SPQR (So, plot… quick recap)
There’s been a Regni spy inside the Cantii citadel all along whom we assume is the now-fled Philan. Divis is possessed by Puica and feels ghastly rumblings that the demon king might be about to return.
Down into the depths dives Divis (sorry) and in the underworld he meets Aulus inspecting his own hacked-up corpse in a ditch. Cait stands holding a flaming SPQR banner and Aulus looks terrified of her. Is she Boudicca? Is she a goddess? Just as Divis is leaving the nether land, he is entangled by Puica (he helpfully says the demon king’s name for those not keeping up) and returns to earth possessed anew.
Antedia’s gift list grows ever longer as she’s now awaiting delivery of both Kerra (alive) and Veran’s head “on a nice big stick”. She’s beginning to remind me of Blackadder II’s Queenie.
Hurdy Gurdy brain hug
Hurdy Gurdy Man is now my favourite bit of every episode because it briefly takes me to a place when this series was all potential and I hadn’t heard the dialogue yet. To be fair, this episode’s script is the best so far.
Kerra, wearing a lovely crown of greenery and white berries, processes back into the Cantii settlement as their new queen. To cheers from the throng, she casts a kind look on newly arrived Cait and the little girl is plainly thrilled. Later, she invites the youngster back to her quarters and gives her the dress Kerra’s mum made for her. She plans to be a thoughtful, beneficent ruler.
Meanwhile, her wicked sister-in-law Amena (booh hiss) fingers a dagger as she prepares to pay homage to the new monarch. But she doesn’t gut her with it as you might expect and instead steals a lock of her lovely red hair. Having failed to win power the conventional way, she now decides to lay a curse on her beautiful nemesis with all pentagrams and bulgy-eyed mutterings and that.
The one and only
Cait’s dad says he knows the gods gave him a special daughter to raise for an important purpose, little realising he’s thinking about the wrong daughter. In this episode, if you hadn’t already guessed, we confirm that the gods have a plan for Cait and she will, if the vision both Aulus and Divis see in the underworld is to be trusted, one day defeat the Romans.
Lindon reluctantly says he’ll stay with Amena even though she is a swivel-eyed rage-fountain hell-bent on destroying a perfectly nice woman for no real reason. But he’ll probably find somewhere else to sleep.
“Dark mother, send me a demon to do my will,” she mutters over her pentagram before nodding off and awaking to find the clump of Kerra’s hair is now neatly wound. Did the dark mother pop in while she was asleep and also leave her a cup of tea, like they do when you’ve asked them not to disturb you?
“Shit, shit, shit,” says the cowardly Roman runaway when he sees his released friend Vitus return from Cantii captivity. Rather than sticking around to get outed as a big chicken, he does the decent thing and runs away, taking the other soldier, blissed-out from Divis’ Jedi mind-meddling, with him. I’m still not sure why we are supposed to care about either of them.
Before agreeing to Kerra’s parlay, Aulus hears from Lucius that a “little girl” freed her “blind father” from slavery and fled the camp. We are continually hit over the head with these references so anyone who hasn’t got this by now, see me afterwards. Slowly but surely, Aulus is getting the picture. Someone just needs to give his aerial a little waggle.
“You look well. Have you put on a bit of weight?” he says to Veran as he meets him in the middle of a field to essentially tell him to get lost. Veran tells the general that he was followed into the underworld and someone else saw what he saw.
The two men part on bad terms and Veran tells his accomplice that Aulus will soon be “ready”. At this point – because we have to talk in witchy-woo terms now, we have no choice – I assume this means that Aulus is possessed by Loka, Divis is possessed by Puica and there is one more demon king knocking around somewhere. And they all have to fight. I think.
On their march through the forest, the Romans see the dismembered legs and guts of their fellow soldiers, apparently torn limb-from-limb by Divis who has transformed into some kind of rabid canine gouger beast.
Aulus puts the remaining Roman soldier out of his misery by stamping on his chest and moves on to his parlay with Antedia. He just skips from one Celt to the next, promising the earth and being charming but where has it got him so far? He’s still sat preening in his big tent in no apparent hurry to conquer anything.
“You’re late. Where’s my present?” demands Antedia as Aulus arrives. She’s referring to Veran’s head. See? Pure Queenie. She reluctantly stands down her army with the caveat that it only be till dawn. “Then you can lick my crack,” she adds playfully. The Regni flirting technique really is quite direct.
Trump or Butterworth
Off Aulus goes to turn on the charm with Kerra, telling her his soldiers could keep the peace at her citadel for a hundred years. “That’s a lot of peace,” he grins. And then adds with refreshing frankness: “I don’t know my fucking Cantii from my Regni.” That’s a Trump THEN a Butterworth.
Still hoping to fan the flames of lust in Kerra, he purrs “We’re the future, you and I,” running his thumb over Kerra’s runes saucily. “I left my last suitor scrabbling on the floor for his balls,” she warns and he concedes for now.
She has a good flirt but doesn’t trust the Roman at all. We see this next when she helps Cait escape his and Divis’ clutches. “Listen to me, you are the one. It’s you,” she tells the confused girl before sending her off down some secret underground escape route. We leave father and daughter quaking with fear as Puica/Divis snarls at them, trying to fight the beast within. God, Nikolaj Lie Kaas is doing a stoutly brilliant job with this mad role. His scenes are always my favourite, just for the sheer commitment.
As the Cantii citadel is sealed, Aulus sends word to the Regni to begin their siege. As Lucius puts it, quite the “fuck you” on both sides but not the one that looked to be on the cards earlier.
With three episodes to go we are heading for battle, gallons of stage blood and an unearthly fight between two, possible three, demon kings. Glory be.
Notes from the end of the woad
- Due to a laptop/iTunes cock-up, just as the ep was starting, the growling guitars of Virginia Plain by Roxy Music kicked in and I thought things were finally stepping up a gear. No such luck. I recommend adding Roxy Music to all future instalments.
- “No skin off my nose,” says Vitus, the returned Roman prisoner, as he dabs at his partially flayed abdomen to a big laugh from Aulus. These very occasional dad jokes sit oddly in the otherwise doomy tone of the show.
- Divis’ “Can you get me inside?” to Amena when he arrives at the citadel is a bit much and I totally think Tom Butterworth is doing it on purpose. It always threatens to tip into Carry On Cantii.
- “One day, you Romans will be no more than songs and ruins in our lands,” sneers Antedia as the general barters a brief truce. I have found a line I actually admire this week and am taken aback.
