The Tale of Oriel (43 page)

And that pricked him. He would not have her think little of him. “Your words do honor to the King, as they should,” he said to her. “Have you no honor or grace for me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and then stood icy angry, for she had lost her composure. “As much as you deserve.”

These were words used like swords, and Oriel didn't know why she should hope to wound him.

“You may find, lady, that as much as I deserve is more than you think,” he said.

“You know what I think, then? and on such short acquaintance?”

“I think,” Oriel admitted honestly, “that I might know you all my life and never know your mind.”

“Now you call me false!” she cried. “I have no more to say to you!” She waved him away.

Oriel obeyed her wish. He thought, too late, that he might have said he would call her fair, fairer than any other. He thought, too late, that he might have sworn to her truly that he would be content to use his life in service to her.

Later, although how much later he couldn't have said, there was dancing. Between the time when he held her fingers in his hand and the time of the dance, there was wine, and food, and many people talking and laughing together, and candles burning in the hall; but he could remember only her voice, and her face, and the way she had of holding out her hand and at the same time drawing back as she stood there in her green gown with the falcon sewn into it in gold threads, welcoming her suitors.

Later still he approached her again, to claim a dance from her, and she did not see him and so turned her shoulder to him as she went off on Verilan's arm. He came up to her again, where she stood with Tintage, who had somehow caused her to laugh. Tintage was telling the story of Rafella's rescue from Yaegar's house. Oriel thought that the lady might think well of him, for Tintage told the tale unsparingly. “As always, in my father's presence, I was the fool,” Tintage said. “I dared not go to the side of my friends, for fear of my father's hand; I dared not stay back from the event, for fear of my father's mockery—and my brothers ready to follow his lead—and Rafella, who had been like a mother to me, to comfort my fears and failures, to speak on my side of a question, to find me worthy of a place in her heart. And I could not move to her side, to aid her, not even to stand beside the better man.”

The lady spoke gently to Tintage's unhappiness. “Is it better, then, never to know doubt? never to fail? Stones have such lives, do you say it is better to be a stone than a man? Do not speak of better men, Tintage. I know what you have had to endure.”

In the lady's presence, Oriel lost much of his quickness, but he understood from the gentle way she spoke to Tintage that she might not admire a man only for the deeds he had done. She must also see the testing of his heart. Oriel thought his own heart had been tested; but he was not sure. His strength had been tested, and his courage, his cleverness and his loyalty, his boldness, endurance—but where was his heart in all of that?

This lady touched his heart, and painfully, as no other had done; just as her lands—and he thought of her lands, looking at her as she spoke generously to Tintage—touched his eyes, and the soles of his feet, and the palms of his hand as he ran the rich soil through his fingers.

“Lady, I ask the honor of the dance,” Oriel said. The heart he wasn't sure he had thudded in his ears.

She held her hand out, with a smile, but held it out to Tintage.

“Merlis, it wasn't I who asked the honor,” Tintage said.

“Ah, but it is you whom I choose,” she answered. After a pause she added, “for the dance.”

“I can't be so churlish as to refuse,” Tintage said, but he looked ruefully over at Oriel. “Don't be upset, friend. It doesn't matter who the lady wants, since she goes to the Earl.”

Her cheeks turned pink with shame; and Oriel wished to punish Tintage for that; and he saw in the dark mole eyes that Tintage had chosen his words carefully, and now measured their effect. But Tintage should not, Oriel thought—his heart like a clenched fist to see it—give the lady pain.

Merlis drew back, and drew her hand out of Tintage's. “I'll have neither of you!” she cried.

Her voice was such that people nearby stopped speaking, and turned to see what caused her to speak so.

“The choice is not yours, lady,” Tintage reminded her.

“Leave her,” Oriel said to him. “Let her go.” Maugre the shame of it, he would fight Tintage here, before all of the assembled guests. “Can't you see how you offend her?”

“I am the unhappiest of women,” Merlis said, her voice soft again now—and Oriel thought she might be, and he wished that she might live to say of herself that she was the most fortunate.

He wouldn't trouble her again, he thought. It would be gall to a proud spirit to know she must marry whoever proved strongest in the Tourney, whoever was most willing to slaughter men—men who were perhaps his friends—for the prize of her hand, and her lands. Oriel couldn't blame Merlis if she felt bitter to the world, and betrayed by it.

He thought, watching her walk away from him, that he could be nourishing as the land for her, and patient, too, and let her grow into a life with him as a garden would grow—slowly, greenly, into its own flowering.

ALL SOON KNEW HOW THINGS
stood with Oriel. Only Tintage dared to front him with the knowledge, but he felt the laughter in which the others joined when he was absent, and he almost admired Tintage for his forthrightness. At practice, Oriel had only to think of his opponent as winning Merlis's hand to have grief and despair and a desperate anger added to his strength and skill. For he couldn't long deceive himself: The lady liked him least of all the men who sought her hand.

He wished to understand what he had done wrong, that he might do right. In his confusion—in his longing for Merlis—in his need of her advice, he sent for Beryl. But she was nowhere to be found in the city, and even Griff didn't know where she might be.

The ladies of the court counseled him instead. Some thought he should find a landed lady who would know the luck she had in such a suitor. Some thought he should pretend to think another more desirable, and then, they said, Merlis would seek him out. Others maintained that a woman spoke most sharply to the man she most desired, as if a woman feared to give a man her heart and therefore tried to drive him away before he could see the danger she was in. “Merlis doesn't know her own heart,” they all agreed. “If you win her, she will be glad,” they promised him. “If you persist.”

Oriel persisted. The desire he had to be in her company, if he couldn't have her smiles, for the sight of her if he couldn't hear her voice—unless she was nearby, he had no peace, and when she avoided him all around the hall his longing burned like a flame in him. When—and it happened thrice; on three occasions that shone like bonfires on a dark plain it happened so—during an evening of dance and song, the lady looked around to meet his eyes and summon him to her with a smile, and speak fair to him—then he was dazed, dazzled, and filled with hope. He was unsurprised that Merlis at last had chosen him. He was no less joyful, and his longing did not abate, but he was unsurprised. Unsurprised, but as glad as the land itself must be, to feel the warm spring sunlight falling at last upon it after the cold of winter, and to feel its own richness stirring within it, to feel the grass and flower swelling out, tree and herb and grain, all growing things.

Thrice after such occasions, his sword was like a bird in its quickness and flight, and no man could stand against him. Joy was a more potent weapon to him than grief or anger. Joy made him invulnerable. After such occasions, he would go eagerly to the next meeting with Merlis—and she would turn coldly away, scorning him.

Gwilliane was worried. “Merlis is not the woman to play so coyly with you. There is some deep feeling there.”

Oriel could not speak, for the hope that the deep feeling was for him.

“We have deemed her ill,” Gwilliane said. “We have measured her in her own lands, never in herself.”

Oriel could make it all up to her, in the devotion of his heart that would never weaken.

“Poor child,” Gwilliane said, and Oriel understood that it was the lady Merlis whom she pitied.

“Tell me,” he said, because he wished to know all that he might of the lady, and because to be talking of her both eased and fueled his longing.

“Merlis was raised to great pride, and in the bitterness of the inheritance she could never have. And what have we done for her? I think, Oriel, that no woman should believe that a man might think death a fair exchange for the chance of her hand.”

When Oriel saw the lady thus, in herself and removed from his desire for her, he knew what her perfect lover would do:

Her perfect lover would win the prize, and then lay it at the lady's feet. He would give to her the governance of her lands, and of her own heart. He would give it freely, knowing the chance that she might not give her heart, and hand, and lands, to him, even though he was the most worthy. Even though he had proved his worth in the battles of the Tourney, and then again in the gift, she might prefer another. But even knowing this, the perfect lover would serve his lady rightly.

Oriel understood this, but he knew his longing for Merlis was too strong. If he could win her, he would take her, willing or no. He wished her willing but if she could not be, then she could not. He would keep her, willing or no, in the castle he had won away from her, in his bed. If he could just win her, he would not let her go.

But he longed to find her willing, since she must come to him through the blood of men he admired, at the price of their lives, since she must come only at risk of his own life, since she was so beautiful and proud and had his heart.

AT LAST, BUT IT WAS
only the ninth day after he had first seen the lady, the day of the Tourney arrived. By the end of that day there would be an Earl over the south. That man would be wed, and would then have the task of bringing order back to his lands. The day that dawned pink and gold would end in blood for many, and Oriel greeted it with relief.

For soon the game would be played out. He would have death or the lady, but he thought he would likely have the lady. He had measured his opponents—had he not taught them how to give themselves to the water, and seen which part of them fear touched first? and how each reacted? He knew their hearts, every one.

He knew his own heart, and his own desires. In what he had been, he saw what he might be. He dressed himself in green—shirt and trousers—over which the light armor would gleam silver. He pulled on high boots and strapped on his sword. He thought of the lady, and then drove her from his mind and heart, until the day should be done.

Only Griff was with him. Haldern had gone on ahead to stand with Rafella among the royal party at the Tourney. Oriel felt gratitude, that morning, for Haldern, and for Griff, and even for Rulgh and before him the Saltweller and the men of Selby. He thought that it might be said to be the sixth Damall who had started him along the path that led him to this day—and he laughed aloud.

The morning air was crisp, winy. It seemed to Oriel that with every step, every time his foot went down on the earth, his strength increased. It seemed that with every breath he drew in, he became more clever, and perhaps wise, too. He stepped out, glad, and Griff was beside him.