The Tale of Oriel (12 page)

Griff understood him.

The old woman put the doll-baby back in place, folded the blanket back over the box, and pushed it back under the bed, with so much grunting that Griff and Oriel knelt beside her, to help. The wooden box scraped against the wooden floor, like bone against bone. Then she returned to the fire. She plucked at the fish. The top layer she dropped into a bucket, but those beneath she piled onto a wooden platter. “Eat,” she said. “I must eat to keep my strength up, to keep the watch,” she explained. “How did you get here?” she asked. “I watch the woods.”

“We came by boat,” Griff told her.

They picked the flesh of the fish off its springy bones. It tasted of the bitterness of the guts but Oriel, who had lived close enough to hunger to know how little the flavor of things matters, ate until his belly was satisfied. After it was fully dark, the old woman unbarred the door and let them go outside, one after the other—not both together because even in the darkness two might be seen, whereas one could slip through shadows unnoticed—to relieve themselves. Outside, under the starless sky, Oriel thought he could breathe again, and thought he would rather sleep the night in the open danger of the boat than the enclosed danger of the little house. But Griff waited inside, and so he had to return.

They lay wrapped in their cloaks on the dirt floor. The old woman had the bed, and her cloak became her bedclothes for warmth in the night. She talked long into the darkness. There was a Countess who never married, the lady Celinde, whose reign was long, longer than any others. The old woman had the babies Celinde could never have because Celinde never married, even though never marrying meant she could never have the babies a woman wanted. She had her lands, instead of babies. Now her lands were filled with soldiers who came to conquer and take food, and coins, gold, and silver, and copper, came like floods on the river, although some years the lands were spared. She learned to save the baby girls. She learned to control the baby boys, except for those who must go off to soldiery until the men of Selby put her into the cart, and her babies with her, and promised her that she would never hunger if she would keep watch on the woods. Ever since the Old Countess had died these many years ago when this old woman was barely more than a girl.

The old woman's voice drifted like a low mist cloud above the room. Every now and then she would sit up in bed to ask, “How did you come here, lad?” One or the other of them would answer her, and then her floating voice would continue, and there would be names told, or memories of a dance, or memories of long winters under the bedclothes with her man before the soldiers came in the spring.

Oriel drifted into sleep and out of sleep, and then at last deep into sleep. A shriek seized him up out of it, and he was on his feet in the darkness with his throat beating.

Someone moved in the darkness. “I hear them!” The old woman's voice cried like a seabird. “They move. It's time, I must.”

Griff now stood beside Oriel, both of them ready for they didn't know what from out of the darkness.

She unbarred the door and stood, a dark shape against a silver sky. “I will protect my own. If I am blooded and thrown down, I will rise again. Tell the people of Selby,” she said, and then turned, pulled the door closed after her. They heard the bar fall down into place. “Safe now, you're safe,” she called.

The voice moved away, faded away. They were left in silence and darkness. For a long time, Oriel didn't speak, and Griff waited for Oriel to speak first, as if Oriel would have the better measure of their hazards.

Oriel waited. Almost, he thought he could hear the sound of distant chopping, but just as the sound became clear to his ears it ceased. He strained at the ears, to hear.

Griff's soft breathing, his own heart, he heard those. At last he went stumbling through the darkness to where the window was, and pulled at the shutter. But it was sealed, somehow, and he couldn't see to open it.

“What do you think she meant?” Griff asked. “Was it all madness? Some of those babies—” Griff didn't finish the thought.

Oriel struck sparks to light the candle. “I'll be happier to be away from here.”

“If any of what she said had any part of truth, and I think some or all of it must have, I'd go mad, too,” Griff said.

Oriel pulled the bolt back, and opened the shutter a crack. He could see the deep blue sky of coming daylight, before the sun had appeared but after the night had withdrawn from the field. He could hear nothing except the sniffling of wind. He could smell no fire. He had led Griff outside and pulled the door shut behind them before he understood what it was that he hadn't seen in the emptiness before them. The meadow grasses bent towards the silvery water.

The darkened woods waited on all sides, thick as hills.

“I don't hear her,” Griff said. “Do you think there
was
an army? How long since she left us?”

“Long enough,” Oriel said. His mind was already busy on the problem, thinking it out, to travel north or south, or inland, what unknown dangers might await in every direction, and what known dangers. He didn't know enough—of the land, of the people, of the times. He couldn't even choose well. But there was no help for that, and no use to regret. Once it was light enough to see, he could at least see an immediate danger.

“Where are we going?” Griff asked. “Where's the boat?”

“Gone,” Oriel answered.

“But—?”

When they had the boat, they were free as birds, Oriel realized. When they had the boat, they could have eluded many dangers. Now, they had only their wits, and their feet, and luck.

“Why would she do that?” Griff asked.

“I think, she will have thought she was protecting us. Because the boat could be seen,” Oriel said.

“Now what?” Griff asked.

“West,” Oriel said. “Celindon lies to the east—remember?”

“Yes.”

“I think she was saying that the armies will stop at Celindon, for its riches. There are gold mines in the hills of Celindon,” Oriel said. “So Selby, and south, is the better choice.”

“Do we go along the coast or through the woods?”

“I think there should be a path into the woods, if the town brings her food. I think that will be the quicker and safer way.”

They crossed the meadow in growing light. The grass whispered like water at their boots. It was Griff who spotted the dirt path emerging beside a fat beech tree, whose branches spread out over the path like an arched doorway.

Oriel, with Griff behind him, moved into the deeper darkness of the wood.

O
RIEL LED AND GRIFF FOLLOWED
far enough behind to stay clear of the back-snapping branches. Although worn down to dirt by frequent use, the path was no wider than a solitary man would need. All around, the woods were crowded with tree trunks, and tangled with undergrowth through which, occasionally, great grey boulders pushed their way. From overhead, sunlight sprinkled onto the little new leaves and flowed down over the long branches of firs to lie in bright patches on the path. It was cool, in the woods, and shady. Their progress was steady. They tramped—

Oriel walked almost into the face of the man.

He was too surprised, almost, to recognize the man as human—as a young man—and then he backed away as there came four faces in front of him. There were four of them, two beardless boys and two men, two short-trimmed beards and two hooded heads. They traveled cloaked and all carried packs on their backs. Oriel hadn't heard their approach.

He backed into Griff, backing away from the four surprised faces. If the four hadn't looked as surprised as he felt—and alarmed—he would have turned and run into the woods, trusting Griff to follow, trusting that as long as he was near to the sea he could never be lost for long. But the strangers backed away uneasily, and if they had weapons, they weren't drawing them.

Oriel thought then that he would see how those four dealt with the encounter. Let them show him what was the appropriate conduct towards traveling strangers. If they were to threaten, he would run. If they were to thrust along on the path, he would step aside without protest. If they were to offer food, he would eat. If they asked questions, then he could learn from their questions what it was one traveler might ask another. If they were to flee from a meeting, he would go on his own way. Of all the possibilities, Oriel thought he would prefer food.

Both of the men were dark, dark hair and dark eyes, although they didn't look alike. The first had a big, square-toothed smile, the second had a squinting way to him, as if the sun shone full on his face. The two lads stood behind in shadows. “Good day to you,” the first man said.

Oriel answered, “And to you also, a good day.”

“Where might you be bound this morning?”

“Westwards, to a town called Selby. And you?”

“To the walled city of Celindon. Do you know it?”

“I've been to market there, two or three times. I've slept two or three nights there. Perhaps four,” Oriel said. “Do you know Selby?”

“Aye, but we're on our way east, up from the southern hills. We've heard there is always work in Celindon, and safety within its double ring of walls. Come you from the east?”

Oriel had thought what his answer to this question might be, thinking it must be asked of him. “From seaward, a small fishing island with not even a village on it.”

“At Selby they told us islanders were poor, puny men, but you aren't, and he—” the man's eyes went to Griff, “looks underfed but he's tall enough.”

“And I'm strong enough, too,” Griff said.

The second man squinted at Oriel, and then at Griff behind him. He put a hand on his companion's shoulder, to speak. “We were about to break our fast. If he knows Celindon, they don't seem dangerous, they might prove useful to us.” The first man nodded and the second asked Oriel, “Will you eat with us? What food we carry is simple enough, but if you're hungry, simple is as good as the feast. We can give you news of the south and west in exchange for yours.”

“Gladly,” Oriel said. “There's a rock a few paces back, where we might all sit down together, and we are hungry—but we can tell you little of the east, and north.”

“Little,” the first man laughed, “will be double what we know. Come, lead us.”

THEY ATE CHUNKS OF HEAVY
dark bread and onions that dripped sweet juices when they were cut. The two lads sat apart. The men faced Oriel and Griff, passing the bread first to their lads, then to the strangers. “We have nothing to eat,” Oriel told them. When he was seated and still, he could hear the sounds of the woods—rustlings, and occasional birdsongs, a creaking of branches almost like the creaking of a mast pulled by the windy sail. “We can only offer thanks in exchange for food,” he said.

“It's no matter to us if you add nothing,” the man said, smiling broadly. He seemed a man more than contented with his lot in life. “We've plenty, as you see, and where we go there is plenty more—if you've the coins to buy. We've the coins, and we've the skills to earn more coins when those are gone—so eat your fill. Then tell us how things stand, to the north and east.”

Oriel passed Griff half of an onion and took the rest for himself. He bit and chewed. He had no reason not to believe the old woman and he had heard rumors for years, in the markets. “Things stand at soldiery,” he said. “The old quarrels over who will inherit the Old Countess's lands.”

“That is as we heard,” Griff added. “We saw neither soldiers nor battles ourselves. We were warned, though, and I believed the warning was truly meant.”

“And of Wolfers?” The man was not smiling now.

“Wolfers?” Oriel echoed. “What are Wolfers?” He didn't ask Griff. What Oriel didn't know of the world beyond the island, Griff wouldn't.