The Tale of Oriel (19 page)

“I have heard of such slaves, who are bought at the highest price for the promises the Dammer makes about how useful these boys will be, especially to the great guildsmen of Celindon. But I've heard also that these boys make trouble among the other slaves, with the proud airs they take for themselves, and they care more for the fullness of their bellies than for the well-being of their master, or his house. These boys can see no farther than their noses, or so it seemed to me, hearing the tales; since their own well-being depends on the well-being of the house. Do you agree?”

Oriel answered, after a hesitation to consider, “Aye.”

“These boys have taken coins to falsify the names or numbers. Such coins are often offered by one who wishes the great house ill—and there are always some to wish a great house ill. These boys will try to be masters among the slaves, and slaves to the masters—spiteful to the one and fawning to the other. The Dammer has starved out of them their courage and loyalty, until they are ruined. Even women make better slaves than the Dammer's boys because a woman will be loyal to her master, if he once gains her heart. The best use for the Dammer's boys, to my mind, is to use them to teach you letters and numbers so that you can keep your own record books, and then sell them to the mines. Lest they undermine your house with their cowardliness.”

Oriel nodded slowly.

“I think,” the Saltweller said, “that if you can speak of keeping records then you can write numbers, and letters.”

Oriel nodded slowly.

“I think,” Vasil said, “that you must be from the Dammer's island.”

Oriel took a breath and said it. “Yes. I am.”

“And I also,” Griff said.

Unsurprised, the Saltweller rose from his stool. He went to the cupboard and took out a jug of wine. He poured out three bowls and gave one to Oriel, one to Griff, keeping the third himself. “This I believe,” he said. “Not everyone can be ruined by evil experience. There are some who cannot be ruined. And there are others who find themselves in company with such men, and have the wisdom to know their fortune. I would ask you both to stay here, as my men. Tell no one else whence you come, deny it if asked, I will put my word behind you should it be needed. I would ask you, further, to teach Tamara the understanding of numbers and letters.” He raised his bowl of wine to promise, “I will keep my faith with you.”

“We will keep ours with you, Master,” Oriel answered, and drank.

As the wine slid down his throat, happiness flooded up like rivers to meet it. For the time it took to swallow the wine happiness was the very bones of him, over which his flesh was wrapped.

He was learning to work the goodness of the property and he would work it well. He could bring to the house his knowledge of the sea, and how to take the goodness of sea and river for the benefit of the house. He felt also, in himself, that he might become the kind of man the Salter was. Oriel had frequently accompanied his master to the market in Selby, and once to the inland city of Belleview, and once in the fall to double-walled Celindon. When they had been in Celindon, that city had been held—with smoke still rising from the ruins of the embattled streets—by Karle and Eleanore; but what heir was in power made no difference to the Salter. Vasil wore no man's color, but all men knew he had given a son to each cause, except Phillipe's. If Vasil was no man's follower, then he followed no man's enemy. Vasil had earned the right to move independently, and he kept that right to his house and all within it. Oriel thought he also had the strength to move so independently; he thought his was the same kind of strength his master had. Oriel thought he would make a worthy saltweller.

He must, then, wed Tamara. Given her own choice, she would take Griff, but she was only just approaching eleven winters and it would be two more before her father asked her to take the man he wished her to wed. Oriel was fairly sure he could win Tamara's heart, when her heart was ready to be given to a husband.

Griff himself said, at some time that first winter, “When Tamara chooses, as the Saltweller will ask her, she will choose you, Oriel. How could she not?” Griff asked.

Oriel knew that you couldn't tell a woman what to do with her heart. He had seen that from the first, that being one of the things Mad Magy had to teach, if you were wise enough to learn from her. He had seen it also in the cookmaid at the Captain, who would never leave her rough-handed Innkeeper, however little he gave her in return. Oriel thought that if he were a woman he would choose himself over Griff. That first winter he sometimes tried to see past his companion's face, into Griff's heart, to know what was there—because he would not like to take from Griff any of the little that Griff might desire for himself, he would not be such a man, not unless urgent circumstance or urgent need drove him to it. He tried to see if Griff would have liked to be the man to husband Tamara, and he saw none of the lingering glances that gave a man away, just as he saw no hunger when Griff's eyes followed the line of hills over the farm's rising and falling lands.

Over that first winter, when the weather was too rough for any army to move through it, quiet spread over Selby. Day followed day, bringing sunshine or sleet, rain, cold, and great chunks of ice floating down the river from the hills. Day followed day, bringing daily chores, until the stools and tables were all mended and a pile of woven cones was stacked in the storeroom, until all knives and daggers were honed to razor sharpness and a stack of saltboxes stood beside the cones, until shirts and skirts and especially trousers were mended. Oriel divided the Damall's coins into two equal parts and sewed them into the hems of his trousers. The beryl he kept in its own hiding pocket, beneath one of the waist tabs where its bulkiness wouldn't be noticed.

It was a mild winter. The herds could be left in the fenced pastures, where the two mastiffs would gather them together and drive them in at the first sign of a storm. There was mildness among the factions, also. When Oriel went into Selby and wandered among the market stalls, or sat with his master over bowls of stew, slabs of bread, and tankards of ale at the Captain, talk turned as often to the weather as to the movement of armies. A man wearing Ramon's and Taddeus's blue neckerchief might ask to escort a maid home who wore the green head kerchief of Matteus and Lucia. And that man might try to steal a kiss. And the maid might let him, knowing this would be no occasion for bloodshed, because Selby lay under the peace of winter.

T
HEY HAD A SUMMER OF
peace. This was the third such summer the people of Selby had enjoyed and they made the most of it. For with every year of peace, the likelihood of war closing in upon their fruitful fields and orchards in the next year became greater, and the fear of it also. On some nights, distant lights would burn along the northern horizon, or the western. During some days smoke would rise, like faraway clouds. The people of Selby would stare off into the distances and await messengers. Over the second long summer no messengers arrived.

The town built its walls thicker and taller, and cared less what color neckerchief a man wore than how honestly he dealt in his trade and how lightly he danced on the square after market days, and how straight he could stand after an afternoon in one of the Inns, and how fair his daughters were. The people of Selby cared more for Selby than for any victories among the heirs.

On market days, after the companionship of the morning's labor of loading a wagon and selling the wagonload of salt, after the companionship of beer and bread, Oriel and Griff and their master walked home through darkening air in a different companionship. Tamara watched for them, to offer hot food and demand the news of the day.

Tamara was growing into her womanhood. Oriel could see that. Anyone could see the roundness of her, and the care with which she wrapped her head kerchief around her hair, and pulled two or three locks out from under the kerchief, to be admired. Oriel didn't know if everybody could see the new way she looked at him, from under her eyelashes as if she were a little afraid of him, or the little smile that let him see the tips of her teeth, and seemed to make sport of her own seriousness, and seemed, somehow, also to make sport of him. Despite the woman's work that kept her busy, Tamara found time and energy for more. She made Oriel and Griff teach her numbers and letters. She asked, looking at Oriel from under her lashes, if they might not have a boat. With a boat they could travel on the river, quicker than walking, and Oriel had once built a boat by himself—hadn't he? he'd told her about it—so he could do that again. She looked down again to remark how handy a boat might be, for catching fish also, and to remark that she might be useful in the building, if Oriel and Griff would let her help with it.

“I can work, and work hard, can't I?” Tamara asked Oriel, who agreed. “Even if I'm not as pretty as some, I am a strong worker. Does a lad care for that as much as prettiness, think you?”

“How could a lad not care for you?” he asked her.

The game between lass and lad required neither of them to answer this kind of question, so that both could imagine what an answer might be. But Oriel knew what he thought: Tamara was dowried with the saltwell and its lands, she was skilled in housekeeping and husbandry, she was a round, neat person with hair that shone in the sunlight when she let it hang down to dry after washing, and she often had thoughts about him that made her cheeks pink, when he caught her staring at him.

It was a good year for rain and sunlight, and each farmstead had full barns, grains stored, and roots, and its animals fed to fatness, their young plumping up at their sides. All of Selby counted its luck that second winter.

This made it seem the more cruel—or perhaps made Selby feel the more lucky—when spring brought the news, from the villages upriver and the cities to the east along the coast, and the cities to the west. The news was dangerous. The news was the more dangerous for being contradictory. There were too many stories afloat on the spring air for any man's peace.

Celindon had been taken, its double-walled fastnesses breached and its houses burned to ashes—some said by Phillipe, some said by Karle, all disagreed about who had defended it, and one or two of those who brought news from the north reported nothing changed from earlier years except a citizenry more closely cloaked in hunger. The walls of Celindon stood, others claimed, the guildsmen counted their coins in safety, the slave markets were full, and the gold mines produced richly. Eleanore's children had all died off in the poxy fever, rumor said, and Lucia was—at last—with child. Taddeus had taken his troops over to Phillipe, leaving Ramon weak as a beached fish. Phillipe had had his wife murdered so he would be free to marry Eleanore, and he was willing to take her sons as his heirs, over any sons he might get from her.

If you could believe Phillipe. If you could believe rumors of him. If you could believe anything you heard.

Danger was in the air, the very air the people of Selby breathed into their bodies.

The men of Selby were fearful, and undecided. A few remained staunchly loyal to their colors, but most were not. All hoped that Selby was small enough, distant enough, a poor enough prize that no Captain would desire it.

And then there came word from inland, word of Wolfers. Where Wolfers passed, they left nothing standing, not farmhouse nor any growing thing, not tree nor animal, and not man nor woman, nor child. They spoke a tongue no man could understand, baying like wolves. They ate the hearts of the enemies they killed in battle to take into themselves the courage of their foes.

Mad Magy was given the best of the vegetables, and sweet cakes; the most tender meats were put into buckets of soup for her, just in case there was truth in the old saying. Selby remembered the old saying, that spring, and hoped. Selby will stay safe as long as Mad Magy lives on its borders, they said to one another.

“Not in the spring when there's little to take,” the men of Selby said to one another, glad of the distance Selby lay from other cities. “Not until the crops are grown and worth the taking,” said those of cheerful disposition. “Perhaps never,” the most hopeful said. “Perhaps there will be battles elsewhere, perhaps these tales of Wolfers are untrue, perhaps we'll have another year of ease.”

And the blues would no longer drink ale among the yellows, the greens spat on the reds, who had no claim under law except the law that the strongest takes what he can get and hold, and the reds mocked any man who gave his life merely because a cause was just.

Fights became more frequent and they were welcomed. At least, Oriel thought, while the blood hammered in his heart and his closed fist hammered against some man's jawbone, and he didn't know if the blood he wiped from his face was his own or another's—at least he wasn't sitting in his fear, just waiting for danger to strike.

The Innkeeper of the Captain at the Gate tolerated no brawls within his doors and heaved any quarrelers out no matter whose color they wore, so his was the place Vasil chose for a measure of ale and news, at the end of a market day, after which the three would go home the longer, safer way, around the town walls. Tamara would be watching out for them. Alone, she was forbidden to leave the farmyard, forbidden to take their boat out onto the river, forbidden to greet strangers. She had no desire to disobey and no sympathy for Oriel's bruises. “It'll be knives and daggers soon,” she worried, “and then what is the difference between the men of Selby and armed soldiers? I'm not so much a child that I don't see the seriousness of things. Color turns against color, and the walls that should protect us cannot. If the armies come in the spring there will be no crops planted, and we will go hungry, if we live. If they come in the summer, our labor will go for nothing, and we will go hungry, if we live. If they come in the autumn—”

“Enough, Daughter,” her father said.