The Fox (49 page)

He took my hand and led me to a bench surrounded by a small garden in a park across the street from the doctor’s office. I sat down, and he sat next to me, both of my hands in his.

“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.

J
ULY
, 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.