Western Walkabout: Three Queens For Tea
...I asked Boadicea what she admired most in the men of her times and how important were things like clothes and body scent? And did she have any advice about men that might be useful to modern women.
The Briton was blunt and gave me a shocking reply. “My father used to say that if it doesn’t fart or eat hay, it will be of no interest to Boadicea...
The guests are Cleopatra, Boadicea and Hippolyta.
Richard Harris imagines the tea party to end all tea parties.
It promises to be quite a night. I’ve invited three of my favorite people to dinner - all powerful, majestic figures and each quite different in her own right.
First, there’s Boadicea, the Brigantine Briton war queen; Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt; and the third, Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen who fell to Achilles at the siege of Troy.
I start the ladies on my chilled cucumber soup, flavored with dill seed. Main course is grilled baby shark with a Greek salad; and dessert a fresh fruit salad, with a light, fruity yoghurt.
Drinks - champagne, either Maglieri, or Jacob’s Creek brut cuvee. As a snifter afterwards, a smidgen of Slivovitza with roasted pistachio nuts.
I apologized to Boadicea for the nuts for I’d heard Caesar was eating roasted pistachios when he first viewed the British shoreline.
She just shook her head, a mass of chestnut curls, and smiled. I asked her if in retrospect she still thinks it was a good idea to allow the Roman troops the opportunity to struggle ashore through the surf, giving them a sporting chance in the affray to come, or whether this was carrying the tradition of British sportswomanship too far.
Boadicea tossed back her curls in disdain at my question. “Caesar was a man to be respected. He was a natural leader with the touch of the god on him. You’d call that charisma these days. I felt it immediately. Of course we had to let his men come ashore for the fight. We’re British, not savages.”
I turned to Cleopatra, an elegant woman with a strong nose, prominent in a face full of character.
“What did you think of him, daughter of the Nile?”
Cleopatra had this helmet of black, glossy curls. In her time, she was the most powerful woman in the known world... “Caesar was an old guy when I met him,” she said. “He used to take fits – very alarming to the uninitiated.
“But he carried the mantle of greatness. We had a mad affair and there was a child, a little boy.”
I turn to Hippolyta, “This was all long after your time, lady of the cavalry. Have men changed that much since your days? And what did you think of Achilles?”
Hippolyta, tall, slim and athletic, could throw a javelin or shoot a bow from her horse at the gallop. Her women used to dip their arrows in a venomous extract from a local swamp toad. They only had to nick you and you were undone, so they were much feared by their foes. Golden bangles did not conceal several old knife and sword wounds on both her arms. Elegant she wasn’t but there was a raw power and energy about her which made her quite fascinating.
She looked at me carefully, put her right hand over her heart to indicate she would speak only the truth. “I don’t think men change. I never found them very loyal or reliable. The ladies in my war band were loyal to death – I always knew where I stood with them – totally supportive. Achilles was a lout, a braggart, and he stank of sweat and urine. None of my ladies liked him, despite his reputation. Too full of himself, by all accounts.”
I asked Boadicea what she admired most in the men of her times and how important were things like clothes and body scent? And did she have any advice about men that might be useful to modern women.
The Briton was blunt and gave me a shocking reply. “My father used to say that if it doesn’t fart or eat hay, it will be of no interest to Boadicea. I was notoriously fond of my war hound and chariot horses.”
Cleopatra said she was trained for diplomacy, not war. She felt a man should take an interest in a lady’s health and know how to resuscitate her if she’d swallowed a lot of water or been bitten by a snake or scorpion. Life was too interesting and certainly too difficult to tolerate a man who wasn’t useful. “His breath should be clean and sweet for mouth to mouth contact,” she said. “Make sure he has his teeth fixed regularly.”
She flashed her teeth at me in a charming smile and made a curious gesture with her arms – the old invocation to Isis, the Mother Goddess – and I was enchanted by the flow of scent that came to me from her body.
I could see why Caesar fell for her. Good looking, wealthy, and sharp as a Nile crocodile’s front teeth. What a personality. I love having people in for dinner.
