The Amber Seeker

by Mandy Haggith

  Wherever I have been in the world since that voyage, if I overheard a sailor or a person in some drunken gathering or a beggar or a slave at a task, whoever it might be, singing one of Toma’s songs, I always recognised them immediately as his and seemed to hear him in the distance, in the background, singing along. He sailed that boat by his voice, I swear it. I never heard him sing when the boat was not in motion, and never on land. And I never heard Ussa sing on the boat at all. They each had their domain. They still have, I assume. Perhaps in some strange way their very different styles of singing united them, bonded them, and defined their relative strengths and the loci of their power. When the sea played under the keel, Toma was master, and he sang the tunes. All the rest of the time, Ussa was in charge.

  Most of the time, Ussa was in charge.

  Toma’s songs were primarily utilitarian, with a definite nautical purpose: to make light of a hard task, like hauling up a sail. They would allow work that needed to be done repetitively, like bailing, seem to symbolise something else, sometimes joyful, sometimes violent, sometimes moving from despair to the ineffable, so that as sails filled with air or an anchor rose from the deep, those making it happen would feel their spirits lift. Sometimes his songs were pure mischief and I don’t know if Ussa realised how many of the mermaids were mocking her, or how many of the inclement winds in the songs were intended as metaphors of her moods. Often the songs were pure innocent fun, ridiculous stories regaled for the sheer mirth they invariably created, or so lewd you’d blush if I told you them.

  Occasionally he sang strange, mystical wonders, and these could unmake a person, but most often his songs were navigational, verse after verse pointing out the landmarks needed to steer a safe passage from one place to another, an oral version of the periplus. Some of these were downright strange. I remember one: ‘The flat face of the salty fisher winks across to the shaggy rock. Roll among the seals, cock a dog leg and throw yourself down upon the block.’ It meant something to him, no doubt.

  *

  After Thule, on the approach to the Cat Isles, I remember Toma muttering to himself in a sing-song way: ‘…stack with a hat, under if flat, wind against tide, half a mile wide…’

  I was curious. I asked what he was singing.

  ‘It’s the inshore lore for here, that’s all.’

  I listened to him, chuntering on. As he was singing he looked intently at all of the stacks and geos. He nodded and sang to each rocky outcrop we passed with a kind of chanting voice. Birds passing led him to another kind of recitation. More than half I could not catch, as he was murmuring to no-one in particular. Throughout the western coastal journey there had been a boy, Callum, with him, but he had died in the northern ocean, and I realised now that in his seemingly endless chat to the boy, what he had probably been doing was reciting all this lore, teaching the youngster, as we travelled. What I had taken as the endless idle chatter of an old man with a captive audience I now saw as the passing on of ancient wisdoms. He was a walking almanac, this man. Inside his head was an intimate knowledge of the coastline, expressed in verse or song, gathered and passed on by generations of seafarers.

  What a loss it must have been, therefore, to lose his boy. I don’t know if Callum was his grandson, or even related to him. I never asked. But he wasn’t just a companion for the old fellow. He was, or he would have been, the repository of all that knowledge, journey by journey. I didn’t understand then, but now I do, how he must have mourned his passing, and grieved for his loss. I wonder if he ever found another boy to take his place?

  NORTHERN ISLES

  You know, I wasn’t the only one fascinated by Rian. In the Seal Isles, where I spent much of the short summer after she had been sold to the Black Chieftain, I encountered a druid who believed she was the stuff of legend.

  We were in the Seal Isles because Ussa had run out of bronze goods to trade and wanted to track down Gruach, the bronze smith, and his daughter, who we had left there on our way north. They were exactly where we’d left them, in a friendly community centred on a big roundhouse which had an endless traffic of people in and out, cooking and sharing, bantering and bartering, presided over by a hugely jolly, buxom, loud-laughing hostess.

  While I was there I heard about a huge ring of stones, at Brodgar. Perhaps you know it? An extraordinary edifice, an astronomical device of stone on a massive scale, built by the ancients, and still in use, like a calendar in the landscape. It allows them to map the moon and stars’ journeys in the sky. As there is nothing like it where I am from, I wasted no time in getting a guide to take me.

  I arrived in the late morning. It was damp and still and the biting midgies were wicked. A group of longhaired, bearded mystics were gathered around a smoking fire. One of them got up to meet me. He was a wispy grey-cloaked man who introduced himself as the master of the stones. He gave brief evasive answers to my questions and, although he allowed me to take a gnomon reading, when I attempted to measure the dimensions of the circle, he told me politely, but firmly, that I must leave.

  I wanted to protest, but one of the druids by the fire separated from them and offered to walk with me back to the roundhouse and explain some of what I had seen. He was an ugly man, pockmarked, with an arm missing, and a straggle of dark hair and beard. He spoke Keltic with the southern twang that Ussa and Og had, and sure enough, he too was from Belerion.

  ‘I’m a wanderer,’ he said. ‘Uill Tabar’s my name and happiness is my business. How are you? Where are you from? Far away, I can see. Tell me all about your travels.’ He was loquacious and funny and he said he could drive out bad spirits, intervene in difficult times and foretell the future. ‘Mostly, I collect prophecies.’ He grinned at me. ‘What can I do for you?’

  I asked him about the ring of stones, and he was rather secretive about it and changed the subject back to my journey. Eventually we got talking about tides. I described my amazement at some of the strange currents I had observed around the islands. This was clearly something he was interested in as well. He told me that the channels between the islands have flows of incredible power and what I had seen was nothing exceptional. The local fisher people think nothing of the sea between islands flowing west in the morning and east in the afternoon, reaching speeds as fast as a rapid river in each direction. He talked about eddies and whirlpools. He explained the dangers of standing waves and overfalls if the wind is in the opposite direction to the tidal stream, and the violent seas caused by strong cross winds.

  Most importantly, he showed a keen understanding of the tidal rhythms and their relationship to the moon. He confirmed that they ebb and flow each night and again each day, a little later each day than the last, in a cycle that follows the moon, reaching their maximum strength when the moon is full and when it is new, then weakening again when it is waning and waxing. This knowledge confirmed my belief that there is great knowledge among these barbarian people, and I wished their astronomical lore was less closely guarded.

  At the roundhouse he was clearly well-known as ‘The Prophet’ and welcomed for his humorous stories. After dinner, he and Ussa were joking with each other.

  ‘You’re going to have to stop the slaving my dear. It’ll bring you bad luck, I’ve told you before. The only fortune it’s going to make you is bad fortune.’

  ‘Pshh, what do you know?’ She elbowed him. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve done rather well this year. I’ve a boatload of fine whalebone tools, a piece of amber you’d be amazed by and a handsome new crewman, all thanks to a ginger girl I won at craps in Assynt.’

  He turned round to her. ‘A ginger girl, did you say?’

  ‘She was his for a while, wasn’t she? Your wee pet, Rian.’ She pointed a long fingernail towards me and I nodded an acknowledgement.

  ‘Rian.’ He turned his head back slowly but his eyes were wide. ‘And where is she now?’

  ‘You’re interested, are you?’ Ussa chucked him under the chin like a child. ‘Come on Mr Prophet, spit it out. What do you know of he
r?’

  ‘Ach I’m just feeling sorry for a lassie ripped from her home. And are you still chasing that damned stone?’

  His diversion worked and the conversation fell to the Stone of Telling and the prophecies associated with it. One was that it would make a good king kill his son, which had come true, and that incident earned it the moniker of the Death Stone. A second said that anyone who held it would be infected with a kind of bloodlust. The third was that it would be neutralised by a child whose mother, grandfather and great grandmother were slaves, but whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather were free.

  ‘These three generations uniting slavery and freedom will end the Death Stone’s tyranny,’ he said.

  We were all rapt listening to him. The fire had died down as we talked and we were sitting in a dim glow, his eyes glinting as lamplight caught them with each movement of his head.

  ‘You mean it would destroy its power of Telling. And that will never happen. It’s a curse that can never come true,’ Ussa retorted.

  They argued on and I lost interest in the debate.

  The next morning, Ussa and Og appeared with Uill Tabar in tow. He looked much the worse for wear and I didn’t like to ask what might have ensued. I suspected that Ussa had resorted to force to get what she wanted to hear out of the poor man. Whatever it was, Ussa now wanted to leave straightaway. I was used to her sudden whims by now and I was optimistic that we might be heading east across the North Sea, but in fact she wanted to go back north to the Cat Isles. She claimed ‘unfinished business’ with the Black Chieftain and I surmised she had got wind that Manigan might be there with the stone.

  ‘After a quick visit, we’ll find you some amber, I promise,’ she said to me.

  Of course, I agreed to go with her. My tin was still in the hold of her boat.

  Gruach and his daughter Fraoch came along with us, plus a local seaman who led Toma right through the centre of the islands, along a succession of fascinating tidal channels. We dropped him at the north end and sailed on, overnight, to the Cat Isles.

  Early in the morning, as we approached an island, Toma called to me. He was pointing out to starboard. At first I couldn’t make out what he was seeing, then a big round head, like a whiskery barrel, broke the surface. It had two impressive fangs.

  ‘Tooth-walker,’ Toma said. ‘Sea horse.’ He raised his voice and called to the beast. ‘Greetings, Old Gentleman.’

  The creature lifted itself up, like a seal does, to get a better view of where the voice was coming from. It was just like a seal, after all. A big seal. Just an animal, like any other. After all that I had heard, all the mystery and moon magic of its ivory, that was all there was to a walrus. It bobbed, then dived, its rear flippers like a pair of gloved hands. They seemed to wave, and then it was gone.

  MOUSA

  It was fair this morning so I ate my breakfast out in the courtyard, basking in the low-angled sun. At this time of year it feels so health-giving, as if it can burn away the misery of winter. As I got up to go indoors, to return here to my desk, I passed the entrance to the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, where one of the female slaves was sitting in the doorway, stitching a fine cloth, catching the light. I deduced that she probably belongs to my sister-in-law. She is pregnant, very much so, which I suppose is why she hasn’t gone to Greece with her mistress, nor out to the vineyard.

  The woman’s pale face had a kind of translucence, as if the child makes itself visible as a glow from within, signalling that it is more than a mere lump in the belly. Seeing her reminded me of when I first learned that Rian was pregnant.

  We had been to an island off the mainland of the Cat Isles, which had on it a most impressively built broch. I was in a good mood, I seem to remember, having been enjoying our passage, particularly the tidal streams which are so strong. I had been sketching the layout of the islands in my notes, and fitting together an understanding of how the rips and races follow a fixed schedule, running, pausing, then running back, twice each day, in synchrony with the tides. We had on board a crewman pilot who knew these waters since childhood and had the patience to explain their flows to me, and although he kept referring to an undersea serpent as their energy source, which frankly I believed to be nonsense, he was otherwise lucid about the flows and ebbs. So I was greatly stimulated when we made landfall and looked forward to the good hospitality I had come to expect at a broch.

  I was sadly disappointed. The building itself was large and belonged to the Chieftain’s wife’s family. Maadu was a dour, stout woman with an equine face and a gaudy clutter of bronze and silver jewellery on her neck and arms. She welcomed Ussa like an old friend and was delighted that Gruach was with us. She urged him to set up his forge as soon as he could. She was making preparations for the wedding of her son later in the summer, so she wanted gifts of bronze as well as the usual repairs to kitchenware. She told us this as we walked up towards the broch from the shore. She remembered me from when we had first made landfall after our great northern ocean voyage, and flattered me that I was looking much less drawn and hungry now. I replied to the effect that everyone benefits from summer’s largesse.

  Although the broch was substantial, there were very few people there. Maadu explained that she used it as a summer residence and had taken just enough slaves there to manage the summer crops and tend the cattle.

  Among them was Rian. She ducked in through the doorway, backwards, pulling a pail of milk in after her and as she turned, I recognised her. To say I was shocked would be a grave understatement. She was filthy. It disgusted me that I’d ever touched her, to be frank. Dressed in nothing better than rags, feet bare and crusted with cow dung, that amber-coloured hair matted and dull, her face so bony her eyes seemed to bulge from it.

  I am a clean person, fastidious in my ablutions whenever I can be, and such a state of ill-kempt slatternliness revolted me. She smelled of the midden. She did not make eye-contact and I did not want to look at her.

  The broch was untidy altogether and there was nothing and no-one to amuse me in it, so I took myself off to explore the island, and was pleased to leave. I believed that this sight of Rian had cured me of my fascination for her. My admiration curdled to contempt, or so I told myself.

  It was only later, on the boat returning to the mainland, that Ussa told me what she had learned there. I wished I had found out sooner, so I could have looked more closely at the girl.

  We were seated on a bench on the boat. Ussa’s hand latched onto my knee. ‘So, have you left a string of bastards all along your trail? You’re a sly one. I had a hunch you and she were up to it. No doubt the child is yours, eh? Given the timing. Or it could be Maadu’s husband’s of course, though she swears not.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  I looked at Ussa. She was fuming. ‘And now Maadu won’t sell her because she’s pregnant. Her excuse is that as it was the Chieftain that bought her, she’ll have to consult him. He might want to breed from her. I told her I think it’s your brat.’ Ussa curled up her lip as if I was a flea-ridden dog.

  ‘So?’ I could not understand why she was so angry with me.

  ‘You heard the prophecy. Now I’ll have to wait for the Chieftain. Damn it all. Men. Can’t keep your hands off…’

  It dawned on me eventually that she was trying to buy Rian back because she believed she would fulfil the prophecy Uill Tabar had told. I wanted to say, ‘It’s only a story,’ but I didn’t, of course.

  Ussa looked smug. ‘It turns out she belongs to the Winged Isle. One of those round houses near where we stayed, when you were off meeting the spirits of the underworld. I wish I’d found that out earlier. But anyway, I can make full use of it now I know.’

  ‘Did that druid tell you that?’

  ‘I got it out of him.’

  Something about the way she said this made me leave off questioning her. There was steel in her eye, and fear, something trapped, like a caged hawk, and I had learned to leave her alone when she looked li
ke that.

  My mind raced. Father of a child of that bag of filth and bones I had just witnessed? I was horrified. But I said nothing to Ussa, shrugging it off with a laugh, making some dismissive, enigmatic remark. And Ussa took me to mean that I had no interest in any bastard offspring I might leave behind me. Nothing could have been further from the truth. That woman had no insight into me on such a matter at all.

  *

  It was a busy landing and I was taken to a house belonging to a widely-travelled sailor who kept me entertained until late that night. So it wasn’t until I lay down in my bed that I could think through what Ussa had suggested. It was so hard to match the maiden I had taken to my bunk with the slut I had seen that morning. I tried to imagine a child growing in her belly, but I hadn’t looked closely at her at all. My impression was only of dirt and skinniness, and because of this, for a while at least, I dismissed any thought of her as the possible mother of a child of mine. I lived, for the rest of that brief summer, in a state of denial.

  ON AMBER AND IVORY

  Amber was what I was searching for, really. The tin and ivory were part of my quest, but what motivated me most was the mystery of amber. Devotion to Artemis and the memory of my dead mother were perhaps part of that, but also sheer curiosity about the origins of such a peculiar material.