The Tale of Oriel Read online

  Verilan’s dark eyebrows gathered together in irritation; and then, unwillingly, he smiled, and then he laughed in a short swordstroke of laughter. “Yes, my lord, you have the right of it. I have had such thoughts in my mind, such desires in my heart.”

  “And you do not deserve hanging,” Griff said. One decision was now made, and he spoke it. “You deserve, I think, the work of restoring order to this part of the Earldom. Yaegar’s moiety is yours, whatever Yaegar’s fortunes may be.”

  Verilan looked quickly at Wardel.

  “Wardel will be my Captain, in a brother’s place,” Griff said. “I would ask this of you, Wardel.”

  Wardel, his eyes shining with the honor of it, assented.

  “So, now, to Yaegar and his sons,” Griff said.

  “I can keep all four in my dungeons,” Verilan offered.

  “Wouldn’t it be dangerous to let them remain in what were their own lands?” Griff asked.

  “Must they be judged together?” Wardel asked.

  “Ah.” Griff welcomed a new way to see the problem. “No,” Griff said, and asked Verilan, “Do you think?”

  Verilan agreed. There would be one judgment on the father and another on the sons. After a long argument, during which at one time or another each of the three became so frustrated that he suggested hanging all four traitors, just to have the quarrel between the three of them settled, a decision was reached. Yaegar, under guard led by Wardel, would be sent to the King, and house arrest in the King’s city would be the sentence on him, the expenses of his imprisonment to be borne by the Earl’s coffers. The three sons would be sent into the north, one to Lord Hildebrand, one to Earl Northgate, one to Lord Arbor, again in Wardel’s company, to serve those lords in a country to which they had no claim by birth and where they had no hope of sympathetic followers.

  Wardel and his soldiers would then ride back at speed, to be of service to Verilan should he need it and thence back to the Earl’s city. Griff and the remaining soldiers would return now to Sutherland’s city, where he must be Earl and rule. Verilan would keep a company of his own men with him, until he could be sure of the loyalty of Yaegar’s house and people.

  “Yours is the most perilous situation now,” Griff said to Verilan even as he thought that the peril would be welcome to the young fighter. “Remember, the Falcon’s Wing I keep in my own disposal, under my own man, if you need a place of safety.”

  Verilan wished to deny the possibility, but couldn’t, although he could think it unlikely. “I hope not to need to accept your hospitality,” he said.

  “As I hope also, and feel I have good reason to,” Griff said. But there was no certainty, as he knew. There was only a good plan, and luck, and the intention to deal justly; that was all he could bring to any occasion.

  Griff had much work to do, and much to learn, and these would fill the days until he could know how Beryl would answer him. He rode out of Verilan’s city two days later, without allowing himself to turn and see where the river flowed away, into the forest, southward to the Falcon’s Wing.

  Chapter 31

  WEEKS LATER, THE GROUND WAS covered with snow, a light white dusting that had fallen the night before, and flurries of snow swirled down through the darkening air. Griff stood in the castle yard, wrapped in his cloak. These were the shortest days of the year, the longest nights; but a messenger had arrived at midafternoon, with news that the lady Beryl was close to the castle. Her covered carriage should arrive before nightfall.

  The rooms were ready, two midwives were in residence and a wet nurse also, and Griff had grown too restless to stay indoors waiting. It was cold in the castle yard, but not as cold as he had known in his life. He was warm within the cloak. White flakes of snow blew into his face.

  He heard hoofbeats, the steady pattern made by eight hooves on packed dirt. He heard the creak of wooden wheels. A carriage followed those heralding sounds out of the darkness and entered through the broad castle gates.

  Griff came forward to open the door, and saw that Beryl was alone. He handed her out, and hurried her towards the warmth. She was already inside before any of his servants noticed that the carriage had arrived, and the cart behind it, and that all needed unloading. Griff hadn’t dared to speak to Beryl, not even to greet her. He hadn’t dared to look directly at her. Now that the time to know had come, he thought he would prefer another day’s delay, lest she bring word of her refusal.

  “We’ll be wed, Griff,” she said quietly, as if she understood how sharply waiting to know hung over him.

  Then he did dare to look into her face.

  “If you still wish it.”

  “Aye, and I do,” he said. He didn’t know what to do with himself, whether to let his knees fold up under him, or to call out for the best wines in the cellars, that all might drink to the Earl’s Lady. He didn’t know if he could put his arms around her and hold her against his heart—and he thought, as he looked at her swollen belly, that it might harm the child were he to do that.

  Griff held out his hand. Beryl held out her own, and placed it in his. He felt her fingers against his palm. She would be his wife.

  Servants and lords swirled around them. Beryl, who stood no taller than his shoulder, smiled up at him to advise, “You might make the announcement. The child should be born to the woman who is your wife, I think. And I don’t know how long this child will wait to be born,” Beryl told him.

  Two days later they were wed by the priests, and the marriage was celebrated by the castle and city. Then all settled back, to await the arrival of the heir.

  Beryl was restless. Griff thought she might be anxious and sent to the King’s city for the midwife who birthed the Queen’s children. Lilos came often into Beryl’s rooms, to keep her company, and often brought lords and ladies with him, to enliven her days. “I’m never left alone,” Beryl complained to Griff. “Except when I sleep, and even then there is some servant nearby. I don’t sleep well,” she complained. “It’s the child,” she explained, to the expression on his face. “It’s partly the child, coming to its time, but—and we are never alone, you and I, the way we used to talk together, before you were the Earl,” Beryl complained.

  The Earl had his apartments and the Earl’s Lady had hers, down the hallway. Each had a sleeping room and sitting rooms, and a room where the servants could keep out of the way but still be within call. The nursery apartments were down another hall, distant enough so that the sounds of children might not disturb the ears of the Earl, to interrupt his work or his rest, where the sounds of children might not irritate the Earl’s Lady. Finally Beryl burst out, “I don’t want to live like this. I want my baby near to me. I don’t want my baby fed at another’s breast, Oriel’s child, I want—” and tears fell from her blue eyes.

  Garder set to work, having nursery furniture moved in and servants’ furniture moved out, making the lady’s apartments her own suite of rooms, for herself and her child. Griff wondered if there would be room for the lady’s husband, but didn’t dare to ask. Let her finish the business of childbearing before he presented himself as husband, he thought, and then thought more honestly, let her finish the business of Oriel.

  “How did you leave the lady Merlis?” he remembered to ask one day. They were by the fire in her smallest sitting room, where he had come to bid her good-night. She wore a green cover and she knitted some tiny garment. She often shifted in her chair and Griff wished he could know how to ease her discomfort.

  “I left the lady Merlis in the ground beside her man,” Beryl said. Her hands fell still and she looked up at him then. “The lady hanged herself, since the man had been hanged. I don’t—Merlis stayed on at the Inn, and wouldn’t be comforted. Every day she had herself taken in a boat across the river, to the place where he was buried, and left there, all day, day after day. Other wounds healed, other fevers abated, but hers—”

  Beryl looked into the fire, where flames had turned logs into grey ash.

  “She wouldn’t be comfort
ed. I don’t know what to believe of her, except—she hanged herself so that she might always lie beside her lover.”

  Griff was more afraid to leave the thought unspoken, where it might grow in Beryl’s mind, than to ask it. “Do you think you cared for Oriel the less because you choose to live?”

  “I never thought of comparing the size or worth of our two hearts,” Beryl told him. “It isn’t who had the greater or better heart that I think of. I think—the lady Merlis was fierce in her heart, like a falcon, as if the man were her prey. I think—she hanged herself for the sake of a man who had murdered another, which second man had given the lady his heart, unasked and unwanted.” Beryl stopped speaking and seemed to be listening. “I think,” she spoke slowly, while Griff stood at her fireside, watching the restless light on her sorrowful face, “you had best call the midwives to me.”

  THE WOMEN CAME AND THEY drove Griff out of the room. He went as far as the broad hallway that separated his apartments from Beryl’s. Women servants came and went from her rooms, carrying water and linens, bobbing their heads at him, but never speaking. Lilos joined him, and so did Wardel, and they spent the night together in the hall, pacing, starting brief conversations that none paid attention to, trying to hear and understand the sounds from the doors behind which Beryl lay in childbirth.

  At early light, with Lilos and Wardel slumped asleep at a table, Griff went determinedly back into her sitting room, where just the last night—and he went up to the closed door to her bedroom. From inside he heard her cry out—sharp and frightened, like a bird’s call. He opened the door.

  The women flew towards him—“You can’t!”—“What—?!”—“Sir!” Beryl lay on her bed, pale of face, her hair tangled and damp with the sweat that ran down her cheeks.

  “I am the Earl,” Griff reminded the women, which confused them long enough to give him time to continue on to the bed. He sat by Beryl’s head. She looked at him as if she didn’t know who he was. She held birthing straps in her hands. Her belly rose, and fell, and sweat ran down into her eyes, and she clenched her teeth, and she looked at Griff as if she were his murderer, or as if he were her murderer, and her mouth opened on a high, wordless cry.

  Griff took her hand in both of his. Her nails dug into his palm.

  “My lord,” a woman’s voice spoke at his ear, “you can’t stay here.”

  Griff didn’t move. “I am the Earl,” he said again, and he didn’t know if Beryl was clutching his hands any more than he was clutching at hers. She was panting now, and her knees were drawn up. He could do nothing to help her, but he couldn’t bear to leave her. He didn’t want to stay and have to hear her pain, and see it, but knowing of her pain, he couldn’t abandon her to its company.

  This was what men did to women, in taking pleasure of them, he thought as her body arched up again. Let this child live, Griff thought, and he would never ask Beryl to bear another.

  He heard women at his back, telling Beryl that they could see the baby’s head, but he didn’t think Beryl heard them. Her eyes were fixed on Griff’s face, sometimes as if she knew him. He heard a woman’s voice, calm, tell him, “Now you mustn’t move, my lord. Stay just as you are, until we tell you.”

  Griff nodded his head and gripped Beryl’s hand and let the calmness of the voice comfort him.

  Beryl opened her mouth, and howled, and her face grew red with the effort.

  A matching howling cry rose in Griff’s throat, but he was too frightened to find voice for it.

  Then it was done, it was easy now, and he heard a baby’s cry, and Beryl was breathing heavily. They put a bloody child into her arms, and she opened her eyes. She released Griff’s hand. Griff could see only the baby’s wet head, and shoulder—Birthing was as bloody a business as battle, he thought. The baby was streaked with watery blood. One of the midwives lay a soft white cloth over it, and picked it up. “You have a—”

  “Don’t tell me,” Griff said, more roughly than he intended. The midwife drew back, as if he offered the baby harm.

  Beryl sat straight up in the bed. She cried out—

  A cry greater than any she had given in the birthing and tears ran like sweat down her face, and she cried out aloud, “I’ll never see him again!”

  So Griff held her face in his hands. There was nothing he could do to deny it. Helplessly, he held her face, with its unseeing eyes.

  “Never!” she cried, stiff and straight in the bed.

  When the midwives brought the babe, wiped clean and wrapped in more white cloths, Beryl turned away from them all and turned her head into the pillow, so Griff took the child into his hands.

  The baby was all there was left of Oriel in the world.

  “Go,” Griff said to one of the servants, “Find Lilos where he waits in the hall; tell him to call the household together.”

  Beryl wept silently, with her back to them all. Griff held Oriel’s child in the two palms of his hands, one palm around the little skull, the other around the little backside.

  The first time Oriel had seen the whipping box, which Griff knew to fear, he had slipped his hand into Griff’s, whether to give or take comfort Griff didn’t know. There was, of course, no comfort, and there was no help—there was only the two of them, standing together for whatever came.

  Now there was only Griff.

  But he held Oriel’s child in his hands, and that was something. That was more than the nothing he had had left of Oriel when the birthing began.

  Griff stood, the child against his chest. “I’ll return shortly,” he said to Beryl’s back, in case she heard him. The midwives didn’t dare protest.

  He carried Oriel’s child out of Beryl’s room and out through her sitting room, into the broad hall, crowded now with his household, Garder, Lilos, and Wardel among them. He held the baby up before them, one hand under the backside, one under the skull. He held the baby up briefly and then gathered it back against his heart.

  “The heir is born,” he announced. “Let the bells be rung. Let every man and woman in the city be given a holiday, to mark the day. Let every man and woman in the castle be given a measure of wine, to mark the day. This is the heir of the Earl Sutherland.”

  The baby wailed then, and everyone laughed.

  “Is it a boy, then?” Wardel called. “What do you name him?”

  “I don’t know yet if this is a boy or a girl,” Griff answered. His face kept smiling, although the occasion was solemn enough. “I know only that this is Oriel’s child.”

  A brief silence greeted this news, and then voices spoke out in wordless approval, Ho’s and Ha’s, over other voices that murmured doubtfully. Lilos came forward. “I will drink to the heir of the Earl Sutherland,” he announced. “Let us all toast the heir,” he said. “Bring wine to the great hall,” Lilos gave the order.

  Griff left them then, and returned to Beryl, with Oriel’s child in his arms. Her face was wet, with sweat and with tears, but she reached up for the baby—which was now wailing, with hunger Griff thought, but even knowing the baby cried for food didn’t make it easy to let Oriel’s child out of his hands.

  He thought his heart must break at the joy of Oriel’s child.

  When the baby was arranged at Beryl’s breast, and sucking, she asked him, “You named the heir?”

  Griff nodded.

  “Sit down, Griff. You can sit beside me on the bed. They’ll mutter but—aye, and among the people a man might stay in the same room for all of the birth, if only because there would be no other room to go to. Do you mind whether it’s a girl heir or a boy heir?” Beryl asked.

  Griff shook his head. “But, Beryl,” he said, “you must never again have to—”

  “Aye, Griff,” she said, “it’s only pain, and there’s the child at the end of it—and we two both live, now, the child and I, and I feel—” her eyes smiled at him “—so strong, so— This was easier than when they branded you, I’ll wager. For there’s the child at the end of pain.”

  She was sitting up aga
inst 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.