Raptor (110 page)

“My lady queen, I petition for nothing of a material nature. My first purpose here is only to convey Theodoric’s heartiest thanks for what you have already lent us. Theodoric is certain that your Rugian army will help establish him as the rightful ruler of all the Ostrogoths and all their domains. Once that is accomplished, you will be amply rewarded for your support—and for your kinship, since you and Theodoric’s every other cousin will thereafter be acknowledged as belonging to the rightfully ruling branch of the Amal line.”

That somewhat warmed her, as it was intended to do, and she showed the tentative beginning of a toothy smile. I went on:

“In expectation of that happy outcome of the war, Theodoric desires that the world be provided with a history of the Amals’ august lineage, from remotest time to the present day. He wishes to assure that his and your family be deservedly admired, its origins honored, its virtues universally lauded. To that end, he has commissioned me to compile such a history.”

“A worthy project,” she said, widening her smile to display expanses of gums beyond the teeth. “It has our approbation.”

“Therefore, my lady, my second purpose here is to ask your permission to acquaint myself with this coast and its history, because it is said that this is where the earliest Goths made landfall when they first came from the north across the sea to this continent of Europe.”

“Ja, so it is said. And ja, of course you have our permission, Saio Thorn. Can we assist you in any way? Provide a knowledgeable guide, perhaps?”

“It would be most kind, my lady. And I was thinking… to make sure that my lady’s branch of the Amal family is properly, copiously,
eminently
represented in the history, perhaps the young Prince Frido could be my guide and informant.”

The boy’s face went from glum to glad, then back to glum again when his mother said, with a sniff of disparagement, “Vái, the child knows more of his father’s Rugian antecedents than of the Gothic.”

“Then I would presume, my lady, that he also speaks the Rugian Germanic. And that dialect of the Old Language I do not speak with ease.”

“Ja waíla, he even speaks the brutish Kashube Slovene”—Queen Giso laughed like a horse, toothily—“which not even the brute
Kashube
can speak with ease.”

“Well, there we are! He would be invaluable to me as my interpreter hereabout.” The prince was looking uncomfortable at being discussed in the third person, so I addressed him directly. “Would you do me that service and that honor, Prince Frido?”

He waited for his mother’s grudging nod before he said, shyly but with pleasure, “I will, Saio Thorn.”

So the next day, with proprietorial pride, young Frido showed me about the town of Pomore, though it had not a great deal to show, because it exists mainly as a center for the trade and shipping of products that come from elsewhere. Pomore’s only really native product is amber, so Frido took me to various lapidary workshops to show me that material being fashioned into beads and buckles and fibulae.

Frido made a good guide, for he was a companionable lad, not at all vainglorious like his mother. Once he was away from her, he was just another boy, bright and cheerful, at least until he was reminded of her. When I asked if she was the reason he was not marching with his father the king, he got glum again and muttered:

“Mother says I am too young to go to war.”

I said, under my breath, “Mother love,” and that evoked recollections that made me laugh at myself for having said it. I went on, “I have known a variety of mothers, Frido, but I never had one of my own, so perhaps I am not qualified to judge them. However, I do believe that war is the province of fathers and sons, not of mothers.”

“Then you think I am not too young to go?”

“Too young to fight, perhaps, but not to watch. You will be a man eventually, and every man should have some experience of war. It would be too bad if this were the only one to occur in your lifetime and you were to miss it. Still, you are only nine. You will probably have another chance. In the meantime, Frido, what
do
you do for manly excitement?”

“Well… I am let to play with the other palace children, so long as they respect my station and do not overstep theirs. I am let to ride my horse, and alone, without attendants, so long as I do not gallop. I am let to roam the beach, and alone, and collect seashells, so long as I do not go into the water.” He saw my look, and concluded lamely, “I have quite an estimable collection of seashells.”

“Indeed,” I said.

We walked on for a bit in silence, and then he asked, “What did you do for diversion, Saio Thorn, when you were my age?”

“At your age… let me see. I had no horse. Or beach. And most of the time I had to work very hard. But there was a waterfall, and a cave, and inside the cave I discovered caverns and tunnels going deep and dark into the earth, and over time I explored them all. I climbed trees, even unclimbable trees, and high up in one of them I once met a glutton face to face, and I slew it.”

Frido’s eyes were on my face, and they shone admiringly, enviously, wistfully. “How fortunate a boy you were,” he murmured, “not to have had a mother.”

Because I was concerned to merit Queen Giso’s trust, I made sure to get Frido back to the palace grounds before dark. There the queen was waiting—outdoors, despite the cold, and with several of the palace guards about her—as nervous as a mother cat when someone is handling one of its kittens. And, like the cat, she was obviously relieved when I returned her son safely to his nest. So she acceded, not too grudgingly, when I asked if Frido and I might go out together again the next day. I was pleased at that, and pleased also to note that the queen had apparently not lied when she told me that every able Rugian male was gone abroad with her king-husband—for now I observed that all her palace guards were, like the harbor officials I had earlier met, men old and fat and not formidable.

The prince and queen went off to their nahtamats, and I went to my own in my guesthouse quarters. I found the meal to consist again of dishes variously prepared, and again all of them fish, and all the same fish, only this time the fish was cod.

In the succeeding days, Frido and I went farther afield, now on horseback, and now along the shores of the Amber Coast. Frido’s horse was a sturdy bay gelding, though not so fine as my black, and the boy rode well, even at a stretch-out gallop, which I allowed him to do—vái,
encouraged
him to do—whenever there was no one about who might report to the palace. Frido rode even better after I helped him make a foot-rope like my own, and showed him the utility of it. One morning we would ride east along the beach, the next west, but each time going only half a day’s journey out from Pomore. At noon I would turn us back for the town, to make sure that the prince arrived at the palace in time for nahtamats with his mother. And I hoped they were dining better than I was, for I was still being fed alternately on herring and cod. As a guest, I could hardly complain, but I did think it curious.

Nor could I rightly complain to anyone because I found the Amber Coast far less attractive than its name. The beach itself, as I have said, is all sand and, at least in summertime, might have been a pleasant place, except for the incessant north wind. But that beach has the insurmountable handicap of fronting on the Wendic Gulf of the Sarmatic Ocean. I had earlier looked out over other great salt waters—the Propontís and the Black Sea—and I had much enjoyed the view. But I think no one could enjoy looking at the Sarmatic Ocean. From land’s edge to far horizon, it is an unrelieved gloomy gray, without so much as a lacing of white foam where it meets the beach.

During the days that Frido and I were riding the margins of the gulf, the weather got colder and colder, the winds more bitter, the Amber Coast decidedly ugly. Just upstream from the Pomore docks, the river Viswa was sheeted over with ice, and somewhere north of us even the
ocean
was freezing; the gray sea began to wash gray chunks of sea ice onto the beaches. Nevertheless, the prince and I found our outings a pleasure—he, no doubt, because he was temporarily free of his mother’s strictures, I because I was learning new things. Not all of them were pertinent to my compilation of history, but some were interesting. For example, Frido took me to the stretch of sand that the Slovene peasants call nyebyesk povnó, “blue earth” (though it is more a dull green than blue), where are oftenest found the lumps and knobs and knots of amber in the raw. Frido did a competent job of interpreting whenever I questioned a coastal dweller or passerby, and he himself provided helpful information—not least when he enlightened me as to why I was being fed such monotonous meals at the palace.

“Of all the world’s salt seas,” he said, “the Sarmatic contains the least salt. And it has no tides to move and cleanse its water, so it is soupy with drifting particles of matter. Even in summer, its water is very cold, and in winter it often freezes solid enough that an army could march on the ice all the way from here to Gutaland in the north. It is for those several reasons, the fishermen say, that the Sarmatic cannot support oyster beds or deep-dwelling fish. Indeed, practically its
only
fish worth catching and eating are the cod and the herring.”

So, I said to myself, the sea was as impoverished as the sandy land was infertile. Once more I was in a place where the early Goths had not cared to stay, and with good reason. I had to wonder why it had taken the later-come Rugii such a long time to tire of the Amber Coast and decide to seek better opportunities in the south. But something else in Frido’s speech had interested me more.

I said, “You mentioned a place called Gutaland.”

“Ja, a great island, far to the north of here. It was from there that the Goths sailed to this shore, back in the distant mists of time. My mother’s forebears. Just as my father’s Rugian forefathers sailed here from an island over to the west, called Rugiland.”

“I believe I have heard of Gutaland,” I said, “if we are speaking of the same island. I heard it called by the name of Skandza.”

“Akh,
everything
yonder is called Skandza.” Frido made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the whole seaward horizon, from west to east. “The lands of the Danisk, the Svear, the Fenni, the Litva,
all
the peoples who live beyond this ocean. But the different parts of Skandza have different names. Hence Rugiland, ancestral home of the Rugii. Gutaland, ancestral home of—”

I interrupted eagerly, “Is Gutaland still inhabited? Still by remnants of the Goths? Do your Pomorenian ships trade there?”

He said uncertainly, “Our ships call there. But I think there is little trade.”

“Let us go and talk to a merchant ship’s master.”

So we did, and fortunately the master was a Rugian, meaning that he had taken some trouble to learn the history of his surroundings, which no Slovene would have done. With Frido translating, he told me:

“There is evidence that Gutaland was once, ages ago, a major center of trade and shipping. To this day, when money changes hands there, we often find ourselves receiving curious old coins—Roman, Greek, even Cretan. But that activity and prosperity must have come to an end when the Goths left, for the island has been of no consequence in all the centuries since. It is inhabited nowadays by a scant few families of Svear farmers. They manage a miserable living by raising barley and a breed of yellow cattle. We put in to buy the barley for beer-making and the distinctive hides of those cattle. I know of only one Goth still resident there, an aged woman, and she is quite mad.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, “I should like to be able to report to my king that I had seen the place. Would you take me there?”

“At this season? With the Sarmatic freezing over? Ni.”

I urged, “My king will see that you are paid enough to compensate you and your crew for whatever danger is involved. And he does not pay in worthless antique coins.”

“There is no
danger,”
the master said impatiently. “Only dire discomfort and wasted effort. To cross the icy Sarmatic in the bitterness of winter to look at a worthless island, that is a fool’s errand. Ni, ni. I cannot be bought.”

“But you can be commanded,” said Frido, surprising both me and the ship’s master with his air of authority. “I, your crown prince, also wish to go there. You will take us.”

The master argued and blustered and expostulated, but he could not flatly refuse a royal order. The prince sternly instructed him to be ready when we came again, and he and I took our leave. On our way back to the palace, I said:

“Thags izvis, Frido, for your princely intervention. But you know your mother will never let you do such a thing.”

He gave me a sly look and said, “We shall see.”

In every tongue at her command—Gothic and Rugian Germanic and Kashube Slovene—Queen Giso said no. “Ne! Ni! Nye! You must be mad, Frido, even to ask to go on a sea voyage.”

I said, “The ship’s master assures us there is no hazard, my lady, only the cold.”

“The cold is hazard enough. The kingdom’s sole heir cannot risk taking ill.”

“If the boy is well bundled in furs—”

“Desist, Marshal!” she snapped. “I have already been un-motherly in letting you haul my son all about the countryside in the unhealthy open air. But that ceases here and now.”

I entreated, “My lady, regard the lad. He looks ruddier and stronger now than when I came.”

“I told you: be still.”

I could not disobey her, but Frido could. He said, “Mother, I told the ship’s master I would go. I ordered him to transport us. Can I renege on a royal decision and a royal command?”

That made her turn pale. And I realized why Frido had looked sly: he had hit on the one stratagem sure to win over a woman like Queen Giso. She had for so long insisted that he maintain his “station”—and that everyone else revere it—that she could not now let him disavow it. If she who was mother to the Crown Prince of the Rugii bade him go back on his given word, then she who was Queen of the Rugii would be sorely bruised in her overweening vanity. So, though it was no
easy
victory, Frido got his way. Giso did a great deal of agonizing and ranting and flinging her arms about, and even some weeping, but in the end her royal self-importance had to overrule her maternal solicitude.