The Tale of Oriel (16 page)

Before he had finished the speech, the Innkeeper was around the front of his bar. His body like a barrel on top of legs as broad as tree stumps, his arms huge as he rolled up his shirtsleeves for the work to come, he moved slowly towards the father. The Innkeeper had no weapons but his eyes, with their malevolent glance, and the promise of strength in his arms and legs.

The ropemaker backed away.

The Innkeeper's hands hung huge. His arms looked strong enough to pick up one of the barroom tables to use as a shield. He feared nothing, and nothing that tried to stand in his way would stop him. He rolled like a boulder towards the retreating man.

The ropemaker sheathed his sword. “All right,” he said.

The Innkeeper kept moving towards him.

A man moved silently to open the door.

The father didn't dare to turn his back on the Innkeeper. As the father backed into the open doorway, the Innkeeper lifted his huge right arm. He made his hand into a fist and—faster than Oriel could see—slammed it into the father's face, and the man at the door slammed the door shut on the father's heels, and the room erupted into merriment.

The Innkeeper quieted the room by looking around, his face not rejoicing in the victory, nor amused by the event, nor angry.

Oriel was almost sorry he hadn't been given the chance to fight at the Innkeeper's side. He had been half out of his seat, and ready. He had chosen the way he would take across the room, to put himself beside his host.

“Would you then let a daughter of yours choose her husband herself?” a man asked boldly.

“If I had a daughter,” the Innkeeper said. Once again, he loomed large behind his bar. “Why should she be forbidden?” He seemed in good spirits now, and gave himself a bowl of wine.

“You should wed, then, and get children, and see if you feel the same easy way,” another called.

“After all these years, you should wed your mistress kitchen,” another called.

“Let the wench get a child, and I'd wed her fast enough. Woman!” he called, draining his own tankard, letting it clatter down onto the bar. The cookmaid's face appeared in the door. “Did you hear my promise? If you were with child, I'd wed you. I'll not take a barren wife, and why should any man?”

The woman said nothing. Color rose in her cheeks, but she didn't quarrel.

“Aye, go back to your work,” the Innkeeper said, dismissing her with more anger than he had shown for the ropemaker. “There's ale for any man here who held his tongue this night,” the Innkeeper announced, and the men thronged to take him at his word.

Oriel and Griff rose together and withdrew to their sleeping chamber. Oriel barely had time to feel surprise at the comfort of their mattress, before he slept.

And woke to darkness. He sat up. His heart thudded in his chest.

He didn't know what had awakened him. He was listening to the night outside where the air seemed to be shivering with some echo of sound. He couldn't remember hearing anything.

Griff was sitting up, too.

Oriel's ears rang. “What . . .?” he whispered to Griff.

“Don't know,” Griff whispered back. “Danger?”

“A dream? Don't remember. Did you hear something?”

“Don't know.”

They sat in the dark, and listened, trying to hear whatever lay beyond their chamber. Oriel reminded himself that they were within the thick walls of the town, protected.

“Sleep,” Oriel whispered. Griff lay back down. Oriel lay on his back and stared up into the darkness until he slept again.

And woke, to what might have been the cry of a seabird. He sat up, and Griff beside him was sitting up. The sound had moved through the room like a flying creature, over whom the walls had no power— He couldn't hold the sound in memory because it had flown before he could fix his ears on it. But at least he knew he had in fact heard something.

“Like the pigs,” Griff whispered. “When their throats—”

“I didn't hear,” Oriel whispered.

“I heard,” Griff said. “Like something human.”

“Outside?”

“I think.”

They listened. Oriel could hear only darkness. He was relieved that he could hear nothing more than the night.

Griff lay back down. Oriel lay back down.

In the darkness, you would sense rather than see someone creeping towards you. You might hear some faint movement, but how would you know that it wasn't Griff, turning in his sleep?

Oriel didn't know what he was listening for, except that it was danger. He knew that Griff also lay waking, but neither of them risked speech. Oriel lay awake until he saw grey light under the doorway and heard people stirring in the courtyard.

Griff and Oriel had slept fully clothed, like everyone else, so it was simple to rise and pick up their boots. Oriel opened the door, letting in the first pale light of a misty morning.

The cookmaid was hauling up water from the well. They carried the full buckets into the kitchen for her. Her finger across her lips, she let them help her in her work.

“There's only yesterday's bread,” she told them, when they were back in the kitchen. “Unless you can eat cold soup?”

“Those would both be welcome,” Oriel said, and thanked her for her trouble. Neither he nor Griff sat down to eat. He had a question he needed answered. “In the night, we were awakened . . .?”

“Those would be travelers, or perhaps lawless people. Folk from other places. The men of Selby know not to come out of their houses at night. Although, they say, if you speak against Phillipe, you may have soldiers pounding at your door in the dead of night, you may find yourself dragged out into the street, and killed there. Many folk will not open door or window, not at night.”

“I thought Phillipe had no claim,” Oriel said.

“He's a Captain over soldiers, that's his claim. If he can take the cities and hold them against the other claimants, and see the others all dead, then he will have won the Countess's lands. Phillipe says the strength of his right hand makes his true claim, and all who dispute that can do so with their right hands. He's the better soldier, of them all. All fear him, and with reason. They say he's fought against Wolfers and held his own there. Do you know of the Wolfers?”

“We've heard of them.”

“We've never seen them, in Selby, but we hear. . . . And there are as many who believe the tales as who doubt them. But Phillipe is no tale, and there are some who say that since Phillipe will win out in the end, being stronger and more cruel, that's reason enough to wear red now. I don't know. The Innkeeper says there will never be reason enough for him to change his colors, but if the city does fall to Phillipe, and he loses the Inn, then what will happen to me?”

Oriel couldn't answer her. He only knew that his decision had been made. He and Griff were leaving Selby, to find work and lives elsewhere.

T
HEY LEFT SELBY THROUGH THE
sea gate. At that hour only one solitary boat lay keel-up on the beach. The rest fished somewhere on the flat grey water, beyond the veils of misty rain.

The path they followed kept the city walls to their left. It had been marked on the ground by many feet, although on that morning they saw only a few men, and those closely cloaked. As the morning went on the drizzle ceased, and then the mists lifted, and finally the clouds pulled apart to reveal a pale blue sky. By that time they had come to the river gate and could see, under watery sunlight, the countryside spread out before them.

“Upriver,” Oriel said to Griff, to identify the land before them, which was also their destination. They stood looking at it.

The river flowed away behind, down to the sea. Ahead, close around Selby, there were many small farms, with gently sloping fields in cultivation, fenced pens for animals, outbuildings to store crops. The freshly turned earth of the fields glowed brown. Upriver, the land became hilly.

Upriver was inland. “I think we should risk inland,” Oriel said, but they didn't move.

Their shadows fell towards the riverside, as if urging them in that direction. The path they followed led down to the river's edge and then followed beside the water, going inland. They stood.

“We can live off the sea,” Griff said at last. “But those sounds—I think men were murdered last night. I think men are murdered every night in Selby, and the men of Selby wait for Mad Magy to be murdered as her children have already. . . .”

“Is all the world then like the Damall's island?” Oriel wondered.

Griff didn't answer. His dark eyes studied the land ahead.

“It may be, and if it is we know how to live in it,” Oriel decided. “We know the island, and we know the cities of the coast. I would go inland, on the chance.”

“Then that's what we'll do,” Griff said, and he smiled. “Unless, is there a reason that you hesitate here?”

“No reason,” Oriel answered. There was a feeling of unease at leaving what he knew, to go into what he didn't know anything of. A feeling was no reason, however, and besides, part of the feeling of unease was eagerness. He was eager to be begun with whatever the land upriver held for him.

They didn't hurry. The morning was warmed gently by a southern breeze. As they walked, the river moved in the opposite direction, sometimes in a slow sweep, sometimes rushing over shallows. The river banks grew gradually less steep. The farms became larger land holdings, and fewer, but they had the same busyness of the year's beginnings. Figures moved about in the fields, a man plowing behind an ox, a man moving a herd of animals from one fenced pasture to another with the dull clanking sound of metal neck bells. Sometimes a woman could be seen, bending over the well. Sometimes children sat looking out from doorsteps, and once a little child stood up, to wave. Oriel waved back. The child stepped forward only a few paces, and waved more energetically. Both Oriel and Griff waved back. The child, its feet dancing beneath its skirt, waved with both its hands in the air in a frenzy of excitement.

THE SUN WAS WELL ON
its way towards setting when Oriel saw his destination. The farm buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, like companions, with the long green hills at their backs. The yellow stone of house and fences glowed like gold under the lowering sun.

Looking across at the fields that ran up, edged in golden stone, over the hilltops, where sheep grazed, looking down to where a pond had been dug for the ducks and geese that roamed around its muddy edges, seeing a child move among the ducks—Oriel felt peace, deep as a rockbound harbor, fill his belly.

Without thought, without a word of explanation, he turned onto the narrow path. The farmhouse seemed to await him.

As they came up to the wooden gate, they were halted by the sounds of dogs barking. Two mastiffs came running out of the house and jumped up against the gate, growling low, barking. Oriel and Griff stepped back, to be safely out of reach of the yellowed fangs. The child left the ducks and approached the gate. She called the dogs to silence. They did not obey her. She stood between them, no taller than their shoulders, regarding Oriel and Griff out of round brown eyes in a smooth round face. The dogs barked and slathered and she stood quiet, not smiling, not trying to speak.

Gradually, the clamor subsided. The girl pulled and pushed at the dogs until they stood on four feet again. She put a hand on each dog's shoulder. “Now be quiet, Brownie,” she said. “Be good, Faith.” She stared up from between them at Oriel and Griff.

Oriel didn't know what she saw to strike her so silent, but he thought he should wait for her to speak first. He wanted to make no careless mistakes here. To be clever as a river sometimes meant moving slowly, letting the land itself guide you.

“Good evening, sirs.” When the girl spoke, her cheeks turned pink.

“Good evening,” Oriel answered.

“It's a fine evening,” she said. Her voice was high and childlike, but so soft he had to listen carefully to hear it. After her first searching regard, she hadn't looked at the visitors.

“Yes, a fine evening,” Oriel agreed.

He waited then. The girl waited. The dogs stood patiently.

“Is your father at home?” Oriel finally asked.

“Aye,” she said, and continued studying the ground between the toes of her boots.

Oriel waited. She didn't fidget but she wasn't at ease.

“I would speak with your father, if I may,” he said.

“Oh, aye,” she said. She looked over her shoulder towards the end of the row of buildings, and looked back at Oriel.

Oriel turned to Griff.

“We wonder,” Griff said, “if we could ask you to fetch your father to us. Or perhaps your mother?” She shook her head. “We wonder,” Griff said, “if your father can be disturbed at his labors? Can we ask that favor of you?”

She looked over her shoulder again, as if for help, but no one appeared. “Aye, you can,” she said, but hesitated. Oriel was about to speak impatiently when she warned them, “You mustn't try to follow me, not into the yard, sirs. The dogs won't permit it.”