The Tale of Oriel (47 page)

Griff endeavored to learn his way around the many-roomed castle itself, and all the custom it was built on; and to learn the business of the land. He endeavored to go out into his city, where he could be seen and known, where he could make some of the faces familiar to him. For should not an Earl know his own people? And was not the purpose of the Earldom to make life richer for its people, whatever their rank or occupation?

Griff did not want the title of Earl. There was no other man to carry it, but the burden lay uneasy on his shoulders. Only Oriel would have understood, Griff thought.

Or Beryl, perhaps, but Wardel—whom he had sent once again into the north, to seek her whereabouts—had not returned, so Griff didn't even know how things were with Beryl. He thought of her seldom—for the grief of Beryl was like an open wound. The grief of Oriel, who was dead, had at least finality. He awaited Wardel with fear, and grief, and a desire to see Beryl, to be in her company, to hear her speak, of Oriel, and the world, and the puppet tales, and the child she carried. To hear her speak.

And the child she carried. He had forgotten the child.

It was as if Oriel had placed a hand on Griff's shoulder, to comfort him, and to strengthen. Griff could be Earl when Oriel's child was heir. He could hold the Earldom for Oriel's child.

The thought of the child—It wasn't that grief rose from her place in his heart and rose into the air, leaving him. No, grief was his companion. But he was no longer so separated from Oriel when he thought of the child.

More days passed, and the leaves of the trees in the castle gardens became tipped with gold and red. Wardel, at last, rode in and delivered his news. The holding was still uninhabited. None had seen Beryl, in the villages between his father's city and the holding. The spaewife had flown away on a tree branch, some said, who claimed to have seen her traveling across the sky. Others said she would return if they had great need of her. A few spoke only into his ear to hope she had not been murdered, for she was only a girl, with a talent for healing. But she had taken into her house, just last winter, two dangerous-looking young men, who had ridden to the fairs with the girl between them. Perhaps those young men might be traced? One or two said if Beryl was in need of help she could always ask help of them.

Griff ignored the rumors and tried to accept the reality.

Wardel, the stains of his journey still upon him, sat before the broad fire in the Earl's apartments. Woven tapestries hung down over stone walls, and a tall window opened onto the night sky.

“Beryl's grandfather,” Griff said now, “came from the south, from an Inn at the southern edge of the Kingdom, she said, and I think I will seek her there myself, and thereby see more of the people I rule.”

“That would take you into Yaegar's territory,” Wardel said. He pulled in his legs and asked a direct question. “If you find this lady—but she isn't a lady born, is she? Will you wed her?”

“If she will have me,” Griff answered. “She is with child,” he told Wardel, “and the child is Oriel's.”

Wardel looked into the fire. Griff could see his calculations. “So if you were to wed her, you would be regent for the child, who will have in his veins the blood of the man who won the Earldom.”

“I am the Earl Sutherland,” Griff said.

Wardel was angry at Griff's answer, which made complicated what Wardel had hoped to keep simple.

“As I was named by Oriel,” Griff reminded him.

“And I begin to see why he chose you,” Wardel said. “For you have a heart that is stubborn for truth. What of this child, then?” Wardel demanded. “And the woman, when you wed her?”

“If she will have me, for she has already refused me once.”

Wardel turned back to the fire, where flames rose up in disorder. “You must have an heir, you know that. And more than one, if you can, an heir and brothers for him.”

“I know,” Griff said. He would marry, for heirs.

If he couldn't marry Beryl, and Oriel's child, then he would find another lady. There would be many glad to be an Earl's Lady. “All I ask is to know that Beryl is safe.” She would not, he thought, be brought to bed for another few months, but he couldn't be sure of that.

“And this child may be a girl and no danger,” Wardel said.

Griff didn't argue. He felt a wash of loneliness, or perhaps only grief, that drove him from his chair by the fire, to look out the window. Before winter closed him into the castle, he would go south, to see his people and meet his lords and find Beryl. If she was to be found. This place in the world which Oriel had given to him—he was unprepared for this place. What was good in him was not the same as all those things that had been good in Oriel—

“Lord Griff, I would be of service to you,” Wardel said, from his seat by the fire.

“I thank you.” Griff turned around. Wardel looked a boy, but he would never let another take unmerited advantage from him. Oriel had found Wardel, and selected him, but Griff knew why the choice was wise. That was all the advantage he had ever had over Oriel. He had known Nikol's heart, and the desire of the sixth Damall to have a heart as foul as his own inherit the island. Oriel had only recognized Nikol's enmity.

Griff couldn't, as Oriel could, gather men to him at a glance, seal them to him with a word. He had himself been the first gathered, the first sealed.

“I thank you for the offer,” Griff answered, and not until he saw alarm in Wardel's eyes did he realize that he had already spoken those words. “I will ride into the south,” he said, “to seek the lady myself, and to meet my people. I should assure myself of Lord Yaegar's fealty, I think, for there are rumors.”

“I ask to ride with you,” Wardel said.

“With no rest?”

“Across the winter, I promise you. I'll rest and grow fat,” Wardel said. “But I would go with you into the south, and a troop of soldiers, too, Griff. For Lord Yaegar . . .”

This was business, and Griff got down to it. He called a servant to summon Lilos and Garder to them, and sent another to fetch Verilan from among the soldiers.

TWO DAYS LATER, THEY RODE
out. They rode out into grey rain, Griff, Wardel, Verilan, and behind them a troop of one hundred mounted soldiers, trained—as Lord Haldern required—for fighting on horseback or on the ground. Griff knew no more of what they rode towards than did the others, lord or soldier. He feared what might await them, if the rumors were true. On the chance that the rumors were true, Griff had that morning named Lilos as his heir. “His is the highest blood of all of us,” Griff had explained.

“And after Lilos?” Verilan inquired.

“That is up to Lilos,” Griff decided. Verilan masked his disappointment and thereby revealed his desire to be named if not first, then second. Griff noted that ambition in his Captain, and thought he would be unwise to overlook it.

As they rode through steady rain, Griff surprised himself by this thinking of successions. Then he surprised himself again, when he understood how natural it now felt to him to ride out as Earl Sutherland. He looked back over his green-caped shoulder, to see the soldiers riding four abreast behind him, along the River Way.

The rumors were enough to dismay all but the most high-hearted. There were rumors of the disinherited lady and her true man, who welcomed all who cared to fight on their behalf for the lady's lands. There were rumors of a troop of discontented soldiers, and some with genuine grievances that had gone unanswered during the years since the Lady Earl had died, and for years before as well, long grievances. There were rumors of rebellion.

For the first two days of travel, as they crossed by fields and villages lying close to Sutherland's stronghold, all seemed well. The people gathered to cheer them. A solitary farmer's wife might look up towards them from the field where she gathered the last onions. Children called out in excitement to see so many armed and mounted men, riding at such speed. Dogs ran out to bark. For the first two days, they rode through prosperous land.

After those first days, however, the land seemed sparsely inhabited. The villages that they rode through were empty, and if they happened to pass a herdsman out with his flocks, that man would pretend not to see them as he drove his goats or sheep in an opposite direction. Midafternoon of the third day they passed a ruined holding, the house no more than charred posts and black beams, the field black stubble. No animal or person remained, except for a solitary cat who stalked birds and mice, as if the holding still needed protection from such thieves. It worried Griff to see the holding in ruins, here in the Kingdom.

By the time they arrived at the village near which they would camp that evening, they had passed two more scorched holdings, and Griff had moved from worry to anger.

The Major of the village came forward to greet them, and the people gradually came out of their houses, to stare at the soldiers without expression. They were not glad to see soldiers, nor afraid to see soldiers, nor sorry to see soldiers. The Major was a wiry white-haired man, bald-pated, whose eyes doubted all they looked upon, whose hands he kept clasped behind him as if they might lead him into trouble. He greeted Griff and the lords with minimum courtesy, although he offered them refreshment. “We have some ale yet left, and bread. But we cannot feed another army of soldiers.”

“Another?” Griff asked. He stood at his horse's head.

“Aye, and you don't think yours is the only army about, do you?”

“Is this the way you speak to the Earl Sutherland?” Wardel warned the man.

The Major was not afraid. “How do I know he's the man?”

“Who else would wear the ring?” Wardel asked.

“Aye, and I heard the tale, of a foreigner who without even fighting for it laid his hands on the title, and then he gave it over to his creature. And so the lady could not have her own inheritance from her own father, and his father before him who was the Great Gladaegal. The lady, as I heard, stood helpless until there came a man willing to put his army at her disposal, for the justice of her cause.”

Griff silenced Wardel to ask, “What is the justice of the lady's cause?”

“Why, her inheritance, from her father the Earl, and his father the Earl before him.”

“Was she named the heir?” Griff asked. If there were an error in justice, he would give the lady her rights, without delay.

“Only the people name their heirs,” the Major told him. “Among the lords, as you should know, it is the oldest son who takes the lands and title. The lady, maugre she was the only child of the old blood, could never be the oldest son.”

Griff ignored the discourtesies of word and tone, and now he could ignore the lady's claim. Now he had more pressing concerns. “We passed three burned farmsteads as we rode into your village.”

The circle of listening villagers fell silent. Griff looked around at them all. They were only eight in number, three women and five men, plus a few children standing hand in hand, or clutching a woman's skirts. One child seemed alone, and pale—he stood behind a woman's skirts but as if he was attached to no one.

“Why were the holdings burned?” Griff asked. He heard but did not look to see his own men, impatient, with stamping of hooves and jingle of spur and sword.

The Major shrugged his shoulders, a helpless gesture.

“Did all the people of those holdings come safely away?” Griff asked. He sensed something wrong here, of which no one spoke.

“Not my father,” the solitary boy cried. He was perhaps seven summers, perhaps eight or nine, and he was angry. But his anger was directed at Griff.

About boys at least Griff felt he knew something.

“Lord Tintage told us it was necessary, for the lady Merlis to have a victory. For when the hordes came down to take our lands from the lady, and from us. There is a great army coming out of Sutherland's city.” The Major reported this warily, and bitterly.

Griff forced back his own fury. He looked at the boy, and at the Major. “You see the great army. I am the Earl Sutherland,” he said. “I am Earl through being named heir by Oriel.” He clamped his teeth together to keep from saying here and now what had happened to Oriel. He must claim the Earldom only by himself, for himself; he must not take it away from Merlis or Tintage. “I have sworn the Earl's fealty to the King. I wear the ring and carry the sword. I have the commission to rule over you.”

The Major studied him. The woman before whom the boy stood held the boy by his shoulders, holding him back.

“You aren't a lord,” the Major said.

“No,” Griff agreed. “Neither am I born a man of the Kingdom. But I ask you to recognize me as your Earl.”

The Major studied him for a long time before saying, “Aye, and I will. And if I will, so also will the people of the village, and the people of the holdings. When we tell them. For holdings should not be burned out, and crops should not be burned over, as if winter will never come. A man who has no need to die ought not to lose his life to save his holding. When they rode through this summer, I saw that man. Oriel. If you are his chosen heir, I serve you.”