The Tale of Oriel (40 page)

THE HORSEMEN RODE OUT OF
the city and followed the King's Way east until they reached a ford; there they crossed the river and headed south. Lord Haldern led them. In his troop were twenty picked soldiers and six of the young men who would contend for the title of Earl Sutherland. Oriel was one of the six.

He alone wore neither hat nor helmet. He alone lacked stitching or sign, in gold or silver, to name the house he belonged to, or the lord he served, or to identify him as a King's man. His shirt and cloak were the green Beryl had recommended to him for his chance before the King. He had not thought by his simpler dress to single himself out, but he was not displeased to have done so.

Near the King's city, the land prospered. The fields bloomed with crops and the orchards with leaves and budded fruit. Fish leaped up in river and pond. Oriel saw between the rows of leafy onions how rich and black the soil was. In the green stems of rye and millet and in the honey-colored heads of wheat, he saw how the soil fed everything that grew on it. This was a prosperous land.

As the troop moved farther from the King's city, however, things changed. The people welcomed the soldiers but all bewailed that the protection was only temporary. For a farmer didn't know when he planted his crops if they would be left to grow, and young men refused to work, without the promise of a harvest. Why should we labor to dig into the ground what will only be burned away when it breaks through the soil? they asked. Better to take the pleasures we can find now, while we live.

So each village and every lord welcomed Haldern's riders, and looked with hope at those who were contenders for the Earldom and the hand of Merlis. All pitied Merlis, who must keep within her castle for her own safety, and was thus unable to help her lands and her people.

Haldern's riders passed this castle at a distance. Oriel saw its tall towers rising up into the rainy sky, and he wondered if the lady stood at one of the windows, looking across to the troop of soldiers and suitors as they crossed her land, to collect her taxes.

One evening, after they had been many days on the roads, they came into a village by the river's side, one of the villages in the Earl's granting. There, several people had collected around a man who stood with his fist raised over a woman who knelt on hands and knees in the dirt before him.

Oriel recognized the event. Without thought of asking permission or advice from Haldern, he leaped off his horse and shoved through the crowd to grab the man's arm from behind.

The man was tall and thickly muscled, but surprise gave Oriel temporary advantage. Memory of the whipping box burned in him. The man would have had to have been even more tall and even more heavily muscled than he was to shake off Oriel.

“What—?” the man grunted. “Who—?” Oriel pulled down sharply on his arm.

“She's a woman,” Oriel said. “Why should you—?” The man turned, to shove him.

Then the man pulled himself free of Oriel's grip, and stepped back, on braced legs. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Oriel. By what right—?”

But the man had undergone a complete change of expression and attitude. He dropped to one knee and took Oriel's right hand into his. He bent his head over the hand, before he rose to stand before Oriel. “I'm Major of this village, my lord,” he said.

Oriel wondered why the man's spirit should so suddenly shrink at the sight of a shaved face, and high boots. Unless it was the sight of the sword that conquered him.

“The woman is a widow,” the Major said. “By custom, she must give back the cottage and boat that were her husband's holding.”

“By custom?” Oriel asked. It seemed an odd custom that would require a widow to give up her livelihood.

“By custom and by law. If he has a brother—”

Oriel interrupted, speaking loudly. He had watched men lie before. “Not by law, I think.” If the man deduced that Oriel had read the law, so much the better.

“I spoke hastily,” the man admitted. “Custom is as much as law, for us, my lord. By custom alone, then, the man's brother is given the holding.”

Quick to sense her advantage, the woman knelt in the dirt again, at Oriel's feet. “Help me, my lord,” she said. “And my children. Help us, we implore you.”

Oriel didn't pity her, and he wished she wouldn't kneel so at his feet, with a hand on his boot as if she were a dog. “Why were you about to strike her?” he asked the man.

“According to the custom, she must relinquish the holding, as the village asks her. She has been told she must leave the cottage, and she disobeys. So we have told her she must leave the village. But she won't go. There must be punishment, or who would obey my word? I don't misuse her. She doesn't bend barebacked, my lord, and I have neither stick nor thong.”

“Aye, and you use your fist well enough to break flesh and bones, and you use shame,” the woman cried. “Save us, great sir!”

Oriel didn't know how to proceed. If the people were encouraged to go against customary usage, then the village would be at the mercy of whoever proved strong enough to force his will upon the people. So obedience to custom, especially in parlous times, gave the village the safety of numbers banded together. But the woman had children to care for, and the village should take care of its own in times of need—or what did the village have to offer its people in exchange for obedience?

This question was more complicated than the whipping box.

The men on horseback waited quietly for him, to let him play out the scene he had entered. “Who is the brother?” Oriel asked, thinking that the man might be compensated with coin. For he knew how fierce a woman could be, for her children. “Which man stands to lose the use of the holding if the woman keeps the cottage and keeps use of the boat?”

Faces were amused, and before he turned back to the Major of the village he had guessed why. But he waited until the Major spoke it. “I am that man.”

Then Oriel let anger flow into his shoulders and his voice and his face. He knew that he seemed now as dangerous as an unsheathed sword and that might cause trouble he wished not to have, but still he judged that fear would serve him best here. “I have no time for this,” he said. “Let the woman be, let her live in the holding and fish with the boat.” The woman clambered to her feet, still pale, but now satisfied.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, and bowed her head.

Oriel looked around at the men and women, who had gathered first to see a beating and then whatever fight ensued, if they were lucky enough to have a fight to watch. They were, he saw, glad enough for what they deemed justice. Their glances were on him as he walked back to his horse and remounted. He spoke to the watching eyes. “You need a new Major I think.” He turned his mount away before any answer could be given. Let the village know that it must be ready to protect itself and every person in it.

An Earl, Oriel thought as he rode behind Haldern out of the village, with the purse of tax money in the soldiers' care, was an idea as much as a man. The idea of the Earl, the idea of the Earl's justice, would be enough to govern men's behavior, most of the time. The certainty of the Earl's concern and action was all that was needed. The Earl didn't need to be a daily presence to keep order. He needed only to be known to be in his castle, in his power.

T
HE LANDS OF THE EARLS
Sutherland pleased Oriel, more than any other country he had seen. Often, as they rode, he would stop his horse, dismount, and walk, trailing farther and farther behind the others. He did this just for the pleasure of walking the southern lands, the sense that when he put his foot down on the land it became his. He did this under the strong southern sun and the fat plopping southern rains. The others stopped mocking him when they saw that mockery didn't affect his good humor.

He taught them to swim, on a dare. The bolder ones—like Wardel—chose to be rowed out onto the river so they might jump into the deep water, learning to float on top of it by necessity. The more cautious ones—like Garder—he led into the water from the shallow banks, giving them time to learn to trust their ability to float. Some he teased and led laughing into the knowledge. Some he challenged and led quarreling. Some he persuaded. Haldern declined, saying he was too old to learn anything new, and Oriel let him be. Lilos said he was too skinny to learn, and too afraid, and would have to put it off until a later, fatter, braver time, and Oriel didn't argue with the Prince because he thought how tender his pride must be. So the two of them went off one early dawn—the sky as pink as a girl's mouth—to teach, and to learn, where none but the two might see any panic, humiliation, or failure. Lilos had, as Oriel had foretold, small difficulty learning.

The horsemen were welcomed into the great houses of lords and fed well, and entertained with music and dance. They were welcomed at towns and entertained with the best foods the Inns could produce. They were welcomed into villages and offered shady shelter, and cool water. But why, Oriel wondered, were the people so quiet and, he thought, anxious. The people and their lords were anxious to please the riders, anxious to welcome them and to wave them on their way, anxious, and wary, too, he thought. Why should these people—with their guarded smiles and low-pitched voices, with their way of listening before they uttered an opinion so that the opinion they uttered never varied from the opinion they heard—be the inhabitants of this prosperous land? The people of this land should be gladsome, openhanded and openhearted, boisterous.

The people of Yaegar's land were at least boisterous. Yaegar's great house had been built out of wood from the forests, and as they rode up before it, its doors and windows were flung open, and servants rushed out to take the horses from them, and more servants rushed out to demand that the riders follow them into the house, where the steward clapped Tintage on the back and laughed into his ear, and offered great cups of ale to all of the riders.

Tintage drank his down, and the servants cheered him, and he ordered them to fill his cup again. “I welcome you to my father's house,” he said to the company, “which belongs to three brothers before it comes to me. It is mine insofar as they give me permission to inhabit it. I call them Mumbo, Jumbo, and Gumbo. They are giants of men, and they take the one brain they have between them around in a box. No, you laugh, but I speak truly. My father dotes on them. For no one else in his whole broad demesne can down a tankard of ale as rapidly as Yaegar, or any of his three older sons. They are great men, those four.” Tintage downed his second cup of ale, and clapped the steward on the shoulder.

Lord Haldern, Oriel noted, stood at the rear of the company, although he must be—Oriel thought—eager to see the lady. Oriel was eager and impatient for the lady Merlis and he had never even seen her, much less courted and won and given her up years ago.

The horsemen were taken to a large hall filled with sleeping couches, and bade to table with Yaegar. The steward told Lord Haldern that Yaegar regretted that their stay must be so short. Yaegar had their tax purse ready for them, and he remembered Haldern well from years earlier, the steward told them.

“Take care,” Tintage warned Haldern. “I wouldn't trust the man, and especially when he seems to show goodwill.”

“I'll deal courteously with him, since he has spoken courteously to me,” Lord Haldern answered, “and since moreover he has in his giving that which I desire.”

“All the more reason not to trust his words, however courteous,” Tintage said, filling the air with flourishes of his hand as he mocked a courtier's bow to Haldern. “Since he doesn't fear you. I think I'd be a contented man if my father feared me.

Tintage stood still, as if listening to his own words. “Or,” he added, “if I had no father. Are you contented, Oriel?” he asked.

Oriel thought perhaps he was. “But don't think it's because I have no father,” he said. “The father has nothing to do with it.”

“I wouldn't let Yaegar hear you saying that. He'd clout you all the way into tomorrow, and then he'd stomp on you when you landed.”

Oriel laughed. But he was curious about Yaegar, and watched for him when they were led into the dining hall. Lord Haldern and Lilos and Garder were seated at a long table with Yaegar and his three older sons, and so was Oriel, which honor did not escape him. The rest of their party was scattered among the lords and ladies, stewards and squires and their wives and sons and daughters. Food was plentiful, platters of roast meats, plates of pastry, rounds of bread. Their wine goblets were kept well filled. Yaegar ate in great devouring bites. He let his three sons lead the conversation, to speak of the hunting season and the births among the hounds and the births among the horses, to speak of the amount brought in by taxes. Theirs was the only table at which no women sat.

When mention was made of the Tourney, Yaegar at last looked up from his plate, and seemed surprised to see he had guests. Yaegar was a thick man, thick necked, thick shouldered, his head set as square as a rock. His great hand wrapped around the dagger he used to cut off chunks of meat. “I've a son in this Tourney,” Yaegar said. “Don't I? Yes, I see him here, across the room—Look, boys, it's our dancing master. Stand up, Tintage, and let me see if you've grown to any size yet. Welcome home,” Yaegar said, mocking.

Tintage rose, to bow in mockery.

“No, you're still a wee mite, just like your mother. She was a fair dancer, too—Do you remember her pretty ways, boys?”

The three looked away at this public shaming of their brother.

Yaegar had no such soft feelings. “You made us a promise, Dancing Master,” he said. “You promised us you wouldn't be back until you had the Earldom, and we would all bow down to you. Or until you were dead,” Yaegar said. Tintage alone stood, his moleskin eyes helpless and angry. “You break your word now, too. That leaves you honorless, doesn't it?”