The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  At first Oriel waited impatiently for the end but then, as he grew accustomed to coming back to the low, heavy-walled house, which seemed—every evening—to welcome him, he grew accustomed to Vasil’s slow telling. And he was glad as he listened that he could hear the story in pieces. There was more sorrow in the tale than Oriel would have liked to hear in one night.

  Sometimes Griff was present, to hear whatever part of the tale was told that night. Sometimes it was just Vasil and Oriel. Sometimes they were walking up to the pasture, where a herd needed care. Sometimes they were waiting for the mother liquor to taste ready, sometimes moving faggots onto the fire, sometimes packing conical baskets for draining or wooden boxes for drying. Sometimes they would be sitting at the fireside after the day’s work, or sitting on a bench beside the door watching the day’s light fade. The Saltweller’s voice would begin: “In the days when the priests had returned to the land, and I was a boy, and my father was Saltweller . . .” This grew into the story of Vasil’s oldest son, who would have studied to be a priest had the priests not fled the wars, the son who had supported—as had the Saltweller—Karle. The son wore his yellow neckerchief proudly and did what any boy of spirit must do when he had chosen his leader, and died in a battle before one of the cities up along the coast, where—since Karle’s army had fled from that battle—his body was lost to recovery.

  The second son, as his father had at the time, supported Ramon—this being before Ramon had leagued himself with the scoundrel Taddeus. But the weakness in armed strength that led to the ill-chosen leaguing had led Ramon previously into ill-conceived battles, in which he was outnumbered, during which any number of men’s sons were slain, and their blue neckerchiefs stained with their own red blood.

  And so the stories went, for the Salter had a son dead in every man’s color and he would no longer wear any man’s. He had lost wives also, but they had died of fever or the bloody flux or childbirth. For all the uneasiness of present days, the Saltweller pointed out to Oriel and Griff and his daughter, any man alive had known worse, since the Countess died. Selby was lucky in being out of the way, off the main roads between the greater cities. The citizens of Celindon, for example, were eaten with envy for the peaceful life in Selby.

  The daughter’s name was Tamara. There were older daughters, two of them still living, married to neighboring farms. So all of the landholdings along the river belonged in the Saltweller’s family. “For they were pretty enough girls for the purpose. Who weds Tamara will be Salter after me. That’s if the armies come to peace. If these wars don’t kill off all of the men. If in the division of the spoils the saltwell doesn’t fall to some stranger’s gift. Because there is only so much a man can do, to secure his child’s future, Oriel. And what of my little Tamara, do you find her pretty?”

  Oriel didn’t find Tamara at all. He didn’t look for her. She brought food to the table, kept the house, cared for the fowl, cultivated the kitchen garden and orchard to produce foods that she gathered, and set out on the table, and preserved in woven baskets or salted kegs against the coming winter; also she first sewed and then kept clean the clothing of the men of the house, and the linens. Griff seemed comfortable in Tamara’s company but Oriel couldn’t be. She was a child, of only ten summers.

  When her chores were done, she played with her doll, or tied cloths around the dogs’ tails saying they had been hurt in battles and she was caring for them. Griff could chatter on with her, and listen to her stories. Tamara must always be imagining, and Griff’s attention encouraged her. She spoke of a land she named the Kingdom, filled with beautiful ladies and brave lords who lived adventurous lives, and met up with giants, and true love, and of Jackaroo, a man who was—as far as Oriel could tell by the hearing—little better than a pirate, for all that Tamara described his mask and cloak and deeds with sighs of admiration.

  Oriel didn’t know how much of this Griff gave credence to, and he didn’t ask. He had real questions to ask of the Saltweller, questions about the length of time packed salt needed to hang over the salt pans—the general rule, since the dampness in the air, and the temperature of the day, and the wind, and the heat of the faggots under the pans all also affected the exact time the packed salt had to hang over the fires, drying.

  One autumn evening after Tamara had babbled tirelessly while sewing the tabbed waistband for a pair of trousers Oriel could wear in winter cold, Oriel asked Griff as they climbed onto their beds, “Is this Kingdom actual, do you think? And the great impenetrable forests under ice mountains?”

  In the candlelight, Griff had smiled. “The Kingdom is more real than the golden city of Dorado, I think, but less real than Celindon. Vasil says there used to be merchants, before the death of the Countess, who traveled great distances. Now the journeys aren’t safe, but at that time travelers told strange tales.”

  “But, Griff,” Oriel protested, “the child says that her mother, dead these many years, has gone to the Kingdom.”

  “Just as she denies the death of her youngest brother, who stole the purse of coins Vasil kept under the hearthstone to give to Matteus. Except she says he has gone to the Dammer’s island.”

  “So it’s false,” Oriel agreed. He pulled his bedclothes up for warmth against the chill of night. “Her mind is filled with fancies. She weeps over the princess whose lover came back from afar with a foreign witch for a bride, who carried him away and he was never seen again, and the princess died of a broken heart. And this story brings tears down her cheeks.”

  Griff didn’t comment.

  Oriel blew out the candle. “I believe in Mad Magy, and her babies—but not in a princess who dies of a broken heart.”

  “I think they may be the same story,” Griff spoke across the darkness.

  “No, not at all,” Oriel told him. “The child said—did you hear her?—that she will teach us to dance. As if I had time for dancing.” He was smiling to himself as he fell asleep.

  IT WAS EARLY IN THE first winter of the three Oriel spent as the Saltweller’s man that he gave his master the truth. He gave it unwittingly, but in the end it turned out to have been wisdom that he didn’t know he used, to have been truthful.

  The cold had closed in with the darkness, and the windows were shuttered against rain. Snow came rarely to Selby, the Saltweller said. It was not unknown, just uncommon, but meantime the rain was cold enough. They were all four seated close to the fire. The Saltweller was reckoning up his stores and his coins.

  “Remember that for me,” Vasil said to Oriel after he had named the number of saltboxes that the Innkeeper of Captain at the Gate had purchased for his winter stores. “To which I add—Tamara, do you remember what the summer purchase was?”

  “For the Captain?” Tamara asked. She was sewing a sleeve onto a shirt for her father. The needle went in and out, as she wrinkled her brow. “Was it four? That seems so few, so was it fourteen? You told me, I remember when you told me. I just can’t remember what you told me, Father.”

  Vasil sighed. He scratched lines on the hearthstone. Oriel, like Griff, was fitting together pieces of wood for saltboxes. “How many of the summer’s boxes did he take credit for, when he placed his winter order?”

  Vasil didn’t ask this question of anyone in particular. Oriel had taken no note of the number at the time, and neither had Griff. They hadn’t thought it was necessary.

  “Every year at this time, Father worries that the spring is producing less salt,” Tamara explained. Her needle, pulling its long train of thread, moved in and out of the thick cloth.

  “Aye,” the Salter laughed ruefully. “But I can never remember exactly the last year’s numbers. It’s enough for my poor head to recall whose bills are paid up, and whose owing. I am probably being cheated out of a good profit.”

  That thought didn’t call forth any laughter.

  Without thinking, Oriel asked, “Could you not keep record books?”

  “Aye, if I had books, if I had quill and ink. If I knew how to read and write.
Aye, I could do that.”

  Oriel could sense Griff’s wary stillness.

  He could almost feel the Saltweller’s eyes on the back of his neck. “It’s time you were in bed, Tamara,” Vasil said at last.

  “Yes, Father,” she answered, folding her sewing together and setting it into its basket. She was almost out of the room when he called to her. “Tamara?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “If you were to wed, would you take one of these lads?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Which one would it be?” the Salter asked.

  “Why, you would tell me which,” she said. In the light of the candle, her face seemed more solemn than ever, her eyes larger. The cloth around her hair made her look not so much a child.

  “But if I were to ask you your own preference?” her father asked.

  “I prefer Griff, Father.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because he likes to talk with me. Just as Oriel likes to talk with you. So we get along. Griff doesn’t mind when I am stupid.”

  “Go now, Daughter,” her father said.

  “Good night, Father,” she answered, and left the room.

  There was a long time of silence, while Vasil stared into the flames and Oriel stared at his knife blade, and Griff patiently scraped a flat surface smooth.

  “Is it not time to speak the truth?”

  Oriel didn’t move. But inside of his head, all was movement, like a river running over rapids, searching for the way through, trying routes around rocks and over shallows, a turbulence of thought more rapid than he could follow. Griff, he knew, would do and say nothing until he heard Oriel’s choice.

  After waiting a while, the Saltweller’s rough voice queried quietly, “Have you not learned over the seasons that I am a man to be trusted? Can a man throw his sons alive to those wolves who care only to win the rule of cities to themselves—can he do that and not learn to question common wisdom?”

  Oriel looked up at Vasil, to answer, “Aye, Master, I think a man can.” Oriel knew that trust between man and man had its own fields of honor, and even if one of the men was a lad and the other the master, still there might be honor between them.

  “And have I not seen,” Vasil went on, “how your feet mold themselves to the very shapes of the hills and fields of my lands?”

  “That I did not know,” Oriel said, choosing not to acknowledge that he had suspected it. He couldn’t know how much the master had guessed of the desires he warmed his heart before.

  “Can you not give me the truth? Oriel? Griff?”

  Griff watched Oriel, to give away nothing Oriel chose not to give away, to deny nothing Oriel should speak.

  Oriel asked, “Tell me what you guess. It might be that the truth is dangerous to us, and should not be told, but if it is already known we will acknowledge it.”

  The answer pleased Vasil. “I think that you can figure with numbers. I think perhaps that you can write with letters, and read them. These are skills the Dammer’s boys are trained in, before they are brought to the slave market at Celindon.”

  The Saltweller spoke cautiously, as a man fishing in a river plays his line out. Oriel didn’t respond in any way. He didn’t look away and he didn’t allow any expression onto his face.

  “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 urgen
t 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.

  Chapter 13

  THEY 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.