“Richard?”
The grip on her arms eased. He took her by the wrist and twisted slightly, to tell her he would hurt her if she did anything. They stood together in the utter darkness. At first Maria could hear only her blood beating, but then she picked out a heavy voice on the far side of the wall: Odo’s voice. Her father answered him.
“You shouldn’t have hit young Roger. They are like snakes, the d’Alene brothers; when one hates they all hate.”
Odo grunted. “I can handle them.” He sounded confident.
“Oh, you can,” old Robert said. “I’ll nurse my doubts about that. Anyway I don’t allow feuds between my men, especially when one is my daughter’s husband.” His voice smoothed out. “If they give you any more trouble, come to me. There’s ways to scorch snakes. If you know what I mean.”
Maria moved her wrist, testing Richard’s grip, and he squeezed her hard. Her father said pleasantly, “Is there something else you want to say?” and Odo muttered a leave-taking. The man beside her pushed her. She started off ahead of him along the wall passage, back toward the stairs. Groping in the dark, he relaxed his grasp, and she tore loose and bolted away toward the stairwell.
Behind her there was a soft sound like something striking the wall. She squeezed out of the crevice and raced up the stairs two steps at a jump.
There was nobody in her room. Through the window she saw the gloomy sky, the sun lowering. Adela and Flora would be in the kitchen helping the cook. She wheeled to go back down to the safety of the crowded hall. Richard was running up the stairs. She slammed the door and bolted it in his face.
His weight crashed against it; the bolt held. Maria leaned against the inside of the door. In an even voice, Richard said, “Let me in.”
She did not want to, but he would reach her eventually. She opened the door. He came in and shut it behind him.
“What were you doing in there?” he said.
“I go back there, sometimes.”
“Not anymore.”
She stood her ground, saying nothing; she did not trust her voice.
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said. “If I want to go in there, I will.”
From the foot of the stairs, Adela called, “Maria? Cook wants you.”
She started toward the door. Richard caught her arm. “Are you going to obey me or not?”
“I have to go to the kitchen.”
He let go of her arm. She ran away down the stairs.
The cook needed onions. She let him into the storeroom and while he stood in the middle complaining, climbed up on a keg to get a net of onions from the ceiling. They went out to the ward and she locked the door.
“If you’d give me the key—”
She went off across the ward to sit in the sun with Adela and Flora. No one seemed to know how the fight had started between Odo and Roger. While Adela’s voice ran aimlessly in her ear Maria sat staring across the ward, cluttered with chickens, dogs, and people. What she had overheard in the passageway unnerved her. Richard and her father hated each other. She was caught between them. Richard came out of the New Tower. He gave her an expressionless stare and walked across the ward to the Knights’ Tower.
She saw nothing more of him until supper. She sat between him and her father and no one said a single word throughout the meal. Her appetite was coming back; she ate to glut. The sun was setting. The kitchen boys went around lighting the torches on the walls. Richard left the hall. Maria stayed a while longer, beside her father. She could not talk to him. She realized, frightened, that she could not trust him. He got up and crossed the hall, toward Odo. Maria went up the stairs.
Richard was already in their room, standing in front of the fire, a poker in his hand. That surprised her. She had been sure he was in the wall passage. She went to the cupboard for his wine and the herbs of the charm. Standing in the lee of the bed, she shook the herbs from the box but finally put them back in again: it seemed unfair to give him a love potion when she was fighting with him. She went back to the hearth and put the wine into a pan to warm.
Richard said pleasantly, “You’re going to do as I say.”
“Only if I want to.”
He jabbed the poker into the fire, throwing the logs back, and put on wood from the heap beside him. On her knees on the hearth next to him, she braced herself against his next shout.
His hand closed on her shoulder and dragged her up onto her feet. She threw one arm up between them to ward off his fist, but he struck her arm aside and hit her on the cheek, caught her when she staggered, and knocked her again in the face.
Her eyes failed. Blindly she thrust her hands out, her fingers clawed, and her nails snagged his cheek. He pushed her away. She sat down hard, sick to her stomach, and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her eyes were still bleary. Richard was coming for her.
“Richard. The baby.”
He hauled himself up short. Maria got her breath back, nausea sweet in her throat, and her eyes cleared. Roughly he lifted her up onto her feet. She clung to him to steady herself. He thrust her hard away from him.
Maria wiped her eyes dry. No one had ever struck her before with a closed hand. Her mouth was bleeding, and the whole side of her face hurt. Tears welled into her eyes.
Richard was poking savagely at the fire. On his cheek three long scratches showed in beads of blood. His head swung toward her. “Are you going to let this wine burn?”
She went up slowly beside him. The wine was bubbling. She poured it into a cup and mixed in more wine from the cupboard. Her mouth was swollen. On the back of her tongue she tasted something bitter.
“I hate you,” she said.
“You’ll do as I tell you.”
She said nothing, exhausted. The warmth of the fire drew her irresistibly.
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
He muttered something in his throat and drank the wine. The red scratches ran down his cheek. She put her hand to her swelling eye. He pulled her arm down. He took her face between his hands, and she winced.
“You’ll have a black eye tomorrow,” he said. “What will you tell your father?”
She shook her head. “Anything. That I fell.”
“Tell him I beat you. I want to see what he’ll do.” Maria backed away from him. In the fire’s warmth, she began to take off her clothes. He went around the room, putting out the candles and the torch. The heat of the fire licked her arms. Richard undressed in the darkness behind her. In her shift, she crouched before the fire, dying in its bed, a heap of throbbing coals and ash. The side of her head ached in the heat. She said her prayers.
“What are you doing over there?”
“I am praying,” she said. She crossed herself. The fire was veiled in a layer of ash. Richard in the bed behind her was muttering discontent. She asked God to help her endure him and rose and got into the bed with him, into his burning embrace.
***
When she sat down to breakfast the next morning, her father swore, wiped his hand on his chest, and turned her face to the light. Maria pulled away from him.
“I fell out of bed.”
“He hit you, did he?”
She said nothing. Her left eye was swollen almost shut. Her father pulled on his chin. “He’s a dog to hit a woman, even his wife. Why did he do it?”
“I told you,” she said. “I fell.”
She went off to her chores. Everybody stared at her. Flora and Adela whispered behind her back. The cook laughed at her. “It’s a long way from your heart.” When she went up to the hall again in the forenoon, Richard was sitting on the hearth playing bones with Roger. The scratches striped his cheek like a flag. She went up to her spinning wheel and got out the shirt she was making for him. She glanced at him once, while she was threading the needle, but he was watching her and she looked quickly away.
A short dark knight came in. When he saw Richard’s face, he crowed derisively. “Who won?” Maria bent over the seam she
was sewing. The men all laughed, even Richard. The seam was coming out crooked, and in a fury she ripped it apart.
Her father came in the door. Odo followed on his heels, along with several dogs. Old Robert threw his cloak aside. She could smell the wet wool of the lining. He strode into the middle of the hall.
Maria sat poised over her needlework. Her father put his hands on his hips. He was staring at Richard; the talk died. Richard got to his feet. Her heart began to beat painfully fast. She didn’t care who won, so long as they fought. They faced each other a long moment in silence.
Her father broke into an unconvincing laugh. “I suppose she can take care of herself. You’re not really married until you’ve drawn blood, they say, although not usually about the wife.” He went up to the hearth, chuckling, the only man in the room even with a smile on his face. He put his hands out to the fire.
Richard said, “Is that all you want to tell me?”
“Well, you could try hitting the other end.” Her father glanced at him over his shoulder. “It doesn’t show.” Odo came up beside him. They talked.
Maria let out her pent breath. They weren’t going to fight. She went back to the mess she had made of her work; her face hurt, her stomach was sour again, she wanted to cry. She concentrated on sewing the seam down flat.
Richard came up beside her. She put her hands and the shirt in her lap. “Get away from me,” she said.
“Obey me the next time, and I won’t hit you.” He leaned up against the wall.
Maria clenched her fist. All the men by the hearth were watching them, all but her father, all grinning. She hated Richard for hitting her and her father for not fighting him over it. She gave Richard a hard look.
“Now you’re asking for it, you stubborn little slut.”
She knew if she said anything her voice would tremble. He sank down on his heels. He hadn’t shaved in two days; the scratches on his cheek were crusted with dry blood. “Have you told him yet?” He glanced over his shoulder toward her father. “About the baby.”
She shook her head, wary. “I wanted to be sure.”
“Are you sure now?”
She nodded. His eyes widened; he rubbed the back of his hand absently over his cheek. “When will it be born?”
“In the summer. The midsummer.”
He took hold of her hand. She pulled against his grip. “Let me go. I have to do my work.”
“You don’t mind me so much in the dark.” He clenched her fingers hard. When she stiffened at the pain he released her. “That’s for talking back to me.” He went down the room. Her father was watching her. She picked up her needle again and stabbed it into the shirt.
Four
Maria’s father got her a saddle of white leather for her little mare. He gave it to her the morning of the first hunt of the spring, with much show of stripping off the old saddle and putting on the new one with his own hands. Beside Richard in the doorway, Maria laughed and clapped her hands, but Richard kept to a surly silence. Her father led up the white mare, and her husband lifted her up into the new saddle.
“You shouldn’t even ride anymore,” Richard said, giving her the reins. “And if you need presents, I will get them for you.” He walked around the mare’s rump toward his horse.
There were five of them to go hunting—Richard and Maria, her father, Roger, and William—and while the men got their horses and mounted, Maria trotted her mare in circles in and out of the crowd in the ward, to show off. She liked to ride, even with the baby swelling out her body round as a cushion, and the mare bent neatly to her hand, backed up, reared, and went into a lope around Richard. He was in a foul mood; she rode to her father’s side.
Loose-limbed on his old bay stallion, he leaned over her. “Do you like it, my dear one?”
“Oh, yes.” She put her hand on the carved leather swell of the saddle. Long-faced, Flora and Adela stood on the step watching her, and Adela scowled at her. They thought she should stay in her room, even in her bed, and let no one see her with child. She had needed most of a month to convince Richard to take her with them. Her father shouted, the gate opened, and they rode double file onto the hillside.
Adela and Flora were wrong, Richard was wrong, and there was nothing to be unhappy about. Ever since her father had learned she was pregnant, he had treated Richard pleasantly, and now here they all were, going out together to hunt. She could not understand why Richard was so sullen.
They rode across the valley to the west. His brothers carried the hawks, hooded in leather. The dogs scattered around them sniffing at everything. In the deep, furrowed ground of the valley floor, the serfs were bent over planting seed. Even the littlest children went about to pick up stones. The hunting party crossed into fields plowed but not yet planted and from there into the oak wood.
Maria went up beside Richard. He was a good horseman; she was proud of the way he rode. For a while he pretended not to notice her next to him. Eventually he looked down at her from the back of his gray horse.
“You should not ride.”
“I won’t. Not after this.” But she loved the spring hawking after cranes. Their horses swung into a canter, shoulder to shoulder. Two swine ran squealing into the wood away from them. The trees closed over their heads. Birds shrilled at them. In the distance the sunlight poured in through a gap in the roof of the wood.
The slope flattened into the sunlight of an open meadow. Maria’s father led them out onto a point of dry ground that ran above the marsh to the beach. The horses dropped to a jog trot. Richard reined in to let her go in front of him.
“There are boats out there.” He pointed toward the glittering water in the distance.
Maria shaded her eyes. The low surf rolled in along the beach. Beyond, the water danced green to the horizon. Near the sky, two white dots moved over the sea. One dot lengthened into a line and showed its curved sail.
Roger said, indifferent, “The villagers must fish there.”
“The villagers have no boats,” Richard said. “They are Saracens from Mana’a.”
Maria drew her mare to a halt. The sudden bright sun was hurting her head. Instantly Richard brought his horse up beside her.
“I warned you,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
“Maria?” her father called from down the beach, and she rode away from Richard, nudging her mare into a canter across the pale firm sand.
They hunted the rest of the morning along the edge of the marsh. Maria shook off her headache. Dragonflies swooped around her, hung whirring in the light, and zigged away. The broad golden marsh smelled of rot. Once, while she stopped to rest, a little deer came up through a stand of evergreens across the cattails from her. When she moved, the deer wheeled and lumbered out of sight, its barrel round with fawn.
Exhilarated, she rode on after the men. They had reined up along the bank of a stream. Out over the marsh, a crane unfolded its great wings and gathered itself into the air. The red falcon stooped above it. The crane’s curved flight broke. Like a white feather it hung long in the pitch of the sky.
“Beautiful killing,” Roger murmured, and her father muttered in agreement, his eyes fixed on the hawk.
Richard lured it back, and William raced off after the dogs to retrieve the crane. Maria’s mare splashed across the stream. No longer hunting, the riders spread out over the beach. Richard turned his horse down to the slow breakers and sat watching the Saracen boats. At the edge of the marsh, Maria’s father was whistling to his dogs. She rode into the surf, up beside Richard.
The curling waves broke around their horses’ knees. She sniffed the brisk salty wind. On the sea before them, the Saracen boats were crawling north.
Richard reined his horse around her. “Let’s go. You are getting sunburned.” She followed him up the beach.
By late afternoon, they were riding into the foothills, where the beach disappeared and the sea came in to the rocks and the cliff. They cut across the wooded hills, reached the road, and swung north along
it. Soon after they left the trees, the evening fell over them. They rode into the deepening twilight. The tired horses walked with their necks stretched and their heads down. Richard laid his rein slack on his gray’s withers. Roger sang; the others joined in the refrain. Maria ate some blancmange she had brought wrapped in a napkin. She felt pleasantly sleepy, rocked by the white mare’s easy stride.
Beside her, Richard said quietly, “Hold. Someone is coming.”
They all drew rein. William called to the dogs. Maria’s father rode up on her other side. The men shifted around her, their horses suddenly restless. A little band of men was riding toward them.
“Well met,” Odo called, and he and four men came up around them. Odo was smiling but his face was graven with harsh lines. “The darkness fell, and we decided to see what had become of you.”
Maria’s father reached for her reins. She pulled the mare away from him, warned. Richard said, “Odo, you lie,” and his hand went to his sword.
“Get him!” Odo roared.
Maria’s mare reared up. A horse burst up past Roger, between her and Richard, and the man on its back hit Richard over the head with a club. Maria screamed. The horses fought and kicked in a tangle. Richard was doubled over his saddlebows. Beyond him, the man with the club wheeled his horse to strike him again.
“Maria,” Roger shouted. “Run! Run!”
She reined her mare around hard. All around her men were fighting. Her father was gone. She caught hold of the bridle of Richard’s horse. Two hands taller than her mare, the stallion half-pulled her from the saddle. Richard was slack across its neck.
She dragged him forward, between horses, toward the open road.
A knight loomed before her. He raised his sword but she was between him and Richard and he did not strike. She galloped past him, one hand in her mare’s thick mane and the other on Richard’s bridle. Iron rang behind her. She looked back: two riders were chasing her.
“Richard,” she screamed. “Richard!”
He heard her. He heaved himself upright in the saddle. Blood streamed down the side of his face. He wrenched his horse’s head out of her grasp. Wheeling, he charged back along the road.
Great Maria (v5) Page 4
