It was amber that drew me to Rian and why I have never really been able to let her go, even though of course I have abandoned her. In person, but not in my soul. In my heart she still stands there with that glowing hair, those quiet features, those bright eyes, that calm. She is the human embodiment of the gem, which although stone-like, is not exactly a stone. It is the living stuff of a tree, magical and supernaturally alive.
I have met others who believe it is a bird secretion, but I prefer the traditional story, that it’s the tears of the sun god’s daughters, the Heliades, who have been turned into poplars. It smells of tree sap and it has a kind of pliability, a plasticity, which makes it like resin, but in reality it is stronger and denser than anything a normal tree can exude. Perhaps in ages past trees were different, or perhaps it is the ageing that it has undergone since Helios’ daughters’ days of weeping that has given it its texture. Whatever, it arouses my passion. It is the most magical of all materials and it pushes my scientific understanding more than anything else I know.
It was Manigan who first told me where I would find it. I talked to him in the court of the Black Chieftain of the Cat Isles. Well-named, he was black-haired and black-hearted. I was invited to go sea-hunting with him and I turned him down, and ever afterwards he treated me as only half a man, not even half. Ussa went with him, of course. I’ve never known a woman more thirsty for blood and killing, and no matter how often she hunts she always seems momentarily victorious at the moment she walks through the door, and then disappointed not to have killed more. The day they returned was like every other. She paraded in with her slaves carrying the gutted carcase of a seal and within minutes was making withering remarks about their failure to catch even one of a pod of pilot whales they had glimpsed. ‘I would like to be eating whale meat now’, I heard her say, the juice of the seal steak literally dribbling down her chin. I was always amazed she dared to be so rude. It was a slight on the Chieftain’s hospitality. I could see it drove his wife nearly to distraction but the Chieftain and his son were in thrall to Ussa. They treated her like some kind of queen.
Anyway, while they hunted I did not go. I wanted some time on land to take a gnomon measurement and do some careful observations of the sun. I took a slave and marched him up to the highest point of land, where our position on an island in a sheltered sea loch, which they call a voe, was clear. I had been keeping track of time and it was by my calculations only about ten days before the summer solstice. I measured the ratio of the noon shadow to the length of the gnomon, and from the length of it was able to calculate that the height of the sun was only three cubits. I had some hour-candles with me, and although people thought I was completely crazy, I burnt one continuously from one sunrise to the next. By measuring the length of the candle at sunset and again the next sunrise I calculated that the day length was almost exactly four times the length of the night, which lasted barely five hours. It never really got dark. I was now sure that no Greek had ever been so far north. I was hungry to find out more about the land where the sun does not set at all in summer from some of the sailors of those islands who frequent the northern ocean.
After we came down from the hill I sought out some of the elders with knowledge and experience of the seas. There were some great wayfarers among those men. They have a special affinity with the sea and no doubt many old customs that they kept secret from me. Taboos are strong among the seamen, many won’t let a woman on their boat, for example, some have a phobia of the colour green, and they don’t trust easily. Quite rightly, in my view.
There was a lively discussion among three grey-haired sailors. They exchanged a few words with me in a friendly enough way and took my questions, one with a nod of his head, one a scratch of his bulbous nose, the last with the tap of a calloused finger on his knee, checking with each other for confirmation before giving me back an answer. Most of the time the conversation flowed between them in their own dialect like a flow of jabbling water between boats in a harbour, full of chuckling and backslapping and moments of thoughtful, gloomy contemplation. I wanted to ask what they were saying but I also did not wish to be rude or make myself a burden to them. Then we were joined by Manigan, who seemed to know two of them, and he began to act as an interpreter for me, passing what was said back and forth between us. I was surprised that he was willing to be here, given Ussa’s presence, but when I asked him why he wasn’t worried about her he just laughed.
‘She’s hunting. What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. I’m not going to let her ruin the fun of the wedding feast,’ he said.
Then he started quizzing me, and he must have made me sound interesting enough to the old fellows because they seemed to become curious about my journey and wanted to be helpful to me in my search for amber, although like I said, it was Manigan who actually told me where to go.
‘The lynx stone, they call it. It washes up on beaches on the far side of the North Sea.’ He gestured eastwards. ‘If you’re lucky you can find it.’
‘Why do they all it lynx stone?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s the colour of cat’s piss.’ He laughed.
‘And where, exactly, is it found on beaches?’
‘On the eastern shore of the North Sea. There’s a long beautiful beach to the north of a promontory where there are polite but very dull people who may show you exactly where to go, or they might not, depending on how boring they are being.’ This was typical of Manigan; if there was a joke possible, he would make it. He said something rapidly in their dialect and the old men laughed. Then he proceeded to give me good directions of how many days’ sailing south and east the coastline in question lay, a few key landmarks and the name of a village.
I committed all he told me to memory, thanked him and asked how I could repay him for the information. He looked somewhat offended. ‘I have given you nothing at all. If you expect to pay for nothing you must get taken for a lot of gold.’
‘Knowledge is valuable,’ I said.
He sat back and crossed his arms. ‘Most valuable things are not worth paying for, and the most valuable of all cannot be bought.’
I could not accept this philosophy. Everything has its price, and I didn’t want to be in debt to anyone, especially not to an enemy of Ussa.
He exchanged words with the old men again. Then he said, ‘I know. Tell me a story! That’s what I want in payment: a story from your country.’
So I told him this. ‘Phaethon was the son of the god Helios, and like all sons he believed what his father did was simple, that it was nothing much at all and that he, his father’s son, could do it easily. But Helios’ job was to drive the chariot of solar fire across the sky from east to west each day. No-one else had the strength of will and body to control the fiery steeds on their great daily climb across the firmament, across the high noon plains and down to their evening resting place. But Phaethon was young and like all youths he thought himself bigger than he was in reality.’
Manigan smiled at this, his eyes on mine.
I was encouraged by his attention. ‘One day, he got up early, took the chariot and drove it up into the morning sky. As the horses got into their stride, he had to use all of his strength to keep them running straight and of course the animals realised that the boy didn’t have full control of them so they started to gallop. Once they were out of rhythm the chariot began veering and slewing about. The horses panicked.’ I was probably gesturing with my arms by this stage. ‘One of the steeds broke out of its harness and the chariot tumbled. Its fire spilled across the firmament. In minutes, there was smoking, flaming chaos and all the gods were calling on Zeus to do something before the whole world was destroyed by fire.’
‘Zeus?’ Manigan furrowed his eyebrows.
‘The chief god.’
He nodded.
I continued. ‘With a thunderbolt, Zeus struck Phaethon down to earth. He sent water sprites to dowse the flames. Phaethon fell into the Eridanus River and drowned, and we were all saved from being tinder. His sisters, the Heliad
es, rushed to the river and stood there, wailing and grieving until eventually Zeus turned them into poplar trees. Their weeping, with the clarity of tear-drops and the colour and intensity of sunbeams, is electrum, the shining one, amber.’
Through it all, Manigan listened intently. ‘What was the river?’
‘Eridanus,’ I said.
‘Eridanus,’ he repeated.
I corrected his pronunciation, which he didn’t seem to mind at all.
Once satisfied he could say it right, he said, ‘Thank you for this story. I like it, and I shall tell it, but when I do, I am going to make them the tears of the girl who loved him, not his sisters.’
‘But that isn’t what the story says. It was the Heliades.’
‘Let me tell our friends.’ He turned to the old men and gave a little preamble, then told them the story. I could tell he had begun because it was as though he was suddenly a different person. His voice changed, its tones were richer and had a sing-song lilt. There was a rhythmic patterning as he repeated phrases and his body was alive with gestures. I wondered if the same transformation had come over me when I told it, but I doubted it.
After he had spoken there was some debate among the old men.
‘We’re discussing the sisters,’ Manigan told me.
There was a bit more banter.
‘They agree with you.’ He pointed to the oldest two men. ‘But me and Tor think the story is better if there’s a broken heart, not just sisterly grief. It’s a good story, though. The arrogance of youth and the wild horses of the sky, amber has all of that fire within it, we agree. But what we’re debating is what kind of tears are needed for it. We like that there are women, so that the amber contains both masculine and feminine, and that they are tears of grief, of loss. I think there must be an erotic charge to it as well, hence wanting it to be a girl who lusted after Phaethon, who loved his courage, his headstrong bravado, maybe even egged him on to test himself, so sure was she that he could make the sun shine for everyone, the way he made it shine for her. Aye. The old boys say the amber is pure and so it is better if it is sisterly love, with no eroticism. But I want that charge. I feel it in the stone.’
‘Do you know that when you rub it, it attracts things?’
He nodded and spoke to the men. One of them shook his head.
‘I have some.’ I got out my pouch, opened it and took one of the larger amber pieces out. I held it on my open palm.
Manigan, without missing a beat, took it, rubbed it vigorously on the sleeve of his shirt, then wafted it close to the silvery head of the eldest man. Hairs lifted, and he made them dance and wriggle, clinging to the amber. Everyone laughed and Manigan said something lewd no doubt, echoed and augmented by comments from the others. They giggled like schoolboys and Manigan winked at me.
‘I think my version of the story is the winner!’
‘But it’s not the true story.’
He lifted both hands. ‘Truth? What matters is whether people like what they hear.’
I wanted to argue, but he had my piece of amber.
‘What do you want to swap for this?’ He let it drop from one hand into the other in turn.
I seized my chance. ‘A piece of your walrus ivory and the knowledge of where it comes from.’
He was taken aback.
‘My livelihood and my secrets too.’ He put his hand into his pocket, together with my amber. ‘You don’t ask for much, do you? I’ll give you one or the other, which is it?’
‘I’ll take the ivory,’ I said. ‘I always trust hard evidence before a story.’
He sniffed with indignant scorn. ‘You turn down a sacred mystery.’
‘I have more amber, I have no ivory. That’s all. I’ve learned that the ivory comes from a tusked sea horse. I got a glimpse of one on the way here. I gather you hunt them.’
‘The Old Gentlemen are my compatriots. I am the Mutterer. It is my duty.’
‘So, you’ll give me a piece of ivory, and I’ll shake the hand of the man who hunts the animal it comes from.’
He took a shard of ivory from an inside pocket, and laid it on his palm. ‘This is a tusk tip. It contains all the mystery of the northern ocean. Treat it with the reverence the Old Gentleman who gave it to me deserves.’
I took it off his palm. ‘It’s a fair swap.’
‘Swear that you will revere it.’
‘I can’t swear that. It’s just a piece of ivory.’
‘No, no. It’s not just anything. If you treat it like that, if you don’t recognise it as sacred, then one piece is the same as any other, and any piece can be swapped for a coin or a gem. Then everything is reduced to exchange and nothing has any sacred value. Believe me, that way lies greed that can never be satisfied.’
‘It’s just bone. It’s beautiful, I give it that. But to me it’s no more sacred than meat. If everything was sacred then trade would not be possible.’
‘Not so. I just traded you this sacred thing for a beautiful gemstone with a memorable story behind it.’
‘But surely any bit of amber would have sufficed. Or gold of the requisite value to allow you to buy some amber, if that’s what you desire.’
‘Not at all. I have no interest in gold. I’ve seen what it does to people. Look at Ussa, for goodness sake.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
He shook his head at me as if I was an idiot. ‘She sells people as if they’re trinkets.’ He took the amber out of his pocket and held it up to the light. ‘I wanted this because of the story that introduced it, which is now contained within it. This is the object that lifted my friends’ hair with its strange attraction, that gave us all this good time together. I wouldn’t want another piece. And in exchange you have this tusk tip. It is unique, true, but you turned down the chance to hear a story, which would, I can promise you, have been more memorable.’
I told him I was satisfied with just the ivory, but if he thought I should hear the story I’d be delighted to listen to his yarn.
He shook his head. ‘You have a strange idea of value. I don’t want to trade with you after all. I’ll have that back.’ He switched the amber for the ivory on my hand, and slipped the tusk tip back in his pocket.
From that point on he made no secret that he didn’t like me. Or maybe he just wanted a chance to show off by telling a better story than I had. More likely. He beats me at story-telling, I’ll give him that, though I think my loose ends are becoming as bad as his. He always seemed to have a tendency to leave a thread of a tale hanging. I think he did it deliberately, to leave the listener wondering, to give them that feeling of teetering on a cliff, so they want you to carry on. No doubt he often used this trick to get a drink or a bed, by leaving his audience feeling that if they treated him well, he’d cough up something more. I don’t think I did that with the Phaethon legend, yet here it is the opposite extreme: I’m leaving so many hanging threads my entire garment of a memoir is fraying. I am getting old, my dear, forgive me.
Anyway, I had missed my chance to get a sample of walrus ivory from its hunter, and it took me a long time to get the piece from which the dolphin amulet was carved. You’ll have to be patient with me. I am trying to weave the threads of this story together, even if it is threadbare in places.
THE CHASE
My feelings about Rian erupted again at the wedding feast. I wasn’t really looking forward to the event, as I have a dread of the dancing that inevitably follows such things and I had vowed to myself to leave early. I delayed my arrival, fussing about with my notes on the tides, so that when I reached the wedding feast the celebrations were already well underway. It was a big crowd. People must have come from all of the islands and they had set the party up outside the broch. I was shown to a bench next to Ussa and treated as an honoured guest. And who should come to fill my cup, but Rian?
What a transformation had come over her! Dressed in a simple frock and apron, her amber hair tied back in a plait, she looked radiant, with clear skin and those sea-
green eyes. I feasted my gaze on her. She was exactly as beautiful as I had remembered and although she didn’t meet my glances, her modesty only made me keener to watch her.
As she carried a jug of ale to the guests I was reminded of the gilded statue of Athena at her temple in Massalia. Such poise, such elegance, and the haughty superiority of a goddess, untouched by the filth and lewdness of men. The squalor of the summer was an aberration I soon forgot. The farmyard muck had blinded me to her grace, but now it was all washed off I knew with absolute certainty that I had not been wrong to take her as my own, and I wanted her again.
Yet I held back, observing her. Several times, Ussa had to tap me on the arm to attract my attention back to the conversation with the Chieftain’s family. Yet as soon as I could, I returned to watching. I had a good vantage of the broch doorway. Whenever she ducked away inside with an empty jug or dirty dishes, it was as if the sun went behind a cloud, and each time she tripped back out, balancing a tray or with another pitcher for the thirsty throng, I felt myself latch back onto her like a dog. So when Ussa started hussling the Chieftain to buy her back, I joined in on Ussa’s side, hoping, really, to get her for myself. I was drunk enough for it to feel like a game. I would have paid anything to touch that tender, bronze skin again.
Ussa haggled with the Chieftain until he had agreed that she could buy her back from him. She offered him bronze, but what he said he really wanted was ivory, and she gave him a beautiful creamy slab of it.
I was furious. If I’d known she had it I would have bought it off her like a shot, but when I challenged her on it, she simply laughed, and told me to ask the Chieftain’s steward, who could procure anything I wanted.
So, the morning after the feast, I was asking the steward whether there were any walrus hunters other than Manigan who might be willing to trade a tusk for gold, when Ussa dashed in, her hair in a frazzle as if she’d been dragged out of bed.
‘That little bitch slave has run off with my thieving cousin.’
The Amber Seeker Page 11
