The Tale of Oriel (36 page)

If she was not Merlis, then, as she could not be if she was the King's daughter, Merlis must be some other young woman. Oriel looked again, and saw a lady sitting proud in a green gown, with gold ribbons worked into her long dark hair. This, he thought, was the lady before whom he would lay down his heart. This was Merlis.

The second puppet story was one the people told, about the old farmer who wished to wed a young wife, so he disguised himself as he courted her. On their wedding night when he changed into his nightshirt behind the screen, the old farmer flung over it his false hair and binding corset; unable to see that his young wife, undressing behind her screen, was flinging over it her own false hair and binding corset. This was the cleverest puppetry, and the King's court responded wholeheartedly. The lady in green rose up at its end, and went to stand behind a young courtier with her hand on his shoulder, as a wife does.

Oriel looked around again, while his audience talked among itself and smiled up at him. Would Merlis smile so, he wondered, if she were the daughter of an Earl? Might dark-rimmed grey eyes mark this smiling lady as of Earl's lineage, with the white fur trimming her gown as a lady of wealth must wear. Oriel readied himself to give this lady his heart.

However, the third tale began what he must succeed at in order to set about winning the heart beneath those grey eyes, and the lands she brought with her. Oriel concentrated on his showman's pan, to make the puppet play work; for the story was too complicated to be told without a showman. It was the story of the Emperor's stolen daughter, and of the loyal soldier who spent his life seeking for her, despite the perfidy of courtiers and the enmity of kingdoms, despite year after year of failure. At the last, the soldier found a child and in a dream was told that this child—if he could rule over the Emperor's realms—would bring lasting peace to the land. The soldier returned along the ways he had come, to take the child to the Emperor. Some people helped him, some sought his death, some tried to take the child and either put him under their power, or kill him. The loyal soldier persisted, but was overcome by treachery. He died on the gallows, asking for word to be taken to the Emperor. But the Emperor was dying then, on his golden bed, under silken bedclothes, still mourning his lost daughter. And the soldier's dream-named child was lost in the crowd that watched the hanging. “They had only hope,” Oriel said, as the curtain slowly lowered, “that the child would live, and find his way, and become Emperor, and bring peace to the people.”

Pale tears fell out of her dark-rimmed grey eyes and down over her soft cheeks. The King sighed, and turned to his Queen to say, “I wish Merlis would have come to see these puppets. For all that she protests, I think she would have found them worthy.”

Then the lady was not here. Oriel would have laughed at himself if he had been alone, would have laughed at his own hopes; and he was sorry to lose the grey-eyed lady, for he knew she had a heart that the puppets could touch.

“Not trivial at all, are they, Gwilliane?” the King asked.

“Not at all trivial,” his Queen assented. “They should be generously rewarded, don't you think?”

“Indeed so.” The King rose from his heavy chair, a man of middle years and of middle height, of a certain plump dignity of carriage, and with a pleasant expression on his round-cheeked face. The King had the face of a man to whom life has always been a pleasing affair.

A tall, spare man, whose face seemed carved from pale wood, so much did it refuse to bear any expression, leaned forward, to speak into the King's ear. He wore a red shirt, high-collared, and carried a sheathed sword at his waist. “Yes, one must inquire,” the King said, and both watched Oriel.

Oriel thought this must be a soldier, and one of high rank, since he could speak so closely to the King. When he stepped forward, with a clanking of the metal of his sword and a creaking of the leather of his boots, Oriel moved to meet him. They faced one another. Oriel thought he ought to be uneasy, but he was not. He had no weapon, nor plan. He had only his own words and his own self, but he felt well armed.

“The King wonders, and I wonder, what might be the meaning of the whisper, the reports of which have been often brought to his attention,” the soldier said.

A black-robed priest, who wore a heavy gold ring on his right hand, joined the soldier. “My priests heard of it.”

A third man, clothed like an ordinary lord except for the heavy silver chain he wore upon his chest, joined the other two. “It reached my ears as well,” he said, in a voice as pleasing as song.

Oriel answered all of them. “I would tell the King alone.”

“Not possible,” the soldier said, without hesitation. At the same time the King said, “We can go—” and the smiling man objected, “It is customary to have others present when—” and the priest asked, “Is it safe?”

The Queen asked, “Is a man who rules ever entirely safe?”

“Please be seated, sire,” the soldier said to the King. “I think that this showman must speak before us all.”

“Yes,” the King acquiesced. “That must be so. What then is the news your puppets wished to be brought to me, Showman?”

“No news, sire,” Oriel said. Now, facing the King, he felt uneasy. He could pass it all off as a jest they had thought up in order to draw crowds to the puppet show. This King would not punish him for such a jest. Why should Oriel, after all, think he was a man to try for the Earldom, the lands, and the hand of the lady?

The question made him smile, and gave him confidence. Because he was such a man, and more. He looked over the crowd, briefly, and saw that few of them were interested in the events at the front of the hall. Aye, but they would be, and soon, he thought, reaching into a deep pocket that had been sewn into the hem of his shirt. He held the beryl out to the King.

Puzzled, the King looked to his Queen, who smiled. The King held out an open palm. Oriel dropped the green stone into it.

The King recognized it immediately, and the Queen also. Both looked intently up into Oriel's face. The King's face, in its kindness, was troubled. “I will hear this young man privately.”

“Yes, but with your closest advisors present,” the Queen said. She rose from her chair then. “Let us withdraw,” she announced to the court, which followed her out of the long hall. The King and the three men remained.

“Is there not another behind the screen here, one who works the strings of the puppets?” the smiling lord inquired.

“There are two,” Oriel answered, and then turned to the King. “They companion me, and advise me. I ask their company, sire.”

He did not need Griff and Beryl with him to bolster his courage, but he wanted the two behind him, so that he might be understood to be not a man alone. Oriel's mind worked swiftly, calculating the expression of each of the four men, calculating his chances, looking for sources of enmity and measuring its strength. Here, were subtle dangers. Oriel had led a troop of boys out into shelterless places and brought all safely home, he had sailed night seas, and he had faced wild men in hopeless battle. He had chosen to fly down the steep mountainside in risk of death by catastrophe rather than take the known way in risk of death by privation. But the present adventure was the one, the only one, that he had chosen for himself. These subtle dangers he had sought out.

“Is there any reason to refuse his request?” the King asked his attendants. “What do you advise?”

The three consulted together before they gave assent. Oriel called his companions out. Griff stood at his left shoulder, a little behind, and Beryl at his right. Both Griff and Beryl wore the brown of the people. Beryl had her braided hair wound around her ears, and the only way Griff differed from the men of the people was in his clean-shaven face, and the crescent scar.

“Your names?” the smiling man demanded.

“This is Griff, who has traveled with me from the first,” Oriel said. “This is Beryl,” he introduced her.

“A woman,” the soldier said.

“As you see, my lord,” Beryl answered. “As befits a land where the King attends to the words of his Queen and consort.”

“And so I do,” the King assented. “You're right to point that out, Baer, and I am glad to think that my people know me so well.”

Then the King and his advisors waited for Oriel to name himself.

Oriel knew that, and let the wordless time grow, until at last he broke the silence to demand, as boldly and discourteously as it had been demanded of him, “Your names?” He looked at the courtier, who did not smile now, and at the priest, whose eyes narrowed under grey eyebrows. It was the soldier who answered him, with an approving nod, “Haldern. First Captain, Lord Haldern. First Minister, Lord Tseler,” he waved a hand at the courtier, “and Lord Karossy, First Priest as well as Custodian of the Books of Laws and History.” Lord Haldern bowed stiffly, from the waist. When he did that the other two had to follow his example, or make their quarrel known.

Oriel and Griff imitated him, while Beryl curtsied.

“My name is Oriel,” Oriel said then, speaking to the King.

“Oriel?” The King studied him, as if he recognized something about him. “What do you want of me, Oriel?”

“I would ask of you the privilege to enter the Tourney, and to try my chance to be Earl Sutherland. No more than that,” Oriel answered.

“Do you think,” Lord Tseler inquired, “to purchase that right with the stone?”

Oriel understood what the First Minister was attempting to discover about him. He answered boldly. “I have no desire to part with the stone, unless the King will take it as a gift—For it is mine to give—or to spend—as I will—or to keep. I show the stone, sire, to claim my right to ask a place in the Tourney.”

“Do you not overreach yourself?” Lord Karossy asked.

Oriel thought there was no need to answer that, which was not a question. He stood patiently until a real question might be asked him, or an answer might be given to his request.

“Your name is Oriel,” Lord Haldern said, “and you are not, I think, a man of the Kingdom.”

“That is true,” Oriel agreed.

“What land do you come from?” Lord Tseler asked.

“From countries to the south,” Oriel answered. “As far back as I remember, I come from an island far to the south of this Kingdom.”

The three advisors conferred again, until Lord Tseler inquired, “Who is your father and what is his station?”

“I cannot say,” Oriel said. “I never knew, and had no way to discover. Nor mother, neither.”

“Your age?” the King asked abruptly, as if curiosity had caused him to speak out of turn.

“Not less than eighteen winters, as near as I can count,” Oriel said.

The King shook his head, as if that was not the answer he had hoped for. He turned to say to Lord Karossy, “You know the story I am thinking of. You know the book.”

Lord Karossy had a fleshless face that sloped forward to his long, sloping nose. Oriel couldn't have said whether he was an old man or a man of moderate years. He was thin as a tree in winter. “Surely he is too young,” Lord Karossy protested.

“Just fetch the book,” Lord Haldern said, impatient.

The King was a comfortable man, even as he sat in a chair that he made a throne by sitting in it. He merely nodded his approval when Lord Tseler leaned down to say, softly enough for privacy but loud enough for all to hear, “If you give Karossy your word that no one will ask the man any further questions while he is out of the way, then I think he'll do your bidding swiftly.”

“You have my word, Karossy,” the King said. He turned back to Lord Tseler, who was pulling straight his white overshirt and brushing smooth his long vest. “I would remind you, Minister, that the man has a name. Oriel.”

The minister took the correction humbly, or so Oriel thought until he caught the expression in the man's eyes. “I beg your pardon, Oriel,” Lord Tseler said, and his eyes begged nothing of the kind, would beg nothing of Oriel.

Oriel answered on a laugh, giving his pardon as if he were accustomed to having it asked by the great men of the Kingdom, as if it were not possible for someone as insignificant as Lord Tseler to offend him.

They awaited Lord Karossy's return in a silence of occasionally cleared throats, and shuffled feet, and questions almost asked. “Did you—?” “No, did you—?” Lord Karossy brought back with him a large, leather-covered book, which he carried before him like a babe. The King held out his hands to take the book, but Lord Karossy gave it instead to Oriel, with a sharp glance from under the grey eyebrows, and terse instructions. “The section the King remembers is twenty-six pages back from the center.”

By the expression on Tseler's face, and the consternation on the Captain's, and the displeasure on the King's, Oriel knew Lord Karossy hoped to snare Oriel somehow through the book. He couldn't know exactly how the snare worked, but he knew how he planned to elude it. First he asked the King's permission to read. That given, with Lord Karossy mumbling apologies to the King, Oriel opened the book to its center. Silently, he counted back twenty-six pages. Silently, he stood and read.

The page told part of the Kingdom's history, not as a story is told, but as if the writer wrote down notes of the significant events for later reference. Oriel read slowly, to understand why the King had sent for this book. A name caught his eye, written in fading ink on the heavy paper. He read the writing: “Sutherland's heir slain, leaving eldest son Orien.” Later, the name reappeared in the small script. “Orien gone, rumor says run off—murdered by brother?—to wed his southern Princess.”

Oriel questioned the King. “What would the writer mean when he spoke of a southern Princess, sire?”

“There are no such southern Princesses in the Kingdom,” the King answered, which was what Oriel expected to hear. “I think it must mean a Princess from the lands beyond the great southern forest, beyond the Kingdom, where maps picture a sea, and stories describe a watery world as endless as a forest.”