The Tale of Oriel (18 page)

“That I'll explain as we sup,” Vasil said, “having noticed that you yourselves wear no colors.”

“Aye, but we are not men of Selby,” Oriel told him. “And we must make our farewells, and be on our way upriver.”

“Aye, but I don't think that is necessary,” Vasil said. He laughed, pleased with himself, pleased with Oriel and Griff. “You didn't think of it? You didn't think of a test?” He clapped Oriel on the back, and clapped Griff on the back. “I was testing your loyalty, lads. To know if you were loyal to one another.”

“Why should we not be?” Oriel asked.

“Loyalty isn't convenient, much of the day,” Vasil answered. “But tell me, you will stay, the two? For a trial period?”

Oriel didn't like being tested, and he thought of saying No. He thought he'd had enough for a lifetime of this way men had of testing lads, to determine if the lads were fit for manhood. But he did want to abide in that place, and he thought that a man living alone with his one daughter would need to be sure his workers were loyal men. So he said, “Yes.”

“You speak for both?” Vasil asked, as he had the night before.

“Oriel can speak for me,” Griff answered again.

O
VER THAT EVENING'S SUPPER, THE
Saltweller began the tale of how he came to be no man's man, in the question of the Countess's heir. This was a slow-told tale, with no main pathway but only a maze of byways through dense woods—and no apparent destination. The telling of it took up many evenings. Vasil unfolded the story step by step, step after step—and often step upon step, step across step, steps all the way around.

At first Oriel waited impatiently for the end but then, as he grew accustomed to coming back to the low, heavy-walled house, which seemed—every evening—to welcome him, he grew accustomed to Vasil's slow telling. And he was glad as he listened that he could hear the story in pieces. There was more sorrow in the tale than Oriel would have liked to hear in one night.

Sometimes Griff was present, to hear whatever part of the tale was told that night. Sometimes it was just Vasil and Oriel. Sometimes they were walking up to the pasture, where a herd needed care. Sometimes they were waiting for the mother liquor to taste ready, sometimes moving faggots onto the fire, sometimes packing conical baskets for draining or wooden boxes for drying. Sometimes they would be sitting at the fireside after the day's work, or sitting on a bench beside the door watching the day's light fade. The Saltweller's voice would begin: “In the days when the priests had returned to the land, and I was a boy, and my father was Saltweller . . .” This grew into the story of Vasil's oldest son, who would have studied to be a priest had the priests not fled the wars, the son who had supported—as had the Saltweller—Karle. The son wore his yellow neckerchief proudly and did what any boy of spirit must do when he had chosen his leader, and died in a battle before one of the cities up along the coast, where—since Karle's army had fled from that battle—his body was lost to recovery.

The second son, as his father had at the time, supported Ramon—this being before Ramon had leagued himself with the scoundrel Taddeus. But the weakness in armed strength that led to the ill-chosen leaguing had led Ramon previously into ill-conceived battles, in which he was outnumbered, during which any number of men's sons were slain, and their blue neckerchiefs stained with their own red blood.

And so the stories went, for the Salter had a son dead in every man's color and he would no longer wear any man's. He had lost wives also, but they had died of fever or the bloody flux or childbirth. For all the uneasiness of present days, the Saltweller pointed out to Oriel and Griff and his daughter, any man alive had known worse, since the Countess died. Selby was lucky in being out of the way, off the main roads between the greater cities. The citizens of Celindon, for example, were eaten with envy for the peaceful life in Selby.

The daughter's name was Tamara. There were older daughters, two of them still living, married to neighboring farms. So all of the landholdings along the river belonged in the Saltweller's family. “For they were pretty enough girls for the purpose. Who weds Tamara will be Salter after me. That's if the armies come to peace. If these wars don't kill off all of the men. If in the division of the spoils the saltwell doesn't fall to some stranger's gift. Because there is only so much a man can do, to secure his child's future, Oriel. And what of my little Tamara, do you find her pretty?”

Oriel didn't find Tamara at all. He didn't look for her. She brought food to the table, kept the house, cared for the fowl, cultivated the kitchen garden and orchard to produce foods that she gathered, and set out on the table, and preserved in woven baskets or salted kegs against the coming winter; also she first sewed and then kept clean the clothing of the men of the house, and the linens. Griff seemed comfortable in Tamara's company but Oriel couldn't be. She was a child, of only ten summers.

When her chores were done, she played with her doll, or tied cloths around the dogs' tails saying they had been hurt in battles and she was caring for them. Griff could chatter on with her, and listen to her stories. Tamara must always be imagining, and Griff's attention encouraged her. She spoke of a land she named the Kingdom, filled with beautiful ladies and brave lords who lived adventurous lives, and met up with giants, and true love, and of Jackaroo, a man who was—as far as Oriel could tell by the hearing—little better than a pirate, for all that Tamara described his mask and cloak and deeds with sighs of admiration.

Oriel didn't know how much of this Griff gave credence to, and he didn't ask. He had real questions to ask of the Saltweller, questions about the length of time packed salt needed to hang over the salt pans—the general rule, since the dampness in the air, and the temperature of the day, and the wind, and the heat of the faggots under the pans all also affected the exact time the packed salt had to hang over the fires, drying.

One autumn evening after Tamara had babbled tirelessly while sewing the tabbed waistband for a pair of trousers Oriel could wear in winter cold, Oriel asked Griff as they climbed onto their beds, “Is this Kingdom actual, do you think? And the great impenetrable forests under ice mountains?”

In the candlelight, Griff had smiled. “The Kingdom is more real than the golden city of Dorado, I think, but less real than Celindon. Vasil says there used to be merchants, before the death of the Countess, who traveled great distances. Now the journeys aren't safe, but at that time travelers told strange tales.”

“But, Griff,” Oriel protested, “the child says that her mother, dead these many years, has gone to the Kingdom.”

“Just as she denies the death of her youngest brother, who stole the purse of coins Vasil kept under the hearthstone to give to Matteus. Except she says he has gone to the Dammer's island.”

“So it's false,” Oriel agreed. He pulled his bedclothes up for warmth against the chill of night. “Her mind is filled with fancies. She weeps over the princess whose lover came back from afar with a foreign witch for a bride, who carried him away and he was never seen again, and the princess died of a broken heart. And this story brings tears down her cheeks.”

Griff didn't comment.

Oriel blew out the candle. “I believe in Mad Magy, and her babies—but not in a princess who dies of a broken heart.”

“I think they may be the same story,” Griff spoke across the darkness.

“No, not at all,” Oriel told him. “The child said—did you hear her?—that she will teach us to dance. As if I had time for dancing.” He was smiling to himself as he fell asleep.

IT WAS EARLY IN THE
first winter of the three Oriel spent as the Saltweller's man that he gave his master the truth. He gave it unwittingly, but in the end it turned out to have been wisdom that he didn't know he used, to have been truthful.

The cold had closed in with the darkness, and the windows were shuttered against rain. Snow came rarely to Selby, the Saltweller said. It was not unknown, just uncommon, but meantime the rain was cold enough. They were all four seated close to the fire. The Saltweller was reckoning up his stores and his coins.

“Remember that for me,” Vasil said to Oriel after he had named the number of saltboxes that the Innkeeper of Captain at the Gate had purchased for his winter stores. “To which I add—Tamara, do you remember what the summer purchase was?”

“For the Captain?” Tamara asked. She was sewing a sleeve onto a shirt for her father. The needle went in and out, as she wrinkled her brow. “Was it four? That seems so few, so was it fourteen? You told me, I remember when you told me. I just can't remember
what
you told me, Father.”

Vasil sighed. He scratched lines on the hearthstone. Oriel, like Griff, was fitting together pieces of wood for saltboxes. “How many of the summer's boxes did he take credit for, when he placed his winter order?”

Vasil didn't ask this question of anyone in particular. Oriel had taken no note of the number at the time, and neither had Griff. They hadn't thought it was necessary.

“Every year at this time, Father worries that the spring is producing less salt,” Tamara explained. Her needle, pulling its long train of thread, moved in and out of the thick cloth.

“Aye,” the Salter laughed ruefully. “But I can never remember exactly the last year's numbers. It's enough for my poor head to recall whose bills are paid up, and whose owing. I am probably being cheated out of a good profit.”

That thought didn't call forth any laughter.

Without thinking, Oriel asked, “Could you not keep record books?”

“Aye, if I had books, if I had quill and ink. If I knew how to read and write. Aye, I could do that.”

Oriel could sense Griff's wary stillness.

He could almost feel the Saltweller's eyes on the back of his neck. “It's time you were in bed, Tamara,” Vasil said at last.

“Yes, Father,” she answered, folding her sewing together and setting it into its basket. She was almost out of the room when he called to her. “Tamara?”

“Yes, Father.”

“If you were to wed, would you take one of these lads?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Which one would it be?” the Salter asked.

“Why, you would tell me which,” she said. In the light of the candle, her face seemed more solemn than ever, her eyes larger. The cloth around her hair made her look not so much a child.

“But if I were to ask you your own preference?” her father asked.

“I prefer Griff, Father.”

“Why him?”

“Because he likes to talk with me. Just as Oriel likes to talk with you. So we get along. Griff doesn't mind when I am stupid.”

“Go now, Daughter,” her father said.

“Good night, Father,” she answered, and left the room.

There was a long time of silence, while Vasil stared into the flames and Oriel stared at his knife blade, and Griff patiently scraped a flat surface smooth.

“Is it not time to speak the truth?”

Oriel didn't move. But inside of his head, all was movement, like a river running over rapids, searching for the way through, trying routes around rocks and over shallows, a turbulence of thought more rapid than he could follow. Griff, he knew, would do and say nothing until he heard Oriel's choice.

After waiting a while, the Saltweller's rough voice queried quietly, “Have you not learned over the seasons that I am a man to be trusted? Can a man throw his sons alive to those wolves who care only to win the rule of cities to themselves—can he do that and not learn to question common wisdom?”

Oriel looked up at Vasil, to answer, “Aye, Master, I think a man can.” Oriel knew that trust between man and man had its own fields of honor, and even if one of the men was a lad and the other the master, still there might be honor between them.

“And have I not seen,” Vasil went on, “how your feet mold themselves to the very shapes of the hills and fields of my lands?”

“That I did not know,” Oriel said, choosing not to acknowledge that he had suspected it. He couldn't know how much the master had guessed of the desires he warmed his heart before.

“Can you not give me the truth? Oriel? Griff?”

Griff watched Oriel, to give away nothing Oriel chose not to give away, to deny nothing Oriel should speak.

Oriel asked, “Tell me what you guess. It might be that the truth is dangerous to us, and should not be told, but if it is already known we will acknowledge it.”

The answer pleased Vasil. “I think that you can figure with numbers. I think perhaps that you can write with letters, and read them. These are skills the Dammer's boys are trained in, before they are brought to the slave market at Celindon.”

The Saltweller spoke cautiously, as a man fishing in a river plays his line out. Oriel didn't respond in any way. He didn't look away and he didn't allow any expression onto his face.