The Amber Seeker

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘We have some good metal workers,’ was all the King offered.

  Something about the way he said it made me deduce that it was stolen, and when he made a quiet mention that if we were seeking slaves this also could be arranged, I sensed a frisson of violence and saw that under his gracious exterior there was a warrior who went on raiding parties.

  A brooch was passed to me, which had evinced whistles from everyone who looked at it first, and, not for the first time since my mugging, I wished I had my bag of gold coins and could join in the trading. It was an exquisite thing: a silver plait-work decorated with chevrons and dots. I passed it to Gannet next to me, who shook his head with indifference, and passed it nonchalantly back to the young woman. I wanted to grab it back, and kiss or stroke it, to pay it the deference such work deserved.

  Just then a noise outside was followed by shouts and a hammering on the door. A hairy man burst in. ‘This is the trading house, I take it,’ he slurred. ‘Show us what you’ve got, we’ll have the lot. We’ve brung the tin you asked for, and we’re leaving as soon as you’ve given us what it’s worth.’

  There were two men behind him. Silhouetted in the light, I couldn’t make out anything about them except their bulk, but one of them called ‘Pytheas’, and dodged in front of the hairy man. As he bore down on me, I realised it was Og.

  ‘How are you?’ He slung his arm around my shoulder. He was clearly drunk, and his boisterous entrance had put the King on alert. If I were him, I would think he was under attack. Our civilised process of exchange seemed to be degenerating into a skirmish.

  ‘I’m well,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘Sit down, Og. We were just in the middle of looking at these fine things. This is Gurt.’ I pointed to the skipper, who was asking, ‘What’s going on?’ with his eyes. ‘I came from the amber coast as part of his crew. This is Og, who I sailed with for many months on a trading ship north from Belerion, up the west coast of Alba.’

  ‘I was a slave then, but I’m a free man now,’ Og said.

  Everyone’s eyes were on us and there was some alarm in most of them. ‘I’m sorry we’re disturbing everyone,’ I said. ‘We’ve not seen each other for a long time. It’s unexpected.’

  ‘Where did you sail to?’ the King asked, coolly.

  ‘Up to the north of Albion to the Seal Islands, north again to the Cat Isles and north again to Thule, into the frozen sea.’

  ‘In whose boat?’

  ‘Ussa, she is called.’

  The King gave the merest lift of his eyebrows. ‘The woman with the white bearskin coat?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Bitch,’ said Og. ‘Slaving bitch.’

  The King stared at him. His hand was on the handle of the short sword slung across his hips, and he had positioned himself so his wife was behind him. The young woman was standing with a fixed smile on her face but she had taken at least one step away towards the King.

  ‘If you’ve done blethering, I’ve brought the tin,’ the man in the doorway said. ‘Do you want it or not?’

  ‘Can you come back later?’ the King said.

  ‘I cannot. I’ve got a tide to catch. I can sail on with it or you can give me what it’s worth and we can get on.’

  ‘I’m not used to such haste.’ The King smiled at Gurt. ‘I do hope you’ll excuse this confusion. Perhaps you might also be interested in some tin? Bly, come on in, have a seat, let’s do this in a civil manner. And your men, there’s a bench here, and here.’ He swung around to the young woman. ‘Give them some ale. Settle yourselves, gentlemen.’ His command was regained and he soon had the newcomers under control and a deal began to be formulated.

  ‘Tin, is it?’ Gurt was genuinely interested, weighing an ingot in his hands. He was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to look nonchalant; his desire for the metal betrayed itself in the way his fingers touched the shining surface as if expecting a charge from it. He tried to make the ingot seem light, but the density of tin makes that impossible.

  I found an ingot passed to me and I put it to my ear as I’d been taught. It did not crackle. I shook my head. ‘Are there others?’ I asked.

  Og was laughing. ‘You can’t fool this one, Bly. He’s an expert.’

  Now Bly was frowning, and Gurt was scratching his head, eyebrows raised. The King was standing back with his hands on his hips, watching us all as if observing a minstrel’s play.

  The second ingot crackled, as did the third. The fourth did not. I saw Og and Bly exchange looks. Then the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth sounded true.

  ‘I’ll take this up with my supplier,’ Bly blustered. It looked as if a ruse to fob the King off with fake or low-grade tin had just failed to come off.

  But when it became clear how keen Gurt was to get his hands on the good ingots, and Bly realised what quality of skins we were carrying, the trade became jolly again.

  There was a moment when Gurt seemed so enthusiastic about swapping furs for tin that the King realised he was in danger of being left with neither tin nor good quality furs, and he waded in with his silverwork to secure himself some bear and wolverine pelts. Gurt added the silver to his pile of winnings and grinned, rubbing his hands on his thighs. ‘Have you got this all written down, Tern?’

  I hadn’t, but I got to work with my quill, checking off the list of what we’d brought, noting down the deals struck so far. I was kept busy, evaluating tin for Gurt, explaining the wonders and rarities of the amber pieces to Og, Bly and the King and Queen, and making notes of every agreed stage of the exchange. There was a risk of it all breaking down at one point, when Bly wanted more than a bear pelt in exchange for an ingot, when one had been happily swapped for a wolf pelt earlier. I knew there was a real risk that my tidy record would degenerate into crossingsouts, but instead I found myself a surprising ally.

  The Queen, who intervened in the dispute, pointed to my record and said, ‘A wolf pelt was exchanged earlier for an ingot of tin, isn’t that right?’

  I nodded. I didn’t think she could possibly read my Greek script, but it didn’t matter. She knew that the written word had an authority that she could invoke. I put my finger on the note of that transaction and read it out.

  ‘One pelt, wolf, one tin ingot.’

  ‘Therefore…’ All eyes were on the woman, magnificent in her embroidered robe. ‘A bear skin, both larger and warmer than a wolf skin, cannot be worth less than one ingot as well. It’s quite simple. Would you like more ale, gentlemen?’

  They ate out of her hands. All the remaining goods were exchanged. Several of the pelts that had gone to Bly ended up with the King, swapped for iron work in which Gurt was so completely uninterested. Our amber pieces were all traded for fine jewellery and weapons. Gurt nodded contentedly as I completed my list and accepted a bronze cup of ale, his first, I noticed. I happily let my cup be refilled.

  Bly was no longer in such a hurry to depart. His small chest of tin had been replaced with what, as far as I was concerned, was a large quantity of low-grade ironmongery and a fair few animal skins. It had bulk, for sure. It would take up more of his ship. But that was all I could say for it at that point. I was wrong, of course, as I am so often wrong. He no doubt had a perfectly good reason to think himself lucky in his transaction. There is something in this trade of goods that I have never really mastered, how worthless things gain value and clever people become wealthy and powerful by simply taking something one person does not want and selling it to someone who does. When I set out on my journey my goal was to become rich this way. I was going to turn my gold into amber, tin and ivory and return to make my fortune (while having gained some knowledge and adventures along the way) but after all I had been through I no longer felt that way. Apart from Gurt, all the traders I met were greed-driven zealots. I didn’t have it in me to be like that.

  Bly’s relaxed acceptance of another cup of ale and the completion of our trade gave Og and I a chance to talk. It soon became clear that Og bore bitter grudges against me. I, in t
urn, still bristled at the memory of being abandoned in the clutches of the Greatmother, who I knew to be a tyrant but whom Og remembered as his saviour, his liberator.

  ‘You left without me.’

  ‘Too right we did. I was all for feeding you to the bears.’

  ‘Why? It was Ussa who enslaved you. It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Tell that to Rian.’

  ‘What’s Rian got to do with it?’ I could feel myself reddening.

  ‘Acting innocent still? You bloody slavers are all the same. You think you can treat a person like a tool, like a toy, nothing more than a pelt to lie on.’ He plucked at one of the furs, and let it fall limp.

  I felt shame rising, and fought it down. I had paid sufficient penance with the Greatmother and I was not going to be bullied by this man. I did not need to be ashamed. Or did I? To Og, it was as if time had not passed. He had no sense that I had answered for my deeds. Perhaps I never could.

  ‘Where is she? Do you know?’

  ‘Far away from you, thankfully. Except for the brats, she could have put what you did behind her. She’s done well, though, I’ll give her that.’

  My gut froze.

  ‘She has more than one?’

  ‘There you go, feigning innocence again. Yours, of course. Twins, except it’s nothing to do with you, is it?’ He was shouting and everyone’s eyes were on us.

  I was blinking very fast, trying to absorb what he had said. Ever since Ussa had fixated on the prophecy told her by that druid, I had imagined Rian bearing my child. It was unknowable, perhaps nothing more than a fantasy, but it had sustained me in dark moments of my journey. This was confirmation and I couldn’t disguise the feeling bubbling up. I was proud. I was joyful, even. It was true – I was a father! Is there any greater role a man can play? Twins! If one of them was a boy, he was my son. My son! I wanted to possess that child, I could not help myself. And as there were two, why, one of them surely could travel home with me.

  ‘You know I was very fond of her. I never wished her any harm. She has done well, you say? Are they boys?’ I had to work to keep my voice level. I wanted to say, ‘Tell me everything you know. I want to know every move she has made.’ But of course I could not.

  ‘I don’t remember. I just know that Ussa’s still chasing after her, just like she’s still trying to get the damn stone off the Walrus Mutterer.’

  ‘What’s that about the Walrus Mutterer?’ the King said.

  Og didn’t miss a beat. ‘He’s nothing but trouble.’ I wouldn’t have thought so fast. He might not have been as drunk as he seemed.

  The King said, ‘Do you know him? Do you know his whereabouts? I’d like some ivory.’

  Og laughed. ‘On the ocean, in motion, in a dock, drinking hock.’

  The rhyme set Bly to singing and while he sang, I asked Og, ‘Does Rian travel with him?’

  ‘How should I know? I saw her on Ictis and he wasn’t there then. Why? Are you going after her?’

  ‘No. I’m just interested.’ This was a lie. I tried to remain relaxed, and looked him in the eye, but I was trembling with excitement inside. I had offspring! The past three years faded to insignificance. All I could think of was the girl with the amber hair, and my son, maybe even my sons, and how this might transform my future prospects! Now there were two reasons to make my way to Belerion.

  BACK TO ICTIS

  I travelled with Gurt further southwards to other ports until all his goods were exchanged for things he knew had value back in the amber lands. When he decided it was time to set sail eastwards again across the North Sea, of course I chose to stay in Albion. I was well rewarded for my time with Gurt and I had some skins and amber to help me to travel onwards.

  Over the course of late spring and early summer I made my way down to the southern tip of the island and along the coast that fringes the narrow sea channel. I walked most of the way and saw many fascinating sights. I remember a chariot race, which was wild and terrifying – those drivers must have no sense of fear. I ran scared from a palisaded village when the people set their dogs on me, yet further on I was invited to visit a hill fort where I was treated as an honoured guest. I’m still not sure why. Along the south coast I marvelled at cliffs of white chalk, the edges of which are both dramatic and treacherous.

  I was always interested to look at boats in harbours and sometimes was taken on board for a leg of my journey. Like all the shores of Albion, the stretches I sailed taught me great respect for the wayfarers who understand their wild currents and complex tidal flows. I wrote about this at some length in my book, but many of the mariners from our sea mock me for fantasising. They simply do not believe that the seas could be as fickle and dangerous as Homer describes in his great legend of Odysseus. I sometimes wonder if his tale was based on experience of the northern seas. But enough of that. There is plenty of my speculation of such matters in the ocean book, so if you’re interested, read that.

  I enjoyed my walks, particularly because they gave me time to think about what I had learned from Og, that I was certainly a father. This changed everything, not least my status when I returned home. No longer a childless man, no longer still effectively a boy, as a father I would be entitled to join the Boule, the city council, to become one of the Timouchoi and help to govern the people. With a child of my own, I would be a responsible adult.

  And what would the children be like? Twins! How was that possible? Were they boys? Did they, too, have amber hair and sea-green eyes?

  I did the final leg of my journey to Belerion on a boat that was heading west to trade wine for tin. It had come from a region of the mainland to the east, the mouth of a big river, and its skipper was a fascinating expert on the tides and currents. I had mentioned Ictis to him and he had agreed to take me in his crew. He was one of my best sources of information about the tides. The diagram in my book of channel currents is based on a detailed chart he kept in a long, thin wooden box. I would have paid considerable gold for such a chart, but it was a possession I was lucky to get a sight of and could never have purchased. He only let me glimpse at it, then hid it away again. Afterwards I drew what I could, in simplified form, from memory. He corrected my mistakes, kindly enough, but would not let me look again at his chart. It was like a sacred object to him and I suppose in a way, because of its ability to save lives and allow him to predict the future behaviour of the water and the shape of land as yet unseen, it did contain a kind of magic. In my whole circuit of Albion, that one chart was the only diagram I saw on parchment. All the other mariners, Gurt included, sail the coasts based on memory, story-telling and songs.

  So now I get to the part of this epistle you have been waiting for. I finally made it back to Belerion and I was delighted to reach the place where I had first been with Og and Ussa at the very start of my experiences of Albion, proving to my satisfaction that I had indeed circumnavigated the whole big island, even with three year’s diversion across the North Sea and back.

  At the island of Ictis, it was a breezy morning. We were greeted by a squadron of oyster catchers dashing back and forth before the waves on the beach, and by one of the Keepers – a calm, graceful woman who seemed to float towards us across the sand, the motion of her feet invisible under her long gown and her body so poised I felt myself in the presence of some goddess. She welcomed us with a warm, honeyed voice. We followed her. I guess some men must have stayed with the boat, but there seemed to be a large gang of us straggling along on our sea legs, looking forward to shedding ourselves of the grime of a long voyage. We were shown inside a large stone building and settled down on benches, taking over the space. Then people brought in food: platters of fresh fruits and warm bread.

  The Keepers represent a pinnacle of civilised behaviour among people who are often brutish and ignorant. There was a procedure to go through. Each individual had to talk to a Keeper, one-to-one, about their intentions on the island, and as soon as the meal was over we were told to form a line and wait for our audience. Most o
f the crew found the whole operation exasperating and sat in a corner playing counters, but the skipper and some others were clearly keen to converse with a Keeper. I do not know what other people’s experiences were. Some of the interviews lasted no more than a couple of moments. I suppose they must have answered no to every question. Others talked for long periods.

  My interrogation was one of the longer ones. When my turn came I was taken to a small, round, wood and wattle cell. There were flowers in a ceramic vase on an altar-like shelf opposite the doorway, and the floor was strewn with straw and herbs that scented sharp and sweet as we trod on them. My host opened a wicker shutter to let in more light and then offered me a cup of water from an elegant pitcher. She was dressed in a long, pale green robe, like the woman who had greeted us on the beach. Her hair was white. It was like being in the presence of a lily in human form. She addressed me in Keltic.

  ‘Welcome back, Pytheas.’

  I was taken off-guard to be known. I wondered if this was going to be the start of an interrogation like the one I had suffered in the amber coast in the clutches of the mad Greatmother.

  ‘Your hospitality is very generous,’ I said.

  ‘We like our guests to feel themselves welcome. This is a special place…’ She paused and the sound of waves and seabirds filled the room. ‘A restful place. What brought you back to Ictis?’

  ‘I am on my way home, but I hope to take some of the smelting metal back with me.’ I remembered just in time not to use the word ‘tin’. ‘I bought some when I was here before. I had gold then, of course. I have lost everything I had, but I need one ingot to take back to Massalia to prove that I have seen what I have seen, to prove I know its origin. If someone can give me some of the metal, I’ll strip naked and offer them my skin.’

  She grimaced.

  I clarified. ‘I have a wolf skin coat and leggings. And I have some amber that I can trade.’

  ‘I will see if I can help with the metal. And is there any other reason you are here?’