This time would be different.
FOUR
SHORTLY AFTER SUNRISE, Éremón thought he saw land. An irregular shape floated on the horizon, startlingly green against the blue of the sea. The husky Gaelic warrior had been keeping watch in the prow of his galley for most of the night with two of his hunting hounds at his feet while he alternately strained to see something that was not there and struggled to stay awake in case it ever appeared.
Then there it was.
Éremón blinked. The vision vanished. He blinked again. The miracle he sought glowed like a green jewel in the light of the rising sun.
Kicking one of his hounds aside, Éremón turned toward a thin, swarthy man awkwardly draped across a pile of rope. “Get up quick, Sakkar! Look where I’m pointing. Is that Ierne out there?”
With a groan the Phoenician dragged himself to his feet. He had hoped to eke out a few more moments of rest before the work of the day began. Every part of his body ached. He was no longer young, and coils of rope were no substitute for a comfortable bed. It could be a long time before he enjoyed a bed again. “I may see something,” he conceded. “Perhaps…” He shrugged his left shoulder. “At this distance it could be anything or nothing. You’ll have to go closer.”
Éremón glowered at the smaller man. “I have to go closer, Sakkar? And risk running aground? Need I remind you that I am responsible for the future of the Míl’s entire tribe? All these lives depend on me!”
Éremón was the youngest son of Mílesios—respectfully titled the Míl—the recently deceased overlord of a large Celtic tribe in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. The clans comprising the tribe were known collectively as Gaelicians, or the Gael. The dominant clan preferred to be called the Mílesians after their chieftain. The fleet was laden with iron implements and weaponry and carried all six of the Míl’s princely sons—even though one of them was mad.
As Sakkar was aware, Éremón was claiming a prerogative that was not his alone.
The Phoenician would not dream of contradicting him.
Sakkar had been an orphan, one of the countless ragged little beggars who thronged the crooked streets and malodorous alleyways of the ancient seaport of Tyre, on the Middle Sea. A scrawny child with dark, almond-shaped eyes and nimble fingers that could slip a coin from a purse without being discovered.
Deference to authority had been beaten into Sakkar from an early age, but from some unknown ancestor he also had inherited a stubborn pride. He refused to spend the rest of his life begging—or stealing.
As soon as he was big enough, he had apprenticed himself to a Tyrian shipbuilder. “I’ll do anything,” he insisted. His new employer promptly assigned him to carry timber that weighed almost as much as he did.
Sakkar was short but wiry, with iron muscles and boundless stamina. In the beginning, nothing more was required of him. The work was exhausting, yet he thrived on it. For the first time in his miserable life, he was sure of a meal at the end of the day and a dry place to sleep at night. He took great pride in being able to earn his living.
After a few months he began to look for other jobs around the shipyard. On his own, he taught himself to straighten bent nails, to braid rope, even tried his hand at patching sails. Such skills came easily to him. Before long, his efforts were observed—and approved. The more he could do, the more he was given to do. In time, Sakkar was offered better food and slept on a pallet instead of the floor.
Within a year he understood how a ship was constructed, down to the smallest detail. In another year he could have built one by himself.
A decade had passed, during which Sakkar absorbed knowledge like a sponge, observing everything that happened around him and listening intently to more experienced men. In this way he had mastered several languages and a handful of dialects that were common among those involved in commercial trade. He also acquired the gestures and manners that set an educated person apart from a common laborer. Only a portion of what he learned was of any apparent value; some of it was merely trivia that stuck to his brain the way barnacles stuck to the hull of a ship.
Barnacles have their uses too.
On the day when Sakkar was promoted to shipwright, he had thought a special star shone over him. This was confirmed a few years later when he met a wealthy trader called Age-Nor, who required an outstanding shipwright to accompany his fleet and supervise the inevitable repairs needed on long journeys.
Sakkar had demonstrated a full and impressive range of skills, and the position was his. He abandoned his original employer without a second thought. Age-Nor promised that after their first voyage together, Sakkar would be able to afford a house of his own and an obedient wife instead of waterfront prostitutes with bad teeth and worse diseases.
Except all had gone terribly wrong. Which proved one could not trust the stars.
Ruefully, Sakkar rubbed his crooked right shoulder. The smashed joint had not healed properly and never would; he was left with a useless arm and damaged nerves. Gradually, the fingers of his right hand were contracting into claws. There was nothing to be done about it. At his age, whatever that might be, structural changes to his body were permanent.
Éremón growled, “Well, Sakkar? Either that’s your famous ‘island in the sunset’ or it’s not. If you’ve tried to deceive us, you’ll regret it.”
Sakkar’s bright black eyes were as innocent as a child’s. “Who would dare incur the rage of Éremón the warrior, champion of every battle?”
Éremón smiled; he never could resist flattery. Perhaps it was a weakness, he told himself, but he had so few weaknesses this one was rather endearing.
“As I explained to your late father, I never visited Ierne myself,” said the Phoenician, “but in the harbor-front taverns of Tyre and Sidon it was often mentioned. Late at night, when sailors have drunk too much, they speak of strange things. I have heard it said that Ierne has wealth beyond measure, more gold than in all the treasuries of the East. Some even claim it contains the secret of eternal youth.”
Éremón grunted encouragingly; he liked that part the best. His stocky body was revealing the first hints of a possible rebellion in the future.
“No two descriptions of Ierne match,” Sakkar went on, “but all agree it is one of the Pretanic Islands in the ocean-river at the edge of the world. With my own two ears I have heard Greek navigators describe its position in relation to the tin mines of Albion and”—he hesitated, reluctant to put stress on something he knew to be unreliable—“and the stars above. Those are the guideposts that have brought us to this place. So it must be Ierne.”
“Let me remind you…” Éremón began again.
Sakkar interrupted, “I would never endanger the family of Mílesios, great prince. May Melqart, god of Tyre, strike me down if I am lying.”
Éremón tensed instinctively.
Both men glanced up.
No bolt of fire shot from the sky.
More relieved than he wanted to reveal, Sakkar said, “Let me remind you, Éremón, that after I was injured in a shipwreck on your coast and abandoned as useless, your family took me in. Among my people, such a deed confers a powerful obligation. When Mílesios happened to mention Ierne, I realized what the gods intended. Your gods and mine,” he added hastily. “It was in my gift to tell your father what I knew of Ierne, but more than that; I was the perfect person to design these galleys for your people and supervise their construction.
“You Gaelicians stake your honor on your hospitality. My people stake theirs on fulfilling obligations. Therefore, I can assure you these ships are as safe as any seagoing craft can be. There is no danger of running aground prematurely; you can sail close enough to have a good look. If you are satisfied with what you see, have your men lower the sail and row as far as the shallows, then wade ashore.”
Éremón’s voice cracked like a whip. “Are you trying to tell me how to command my fleet?”
Sakkar pressed his hands together and gave a slight bow, just eno
ugh to show respect but not enough to admit subjugation. “I would not be so presumptuous, great prince. You know how to proceed in these matters far better than I could.”
Éremón was never sure if the Phoenician was mocking him or not. Sakkar’s aquiline features were like a closed box. Éremón’s brother Amergin was fond of him, though—which was enough reason to be suspicious of the former shipwright. Amergin was the chief bard of the Mílesians, but in Éremón’s opinion he was no judge of people. That was proved by the fact that Amergin never said anything unkind about anyone.
Of all his brothers, Éremón found Amergin the most difficult to understand. Amergin was not only a bard—reciter of histories, keeper of genealogies—but a druid. Among Celtic tribes, the druids comprised the intellectual class, men and women whose abilities were of the mind rather than the arm. Their high prestige derived from the esoteric disciplines they practiced, sometimes in private and always beyond the comprehension of their less-gifted kin.
As far as Éremón was concerned, Amergin was a riddle on two legs. He preferred people to be uncomplicated, like himself. Éremón said exactly what he thought without any druidic misdirection. If he disliked a man, he told him to his face, then cheerfully hit him in that face if a fight was offered. This did not apply to women, of course, but nothing simple applied to women.
Éremón pulled his mind back from the dangerous subject of women. His wife Odba had been one of those who stayed behind when the fleet departed, but he could not be sure he had escaped her forever. Odba might have a touch of the druid herself, the way she could hear his most private thoughts. When he had first mooted the idea of taking Taya as a second wife, Odba had pounced on him like a cat on a rat, and there had been bitter war between them until the day he and the rest of the fleet set sail for Ierne.
At least their sons had chosen to come with him, Éremón reminded himself. Moomneh and Legneh were old enough to realize they could not expect any inheritance without their father.
Three of Éremón’s brothers, Donn and Ír and Éber Finn, were the proud possessors of obedient wives who had joined them on the voyage without complaint—or at least without any complaint that Éremón knew about. Éber Finn even had three wives and an impressive swarm of children crowding the deck of his galley. They seemed to be as happy together as a litter of puppies. How, Éremón often wondered, did Éber enforce such domestic harmony?
And what did a young woman like Taya see in a man like Amergin?
Éremón was almost as tall as Amergin. Among the Mílesian princes only yellow-haired Ír of the Long Legs was taller, but Ír was no competition. His mental instability put him in a class apart. Éremón believed himself to be the most handsome of the brothers. In his opinion, Donn and Colptha were as plain as mud. Neither looked impressive; they could be anybody.
Only Éremón and Éber Finn had inherited the ruddy coloring and heroic torso of their father. Strangers sometimes mistook the two for twins. As was traditional with warriors of the Gael, they sported flowing moustaches that hung far below the jawline. The vitality of their moustaches symbolized the vigor of their manhood.
Bards, on the other hand, were clean-shaven.
Their mother, Scotta, had once described Amergin as “the one dark leopard in a litter of golden lions.” How could any woman desire a black-haired, lanky druid who went around with his bare face hanging out? Taya deserved much better. Pretty Taya with her plump white arms and level eyebrows, like a line drawn with a sooty finger. Her round hips and full bosom that a man could lose his face in …
Whenever Taya crossed Éremón’s mind, he found his thoughts wandering.
The entire tribe knew that Taya had shamelessly pursued Amergin at one time. Yet Old Irial, chief druid of the Gaelicians, claimed that druids dwelt alone in an inner winter. And bards were preoccupied with memorizing histories and genealogies and preserving them in great swathes of poetry. From this Éremón concluded that Amergin’s only relationship was with his harp. He could not begin to compare with the lusty physicality of a chariot warrior.
Fortunately for Éremón, Taya had realized this before she made a grave mistake.
When they were settled in the new land, Éremón was going to build a splendid dwelling for his second wife. He would shower Taya with the luxuries that Odba would have enjoyed if she had treated him better and joined him on the journey. The riches of Ierne that Sakkar had so casually mentioned would be Taya’s: three colors of gold, masses of silver and copper, amethysts as big as a man’s fist. Even chypre, the nauseatingly heavy perfume that women loved and was made from sandalwood. Surely there was sandalwood on Ierne? If not, Éremón would import it.
Soon he and the other sons of the Míl would be able to forget the misfortunes that had befallen them. Éremón did not like to think about such things, but they were always at the back of his mind, like awareness of a rotten tooth.
The prosperity of the Mílesians had depended on two factors: their vast herds of black cattle, and the surface tin mines in their territory, which was located in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. The cattle provided the Mílesians with quantities of rich milk and supple leather to exchange with neighboring farming tribes for basic agricultural produce. The Mílesians were a warrior race; they looked down on people who dug in the dirt.
Copper alloyed with tin was the basis for bronze. Once supreme among metals, bronze was being replaced by iron, which was stronger. However, bronze retained its high prestige for ceremonial use and ornamentation. For centuries, the tin trade had provided a very high standard of living for the ancestors of the Mílesians. From the great port cities of the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians had brought a cornucopia of undreamed-of luxuries to Iberia to exchange for tin. The Sea People had offered gold from Ophir, silver from Ethiopia, amber from the Baltic, fragrant cedar from Lebanon, and fine cotton from Egypt.
After several generations, such opulent items had become necessities.
Mílesios and his clan dressed in silk embroidered with gold thread and wrapped themselves in woolen cloaks as soft as clouds. They wore so much jewelery that they clanked when they walked. Gold neck rings, ear rings, arm rings, finger rings, sword hilts and clothing fasteners and horse-harness ornaments, even silver trinkets for favored servants. They hunted wild boar in the forest with great shaggy hounds crossbred from dogs imported from Egypt and the deserts of Arabia.
With the assurance of those born to wealth, the Mílesians had assumed their resources were infinite.
They were mistaken.
Seven years of unprecedented drought had all but wiped out their herds. Producing enough tin to satisfy the demands of the traders finally had exhausted their mines. Almost overnight, or so it seemed, the splendid garments of the Gaelicians grew shabby. They had nothing to offer the Sea People in return for more bright silks and fine linen. Without enough cattle to trade with other tribes, the adherents of the Míl were reduced to exchanging jewelery of the finest workmanship for real necessities such as beans and barley. At the summer market, their nearest neighbors, the Astures, gave them one sack of mouldy wheat for two massive gold arm rings and went away laughing.
Astures! Men who stooped to plant seeds in the earth! Éremón still shuddered at the remembered humiliation. And the cruel barbs Odba had slung at him when he returned home with so little to show for his efforts. She did not even prepare a welcoming feast for him—and Éremón was a man who loved his food. He was famed for eating right- and left-handed.
Mílesios, his immediate family, and his far-flung dependants were all desperate to regain their lost prosperity. In common with people everywhere, they accepted myths as historic truth. One of these, related long ago by a patriarch called Bréoghan, involved an island he had glimpsed from the top of a watchtower at the harbor. He had claimed to see a lush green island of incomparable beauty floating on the northern horizon, a rich sweet land of honey and harvests where gold glittered in the streams.
Bréoghan’s own people
did not believe him, but the Phoenician traders with whom they did business believed. A few even claimed to have visited the island. Yet they were reluctant to go into any detail about the place they called Ierne. They spoke of it in hushed tones and insisted they would never go back. Their reaction added a delicious shiver of fear to the tale, which was repeated from one generation to the next until Ierne became little more than a tale to frighten children.
Yet when the pangs of poverty bit deep, the Míl and his kin began to speculate in earnest. What if Ierne was real? A land like that would offer the opportunity they needed, if only they could reach its shores and start anew.
Centuries earlier, a branch of the Celtic race had undertaken a similar migration, leaving the dark forests of northern Europe in search of a better life. Known as the Gael, they had dispersed along the western edge of the continent. The Gaelic ancestors of the Mílesians had even crossed the Pyrenees on their way to their current homeland.
What sort of courage, Éremón had asked himself, did it take for men to pack up their families and all they possessed and journey into the unknown?
Now he knew. Not courage but desperation.
And Sakkar had appeared at just the right time. Unless of course they were mistaken about the Phoenician and he was a harbinger of disaster …
Again Éremón reined in his wandering thoughts. His eyes were still fixed on the image on the horizon. Why was he finding it so hard to concentrate? The riches of Ierne would not be denied to him … putting two fingers into his mouth, he gave a shrill whistle. He raised his other arm and pointed toward his discovery. The gesture was intended for those on board the other galleys and the accompanying flotilla of hide-covered coracles. The two best-appointed galleys carried the families and possessions of the sons of the Míl, together with the brehon judges whose heads contained the laws of the tribe. Members of lesser Gaelician clans were in the other two galleys, crowded among crates of supplies and sacks of grain for planting.
Only the Stones Survive: A Novel Page 3