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 fortress 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?”
My father lifts his shoulders, opens upturned palms. “Only Hunter ever makes the trek, and it’s been a long while.”
“Think of it, serving mead to a Roman.” Fox slaps his palms against the tabletop, startling both my mother and me. “Have they ever set foot in Black Lake, the Romans?”
My father shakes his head.
Fox nods knowingly. “No reason to stick their noses into so remote a place.”
Silence throbs as I wait for my father to correct the druid, to explain that my vision foretold a band of Romans at Black Lake. Sweat collects at my neck, trickles between my shoulder blades.
When I cannot stand a moment more, I say, quiet as a lamb, “Hunter is expecting me and Walker, too.” For a low moment, I am thankful that Hunter’s mother ails, that she insists only I correctly rub liniment into her limbs, also that Walker will pace the night through without the sweet violet draft that eases her to sleep. “I should go.”
Fox says, “I’ll accompany you. You can point out the cesspit.”
“I’ll show you.” My father begins to rise to his feet, but Fox’s hand lands on his shoulder.
“You’ll sit.”
No man denies a druid. To deny a druid is to offend the gods. It is a truth I have always known, and yet in such close proximity to Fox, who swallows stew and feels an urge to empty his bowels, no different from anyone else, I wonder about the perfection of druid rule. Might a druid, like any man, fall prey to his own ambitions, his own needs? Such thoughts! Dangerous thoughts. Useless thoughts, when druids have the power to banish, to condemn a man to live out his days away from his kin and the only life he has ever known.
My father sits down, and my mother’s wariness washes over me like the cold shadow of a cloud.
Fox and I are not three steps from the roundhouse when he says, “You’re a seer? It’s true?”
I focus on the moon, shining feebly, a thin slice against a starless sky, as I nod.
“And what do you see?”
Where to start? How to start? And is it firmly in my best interest to convince this druid that I am a true prophetess? My parents seem to think so, seem to think it might overshadow that I am a runt. “Storms before they come.”
“Plenty of folks predict storms.”
I lick my lips. “Whether a ewe will birth twins.”
“A ewe’s belly would hang lower.”
I point a trembling finger in the direction of the cesspit. “That way,” I say. “Past the sheep pen.”
“What else?” Fox says.
I take deep breath. “Spots to find honeycomb or a certain plant, white bryony most recently.”
He huffs, as if to say there is nothing extraordinary in my claims.
“I caught a hawfinch fledgling. It fell from the treetops, from a nest.”