The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Griff said, and he smiled. “Unless, is there a reason that you hesitate here?”

  “No reason,” Oriel answered. There was a feeling of unease at leaving what he knew, to go into what he didn’t know anything of. A feeling was no reason, however, and besides, part of the feeling of unease was eagerness. He was eager to be begun with whatever the land upriver held for him.

  They didn’t hurry. The morning was warmed gently by a southern breeze. As they walked, the river moved in the opposite direction, sometimes in a slow sweep, sometimes rushing over shallows. The river banks grew gradually less steep. The farms became larger land holdings, and fewer, but they had the same busyness of the year’s beginnings. Figures moved about in the fields, a man plowing behind an ox, a man moving a herd of animals from one fenced pasture to another with the dull clanking sound of metal neck bells. Sometimes a woman could be seen, bending over the well. Sometimes children sat looking out from doorsteps, and once a little child stood up, to wave. Oriel waved back. The child stepped forward only a few paces, and waved more energetically. Both Oriel and Griff waved back. The child, its feet dancing beneath its skirt, waved with both its hands in the air in a frenzy of excitement.

  THE SUN WAS WELL ON its way towards setting when Oriel saw his destination. The farm buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, like companions, with the long green hills at their backs. The yellow stone of house and fences glowed like gold under the lowering sun.

  Looking across at the fields that ran up, edged in golden stone, over the hilltops, where sheep grazed, looking down to where a pond had been dug for the ducks and geese that roamed around its muddy edges, seeing a child move among the ducks—Oriel felt peace, deep as a rockbound harbor, fill his belly.

  Without thought, without a word of explanation, he turned onto the narrow path. The farmhouse seemed to await him.

  As they came up to the wooden gate, they were halted by the sounds of dogs barking. Two mastiffs came running out of the house and jumped up against the gate, growling low, barking. Oriel and Griff stepped back, to be safely out of reach of the yellowed fangs. The child left the ducks and approached the gate. She called the dogs to silence. They did not obey her. She stood between them, no taller than their shoulders, regarding Oriel and Griff out of round brown eyes in a smooth round face. The dogs barked and slathered and she stood quiet, not smiling, not trying to speak.

  Gradually, the clamor subsided. The girl pulled and pushed at the dogs until they stood on four feet again. She put a hand on each dog’s shoulder. “Now be quiet, Brownie,” she said. “Be good, Faith.” She stared up from between them at Oriel and Griff.

  Oriel didn’t know what she saw to strike her so silent, but he thought he should wait for her to speak first. He wanted to make no careless mistakes here. To be clever as a river sometimes meant moving slowly, letting the land itself guide you.

  “Good evening, sirs.” When the girl spoke, her cheeks turned pink.

  “Good evening,” Oriel answered.

  “It’s a fine evening,” she said. Her voice was high and childlike, but so soft he had to listen carefully to hear it. After her first searching regard, she hadn’t looked at the visitors.

  “Yes, a fine evening,” Oriel agreed.

  He waited then. The girl waited. The dogs stood patiently.

  “Is your father at home?” Oriel finally asked.

  “Aye,” she said, and continued studying the ground between the toes of her boots.

  Oriel waited. She didn’t fidget but she wasn’t at ease.

  “I would speak with your father, if I may,” he said.

  “Oh, aye,” she said. She looked over her shoulder towards the end of the row of buildings, and looked back at Oriel.

  Oriel turned to Griff.

  “We wonder,” Griff said, “if we could ask you to fetch your father to us. Or perhaps your mother?” She shook her head. “We wonder,” Griff said, “if your father can be disturbed at his labors? Can we ask that favor of you?”

  She looked over her shoulder again, as if for help, but no one appeared. “Aye, you can,” she said, but hesitated. Oriel was about to speak impatiently when she warned them, “You mustn’t try to follow me, not into the yard, sirs. The dogs won’t permit it.”

  “We’ll wait here,” Griff promised her.

  Then she did go, but she didn’t run as a child would. She walked away full of dignity, the way a grown woman would. When she was out of sight they could hear her voice, calling, “Father, Father! Strangers, Father!”

  The dogs sat side by side, watching. Oriel and Griff stood side by side, waiting.

  Moving quickly, a man came out from behind the farmhouse. He wore the customary loose shirt, loose trousers, and boots. His hair had grey in it, although his thick beard was entirely dark. He approached them without haste and without reluctance. He wore no neckerchief. The girl came along in his wake.

  The dogs turned their heads to greet their master, and watch for his commands.

  “Good evening to you both,” the man said. He was more well fleshed than Oriel and Griff, but not much taller. “My daughter says you wish to speak with me?”

  “Good evening to you,” Oriel answered. He could think of no way to say what he hoped, except to say it plain. “We seek work.”

  “Who told you I was in need of workers?” the man asked.

  “Why, no one. Are you?” If this was so, it was more luck than Oriel had ever had before.

  The man asked, “What do you know of my trade?”

  Oriel had to admit, “There are fruit trees here, there are fields and herds. We know how to tend fruit trees, how to farm land, how to fish, how to care for livestock. If you are a farmer, we know how to be useful to you.”

  “You truly don’t know what I am?”

  “Truly,” Oriel said, and Griff echoed him, “We don’t.”

  “What led you to this gate?” the man asked, mistrusting.

  “We were going upriver, seeking work to keep us,” Oriel said. “I saw your farm and it looks—”

  The man waited.

  “It looks a place where I would abide, if I could,” Oriel finally said.

  The man decided. “I can offer you a supper, at least, and a bed for the night. You want to be indoors once the sun goes down, lads, in case you don’t know that. Happens I am looking for help. I may have work to offer you, if you would—abide.” The word seemed to please him. He spoke it as if he would like to speak it again and again, as if it were the name of someone dear to him.

  When Oriel reached out to open the gate, the dogs snarled, and started. “Quiet!” the man roared, and clouted each across the nose. The dogs sank back. “But until I’ve opened my gate to you, and opened the door of my house to you, be warned, lads, that the dogs will bring you down. Once you’ve been welcomed, Brownie and Faith will know you. Unless you seek to harm us, and then they’ll be your enemies. Vasil it is,” the man said.

  Oriel waited for the gate to be opened.

  “Have you no names, lads?” the man demanded.

  Oriel felt a rush of anger, to be so spoken to. Before he thought, his shoulders stiffened and he answered only, “Aye.”

  For some reason this made the man smile, and Oriel felt foolish. “Aye,” he said again, as the gate was pulled open and they entered, “it’s Oriel, and my companion is called Griff.”

  “I welcome you both,” Vasil said, barring the gate behind them. “Come into the house and my daughter will show you where to sleep, and give you water to wash the dust of the journey from you, while I finish the day’s work. After we have supped we will talk. Is that well with you?” he asked. “Or have you another manner in mind, to settle our business.”

  Oriel felt he was being mocked, but not unkindly. “We have no other manner,” he said. “We thank you.” He needed to learn how to act as men acted. He needed to learn it quickly and cleverly, for there had been no man on Damall’s Island to teach him. The Damall had
been the master, holding all power over the boys; with all that power, the master had no need to be a man.

  The girl showed them to the room where they would sleep. There, three mattresses lay side by side on a sleeping platform. The room smelled of sweet dry stuff, but she had opened the window to the evening breeze before Oriel could identify the odor, except to know that it was good, clean. She led them around to the back to show them the privy, and looking across the yard filled with ducks and geese they saw Vasil bent over a low pan, as broad as the long roof that had been built over it. Steam rose from the pan. The girl showed them the well and then took them back into their sleeping chamber, where a chest was filled with shirts and trousers in all sizes. “This was my brothers’ room,” she said.

  “You have brothers?” Oriel asked.

  She nodded.

  “Where are they?”

  “Gone,” she said. “I have work to—” she said, fleeing from the room.

  “The silly child is afraid of us,” Oriel remarked to Griff, as they pulled their shirts over their heads.

  “Perhaps shy with strangers,” Griff suggested.

  “No matter. It’s her father’s good opinion we need, if we’re to stay on here.”

  “Unless she might dislike us for some reason,” Griff said.

  Oriel’s mind was on the more important point. “I hope I know how to get his good opinion.”

  AFTER A SUPPER OF SOUP and bread served by the daughter, they all sat near to the fire. Vasil had been silent during most of the meal, but now he spoke. “If you were of a mind to try working here, I’m of a like mind. I’m a slow man, usually, but a man should never be slow to wrap his hand around a piece of good luck. So, shall we try one another? For a fortnight, what do you say?” He yawned, and yawned again.

  “Yes,” Oriel answered, without hesitation.

  Vasil laughed out loud, a pleasing sound. “You speak for both?”

  “He can speak for me,” Griff said.

  “Two copper coins apiece for each sennight’s work. I offer food, and shelter besides, clothing and whatever is needful, as if you were apprenticed to me.”

  “Yes,” Oriel said.

  Vasil smiled, yawned, and rose to leave the room. The girl followed him. Oriel and Griff lingered. Night lay chill outside the thick walls, and quiet lay over the farmstead and hills and river. This was a house where he would sleep deeply, Oriel thought, and rise up strong and rested to work gladly across the day. This was a house where he might abide.

  IN THE GREY MORNING, VASIL took them outside to show them his property. “I’m a saltweller. In fact,” he said, his voice ripe with satisfaction, “I’m the only saltweller within a sennight’s travel. Salter, Saltzman, by whatever name, the work and profit of the salt spring are mine, as my father’s before and his before him, as far back as anyone has heard. My spring produces salt of the finest quality. It was my salt that the Countess, while she lived, must always have. In her own great house at Celindon, the bailiff knew that only one salt was fine enough. Mine. When the Countess traveled, she always took a cone of it with her, and never for visit-gift. She would never part with Vasil’s salt, except to offer the saltcellar to a guest in her own house.”

  He expected Oriel to say something, so Oriel obliged. “That is a great honor.”

  “Was, lad. Was.” Vasil shrugged. “Since the death of the Countess— But I don’t complain. Times for a salter are never as hard as for other men and I’d be a fool not to be grateful for that. But times haven’t been the same as they were in the Countess’s day. Or her father before her, when the Old Count ruled the cities. But,” and he clapped his hand across Oriel’s shoulder, “there’s no use in regretting what has gone, is there? Since change is the rule, and things once lost in the changes can never be regained. Any more than lives once lost can ever be regiven. What do you know of a saltwell?”

  “Nothing,” Oriel said.

  “Then to start with,” Vasil said, “you should know that what I show you here is not negligible, however much it doesn’t look like riches. There are farmlands with the property, as you know, and woodlands all around, but the heart of it is here.”

  Oriel looked where Vasil indicated. He saw two huge, flat, shallow metal pans, each one large enough to hold a man lying down with his arms outstretched. Each pan was filled with a blue-green liquid, which steamed because of the fire beds over which the pans—now that he looked more carefully he could see how the arrangement worked—hung suspended by chains from each corner. The chains were attached into the roof beams. The pans were not hung at equal height from the ground. One pan hung a handsbreadth above the other. All around the pans, the ground was crusted with white.

  A row of cone-shaped baskets hung above the pans, a pile of small wooden boxes, of a size to hold a house’s valuables, occupied a corner of the covered shelter, and now that he noticed it, Oriel saw that the liquid in the higher pan came dripping down from a sluice. The sluice led back up to three shallow wooden boxes, lined up like steps.

  A shallow basket mounded with white snow had been set down beside the wooden boxes. Oriel didn’t know why the snow hadn’t melted.

  Vasil watched their faces, and pulled gently at his short beard. “All right now, lads, you listen while I tell you what’s what here. This,” he said, leading them out beyond the roofed structure to a tiny puddle of water that was not clear and clean as a spring should be, “this is the brine spring. It’s belonged to my fathers since before anyone remembers, and nobody knows how it was found, how the saltworks began.” He hunkered down and dipped his fingers into water that bubbled up gently at the center. “Taste it.”

  Oriel crouched down, and Griff followed his lead. They both tasted.

  “Salty. You’d know it now. When you taste that, it’s a saltwell. Stronger than salt seawater, you can’t mistake them.” Vasil went on, in loving detail, explaining how the brine was elevated up the stepped boxes, then flowed down the sluice into the pans. There the water was removed by heating. “First it looks like scum, on the top. That sinks. When it sinks, you want to move the mother liquor down to the next pan, because what you’ve got from this spring is basket salt, and Vasil’s is the finest basket salt anyone can buy. Cleanest. Purest. You take it up from the bottom of this pan, when you’ve tipped the mother liquor into the other. From the other, when it cooks out, we take fishsalt, for salting the barrels of fish. It’s too strong for table, but some farmers also use it for their cheeses, if they can’t get the finer.”

  “How do you know when to tip the pans?” Oriel asked.

  “Aye, you can taste it. You’ll learn the taste soon enough. For now, if you know the look, the color, and thickness, and call me to determine, that’ll be good enough.” Vasil stood up, and faced Oriel. The man’s face had turned to solemnity. “But I’m not sure it’s a wise man who would take two unknown and untutored workers on at the same time.”

  Oriel didn’t know how to deal with this. Griff waited by his side. “Last night you said differently,” he reminded Vasil.

  “I also said last night that I’m a slow man. It takes me a time to think things out. This morning, I’m saying to you that there may be only one man’s work here.”

  It didn’t have to happen that just because a place suited him, he would suit the place, Oriel thought to himself. This house and its saltwell, and its fields and herds pleased him, although he didn’t understand why. But that didn’t mean there was a place for him here. Moreover, he argued silently, the chances of another pleasing choice were greater on the mainland.

  “I am sorry for that, Saltweller,” he said, concealing his disappointment. “We thank you for the night’s lodging.”

  “You’re a hasty lad,” Vasil said. “You, Griff, is it all the same to you, if you stay or if you go?”

  Oriel hadn’t thought of Griff staying on here without him. He had only thought that he wouldn’t stay on without Griff. “Stay if you choose,” he said.

  “I don’t choose,�
�� Griff said. “But if you do, I’ll not be angry.”

  Oriel spoke to the Salter. “We need a place where there is work for two, together.” Vasil already knew that. The daughter now came to stand in the kitchen door, across the farmyard. She watched them, wiping her hands on her apron, her hair wrapped around with a white head kerchief. “But tell me, how is it you wear no man’s colors? You must be the only man of Selby so undecided.”

  “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.

  Chapter 12

  OVER 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.