Daughter of Black Lake Read online

  As far back as Devout could remember, when stores outlasted Fallow, they sat on the Smiths’ burdened shelves. The maidens called out, and Young Smith’s mother opened the door, her eyes roving from one scrubbed face to the next. It would not matter that the girls were lit only by the moon and the blazing fire within. Devout’s foulness, her dishevelment, would be apparent to Young Smith’s mother, that is if she so much as bothered glancing at the hand maidens.

  Young Smith appeared behind his mother in the doorway. Devout gripped the neck of her cape, though it was not possible to hold it more snugly closed than it was. It pleased him, that infinitesimal shift of her hand, the whitening knuckles, and his face broke into a wide smile. His mother turned to him, turned back to the maidens, and said, “A boy besotted with a shabby lot of maidens begging at the door.”

  Her eyes were on Reddish as she spoke, and it was plain that his mother was not wise to her son’s gift, that so far as she was concerned, Young Smith would have Reddish as his mate. His mother had concocted the insult so that Reddish would know to come into the household with her head bowed.

  The maiden smiled slyly, as though certain that her life would unfold much as she had planned.

  Devout swallowed hard at the thought of the woman’s eyes on the glinting Mother Earth’s cross. Even if Devout were washed, even if her hair gleamed with chamomile, to Young Smith’s mother she would always be a hand. The woman’s blindness caused something to harden in Devout’s chest, and any ambivalence about wanting the lost amulet at her throat collapsed. She imagined herself alongside Young Smith, cape pushed back from her shoulders, amulet exposed as he told his mother that he had made his choice. Devout’s hair shone in the scene. Her cheeks gleamed. Her dress was not creased or stained with sweat.

  When finally Young Smith’s mother said, “Welcome, Mother Earth. Abide with us,” the words were flat, and it sent a chill along Devout’s spine that anyone should call so indifferently to Mother Earth. The woman handed over two flagons of wheaten beer, also a round of hard cheese, a sack of hazelnuts, and a vessel of honey, then drew back from the doorway, and the maidens entered, Devout with her head bowed under the weight of Young Smith’s gaze.

  Young Hunter’s boar hung over the firepit, sizzling and crackling and dripping grease into the flames. Smoke curled upward and disappeared through the roof’s thatch, a sweet, smoldering reminder of the feast to come.

  Though they were meant to parade solemnly, Devout looked up from the hands clasped together at her waist. She took in the great rectangles of woven wool partitioning the alcoves where Young Smith and his kin slept from the bulk of the space. Each alcove contained a sleeping pallet thick with rushes and heaped furs, and neatly enclosed by four planks. She counted ten alcoves, observed that not a single partition was the yellow gray of undyed wool but rather the blue of woad, the green of nettle, the purple of elderberry, the yellow of goldenrod. It made her think of her own home as wearisome even though the wattle-and-daub wall was well patched and the floor spread with a thick covering of new rushes. In the dim light, she noticed the hoard of swords, one for each clansman, leaning against the wall; the trio of low wooden tables; the dozen low benches ringing the firepit, each draped in furs; the shelves laden with bowls and plates and every kind of serving vessel and more flagons than even so large a clan could use.

  She looked at her clasped hands, tried to focus on Mother Earth, who would come freely that very night to rid the clearing of fleas and rats and wheat-felling moths and those dark fairies—imps too small and too fast to be seen—who stole milk from ewes’ teats, who snatched sprouting seed from blessed women’s wombs. But she could not shut her mind to the infrequency with which Young Smith’s mother trudged beyond the clearing to collect wood, certainly not to the base of Edge to draw water at the spring. Nor did she hunch for long hours over the quern stones milling wheat. She spent her days with the matriarchs of the other tradesmen clans, women with sons apprenticed to their fathers from whom they would inherit their trades. She spun wool to yarn and idly chatted about the superiority of rowan over meadowsweet in creating black dye, the usefulness of urine in making a color fast.

  Was Young Smith eyeing Devout in the procession just now, seeking a wink of silver at the front opening of her cape? She would not be found out, not just yet. All the girls wore their skin capes as they paraded sunwise, their arms heavy with bread and cheese and wheaten beer. Still the moment would come when maidens slid capes from shoulders. She picked at the dirt beneath her fingernails, wondered if she might abandon the procession, slip away, and then later quietly rejoin the maidens. Might she return to her roundhouse, rub a handful of crushed sweet violet into her skin, masking her ripeness? She could tidy her hair. She did not want Young Smith to find her repellent as they stood face-to-face, could not bear his disapproval, though it would surely come. It was a slight like no other, her carelessness with his gift. Yet still she wanted his good opinion. She wanted the unassuming boy, who had made her an amulet and who had flagons to spare and rafters hung with every color, to favor her still. She wanted Reddish to know.

  Such thoughts! And at the very moment when Mother Earth should be uppermost in Devout’s mind. Her sack, at home on her pallet, brimmed with sweet violet, the full haul, even the third that belonged to Mother Earth. This, on the Feast of Purification, the very night she would come, the very day Devout had been so heedless as to lose the cross that paid homage to her. And yet she paraded sunwise, mind ablaze rather than steadfast on Mother Earth.

  Her eyes lit on Mother Earth’s cross hanging from the rafters, same as it did in each roundhouse at Black Lake. Twelve rushes woven together formed the central square and four extending arms of the cross, a configuration meant to remind the bog dwellers of the goddess’s limbs reaching outward to all the world. Devout went to her knees beneath it, touched her lips, the covering of new rushes spread over the earthen floor. She closed her eyes to pottery vessels and woven partitions, opened her mind to Mother Earth, to ewes lambing well, to the blush of green soon to unfurl. Devout’s chest expanded, became a waiting cave. She breathed deeply, filling that hollow place with a spreading warmth, not unlike hot soup during the coldest, hungriest days of Fallow. Mother Earth had come. They called, and she had come to Devout.

  She had earned her name early, after a long stint beneath Mother Earth’s cross even before she had turned four. In truth she could not remember the episode, but the bog dwellers had supplied her with enough detail that it was almost as if she could: an egg, bluer than the sky, alone in the mud. The egg rescued, carried home in cupped hands, and then held in the valley where her thighs met as she knelt beneath the cross, asking for the egg to hatch. Finally, a crack appeared in the perfect shell and then a pink-yellow beak emerged, an orange-red throat, slick feathers, matted and black.

  Afterward, hardly a moon passed without the girl spending an extended stretch beneath the cross. She asked for meat, and Old Smith appeared, arms heavy with a joint of salted pork for her household. She asked for the itchy pustules that had come up on her abdomen to vanish, and they dried to brown crusts. She asked for some gift to make her mother smile; and Arc, who knew the ways of bees even as a child, produced a dripping slab of honeycomb. She asked not to be afraid, and daybreak broke; for rain, and the heavens burst. She asked reverently, and exulted Mother Earth fervently in return for the gifts bestowed. It had been easy; easy to notice, too, the way Mother Earth heard her, the favor shown to so devoted a girl, the way she and her mother were spared the worst hardship when others were often not.

  * * *

  —

  By the time the procession ended, Devout felt reassured, ready for the evening, as though her woolen dress were fresh, as though her hair reflected the gold and silver of the flames. Had she really considered abandoning the procession? For what? To perfume her arms? She would face Young Smith, ignore his flitting eyes as they leapt from dirt-lined fingernail to tangled
lock of hair. She would say it plainly, that she had lost the amulet. And as he took in her tousled, unkempt state, he would feel relief that he was not beholden to her. No mother’s fury to bear. No perplexed looks from the other young tradesmen. It struck her that Arc would not appraise her now, wondering what had possessed him to unearth sweet violets and haul them to the summit of Edge so that he might plant a glorious bed for her. Day in, day out, he toiled alongside her in the fields belonging to Chieftain, ruler of their territory. They had tilled the earth together in cold, relentless drizzle, and he had seen her nose red and running, her face set and grim.

  The maidens sat on the low benches circling the firepit, passing a goblet of wheaten beer, always sunwise, each solemnly swallowing a mouthful when it was her turn. They ate the tenderloin first, slowly, pondering the sweet juice in their mouths. Devout swallowed her share of the meat and barley but hardly tasted it. She had forgotten the filth under her fingernails, and the moment when she took off her cape to reveal a dress as filthy as it had ever been passed with little anxiety. Young Smith and his clan had left so that the maidens might feast in private, but he would return to see her throat bare. Never mind, though. Mother Earth resided within her now. What Devout felt was goodness, benevolence, peace. She wanted to clear away the new rushes, lie on the ground, and put her cheek, her heart, her hands against Mother Earth; but it seemed she should remain still, that if she were quiet, she might preserve the moment, that Mother Earth might stay.

  Then the boys were pounding on the barred door, as the maidens knew they would. They smoothed their dresses, laughed, and called out, “We have more to eat,” for, according to tradition, the maidens must finish the feast before opening the door to the boys. The maidens began milling and speaking loudly enough to taunt the boys waiting outside. “You’ll have more loin?” Reddish called out. On such a night, Sullen answered back, “Can’t bear another bite.” Her usually slackened cheeks lifted. “I’m as full as a ewe’s ripe teat.”

  Eventually the door was opened, and the boys came in with more flagons of mead and, carried in the arms of a hand called Singer, a large circular frame covered with a pulled-tight skin. It was a tool for tossing wheat into the air, for catching the grain that remained after the chaff was carried away by the breeze. But from the frame against Singer’s hips, the skin beneath his tapping, patting hands, the rhythm of a song would swell.

  The boys’ voices boomed, and there was mead in their laughter—too easy, too loud, falsely low, mimicking the men they would become. As Devout turned toward the din, she caught Arc’s eyes. He smiled, and she tumbled back to the reality of an afternoon searching the underbrush.

  She glanced away from Arc, who was good, who made her heart flutter, who would favor her still, who need never know she was given an amulet. Certainly, Young Smith would tell no one, would not admit he had once felt affection for a hand. With his smile unreturned, Arc would not approach but stand bewildered. With a bed of sweet violets, he had made his feelings clear. As he stood peering over the rim of the goblet passed to him, he would wonder whether he had declared a kinship stronger than what she felt, and it made her heart ache. By now, Young Smith would have looked, seen her naked neck and felt the insult of a lowly hand’s rejection. She would not go to Arc, not tonight, would not further offend Young Smith.

  Her elbow was nudged, and she took the goblet Reddish held out to her. She drank a long swallow and watched Young Smith step around Young Hunter and then walk toward her in a straight line. Reddish nudged her a second time. “He comes.” She and Devout stood with three other maidens, and each stirred taller as he approached. Reddish took the mead from Devout and held it to her mouth, moistening her lips, though it broke the rule of passing sunwise. And then Young Smith was close, among the cluster of maidens, saying, almost too quietly to make out, “The amulet?”

  Her fingers moved to the hollow at the base of her neck. She did not wear it, and he could not pretend it was hidden by her clothing or otherwise made invisible. He focused on the spot on her neck where the amulet should have hung, his brow a web of questions.

  “Amulet?” Reddish said, her face as expectant and immaculate as Devout’s was unsure and unclean. “You gave her an amulet?”

  Eyes leveled on Devout, he nodded.

  Tiny gasps escaped the clustered maidens.

  “To her?”

  It was like a slap, Reddish’s disbelief. Devout willed her voice to steady and said, “An amulet such as you have never seen.”

  Reddish turned to her. “Where is it, then?”

  Devout opened her mouth to say she had lost the gift in the woodland, but under Reddish’s blistering gaze, she found her tongue, her lips, her teeth forming different words: “I made an offering of it to Mother Earth at the bog.”

  Young Smith’s hand clapped his chest, and all eyes on him, he worked to keep his face still, but the firmness of his jaw, the tightness of his lips gave away an inner storm. He had spent days. Taken great care. He had suffered risks, perhaps, even lied to his mother, saying he had stayed late in the forge perfecting his barrel hoops.

  Devout’s fingers went to her lips, the rushes. As she crouched there, inspecting his shoes—the laces crisscrossing his instep, the leather snugly drawn into place—it occurred to her that a hundred times over she had earned her name. Might he believe a maiden of such sure devotion would have taken what was most precious and cast it into Black Lake’s pool, as was the bog dwellers’ custom in honoring the gods?

  His fingers lifted her face.

  In his soft eyes, his relaxed jaw, she saw that he had swallowed the lie.

  6.

  HOBBLE

  From just inside the doorway, Fox takes in the breadth of our roundhouse and the jumble of flora hanging from the rafters. His nose wrinkles as he spies the bundled roots, some like oversize slugs, others like wrongly formed fetuses sent too early from the womb.

  My mother, father, and I hover near the door, uncertain about entering our own home, afraid to speak, to disturb. Is this how we are to live until we rid ourselves of our unwanted guest? He begins to slowly circle the roundhouse sunwise, palms open, arms splayed from his hips, lips moving in silent blessing. His thoroughness is unrelenting, and I look to my mother, whose eyes stay put on Fox, and then to my father, whose jaw is set, whose fingers are curled into fists.

  Eventually, Fox clasps his hands, and they disappear inside his sleeves. “I’m famished,” he says.

  In silence, Mother makes a stew of greens and barley, humble fare meant for our evening meal. The silence continues as I lay a low table with four spoons and four bowls, as we take our seats, as my mother ladles stew into bowls. We do not touch our spoons until Fox lifts his and begins to scoop his meal into his mouth.

  In between swallows, he peppers my father with questions: How many hands? Forty-nine. How many tradesmen? Ninety-three. Which clans trade most successfully? The Hunters, the Carpenters. Which have abandoned our old customs? None. As the interrogation continues, I await his expectant face turned to mine. That claim made by my parents—he will ask about the Romans I have seen. But he proceeds as before, without engaging me, until his bowl is emptied and refilled and emptied a second time of more stew than the complete share allotted my mother, father, and me. Fox sits afterward with fingers threaded together over a sated belly, but still his lips purse. “The Romans have built a fortress just west of Hill Fort.”

  Neither my mother nor I doubt my vision, and yet with Fox’s news, her mouth drops open and my back stiffens. Fox’s lips curve into a satisfied grin.

  “I didn’t know,” my father says. “Hill Fort is a full three days’ walk from here.”

  Hill Fort is the closest market town to Black Lake and takes its name from the high mound at the town’s northern border. Chieftain and his kin live at the summit, their roundhouses protected by a wooden palisade.

  “The Romans call their fortre
ss Viriconium,” Fox says. “It’s permanent, made of stone.”

  He pauses, awaiting some response, but my father only turns the spoon, held between his fingers, end over end.

  “They used that fortress to push into the western highlands and snuff out the last of the rebel tribes,” Fox continues. “They’ve been as thorough as blight.”

  Traders come to Black Lake to take away Shepherd’s wool or my father’s ironware. Sometimes they bring news of rebel tribesmen swooping from the highlands—those same highlands we can see from Edge—and wreaking havoc on the Roman encampments far to the east. I sat among the bog dwellers, gathered around a blazing bonfire, listening to accounts of raided Roman camps and watchmen slain in defensive ditches and granaries set aflame and torches hurled onto the roofs of tents. Though that rumored defiance existed so far outside Black Lake that it hardly seemed real, quiet pride stirred within me. “To the rebels,” the traders said and lifted their mead toward the highlands. In return, we held up our mugs and repeated the tribute.

  Fox pauses again, eyes on my father, but he keeps his face blank. My mother, on the other hand, looks as mournful as the wailing wind that the last holdouts from Roman rule are defeated.

  “They say warriors from that fortress take their leave at Hill Fort, drinking and eating and playing dice in the marketplace stalls.” Fox raises his eyebrows. “Ever heard such talk?”