Why would I not go with her? She had been true to her word and more helpful than I could have expected. She not only knew the trade routes but to some extent, I suppose, she had created them by making deals with people wherever she went. And she was going north.
The evening before she planned to leave, we gathered to eat the meal the Keepers provided for their guests. It was more elaborate than usual, as if she was being given a send-off. Ussa waved me over to her and indicated a man seated at his meal.
‘Pytheas, meet Gruach, my cousin.’
He was all dressed in tough leather and the skin of his burly body, where exposed, was tattooed with chevrons and spirals, as if he practiced his decoration on his body before hammering or casting it into metal.
‘Pytheas has come all the way from the south of Gaul,’ Ussa said.
He smiled genially enough, putting the leg of duck he was chewing down on his plate. ‘And you are going where?’ He articulated each word as if it mattered, which it did, I came to realise as I got to know him better. He used few of them, spending their coinage with weighty consideration.
‘To the edge of the world,’ I replied.
He smiled with one side of his mouth. ‘And you know where that is?’
I grinned. ‘No, but I shall.’
He nodded. ‘Don’t fall off.’ He picked up his drumstick and bit into it, and Ussa clearly understood that this was all the conversation we would get out of him.
‘We’ll leave at first light,’ she said. ‘Are you loaded?’
He shook his head as if this was a tiresome question and Ussa rolled her eyes and turned in search of more convivial dinner company. Before I followed, I noticed a waif sitting alongside the smith with similarly tattooed arms, presumably his daughter. She was watching Ussa and me intently and when I caught her eye she gave a little smile then turned away.
The knowledge that the smith was intending to travel north with Ussa clinched it for me. The opportunity to travel with a smith, and perhaps wangle more tin secrets out of him, was unmissable.
I caught up with Ussa and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll come too, if that’s all right?’
‘Good.’ She tucked her arm around mine. ‘Let’s find ourselves some company to share music on our last night in Ictis.’
NORTH ALBION
MEASURING ALBA
I must tell you about my most recent calculations. I have become a little obsessed by them in recent weeks. I am preparing to make a presentation to the Council about the island that its inhabitants call Alba, and we call Albion. It is part of an archipelago. I don’t need to tell you that, but it made calculating its circumference a challenge, with all those islands around it. The main island, Albion itself, is a sizeable chunk of ground and I have been working out just how big, based on all the measurements I took and the records I made.
I tried hard when I was there to keep tidy records, but when you’re one of Ussa’s crewmen, keeping a handle on logic and making records that follow that logic is easier said than done. Ròn is an excellent craft, a powerful, seafaring vessel, but life on a boat, any boat, is rough and an open sea boat especially so. And it was difficult living with strangers that I’d been brought up to think of as barbarians.
The journey north from Belerion to the Winged Isle was straightforward at first: a short southward passage and then west to pass the cape, during which our progress was slow and steady in a light easterly breeze. Then the wind shifted south and then southwest and we made better speed for the next four days and nights, accelerating in fact as the weather deteriorated. It felt like spring when we left Belerion but as we headed north, winter returned to harry us.
It is hard to measure the distance covered. I would estimate that we could travel somewhere between three and four hundred stades in a good day’s sailing, and more of course when we continued through the night. But that’s no more than an estimate and I tried to adjust my records to take into account our progress, including time when we wallowed about in calm seas (it has to be said that there are considerably fewer of these out on the ocean around Albion than we have in our Great Sea).
We made a short stop on an island in the middle of the strait between Albion and Eriu. The weather there was bright and I managed to get a sun declination measurement. However, Ussa was disappointed because a Silurian trader had passed there recently so the local people had nothing of interest to swap for her goods, so she wanted to move on almost as soon as we had arrived.
A druid of theirs warned us worse weather was coming but Ussa insisted on going anyway, so we set a northwards course and the next day we made good progress up and beyond Eriu, into the complex waters of the Hebrides. There I saw strange sights that made me realise that the tides could hugely influence our speed and therefore my measurements of distance.
The one I remember most vividly was waiting at anchor between two islands while a torrent raged ahead of us. Toma, the skipper, was chanting some incantation to the water. Eventually his pleading calmed it completely, allowing us to sail down the channel. At first it flowed gently the way we were going as if to help us through, but then, as if we were not going fast enough, it accelerated. By the time we reached its mouth Toma was cackling and as animated as I ever saw him, and the water was rushing almost as wildly as it had been when we were anchored at the other end, as if it wanted to spit us out. Only a person in communion with spirits, surely, could navigate such fickle waters.
Over the next week we were in and out of harbours. Ussa could never pass up a chance to trade and I was always keen to be back on land. I love the sea, but you cannot better the drama of a landing and the thrill of a new port. Everyone wanted to know Ussa, so travelling with her I was guaranteed to meet the most interesting people wherever I went. I know she used me like a circus animal, ‘her Greek’, but it didn’t take long for me to learn how to get around that. I’d play dumb for her, but when her back was turned, I had my own games.
Anyway, as I was saying, today I have been totting up all the notes I made of my actual journey times. To calculate the circumference, I’ve had to cheat a bit. Albion, the big island, is roughly triangular and the long side is on the west where it is a confusion of smaller islands, riddled with rias and promontories. Overall, as the eagle flies, I calculate it as twenty thousand stades. The short side goes opposite Gaul, from Belerion to Kantion in the east, and it is only seven and a half thousand stades. And the eastern shore, I am prepared to hazard as fifteen thousand stades, although my journey took me down only part of that coast and I have had to make calculations based on what sailors told me. By the time I got there after my amber trials I had learned enough to work out whose stories I could trust and whose I could not – or I like to believe I had. I shall never know. Find out if I am right if you can; tell me before I die and I shall go to the Islands of the Blessed a happy man. To be honest, I think I shall be fairly content when I go there, if that is where we really go. I have had a good life. Few have seen what I have seen and lived to tell the tale, although I must admit I also have my share of regret, and the guilty conscience that drives me to write this epistle.
*
Back to my journey. After an extremely long but enjoyable day’s sailing with a following wind, we rowed into a perfect harbour on the north side of a large island, where Ussa was well known, but not, from what I could gather, particularly welcome. I hoped we might be there for some time as sailing up the coast, its rock formations had intrigued me. But the people who rather reluctantly took us in for the night talked about the walrus hunter called Manigan, and Ussa became extremely agitated. My interest was piqued. He had been there only a few days before and had told our hosts of his plans to travel north, starting his hunting season early.
This was when I realised quite how obsessive Ussa could be in her chasing after Manigan and his magic stone. She was mad for it. I tried to get her to explain to me why it was so important, and she said to me, ‘He’s my cousin. It belonged to our grandmother and she wa
s told it should always be in a woman’s care. It’s rightly mine.’ I wonder if she ever got it off him.
On this occasion, ignoring the warnings of rough weather and the offers of hospitality from our hosts, she packed us all off again in the boat at first light. It was blowing hard out of the southwest for the first few hours and the sea was the lumpiest and most uncomfortable I have ever known, worse even than a storm in the Northern Ocean, which, although the sea was huge, had a rhythm about it I could understand. Toma told me the land we were passing was notorious for its unpleasant sea, due to the mixing of water from many different directions.
The morning’s sail was nothing, however. Not only were the tidal streams and currents baffling, to me at least, but in the afternoon the sea became wild and a wind got up that seemed to build and build with a ferocity I had never known. I was soon soaked to the skin and glad of my boots and my wolf fur outer layer, which kept me warm even when wet. I swear there is nothing better than good boots and thick wool socks. I can endure a lot with feet that are tolerably warm, virtually nothing once my toes get cold.
The sea that day! I’ll never forget those waves. Our boat was lifted and tossed until I thought we were certain to flip over. I clung to the halyard at the mast until Toma told me to come and shelter at the stern where the side of the boat was a little higher and I at least had something solid at my back. I cowered there throughout the rest of the gale, while he and the slaves battled with sails and rope. I couldn’t understand how they could even attempt to sail, but it was clear we needed to try, as allowing the boat simply to be buffeted by the wind and waves would have put us on rocks many times. Somehow Toma managed to have enough sail and control of the rudder to keep us off the shore.
There was a period when the wind was at our backs, before it moved to the east and blasted across our beam, building in intensity. Toma ordered the slaves to reef the sail until it was as small as it would go. He was anxious to make for one of the various safe harbours he knew, but these were all on the eastern shore and the wind would not allow us to approach them. For a while, the visibility was so poor I was amazed that he knew where we were, but that was his genius I suppose, and why Ussa had him as her skipper. Then, as the day went on, the cloud lifted.
The safe channel between the island and the mainland was too easterly for us to approach, so we had no choice but to go north into a loch, or west to other islands. Toma gave Ussa a choice of two possible harbours. He favoured one on Rum, he said. She chose the other, due north, Loch Slapin, in the Winged Isle. Her eyes were greedy for the place on account of it being Manigan’s land. She was sure she’d find him there.
The loch had daunting crags along its western shore and I was terrified we would be wrecked along them. Behind these cliffs, mountains loomed like the jaws of some great predator. I have never seen a more forbidding place. We hurtled up the narrows and made for a place of relative shelter. Toma ordered the anchor to be thrown overboard when we neared the shore and we came to a halt in the shallows, then he let out rope so we could be washed up onto the rocky beach with some control. The boat yawed and slewed about in the waves and I was sure we would founder there, but Toma’s nerves are of stronger stuff than mine and he got us onto dry land without injury.
The boat was battered in the process of landing, and Toma made it clear he wouldn’t be able to sail again until it was mended, so we were stranded there for several days.
At first I was simply delighted to be alive, and once I discovered where I was I became fascinated. Ussa, needless to say, could not wait to get back out to sea and on with her journey. Her enmity with Manigan made her an uneasy guest, although I have to say they treated me honourably and made me feel more than welcome, particularly once I learned what a special location it was.
THE WINGED ISLE
On the Winged Isle there is a place I will break a great taboo to tell you about, but because you are who you are, I want to share it with you. Take it to your grave. It will perhaps serve you better there than in this bright world of greed and jealousy and ire. Or go there while you are living. It is a wet and dreary island but it may change you. It did me. I believe it prepared me for my meeting with Rian, even further north.
After our crash-landing, we were spotted by the family who lived closest to the stony shore and they took us into their crag-top house, tall and imposing. The matriarch Seonag stood as we stooped through the narrow entrance and was the first to speak to us, after Ussa and I had made our way in. I was surprised that the old woman of the house had such power.
‘Welcome,’ she said, ‘and bring your slaves in as well. We are all the children of the Great Mother.’
I liked her immediately. She made us all feel welcome and was full of curiosity about our plans. She and her family spoke a dialect of Keltic that was hard to follow when they spoke among themselves, but when she talked to us, she spoke slowly and clearly and it was easy to tune in to what she meant.
The broch was far less impressive inside than out, like an orange with a thick skin; it looks so juicy and inviting on the outside, but once you start peeling it reveals only a few wrinkled, stringy segments on the inside. The people were comfortable enough, I suppose, but the furnishings were all simply made of hazel wattle, cow hide and itchy heather. They don’t go for fine cloth, these people, and why would they? For much of the year they need materials that will keep them warm when gales are howling and storms lash in from the ocean.
We were offered seats made of stone along the wall. They were cushioned by hide over something, perhaps heather. They use heather for everything, those people, you can’t believe it. Or perhaps you can, perhaps I’m telling you things you are familiar with.
Ussa was given a bench with rather splendid furs to sit on, which no doubt doubled as a comfortable bed at night, and she adopted a queenly pose. There was a good fire going and food was soon put before us, fish mostly, but also cheese and small, delicious, nutty bannocks.
People came and went all the time, and the place was clearly a kind of physician’s centre with Seonag, the woman of all cures. There was a pot of something herbal brewing. Grateful-looking people came bearing gifts of food, a few eggs or some roots, shellfish or grains, and their empty cups and bowls were refilled by the ever-smiling matriarch. Those who looked hungry were given a task, like grinding some corn or fetching water, then a bite to eat. It was like watching a mother with dozens of children, only most were adults.
Ussa sat stony and silent much of the time, but after we had been there a couple of hours, men arrived, one older than me, carrying a satchel of tools, and the other, clearly his apprentice, carrying a roll of hide. After a few words, most of us set off with the two of them to mend the boat, while Gruach and Fraoch set up their forge.
I have a great admiration for the way these leather currachs perform in the sea if they have the right people handling them, those with the knowledge of how they can fly. Their lightness and flexibility, far from being a liability, is what gives them the ability to survive those wild waters. They lift on big waves, instead of acting as a barrier, and they can survive a battering by lumps of water that would prise open the planks of many a ship of our waters. More importantly, they are light enough to lift up onto a shore, so in a storm they can be protected, instead of having to hang onto an anchor at risk of being smashed against rocks.
I can give you an example of what impressed me about the boat’s design. One day in the northern ocean after being pitched about all day in evil water, our boat sprang a leak where the wooden spar had rubbed against the leather and worn it so thin a rip could open up. Toma calmly took out a roll of cow-hide from his chest, a ball of sinew, a big awl, and a needle made of some kind of bone. With his knife, which he always kept wickedly sharp, he cut two pieces of the material, roughly square, pierced holes along their edges with the awl, then leaned over the side of the boat. With one hand on the outside, he placed one of the patches over the hole, and the leak stopped. He gestured for me to help
him, and placed my hand over the patch. He slipped the second piece under the spar on the inside. Despite the boat pitching about on waves, each time we rose up he’d punch the needle through and follow it with twine. With a few deft stitches, he fastened the patches in place. It took less time than the boiling of a kettle and the boat was as good as new again. I tried to imagine the equivalent mend on a wooden boat, the palaver of heating up pitch to try to caulk a leak or the futile attempt to nail a wooden patch over a hole, which would be doomed to seep forever. These boats are watertight and as mendable as a solid pair of riding breeches.
But that day, it was clear that there had been some real structural damage as we had made landfall. Two wooden spars had smashed, and needed replacing. I watched for a while as they cut out the damaged wood and discussed how they would lock in new pieces, but eventually the cold and wet drove me back to the broch.
Seonag was there, chatting with a neighbour, a younger, elegant woman called Cuilc. The interest I showed in Seonag’s ministrations to her flock had endeared me to her, and I found myself getting deep into a conversation I shall remember to my grave, and who knows, possibly even beyond there.
The Amber Seeker Page 6
