Maria reined in. The full moon was rising, and the evening grew bright as twilight. The fighting ranged along the road. Two men already fought on foot. A loose horse cantered away from her. Roger’s voice came to her, shouting something. The gray horse wheeled in a knot of darker bodies. Maria urged her horse forward. She wanted to throw herself barehanded into the fighting. Someone was crying for mercy. She would give no mercy. She galloped around the fighting, looking for her father.
His bay stallion stood in the middle of the road. The old man lay on the ground a hundred strides behind it. The dogs surrounded him. She rode up and started to dismount but the dogs leaped at her horse, barking, and the mare began to shy and fight. Maria struggled with the horse. In the middle of the dogs her father lay motionless on his back, his head turned away from her.
“Jonah! Lightning!” William rode up among the dogs, and they calmed down, their tails wagging. Maria made her horse stand. Two men on foot hobbled after William. They were roped together by the ankles. She dismounted and went up through the dog pack to her father.
“Papa.”
When she put her hands on him a dog snapped at her. William shouted to it. Her father moved under her hands. She remembered how he had reached for her rein, before Odo attacked them. He had known what was coming. The old man raised his head, groggy.
“Papa.”
She sat back heavily. Other horses were cantering toward them. She stared at her father, wondering who had felled him, Odo or Richard. The old man sat up, his head in his hands.
Horses pushed up around them. Richard said, “Maria, get away from him.” She climbed slowly to her feet. Richard braced his hands on the pommel of his saddle. He was still breathing hard. Roger caught her mare and brought it over to her. Dismounting, he came to help her into the saddle.
“You were very brave, Maria. They would have killed him if it hadn’t been for you.” He lifted her up on the mare’s back.
She took hold of her saddle, dizzy. William and Roger got her father onto his horse. The two prisoners waited in the road, tied foot to foot. The ride back to the castle seemed long as a pilgrimage. She closed her eyes.
“Why didn’t you take Odo alive?” William called.
“He wouldn’t let me,” Richard said. She started at the close sound of his voice, opening her eyes; he had come up right beside her.
“A pity,” William said.
They started along the road again, the two prisoners striding awkwardly along ahead of them. William led her father’s horse. The old man sagged in his saddle. The wind rose. Richard kept glancing at Maria’s father.
“Damned dirty old pig, you couldn’t even do this well.”
Maria was still holding onto her horse’s mane. She stared straight up the road. She imagined what would have happened to her and her baby if Odo had killed Richard.
“How many were there?” Richard asked.
“Five,” Roger said. “Not counting—” he nodded toward her father. His horse trotted a few steps to catch up with Richard’s. “You think he was in it with Odo?”
Richard said nothing. They rode up around the shoulder of the hill. Above them was the castle. She held onto her saddle with both hands. The two men they had taken prisoner lagged on the steep slope, and Richard’s horse trod on one of them. They skipped quickly out into the open road again.
The ward of the castle was crowded with men: the rest of the knights, standing around in the dark. “Look at this,” William said. His voice rang in the silence. “All out to see which side came back riding.”
Maria stopped her mare. Two of the men waiting in the dark came up to hold her bridle and she backed the horse away from them. Richard was giving orders. No one paid any more heed to her. She slipped down from her saddle. Her legs trembled and she held onto her stirrup.
“William,” Richard said; he rode up beside her. “Lock the old pig up—find a good strong lock.” He dismounted. His arm went around her waist. “Come on—are you nailed to that saddle?”
They went into the tower and up the stairs. Richard’s teeth were set. Once he put his hand to his head. In their room, he sat down on the bed; Roger went to stir up the fire.
“Are you all right?” she said. “Let me see.” She made him turn his head so that she could see the lump swelling up fat above his temple. His scalp had split open and his face was covered with blood.
“You’re very lucky,” Roger said. “You’re a damned lucky man.” He brought him a cup of wine.
“Oh,” Richard said. “I move fast when something is aimed at my head.”
There was water beside the bed. Maria got linen and washed his face off. Roger talked cheerfully of the fighting. Richard answered him in monosyllables. There was a knock on the door.
“Whoever that is,” Richard said, “I don’t want to see him.”
Roger went over to the door, opened it a crack, and spoke through it. Maria washed out the linen. The water in the basin was stained with blood.
“What will you do to my father?”
He looked at her over his shoulder. “Now you believe me, don’t you? You stupid sow. It’s amazing to me you still have the baby.”
She wrung out the linen and scrubbed ungently at his matted hair. Roger came over to them. “For God’s love, Richard, let her alone.”
“Who was that at the door?”
“Somebody swearing he loves us.”
“Who?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Richard laughed. Maria dried his head off. She took the basin over to the window and emptied it into the ditch. Roger left. She put the basin down on the chest again and started to take off her dress. Richard turned her around, her back to him, and undid the laces.
“What will you do to my father?”
He pushed her dress open and down over her shoulders. His hands rested a moment flat on her skin. She turned to face him.
“It was Odo who tried to kill him,” he said, eventually. “Not me. He betrayed me, but Odo betrayed him, that’s why it didn’t work.” He smiled at her. “All right. I won’t let him go. But I’ll let him live. For your sake.”
“Thank you,” she said.
***
Beginning in the morning, Richard had the two prisoners whipped in the ward. Their screams woke Maria, asleep late into the day, and she sent Flora down to make him stop, but Flora came back, looking sour, and said that he had only moved the prisoners to the other side of the ward. Although Maria could scarcely hear them, she could not fall asleep. She got out of bed and dressed herself.
When she went down into the ward, in the afternoon, the whipping had stopped. The two prisoners hung by their wrists against the wall near the gate, their heads slack. Richard sat on a stool in the shade nearby, drinking. The blacksmith from the village was pacing up and down flexing his arm, his whip coiled over his shoulder. Maria went into the kitchen.
“I knew it would come to this,” the cook said. “The old man’s been downhill since your mother died. He should never have let the knave in the gate.” For the first time since she had known him, he burst out laughing. “By the knave I mean Odo, of course.”
In the room at the top of the New Tower her father lay on his back, snoring. The whipping had started again. Through the window the screams of the two men reached her faintly. She set down the tray she had brought and poured one of the cups full of the cook’s best posset.
“Papa,” she said. She sat down on the bed next to him, his vast bulk spread out under the blankets like a mountain. The snore broke off and he opened his eyes.
“Here, Papa, drink this.”
He grunted and shut his eyes again. “That bastard Odo.” He put his hand to his face. “Is that him down there?”
“No,” she said. “Richard killed him.”
In a flat grinding voice he called Richard several names. She tried to give him the drink, and he struck it away. She sat on the bed staring at him.
“Papa, did you really—was
it really your idea?”
His eyes opened, and the corners of his mouth curled down. “I am a stupid old man,” he said, “out against a clever young one, who I have faith will be a stupid old man himself someday.” He shut his eyes again. “Get out.”
“Papa—”
“Get out.” He turned his face to the wall.
She sat there a while longer. At last she went down the stairs. Six or eight of the knights were sitting around the hearth in the hall. When she came in they looked studiously away from her. She went to the wine ewers on the table and banged on each of them to see which needed filling.
A shriek came up from the ward. The men around her all moved suddenly.
“One thing about Richard,” the small dark knight said. “He spares the sermon. He goes straight to the sacrifice.”
One man laughed, unnecessarily loud. Maria remembered the ambush and the knight who had not struck at her. Probably he was hanging on the wall screaming. She went hunting some place in the castle free of the noise, but she could find none, and until sundown she paced from room to room, praying that they would die and leave her in peace.
Five
The two prisoners died the next afternoon. Their bodies hung from the gate pole on the curtain wall until the summer. Maria’s father, lying in his bed, began to waste. Maria went to the kitchen herself to cook his food and mix his drinks of herbs and wine. When Richard found out, he laughed at her, and she stopped, since she had marked also that her father still sickened a little every day.
“I don’t have to poison him,” Richard said. “He poisons himself. Are you ever going to have this baby?”
She and Flora sewed pads of cloth to use when she was in childbed. The fetid heat of the summer closed down on them. She felt as if she could not breathe. One night Richard’s coast guards came to tell him that Saracen boats were sailing up from Mana’a. He and Roger galloped off with all but a handful of the knights; William kept command of the castle.
Of course as soon as they were gone Maria felt the first undulating tension in her womb. The midwife came, and the overheated room filled with women being important. Through the deep summer night, she lay on her side, her legs drawn up. Once she slept and dreamed of Saracen boats, shining like gold, slipping through the water, and the knights galloping across the dark waves to attack them.
By dawn she could neither sleep nor daydream. The women held her hands and told her meaningless soothing things. She had thought she would bear the pain silently and nobly, but she could not keep from screaming. At last the baby was born. The women fussed over her, feeding her a rank potion of wine, and kneading her belly painfully hard. Suddenly Flora was holding the baby out to her.
“Is that mine?” she said blankly. She felt nothing for it at all; it was just a baby. They put it down next to her. They all expected her to love it. And it was a girl, not a boy.
“You’ll call her Matilde, for your mother,” Adela said. “Won’t you?”
“I hate that name. I’ll name her Cecily.” She touched the baby’s face. It was an awful slate color, but it opened its eyes, its mouth sucked at nothing. Alive. She kissed its forehead. “Cecily.”
***
Maria opened her eyes. She had wakened at the noise the men had made, tramping into her room. Richard took a splinter from the hearth, blew the coal at the end into a full flame, and lit a candle. With his brothers he stood over the baby.
“Why Cecily, in Jesus’s name?”
“After her mother.” Roger stepped back. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted a boy.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Her mother was named Matilde,” William said. “Mark, it’s a name from stories. Where is the fat wench? Nowhere.” He lifted the baby. Maria pushed herself up on her elbows. “I saw you both this little once. Both you knaves.”
Roger made a disbelieving noise. He crossed the room to a leather sack on the hearth: loot from their raid. “They will not bring their goods north again in boats,” he said. The firelight shone on his face. “We shall be great from this night.”
Richard said, “They’ll sail—they’ll just stand out to sea, where we can’t reach them.” He bent over the baby. William crooned to her. Like the piping of a bird, a little wail started up, and William put the tip of his finger into the baby’s mouth; that quieted her immediately.
Richard said, “William, another of your many crafts.”
“Good night,” Roger called, and went out. William laid the baby in the cradle. Richard stood with one hand on his hip, talking to him of their raid on the Saracens, while William stooped to rock the cradle. At last he stood up straight.
“God keep her,” he said, shaking Richard’s hand. “God give her a happy life. She’ll be as pretty as her mother.”
“Oh, prettier,” Richard said lightly, and went with William to the door. Maria lay down again, sinking back toward sleep. When she wakened again, a while later, Richard was still there, standing with a candle in his hand, looking down at his daughter.
***
The baby waved one fist. Maria caught it and kissed it. Cecily’s tiny perfections fascinated her. She sat up on the bed, her legs folded under her, and opened her nightdress and gave the baby her breast. The baby was nothing like she had expected: she woke at odd hours and howled, she was always soaking wet, she demanded everything and gave nothing back but more work. Maria smoothed the baby’s fine brown hair down over her skull. Her color was much better, save that her hands and feet were dark. She cupped the head in her palm. With her thumb she held her breast down so that the baby could breathe while she nursed.
“Cow,” Richard said. He was lying in the bed behind her.
Maria got up. The baby had finished nursing and lay peacefully in her mother’s arms, her dark blue eyes open. Maria changed her napkin and put the baby into the cradle. She stood beside it, rocking it. Richard got out of bed. Down the stairs, Adela called her, but Maria pretended not to hear. At first every woman in the castle had spent the mornings in her room, making her listen to their detailed and contradictory advice, and passing the baby from lap to lap; at last she had driven them away. Richard came up beside her.
“I have something for you,” he said.
She turned, surprised. He had never given her anything before. He was looking down at the baby. He took his left hand from behind his back.
“Oh,” Maria said. “A looking glass.” Her mother had once had a looking glass. She took it out of his hands. It was heavier than she expected, the frame worked in gold, with cameos set in the four corners. She could not bring herself to look at her own face. She turned and kissed Richard.
“We took it in the plunder, the night she was born,” he said. “I told you I’d give you presents. Do you like it?”
Maria said, “It’s beautiful.” She searched his face. “She looks like you. Do you mark it?”
He laughed. His head tilted down toward the cradle. “She is me. Part of me.” He took the looking glass from her and held it to show her own face.
Maria clapped her hands over her eyes. “What is wrong with you now? Here, look.” He grasped her by the wrist. Maria resisted his pull. She was afraid to see herself. She was afraid of being ugly. But between her fingers she saw the image in the glass, and slowly let her hands down, taking the glass away from him.
“Oh, well,” she said, and turned her head a little. Her chin was pointed and her nose too short, and save for her dark blue eyes she had no color at all: white skin and black hair. It was better than being ugly.
“Now you’ll neglect me,” Richard said, “and spend all day long looking at your face.”
She held the glass in front of him, to show him himself. He covered the mirror with his hand. “No, I’m not vain, like you.”
Maria kissed him again, one hand on his forearm. “Thank you. You are very kind to me.” Putting the looking glass down carefully in the cradle, she slid her arms around his neck. “Let me take Cecily up to show my father.”
>
“Hunh.” His whole face soured; his mouth went tight as a trap. “Go ahead. I suppose you ought to.” He reached behind him, took her wrists, and pulled her arms away from him. He strode toward the door, but first he looked down at the baby.
Maria’s father, dying in his room, saw the baby and wept. For a while he babbled disconsolately of the punishments inflicted on him, who deserved only peace in his old age. He called Richard a variety of names and cursed him for making Cecily a girl. Maria left him almost at once. It frightened her to see him there, his flesh sunken around his bones, and his eyes milky with disease. Six days after her churching, he died in the night.
When they buried him a great crowd of people came from all over the area, men and women Maria had never seen before: shepherds and fishermen, serfs, and hill-dwellers. Few of them were sorrowful. They told wild stories about her father that ran back forty years. With the baby in her arms she walked along the hillside away from the graveyard. Richard came up beside her.
She said, “I wish you had killed him. It would have been better than having him die like that.”
“It was your idea,” Richard said. He held the postern door open for her. They went into the castle.
Six
Maria’s castle stood in the wilderness near the sea. A day’s ride to the south the wood-covered hills rose into mountains, which the Saracens controlled. Beyond the shield of the mountains was the ancient city of Mana’a, now like Jerusalem in the hands of the Saracens.
North and east of the wilderness was Santerois, ruled by a Norman duke. Maria’s father had always kept his reach short in that direction, shy of Duke Louis, but soon after Robert Strongarm died, the Duke of Santerois died also. He left as his heir a baby named Henry. The child’s powerful relatives took care of him and fought for him, but they could not keep the Duke’s tenants from seizing his castles, chasing out his garrisons, and starting wars among themselves.
Between Santerois and the northern edge of the wilderness lay the March of Birnia, a stretch of hills and fen. After the old Duke died, Richard led a dozen raids there. When he had savaged the countryside and burned several villages, the town of Birnia gave up to him, and he took Maria and the baby north to join him while he rebuilt what he had seized.
Great Maria (v5) Page 5
