The Amber Seeker

by Mandy Haggith

  PURCHASE

  I bought Rian from Ussa with a piece of amber in the shape of a tear-drop. Yes. I’m sure if I told her, my old nurse Danu would shake her head and mutter about omens.

  There were some wild nights of drinking on the journey north, and the broch in Assynt where Rian lived led to one of the most memorable. Og was on fine form on his whistle and Ussa danced and sang her way into the headman’s bed, making him think she was doing him a favour while stripping him of his valuables through trade and gambling. She noticed far sooner than anyone else the most precious thing he possessed. She had a way of seeing everything in terms of what she could sell it on for, and persuaded people to give it to her for a fraction of its value. She would pay so well for all the mundane goods, like skins, pottery, metalwork and even hospitality, (although that was normally given for free), so people thought she was generous. They wouldn’t question when she offered a pittance for a priceless gem, persuading by her that it was just a shiny, pretty stone.

  I don’t think Ussa even bought Rian from her foster father. He gambled her away in hope of winning a bronze blade, which was handsome enough, but nothing special. Unlike Rian.

  Looking back I wonder if Ussa saw my attraction to her and calculated the profit she could make by facilitating my acquisition of her as my slave. I’d put nothing past that woman. I’m sure I wouldn’t have offered to buy her from her family, and I’m even surer that those people wouldn’t have sold her to me. The grandmother protested as it was. I would surely have acquiesced.

  But to Ussa such scruples were meaningless. I don’t think she understood the concept of love. Lust, for sure, which is just a form of greed. She wielded lust as a deadly weapon. But to her, family devotion signified little other than a kind of bondage best broken, ties to be severed. Although she travelled with her cousin, the smith, she seemed able to abandon him without qualms. Her enemy, Manigan, was also her kin of course. What unhappiness lay behind that family rift I never did discover. I’m not sure I wanted to. Perhaps you know?

  Anyway, Ussa dragged Rian awake in the middle of the night and won her at craps from that thug who was supposed to be her guardian. She was branded next morning, while I was out getting the lie of the land. I returned to a furious hush, the smell of burned flesh and Ussa, smug as a cat with a songbird in its mouth.

  She put on a show of leading a hunt, which was a farce. I don’t think she ever caught anything hunting, she was far too noisy for wild animals, and I think she did it deliberately, playing a game with the man she was toying with at that moment. During the long trudge that her expedition involved, I observed Rian closely. She limped, but bit back tears when the new brands pained her. I felt quite sorry for her, she was such a pretty little thing. When Ussa made Rian bend down in a muddy hollow, then put her feet on Rian’s back to refasten the thongs around her boots, I hatched the idea of buying the girl.

  I slept on the thought, but it would not dislodge itself from my mind. At breakfast she waited on Ussa and I was envious. I wanted her to hand me a bowl of food. I wanted her to brush my hair. So I offered Ussa the amber teardrop, and Rian was mine.

  ON BROCHS AND SLAVERY

  My experiences in the northern lands made me question almost everything about myself, about what I knew and about the order of the world. Take this relationship between a master and a slave. You would think it is a fairly simple thing to understand: one has the power and the other, powerless, obeys. I was once told that power is like pregnancy: you either have it or you don’t and it can’t be shared. But I met people in the north, and Rian in particular, who defy that simple picture.

  Some slaves, like Og, are pliant and adaptable, and these are the ones who survive, or even thrive, sometimes, given the right owner, someone who can appreciate their merits. They are obedient and do not suffer from their role. Og and Ussa were a team really. He had moulded her life almost as much as she had shaped him to her will, creating a niche for himself, doing mostly what he does well, like cooking. He helped to control the other slaves, making everyone’s lives together as comfortable as they could be. I got the impression he smoothed the way for them. You would see Li and Faradh grumbling but they would not rebel, they would fall in with him.

  I saw him trying to give Rian the kind of tasks she could perform easily. There was of course lighting the fire, which she seemed to have a magic for; she could make flames anywhere, with anything, effortlessly, it was a part of her being. But apart from fire-raising, everything she did for Ussa appeared to pain her. She chafed visibly.

  I don’t think broch people make good slaves, in general. I met a few in my journey. They are hard, like the stone of their buildings. They resist or they are blank and discontented, like Rian.

  *

  The brochs are impressive buildings: some are as tall as eight men, as tall as Athena’s statue in the Parthenon, and made of stones so massive you wonder who built them. They’re skilled architects, but they use this skill to make brutal buildings. They stand for strength and they stand strong. These are the houses of hard people who can withstand the wildness of the northern ocean, who even thrive on it.

  I have been wondering about those towers of double-walled magnificence. All around the coast the people dwell in these majestic structures, surrounded by various huts, barns and hovels. It is perplexing. The inordinate lengths they go to in order to craft these extraordinary buildings makes me sure their architects must have some kind of blessed status with the gods. It is impossible for us in the civilised world otherwise to understand them. They adore their boats and they adore these circular towers and they adore the promontory structures and the old circles and underground chambers of the ancients, and all these are indeed wondrous. Yet they are barbarian people. They do not understand the order of the universe: the gods in their hierarchies, the motions of the spheres, the geometry of the world. All of this, when I talked of it with them, met with utter incomprehension or mockery. They make music of a harmonic depth and with melodic beauty and complexity, and they build structures of such cleverness, even brilliance, I will go so far to call them mystical structures, yet their spiritual lives are completely lacking in what is needed to explain such gifts. How can the Gods on the one hand bless them with these skills yet on the other hand tolerate not being honoured?

  Of course the broch people have gods, yes, but they comprehend them in peculiar ways, full of what I took to be misconceptions at the time, in my arrogance. Should I consider you one of them? You are descended from them, so perhaps I should. In which case I should say, ‘you broch people’. Now, looking back, I wonder if they were, (and if you are one of them, if you are) so misguided after all. I have asked for favours from Apollo, especially safety at sea, of course, and assumed that when this was granted it was him I should be thankful to. But how, really, should I know it was him? What if it was Artemis who actually favoured me, or perhaps even the cow goddess of those people, Brigid, who was looking on and taking care to fulfil my wishes. Or what if, (I shall be condemned as a blasphemer but I am beyond caring), what if Zeus, Apollo, Artemis and all the rest of the Gods are a figment of our collective imaginations and we are all actually at the mercy of the whims of some wild sea spirits from the ice lands?

  Did you know Rian lived in one of these brochs when I met her? Her foster father, Drost, I think he was called, was the headman, and had been there along with his mother, since they built it. She was one of those matriarchs, like Seonag, who made me wish the world was run by women, not by men. This was one of the things I learned on my voyage, that the world is not ruled by men everywhere, and I admit I found it ridiculous at first. It’s odd, when you are in a house where it is obvious that the most sensible person there is a woman, and that the things organised by her are the best part of their lives and the matters presided over by the men are a shambles. I suppose that’s why Ussa went there. She did not always get an easy welcome. There are some headmen who cannot think of trading with a woman, although in my experience of
the north, some of the best dealers were of that sex. People laugh at me here in Massalia when I tell them this, but I’m sure I wasn’t just imagining it.

  On the sea, though, it is mostly men. Ussa is rare, although not unique. Few women own a boat and ply the ocean but the barbarian women have skills and roles that have surprised me often. Her helmsman, of course, was a man. Ussa never directed the affairs of the ship, really. It was a tool for her I suppose, and Toma was the brains of the boat. He never left it, as far as I could tell. He slept on it or as close to it as he could. He would wait on it whenever we came to harbour, only ever going on land to get something the boat needed – hide or rope or tar or wood or tools. He was as devoted as a mother to that boat. He was a part of it, or it was a part of him. He’s not unusual I know. Harbours are full of these men married to a vessel, but his marriage was somehow more intense than most. I never did understand why. I think Ussa acquired him when she got the boat, but I don’t think he was a slave. I presume he built the vessel and he certainly knew how to sail it better than I’ve ever known anyone sail, apart from the Walrus Mutterer of course, but his boat is a slip of a thing compared to Ussa’s. It’s like an arctic tern, too fleet and light ever to be caught but capable of long, long journeys. Ussa’s boat, Ròn, is a skua, fierce, strong and proud, a raptor, and with Ussa on board that’s not a bad analogy. But she never seemed able to hunt down Manigan, although I have watched her catch gulls, both real and metaphorical, and I’ve been horrified at the cruelty she is capable of.

  *

  There was a day I realised my feelings for Rian went beyond the care of a responsible slave-owner. We anchored in a steep-sided geo and Ussa hurtled off, sniffing for trade, while Gruach unloaded in his normal, unhurried manner. From Ussa’s excitement I got the sense that this was going to be an interesting location, so I packed up all of my belongings on the assumption that we would be there a good while. I gave my bundle to Rian to carry.

  I was cross with her because of a kerfuffle on the shore involving a sailor from another vessel that had anchored beside us. She and Gruach’s daughter were flirting with him and I considered their behaviour rather too fresh. I don’t think I was consciously punishing her, nor was I really aware that it was a flash of jealousy that made me lose my usual gentleness with her. Not until I had cause to reflect later, after the ardour of my rage had cooled, did I understand its source: the sailor, who was my rival. I didn’t know then who she was frolicking with on the wave-lapped rocks, although I learned later that it was Manigan, but his identity was irrelevant.

  I thrust my baggage-roll at her and strode on, leaving her to lug it up the near-vertical gully wall. When Li helped her with it, I made her go back and carry it herself. It was a matter of principle: she had to do my bidding. But it was also more than that. I wanted to show everyone watching, including that upstart sailor, that she was mine. I stood at the cliff top watching her struggling, but pushing on, like a poor little kitten trying to clamber out of a bucket, and when she reached the top I wanted to fold her in my arms. But before I could she collapsed into a dead faint. The other slaves carried her to the nearest habitation, a big roundhouse, and I asked the lady of the house to do anything she could for the girl. She took her in and brought her back to herself. I was embarrassed by the force of my feelings, the remorse I felt at my cruelty, and it made me realise I was unnaturally attached. The fear that she might die – it was brief, but long enough to recognise that I loved her, and that my annoyance at the sailor was in fact jealousy.

  I was enamoured of my slave! I have to tell you, this took me aback. Yet on the other hand, it also took me onwards.

  *

  I found Rian endlessly fascinating. Enchanting, even. Yes. I came to believe a kind of spell had been cast on me. Looking back I think I lost all sense of myself in the weeks that followed. I play-acted a man, Ussa’s pet Greek, a charming traveller, but if I am honest I felt completely out of my depth in that strange land where women were strong as rocks and men as baffling as the tides.

  We chased Manigan, never catching him, and the pursuit took us so far north we reached the veritable end of the world, Thule, where sea and air and land congeal and make no sense at all. A strange spirit of the sea, a monster, rose from the ocean and Rian and Toma sang a song to it that completely unhinged me. I struggled to keep a grip on myself through calm and storm and near starvation. The skipper’s boy died and was tossed overboard, as if he was no more than a dog. One of Ussa’s slaves, Faradh, followed.

  Among it all, I don’t know why, I tried and failed to be a master to Rian. That is all I seem able to say about this now.

  THULE

  After writing yesterday, I walked for hours and reached the conclusion that I have to be more candid with you than I have been so far. I cannot simply skip over what is difficult for me to write.

  The northernmost part of my journey has developed, in memory, a dreamlike quality. I spent many happy hours musing, glorying in my momentous achievement. I was further north than any of my compatriots had ever been, I was sure of this, further even than most would believe possible. I didn’t appreciate then what I know only too well now, that they would mock me, that people like to feel safe and contained within boundaries. Even powerful people, those I used to admire and those whose respect I hoped to gain through my discoveries, hate change. I have learned that we are few who thrive by pushing on into the unknown, revealing what lies beyond.

  The sky above me swathed in cloud, I exulted in what I had seen. For all that day we had sailed among ice, plates of it, like a temple mosaic. We crept our way between the floes, slush parting before the bow, shouldering and shoving aside, where necessary, big slabs of ice. The pack ice is well named: the blocks of ice swarm like wolves, menacing from all directions at once. The barbarian slaves were nervous but the skipper had my faith. He couldn’t have got to the age he was without knowing all he needed to know to survive in those waters; he would have perished long since otherwise. He followed a sea creature with a horn for a while – a genuine unicorn – which seemed to understand a song he sang to it. It guided us to where the ice thinned, which it did suddenly, and we were out in open water.

  Beyond the ice we sailed on, and it was then I took the helm to let Toma rest. Contemplating the ice and its sharp boundary with sea, I made up my mind that it was time to take my slave across a similar threshold. Rian was a virgin, I was sure of that, and as I steered the boat, keeping it in the groove where the breeze could be most help to us, water trickling under the keel, I reflected how like ice Rian could be, and yet how much I desired to set her on fire.

  We had, as the poets say, been playing with smoke and sparks, or so it felt to me, and it was time to build a blaze. This metaphor was not random, for the place we found ourselves in beyond the ice was a marvel of volcanic mystery rising right out of the ocean. A mountain belched smoke and its steep side glowed, as night fell, with lava. There was a pungent smell and a hiss as brimstone flowed into brine. It was extraordinary.

  Toma took the helm from me. Then the wind died. We were carried in by a current, closer and closer towards the fuming shore. Eventually, we had to get the slaves to row and my Rian pulled her oar alongside the men, like the tough little creature she is. I was full of admiration and watched her, imagining my hands on the muscles of her back, my body against hers in a rhythm similar to the heave and thrust of rowing. Ussa was impatient and wanted to use her holly whip on them, to lash them into greater speed, but Toma and I pleaded lenience and, for once, prevailed.

  So when Toma let them stop, deeming us to be once again at a safe distance from the shore with the tidal stream easing, I led Rian under the shelter at the prow. She was exhausted and shivering, drenched with sweat, so I helped her out of her wet clothes, wrapped her in my wolfskin coat and took her to my bunk, where I warmed her against my body, bringing myself to a perfect height of readiness. She writhed like a kitten trying to escape and I had to hold her firmly to overcome her resistance.


  It is only natural, I suppose, to fear being taken across a threshold. I felt sure that once she was over the other side she would share the flames I felt inside, and relish the heat of a mutual fire. And so I pushed her bodily across the boundary that held her as a girl, puncturing it, thrusting her through it into womanhood.

  But afterwards, far from being joined to me, she seemed more distant and withdrawn than ever. It was unbearable, her ashen sullenness. I felt as if I had bought something sparkling bright and now it was doused and dull, mere dust. She would not speak. She would not even look at me.

  In my disgust I sold her back to Ussa.

  It is only looking back that I can see how much that disgust was displaced from me onto her, how inside my petty hatred and scorn a deeper shame was hiding. The real boundary violated that night, I see so clearly now, was within me.

  ON SONGS

  Songs contain a strange magic. I can’t sing a note myself, have never been able to hold a tune. I don’t know why. Perhaps it has something to do with having lost my mother so young, so all the songs I heard as a child were sung by slaves and servants, almost never in my mother tongue. Perhaps that is what makes their power all the more intriguing.

  One of the things I noticed about the slaves aboard Ussa’s boat was that they were in a continual state of lethargy unless a song was being sung. It was part of Toma’s genius as a skipper that he used tunes to work the crew.

  I remember when I became conscious of this. It was somewhere close to Rian’s home. The wind was favourable, and there was that delicious sound of the sea slapping under the keel. As always, Toma was singing along with it, some shanty that seemed to make all the crew’s work easier, the ropes coil more evenly, the sail hide more pliant and the sea and the wind and the boat join together in a kind of unity. ‘The chicken rock is a dead man’s sock, a head on a block, a funeral frock, oh give it a wide berth, let’s give it all you’re worth, stay off and away to the inner bay, off and away to the cosy bay’. There were lots like that. I guess they were really useful in some places, but they seemed to sing them at all kinds of odd times.