Daughter of Black Lake

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  “He said we were to wait there until the water grows shallow, to cross once the mud flats are exposed.” The oldest uncle lifted his gaze from the flames and met the oldest brother’s. “I have yet to see a river grow shallow twice each day as the druid claimed.”

  “Do not doubt a druid,” the oldest brother snapped. He gestured, indicating that a flagon should be passed to him. He refilled his mug, set the flagon at his feet.

  Young Smith pulled himself taller on the bench, glanced toward Devout a moment and then quickly away. “A trader once told me about the regular rise and fall of the water in the sea,” he said. “The tide, he called it.”

  Had he piped up, in part, to impress her? Ever since revealing Arc as her choice, Devout had been careful to offer nothing more than a nod when they met at the spring or on the path to the bog. She averted her eyes when he looked up from his anvil, following her as she came in from the fields.

  The oldest uncle flicked his wrist, dismissing Young Smith’s idea of an undulating sea.

  She saw how the evening would continue, with Old Smith and his brothers wary, unreceptive, and the younger contingent—Young Smith’s brothers and cousins—cajoling, pushing for battle. Why not, when in the end it was Old Smith’s decision, and he had already made up his mind? None of the younger Smiths would be called on to prove the courage they so easily voiced.

  “And if we find ourselves lost?” Old Smith said, directing the question to Young Smith. His father had noticed, then, that Young Smith’s words about the rising and falling sea had been flicked away.

  “You know the route to Hill Fort,” Young Smith said. “We’d be with the others leaving from there.”

  “And if they’ve already set out?”

  “We could hire a trader to guide us.”

  Again, Young Smith glanced toward her, and she grew heavy with the idea that she made him blind to the seriousness of the decision being made.

  Old Smith ran his thumb over the rim of his mug. “Have none of you considered that we would be crossing enemy territories?”

  “The druid promised safe passage,” said the oldest brother. “The chieftains have given their words.”

  “Are we to believe that word has reached every settlement? Would we not slay any valley dweller who set foot in Black Lake?”

  “I’d put a spear through his heart,” said the brother closest in age to Young Smith. That brother was a known braggart, one bent on compensating for his clumsiness in the forge, if Old Man were to be believed.

  Old Smith opened his palms, as if to say his point was proven.

  The flaming logs crackled and hissed as the Smith men grew quiet around the firepit. Devout felt the blaze’s heat on her cheeks, Arc’s heat on the length of her arm. She moved her hand so that it brushed his. His thumb traced her wrist, and her skin awakened. That pleasant ache she had first felt the day they harvested the comfrey came to her loins. She put her attention on Old Smith—the dark hollows of his eyes, the reflected firelight brightening his brow, his cheeks.

  “They say the Roman warriors—” he began.

  “They say they’re short,” said the braggart.

  “They say they act in unison, as if their gods whisper in their ears,” Old Smith continued.

  “Our gods are mightier than theirs,” said the oldest brother. “That was proven a long time ago.”

  The younger Smiths nodded, surely recalling Julius Caesar’s retreat, and then the uncles, too, slow, careful bobs. Old Smith joined in with a single drawn-out lowering of his chin.

  “To defy a druid—” Old Smith said and shook his head.

  “Would be to anger the gods,” said the oldest uncle.

  “When have we ever submitted to nuisance invaders?” said the oldest brother.

  “When have we ever lain down to a marauding tribe?” said the braggart.

  He leapt to his feet, swiped the air as though with a blade. “We’ll come back with a dozen Roman heads.”

  Had jealousy, as much as courage, formed the words? A skull hung over the Hunter roundhouse door. That skull had been struck though by Old Hunter’s spear during a raid against the uplander tribe. The Smith clan had no such prize to attest to their bravery.

  The oldest brother was next on his feet. He pumped his fist overhead. “We’ll nail the skulls up over the forge’s gate.”

  A bronze serving platter—Young Smith’s handiwork—occupied the spot. Devout had watched as Old Smith positioned it there during an earlier bonfire. First, though, it was passed among the bog dwellers so that they might admire the raised swirls and inlaid red glass. “You’ll see,” he had said as he clapped Young Smith on the back. “One day he’ll surpass me in skill.”

  One of the brothers, then the next, got to his feet, Young Smith last of all.

  “Glory will be ours.”

  “More skulls than we can count.”

  “Hail, War Master!”

  Devout grew chilled among the blustering brothers, troubled that they—blacksmiths, all—should want to replace the platter, evidence of the clan’s skill, with the skulls of felled men.

  Old Smith stood, then the uncles. The uncles raised their fists overhead. Old Smith lifted a palm, held it out in front. Once the din had settled, he walked the inner perimeter of the benches, his attention passing from one face to the next. “The Smiths will join the united tribes,” he said. “As for the rest of the tradesmen, the head of each clan must decide what is right for his kin.”

  * * *

  —

  By daylight, the bog dwellers offered a runt lamb to War Master in Sacred Grove and learned that, from Black Lake, only the Smith clan would pursue the Romans. The clearing was a hive of activity, with the Smith women spreading skins, heaping one with salted pork, another with dried fish, another with smoked venison. They filled drinking skins; shook dust from woolen blankets, rolled them into tight cylinders, bound them with sinew braids. The men tested the readiness of spears, the security of the joints between the heads and shafts. They polished swords, sharpened blades, yelped, and swiped them through the air.

  Devout milled about the clearing in her field dress, uncertain on so uncertain a day. Were the hands expected in the fields? Old Smith had not hesitated long enough in his preparations to instruct that, yet again, the farthest field needed to be cleared of creeping thistle, ragwort, and dock. She tried to make herself useful, taking up the stray end of a blanket being folded, straightening a toppled stack of dried fish.

  Midmorning, Young Smith emerged from his roundhouse carrying a dozen spears. As he unburdened himself, tilting one spear and then the next against the roundhouse wall, it struck her that this morning could be the last that he traipsed Black Lake. Conviction washed over her that she must speak to him, must say she knew not what, but it seemed that he should know her respect, her good wishes, before he set out. What was their last exchange? He had said, “Weather’s holding,” and she had said, “The wheat grows well.” Pleasantries that would not do as parting words.

  She was emptying a vessel of the Smiths’ hazelnuts into a linen sack and watching for a private moment to speak to him when Young Hunter brushed by Young Smith’s oldest brother. Loudly enough for a handful of bog dwellers to hear, the Smith brother said, “Your clan are cowards, staying behind, spineless worms.” Then the braggart brother spat toward the skull over the Hunters’ door. Old Smith bellowed, calling his sons close. Wearing his harshest scowl, he told them to keep their needling to themselves. “Undignified,” he said, not minding that Devout—a hand—remained within earshot. “Unbefitting a Smith. Imprudent, too, when our women and children stay behind.”

  He locked his gaze on his oldest son, kept it there until the son’s head bowed. Old Smith looked from one son to the next, summoning obedience in much the same way. When his eyes lit on Young Smith, he did not glower but rather touched his son’s fore
arm with all the tenderness of a newly sprouted leaf. “Walk with me,” Old Smith said.

  Devout watched as they passed the forge, as Old Smith ran his fingers along the rough timbers of the low wall. She saw reverence in that touch, a sort of longing for the place he had not yet left. They stood still once they were out of Devout’s range, and Old Smith clasped his son’s upper arm. He spoke and maneuvered to keep his grip when Young Smith tried to shrug the hand away. Eventually he ducked, releasing his shoulder from his father’s hold, and strode toward the gate leading to the woodland.

  She set down the sack of hazelnuts and caught up with him in the woodland, where he was kicking stones and thwacking the underbrush with a stick. “Young Smith?”

  When he turned toward her, his eyes shone damp. “I’m to live among women and children,” he said, “and haul the wood and water once hauled by a dozen men.”

  “You’re staying behind?”

  “You must think I’m a shirker, that my own father sees me as a burden.” He kicked the earth.

  “I don’t.”

  “And once they’re back”—he shook his head—“there’ll be endless nights at the firepit. Backslapping. Tales of the battle, of bravery. Talk of the southeast, the sea I’ll never glimpse.”

  He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. How much she wanted to console him. How much she wanted to touch his cheek.

  “I told him I’m ready, nearly a man,” he muttered. “He said it’s why he was entrusting me with the forge, the women, their broods.”

  “It’s a lot of responsibility. You shouldn’t feel—”

  “I’m already stronger than two of my brothers.” He thwacked the ferns edging the path. “I told him that. You know what he said? He said, ‘And a better blacksmith, too.’”

  “Everyone says so.” She nodded.

  “How is it fair? For hard work, for skill, I’m made to stay behind?”

  “He’s seen how capable you are.”

  He cocked his head toward a lifted shoulder.

  “I’m happy you’re not going.”

  She had meant it sincerely, but as he stilled from wielding his stick, she feared she had said the wrong thing. How might a boy who had shown her affection, who wore his anguish when she said “I have an old friendship with Arc,” interpret those hasty words?

  “We should get back,” she said. “They mean to set out before the sun crests.”

  * * *

  —

  At the clearing, they found the provisions divided, bundled, and secured with sinew braids, and Old Smith inspecting the spears Young Smith had tilted against the roundhouse wall. Old Smith separated three spears from the lot, said, “These ones need attention before we go.” He held them out to Young Smith. “Waste no more time.”

  The sun crested and the Smith men, already weighted with swords and shields and bedrolls and drinking skins, hoisted the rush baskets holding their bundled provisions onto their backs. Devout stood wringing her hands amid the bog dwellers waiting for the mighty Smith men to lumber away. Young Smith’s kin went to him one by one, spoke in hushed voices. He nodded, no doubt promising that, yes, he would keep close eye on a brother’s thin-skinned son or heed a brother’s ripe-with-child mate. Last of all, Old Smith narrowed his eyes and leveled his gaze at the bog dwellers. “I leave my son as First Man,” he said in a loud clear voice. “He will lead as I have led until I return.”

  Those departing words surely met Young Smith’s ears like rain come to parched earth. No one would think him a pitiable, left-behind boy but rather a man chosen by his father for the safekeeping of his clan and an entire settlement until his return.

  Then Old Smith, his brothers, his nephews, and sons—all but Young Smith—lifted their swords overhead, let out great yelps, and turned away.

  13.

  HOBBLE

  We set out for Hill Fort, walking in a southwesterly direction for the better part of the first morning. My father hauls a laden handcart—borrowed from the Carpenters—over roots and around hollows in the middle of the trackway. I want to feel light away from the burden of Fox, as though I could gleefully clip-clop the full distance to Hill Fort, but I do not.

  The evening before, Fox had calmly slit the throat of the Hunter clan’s hound pup. This, because Hunter griped that my father had no right to go to Hill Fort. Fox had raised a silencing hand and said he would not hear another word, but Hunter could not keep his mouth shut and blurted out that my father did not even know the route. I am breathless as I recall that sweet pup swept from his paws in the clearing and locked under Fox’s arm. He put out his hand and, his face daring objection, demanded Hunter’s dagger, no matter that the pup was favored by the Hunter brood. The pup writhed and squealed as blood spurted, as the sleeve of Fox’s robe bloomed red, as mothers pulled wailing children into their skirts.

  * * *

  —

  I look over my shoulder on the path, take in the glum set of my father’s face, the strain that shows in the way his hand clenches the cart’s handle. I turn to face him, trot backward. “You know what Old Man told me?” I say, thinking of my father’s pleasure when he speaks of his youth.

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “He told me the Smith clan was once thirty-four strong.” I knew the clan had dwindled after my father’s kin set out to meet the Romans but had not imagined so large a clan, so steep a fall. I went to Sliver, who, because we are like sisters, confirmed the number with her mother when I asked her if she would.

  “A long time ago.” My father nods. “It was a druid who cajoled my kin into a battle the tribesmen could never win.”

  For him, the moons following the Roman invasion form a chasm, cutting through his life, severing a whole into two parts—before Roman rule and afterward. In the early days, our clan had number, stature, wealth. Now we endure, diminished—at least, in my father’s mind. And yet he does not despise or fear the Romans, not like my mother does. I have found his receptivity curious. Yes, he is forward thinking, secure in the skill he has to offer, but until this moment, I had not fully understood. My father does not hold the Romans solely accountable for our clan’s fall—not when it was the urgings of a druid that prompted his kin to join a slaughter that was over and done within two days, not when Fox just the night before reminded us of druid mercilessness.

  Trying a second time, I say, “Old Man said the forge was more industrious than any hive.”

  He nods, and one corner of his mouth lifts. My heel snags a root. I stumble, catch myself.

  “Careful,” he says. “Better turn around.”

  “I should know my family’s history.” I continue my backward trot.

  He draws a circle in the air, instructing me to face forward on the trackway.

  I stumble again, maybe a little on purpose. “You’ll tell me?”

  He nods, and I do as I have been told.

  “I was fourteen when my kin left,” he says. “I managed well enough for a while, making a steady stream of swords and scabbards and spears, all delivered to Chieftain at Hill Fort.”

  “By the traders?”

  “That’s right,” he says. “But within six moons, the traders were telling me my wares were required in lesser quantities. I thought I only had to be a better blacksmith, and the commissions would return.”

  I picture the boy I had seen reaching for a shiny object in a magpie nest. I think of him at his anvil scrutinizing a spearhead, shoulders slumping at the flawed symmetry. “Old Man says you’re more skilled than even your father was.”

  “Not early on.”

  “He says you’re the clan’s great talent,” I say.

  “It made no difference to the traders,” he says. “When they came back, it was only to tell me Chieftain had little use for flawless blades and intricate hilts. Blame the Romans, they said.”

  He nudges the dr
inking skin against my arm, continues. “From the start, the Romans insisted on civility between the tribes and punished any chieftain unprepared to set aside the old grudges and live in peace.”

  I have grown up with old tales of raids against the uplander and valley dweller tribes. In my time, though, I know of no such incident. “No more arming Chieftain’s warriors.”

  “I told the traders I’d make up for the loss with housewares and spent a moon forging a pewter flagon.” His voice grows distant, hushed. “A thing of beauty: a convex body tapering to a base rung with scrolls and vines twisting through rosettes.” He clears his throat. “But the traders hardly looked. Half Chieftain’s wheat goes to the Romans now, they said. Even he must economize.”

  It is not like my father to speak so openly, and it makes me think Fox’s presence has stirred a sort of reckoning. “Where’s that flagon now?” I say.

  “Long gone,” he says, and then, after a pause, “like so much.”

  This is the part of my clan’s decline—the disappeared possessions—that I know. Old Man has described the past lavishness of my roundhouse—the vibrant woolen partitions, the multitude of low tables and benches, the furs, the laden shelves. He has said, too, that my father’s mother clung to extravagance far too long. She kept a cook in the household, ordered meat served at every meal, wore dresses cut from the best wool. It cost her the household’s finery—the pewter flagons. When a trader trundled off to Hill Fort, his cart was almost always loaded with a number of items she had selected for trade. Within a few years, the household’s shelves were bare, and unable to face a meatless pottage, unable to muster the humility to stir that pottage herself, she succumbed to a fever that every other afflicted bog dweller had survived. She took her last breath and departed for Otherworld the moon before I took my first.

  “Gone, like your kin.” I speak quietly, tenderly.