The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  But Griff was not Oriel, and couldn’t take a blood revenge. Even if Tintage mocked that in him, when the fit had passed Griff knew it had gone forever. He wished, seeing Tintage smile, that he could summon the fiery fit back, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t Oriel and he never could be.

  “You stand accused of treason,” Griff spoke the formal words.

  Tintage answered, “What I have done deserves my death. I don’t deny it. If I could undo the action, I would. But I cannot and so I must accept your judgment on me.”

  He spoke like a true man.

  Griff smelled falseness on him, like fear.

  “It was a madness of jealousy that made me act,” Tintage said. He looked now at the lords and ladies, and the royal couple. “With the others I was nearly equal. With the others, some of them your sons, and some of you present to confirm my words, I was in some ways the stronger or more able, and in other ways the lesser. With any of the others, I might fight well. But Oriel—”

  Tintage stopped speaking. Griff thought, watching the mole eyes measure the expressions Griff couldn’t see on the faces behind him, that he could see the man peeping out from behind the eyes, pleased with the effect of his words on the company.

  “It was madness of jealousy. But Rafella knows the truth of my life, and how cruelly I was treated—she will speak of beatings, of being locked into my father’s dungeons and given only water, for days, of the shaming. Can you say that for me, Aunt?”

  “I cannot deny it,” she said.

  “What hope had I of honor, then?” Tintage asked.

  Griff didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “My great fault is, I turned my sword against a man I should have offered it to in service,” Tintage said.

  “You turned it against a man you had just offered it to, in fealty,” Griff reminded Tintage.

  It was as if Tintage hadn’t thought Griff was any danger to him. It was as if he hadn’t seen how Oriel honored Griff, and how the others now gave Griff the title they had hoped for. Now he gave Griff his attention, and the title. “Let me live, my lord Earl, and I can promise that you will come to no harm from me. My enmity, like my envy, was for Oriel. For he had everything.”

  Griff answered, “Everything but the heart of the lady.”

  “What is a lady’s heart without her lands?” Tintage asked, almost gaily, as if he were not standing trial for his life. “He would have had her heart, too, soon enough, I’ll wager, once he’d wed and bedded her, once she’d ceased her weepings.”

  Griff had thought the same, and hoped for it. But he thought Tintage disrespectful to the lady, a coward’s disrespect, to say so.

  Death would silence that false voice, but death was not the only silencer. And he would always choose not to kill, if he had the choice. As Oriel had once chosen—

  And regretted it, Griff remembered, then he remembered better—with grief like a stone at his belly—remembered that Oriel never regretted the chances he took.

  “Have you more to say?” he asked. Tintage shook his head. “Then I say to those present that I think of banishment,” Griff said. “Lifetime banishment from the Kingdom, never to be lifted, not for any cause, not on any petition.” He looked around then.

  Haldern stood red-faced but irresolute, Garder seemed doubtful, but it was Verilan who spoke. “If you hesitate to kill him, I offer you my sword.”

  “I hesitate to kill,” Griff said.

  “Is that wisdom?” Wardel inquired, after a silence.

  “It is my choice,” Griff said. “For the weal of the Earldom is not fed by blood, is it?”

  Nobody answered him.

  “Thank—” Tintage said.

  One look at Griff silenced him.

  Griff waited, but no one wished to speak, so he said, “I ask my lord and King to banish Tintage, son of Yaegar, from the Kingdom, and for all of his life.”

  The King spoke the sentence without hesitation, adding, “In three days’ time you must be gone. If after that time you are found anywhere in the Kingdom, your life will be forfeit.”

  Tintage bowed his head. “Thank you for my life, my lord Sutherland. Sire, I thank you. I will obey. I hope—”

  Griff stood, was standing up before he knew that was his intention. Silence held the room, and he knew he held all eyes, but he needed all of his strength to hold his hand and let the law rule. “Take him away,” he ordered the soldiers, and they obeyed him.

  Before Griff could turn away, before the courtiers could rise, before the King could speak whatever formal words he thought befitting the occasion, almost before the servants had closed the doors behind the guards and their prisoner, Merlis ran into the room. She knelt down before the table, her head lowered down into her skirts. Her long pale hair spread around, and when Griff went to her, and asked her to rise, the face she turned to him was paler than her hair, and ravaged by weeping.

  “What do you want of this company?” he asked her.

  “I would speak with you, my lord Earl,” she said, her voice so low he had to bend down to hear her words.

  “Then you will,” he said.

  “Alone,” she whispered.

  Griff remembered his promise to Oriel, but she had shown herself to be a woman capable of great betrayal. “Not alone,” he said.

  She clasped her hands over her breast and tears came out of her eyes and she seemed to gulp in air for the breath to ask him, “Let me go with Tintage. I beg you. Don’t make me—marry—”

  “Never,” he promised her. “Have no fear of—”

  “—bed another—” she gulped.

  “—being forced to marry me, or—”

  “—nothing else matters—”

  “—any other man,” Griff said.

  “Please, give me leave. Please, to take his exile with him.”

  Her request suited Griff’s own purposes, but he tried to warn her, “You are a lady of high birth, and wealth.”

  “I had nothing to do with my birth, and you have my wealth, you’ve taken it, he would have— All I ask is to go with Tintage.”

  “Lady,” Lord Karossy spoke. She turned to face him, like an animal at bay. “If birth has given you lands and beauty, you can never be as those who have none.”

  “I don’t care!” she cried. “I care only to be with him!”

  “Lady,” Griff said. The face she turned to him was hopeful, and she accepted the hand he offered to raise her to her feet. “He wouldn’t have forced you. Oriel. He wouldn’t have struck another man in the back for you, either.”

  She snatched her hand away. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me, my lord Earl,” she said, coldly angry now.

  “You didn’t know his heart,” Griff said.

  Neither could speak to the other.

  But Griff had made a promise to Oriel, and he would keep his word. All he had left of Oriel was word to keep. “You may accompany Tintage, if that is what you wish,” Griff said then. That was the most he could do, for now; and if more was needed later, then later he would do more. “If the King agrees, and no other makes objection.”

  The King agreed. No other made objection. Griff was suddenly tired to exhaustion.

  “And what of my personal effects?” the lady asked now. “My horses? my gowns? linens and servants? my jewels, and the carved chests they are kept in, and the tapestries and furnishings of my own apartments at the castle, my dogs?”

  Griff turned his back to her. “Lilos, would you—?” he asked, and stood looking out the window, stood alone, while Lilos gave the lady Merlis permission to take one horse for riding and one for sumptering, and one hundred gold coins to keep her. He forbade her the jewels, which belonged to the House of Sutherland.

  “May I take my gowns and cloaks? boots? bedclothes? May I have one of the stable cans to carry my goods?” Merlis asked.

  “Yes, lady, you may. And any servant who wishes to accompany you is free to go with you.”

  “And—”

  Griff made himself tu
rn around, to speak again, for she had lost everything. “Lady, I offer you a home of your own, wherever in the southern lands you choose, with fields to keep you in wealth, and servants to care for you, and a dowry should you wish to marry.”

  She drew herself up. “I am already wed,” she said, and he knew she was lying. He knew also that she didn’t wish to be saved.

  “The man is a blooded traitor,” Griff reminded her.

  “Yes, while now you are the Earl Sutherland,” she answered scornfully, and Griff’s heart broke again within his chest.

  Chapter 28

  IT WAS AS EARL SUTHERLAND that Griff rode south from the King’s city. In towns and villages he was formally welcomed—by the Majors and the wealthiest men from among the people. Others, men of all ages, women of all ages, children of all ages, stared at him, as if they could read in his face what their futures might be. At least once in every town and village someone would find the courage to call out, “Aye, and we’ll all miss him, won’t we? You as much as the rest of us, my lord.” Griff heard how those gathered around all agreed. “Aye, and he was a lovely man.” The praise for Oriel made it easier for Griff to ride out on the tall horse, with its great hooves pounding onto the ground, to wear the long green cape with a wide-winged falcon stitched in gold across his back, to have on his finger the ring worn only by the Earl Sutherland and his heir.

  Thus Griff came to the castle of the Earls Sutherland.

  Sorrow, loneliness, and labor made the sum of his days. The storehouses and granaries were low, the linens in disarray, the servants confused and frightened, the rooms and the gardens in neglect. The castle seemed without heart, without life. It was Garder whom Griff put in charge of bringing order to the castle. It was Lilos he sent down into the surrounding city, and to the towns and villages beyond, to carry messages of good will, and to find out how things stood for the winter, how the harvest and herds fared. Verilan was busy with the training and accommodation of a troop of soldiers from the north. For the lady Merlis had taken her soldiers with her into the south.

  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 . . .”

&
nbsp; 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.