The Tale of Oriel (53 page)

She was sitting up against pillows and with her free hand she reached her fingers out to touch his cheek, where the white crescent scar marked him.

The baby suckled and Beryl sat in the carved wooden bed of the Earl's Lady as she nursed her child, and it was Griff who sat beside them. Not Oriel. Never Oriel.

“He told me,” Beryl said, and her fingers were still on the scar, her hand against his cheek. “He said that a man who gave his heart to my child could win my own heart. Oriel told me that. He knew me better than I knew myself in this,” she said.

Griff couldn't speak. He thought—he had never thought—He reached up to take her hand, and the bells of the city began to peal out the good news.

WEEKS PASSED AND THE QUESTION
was decided, the child had Beryl's blue eyes but shoulders—as Griff thought the first time he saw the child lying naked before the warmth of a fire—like Oriel's, broad and flat. As the weeks passed, and winter retreated, Griff made other decisions known. Garder, Lilos, Wardel, and Beryl would be coregents, should Griff die by mischance; he wished everyone to know in whose hands the child's welfare lay. The whole castle—and probably the city, too, for the Earl had little privacy in his life—knew the happiness of the Earl and his lady, how they slept in the same bed and had the child in the next room, with neither servant nor nurse in attendance. But with spring coming up upon the countryside, and the new year's business, labors, and troubles rising with the sap, Griff had to attend to the Earldom this baby would inherit. Consequently, he gathered Lilos and Wardel and Garder together, and he asked Beryl to join with them.

Looking down the long table, at which the five of them sat, Griff announced, “All together we will make the council, to rule.”

Beryl pushed her chair back from the table, but he asked her with a gesture to wait until she heard him out.

“As Earl,” Griff said, explaining his idea, “I can overrule the general will of the council. This will happen seldom, as I hope, because when we are not in agreement we will do nothing. I alone will be responsible to the King.” He waited to hear their reactions.

Garder voiced the objection. “We'll never all agree on anything, and so we'll be bound in inaction and waste our time in quarrels. You must have one man over all, that he may act. It always has been so.

“Might we not avoid unwise decisions if we act in concert?” Wardel asked.

“But what about the wise decisions, which we might be too fearful to see?” Lilos inquired. “Or, unable to admit, in our quarrels?”

“They'd be made eventually, if only because fear has a weak grip on a true heart,” Wardel answered lightly. “And I'll claim true hearts for all of us.”

Griff thought that Wardel and Lilos were already willingly convinced.

“Sir,” Garder said. “I say this with all due reverence. I am not hopeful about this council, if all on it must agree.”

“Oh, but I am,” Lilos said. “The more I think of it, the more I like it. In time, if a thing is good to do, we will all agree.”

“Are we four in agreement that the lady should sit equal among us?” Griff asked.

The three men were.

“Beryl?” Griff asked. “What say you?”

She didn't speak, but just studied their faces.

“No, you must speak,” Wardel said.

“Why must I?” Beryl asked. “I will speak when I have something to say. What is this must? What I must have is the right to decide when I have something to say, and when I do not, that is my must. Otherwise, I am no more than a puppet, if you can pull the string and I must have words in my mouth.”

Beryl smiled to Griff, out of dark blue eyes, and he knew what she remembered. No one spoke, however, for none could answer her. It was Griff they all turned to.

And Griff was what Oriel had shown him how to be, and needed him to be, and saved his life to be. Like Beryl, who was his lady, Griff carried on his breast the medallion that marked the house of the Earls Sutherland. This was the treasure Oriel had won, and given to them. This was the medal Oriel had worn at his heart, when they had laid him down into the dark earth—emblazoned onto a disk of heavy gold, the falcon with its wings outstretched.

Also by
Cynthia Voigt

The Tale of Gwyn

The Tale of Birle

The Tale of Elske

T
HE
T
ILLERMAN
C
YCLE

Homecoming

Dicey's Song

A Solitary Blue

The Runner

Come a Stranger

Sons from Afar

Seventeen Against the Dealer

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 1993 by Cynthia Voigt

Jacket illustrations copyright © 2015 by Adam S. Doyle

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

A
THENEUM
B
OOKS FOR
Y
OUNG
R
EADERS
is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or
[email protected]
.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
www.simonspeakers.com
.

Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

The text for this book is set in Dolly.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Voigt, Cynthia, author.

[Wings of a falcon]

Tale of Oriel / Cynthia Voigt.

pages cm. — (Tales of the kingdom ; 3)

Originally published under the title: The wings of a falcon. New York : Scholastic, 1993.

ISBN 978-1-4814-0323-8 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-0324-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4814-0325-2 (eBook)

1. Adventure stories. 2. Heroes—Juvenile fiction. [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Heroes—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.V874Tao 2015

813.54—dc23

[Fic]

2014044135