The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

Oriel didn’t ask how that could be, when there had been no actual increase in men, or acres, or coins. Men who are giving advice wish to be listened to, not asked questions of.

  “Ramon and Taddeus together have a larger army. Any man knows the largest army will carry the day.”

  “A man with the eyes to see what must come next and take his best shelter, even—aye—giving up all he has and starting again, now that’s a man,” the hammerer added.

  Oriel thought of the yellow and green and blue kerchiefs. He thought he would have to be clever as a river to wind his way among these claimants and their colors. “Can you tell me whose are the men we saw wearing red?” he asked.

  “Red? Here in Selby?” the hammerer asked, alarmed.

  “Aye, in the marketplace, at The Guildsman.”

  “Those are Phillipe’s men,” the hammerer said. He turned back to the shaping of stones, and turned his back to Oriel and Griff.

  The mortarer explained. “Phillipe has no claim by blood, unless it’s the blood of the men he’s killed, or had killed by hirelings so he might become Captain. Phillipe claims the cities by right of force.” He slathered a layer of mortar onto the walls. “If men with red kerchiefs stand boldly about the marketplace, bad times are coming,” he said.

  “Aye, and I was beginning to hope that they would settle their differences without Selby.”

  “I would not be a poor or landless man, should Phillipe take Selby,” the hammerer said. “Think you, should we move upriver?”

  “Safety lies upriver?” Griff asked.

  “Aye, because when armies move, they go along the coast, among the rich cities. When Celindon is beseiged and holds firm, then Selby is safe. But if Celindon falls . . . Upriver are a few farms, a town or two, just villages, perhaps the blacksmith might have a few coins, there is the Saltweller, but his wealth isn’t in coins—none of these are worth the effort of an army.”

  The mortarer reminded his companion, “Mad Magy’s hut lies between us and double-walled Celindon, and she’s kept fed. So long as Mad Magy lives, they say . . .”

  Oriel and Griff walked away. After a while Oriel said to Griff, “I think we may have to choose a man and his color, if we choose to stay in Selby.”

  “We don’t know anywhere else to go,” Griff pointed out.

  “Tomorrow, then, we find work,” Oriel decided. They would wind among the colors, as long as they could, backing no man. They would wind and twist, like a river. “And now back to the Captain at the Gate,” Oriel said, “if I can find our way.”

  Chapter 10

  THEY APPROACHED THE INN DOWN a sloping street. The cookmaid must have been watching for them because she signaled them from a window, to go around, beyond the building, and enter her kitchen from a side door. “Here,” she said, hurrying them to the long bench beside the table, hastily scooping out bowls of the meaty soup. “Before the Innkeeper knows you are back. So he won’t charge you the extra meal. But he’ll expect to sell you a tankard of ale, before the evening ends, I’ll tell you that.” She was washing tin tankards in a pot of hot water, hanging them on nails driven into the wall by the fireplace, so they would dry quickly. “He may ask you if you had a meal, for he knows my hunger for children, although he never would give me any, for all that we’ve lived under the same roof for these many years and all of Selby thinks me his bedfellow. And he not the man to pay enough attention to gossip to deny it, so no other man will think of me for wife. But that’s little to complain of, in this world. At least it’s not Mad Magy’s fate.”

  “What is her fate?” Oriel asked.

  “Set out like a staked goat for the armies. No matter which army it is. Not that it means anything to her, poor soul, since she’s lost her children. At least, if you don’t have children you can’t lose them,” the woman said. “Back outside with you now, and not a word—if you value my skin.”

  “Not a word,” Oriel promised.

  “Not a word,” Griff echoed.

  “Aye, you’re good lads, anyone looking at you can tell that. How could your mothers part with you? No, never tell me, it’ll be too sad a tale. Go now. You must enter the bar from the street. Go, you heard me.”

  The lowering sun lit up the yellow stones of Selby, and made the city glow. With a bed for the night and a plan for the next day, Oriel stepped confidently through the street door into the barroom.

  From where he filled the space behind the bar the Innkeeper stared at the two of them out of pale eyes. Oriel’s confidence retreated before that glance. But he wouldn’t be driven around the world by such men, he thought. He stood his ground, and Griff stood at his shoulder. The Innkeeper didn’t seem displeased to be so faced.

  After a time, during which every man in the room turned to stare at them, the Innkeeper spoke: “Come in if you’re coming. Close that door behind you. I’ll draw you ale,” he said, turning around and reaching up with arms as broad as the thighs of oxen. “Woman!” the Innkeeper called. “Clean tankards! And we’ve custom here, woman!”

  The cookmaid set two tankards down on the table before them, and turned away without a word. As the dark settled, some of the men left, and later the Innkeeper called out for candles. With the candles came moths and other winged bugs. Those moths that found the flames they sought made sizzling sounds in the liquid wax.

  Oriel and Griff sat against a back wall, facing the room and the door into the street. The fire behind them burned with welcome warmth. Conversation was conducted at a low level, men with their heads close together. The room wasn’t crowded, but it was full, and it seemed that most groups—be they only two or three, or be they a full table of seven or ten—were made up of men who wore the same color kerchief. Sometimes a man would go up to the bar and speak with the Innkeeper. Sometimes the Innkeeper would bellow out, “Woman!” and the cookmaid would emerge to carry a tray of tankards to a table, or carry a tray of tankards into the kitchen for cleaning, or be told to serve a man with soup and bread. The Innkeeper stayed behind the bar.

  There was tension in the room, Oriel thought. He sipped at the bitter ale and watched the faces around him. He tried to catch their words, but they didn’t speak to be overheard. Words flickered like candlelight. Voices murmured like water. The evening passed by slowly, sleepily.

  So that when the door to the street was thrown open and a broad-shouldered man stood in it, his short cape travel stained and his boots muddy, the whole room came to silent attention. The man called across to the Innkeeper: “They told me she was here, my daughter. I ask you, Innkeeper, where is my daughter?”

  The Innkeeper greeted this grey-haired stranger with the same pale, wordless glance he had given Oriel and Griff.

  “I asked you a question, Innkeeper,” the stranger said.

  “We have no young woman here.”

  “And my neighbor’s serving wench with her,” the man said. His voice growled, roared, was filled with anger.

  “Neither have we two young women,” the Innkeeper said.

  The man strode across the room to lean against the bar, placing coins down in front of him. “Ale,” he said. “I’ve had a long journey chasing after the four of them.”

  “Now it’s four?” the Innkeeper asked, and a number of men in the room chuckled.

  “Four,” the man said. “My daughter, from my own house, and my journeyman, who still owes me two years of his labor. For I am a ropemaker, well enough known to have need of an assistant. They have taken also my neighbor’s serving maid he planned to bed himself, and with them a good-for-nothing lad who followed all trades a little, and in my village we used him for whatever need we had; he was clever enough, in his way. That’s four, as I said.”

  “What’s a daughter the less, if you’ve sons?”

  “I’ve no sons,” the man said. “But I’ve a likely man who’d have wed the girl.”

  “As old a man as you?”

  “No.” But his cheeks pinked, and he turned his back to the Innkeeper.

  “A young man?�
�� the Innkeeper asked, and the father didn’t answer. The room laughed again.

  “Aye, make mock,” the father said. “I wish you the same sorry fate for your property.”

  “How long has it been?” one of the customers asked.

  “Four days I’ve been following their trail. Today’s the fifth,” the father said, drinking again, and putting down more coins to show that his tankard should be refilled.

  “Then she’s likely with child by now, so why chase any longer?”

  “I’ll not have him wedding her,” the father said.

  “No other will have her now,” another voice said.

  “Nor will that journeyman have what he took against my express desire. The two of them sneaking off together when I refused consent. And there is the matter of my neighbor, too, a man robbed as I have been.” At the laughter, he glared around the room, and drained his ale again, and set it down to be filled. “But what would the men of Selby know about such things? You know what the world says of you, don’t you? Hiding behind your walls, hiding behind the double-walled city of Celindon, so you’ll never have to draw a sword. . . . Do you know what the world calls you?” The ropemaker’s sword was drawn. “They’re here, aren’t they? Tell me, and I’ll kill them all. Or I’ll have your heart on my blade before you can take another breath to fill with your lies.”

  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 w
ill 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.

  Chapter 11

  THEY 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.”