The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  Nikol broke the silence. “What about me?”

  The sixth Damall lowered his tankard and sat down again, before he answered. “What about you?”

  “You promised,” Nikol said.

  The Damall smiled. “But you couldn’t win it. Could you. You didn’t win it. Did you,” he said. “This inheritance isn’t just going to be given to you. Do you understand that now? The title has to be won. And you have lost it, Nikol.”

  Nikol stood absolutely still, as if concentrating on remembering something. Then he turned on his heels and left the hall, moving stiffly. Nikol went out—perhaps, the seventh Damall thought, to the privies, or perhaps to kick the pigs.

  “The title has first to be won,” the sixth Damall said. “Then it has to be held. We hope you can hold it. Don’t we, boys?”

  “Yes,” the boys said, and “You were always best,” and “You’ll be good at it.” Even Raul joined in the line of boys who spoke into his ear. Nikol didn’t return that night.

  At morning, however, Nikol stood beside the cold fireplace. The seventh Damall had risen early, in the pain of mending sprains and bruises, cuts and swellings, joints pulled away bone from bone. The seventh Damall had entered the main hall before sunrise to start the fire. He saw Nikol waiting there.

  Nikol looked pale, and wet, washed clean as if he had spent the night out in the rain. But the night had been rainless. Nikol’s hair was slicked down wet on his head, and his shirt dripped onto the floor. His eyes were cold and he didn’t speak.

  The seventh Damall pretended not to notice, but he saw as much as he could. He saw Nikol’s face, so puffed that it seemed boneless. He saw a pale stillness in Nikol, and in his eyes.

  He thought he had destroyed Nikol yesterday, by shaming him in cowardice. Now, he saw, Nikol had moved beyond the heat of anger or fear. The seventh Damall thought, placing logs on the grey ashes of yesterday’s fire, that he was going to have to win his right to inherit every day, every day win it again, in order to hold it.

  He told the sixth Damall that he wished to walk the borders of the island that day. He didn’t ask it, he announced it, as befitted the heir. He spent that whole long day clambering over the rocks that tumbled down at the sea’s edge, and walking across, back and forth across, the fields and woods of the land he stood heir to. At the end of that day, he had decided what he would do—because he understood that he had no choice.

  A FORTNIGHT LATER, THE DAMALL lay dying.

  There had been a taste of spring. Under the warmth of sun, the woodland meadows had sprouted up pale grass and little white starflowers. Green petals had reached up towards the blue sky. After three days of such promises, they were broken. The wind shifted to the northeast and settled into a blowy rainy cold.

  First the Damall sat day after day by the fire, for warmth he said, drinking tankards of wine to medicine the shits and ease his cramping guts. Then he lay before the fire in the great bed that he’d ordered the boys to take apart, and reassemble there in the main hall. He complained of pains in his stomach, of burning in his throat. He complained of weakness in his limbs. He drank tankards of wine and kept all the boys under his eye. He wanted to see what they got up to, he said. He ate only long after the boys had dined. The sixth Damall shivered in his bed by the fire, complaining that he couldn’t get warm. He pulled clumps of hair out of his head.

  By the tenth day, every breath the Damall drew could be heard by the assembled boys, and the air he drew in rasped against the sides of his throat like pebbles rolled by waves up and down the rocky shore.

  Throughout the sickness, the seventh Damall kept near, to spoon soup into his master’s mouth, or lift a tankard of wine to his lips. He helped the sixth Damall out to the privies, then back into the hall again, until the man was too weak to move from his bed. As the Damall’s body grew weak, his mind also weakened.

  Even delirious, however, he knew Nikol. “I want you under my eye,” the Damall mumbled, whenever he remembered Nikol. “I never trust you. Stay back. Death’s-head beetle, you. You watch—I know you, what you, you want. You should,” he grabbed the seventh Damall’s hair and pulled hard, “have killed him. I told you.”

  Nikol spoke not a word. His pale face and cold eyes showed no expression as he hunched in the corner of the hall.

  The Damall turned in his bed, and he sweated. He sat up to throw his bedclothes onto the floor. He lay back to cry out, and to weep with cold. He saw people closing in around his bed when none were there, when all the boys dozed fitfully wrapped in their cloaks on the floor. He spoke to those people as if he were answering what they spoke to him. “I didn’t mean,” the Damall said. “I didn’t mean it, I was only a boy, I’m sorry, don’t.”

  By the fourteenth night, the Damall had no voice and no thirst, either. He lay on the bed, with no motion except the narrow rise and fall of his chest, and no sound except the whistling of his breath in his throat.

  All the boys were awake, hoping to see death’s moment. Smoke from the fire clung to the stained roof beams like mist. Moisture filmed the stone walls and rose up cold from the floor. The Damall coughed, choking. The seventh Damall rose up from his place at the side of the bed, and leaned over to wipe away the bloody froth.

  Nothing would happen, the seventh Damall knew, until the sixth Damall died. It might even be that nothing would happen until the sixth Damall had been first washed clean, then wrapped around in the bedclothes he had died in, with three round stones at his head and three round stones at his feet, and at last rowed out to be laid upon the sea. But he didn’t count on that much time. He counted only on the time before the sixth Damall died.

  Rain washed against the shuttered windows. It drummed on the roof. He listened to air sucked in between cracked lips. Then he stood up, and looked about him.

  Griff sat with his back against the stone wall. At only that standing movement, Griff was wary, awake, ready.

  But it was Nikol the seventh Damall signaled, with a gesture of his hand. Nikol rose from his corner and darted to the doorway, to await the seventh Damall outside.

  The seventh Damall led Nikol into the shelter of the fowl shed. He brought out a candle and struck a tinderbox. The single flame burned bright in the surrounding darkness. Shadows moved behind Nikol and over his face. Nikol held his cloak close around him. He kept his hands hidden under the cloak.

  “Listen.”

  The seventh Damall pitched his voice low. There was none to hear, but a low voice promised deep secrets. If Nikol thought of murder, he would wait to hear the words such a voice promised.

  “This is where the treasure is hidden.”

  Nikol, who had not spoken for ten days, opened his mouth. “You name me eighth?”

  “He won’t live the night. The Great Damall’s rule says there must be two to know the hiding place.”

  “But never more than two,” Nikol said, low-voiced.

  The seventh Damall said nothing.

  “Will you kill him yourself?”

  “Why should I do what this illness does for me?” the seventh Damall asked. “Listen to me, now. At the southernmost corner, you count west five stones, then north eight. No, not now, Nikol, don’t! If you disturb the fowl all will be wakened, and guess our business. Say it back to me.”

  “Southernmost corner,” Nikol repeated, staring into the candle’s flame. “North five. West eight.”

  “Wrong.” The seventh Damall shivered and the candle flickered. “You said it backwards. Concentrate, Nikol. Listen.”

  Nikol clenched his teeth in irritation.

  “You have to know it exactly.”

  “Show me.”

  “To show you is to show all, if I show you now. And you know what would happen then.”

  Nikol knew. Or, as the seventh Damall guessed the situation—Nikol didn’t know exactly, but he knew it would have to do with blood and death, possibly his blood and his death, and he knew the story of the fifth Damall, he knew the effects of greed. “I’m listening,” Ni
kol said.

  “Southernmost corner. West five stones. North eight,” the seventh Damall said, patience in his voice like honey in a comb. It suited him that Nikol should be irritated, and impatient. It suited him that Nikol should feel events moving more rapidly than his understanding of them.

  “Say it,” the seventh Damall ordered.

  Nikol repeated the words correctly, staring into the flame. Facing Nikol, whose hands were hidden under his cloak, whose face was hidden under moving shadows, the seventh Damall felt fear coil and loosen at his belly. But he didn’t let Nikol see that, not even in his eyes.

  “Dig up the eighth stone, and also those that encircle it.”

  Nikol couldn’t help but ask. “The beryls are there?”

  “That is the treasure’s hiding place.”

  “And the rest of the Great Damall’s wealth? The gold pieces and silver?”

  “There are three boxes, one beneath the other,” the seventh Damall told him.

  “How many?” Nikol whispered. “How much?”

  “I’ve been away too long,” the seventh Damall said. “He’ll notice. Don’t forget.”

  “Southernmost. West five. North eight. All stones that encircle. I can remember that.”

  “You won’t speak until he is dead and underwater,” the seventh Damall asked.

  “I might,” Nikol said. “Or I might not.”

  The seventh Damall knew the dangers he ran. But if he knew his man, Nikol would first feed himself on satisfaction at being named heir, and at the foolishness of the seventh Damall in trusting him, and especially at the promise of the power and wealth of the Damall being his. It would be a time before Nikol understood that if you are eighth Damall after a younger seventh, you have been played a trick. But for a little time, Nikol would be no danger.

  The other boys were no danger. They cared only that at the end of things they stand behind and under the care of the Damall—whoever that might be. The seventh Damall trusted none of them, trusted no one, none but Griff.

  When he slipped back into the firelit hall, with Nikol at his heels, nobody had moved. When he sank down onto his haunches, his back against the bed, Griff’s eyes closed. The whole household sprawled around the hall, wrapped in their cloaks. The dim, smoky air was filled with the sounds of their restlessness, and the sounds of the Damall, sucking at the air.

  The seventh Damall turned his head until he saw Nikol’s corner. A flash of white where an eye closed confirmed his guess.

  At the slightest disturbance Griff would waken. The seventh Damall wasn’t unprotected, should he need protection. The two couldn’t prevail against the numbers against them, but they would not—either of them—stand alone.

  The dying man moved. The seventh Damall leaned forward, to catch whatever sounds might issue from between the dry lips. He thought it was wine asked for and lifted the shallow bowl from the hearth to spoon some red liquid into the mouth, one spoonful, two, the wine chalky now with sediment. He wiped the dribble away with his fingers. The throat moved, to swallow; the head moved away from the spoon; the eyes, which had not opened for two days, remained closed.

  The cold night dragged on. Slowly, logs burned down to coals. Chilly air rose up from the stone floor. The room slept uneasily.

  The seventh Damall thought he, too, must have slept, because when he opened his eyes he saw that Nikol had moved from his corner and lay stretched flat—sleeping, it might seem—with his head by Raul’s head, his mouth at Raul’s ear.

  The seventh Damall stiffened, alert.

  Griff, as if in response to a cry for help, was awake.

  The seventh Damall noted then what had probably awakened him: a stillness of the sixth. The Damall was dead, and it was time to act.

  He leaned forward over the lifeless face, as if the sightless eyes could see him, bent closer as if listening to a request, and drew his own breath in, harshly. He rose to put logs onto the fire, and kick at them until the bark caught, spitting and hissing. The fire leaped up into noisy life, as if it were chattering back to the rain that drummed on the roof.

  He was Damall now, should he claim it. With a glance, he signaled Griff to move outside.

  As Griff left the room, the seventh Damall bent over the body on the bed, to spoon wine between the lips. He drew in another long breath. He spooned more wine, and wiped it off the body’s chin, then set the bowl back down by the fire. Before he turned away from the fire, he gasped, as if in exhausted breathing. Then he rose and crossed over sleeping boys to get to the door, and slip outside.

  Griff waited for him in the rainy darkness. They didn’t speak. The seventh Damall hurried across the yard. Griff followed. They climbed over the barred gate rather than taking the time to open it. Huddled in their cloaks, they ran along the path to the harbor. Rain sluiced down onto their shoulders, burned icy onto their cheeks. The steep path was slick, slippery. Once, Griff fell, landing with a crack of bone that the seventh Damall could hear even above the sounds of rain and waves. At least, he thought, waiting for Griff to scramble to his feet, it wasn’t a wind storm. There was a strong wind but it blew from the fortunate west; the wind would fill their sail from behind.

  He could have answered questions, had Griff asked them: They were taking a boat and sailing away from Damall’s Island. He had hidden food in a stopping place where, if they made a safe escape, they might rest a while in safety.

  Griff untied a boat while the seventh Damall pulled it in to shore. They waded out and tumbled over its sides, tumbling in. Griff pulled the sail open. The seventh Damall poled the boat out into deeper water, then passed the oar to Griff and sat at the stern, taking the tiller into his hand. Griff settled the oars inside the boat.

  The seventh Damall let the boat tell him, through its round keel and flapping sail, about tide and wind, about the pull of currents among the rocks of the harbor. Then he hauled the sail in close and watched it belly out, like a woman with a child growing. He held the sail’s rope in his left hand, the tiller in his right.

  The boat, with its two silent passengers, moved out into the black night, moving among the sharp-toothed rocks as freely as if it were a sea hawk crossing the empty skies of a sunlit noon.

  Chapter 5

  THE RAINY AIR WAS SHIFTING to silvery grey as they arrived. The seventh Damall had sailed the route many times, preparing for flight, and so hadn’t felt the lack of visible landmarks. They could have beached the boat in darkness, but it was easier in light.

  Griff did no more than turn his face in surprise when the seventh Damall lifted the stubby mast out of its blocks and laid it, with its sail pulled close and wrapped secure, flat within the length of the boat. It wasn’t the time for asking questions. Rain dripped down their faces and saturated their cloaks.

  Climbing out into the seawater, they lifted the boat and carried it clumsily up onto the stony beach, then up onto a low flat rock where it was hidden behind boulders. They set it on its side, and the mast clattered down. The tilted boat made a lean-to shelter.

  Before they crawled under it, the seventh Damall led Griff back across the beach to pick up the shattered shell of another small boat, which he had found after days of patient searching. This they lifted more easily, to carry down to the sea. They stood in the rain and watched the waves carry the wreck away, out to sea.

  From the narrow cove where they stood, no other island was visible, but there were many islands, scattered alongside the mainland. It was likely that someone on these islands, somehow, would come across the wrecked boat, and tell a tale about it in the market town. It was likely that, should the tale be told, Nikol would hear it, and be satisfied.

  The wrecked boat floated into the rainy distance. They turned back to their own boat and crawled under its shelter.

  It had been long days and long nights and little time for sleep. The seventh Damall gathered his knees up to his chest. Now he could sleep. All was now done, accomplished. Griff was already asleep, hunched up under the bow, his mouth hangin
g slack, his whole body collapsed into exhaustion. The seventh Damall waited impatiently but although his body ached with tiredness, his mind pulled restlessly, like a fish fighting on the end of a line.

  He stretched his legs out and that didn’t ease the aching.

  He curled over onto his side like a little boy, and sleep didn’t come to him.

  The seventh Damall had made the plan and executed it—what was there now to keep him awake?

  He rolled over. Small jags of rock cut into his back, through the thick cloak, and he lifted himself to sit again, shivering. He wrapped his arms around his legs, drawing them in close again so that he might warm himself.

  If he warmed himself, he was his own fire. Was there danger in the fire-way of consuming itself? The sixth Damall had lain by the fire until death took him. And now there was an eighth Damall.

  The seventh Damall existed only in the past, now, like the Great Damall and those five who had succeeded him. There was no longer any seventh Damall. He could no longer be the seventh Damall.

  He fell into sleep then, as a body weighted with stones and wrapped in winding sheets falls into deep water.

  HE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of rain and the sight of Griff, also awake. In sleep, new concerns had come to him. “We can’t build a fire,” he said, and Griff nodded, understanding. “There’s food here—bread, carrots, onions—but it may all be soaked, ruined.” Griff nodded, accepting.

  He had wrapped the food in cloth and tucked it behind sheltering rocks, but the bread turned to dark mush in their fingers as they scooped it out of its thick crust, like porridge. The carrots were unharmed, the onions slightly mildewed. They ate to blunt the teeth of hunger. When that was accomplished they ceased eating. Water they could lick up out of the hollows in the rocks. Water was plentiful, under the steady rain. Bellies no longer pinched, they slept again and woke to the last light of day, and an end of rain.