The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  “You’ll say the south, Showman, Or-i-el with your high-stepping name, aye, and your fancy clothing, like a lord, isn’t it? Isn’t the creature made to look like a lord?”

  The crowd murmured behind Rik, now nearly convinced by him. Griff stepped out from behind the stage. “What is it?” he asked quietly.

  Oriel shook his head, without taking his eyes from Rik’s face. “Don’t know. Wait.”

  “For we all know what the girl is,” Rik called.

  He said that, as if that was what he had been waiting to give voice to. The sigh of fear that rippled like rising water among the crowd greeted these awaited words.

  Rik turned to the crowd, but his two companions stayed facing Oriel, and Griff. “I know what I think she is,” Rik said. “I’ve heard of women who can take the bones of dead men, and the blood of living babes, and stir them in a pot. When such women say the words, they draw on the power that threw stars out into the sky, the power that cracked open stone mountains to let out rivers—They say the words and a living dead man steps out of the cauldron.”

  Oriel watched the faces. They were unsure, and in their fear ready to be convinced.

  “Aye, Rik, she’s only a girl,” a woman’s voice called. Rik turned to see who had spoken, but could not catch her. Once the woman had broken silence, a man asked, “Aye, and how has she harmed you, Rik?”

  The man meant well, meant peacefulness, but the question inflamed Rik. He didn’t answer the man, but wheeled around to pour his hatred out onto Oriel. “I ask you again, who are you?”

  It was not the time for a soft answer, nor for a coward’s answer, whatever Beryl might have advised. Oriel would choose his own way, and he would take it boldly. “I am the Spaewife’s man.”

  This was not the answer Rik had looked for. It was not the answer the crowd had expected. It displeased Rik, but the crowd saw something to like in it.

  “I am the Spaewife’s man, for her goodness, and her honor,” Oriel said.

  “And I also,” said Griff at his shoulder.

  “So you had best tell us in what way she has harmed you, Rik,” Oriel said. By naming the man, Oriel isolated him from all the rest. Rik had to answer alone, now.

  “Aye, and she gave a charm to the girl who was to be my wife, and she refused to wed me then, and she wed another. Until then, the girl had been mine, as her father and her brothers agreed, and the holding that her father gave with the girl would have doubled my lands. Aye, and I am a man of broad lands and fat flocks, and the girl had never said nay to me before, until the witch charmed her. On the day we were to wed, friends,” he added. This the crowd sympathized with. “Her father came, and her brothers, and they brought her there, but the girl would not say the words. Aye, and she had been found at the Spaewife’s cart.”

  Oriel didn’t know what the crowd was thinking. He only knew what his own choices were—to fight, with whatever chance he himself had against Rik’s bulk, and he thought his agility made chances even; to call Beryl out to speak for herself; to make the fight general and then flee at the first chance, when the melee grew wild enough; or to say his thoughts and trust the crowd to prefer him. He thought they might, he thought they already did if he could give them good reason. He thought, if he made that choice and it failed, he could then choose among the others, so he had little to lose.

  He angled his head to one side, waited for silence, then asked, “So the great harm is she took away your wife-to-be from you?”

  “Aye,” Rik grumbled, and his companions echoed him.

  “I think she did harm you, then,” Oriel said. Rik smiled, seeing a victory. Oriel went on. “To take not just the girl, but also her dowried lands, despite the word her father and brothers had given to you. Great harm to you,” Oriel said again, and some of the crowd—who suspected his thought—grinned up at him. “But I wonder if it wasn’t a great good for the girl.”

  Rik turned red, from chagrin and embarrassment, as the people behind him laughed at the trap Oriel had set, and called out agreement to Oriel, and women’s voices called out approval of what the puppeteer had done for the girl, if she had done it, whether she had done it by charm or spell, or merely good advice, as sisters might speak to one another. Rik turned pale then, and his hands clenched at his side, but even his two companions had slipped back away from him. Besides, there was something he saw in Oriel’s face that he didn’t quite dare challenge any further.

  Rik turned his back on the puppet stage and the two men who stood before it. He shouldered his way out through the crowd. The crowd finished what they had started earlier—fishing into purses and drawing out coins; people came forward to drop their coins into the basket. They stared hard at Oriel while they did this, although they asked him no questions.

  EACH DAY, EACH HOUR, THE audience before their stage grew larger. Oriel and Griff carried purses heavy with coins by the time the days of the fair drew to a close. It seemed that everyone who had come to the fair spoke of the mysterious showman, and wondered who he was, and where he had come from.

  When the fair days at Hildebrand’s city were done, Oriel and Beryl and Griff traveled with the entertainers and merchants on the King’s Way to the King’s city, where they would try their scheme to catch the King’s attention. Oriel had at his back, safely hidden, the beryl. It was on the Damall’s beryl, with the falcon carved into the stone, that the scheme rested.

  Chapter 22

  THE KING’S CITY OVERLOOKED THE joining of two rivers. The King’s palace was at the tip of the peninsula formed by those rivers. Behind the palace, and around its spreading gardens, lay the city itself, its buildings of stone and wood, its twisting streets, the spacious gardens behind the houses where great lords lived, and the open squares and markets. There were no walls around the palace and there were no walls around the city. The fair field, where for five days tents and booths would be crammed with people, lay just beyond the city.

  In the crowds that came to see the puppet plays there were more lords and ladies, more servants in livery, bands of soldiers, and occasionally a priest or a pair of priests. It was to the priests that the puppet first whispered, “Take me to the King. I have something to tell.”

  The puppet whispered this as if he had a true life of his own, and had seen the priest out of living eyes, and chosen to speak out of a living will. But in fact Oriel gave the cue, if there was a likely man in the audience. “Let the play commence,” he would say, with a showman’s upward lifting of the arm; and Beryl, hearing him say commence, not begin, would know that at some time during the story, a puppet should come forward to whisper to the audience.

  Oriel gave the cue twice for priests, in the five days of the fair, and once for a man in purple livery, with a crown stitched over his heart in silver threads, whom he took for one of the King’s household servants. So that was three times the whisper had been started, before the rest of the entertainers went on south, following the fair to Sutherland’s city and then on to the other two smaller cities of the south before the final days at Yaegar’s city, with its tall stone walls to defend the forest entry into the Kingdom and guard the River Way. The rest of the fair, merchants and entertainers, beggars and cooks, moved on under the care of a troop of soldiers. The puppeteer and her two men stayed on in the King’s city, performing in Innyards and beside fountains, and when a likely messenger stood among the watching crowd, one of the puppets would come to the front of the stage to whisper across the audience, “Take me to the King. I have something to tell.”

  Oriel watched his audience when this happened. He could see the questions in their faces. Was this a jest or was it a plot? Was it done merely to make a mystery that would draw crowds, and draw coins from purses? Or was there some urgent message the King must hear, and these bold puppeteers, and the handsome showman, too, him especially, were they heroes for the Kingdom? For all knew of the unrest in the south, and all knew how precarious was the temporary peace among those ambitious to be named Earl Sutherland. All hop
ed the King’s Tourney would produce a strong champion, a man who could gather up the reins of the unruly Earldom and win obedience from its willful lords, and let its people till their fields in peace, and raise their herds without alarms, and pay taxes to only one lord, only at the customary times of the year. But what could a puppet know? And was there not some story that the puppeteer was a girl? Aye, and spaewife, too, who could read the future in a woman’s palm, and knew what spells would cure, or cause, disease? And who was this showman who seemed to gather all of his audience together into a single heart?

  The crowds flocked to Innyard and fountain square, and Oriel—who could gather them together with his voice, and hold them attentive—thought it was only a matter of time before one of the whispers reached the right ear, and the puppets were summoned to play before the King.

  That time came, and the summons came, and Oriel stood at last in a long, tall-windowed hall, bathed, fresh shaven, on Beryl’s advice wearing a green shirt. Before him sat the King, with his Queen beside him, and their children around them. Also present were the lords and ladies of the court, as well as a few priests and soldiers and ministers. Servants waited patiently at the rear of the hall, just as Oriel did at its front. It was the middle of a long, late spring afternoon, and sunlight the color of jonquils blew into the hall. Oriel looked at the young women of the audience, to recognize Merlis among the ladies. He saw a brown-haired girl in a golden dress, her hands folded in her lap and her face serene, and knew her for the lady who would win his heart, the lady Merlis. He saw her, and named her, and was content.

  They had chosen their three plays carefully. Two were taken out of the old puppeteer’s book, which was also the source of the third, but the third had been added to until it had to be called a new story. The first was a tale of a Prince who fought a dragon, to save his land and win the hand of his Princess. Oriel and Griff had carved and painted the dragon puppet, which always drew gasps of alarm and admiration from an audience. At the end of this play, in the silence after the clapping had ended, the King leaned across his sons to say to Oriel’s golden-gowned girl, “Doesn’t it make you wish our land was troubled by a dragon, Daughter? that such a Prince might come forward, to save us?”

  If she was not Merlis, then, as she could not be if she was the King’s daughter, Merlis must be some other young woman. Oriel looked again, and saw a lady sitting proud in a green gown, with gold ribbons worked into her long dark hair. This, he thought, was the lady before whom he would lay down his heart. This was Merlis.

  The second puppet story was one the people told, about the old farmer who wished to wed a young wife, so he disguised himself as he courted her. On their wedding night when he changed into his nightshirt behind the screen, the old farmer flung over it his false hair and binding corset; unable to see that his young wife, undressing behind her screen, was flinging over it her own false hair and binding corset. This was the cleverest puppetry, and the King’s court responded wholeheartedly. The lady in green rose up at its end, and went to stand behind a young courtier with her hand on his shoulder, as a wife does.

  Oriel looked around again, while his audience talked among itself and smiled up at him. Would Merlis smile so, he wondered, if she were the daughter of an Earl? Might dark-rimmed grey eyes mark this smiling lady as of Earl’s lineage, with the white fur trimming her gown as a lady of wealth must wear. Oriel readied himself to give this lady his heart.

  However, the third tale began what he must succeed at in order to set about winning the heart beneath those grey eyes, and the lands she brought with her. Oriel concentrated on his showman’s pan, to make the puppet play work; for the story was too complicated to be told without a showman. It was the story of the Emperor’s stolen daughter, and of the loyal soldier who spent his life seeking for her, despite the perfidy of courtiers and the enmity of kingdoms, despite year after year of failure. At the last, the soldier found a child and in a dream was told that this child—if he could rule over the Emperor’s realms—would bring lasting peace to the land. The soldier returned along the ways he had come, to take the child to the Emperor. Some people helped him, some sought his death, some tried to take the child and either put him under their power, or kill him. The loyal soldier persisted, but was overcome by treachery. He died on the gallows, asking for word to be taken to the Emperor. But the Emperor was dying then, on his golden bed, under silken bedclothes, still mourning his lost daughter. And the soldier’s dream-named child was lost in the crowd that watched the hanging. “They had only hope,” Oriel said, as the curtain slowly lowered, “that the child would live, and find his way, and become Emperor, and bring peace to the people.”

  Pale tears fell out of her dark-rimmed grey eyes and down over her soft cheeks. The King sighed, and turned to his Queen to say, “I wish Merlis would have come to see these puppets. For all that she protests, I think she would have found them worthy.”

  Then the lady was not here. Oriel would have laughed at himself if he had been alone, would have laughed at his own hopes; and he was sorry to lose the grey-eyed lady, for he knew she had a heart that the puppets could touch.

  “Not trivial at all, are they, Gwilliane?” the King asked.

  “Not at all trivial,” his Queen assented. “They should be generously rewarded, don’t you think?”

  “Indeed so.” The King rose from his heavy chair, a man of middle years and of middle height, of a certain plump dignity of carriage, and with a pleasant expression on his round-cheeked face. The King had the face of a man to whom life has always been a pleasing affair.

  A tall, spare man, whose face seemed carved from pale wood, so much did it refuse to bear any expression, leaned forward, to speak into the King’s ear. He wore a red shirt, high-collared, and carried a sheathed sword at his waist. “Yes, one must inquire,” the King said, and both watched Oriel.

  Oriel thought this must be a soldier, and one of high rank, since he could speak so closely to the King. When he stepped forward, with a clanking of the metal of his sword and a creaking of the leather of his boots, Oriel moved to meet him. They faced one another. Oriel thought he ought to be uneasy, but he was not. He had no weapon, nor plan. He had only his own words and his own self, but he felt well armed.

  “The King wonders, and I wonder, what might be the meaning of the whisper, the reports of which have been often brought to his attention,” the soldier said.

  A black-robed priest, who wore a heavy gold ring on his right hand, joined the soldier. “My priests heard of it.”

  A third man, clothed like an ordinary lord except for the heavy silver chain he wore upon his chest, joined the other two. “It reached my ears as well,” he said, in a voice as pleasing as song.

  Oriel answered all of them. “I would tell the King alone.”

  “Not possible,” the soldier said, without hesitation. At the same time the King said, “We can go—” and the smiling man objected, “It is customary to have others present when—” and the priest asked, “Is it safe?”

  The Queen asked, “Is a man who rules ever entirely safe?”

  “Please be seated, sire,” the soldier said to the King. “I think that this showman must speak before us all.”

  “Yes,” the King acquiesced. “That must be so. What then is the news your puppets wished to be brought to me, Showman?”

  “No news, sire,” Oriel said. Now, facing the King, he felt uneasy. He could pass it all off as a jest they had thought up in order to draw crowds to the puppet show. This King would not punish him for such a jest. Why should Oriel, after all, think he was a man to try for the Earldom, the lands, and the hand of the lady?

  The question made him smile, and gave him confidence. Because he was such a man, and more. He looked over the crowd, briefly, and saw that few of them were interested in the events at the front of the hall. Aye, but they would be, and soon, he thought, reaching into a deep pocket that had been sewn into the hem of his shirt. He held the beryl out to the King.

 
; Puzzled, the King looked to his Queen, who smiled. The King held out an open palm. Oriel dropped the green stone into it.

  The King recognized it immediately, and the Queen also. Both looked intently up into Oriel’s face. The King’s face, in its kindness, was troubled. “I will hear this young man privately.”

  “Yes, but with your closest advisors present,” the Queen said. She rose from her chair then. “Let us withdraw,” she announced to the court, which followed her out of the long hall. The King and the three men remained.

  “Is there not another behind the screen here, one who works the strings of the puppets?” the smiling lord inquired.

  “There are two,” Oriel answered, and then turned to the King. “They companion me, and advise me. I ask their company, sire.”

  He did not need Griff and Beryl with him to bolster his courage, but he wanted the two behind him, so that he might be understood to be not a man alone. Oriel’s mind worked swiftly, calculating the expression of each of the four men, calculating his chances, looking for sources of enmity and measuring its strength. Here, were subtle dangers. Oriel had led a troop of boys out into shelterless places and brought all safely home, he had sailed night seas, and he had faced wild men in hopeless battle. He had chosen to fly down the steep mountainside in risk of death by catastrophe rather than take the known way in risk of death by privation. But the present adventure was the one, the only one, that he had chosen for himself. These subtle dangers he had sought out.

  “Is there any reason to refuse his request?” the King asked his attendants. “What do you advise?”

  The three consulted together before they gave assent. Oriel called his companions out. Griff stood at his left shoulder, a little behind, and Beryl at his right. Both Griff and Beryl wore the brown of the people. Beryl had her braided hair wound around her ears, and the only way Griff differed from the men of the people was in his clean-shaven face, and the crescent scar.