The summer had been hot, dry and windy and Thersander had felt cheated of the novelty he had expected from a northern climate. But the air was cooling noticeably as autumn approached and he was grateful to be in front of an early evening fire as he sat on a stool in a woollen robe, surrounded by his drying clothes. The people had complained during the summer because there had been a mild drought. But the crops had seemed healthy enough to him, although he was not a farmer.
The warmth and the crackle from the fire went some way to soothing Thersander's troubled mind, and he leaned back against a timber roof prop to let the remains of his hangover drift slowly away. Waking suddenly, he reached over and pulled a leather satchel towards him. Inside were beads of Egyptian faience and boreal amber, silver figurines, an exquisite bronze axe and others of polished stone.
Thersander's mind turned to the ordeal of his journey home and he found himself wondering whether Theseus would make it to the ship before they set sail on the quest for the Fleece. He had an idea that an important day was imminent - perhaps it had already passed - but he found himself suddenly and unexpectedly confident that Theseus would appear as they had all arranged, as they all hoped, in time to embark with them on the voyage. This new-found optimism offered a welcome respite from his other anxieties.
He leaned back and dozed. But images and arguments moved in his mind with no logic at all. The massive upright stones and lintels of the ring structure he had visited on the mainland with its narrow openings. The trees nearby and on the surrounding hills. And in his mind, the trees vanished and the ring of stones sat in a bare, icy landscape. On the base of one of the stone lintels was a carving of an axe.
·
By nightfall, Thersander had fully recovered from his hangover and his immersion.
'Cretan!' exclaimed a tall, burly man dressed only in leather trousers and a loose shirt, despite the autumnal nip in the evening air. Thersander felt an arm wrap around his shoulders. 'What are you after? Why are you here?' and the man laughed at his own foolish question.
Thersander was tired of explaining that he was not a Cretan but from one of the islands close to the Achaean mainland that bore no love for this maritime power, and decided not to rise to the bait. The voice was friendly enough and joking in the usual way. They were in the open air with a large bonfire burning a short distance away. In his hand Thersander held a large ceramic beaker full of beer, which spilled a little as he turned and took a step back in order to face his assailant and to escape the dreadful proximity of the man's breath.
The bonfire spat and blazed fiercely.
'You know very well why I am here, but let me tell you of a great hole I have seen,' replied Thersander.
'Where's that?' returned the man, loudly. 'Where is this great hole?'
'In the ground!' A great roar of laughter erupted from behind Thersander, unconnected with his own remark, and his listeners waited for him to continue.
A short while after arriving in Albion, before visiting the giant ring of stones, Thersander had been taken to see a deep pit in the chalk. Men had toiled for months to dig it the previous year in order to discover what lies beneath the world. Other men and women in dangling and colourful regalia had been deeply worried. They had cast strangely shaped objects every day to discover the mood of the Goddess. If she had given to understand her displeasure, work would have stopped. But she did not, and the work continued. Deeper and deeper they went. Some people speculated that the pit would break through to the top of the sky of another world and the men would fall to their deaths. Others pleaded for the work to cease, lest a hostile underworld should be breached and the spirits of that world released. Many children held their bedclothes tightly over their heads at night. But the pit went deeper and deeper and it became increasingly more difficult to keep it from flooding. The walls were cleaned smooth in order to look for any sign of the penetration of roots, but there was none and some took this to be a sign that the Goddess shunned the depths to which they had reached. The work was stopped when it was no longer possible to keep up with the inflow of water.
Thersander took this as further evidence for what was already obvious to him, that the world floated upon water. 'How else,' he argued to the others who had gathered around him, as another beaker of beer was thrust into his reluctantly outstretched hand, 'how else could the ground roll as violently as it sometimes does, exactly as though a wave passes underneath.' He stood, trying to manage a beaker of beer in each hand. One or two of his listeners stared incredulously, but whether at his words or at his dexterity he was unable for a moment to determine.
'Shake?' said one. 'When does the ground shake? I have never felt it shake!' Amongst the looks of horror was one of satisfaction. 'The ground never does anything like that here,' said the bringer of the ale.
'I have felt the world move,' rejoined another. 'But only after a night on the beer!' The laughter subsided.
'I have felt the earth shake twice,' explained Thersander. 'Once it was as though I was standing on the back of an ox pulling a plough, but the second time the ground rolled and shuddered like a ship caught in a sudden squall. Buildings twisted and collapsed around me and I was lucky to be out in the open when it happened. Twelve people died in the village around me.'
Three children chose this moment to emulate an earthquake by running through the group, excitedly. Everybody from the district was attending the occasion, and the youngsters were enjoying the thrill of a late night with their parents' attention distracted.
Thersander drained one of the beakers and deemed it an opportune moment to move away from the bonfire. He was still trying to come to terms with his experience near the wooden circle that morning. The moon rose above the tree line as he watered the ground beneath a bush.
'I have heard it said that you Achaeans breed men as we breed dogs,' called a harsh voice. A large man approached him, gripping a huge canine beast by the loose skin of its neck, and instructed it to sit by his side, which it did obediently.
'For the same purpose,' said Thersander, arranging himself back to respectability.
'I believe that you have done something to cause anxiety among those who intermediate with the Goddess. They have been particularly worried of late. There is something in the air. But you have brought many valuable gifts from a land where the Goddess finds strength and plenty. This is gesture enough and will bring solace to those who are concerned. I have a gift for you.'
The man was dressed in ornately tooled leather, had a long moustache and closely cropped, dark brown hair. He reached into his coat and produced three cubes, the size of large dice. They were shiny and untarnished and he passed them to Thersander. Pressing one of them between the finger and thumb of his right hand, Thersander could feel the weight and the softness of the metal, even from the faces and the edges of the cube.
'They are yours, Thersander. Much more will be yours also, of the same quality. It will be given to you soon. In the meantime, you are welcome to stay here and to live as the guest of these people.
'You are very kind,' said Thersander, not particularly thankful for the further waiting that was implicit in the invitation. He drew a blade from his leather pouch. It was a bronze double axe, the size of his outstretched hand and finely cast with spirals and filigree work.
'This is for you.' He offered it and a strong hand took it from him carefully.
'It holds great power,' said the warrior. The statement seemed to require no answer, so Thersander said nothing.
'But it is a puzzle to us; tell me, why exactly are you here? Why have you travelled all the way from the islands in the 'Midst of the Sea' in order to trade with us? You offer us a share of a 'Golden Fleece' for which we are very grateful and will do everything in our power to give you the assistance you ask for; but why, I ask again, are you here? Are there not riches nearer to you than these islands in the western sea? We are happy to have you as our guest, but we wonder all the same.'
Thersander was not sure how much to say. Like a tsunami, a wave of information could travel unnoticed across a vast stretch of ocean but cause great damage on a distant shore.
'Forces are gathering to claim the Golden Fleece. It is important that nobody knows of the expedition; nobody who might want to prevent it.'
The warrior shook his head. 'My friend, these cubes are of tin, not gold!'
'And the island of Alashiya is full of copper.'
The warrior stared at Thersander, then laughed, and he turned and vanished with his dog into the darkness.
Returning to the heart of the gathering, Thersander stayed to watch the dancing, and the light of the fire shone with the light of the moon in the faces of the dancers. As the night wore on, the rhythm of the dance became more frantic and intense, men and women dropped out in exhaustion and others entered the revolving circle as it crossed and wove in repeating patterns to the rhythm of the flutes and drums, around the mulberry tree.