SPQR (So, plot … quick recap)
The general is, according to Divis, not a man but something “far, far stronger” indicating his underworld jaunt inferred upon him godlike powers, hence his cock-of-the-walk manner. Kerra is letting news of her imminent coronation sink in but can’t help thinking she’d rather be pecked to death by crows than wear the crown. With Pellenor dead, a power vacuum will otherwise be filled by Amena and whichever unwilling husband she can persuade to put himself forward.
Aulus and Lucius happen upon Divis’ cave while he’s out, the one we saw him scribbling on back in episode one and leave a Roman helmet as a calling card. They have obviously worked out that he is important but it is not clear how. When Divis comes home to find the helmet, he treats it like a turd, hoyng it away on the end of a stick into the river before torching the inside of his cave to presumably destroy the drawings he has spent months carving into the wall.
Eyeball trigger warning
Meanwhile, at the Cantii burial ground, some seriously graphic slicing and dicing is going on as Pellenor’s cadaver is prepared for burial. Kerra tries to hold on to her lunch as she watches his eyes being gouged and his spine, somewhat improbably, cut out of him and replaced with an oak branch.
Queen Antedia hears news of Kerra’s possible accession and sends for Aulus, who now has the permanent smirk of one with a winning lottery ticket in his saddle-bag. She is not happy that the mutilator of her beloved son’s undercarriage is set to become queen of the rival tribe and demands Aulus kiss her feet in order to reaffirm his loyalty. He delegates this to Lucius and has a bit of a flirt with the Regni queen instead to keep her on side. Apart from the obvious power play, it all feels like treading water.
This is definitely the episode where Jez Butterworth decided to throw sex at the situation what with this and Amena’s utterly pointless visit to Willa’s crusty tent orgy. Never follow a hippy to a second location, Amena. Everyone knows this. Particularly not when it’s full of the great unwashed, humping each other in the mud. As Aulus is leaving the Regni fort, Antedia asks him nicely if he’d mind bringing her the head of Veran “on a nice big stick” because she’s gone right off the druids and she’d like their leader dead, please. He has literally no reason to keep her sweet now he is, apparently, some kind of god and doesn’t answer either way.
By Puica’s nostrils!
Divis’s trip to the skull-strewn druid settlement sees him bump into an old, blind friend played by the great David Bradley (Walder Frey in Game of Thrones). And this is where it gets witchy-woo complicated because the threat is firmly established as entirely folklore-based from here on in. Divis says that Loka is here, presumably meaning Aulus who has taken his form. And if Loka is here, Puica won’t be far behind, we’re told. Something about a 10,000-year old tree, Veran’s dead brother, a snake and – we also discover – Divis’ former life as a druid.
Back at the burial ground, Kerra goes to see Veran who tells her the gods are the earthquake, the wind etc yada yada. “But you’re not the wind,” she points out. Veran admits he did the Romans’ bidding by killing Pellenor and installing Kerra as queen. But he says he also did it to have Kerra as his ally in the coming battle with Loka.
The old man tells Divis that the Roman general has been to the underworld, and if he wants to know what he saw there, Divis will have to retrace his steps. So, the self-appointed soothsayer chucks himself off the cliff and makes his own journey down there to see what he can find. Philan has returned to the Cantii citadel, asked the Roman prisoner about Aulus’ association with the druids and liberated Anya (possible goddess of war, possible mad lady) from the cells. “Get your stuff, we’re leaving,” he says to her before fleeing his home. He’s clearly expecting bad shit to go down imminently.
Kerra decides to stay and become queen, after which Veran reads the runes on the back of her neck, written on the young princess after her mum was flayed to death. “Hope is the daughter of a blind father,” they say mysteriously.
Notes from the end of the woad
- Again, Lindon offers Kerra a perfectly good escape plan. It’s not like she’s got anything to hang around for now. But again she decides to stick around with her tribe. I don’t believe her motives at all.
- As the Romans leave the Regni stronghold for home, Lucius tells Antedia’s knackerless son: “We like your mum. She’s got balls,” which seems insensitive in the circumstances.
- When Antedia’s son asks if she trusts Aulus she replies with her usual brevity: “Not as far as I could shit him”. So, no.
- A lot of slomo crow imagery this week. With any other writer I’d say this meant something, but I think they’re just there to look cool in the background.
