The Tale of Oriel (14 page)

“Karle has the best claim,” the fisherman told him. “His wife Eleanore is the eldest cousin of the Countess and has provided six living children. Karle is the man to rule. And tax these guildsmen and merchants their fair share, too.”

The fisherman spoke more to his audience of like-minded men than to the two strangers.

“Karle has the better claim, if only the fools would see it.”

“Selby seems untroubled,” Oriel remarked.

“Aye, it is, or near enough for the time. But as for what will come . . .” The fisherman looked out over the sea.

“If you will direct us to an Inn called Captain at the Gate,” Oriel said, after a while, “then we'll leave you in peace.”

“Peace you can't leave us, not until the inheritance is won,” the man said, “but the Captain at the Gate is easy enough to find.” He pointed. “Follow the wall and you'll find the gate open, as it's daytime. Turn to your left hand, maybe two hundred paces along, and you'll see the Inn's sign. What do you know of it?”

“We've heard the cost is fair.”

“And that's true. The Innkeeper at the Captain also brews the best ale anywhere on the coast—his ale is clear and sweet, for all that he's a dark-tempered man. You don't want to get to the wrong side of him.”

Oriel didn't want to get to the wrong side of anybody, until he knew which way his own path lay. But he didn't say that. He just thanked the fisherman and moved on, Griff at his side.

THE SIGN HUNG OUT OVER
the narrow street, so low that a tall man must duck his head to go under it. The name was written out across the bottom, Captain at the Gate. Oriel reached into the cloth wound at his waist and pulled out two silver coins, which he knotted at the hem of his shirt. That done, they stepped through the doorway.

Tables from the barroom spilled over into a sunlit court. A few men sat at each of the tables, drinking from tankards. At the far right of the low-ceilinged room was a wooden barfront, behind which stood a burly man. He dipped pitchers into a cask, and brought them up filled with frothy ale: Oriel guessed him to be the Innkeeper.

Barrel-chested, thick-armed, the Innkeeper looked strong. His neckerchief was green. He had small, doubting eyes, and when he spoke his voice was rough and full of distrust. “Two is it?” he asked, reaching down two tankards.

“No,” Oriel said.

The Innkeeper put the pitcher down, braced his big hands on the bar top, and waited for whatever lie Oriel would choose to tell, in which the Innkeeper would catch him out, after which he would drive Oriel and Griff out of the barroom.

“We seek an Inn,” Oriel said. “We were told—”

The man jerked his head towards a door. “The woman's in there.” He had no more interest in them, but hefted a cask of ale into place, as easily as if it had been a babe.

They entered a cookroom where a woman bent over a wooden trough filled with dough, and something savory bubbled over the fire. The woman's grey-streaked hair straggled out from under her green head kerchief. She looked like a round loaf herself. “Yes, lads? What is it?”

“We need a bed for the night, or perhaps longer. We would also eat,” Oriel answered, “when you have finished.”

“We've time,” Griff added.

“You think now you have time, but you'll learn different soon enough,” the woman said, although she set back to work. “Can you pay for the bed?”

“We wouldn't ask if we couldn't,” Oriel said.

That made her smile, but she argued anyway. “You're the last two honest lads left in the world?”

“I doubt that, mistress,” Oriel said.

“I'm no mistress, here. I'm the alewife, not the housewife, not even the bedwife. Not that I'm complaining, for the Innkeeper is fair with me, hard but fair, asking a full day's work for a full day's pay, which is fair.” She lifted the dough up in her arms, then dropped it down into the trough.

“Can you offer us lodging?” Oriel asked.

“Aye.”

But she said no more.

“I smell,” and he sniffed at the air, “a fine soup.”

“Aye, if you like fish and turnips. You'll have to wait,” she said. But she belied her words by wiping her hands on the apron and turning to ladle soup out into deep wooden bowls. She put a metal spoon into each bowl and cut chunks from a loaf of bread. Oriel and Griff sat on the hearthstone. The woman went back to her kneading, the mass of dough as large as a dog.

“When you've had your fill, you pay me. The soup's one little the bowl, with the bread. The bed's four littles the night. That's six—”

Oriel set his bowl of soup on the stone and rose, to hand her a silver coin. Her hands were deep in the dough, so she told him to set it down on the table.

“You've another trueman, I hope?” she asked him. “Because I know where such boots are made and worn.”

Oriel hesitated.

“Aye, you don't have to fear me telling your secrets. I speak only to warn you. There aren't many who'd recognize the Dammer's work, but not all of those who might would look kindly on you. Too many are still jealous, even though the Countess is twelve years underground and the Dammer disappeared a lifetime before she died. Some there were, and many, who wished to wed the Countess, even when she was an old woman, and there might have been an heir of her body and we would not have these wars. And didn't suitors come courting? They say, that when she was a young woman in her beauty, those were the times. My mother told me—the plays, and dances in the open marketplace, feasts and fires . . .”

“What was the Dammer to the Countess, then?” Oriel asked.

“Why, her true knight,” the woman said. “From when she was a child, and however crooked he was to all the rest of the world, the Dammer gave her his heart and his loyalty, and never wavered. Else why would she have given him an island, when all the men he had betrayed were circling around him like a pack of wolves and would have cut him to pieces? He damned them all, always, except for her, everyone except for her. And she saved him in his need.” The woman sighed over the dough. “He was true to her, always. And she would never wed any man—they say because the one man she would have taken to bed was of low birth, and landless, and lawless, and the only good thing to be said of him was his loyalty to her.”

The woman sighed again, and dropped the dough down into the trough. “A handsomer man than the Dammer has never been seen, or so my mother swore.” She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a smear of flour, then covered the dough with a cloth.

“You wear a green kerchief,” Oriel said. “As does the Innkeeper, as do the men in the barroom. The fishermen, as we learned this morning, wear yellow, for Karle. We know nothing of the kerchiefs, Griff and I,” he explained.

“It's green for Matteus,” she answered him. “Who married the granddaughter of the Countess's father's sister. Lucia, she is, and a fine lady, they say, although childless. The Innkeeper says Matteus is the man for him, since Matteus thinks that a man who takes his livelihood from the land or sea is no greater—and no less—than a man whose work comes from manufacturage. Treat all equally, Matteus says, tax all equally. The Innkeeper agrees.”

“And you?” Oriel asked.

She shrugged. “I am a woman.” She picked up the silver coin from the table. “What I think makes no difference, so why take the trouble to think anything? The Innkeeper is no fool, that's what I think, and he's a fair man. He'll show you your bed.”

“We thank you,” Griff said.

“And we will heed your advice, to find boots,” Oriel said.

“I know the man to serve your needs,” she told him.

The Innkeeper was a shorter man than Oriel thought he would be from his stature behind the bar, and his beard was so close-shaven that his skin looked unexpectedly soft. He led them across the courtyard to a room just large enough for a sleeping platform. “Privy at the corner of the yard. Does this suit you?” the Innkeeper asked.

“Yes,” Oriel answered. The Innkeeper wouldn't look him in the eye, but instead looked all around the room as if searching for mice or the webs of spiders, as if expecting some enemy to come out from under the platform.

“When the barroom has emptied the Inn door is barred,” the Innkeeper told them. “Later than that you'll find no entry. It's your loss if you're so careless as to be locked out.”

Oriel said nothing.

Back in the courtyard, the Innkeeper faced them. Even though they stood eye to eye, Oriel had the feeling that the man was much larger, and stronger, than he himself was. “I say also this,” the Innkeeper said. “I say: I do not like a man who tries to skate through troubled times without attaching himself to any one side or the other. You don't have to be for Matteus to please me—although any man with arms to hold onto that which he has won for himself has to favor Matteus, any man who knows he needs strength to endure hard times. I say no more,” the Innkeeper said. He said no more.

His servant gave them the name and street sign of the cobbler, suggested that they go barefoot lest another recognize their footgear, asked how the master bespoke them, and pressed little baked sweet cakes into their hands, saying that she knew how hungry lads always were.

They followed the city wall down to the riverside, to find the marketplace, which was on the river, and the cobbler's shop just off the marketplace. The people paid no attention to two boys, and that was familiar to Oriel, although Selby was not. He wished he could be like a bird, to fly over Selby and see the whole of its shape; but he was earthbound and must note everything, lest the unknown important thing escape his notice and bring him down. “I've seen no slaves,” he realized.

“How can you tell them?” Griff asked.

“Slaves wear collars. In Celindon you see many—the collars tell the wealth of their masters. Perhaps the slaves here all serve inside, with the women,” Oriel said.

“Must there be slaves?” Griff asked.

“The Damall said so,” Oriel answered. “He told me, it was in the nature of men; some must enslave others, some must be slaves. He said it was always so, in all places—” Abruptly, he stopped speaking, and stopped walking. “And unlike you, I never thought to question him.”

“I never questioned the Damall to his face,” Griff said. “I wouldn't have dared. I questioned only the idea. Why are you laughing, Oriel?”

Oriel could only say part of the reason. “People pick me out, I am the one. They pick me, not you, but they underestimate you. You can deny it, and others might believe you, but I will not. Yet I don't know what they see when they look at me, to loosen their tongues and hearts.”

“It's your face,” Griff explained. They recommenced walking. “Your face draws the eyes. You look as if—what you will say will be good to hear. What you will do will—whatever it is—be what a man might joy in doing with you, or behind you. Or take pride later in having done at your side. Your face seems to promise something more than ordinary.”

“How can a face do that?” Oriel asked, reasonably.

Griff shrugged. “Almost all who look on your face see it in this way,” he pointed out.

“But—” Oriel started to argue, then stopped himself. He knew that a man can't ever see himself as others see him. He also knew that what Griff said was true. And he was glad of that, glad to be himself, Oriel, recognized by all who looked upon him.

They had come to the brown river, which here flowed broad and swift into the sea. The people of Selby had laid flat stones along the river's edge and the flowing waters deposited mud on the stones, slippy brown mud on smooth grey rock. They went barefoot across the stones and dropped their four boots into the water. The boots were carried off, sinking as they were swept away. Oriel hoped, without speaking of it, that he and Griff were not going to be so swept away, and lost.

THE COBBLER WORE A GREEN
kerchief at his neck, as bright as the one his wife wore around her hair. His fingers were stained brown with his trade, and his palms bore great yellow calluses. The high boots he wore were intricately tooled, and he tucked his trousers into his boots to better display their workmanship. “We cannot pay much,” Oriel told him.