Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  On the hill above the half-destroyed town, the Tower of Birnia was close as a stable and smelled worse. For the first few days Maria complained steadily, in hopes that Richard would send her home. The baby—they called her Ceci—was awake more during the day, and Richard was very fond of her, playing with her in his lap, while Maria argued with him over the food and the wine and the lack of servants and the smell.

  “Make it better,” he said, “and stop your damned mouth,” and she withdrew into a grim silence and wondered if she could escape.

  After she had refused to speak to him for three days, he beat her. She realized he would not let her go home. She went to the kitchen and told the cook and his knaves what she wished of them, and finding women in the town to help her, cleaned the hall and swept out the stairs, where mice were living in the filth along the steps. From then on, she worked every day, and Richard spent the day gone, and they did not talk.

  The winter blew itself out in a gust of storms. Just before Lent, a messenger came from Theobald, a Count whose holdings bordered on the north of Birnia; Maria took the messenger to the hall, fed him, gave him wine, and set a knight to watch him until Richard came back. During supper, with the messenger on his right hand, Richard made small talk and exchanged bits of general news.

  Maria sat on his left, eating without appetite. Richard ignored her. She watched him through the corner of her eyes. The messenger flattered Richard in an unctuous voice. She could not remember that any lord like Theobald had ever paid such heed to her father.

  After the two hall servants had helped her take off what was left of the supper, she went up the stairs to the top room of the Tower, where she and Richard slept, and found him sitting there with the messenger. When she came in, their conversation stopped abruptly. She went to the cradle to see the baby. The sun had gone down; the only light in the room came from the fire.

  Richard said, “Maria, go downstairs.”

  She gave them a curious glance and went out the door onto the stair landing. Richard came after her. She let him see her go on down the stairs. After he had shut the door and bolted it she went back up onto the landing. Their voices reached her, but not the words. She squeezed in the narrow door on the back of the landing and climbed up the ladder onto the catwalk around the top of the Tower.

  From here their voices were as clear as if she sat beside them. She could even see a little through a hole where a slate was missing in the roof. She sat down with her arms curled around her knees, shivering from cold.

  At first they talked of obvious things: the roads, the necessity of warning one another of raiders. Since Richard had contact with the Saracens, the messenger had many questions about them. She put her cheek down on her knees. She told herself that he could not be blamed that he was not handsome like Roger, or of a kinder disposition. Richard was clever, he had a shrewd understanding, and she should be glad of him as he was and not wish he were otherwise.

  The messenger talked about the King’s brother, the Prince Arthur Fairhame, who from what the messenger said lived in Count Theobald’s pockets. Whenever he spoke of the baby Duke Henry, the messenger laughed and slighted him—“Still in a short shirt,” he said once, although Count Theobald was supposed to be the Duke’s vassal. Maria began to wish the messenger would come to his point. Richard said nothing at all.

  At last the man said, “To be candid, sir, my master the Count is counseling Prince Arthur to seize the duchy and make himself our Duke. Of course, since he has only a few knights of his own, the Prince will need our help.”

  There was a long silence. Maria bent and looked in through the hole in the roof. Richard sat with his chin in his hand, his face expressionless. She could not see the messenger.

  Richard said, “Neither Theobald nor I is such a great man in this country that our help could make anybody Duke, even that baby up there in Agato. I understand Count Fitz-Michael is the baby’s champion. If your master wants to bring Fitz-Michael down on him, that is his mistake.”

  “There are others—”

  “I dislike being one of many.”

  Maria trembled all over with the cold; her teeth rattled together. She was almost glad that Richard was getting up, even though he was ending the talk just when the business was coming out. She put her feet under her.

  “You would not be one of many,” the messenger said sharply.

  “Count Theobald as a mark of his favor will give you the hand of his daughter in marriage.”

  “Holy Mother,” Maria whispered.

  Richard sat down again. “I am a married man.”

  “Yes, but a way out might be found,” the messenger said. “A robber chieftain’s wench, we understand, of no lineage. Your only child is a sickly girl. Possibly you are bound in kinship. You know how easily these things are arranged.”

  Maria bit her lips. He spoke of her as slightly as of the baby Duke. A robber chieftain’s wench, as if she were a serf.

  Richard did not move. Finally he pushed his chair back and got up. “Well, maybe. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow. Good night.”

  Maria waited until the messenger had gone and went down to the stair landing. She opened the door to her room. Richard was sitting in front of the fire, a cup in his hand. She crossed the room to her bed and lifted the baby up, whispering to her. Before, she had been forcing herself to see Richard’s virtues. Now the thought of losing him filled her with terror and rage. He would never dare desert her. She changed the baby’s napkin. Richard was watching her; between his eyebrows were two short vertical lines. He was thinking of it, the wretch, thinking of leaving her. She put the baby in the bed. When she went back across the room, he took hold of her arm and pulled her over next to him.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. “You’re freezing.”

  She sat down in the warmth of the hearth. “It’s very cold tonight—I was in the ward.” She could not meet his eyes. His brothers were back in her castle, two days to the south; the knights here were all strangers. She had no friends here, no one to help her. She turned to put her other side to the fire.

  “Here,” he said; he gave her the wine cup. “Get your insides warm.”

  She sipped the strong red wine. “What did this man say?”

  “Nothing important.” He slouched in his chair, his chin in his hand. “Stop sulking, will you? I know you hate this place, but it’s much better now. I’m very happy with it, I wish everybody worked as hard as you do. I’d be King of Italy.”

  Maria gave him back the cup. In spite of what she knew, his voice comforted her. She turned her eyes toward the fire and wished she had not overheard them talking, so that she could trust him.

  Seven

  Just after dawn, Richard left with a dozen knights, and Maria sorted out the kitchen knaves and set them to cleaning out the ovens, on the hillside below the castle, and the kitchen itself, choked with the debris of years. Maria sat in the ward with Ceci, watching how they did. It was Lent, and most of the people were fasting, so she did not hurry them.

  The town women had come up to work, and they brought out the linen of the castle to air. Maria set the baby down in the corner and went to help them. It was a beautiful warm day, like the late springtime, beneath a cloudless blue sky, and while they shook out the linen, the women laughed and gossiped. When Ceci began to cry, a big, pale townswoman went to get her and brought her back laughing and poking her fingers into the woman’s mouth.

  Maria sat down to give the baby her breast. The other women gathered around her, admiring the baby. Beside her, the big woman got a loaf from her apron and broke it in half.

  “What a beautiful day this is,” another woman said. “Not usual at all. Lenten weather helps prayer, my father always said.”

  The others murmured in agreement. Their jaws munched steadily through their dinner loaves. The women of Maria’s village wore their hair uncovered, in braids; these had linen coifs on their heads, starched stiff as wings over each ear.

  The fat woman
beside her smiled at her. “I am the ostler’s daughter—my father is the spokesman for the town in some of our doings. We keep the inn here, of course. She is a pretty baby. What is her name?”

  “Cecily. Do you have any children?”

  The wide face was bland between the wings of her coif. “My husband died in the fire, when Birnia was destroyed.”

  “Oh,” Maria said; she felt stupid for asking. “I’m sorry.”

  “He deserved it. Maybe now when Birnia is calm again I will get another husband. Here comes yours.”

  Maria stood up to see through the open gate. Richard on his red bay horse with a couple of knights after him rode up the hill from the town. He passed through the gate and across the ward. If he saw her, in the ward among the women, he ignored her, and she sat down again. She popped the baby on her shoulder and patted her back.

  “Come, now,” said the ostler’s daughter, and got enormously to her feet. “We have six more baskets to bring down.” She touched Maria’s shoulder and led the other women off toward the Tower.

  Maria laid the sleeping baby on the grass at the foot of the wall. Some broken bales of flax stood before the doorway down into the kitchen. Two dogs were fighting over a bone on the threshold. She looked around to make sure the baby was safe and went down the steps.

  The cook appeared from the darkness in the back; he was shorter than she was, bird-faced. He hurried up to her.

  “Come tell them they do not have to brick up the wall again. They sit in there and loaf and pretend they are bricking up the wall.”

  “What wall?”

  “In the back—the old pantry.” When Maria brushed by him into the kitchen, he followed. “I told them not to brick it back up—what’s the use of that, I said—”

  Maria walked across the dark filthy kitchen into the back, where the pantry was. Here stacks and bales of goods had been piled up against the walls on either side, except for the narrow doorway to the pantry and the cellar. Now the trash was gone. The wall there had crumbled partly away, the bricks had fallen out, and the gap showed an old doorway, which breathed a draft of cold air into her face.

  The three little knaves were briskly stacking brick on brick, and by the way they worked she guessed the cook was right: they had been loafing, or they would have finished long before. But she did not want to do as the cook said. “Unbrick it. What’s in there? The old pantry, you said. Maybe you could use it.”

  The knaves twisted to watch her. With a glance at the cook they took to unstacking the bricks. Maria moved out of the draft. With the cook behind her she went back up into the daylight and looked to see that the baby was all right. The ostler’s daughter was carrying her around, laughing.

  The cook said bitterly, “As much work as those boys do, they could do on the Sabbath and not make enough of a sin to pray over.”

  “Keep watch on them—make them do it.” She crossed the paving stones to the sunlight, where the women were drinking cups of water and saying how weak they felt, and the fasting hardly begun. Lying on the grass in their midst, the baby rolled onto her back and played with her fingers.

  “My lady,” the cook’s reedy voice called. He was coming toward her at a fast walk. “Lady—”

  Maria stood up; he bustled over to her. “Lady, there is something there. God willed it. God told us to open up the pantry again.”

  Maria headed toward the kitchen. “What do you mean?”

  The cook shook his head. After walking across the ward and halfway back, he was out of breath. His face glowed importantly red. “This fellow Walter Bris,” he said, his voice lowered, “the man who commanded here when my lord Richard came, you know, he was not the true lord of this castle. This used to be a thieves’ nest, here, quite like—” He cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed. She went after him into the kitchen and back toward the pantries.

  They had lit another torch, casting light into every corner of the back of the kitchen, and through the unbricked wall into the old pantry. The light showed a huge old clothes chest, half-buried in dust in the corner.

  Maria caught her breath. She climbed through the rubble of the bricks and knelt beside the chest. She could not move it, not with her whole weight pushing it, and the lid was rusted tight.

  She went out to the kitchen. The three knaves and the cook stood out of the draft, their faces beaming. To the cook, she said, “Stay here. Let no one in. I’ll be right back.” She herded the knaves out of the kitchen and ran across the ward to the Tower.

  Richard was not in the hall. She climbed the stairs toward the top room. Halfway up she heard a stranger’s voice there. She missed the first few words of what he said, but drawing closer, she overheard enough to know what he was talking about. She stopped on the stair, just below the door.

  “My lord,” the stranger said, “what further worth is she to you? You have what you wed her for, Strongarm’s castle and his men. Count Theobald’s daughter will make you a lord.”

  Richard laughed. Maria could make nothing of his laughter. She went in the door, to stop them talking. Both the men spun toward her, their faces taut. The other man she had seen before: one of the castle’s knights. She said, “Richard, there is something down here you must attend to,” and turned away before he could read her expression. The other stood on the hearth. Her hands were shaking. She went out again onto the stair landing.

  “I’m coming,” Richard said. “Good day, Walter.”

  Walter Bris, Maria thought. Richard behind her, she went down the stairs to the hall.

  “What is this, anyway?” Richard asked. “I’ve got important things to do—”

  “This is important,” Maria said. She led him across the hall to the outer staircase and down into the ward. The women were all sitting in a knot, playing with Ceci. She and Richard walked past them to the heaps of garbage before the kitchen door.

  The knaves loitered in the shade, their heads ducked together in some gossip. Maria took Richard down into the kitchen, where the cook was standing bolt upright before the gap in the wall, like a sentry.

  Richard went on before her into the pantry. She stopped to send the cook outside again. When she reached her husband, he was kneeling by the chest, swearing in a soft monotone in the darkness. His hands ran over the leather straps and the lid.

  “Give me a fire-box.”

  She handed him her tinderbox. He got the charred linen burning and used its feeble light to go quickly over the locks on the chains that held the chest to the wall. The light flickered out. He set the tinderbox impatiently aside, tried to force the lid and could not, pulled and shoved at the chest without moving it at all, and sat back on his heels.

  “Devil damn me,” he murmured. In the dark she could not see his face.

  “Whose is it?” Maria asked.

  “Mine, now.”

  He took hold of the chest and strained to move it. “That knight who was with me, just now—he was master here when I came, but he had only been here a few months, and this has sat for years, this box, look at it.” He put his hands lovingly on the chest. “He’ll cry all night when he hears of this, will Walter Bris.”

  Maria put her lips together to keep from saying anything about Walter Bris. Richard stood up straight to draw his sword. The light from the kitchen leaped along the blade. With its edge he burst open the lid. The hinges shrieked. Maria craned her neck to see.

  “Well,” Richard said. The chest was packed with dark cloth sacks. He lifted one, and the rotten fabric gave and chips of dull metal fell out, flooding over the edge of the chest into the dirt. Maria grabbed one and spat on it and rubbed it to a patchy shine on her skirt.

  “Silver.”

  Richard got up. “Come on.” He pushed her toward the door and they went out into the kitchen. The cook hung in the doorway. Richard pointed to him.

  “Go get Ponce Rachet down here. He’s in the hall.”

  The cook strode eagerly away. The three kitchen knaves crowded into the doorway; when the cook went
up the steps they pressed him with questions. Richard held out his hand toward Maria.

  “Give me that money you took.”

  She handed it to him. He went up into the doorway, to look at it in the sunlight. “Saracen. Somebody’s treasure horde. Walter Bris is going to weep.” He put the coin in his wallet. “Get those people away from there.”

  She herded the knaves and the little crowd that had gathered behind them back across the ward. Richard stood in the kitchen doorway, his eyes intently on nothing and his arms folded over his chest. Maria went over to the serving women to get the baby.

  The women surrounded her, bursting with questions, and she shook her head. “I know nothing. It is all nothing to me.” Ceci was playing on the ground among them. She looked up and beamed at her mother. Maria lifted the baby and settled her on her hip, smiled at the ostler’s daughter, and went to the Tower.

  On the steep outside stairs she passed Ponce Rachet, hurrying down from the hall. Richard was still in the kitchen doorway. Maria went up to her bedchamber on the top of the Tower.

  There was no one in the room. She changed the baby’s clothes and put her to bed for a nap. From the window, she watched Ponce Rachet carry a heavy leather sack up from the kitchen, pause to ease his arms, and start across the ward. Maria rubbed her palms together. She wanted to kill Walter Bris, but she did not know how. She would have to get him alone, in a lonely place. He was strong, a grown man in his prime, so she would have to catch him by surprise. She could poison him, but someone else might die by mistake, and she put aside that idea.

  The door downstairs banged open. Feet tramped up the stairs toward her. She went to the rack beside the cupboard where Richard kept his weapons and got a dagger with a long thin blade. God expressly forbade murder, but she would think of that later, when it was done. What he had said about her was worse than murder. She knew how Richard’s ambitions ran: If Theobald’s daughter would bring him what he wanted, she and Ceci would only be in his way. She tucked the dagger in her sleeve, kissed the baby, and went out, past Ponce Rachet coming up the stairs with a sack of treasure on his shoulder.