The Tale of Oriel (15 page)

The boots the cobbler showed them then were piled up in his fenced yard. “Dead men's boots, which they have no further need of,” he said. All were plain, all were brown, some seemed less worn at heel, some few had gashes in the leather. One had its entire toe section cut off. Oriel sat down to try the size of a boot. “There are many men who have died,” he observed.

“And what else do you expect when battles rage every year?” the cobbler asked. He passed a pair of boots to Griff, the leather so worn and soft they could barely stand upright. “These may be too greatly worn. This man died in his bed, having stayed at home to till his fields.”

“A farmer?” Griff asked.

“And wattlemaker,” the cobbler said. “He lived too long. That was his bad luck. With his sons gone to soldiers, the daughters wed, the wife dead, his strength wasted by the years—there was no work he could do, he had to sell his lands away, in order to feed himself. These boots lasted him the better part of a lifetime. It was my father who made them.”

“Where do you find these others?” Oriel asked. The boot he now wore showed a pale strip of leather, like a fish's underbelly, where some sharp weapon had cut it open. He pulled it off.

“Women follow their men, their soldiers. I've heard, some even fight beside them, but that—” the cobbler handed out another pair of boots for Oriel to try—“I don't believe.”

“Aye, but I do,” his wife spoke from behind. She had a child on her hip now. “If the price of your boots would feed my children, I'd not want any other stripping them from your body.”

“Aye, but I'm not a soldier,” the cobbler said.

“I'll take these,” Griff said, “and hope they bring me as long a life as the previous owner.” Oriel also had found a pair. “How much for both?” he asked.

“And won't ever be, if I can help it,” the cobbler said to his wife. “As I promised you, three years ago when we wed. For otherwise, she swore she'd never take me,” he told Oriel and Griff. “Women,” he added.

“Life is hazardous enough without a man going to soldiery,” the woman answered. “Men,” she said to Oriel and Griff, before turning back into the house.

“How much?” Oriel asked again.

“For the two pair? The one soft as a guildsman's gloves and the other barely worn?”

“Aye, the one worn down almost to cloth and the other hacked apart in battle,” Oriel said. “How much?”

“Six kiddles.”

“Three,” Oriel offered, thinking to settle for five.

“Four,” the cobbler said.

“Done.”

The boots felt stiff but sturdy, as if they could give good protection. There had been little difference between the thin island boots and going about barefooted, but he hadn't known this until he wore good leather. His stride lengthened, with these boots, and Griff stepped out long-legged beside him.

As they returned into the wide marketplace, Oriel looked across to where the city wall came down to the river. There three or four armed men gathered around a doorway under an Inn's painted sign. The sign pictured a mason's trowel laid on a goldsmith's crucible, and named the place The Guildsman. The armed men drank, and looked restlessly about. Their red kerchiefs hung down over their chests, as if demanding to be noticed. These were dark, rough-bearded men, who kept one hand on the hilts of their swords.

Oriel didn't like their looks, and didn't like the look one man gave them, like a merchant at the slave market. He led Griff along the side of the marketplace, until they could disappear up into an alleyway. They followed winding alleys until they came back to the city wall. They walked beside it, sure of their direction now. At one place it had fallen down and two men, wearing blue kerchiefs, labored to mend it.

“You've hot work,” Oriel greeted them.

The two agreed. “But the day starts out cool enough, at this season, and it ends cool,” said the man with the hammer.

“Days'll get hotter before we're done this job,” said the man who held his trowel over the pan of mortar. “That's if our luck holds, if soldiers don't come down on us before we've finished.”

“Why should soldiers come to Selby this summer when they've stopped at Celindon for the last three?” the hammerer asked.

“We can never be sure of peace,” the man answered. “Not until one man or the other holds all the cities, and is the Count, named and known.” Both of the men looked to see what effect their words had on Oriel and Griff. “And if that were to happen while I was alive to see it,” the mortarer went on, “well, that would be a day, I can tell you. That would be the great day of my life. I can tell you two lads that. You're strangers?” he asked.

“As you see,” Oriel answered.

“Then we'll advise you. Won't we? Ramon, whose color we are proud to wear, has joined forces with Taddeus. The two cousins now ride together under a blue banner. They have joined armies, too, so each has more soldiers at his command. Each can bring more men into battle. Each controls more lands. Each has more gold to pay the army with.”

Oriel didn't ask how that could be, when there had been no actual increase in men, or acres, or coins. Men who are giving advice wish to be listened to, not asked questions of.

“Ramon and Taddeus together have a larger army. Any man knows the largest army will carry the day.”

“A man with the eyes to see what must come next and take his best shelter, even—aye—giving up all he has and starting again, now that's a man,” the hammerer added.

Oriel thought of the yellow and green and blue kerchiefs. He thought he would have to be clever as a river to wind his way among these claimants and their colors. “Can you tell me whose are the men we saw wearing red?” he asked.

“Red? Here in Selby?” the hammerer asked, alarmed.

“Aye, in the marketplace, at The Guildsman.”

“Those are Phillipe's men,” the hammerer said. He turned back to the shaping of stones, and turned his back to Oriel and Griff.

The mortarer explained. “Phillipe has no claim by blood, unless it's the blood of the men he's killed, or had killed by hirelings so he might become Captain. Phillipe claims the cities by right of force.” He slathered a layer of mortar onto the walls. “If men with red kerchiefs stand boldly about the marketplace, bad times are coming,” he said.

“Aye, and I was beginning to hope that they would settle their differences without Selby.”

“I would not be a poor or landless man, should Phillipe take Selby,” the hammerer said. “Think you, should we move upriver?”

“Safety lies upriver?” Griff asked.

“Aye, because when armies move, they go along the coast, among the rich cities. When Celindon is beseiged and holds firm, then Selby is safe. But if Celindon falls . . . Upriver are a few farms, a town or two, just villages, perhaps the blacksmith might have a few coins, there is the Saltweller, but his wealth isn't in coins—none of these are worth the effort of an army.”

The mortarer reminded his companion, “Mad Magy's hut lies between us and double-walled Celindon, and she's kept fed. So long as Mad Magy lives, they say . . .”

Oriel and Griff walked away. After a while Oriel said to Griff, “I think we may have to choose a man and his color, if we choose to stay in Selby.”

“We don't know anywhere else to go,” Griff pointed out.

“Tomorrow, then, we find work,” Oriel decided. They would wind among the colors, as long as they could, backing no man. They would wind and twist, like a river. “And now back to the Captain at the Gate,” Oriel said, “if I can find our way.”

T
HEY APPROACHED THE INN DOWN
a sloping street. The cookmaid must have been watching for them because she signaled them from a window, to go around, beyond the building, and enter her kitchen from a side door. “Here,” she said, hurrying them to the long bench beside the table, hastily scooping out bowls of the meaty soup. “Before the Innkeeper knows you are back. So he won't charge you the extra meal. But he'll expect to sell you a tankard of ale, before the evening ends, I'll tell you that.” She was washing tin tankards in a pot of hot water, hanging them on nails driven into the wall by the fireplace, so they would dry quickly. “He may ask you if you had a meal, for he knows my hunger for children, although he never would give me any, for all that we've lived under the same roof for these many years and all of Selby thinks me his bedfellow. And he not the man to pay enough attention to gossip to deny it, so no other man will think of me for wife. But that's little to complain of, in this world. At least it's not Mad Magy's fate.”

“What is her fate?” Oriel asked.

“Set out like a staked goat for the armies. No matter which army it is. Not that it means anything to her, poor soul, since she's lost her children. At least, if you don't have children you can't lose them,” the woman said. “Back outside with you now, and not a word—if you value my skin.”

“Not a word,” Oriel promised.

“Not a word,” Griff echoed.

“Aye, you're good lads, anyone looking at you can tell that. How could your mothers part with you? No, never tell me, it'll be too sad a tale. Go now. You must enter the bar from the street. Go, you heard me.”

The lowering sun lit up the yellow stones of Selby, and made the city glow. With a bed for the night and a plan for the next day, Oriel stepped confidently through the street door into the barroom.

From where he filled the space behind the bar the Innkeeper stared at the two of them out of pale eyes. Oriel's confidence retreated before that glance. But he wouldn't be driven around the world by such men, he thought. He stood his ground, and Griff stood at his shoulder. The Innkeeper didn't seem displeased to be so faced.

After a time, during which every man in the room turned to stare at them, the Innkeeper spoke: “Come in if you're coming. Close that door behind you. I'll draw you ale,” he said, turning around and reaching up with arms as broad as the thighs of oxen. “Woman!” the Innkeeper called. “Clean tankards! And we've custom here, woman!”

The cookmaid set two tankards down on the table before them, and turned away without a word. As the dark settled, some of the men left, and later the Innkeeper called out for candles. With the candles came moths and other winged bugs. Those moths that found the flames they sought made sizzling sounds in the liquid wax.

Oriel and Griff sat against a back wall, facing the room and the door into the street. The fire behind them burned with welcome warmth. Conversation was conducted at a low level, men with their heads close together. The room wasn't crowded, but it was full, and it seemed that most groups—be they only two or three, or be they a full table of seven or ten—were made up of men who wore the same color kerchief. Sometimes a man would go up to the bar and speak with the Innkeeper. Sometimes the Innkeeper would bellow out, “Woman!” and the cookmaid would emerge to carry a tray of tankards to a table, or carry a tray of tankards into the kitchen for cleaning, or be told to serve a man with soup and bread. The Innkeeper stayed behind the bar.

There was tension in the room, Oriel thought. He sipped at the bitter ale and watched the faces around him. He tried to catch their words, but they didn't speak to be overheard. Words flickered like candlelight. Voices murmured like water. The evening passed by slowly, sleepily.

So that when the door to the street was thrown open and a broad-shouldered man stood in it, his short cape travel stained and his boots muddy, the whole room came to silent attention. The man called across to the Innkeeper: “They told me she was here, my daughter. I ask you, Innkeeper, where is my daughter?”

The Innkeeper greeted this grey-haired stranger with the same pale, wordless glance he had given Oriel and Griff.

“I asked you a question, Innkeeper,” the stranger said.

“We have no young woman here.”

“And my neighbor's serving wench with her,” the man said. His voice growled, roared, was filled with anger.

“Neither have we two young women,” the Innkeeper said.

The man strode across the room to lean against the bar, placing coins down in front of him. “Ale,” he said. “I've had a long journey chasing after the four of them.”

“Now it's four?” the Innkeeper asked, and a number of men in the room chuckled.

“Four,” the man said. “My daughter, from my own house, and my journeyman, who still owes me two years of his labor. For I am a ropemaker, well enough known to have need of an assistant. They have taken also my neighbor's serving maid he planned to bed himself, and with them a good-for-nothing lad who followed all trades a little, and in my village we used him for whatever need we had; he was clever enough, in his way. That's four, as I said.”

“What's a daughter the less, if you've sons?”

“I've no sons,” the man said. “But I've a likely man who'd have wed the girl.”

“As old a man as you?”

“No.” But his cheeks pinked, and he turned his back to the Innkeeper.

“A young man?” the Innkeeper asked, and the father didn't answer. The room laughed again.

“Aye, make mock,” the father said. “I wish you the same sorry fate for your property.”

“How long has it been?” one of the customers asked.

“Four days I've been following their trail. Today's the fifth,” the father said, drinking again, and putting down more coins to show that his tankard should be refilled.

“Then she's likely with child by now, so why chase any longer?”

“I'll not have him wedding her,” the father said.

“No other will have her now,” another voice said.

“Nor will that journeyman have what he took against my express desire. The two of them sneaking off together when I refused consent. And there is the matter of my neighbor, too, a man robbed as I have been.” At the laughter, he glared around the room, and drained his ale again, and set it down to be filled. “But what would the men of Selby know about such things? You know what the world says of you, don't you? Hiding behind your walls, hiding behind the double-walled city of Celindon, so you'll never have to draw a sword. . . . Do you know what the world calls you?” The ropemaker's sword was drawn. “They're here, aren't they? Tell me, and I'll kill them all. Or I'll have your heart on my blade before you can take another breath to fill with your lies.”