The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  Oriel looked around at all the attentive faces. There was some fear in their silence but he didn’t know why they should fear his words—and just as he knew his mistake Vasil named it.

  “Aye, he can write. Aye and read, and figure with numbers.” Vasil had the room’s attention now. “Aye, what you’re thinking, that’s what the lad is.”

  Oriel knew he could fight, fist against fist, or with cudgels, against his master. He thought he might just win, given his youth and quickness. Oriel’s heart rose at the anger in his master’s eyes because he knew, as surely as if words had been spoken, that the Salter wished him ill.

  “Are you from the Dammer’s isle, lad?” a man asked.

  “Yes,” Oriel said. He owed no man any explanation.

  “You, Griff,” the man asked, “you also?”

  “Yes,” Griff said. He added, “We escaped.”

  “Escaped?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Oriel said.

  “You never told me that,” Vasil protested.

  Oriel said nothing.

  The man who had questioned him made up his mind then. “A lad clever enough to escape the Dammer’s tricks and true enough to resist his temptations? And he can read and write? That’s luck for Selby,” he said. “I call Oriel luck for Selby.”

  As they walked home, the Saltweller at first strode on alone, but then he gradually slowed until the three walked abreast. The master said, “Look out you aren’t too clever for your own good, Oriel. For all that you can convince most folk, aye, and rightly, too. Aye, lad, I never thought to turn against you.”

  Oriel didn’t know what the Salter might do. But here, under the open sky, he was as good as any man of Selby. As good, he thought, and better.

  The Saltweller spoke slowly. “And I’m not glad of my jealousy. So if you can win my daughter’s heart . . .”

  “He can,” Griff remarked. “He has it already.”

  “Then you’ll wed her, and be as good as a son to me, and be a son any man might be proud to claim,” Vasil said slowly, working it out. “An honor to the house.”

  NO ARMIES CAME TO SELBY in the fall, but the men continued on a common way. They gathered a part of all crops and stored them, grain, onions, turnips. The people also stored weapons, purchased by the town of Selby and paid for by taxes. They hired to their own use a Captain the smith and cooper had found in Celindon; this Captain taught all the lads and men how to use daggers and swords, arrows and spears, axes and scythes, for defense and to attack. He taught them how to consider the defense of the city. He taught them how to fight together and listen to orders, how to trust their officers and fellow soldiers. He drilled them, day after day. After the long winter in Selby, the Captain wanted to make his home among them, but they sent him off, each man at a meeting casting his vote on the question as he thought best for the well-being of Selby.

  They told the Captain, paying him, that they would be glad to see him in two or three years, if he was still minded to settle with them. They were too young in soldiery, they explained, to take in a man so experienced. Such a man must assume the role of leader should it come to battle, and they wished to lead themselves. If he ever needed a refuge, Selby would welcome him, they said.

  The Innkeeper escorted the Captain on the first part of his journey back north to Celindon. It was not until he watched the two broad backs walking away, both giving an impression of great strength, although the Innkeeper stood no higher than the Captain’s shoulder, that Oriel remembered to ask Vasil, “What was that thing that made you laugh, sir? Remember? Last winter, when we first spoke of Selby protecting itself, and I said the Innkeeper was a man I would follow.”

  Vasil turned to face him, not smiling now. “You’d never tell?”

  “You have my word.”

  Vasil took a time to think it out, before saying, “He’s no man, our Innkeeper. I don’t think anybody but me even suspects it. He’s a woman, and always has been.”

  “Why should a woman pretend to be a man?”

  “To keep possession of the Inn. There was a son and daughter when the Inn’s people came down with the swelling fever. The story goes that when the doors were opened and the survivor came out, it was the son alone who survived. The other three bodies were burned in their bedclothes, as is the way of destroying the disease. The son took possession of the Inn. Except he never grew a beard and all suspected that he couldn’t play a man’s part with a woman, as can happen after the swelling fever. It was because of this, we thought for years, that the Innkeeper was so fierce in his quarrels. Fiery and ill-tempered, quick to use his fists or cudgel on you, that was our Innkeeper, until finally it took only a look from him to stop a man in his tracks. Because nobody wanted to go against his great arms. Only look at them, Oriel.”

  The Innkeeper was walking back toward them then on his massive legs. His arms bulged with strength.

  “Then how do you know what he is?” Oriel asked Vasil, not convinced, although he could see no reason for his master to lie.

  “His skin, which I’ve never seen less than fresh-shaven,” Vasil answered quietly. “Then, more, I saw him squatting one day, to relieve himself.”

  “Men do that sometimes.”

  “Aye, but they don’t leave behind them buried in the leaves of the woods such cloths as women use in their monthly times. A woman may dress as she will, but she will still have her monthly times. Except when she is too young, or with child, or nursing babes, or too old—a woman bleeds, in harmony with the moon’s phases. Do you know this, Oriel?”

  He didn’t, but he didn’t admit it. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, of course he knew.

  “And you know how children are begotten?” Vasil asked, not deceived.

  “Yes,” Oriel said, for he did.

  “Yes what?” the Innkeeper asked then, having come close enough to hear their talk. “Yes what, in that voice, which says its owner will be happy to quarrel if he has to.”

  Vasil answered. “I’m just making sure the lad knows all a lad needs to know about women, if he’s to wed my lass.”

  The Innkeeper laughed, a brief, barking sound. “You’d have him wise before he is old, then? As long as a lad knows how to get sons, he knows enough. What needs he to know more? Aye, and what more is there to know?”

  Oriel believed Vasil, that this Innkeeper was a woman beneath the clothing, and voice, and words; but he had difficulty remembering that, when the Innkeeper spoke so.

  “Aye,” the Innkeeper said, “and if the armies close in on Selby, there’ll be many lads who never will get sons. Many sons who never will know their fathers. Those of us who have no sons, no children, may be counted the lucky ones, if armies close in, and our hopes of ourselves prove false. But I don’t think I’ll live to see that day. I think I’ll have fallen in battle. Think you so, Salter? For I find I have an appetite for self-governance. With all its drawbacks, I find I prefer being my own man.”

  Chapter 14

  THE THIRD WINTER ORIEL AND Griff spent at the Saltweller’s lasted long. Winter’s grip on the coast was like a mastiff’s: His teeth closed, and he held the land and the people, and he did not let go.

  Stores ran low. At the meetings talk varied between the governances Selby’s men would place upon themselves and whether or not need was great enough to open up the warehouses. These were the stores against famine or seige, for times when starvation—more than mere hunger—was the danger. Ground grains and salted fish filled the warehouses, enough—they had measured it—to feed all the people of Selby across an entire season. The aim was to have a full year’s supplies in store. No army would spend a year to take such a small prize as Selby; the booty and lands weren’t enough to reward so much of an army’s time.

  Before winter reluctantly slunk away northward, all had agreed on an oath, sworn by every man. The citizens swore loyalty to city and fellow citizens, swore obedience to the ordinances of the city, swore to defend the city, its people and lands, with their lives if need
be, and swore to tithe to the town, in coin or kind. The Innkeeper of the Captain at the Gate, speaking in a single voice for Selby itself, swore to the citizens in return that each would be treated as an honorable man would treat his own son, or his own father, never letting them want, never denying them justice, never putting the profit of one man before the profit of the whole people. “Until death releases me,” the citizens swore. “Until death releases you,” the Innkeeper swore.

  Oriel remarked to Vasil, as the two returned from one of these meetings in the late winter, that it had been good fortune for Selby to have such business to occupy its attention. “Otherwise,” he said, “these stories from inland would breed panic.”

  “Do you think, then, that they are no more than stories?”

  “I only hope so,” Oriel admitted.

  “I, too,” the Saltweller agreed. “But since the world so often plays hope false, I will not have my daughter left alone.”

  For across the winter, as if the season itself were not dismal enough to keep men’s spirits down, refugees came to Selby—not many, two men, one woman, two boys of perhaps six and eight. All had the blank faces of those who have seen what they cannot bear to remember and still cannot forget, waking or sleeping. The first man scurried through, silently accepting food before he ran off to the south, as low to the ground as a whipped dog. The second man came to die by the Inn’s fire, speaking disjointedly of longhaired longbeards, of flames, of swords that sliced a man’s head off as if it was as easy to kill a man as a fish. He had burns on his body that oozed green and his flesh stank like carrion. He lifted himself up by the fire and cried to an empty doorway, “Wolfers! There’s no hope for us! Ice-cold eyes, oh, I cannot bear—!”

  The woman, who arrived at the dead heart of winter so starved that her bones jutted out of her face, ate hastily as she crouched in a doorway, then fled. She spoke little, but what she spoke was sensible. “They are quick and cruel, and their long yellow hair they tie back, and their beards they pluck from their cheeks until they hang down long only from their chins. They fear water. I will rest when I have put water between me and the Wolfers. Then I will rest, and grieve. If a fisherman were to take me to the islands in his boat, and leave me . . . I have no coin to pay but I will pay in the coin every woman has for a man.”

  Seeing her, no man would take her payment, but a fisherman took her in mercy out to one of the inhabited islands, when he sailed out on a trading journey, and she kissed his fingers, he said, as if he were a Count when at last she came to the water-washed shore. She kissed his fingers and she wept, as if she didn’t understand that she might well starve before winter eased its grip on the stony land. She kissed his fingers and smiled, as if her own danger didn’t matter, he said. He spoke in a voice that vibrated with fear, because she was one of those women that life batters against without ever bringing them to their knees, he said. “And these Wolfers have brought her down,” he said.

  The two boys shivered by the fire at the Captain at the Gate and would answer no questions. They shivered in silence and broke the darkness of night with screaming. On the third night they ran out of the Inn and across the sands to the sea, either pursued by some dream or still in it. They were returned to the beach, days later, by a falling tide. They lay side by side there, no more silent in death than they had been in life. All around their pale bodies seabirds circled on outspread wings, and soared, and cried out.

  Oriel found that he could never forget the fear that hovered in the darkness, waiting; but he could usually work at his tasks, and speak his mind, and sleep the night through, because there was a plan being shaped and worked out, a way to defy dangers. More than once he said to Vasil, as they walked the long road back from city to saltwell, “It is good fortune for Selby that there is so much to do in becoming our own masters.”

  “Aye,” his master would answer.

  “I do not think these are all stories we hear, and false,” Oriel said. “I am afraid—”

  “Aye,” Vasil said.

  “Master, we are too far from home for the dogs to hear us.”

  “Do you know my mind so well?”

  “Griff would guard Tamara’s safety,” Oriel reminded Vasil. “They will go to the boat and flee by water, if need be; that is the plan.”

  “And even if the buildings were burned and the animals slaughtered, still the saltwell would give us wealth to rebuild with,” Vasil answered.

  “But it will be good to arrive, and sit warm and safe within.”

  “Better, right now, to hear the dogs give warning and know that all is well.”

  As if they could hear their master’s wish, the dogs belled out, and were turned loose. Hearing which way the dogs chased, Griff opened the door, to light their way home.

  “If all the farmers take refuge within the town walls,” Oriel said, as they hung up their wet cloaks and went to stand by the fire and drink down the mugs of warmed ale Tamara brought to them, “what about the animals? Fowl, goats, those at least could be kept, for the food they give, and would it not be wisdom to have orchards within the walls, and gardens?”

  “What, build new walls?” the Saltweller asked, unbelieving. “With these just completed?”

  “Not build new,” Oriel said. “Or, mostly not. These walls could be moved outward, which would also bring the fishermen’s houses within the walls, for their safety, and also that would strengthen the bonds between fishermen and city.”

  Vasil drank deep and said no more, but at the next meeting he proposed that very plan, and he did not name Oriel as its source. Oriel knew it would be useless to argue ownership of such a thing as an idea, but he felt as if something had been taken from him. He understood that Vasil would like to keep him down, as a father does a son, so that the father can maintain the authority of his own higher position. But he thought, in his private mind, that Vasil would not be so concerned to keep him down did he not fear how high Oriel might fly, once Oriel moved on his own wings. That thought kept Oriel patient. He would have Vasil’s lands, and a place in the city that was higher than Vasil would ever be able to claim. If it came to battle, Oriel would prove the best man. Also, if it came to peace. Also, Oriel added silently as Vasil accepted the praise and admiration of the meeting for his farsightedness, if it came to preparations for battle, or preparations for peace, to rebuilding and refortifying, or even merely enduring. In any chance, he knew himself the better man.

  AS IF TO MAKE UP for its tardiness, spring came suddenly. One morning spring thrust itself up from underground, loosening soil, loosing flowers into an air that overnight had become so sweet you could almost taste the summer berries ripening within it. The shoulders of sheep were heavy with wool, and everywhere young were being delivered, dog and cat and goat, fowl and swine and sheep.

  Oriel awoke in darkness, but as if the sun had already risen in his heart. All in the house seemed made glad, even as they busied themselves wordlessly in the dark for the day’s long labors to begin, once the sun had lightened the sweethearted world.

  The labors themselves seemed light, although they were hard: Oriel alone watched over the salt pans, gathered and hung to dry the cones, and then packed the salt into the wooden saltboxes. Griff and Vasil worked the fields behind an ox, harrowing up, plowing to fineness, bending to remove stones that appeared like the wildflowers, every year; then while Griff held the ox to the track for a final plowing, Vasil walked behind to sow the seeds. Tamara meanwhile dug over her kitchen garden, and planted it with onions and turnips and parsnips, as well as the less sturdy garlic. She watched over the birthing of pigs and goats, and was sometimes called to one of her sisters’ houses for a sheep or ox because her hands were strong and knowledgeable to pull out the young, when the dam was too tired to push any longer. Meanwhile, she baked breads and cooked up stews made out of fish she had caught in the earliest light, trolling a net over the boat’s side. Meanwhile Tamara opened the shutters wide and washed over every surface of the house with hot water. She h
ung linens and bedding out in the fresh air. Oriel worked with her when he had the time, when he knew he had time while the salt pan steamed its water away.

  As if there were not enough to keep men busy, Vasil was called away to a meeting in the town every second or third day. Oriel could not be spared in the rush of spring, but Vasil must answer the knock on the door at dawn or the exhausted runner at midday. Rumors rode up from the south on the soft winds, or in from the western hills. Rumors flowed down from the north with each evening’s cool air. Phillipe was on the move, he had taken Celindon last autumn and held it over the winter, his soldiers were closing in on Selby.

  The men of Selby nervously wondered if they should sue for peace, surrender without battle, or send to Karle who, rumor said, had an army encamped west of Celindon. Now, rumor said, Karle had taken Celindon but found it more in ruin than richness. The men of Selby feared choosing sides and they feared not choosing sides. They met together, and reaffirmed their choice to be independent. They wore neckerchiefs of all four colors, cleverly cut and sewn by the women, who bordered all the kerchiefs, including their own head kerchiefs, in a border of white.

  The people of Selby wore their colors bravely, but their hearts often failed, and then they would call Vasil from his fields. They called Oriel, too, but Oriel couldn’t be spared. The land couldn’t spare both of them so it was the master who went, and spoke calming words to uneasy men, and led them in the drills of soldiery.