The Amber Seeker

by Mandy Haggith

  She also confessed to her own sins, and some of these were truly awful. The neglect of her sick mother, causing her death. The murder of a baby. Enslavement of people through tricks and deviousness. I knew of some of this. I had seen it: Rian was one like this. But she blamed the people like me, who bought such slaves from her, as the real villains, as if she was just an instrument, as if Rian’s enslavement had been premeditated by me.

  She turned to me. ‘Do you remember when we met Uill Tabar?’

  ‘The druid?’ I said. ‘The prophet.’

  ‘Yes. And do you remember the third prophecy of the stone?’

  ‘No.’ At that moment old superstitious stories were the last things I had in my mind.

  ‘Rian, the slave girl, fits the prophecy, and she’s carrying your bastard child, which means if it’s born and gets its hands on the stone…’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ the Greatmother interjected. ‘What stone?’

  Ussa took her hand from her eye, looked at the blood, and put it back. She spoke in a dull voice, not looking at the Greatmother. ‘The Head of Telling, a magic stone with three faces. It answers any question. It’s my birthright and it’s been stolen.’ Then she sobbed out her story about why she needed it.

  Apparently she had gambled it away, pretending she possessed it when she only wished she did. She believed it was rightly hers, but the real reason she wanted it so badly was not for its own sake but because she owed it to her father, Sevenheads, the last in a lineage of warlords with gory reputations. She said he would kill her if she didn’t get it and give it to him. Then she turned to me again.

  ‘But what Uill Tabar told me is that little slut of yours…’

  I wanted to point out that she was no longer mine, sadly, but Ussa was in full flight.

  ‘Her grandmother was a queen-slave, a shaman, and concubine of one of the Kings of Eriu. Her bastard son became the secret lover of a chieftain’s daughter on the Winged Isle, and when she got pregnant she had the child in hiding and guess who it was? Yes, Rian. And what have you gone and done but give her a third generation – King, noble woman, stranger, all breeding into the line of slaves.’ She pointed her finger at me as if I was a devil.

  ‘So what?’ said the Greatmother.

  Ussa turned to her. ‘Their spawn will nullify the stone’s power.’

  The Greatmother shrugged. It didn’t interest her. Why should it? ‘What else?’

  Ussa’s rant got worse. She confessed to procuring little children for old perverted men to have their evil way with. She alluded to my behaviour with Rian on that account as well, as if Rian was a little child and not a young woman. She painted me in the most unpleasant light. The way she explained it all, weeping and fearful and contrite, she painted herself as a tool in the hands of the conniving men like me who would travel to the ends of the earth to satisfy their ugly cravings.

  It was my turn to be humiliated. I’m not proud of what happened. At first, I got angry and I shouted at Ussa and called her a liar, called her worse things than that. And then the Greatmother turned her attention to me and extracted my confession, if that is what it was.

  I have wondered ever since how to understand what she drew from me. It was a portrayal of myself that was new to me. Any life story is partial, constructed from events like a necklace of beads strung on a thread. So is this chain of writing I am creating for you, but it was different from this one, different in every respect. I am not sure whether up until that day I had ever told the story of who I am, but I am certain that if I had, it was nothing like the version of myself the Greatmother pulled from me. I have re-told my tale over and over since that time, to myself mostly, trying to make sense of it, trying to rediscover myself. I have concluded that any life story, this tale I tell you and the one the Greatmother got, reflect more about the person told to than about the teller. A knapped flint is just a slice of the original stone and mostly reflects the skill of the knapper. That woman knapped stories sharper and more deadly than anyone I have ever met. I wonder why. What was it about her? I’d like to say it was her eyes, which were uniquely penetrating and blue. But that is no doubt oversimplified. It was what was behind her eyes, something powerful, something dangerous. All this is by way of an excuse, I suppose. I must give you some sense of what I told her, even though it shames me.

  She began by asking me where I was born and who my parents were and what happened to me in my early childhood before my memories began. This is what I told her.

  CONFESSION

  I was born in Massalia. My father was a councillor and wealthy enough to be able to control a large vineyard, or perhaps it was the vineyard that enabled him to be wealthy enough to have a house in town where traders would come, so he was asked to be on the city council, the Boule. First land and then power, as always, follows. Our wine was prized and traded far and wide. My father sent amphorae away by the cartload every autumn, by the boatload every spring.

  My mother was a daughter of a priestess of the temple of Artemis in Massalia. I told the Greatmother that the symbol of Artemis is a bear, and she was interested in this and asked me to speak about my mother. But she died when I was young and I was brought up by my nurse, the old Keltic woman, Danu, who gave me her language, so I have no real memories of my mother to draw on. I sketched to the Greatmother what I could about the Artemis temple, but that was precious little.

  I began to relate the story of Callista, who was turned into a bear by Artemis after becoming pregnant by Zeus. But Ussa, who had been moaning and whimpering ever since she had finished her outburst, flew into a temper about her wounded face, the need to tend the bloody mess around her eye. She was thirsty, she said, and hungry. We all were. It was true. And she needed to clean herself. She got to her feet.

  ‘And I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding.’ She was crying again, sobbing and tearing at her face. There were red splashes on the floor all around her and as she took her hand away she revealed a gash from her eyebrow to her cheek that had surely punctured her eye.

  ‘Do you want to hear what this man has to say?’ the old woman asked her.

  ‘I don’t want to listen to another word. I don’t care about anyone else.’

  I had never seen her so completely shameless. She was like a spoilt little girl. Not a shred of her trademark poise, her stylish composure, remained. She was a shambles, a mess, a wreck. Yes, like a wrecked boat, she seemed simply to be smashing herself onto rocks, unable to resist each wave of emotion as the storm shook her.

  Og seemed safely moored on his hide raft in the centre of the floor and I too felt I still had an anchor somewhere beneath me, though I was being tossed about on the Greatmother’s sea of questions.

  ‘You forfeit your slave,’ the Greatmother said.

  ‘Take him. I don’t want him.’ Ussa was apparently willing to agree to anything, without protest.

  So Og was a free man.

  ‘Look at your amber stone,’ the old woman said to him. ‘Melt it and let the moth be relinquished into the air, or keep it as a reminder of what you used to be. Do you want to stay to listen, free man?’

  Og nodded that he did.

  Then the Greatmother said something to Miki, who took Ussa roughly by the upper arm to the door, where he called for someone to take her away.

  Then only Og and I remained and the questions continued. I told her irrelevant things about my early childhood, stories from my father about things that did not concern me, his wine trade, a trip we made to Narbo, two days sail east of Massalia, which was perhaps what got me hooked on travelling and boats. The very mention of boats made the Greatmother visibly bored. She interrupted me.

  ‘What frightens you?’

  ‘Bears,’ I said.

  ‘You are lying.’ She was right. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I am afraid of dying.’

  She nodded. ‘What else?’

  ‘Drowning. Being knocked overboard in the wide ocean. Storms at sea.’

  Boats again. She cha
nged the subject. ‘What makes you sad?’

  ‘Making mistakes. Being stupid. Not being able to remember my mother.’ She lost her bored look when I said this. It reminded me of being a child, sitting there on that mat on the floor, like being with my tutor, Angelus, who had taught me everything worthwhile: the stars, the fundamentals of mathematics, the geography of the world. He taught me from the great works of Thales and Anaximander and Herodotus. He even introduced me to Aristotle, the genius of our time. He used to sit, as the Greatmother did, on a high backed chair, his sandaled feet planted firmly on the floor, reading from a codex of leather-bound parchment spread across his thighs while I sat on a woollen mat in front of him, cross-legged.

  But the Greatmother had no book, and if she was trying to teach me something it was not benign. She was leaning slightly forward, one hand on a thigh. The other was holding a piece of ivory, which she was rubbing with her thumb.

  ‘Tell me more about your mother,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t remember her.’ I clenched my hands. ‘My father rarely spoke of her. She was a wonderful singer.’

  ‘What makes you ashamed?’

  I had to think how to answer this. Her questions did not seem to follow any logic I could understand.

  ‘Do not think, just answer.’

  ‘When I see someone being beaten I feel ashamed for the person who is beating.’

  ‘But what about yourself? What aspect of yourself makes you feel shame?’

  ‘I think my feet are ugly.’

  She looked at me with contempt, then lifted her eyes in irritation, making clear how stupid she found me. ‘Not your appearance. Deeds.’

  ‘I am ashamed of what I did to Rian.’

  Og swung round to look at me, and I caught his glance by accident and we both looked away again.

  I was embarrassed. ‘I am ashamed of that.’

  ‘This is the slave? What did you do to her?’

  ‘I treated her badly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was frustrated. She is beautiful.’

  ‘So?’

  I wanted to say, ‘She was only a slave. It was only once,’ but I could not bring myself to make excuses, nor to speak the feeling of her under me, slight and cool, her tightness as I pushed myself inside her, the little cry she made, her strange stillness afterwards. I didn’t want to remember that the only words she had spoken had been, ‘No.’ And again, ‘No.’ But I couldn’t forget it.

  ‘I treated her as my possession, and then I sold her. I did not buy her with that intention. I bought her to save her from harm, but in the end I inflicted it on her anyway. So then I sold her.’

  ‘Why?’ The Greatmother’s voice was high and sharp, with Miki’s voice a whisper in pursuit. He had moved from behind her chair and stood beside and a little in front of her, as if that enabled him to pass her words on more easily.

  I thought of various replies: ‘so I would do nothing worse’; ‘so she was no longer available to me to repeat what I had done.’ What I finally said was, ‘Because I had ruined what she was, and that disgusted me.’

  ‘What was she?’

  ‘As free and pure and bright as the moon.’

  ‘And you raped her.’

  I breathed in sharply. It was a dagger of a word. I wanted to deny it. I had not used force, not really. But accused here, beside Og, beneath the gaze of this old spirit woman, I could not utter a denial. I could not say anything.

  ‘Speak.’

  I could not.

  ‘Did you rape her?’

  I did not want to speak, but silence was, eventually, worse than assent. What manner of torture was this? No pain except in my mind.

  ‘No.’

  She laughed. ‘Speak the truth.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you lie.’

  ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Your denial makes it obvious you did. You wanted to possess her.’ She paused. ‘And afterwards, you sold her.’

  ‘Yes.’ I realised as I said this word, that I had implicated myself.

  ‘Because once you possessed her, she no longer interested you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why then?’

  I had never thought about it until this moment, really. I had simply done it. I started to babble. ‘Because she was ashamed and I was ashamed to have reduced her to shame. I wanted her to be free… of me at least. But of course selling her didn’t, couldn’t, achieve that. I saw that afterwards, after it was too late. I had not been thinking straight.’ If I wasn’t careful I would start to make excuses. I stopped myself.

  ‘I am mostly ashamed that I sold her.’ But I saw this was not true.

  The Greatmother was waiting for me to say more. ‘You are weighing your shames. Good.’

  ‘The biggest shame is that of selling her.’ I said. ‘It has so many implications. There are so many ways of thinking of what might have been if I had not and what might have happened since I did. I wondered if I could make amends by buying her back. But the shame of…’ I would not use the word, ‘…what I did to her before, is heavier. More dense. More painful.’

  I could still hear her voice, tiny and cracked. ‘No.’ High-pitched, like the yelp of an animal in a snare. I had done that to her. I had taken the little creature to pet, and instead I had broken her. And then I saw her as she had been on that island in the Cat Isles, filthy from the midden, and inside her my son was growing. I felt sick.

  I thought of copper and tin. Tin, heaviest of metals, lead-like in its density, that was the feeling inside me when I acknowledged my despoliation of the girl. I had taken copper, unburnished, which had not yielded to the flames of the world, and I had tarnished it with a baser metal. I thought of her copper hair, and of the pliancy of a copper bracelet, its healing power. And I knew that she was, as a result of me, alloyed, hardened, and it was irreversible.

  ‘There are many who view sex with slaves as nothing to be ashamed of at all,’ the Greatmother spoke lightly. I looked up. Her face betrayed no light. She was the shadow of an eagle.

  ‘There are people who make swords and sleep at night,’ I said.

  She nodded.

  ‘I could ask you to whom you have caused pain, whom you envy, who you want to see again before you die.’

  I could think only of Rian.

  ‘I see there is no point in asking these things.’

  I asked myself anyway, and I knew I would ask myself these things many times, looking back across the desert of my jovial life. I considered the many characters whose lives had intersected, however briefly, with my own, on my journeys from Tanais to Gadir, from the ruins of Delphi to the wonders of Thule. I knew I would find there only detritus, glittering perhaps, but ultimately dust.

  I had allowed everything else to fall, to hold lust in one hand and greed in the other, and now both my hands were burning.

  AMBER

  After a long, uncomfortable silence, the Greatmother, sitting upright, held the ivory wand up in front of her with both hands, like a lighted torch. ‘What are you looking for?’

  I stared at it. It was just a bone. ‘Amber.’

  ‘Why?’

  I thought of many possible answers. I could tell her about the ceremonies performed in the temples, the magic it catalysed. I could tell her about the people who had made fortunes controlling its trade, stockpiling it when supplies were plentiful and creating artificial shortages to make it more valuable. I could tell her of the healing miracles it brought about. I could tell her the story of Electrum, the tale of Phaethon. I could tell how every bride in our land must have a piece to wear on her wedding night to bring her fertility and protect her from violence by her husband, to keep him mild and gentle with her. I could tell her about the old woman I knew as a child who cured sick cattle by treating their drinking water with an amber heart she carried on a chain around her neck. I could tell her of the hunters who burned it, ceremoniously, to propitiate the weather gods before embarking on a dangerous hunting expedition
. I could tell her that Rian had hair its colour.

  But I told her none of those things. I said only, ‘I am curious. I am seeking its origin. I live in a land where there is no amber, but we revere it, and from time to time it comes into our lives and it is full of power. My quest is for its origin, to discover how and where it is made and by whom, and if it is not made, to see it growing naturally, to watch it wash up on the shore where the gods of the sea discard it, or to find it hidden within rock, as some say it can be found. If possible, I want to understand more of what manner of thing it is and if, as we believe, its origin is the sap of a tree, to see the special trees that can produce such gum, or to learn what treatment the resin undergoes to harden it into a gem.’

  I don’t remember exactly what I said, to be honest, but it was along these lines. I presented myself as a scientist.

  The Greatmother lowered the ivory wand and nodded slowly.

  ‘Where will you go with this knowledge once you have found it?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘And what will you do with it there?’

  ‘Share it,’ I said. ‘That is what knowledge is for, isn’t it? That’s what I believe. I can’t abide secrets, and people lording over other people because they know something someone else doesn’t know.’

  She was staring at me as if baffled. ‘But what will you do with it?’ It was as if she had not understood my answer at all. Perhaps Miki the pilot was not translating effectively.

  I tried to explain about the Akademie in Athens and our respect for knowledge in its own right, but she clearly grew impatient with me, shaking her head as if I was an imbecile.

  ‘Will they come here, these scientists?’

  ‘Why would they come here?’

  ‘To find more amber. To take our amber. We will defend ourselves.’

  I saw that I needed to avoid the impression that I would trigger some kind of invasion of amber-greedy warriors, and I was also intrigued that the implication of her concern was that she had at least some of the knowledge I was looking for.