). Her poetry anthologies Poetry Moves (2020) and Little Things (2013) are widely taught in secondary schools in Singapore. Esther has served as guest editor for Mānoa Journal (35.2), University of Hawai’i Press (2024) and as guest regional editor, Asia for a special eco-themed issue of The Global South (16.1), University of Mississippi (2022). Her personal essays have been published in The Trumpeter, EcoTheo Review, Sinking City Review and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. A literature educator by profession, she is passionate about the entanglements in art, science, literature, spirituality and ecology.
Besides teaching and writing, Esther is an Usui Reiki Master and ANFT Forest Therapy Guide whose practice involves relating to the more-than-human world in an embodied, heart-centred way. She can be found on IG @myrtlereikihealing or on Twitter/ X @EstherVincentXM
Photo credit Nicholas Yeo
References
Andraste, Celtic War Goddess–a non-violent approach by Judith Shaw, Feminism and Religion
Boudica, Warrior Queen of Norfolk, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Boudica and the Romans gallery, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Barbarians Rising, Boudica, Warrior Queen, HISTORY
The Revolt of Boudica According to Cassius Dio, University of Warwick
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