‘The Greatmother.’
I didn’t believe him.
‘She told me I must collect some special things for my wedding.’
Light dawned. ‘If I’m still here for your wedding, I’ll give you something special, Arald, I promise, but for now, can I have my gnomon back please? It was a gift from my teacher and I promised him I would take great care of it.’
He fetched it and gave it back reluctantly, and I carried it with me everywhere after that. What I had not realised at the time was that this was not a boy’s wistful hope for the future, but that the Greatmother did in fact have a plan for him.
I settled into a rhythm of life as an appendage to Uine and Don’s household, eating with them, helping in their fields in spring and autumn, and gathering amber with Arald in all seasons. I found myself considered useful for my woodwork skills, which are nothing special, but I like to make joints, fit wood together neatly, and once I had acquired the necessary tools from an itinerant smith (who nearly agreed to take me with him when he left, but did not dare, in the end) I made various useful bits of furniture in my hut, and paid for my food in kind that way, which gained me a reputation as a competent, if not particularly talented, joiner. But Don always treated me with suspicion and Uine something closer to fear.
The moons waxed and waned and the seasons passed. It is strange how time slides by like that, once there is a rhythm to life. It is dangerous, I think, to fall into habits and routine. You think each day you are moving forwards, but in fact you can be walking on the spot.
My advice is, when you find yourself like that, stand still. Think hard. Look around and choose which direction to run away. Then take a deep breath one morning and sprint off at a tangent. Then your life will start again.
That’s what happened to me.
THE WEDDING
Arald’s ‘wedding’, it turned out, was a winter ceremony, equivalent to the one you probably know as Imbolc, after the winter solstice but before there is any sign of spring, when the dark cold has seeped into everyone’s bones and the barrels are getting low.
Arald informed me excitedly the day before that the Greatmother had told him he had gathered his body weight in amber so now he could be married. I was intrigued who the woman would be that would get this skinny, gauche youth for her husband. As I had promised him, I gave him a gold coin and my leather belt with its fine bronze buckle, which he was most taken by.
The morning began with a feast. Everyone had been baking, it seemed, and there were cakes and pastries decorated with seeds, preserves of summer fruits, all kinds of delicacies that I wished we got to eat more often. Arald was given gifts of food by everyone in the village and was plied with mead, which normally he was not allowed, so he was soon incapable and stupid drunk. There was no sign of a girl, and I became increasingly perplexed, until Uine explained that he was to ‘marry’ Nerthus, the spring goddess, and so I began to understand that this was all just symbolic. Still, in my limited experience of such ‘marriages’, there is usually a pretty girl to play the part of the deity and keep the rest of us entertained. So far she had not appeared.
After feasting, Arald was led away by the Greatmother to the Bear Hall. He reappeared after a while looking tear-stained and with a rip on his jerkin. Still, he looked relieved that his ordeal was over. I had wondered whether the Greatmother would bring her pet animals into play. She usually had a role for one or other in her ceremonies. The big bear still dominated every occasion it appeared in. It was fatter than ever now and the cub had grown into a big strong adult with no apparent fear of anything. They were a terrifying pair.
It was the younger bear that was brought forth to join the ceremony. It had a neck ring and the Greatmother pulled it by a chain. It followed the old woman obediently, trusting her. I think this trust was the source of much of the awe the crone managed to conjure from her people.
*
We all processed out along the track running east from the village up onto the heath. There were drums and whistles, and everyone was drunk enough to be in a lively mood, but not so much, except for Arald, to be stumbling. He had sobered up after his session in the Bear Hall, but was soon plied with mead again to reduce him to slurring, and now that the bear was on a chain he goaded her with a stick, trying to get her to dance, which she did, in a shambling way.
Out on the moor there were three pools. Into each, as she passed, the Greatmother threw a piece of jewellery as an offering to the Earth Mother. A silver earring went into the first, a string of amber beads into the second, and into the third she tossed a bronze neck ring with chevron markings, which glinted in the low-angled sun. I wondered at the wealth this woman could offer to the deities, then reflected on the value of Arald’s body weight in amber, all of which I surmised had ended up in the Greatmother’s hand. The occasional visits by traders must have enabled her to prepare for such ceremonies.
She showed Arald to a place where peat had been dug and piled up into a kind of altar. She made him kneel by it and then she used a stake to chain the bear nearby. She gathered the drummers and silenced those with whistles. A girl with a wooden flute began a heart-piercing melody over a slow drum beat. While they played, the Greatmother arranged various pots and bowls and lit a fire beside the peat stack, which I could see was acting as a windbreak as well as an altar. She spent a long time chanting and burning something. At first I couldn’t see exactly what, but I shifted to get a better view. It was amber! The hard-won stone I slaved to gather was simply going up in smoke in her ceremony! I wondered how much of it she got through in this way. What god or goddess could possibly be pleased by such a waste?
She fed something to both the bear and Arald. It clearly made the bear docile and soon the boy seemed to be swaying in a kind of dream state.
Then the Greatmother said something to the flute-player and they brought the slow tune to an end, switching straight into a crowd-pleaser with a regular foot-stomping beat. Three men and three women stepped out of the crowd singing a song, not all the words of which I could make out but it was about a marriage of a man to a bear, and gradually it seemed to suggest that the bear was not satisfied by the man. I don’t really know what nonsense was in it all, but the three men singing took hold of the bear, and the three women took hold of Arald and they pulled the two pliant creatures around into some very strange, lewd positions as they sang. Both the bear and the boy were floppy as dolls.
The song picked up its pace, with a regular ‘yah’. Gradually everyone joined in a dance that involved side-to-side steps. On the ‘yah’, people turned to their side and slapped hands with the person next to them. I found myself alternately clapping with Uine and an old man, both of whom were a head shorter than me. I felt as if I was dancing with children and this and the mead made me feel altogether more joyful than I had for a long time. The sleepy bear and the drunken youth rolling about in mock sex perfected the sense of being at the craziest wedding ever. I laughed away at the silliness of it all.
Arald was now astride the bear and the three women dancers had tied rope around his upper arms and neck, controlling his movements like a puppet. The men had ropes too, around the legs and torsos of the bear and the boy. The dance they were doing was intricate, and the result was a plaiting together of the ropes, and as the tension rose and the song’s ‘yah’s rang out, the ropes tugged and tugged until I saw Arald writhe up into an ecstatic climax. His eyes bulged. And then a final ‘yah, yah, yah!’ and a huge flourish on the drum and the men and women let go of their ropes and Arald fell back. I saw his face in a rictus, his tongue lolling and blue. He was strangled. He was dead.
*
The laughter froze on my face. I was suddenly in a nightmare. The drumming resumed and all around me the singing continued, faster now, a mad stomping dance that was more frenzy than fun. Arald was lifted away from the sleeping bear and I saw that the peat-pile was no altar at all, but simply the discards from the grave that had been dug and into which his body was now lowered,
on those same ropes, his arms and legs dancing like a child’s puppet.
I watched, horrified, as the Greatmother, beaming with satisfaction, leaned over the hole in the ground, sprinkling dried leaves and flowers over Arald’s body, serene and slow among the manic dancing, as if she was the only person apart from me who realised he was dead.
All these people were strangers to me. How could they behave like this? Did they not realise they had killed the boy? How could they be so apparently blissful, so full of delight? My eyes were dragged back to the ghastly sight of the grave. That boy had been the closest I had to a friend here. I realised this was a kind of living hell and that I had never been anywhere so dangerous.
I felt a touch on my forearm. The Greatmother was beside me.
‘He looks excited, doesn’t he?’
‘Terrified,’ I said.
‘No. It was ecstasy. There is no greater honour.’
As if honour could mean anything to him now.
‘I have something for you.’ She gave me a small cloth pouch. ‘You are doing well here. Perhaps one day you too will have earned the role of Nerthus’ consort. Keep collecting the amber.’
She passed on around the dancing crowd. I stuffed the pouch into a pocket and turned aside, nausea rising in me. I stepped away. My head was spinning. The drum was too loud, the people too crazy. The day was cold, colder than I could endure. I wanted to go home. I had to get away.
I started walking. A shudder. Shivering. A wailing sound that I realised was my own keening. I was sick into a bush, then pulled myself together, wiping the tears off my face, the snot out of my nose.
Where could I hide? Out there on the open heath, there was nowhere.
I glanced back to see if anyone was following me. What if they set the bear to chase me? I wanted to run away as fast as I could, but forced myself to stroll in case running would make pursuit more likely. I put distance behind me, and eventually reached the river valley that wound through woodland down to the coast. I kept walking, my pace increasing, trying to keep my breathing even. I began to compose myself, to think furiously of a plan, a way to escape.
When I arrived back at the village, it was deserted except for one old woman who smiled vacantly at me as she sat outside her hut, a rug over her legs, spindle whirling. I got my box from my hut, wondering how I might strap it to my back, regretting giving my belt to Arald. The thought of him put me in a panic. I thrust some tools in my writing-box. I thought about going to Don and Uine’s place to get some bread but decided that would be stealing. I contrived a way of carrying the box on my back with rope and my fleece and bedding roll. It wasn’t perfect but it was comfortable enough. I didn’t know how far I would have to walk and this thought drove me to Don and Uine’s hut. I could not survive without food. It was winter and I had no weapons for hunting other than my knife, not that I’ve ever been much of a hunter.
I took what I needed: a leather strap, which made my bundle much more comfortable on my back, their breadloaf, some nuts, dried fish and a chunk of cheese. I wrapped it all in a makeshift bag made with my leather sheet. I left a piece of gold tucked under a pillow to appease my conscience. I hoped they would not begrudge me what I needed to survive.
I thought I heard voices and sudden panic grabbed me. I rushed out. It was all quiet apart from the sea breaking on the beach and my heart hammering in my chest.
I avoided the hut where the old woman was sitting and took the path to the beach, then set off south, walking in the shallows to leave no footprints. I barely knew what lay beyond a half-day’s walk but my fear of the unknown was dwarfed by the horror I had witnessed. How could I have stayed so long among people who were capable of such things?
Perhaps you think it’s naïve of me to have such scruples when there are deaths in our temples too. Virgins propitiate gods. This is a reality, I know, but there are ways to do it that are civilised. I admit I’ve never watched how such sacrifice is practiced at Apollo’s temple, for example, but that is precisely the point – there is no horde, no gang of drunken dancers singing along. Whatever happens at the temple, even when Dionysus is being offered sacrifices, is sure to be done with dignity. It is not a crazed crowd of barbarians engaged in collective slaughter. Or maybe, to someone who doesn’t belong to our world, that is exactly what it would seem to be.
SOUTHWARDS
That was the beginning of the end of my journey, the turning-point. As I walked that morning I was, for the first time, aiming for home. I wanted to return to a land of vineyards and cultivation. I spoke to myself as I walked, relating the horrific event I had witnessed as if to an invisible audience of my peers at home, and I made a plan to keep moving. Once I was well out of danger of recapture by the Greatmother, and had properly understood the geography of this amber land, I would seek a boat to take me back to Albion. There I would go in search of Ussa, reclaim my tin or buy some more.
Perhaps I could also seek out Rian, and stake my claim as father of her baby, if she had in fact brought it to term. What if she had not survived the childbirth? I banished the thought; she was strong. Then, I suddenly came up with the idea of taking the child home with me. That is what I actually meant by ‘staking my claim’. I would rescue my son from a barbarian fate and raise him as a Massaliot. I could take them both! I could make her my wife. It was a perfect fantasy. There could be no question that was the right thing to do.
All through the first day I kept looking back to see if I was being followed. I expected dogs, or even bears. I barely stopped, forcing myself onwards, keeping the sea on my right. Fear kept me going. When the path ran out, I pressed on. When I reached the river where we got the best results for amber seeking, I beat upstream to where I knew there was a fordable stretch and waded across the freezing water. I dried out again as I walked on.
The next river was harder; I lost my footing and almost had to abandon my bundle in the flow, but I was lucky and righted myself and found my way across in the end.
By evening, I reached territory that was new to me. I avoided a coastal village and the few houses along the way. I ate only enough to stop hunger from weakening me, and that night I barely slept, although I had to stop through the night hours as it was a new moon and too dark to see my way. I took shelter among dunes close enough to the sea to hear its rhythmic rush and draw. It retreated as the night progressed, the tide ebbing, then creeping back up. I woke to the sound of pebble-shuffling in the early morning when, after hours of worrying, I must eventually have slept.
The second day was grey. Under the low sky, I trudged, but began to recover my spirits. I did not know where I was going, but I was at least going somewhere new. I started to enjoy walking, and felt myself returning to myself as if I had been in a long dream, or under some kind of sleeping spell. I was awake at last, alert to the tracks of animals, the moods of the ocean, the scent of seaweed, the delicious taste of my meagre piece of cheese. And while I walked I dreamed of Rian, and my son.
By the third day I was getting seriously hungry, and my pace slowed. I slept badly.
On the fourth day I came to a large marshy estuary which posed a serious obstacle. I spent a whole day going around the delta, crossing dozens of streams, having to double back when the ground became too treacherous, terrified of bogging down in mud. I was glad the weather was clear. In fog I would have surely perished and I had to reach the far side before darkness, as I knew I would never survive out there on the marsh overnight. It was a land of ghouls and evil spirits, I was sure. I could see woodland and eventually reached a strange alder forest hung with lichens. It spooked me entirely, but I managed to find a dryish patch to spend the night. Fire was not an option. I had no way to light it even if I had been able to gather dry-enough wood.
The next day, the coast veered eastwards and I smelled smoke, then saw that I was approaching a village in a sheltered bay. The cloud was low, visibility poor. I hovered on the edge of an area of fields behind the settlement, then mustered my courage and headed down
a muddy path towards where a few boats were hauled up on a beach.
So far I had avoided habitation, keeping out of view of people, but I was soaked and muddy. The cold was making me miserable and I had run out of food. I wanted to sleep somewhere under cover, even a barn would do, but I was longing to sit by a fire.
As I approached the village, two little children came running, stopped under a tree and stared at me, wide-eyed. I said hello and they giggled and ran away. The alien being could speak, they would tell their disbelieving mother. Would she be hospitable?
The first house was a ruin but the second had smoke and the two little faces were gazing out at me from its doorway.
‘Hello again,’ I said. ‘Is your mother or father there?’
A woman appeared behind them. ‘Who are you?’ Her voice was shrill.
‘Is there somewhere I can rest for the night?’ I said.
‘Who are you?’ she insisted.
‘My name is Pytheas.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I am journeying. I seek someone who can take me over the ocean. But now I’m cold and wet. I’ve been walking for days. I can give gold in exchange for hot food and a warm bed.’
These people were not hospitable by culture. She was suspicious of me, but gold works little miracles and I soon found myself steaming beside a fire with hot mead and a stew cooking. I can’t describe how like a king I felt, wallowing in luxury. Hardships endured make you appreciate every simple comfort. After days out in the wet, a warm dry blanket is a thing of wonder.
I ate and slept, and in the morning I went down to the shore to ask people about boats and they told me they only took them out in fair weather to fish. One old man said that he had been on the ocean, and from his scratchings in the mud I got a sense of the coastline. We were on a peninsula, and to get further south I would need to walk a long way eastwards first, or get someone to take me across the water. He suggested I might find someone in the next village, where there was a safe harbour, which many ships used as storm shelter. I might find an ocean-going vessel there, perhaps.
The Amber Seeker Page 16
