The Fox

by Arlene Radasky

  “Aine, we’ve had a lot of life experience since the last time I almost asked this question. You weren’t ready then; hell, neither was I. I think we are ready now and can make a go of it if you want to.”

  He stopped, looking at me as if he were waiting for an answer.

  “Make a go of what?” I would not let him off that easily.

  “All right, all right. Aine, will you marry me?”

  I looked at his beaming face, his sparkling blue eyes and smiled through my tears. “Do you know that when we get married I’ll be as fat as a cow?”

  “No, not fat. You’ll be showing the world the proof of our love. You’ll be showing them the next generation of Hunts.”

  “I love you. Yes! I’ll marry you.” We leaned in to kiss and my stomach chose that moment to remind us that I was pregnant. Fortunately, I turned my head just in time and hung on to the back of the bench as my hormones caused me to rid myself of my morning tea. Definitely not the romantic proposal I was sure Marc was expecting. We went back to the hilltop after stopping to get some soda crackers at the corner shop.

  That night, after Marc finally fell asleep, I was restless. So much had happened in such a short time. I was still processing much of it, and as tired as I was, I still couldn’t go to sleep. I was on the couch, a light throw over my legs, looking at the full moon. There it was, the rabbit holding the egg. I would point it out to my baby someday, just like my mother did for me. Then I smelled smoke. Peat smoke. Jahna was coming. I hadn’t had a visit from her for a long time, and I welcomed this one. I hoped she could tell how happy I was. The room faded from my sight, and I saw through her eyes.

  Warm sunlight flooded the scene and a strong young man and woman stood tall in front of me. If I reached my hand out, I could touch them. Their raven black hair ruffled in a breeze and both looked at me with intense hazel eyes. The young woman held a baby. The man turned his head to look down on the woman with love, and his arms surrounded her in protection. This was an ancient picture. The woman held the baby girl up for me to see and then I saw the baby’s bare feet. The babe had my toes, the first one after the big toe longer than the rest.

  Then the woman looked at me and spoke. “My mother told me about you. I was too young to understand. She told me you would be the one to tell our story. I feel you now. See the babe my father died for. The infant my mother sent me away to protect. My clan is gone. We have heard stories of the deaths of many. But here, now, we are safe. We are on an island. I have married and love the man standing here with me. There are others here who also found this island. We have a new clan; my husband is the chieftain. This is now and our future. Understand that we will live on. You will see us in all the children and children’s children that come. We will make it so. My father was sacrificed to make it so. It is time for you to sing our song, storyteller.”

  The prayer I prayed the night before I found the man in the bog ran through my head.

  Blood of our blood, do not forget us.

  Blood of our blood.

  I understood.

  Suddenly, the same intense grief that hit me when I first saw the body in the bog flooded over me again. My heart beat so fast I thought it would jump out of my body. A band constricted my chest and I could only take shallow breaths. Then, as fast as they had come, everyone was gone. The memory of it faded like a dream in the morning. Only a wisp of it was left in my heart.

  I fell asleep wishing Jahna would come back one more time. Marc found me and gently carried me to bed where I snuggled next to him, the man who looked at me with love in his eyes. The man who would stand next to me in my search for my family. With him, I would continue the bloodline of the MacRaes with this baby. A girl with my raven black hair, my toes, and his blue eyes.

  The phone woke me up for the second morning in a row.

  “It’s Jim, Aine.”

  I was beginning to like these early morning phone calls.

  “Andy is talking to London right now, and let me call to tell you your good news. Holy cow, Aine, you have the discovery of the year for Great Britain. I’m going to venture a guess and say it is the find for the world this year. I dated the body of this man to about 80 AD. Give it plus or minus 15 years, still puts you in the category of this not being a recent crime.” He chuckled. “I think the coppers will let you go now. Hey, this is close to the age of the woman in the bowl, right?”

  “Yes, Jimmy. It all fits together. You’ve made me a very happy person!” Two things were now shaping my future, my new family and my discovery.

  Andy called me to arrange the excavation and transportation of the body. Marc and I headed up the excavation team. We respectfully and carefully removed the body. Stephen and Mr. Treadwell helped and supplied almost all the equipment, with news crews from all over Great Britain watching.

  I wanted to be married in Scotland, so before we left, we stopped into the Registrar’s office and started the process of producing our previous spouses’ death records and completing all the other paperwork. It would take several months to process. We flew to London with the body. Within the next week, Marc and I had moved back into my small apartment and purchased a new bed and a crib.

  I continued getting fat while doing the most fascinating research I could ever think of doing, with Marc there to share in all the discoveries. Tim had decided to take a year off from his graduate program so he still managed the hill top site for me. I asked him to start plans to build a more permanent structure so we could thoroughly excavate the hilltop and the bog. His family was in construction so he knew the steps he needed to take and I had the money I needed to make it happen. We conferred with the Scotland Secretary of State’s office to make sure we complied with the Planning Process and Scheduled Monuments Procedures policies.

  Stephen Treadwell helped arrange an agreement with the hotel, even with the hilltop and bog on the List of Protected Monuments. The hotel decided they could build the parking lot on the other side of the building. Stephen actually led us through some tricky paperwork so it all ended well, especially with a bit of extra money from me. I’m sure it helped that I had asked the museum to name our bog man the Treadwell Man. I did it to honor Mr. Treadwell, but Stephen enjoyed the popularity as well. The museum agreed because we’d uncovered him on Treadwell land.

  The research kept us so busy, I’d barely noticed time passing. One thing reminded me, however. I was getting bigger and bigger.

  I had trouble finding a dress that I liked that would fit me for my wedding. Finally, my friend Rhonnie Craig took me shopping a few days before the wedding.

  “Aine, you seem to be in a very good place. You have come to terms with your time with Brad and are ready to step onto a new path. You and Marc are supposed to be together and now the stars will line up to light your future. Your baby is healthy and you’re going to find answers for questions you have had in your heart for a long time.”

  I hugged her to me when she told me my unborn baby girl was healthy. I didn’t need to hear anything more.

  We found a beautiful, long, forest-green dress that I felt comfortable in. Marc said the color was perfect with my eyes.

  Marc and I were married in September at the Fort William registrar’s office.

  After, we invited a small gathering of friends to the hilltop. Rhonnie, of course, Kendy and Matt, now married themselves, and Tim came. Mr. Treadwell and Stephen were there. Jim Cowley from Glasgow and even Andy Cardwell and Susan, his wife, took the weekend off to come up. Everyone raised a champagne toast to us, though mine was apple juice. When I could break away, I took a walk to Jahna’s home and lifted my glass to her.

  “Thank you for leading me here and trusting me to tell your story. I will do the best I can.” A brush of warm air lifted the ends of my hair as it lay on my shoulders like a mother’s touch. I swallowed my juice and returned to the party.

  JULY, 2007

  Our beautiful baby girl, Janel, was born in February 2006. At the first chance, I unwrapped her and counted
all her fingers and toes. Her first toes were longer than her big toes, just like mine. Just like the baby I saw in my last awake dream with Jahna. She also had a full head of black hair.

  “She’ll probably lose all this hair, it’s normal,” the nurse had said. “It would be a shame though, it’s so long and pretty.”

  Janel hadn’t lost her hair; it just kept getting longer. Now it shines as it curls and ripples down her back. And she kept Marc’s blue eyes. She was of our blood.

  I stayed home for three long weeks after her birth. I used my web cam, phone, and email to work with the lab. When I went back, we set up a corner nursery for Janel near us. She was fed and learned to laugh among the relics of an ancient people.

  Day by day, we unraveled more of Lovern’s secrets. I carried a respect for him that I will have until my death. His face was peaceful and his hands unbound. He’d volunteered for death. I couldn’t fathom that. It was a question that followed me everywhere. We found and made copies of his many tattoos. We saw paint in crevices that told us he had been painted three colors before his death. We even looked into his stomach and listed the ingredients of his last meager meal, but none of these discoveries answered my question.

  Finally, all the work we could do on him with the knowledge we had was done. The British Museum carefully preserved his body so that as our skills and knowledge increased, or new inventions came along, we would learn more about him. All the bog bodies that were found in Great Britain, and the world, brought life back into archaeology. Everyone who looked at these bodies wondered what kind of life they had lived. Looking at a human body, not just a piece of pottery, was so much more tangible for our minds to grasp. And a stained body trapped in a bog for centuries let our imaginations fly.

  Tricia Jones, an artist and a member of our research team, created his face in wax, or what it might have looked like before the pressures of the bog deformed it. They displayed his body and wax face together. We published our report in February, on Janel’s first birthday.

  We were back in Scotland. Janel was eighteen months old. It seemed strange to count her age in months. I usually counted in hundreds or tens of hundreds of years. She was so young. And she moved so fast. When I took her to the hilltop site, I had to keep a constant watch out for her. Familiar with the people there, she was comfortable and thought the piles of dirt were hers to play in. I loved watching her play in the center of the fort, by the well where I imagined other babies learned to walk so many years ago. Marc would swing her up into his arms, place her on his shoulders and, both laughing, they would go pick the yellow flowers in the field below the fort.

  I had the rights to use the Treadwell Man report as background and write a book. That is one reason we were back in Scotland. I wanted to be near the place where he had lived. I wanted to breathe the same air and see the same mountains. I also wanted to watch over the work on my hill.

  My instincts told me the ashes I found and the man in the bog should be together. I gave the bronze bowl and its contents to Andy, to be displayed with the bog man. According to the carbon dating of the cremated remains, this man and woman could have lived simultaneously and I like to believe they knew each other. On certain days, especially when I had time to visit both displays, the romantic in me believed they had more of a relationship than we will ever be able to prove.

  My scientific background would sometimes let in a picture of two people in love, walking and talking through the groves of trees or fields filled with sheep that surrounded the fort. Jahna, in my mind, had a face that looked somewhat like mine, the man, the face Tricia had given him.

  I wondered what they would have thought of today’s Scotland. Autos, planes, computers. As druids, they probably would have mourned the loss of nature. The freedom the Picts fought for was not realized. Their future held wars with the Romans and themselves, the Norse and the Irish. Even in modern times, Culloden and the loss of traditions and our kings. Now, we are at least able to have our own Parliament; a small freedom.

  Jahna had not visited since the time we saw the baby. I hoped she was finally at peace.

  I was editing the draft of my book.

  “Marc,” I said as I walked into the kitchen. He was fixing dinner and Janel was already in bed for the night. “I want to give him a name.”

  “Who?”

  “The Treadwell Man. He needs a name. I can’t go on calling him TTM. Let’s give him a name.”

  “Alright, a name. Hmmm. Well, you know how important animal names were to the Celts.”

  “Most of his body was tattooed. He was a Pict,” I said.

  “He wore a fur band around his arm. What was it?”

  “Fox.”

  “Right. Fox. A fox tail. I remember,” Marc said as he stirred our pasta to keep it from boiling over. “Toss the salad.”

  I grabbed the oil and vinegar and began to lift lettuce and tomatoes around in a bowl. “He wouldn’t have been wearing it unless it meant something to him. He also had reddish hair, like a fox.”

  “And the fox was important to the Celts or the Picts. It’s found inscribed in the earliest writings and some folk sword dancers still wear fox hats. Pasta’s ready.”

  “Then it’s Lovernios or Lovern. The Fox. I’ll be right there. I have to wash my hands.” Actually, I had to wipe my eyes because tears started flowing as soon as I said the name Lovern. This was his story.

  I walked into my study to write the name down and my stereo was on. I was listening to Scottish folk songs while I wrote, for inspiration. One, titled “Painted Men” by Steve McDonald, was playing and its words cut right through me.

  With Spear and sword in their hand

  People from far away land

  Made their home here.

  The Scotties did battle them so

  They were a terrible foe

  Knowing no fear.

  I close my eyes, look deep inside,

  I see them again

  Pictures disguise, the fire in their eyes

  Like stars in the sky, the painted men.

  The last two lines rang so true.

  Gone is the race, with the tattooed embrace

  The storybook face of the painted men.

  Lovern was a Painted Man, one who once had fire in his eyes.

  Two days later, I asked Marc, “Why do you think he died?”

  “I thought you had that figured out already. As you lifted the garrote from his neck you said you thought it was a sacrifice, not an execution.”

  “Yes. I still believe that, but I want to talk it through so I can make sure my facts are straight in my book.”

  “Well,” Marc said, “he was a sacrifice or ritual killing. Not a slave or prisoner forced to death. They didn’t tie his hands, and he had evidence of the ritual burned bread in his stomach, along with pieces of heather and mistletoe pollen,” Marc said. “He was recently shaved and was painted three colors.”

  “We all agreed he was sacrificed to three gods. Esus, who required a stab or knife slash. His throat was cut. The burned bannock he ate just before death, which represented fire, and the three blows to his head honored Taranis, the god of family and clans. And because of the god Teutates, he was given a watery grave,” I said. “We found him in a bog that was once a sacred lake, the Black Lake according to local legend.”

  “Remember his hands? Soft hands, not callused by physical work. He must have been a druid. Oh, and his toes? I compared them to yours when we took the x-ray of his foot.” Marc had a silly grin on his face.

  “Okay, I remember. It’s not rare, just uncommon. But let’s stay focused. I wonder if the sacrifice had anything to do with the Roman invasion? They were marauding in the Highlands about that time.”

  “Could have, but it’s all conjecture, theory. Unless he starts talking, that’s all we have.”

  “Yes. But it makes sense. I mean for the sacrifice. But I still can’t understand how someone can give up his life, voluntarily, for something like that.”

 
“Sorry, I don’t have any more answers than you have.”

  “Oh well, thanks. I’ll go work on my theory.” I went back to my computer.

  Several months later, still mulling over the question that was always in the back of my mind, I looked out the window of the small room I called my office over a garden filled with various colors of ranunculus bulbs in full bloom. With the blue sky as a backdrop, the vista was vivid, yet calming. My book was about ready to go to the editors, but my mind was still trying to come to terms with Lovern’s sacrifice.

  I knew his religious beliefs were strong. They were his reason for being a druid. He believed he would be going to live with the gods. It was hard for me to justify this as being enough to allow him to give his life so calmly as not to be tied up. Life was sacred. We fight for it subconsciously when in danger.

  Marc and I, both lapsed Catholics, didn’t practice our religion, but I remembered as a child that I firmly believed the saints watched over me. Many a time when I played tricks on my brother, Donny, I asked forgiveness from them, knowing I would be forgiven and be able to go to heaven. Terrorists in today’s world claim religion as their reason for killing themselves and taking others with them. But can that be enough? Some of the so-called terrorists have to be tied into their cars made into bombs. How did Lovern give his life so calmly? And the thought still niggled the very dark recesses of my mind: how did Donny do what he did?

  Our front door opened, and I heard Marc and Janel come in from their trip to the grocers. She was laughing, and he was talking about the big dog they had seen down the street.

  “Woof. Woof. Doggy says woof.”

  I smiled as I marveled how our language skills have grown to include baby talk. She had a good-sized vocabulary now, but we had a hard time getting out of the habit of the hobbit language.

  “Down. Down.” I heard this and imagined her squirming in his arms, making it difficult to hold on to her.

  “Okay, down,” said Marc.

  Her fast steps came in my direction and I squatted so she could run into my waiting arms.