He didn’t answer.
“You didn’t count when I had you fetch the coins?” the Damall asked, and then he laughed. “I know you didn’t steal any. I was there behind you, to know if you were a thief.”
Why should he steal what would become his own? He didn’t ask. Instead, he turned to a huddled group of boys, ranging as he guessed from two winters in age up to twelve. The biggest boy was too old, too tall, he thought, just as the littlest was too little. He noted that only one of the boys stood bravely, without tears or bent head. This boy had curly black hair and a body as round as a tree stump. He went to the master to ask the price. He asked the price of the oldest, first, then the price of the youngest, and he looked doubtful at each answer. It didn’t matter what the answer was, he wrinkled his forehead, as if the price worried him. “How old?” he asked, pointing. “How much?”
The black-haired boy was not the first he asked about, nor the last. When he had heard all of the prices, he stepped back from the master and opened the hand he had held closed. He examined the coins on his palm, as if he were counting them. Then he closed his fingers around the coins again, and wrinkled his forehead again, and bade the master farewell. “I am sorry to have troubled you,” he said. He turned, and moved three paces towards another group of huddled boys and their master. Then he turned swiftly around to ask, “I don’t think you would take five coppers for him?” pointing at the dark-haired boy.
The master barely hesitated before agreeing, and taking the coins, and pushing the boy forward.
He kept his eyes stony, so the master wouldn’t see his pleasure.
As he led the boy away he asked, “Do you have a name?”
“Carlo. I wanted you to choose me.”
He didn’t answer.
He thought the Damall must be pleased when he returned the silver coin whole, but the man said only, “There’ll be a reason he came so cheap.”
NO REASON BECAME EVIDENT WHEN they returned to the island. Carlo made no complaint, learned his chores quickly, and performed them without error. Other boys, especially the smaller ones, would spend a sennight weeping and whining; and the Damall would whip their complaints out of them. Carlo never complained. He became a favorite among the littler boys, who vied to work beside him, and eat beside him, and sleep at his side.
After a few days of this, the Damall called for the whipping box and called Carlo. When Carlo knelt naked and afraid, the Damall said, “I’m a little tired. Would anyone care to do this for me?”
“Me,” Nikol said. “I will. I can.” A few of the other boys asked for the favor.
He stood silent as stone. He thought, when he was the seventh Damall, there might be no whippings ever again.
“Here, you.” He was the one to whom the Damall held out the whip.
He thought, he might decline to take it. But even as that thought was in his mind his hand reached out for the wooden handle. He knew it would be dangerous to refuse. If he couldn’t wield the whip, to win order on the island, then it might be thought that he wasn’t worthy to be Damall.
He had no desire to whip Carlo, who besides had given no reason to be whipped. “How many?” he asked, each word like a stone rolled from his mouth.
“You decide,” the Damall answered.
Nikol watched, the firelight making his face red.
He raised the whip and brought it down once, twice, not hard, not gentle, and then a final third time.
Carlo cringed at the strokes, but made no sound.
“That’s enough,” he said, holding the whip now in two hands. He had shown that he could do it. He asked no more of himself.
Carlo stood up, left the whipping box, and put his clothes on.
“Now it’s Nikol’s turn,” the Damall said.
“Me?” Nikol asked. “Turn for what?”
“I saw your face,” the Damall said. “I know your mind. Do you think to defy my will?”
“No,” Nikol said. His face was pale now. “How many strokes?”
“Let him decide,” the Damall said, and smiled.
“You don’t dare,” Nikol said to him.
He would dare.
“I’ll get you back,” Nikol said.
“Strip,” the Damall said to Nikol. “Kneel.”
Naked, kneeling, Nikol shivered, on his skinny arms and legs.
He thought he would do one stroke, and get it over with, because Nikol’s fear made him feel ill in his stomach, and the whipping made him feel ill. Even though he knew he had to, if the Damall told him to. If he was to be the seventh Damall, he must. He raised his arm and brought the whip down, not gentle, not hard.
Nikol whimpered.
He felt like laughing at Nikol, whimpering now when just before Nikol had been telling him he wouldn’t dare. He felt like bringing the whip down again, and harder, to see if he could make Nikol cry and beg for it to stop. Thinking of the whip, and Nikol weeping and begging, his stomach tightened, and his loins. He brought the whip down hard.
Over the sound of his own heart beating he heard the Damall’s voice. “Remember the boat that was lost? When there was a squall and only one boat was lost? Nikol untied it. I saw him.”
“You did not!” Nikol cried out. “He’s lying! I didn’t!” Blood rose up out of one of the welts on Nikol’s back.
He held the whip that had made those marks, and drawn that blood, and he was ashamed. He held the whip that could make more marks on the flesh of Nikol’s back. While Nikol begged.
“I didn’t mean to do it!” Nikol cried out, and the Damall laughed. “It was an accident! It served you right, anyway, and I don’t care!”
“A confession,” the Damall announced. “You all heard it. And with fishing our livelihood, too, but this boy—” he pointed a finger down at Nikol, “didn’t care about our livelihood. He didn’t care if we went hungry,” the Damall said. “What does he deserve?” the Damall asked.
“A whipping. A bad one,” the boys answered in ragged chorus.
Nikol wept and blubbered and would have fallen onto his belly in despair except for the sharp stones of the whipping box.
“A bad whipping,” the boys urged. Griff watched him out of dark eyes.
He was ashamed, and sick at his stomach, and he passed the whip back to the Damall without a word. The Damall stared at him just for a minute. Then, “He’s right, you’re not worth the trouble,” the Damall said to Nikol. “Get up. Get out of there. You’re disgusting.”
He knew the Damall would make him take the whip again, and he knew he could take it, and wield it. He had to be able to, because he was the heir. But he would choose the number.
WHEN THE LADY DAYS CAME that fall, he hoped to be sent out again with the group of boys. It might be uncomfortable without shelter or food supplies, but those discomforts were a rest from the discomforts of the Damall’s house. But he was ordered to stay behind, with the Damall and Griff, while all the others went off under Nikol’s charge. When the boys returned a fortnight later, Carlo was no longer with them.
The little boy had disappeared, Nikol said. Carlo had just gone in the night, one night. Isn’t that so? he asked, and pale faces nodded in agreement. They had searched for him, all the next day—wasn’t that the case? There was no disagreement. They finally had to conclude, Nikol reported, that Carlo must have drowned, somehow. Perhaps he wandered in the night, the way some little boys did, and had fallen over the cliff and his body washed out with the tide. Perhaps he had walked into the sea to escape. He had been low in spirits, didn’t they agree? The boys agreed.
The boys who had spent Lady Days under Nikol were exhausted, and hungry, and timid. Two of them needed bandaging and all needed hot food, and water. Nikol didn’t look worn at all. Nikol looked as if the days had nourished him well. Nikol looked pleased with himself, as if he knew no one would dare to stand in the way of the words he spoke, as if he knew no one would hesitate to obey him.
The Damall said nothing, not to praise or to blame, not to Nikol
, not to him.
He waited, uneasy. When he thought of Carlo, the uneasiness flamed. Across the winter, it was sometimes Nikol who was handed the whip. He was given the whip rarely. When he at last heard the whispered rumor, he was not surprised.
Nikol, the little boys said, had been chosen to be heir. They had heard it from Raul, to whom Nikol had told it in secret. The Damall had said: It was Nikol who would be the seventh Damall.
He didn’t say a word to the tale-carrying boys. He didn’t say a word to Griff. He stood, and thought, and his heart turned to a fist inside his chest. His heart was a stone fist.
Chapter 3
AFTER THE LONG WINTER CAME days of foul weather, cold day-long rains that froze at night into sheeted ice that covered everything, like snow, then melted the next day under the cold rains. The boys stayed inside, except when they needed to feed the animals and visit the privies, day after day. The Damall moved restlessly around the house, a blanket wrapped around him. It was earlier each day that he called for his tankards of wine, and called for the whipping box.
Day after day, the weather went on, unchanging. One afternoon all the boys complained of stomach pains, and thirst, and the shits. Some even stayed miserably outside, to be close to the privies. The Damall stayed in his bed, with buckets to be emptied by whatever boy was well enough to carry out, and dump, and put back. By the next morning all felt eased, as if some poison had worked its way out of their bodies. In the morning, all the boys gathered pale and weak in the main hall, where the Damall waited pale and weak for them. Outside, sleet clattered down. Inside, the Damall’s eyes glittered. The whipping box was set out and the whip hung in its place on the side of the stone fireplace.
There was danger. Not immediate danger, but mounting danger. Nikol went up to whisper in the Damall’s ear and after a few words the Damall brushed him away. The Damall didn’t eat that day’s soup, and neither did Nikol.
He thought he could see the shape of the danger, forming out of darkness.
By the second morning, all the boys felt well again, and hungry. The Damall had also recovered. The Damall sat beside the fire, the whipping box on the floor before him, a thin smile playing across his lips. The whip rested in his hands. “Nikol,” the Damall called.
Nikol approached, waited before the Damall’s chair.
He looked at the two faces, and recognized his own fear. He did not yet know what he had to fear, but he would find it out. He didn’t doubt that.
He also didn’t doubt the courage of his heart to respond to the danger, whatever it was. He wouldn’t let himself doubt his courage. He didn’t dare to let himself doubt his courage.
“Nikol accuses Griff,” the Damall announced. “Griff. Step forward.”
Griff went forward.
“Face them,” the Damall said.
Griff turned around and faced the seated boys. Griff’s hands clasped and unclasped together. Griff’s tongue wet his lips, and wet his lips again.
He looked at Griff’s familiar face. He didn’t know what the Damall, and Nikol, were playing at. Nikol looked right at him then, and smiled.
He didn’t like Nikol’s smile.
The Damall also looked at him. The Damall didn’t smile. “Come forward,” the Damall said.
He stood up. He moved forward, over the limbs of seated boys. There were three boys then, standing before the Damall in his highbacked chair. He faced the Damall, and Nikol, and Griff. Griff held his hands clasped together, and his jaw clamped tight, to keep himself quiet. Griff must think that if he were still and quiet, the danger would flow over him, like water. He wondered if Griff hoped to ride out the danger, as seaweed rides out the tide, by standing still, floating silent. He wondered how he, himself, rode out danger—and knew the answer before he had finished asking the question, when he felt his spirit spread out its wings, to rise up and away over, to look down on and see clearly, to soar free. Griff’s way was not his way.
Griff’s way would not deflect this danger. He knew that. How he knew, he couldn’t have said, but the knowledge set his heart beating fast.
The Damall raised a hand and pointed a finger at him. “You be judge.”
He didn’t question the choice. The Damall must not see any doubt or weakness.
Nikol accused Griff. “He put something in the soup to make us sick.”
“I didn’t!” Griff cried.
“You did!” Nikol cried.
“Why would I?”
“To make us sick,” Nikol said. “Like you did that other time. You hate me, and you hate the Damall, and you want us to die.”
Griff hesitated against this charge. “But I was sick, too, it wasn’t just everybody else, it was me, too. If I’d done it, would I have eaten any soup?”
“How do I know you were sick?” Nikol asked. He pushed his face towards Griff, jabbing his chin and nose upwards because Griff was the taller. “Anyone can pretend his stomach hurts. Anyone can pretend he’s been outside with the shits, or the vomits. Who made the soup?”
“I did,” Griff said, “but—”
“Who knows what the naked ladies look like?”
“I do. But that’s because after the time before I found all the places where they grow. Because I didn’t want that kind of mistake ever to get made again,” Griff explained to the Damall. “I found the spring leaves and the fall flowers. I found the corms. I know what they look like.”
“See?” Nikol cried out, triumphant.
“But only so I wouldn’t make that mistake ever again,” Griff cried out.
“That other time, we were sick the same way,” Nikol said.
“If somebody did it on purpose, it wasn’t me,” Griff said.
Nikol spoke slowly then, his voice hissing. “Are you saying it was me?”
Griff’s eyes were wide, like the eyes of a rabbit in a snare. “No,” he denied. “I don’t accuse anyone. I don’t know anything. Except I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that. I made the soup, it would be stupid for me to do that because I’m the first person anyone would accuse. . . .” Griff’s voice trailed off and his shoulders slumped.
He thought what Griff said was true: It wouldn’t be the cook who poisoned the soup. He thought that Griff wouldn’t want to make him ill. He believed Griff was guiltless.
“Here’s the whip.”
The Damall passed him the whip.
He couldn’t say—as the Damall wanted to hear him say—“But I haven’t judged.” If he said that, the Damall would pass the whip to Nikol.
He couldn’t say—as the Damall hoped he would—that he believed Griff. If he said that, he would lose his place as heir. He knew that as surely as he knew—whatever Nikol might have actually been promised or maybe just lied about—that he was the rightful choice for seventh Damall. Not Nikol.
He took the whip into his hands and folded its tails back along the length of the handle, being careful not to cut his hands on the stone chips. “For the guilty party, how many?” he asked the Damall.
“Twenty,” the Damall said. “No, twenty-five.”
The boys murmured, pleased. Griff seemed to shrink into himself.
He kept his face a stone mask.
“After which,” the Damall said, “he goes to market. Directly to market. It’ll be spring, when the soldiers come shopping, and the mines need to replace their winter dead.”
He nodded his stone head and did not let his eyes turn their emotionless glance from the Damall’s face. He could see Nikol, out of the corner of his eye, smiling. He saw Griff’s body quivering, as if with chills.
“For the guilty party,” the Damall said, and showed his teeth.
He understood: This was a test, or a contest.
“I am to judge?” he asked. “As you said,” he reminded the Damall.
“So I did.” The Damall seemed pleased.
He didn’t know how to judge, but he knew what his failure to judge would lead to. So he began to make his careful way into the trap. “What Nikol says is true,” h
e said. “It is Griff who prepared the soup, and who knows about the naked ladies. It is Griff who always prepares our food, so it is Griff who could most easily add the sickmakers,” he said. “Nikol is correct also when he says that the guilty person could pretend to be ill. But,” he asked, “how are we to know which one of us it is who was pretending? Nikol might accuse anyone,” he said. “He might accuse me.”
“I didn’t accuse,” Nikol sputtered, “I just told the truth. Are you telling the Damall that I’m lying?”
“How could I know if you’re lying?” he asked, and felt his own cleverness. He had asked a question no one could answer. He knew, now, how to win the test, and hold his inheritance. “How can any of us know, without proof?”
Nikol pulled at his lower lip and looked at the Damall. At last he answered. “Raul saw. Raul saw and he told me. Stand up, Raul. Stand up and tell them what you told me. How you saw Griff cutting up little white-brown things. How he’d gotten them from under his bed, in a bag. How you looked under his mattress and found them there. How he didn’t see you because he thought he was alone, and you were in the shadow by the cupboard beside the fireplace, and his back was to you, and he chopped them up small, with the biggest knife, and dropped them into the soup, handfuls of them. You saw him. You saw it all. Tell what you saw. Tell what you told me last night, when everyone else slept.”
Raul stood up. “That’s right,” he said, and his voice squeaked.
“No, you tell,” Nikol said.
“What Nikol said. That’s what I said. It’s true. I promise,” he cried, his voice rising as Nikol reached a hand out for him.
The Damall interrupted. “Twenty-five strokes, judge.”
He didn’t like his choices. Each choice must be paid for in coin he didn’t have to spare. If he denied his own belief in Griff, then he would have purchased his right to rule the island by the betrayal of the one person in the world he trusted. If he acted as he believed, then he would lose his inheritance. His heart sank like stone.
The Tale of Oriel Page 3