Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  “Seize Maria,” the voice behind her yelled. “They’ll give us bread if we take her hostage.”

  There was a rumble from the crowd, and glancing over her shoulder she saw, here and there, a man with a weapon step forward toward her. In the cart Eleanor let out a low wail. Stephen stood and put his arm around the woman’s shoulders. Maria spun her mare.

  “Wait,” she shouted. “Listen to me before you do anything. I am your lady—I am here to help you. If you lay hands on me, you’ll get nothing at all.” She rode her horse at a fast walk around the cart, past Eleanor’s white face and Stephen’s eyes. All around them were the mobbed faces of the crowd and the scythes sharp as sawgrass. “I’m starving too, I and my children. Besides, if you touch me, Dragon will never sleep until he spikes your heads on the walls of your own town. Trust me—I’ll take care of you, I have before.”

  Their bulled shoulders loosened, and the crowd stirred, here and there a man nodding. “Save us, Maria,” a woman cried, and a feeble cheer went up.

  In the back of the crowd, a woman climbed up on a barrel and shouted, “Don’t listen to her—she’s Dragon’s wife, she lies, the witch!”

  Maria kept her mare walking swiftly around before the crowd. Among the brown faces of strangers she saw people she knew. In a voice pitched to reach them, she said, “You people from Birnia town—you know me. Why are you letting these people come here from all the wild places and stir up trouble for me? You know who will suffer for it in the end.”

  “Maria,” a man called, and the cheer came back, stronger now. The woman who had shouted against her climbed down off the barrel and disappeared in the crowd.

  “I’m going to talk to the merchants,” Maria called. “Go home—stay here—do what you will, but let me talk to them. I promise you will eat as soon and as well as I do.” She turned her mare, and with the carthorse loping on before her she followed Stephen and Eleanor at a fast trot down the street to the market place.

  Jean rode up to join her. In the wide treeless square, people roamed about by threes and fours. The merchants and their soldiers were gathered in a clump before the church. Maria’s knights rode in a single file out of another street and came to follow her. Before the north gate, across the square from the church, another mob was swarming restlessly along the foot of the wall. With Jean half a length behind her, Maria rode up to the merchants, who were all on foot.

  Manofredo in a splendid marten’s fur cloak held up both hands toward her. “My lady, I absolve you of all blame for the way we have been—”

  “Who are you to come in here and make trouble with my people?” she said, and when he started, his eyes round as balls, she bound her face into a terrific frown. “You’ve made a fine mess here for me—what will you do to help me clean it up?”

  “My lady! I assure you, we had nothing to do—there is treason here! What these people are saying about our most excellent prince—”

  Maria said, “They are starving. And if there is treason here, it’s against me, and I will deal with it, not you. I’ll buy all your grain at a penny a measure.”

  Manofredo’s voice failed in his throat. He gobbled at her, horrified. Maria looked around her. The other merchants were staring at her, their mouths slack. “How much grain do you have?”

  “My lady!”

  Maria crooked her finger at the knights. “Surround these men. This one must have the keys to the storeroom, get them and give them to me.”

  “My lady!”

  The knights wheeled their horses up around the merchants. Most of them carried their lances on their saddles. The merchants’ men-at-arms stood fast by the townsmen, but their four knights, all Normans, obeyed Maria.

  “How much grain do you have?”

  “My lady, at a penny a measure we will lose money. We could sell at that price in Iste.”

  “Then go back to Iste,” she said. “I will keep the grain and send you whatever my counting comes to.”

  The merchants’ frightened, angry faces tilted up toward her.

  She looked steadily at each of them; she made her expression like a wall to cow them. One by one, they turned to Manofredo.

  “We have no choice, then,” the merchant said. “But you may be sure we will take this to my lord Roger’s court in Iste.”

  Maria shrugged. “Do as you please.” Relaxing, she stretched her neck to look around the market place. “Jean,” she called, “get these people out of the streets. Tell them if they are not indoors or outside the gates by noon, you will chase them out.”

  Jean shouted orders, and the knights reined their horses around and galloped off. Manofredo folded his arms over his elegant fur-covered stomach.

  “We have Christian justice now in Iste,” he said. “You will see that we are people of consequence.”

  Maria wheeled her mare away. Jean came up to her; the wind lifted his long gray hair. “My lord Dragon isn’t going to like this.”

  “That’s not your concern.” She looked around the market place for Father Gibertetto. Stephen was trying to climb out of the cart, and she went over and took him up before her on the mare.

  “Maria,” Eleanor said. “Maria, what’s going to happen to us?”

  The ostler was coming, followed by his servants, all in arms. Maria called him over. While he crossed the market place toward her, she thought of Fulbert.

  “Jean,” she called.

  The knight pressed his horse sideways toward her. “My lady.”

  “The butcher. He’s behind this, most of it. Will you do something about him?”

  Jean smiled at her. “My lady.” Drawing his sword, he rode off toward Fulbert’s shambles. The ostler was at her stirrup. Maria dismounted to arrange with him the distribution of grain to the crowd.

  ***

  In spite of that, most people went hungry that winter. Maria had to give away much of her own store. Being with child, she suffered the famine badly, lost two teeth from the back of her lower jaw, and spent many days in bed.

  They heard in the middle of Lent that Richard had forged a great chain in Iste and borne it by eighteen wagons over the mountains to Mana’a. This chain he stretched across the mouth of the bay to seal it off against ships. The serfs of Birnia got in their winter crop, and the famine eased. Many had died, especially old people. Clouds blanketed the sky at Easter, an evil omen.

  Fattening on the spring honey and the blancmange she always craved when she was pregnant, Maria grew stronger and happier. In the summer, together with a large company from the town of Birnia, she made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Virgin, walking most of the way, although she was great-bellied with child. On the way back, she met a messenger galloping along the road from Birnia.

  Before he even reined up his horse, he was shouting his news. Mana’a had surrendered. The Emir of the city had done homage to Richard. The news was to be announced in every church in the demesne, and everyone was to celebrate the rescue of the city from the hands of the Saracens, the victory of the Crusade, the triumph of Christ. As soon after the baby was born as she could safely travel, Maria was to come to Mana’a.

  She sent the messenger on to the shrine and went herself to the church of Birnia, prayed, and helped Father Gibertetto with the proclamation and the sermon. The people of the town were still simmering over the incident of the grain merchants of Iste, and to put them in a good humor for celebrating, Maria gave the ostler enough wine to get the whole county drunk. That night, while bonfires glowed all over the countryside and the people of the castle drank and danced and fornicated in the ward, she bore a baby girl.

  That she took for a sign, that God should have finally given her another daughter. She made several presents to the Shrine of the Virgin and named the baby Judith. But everybody instantly called her Jilly.

  Eleanor carried the baby all over the castle, showing her off and letting the other women make much of her. Maria had forgotten how tiny babies were. With Stephen beside her she sat in her bed watching the creature t
witch her wrinkled hands and struggle her head up off the coverlet.

  “Ugh,” Stephen said at last.

  “Yes. I know.” She gathered the baby up. “But she will be beautiful, someday.” She kissed Stephen’s forehead. “You looked just as bad, and now see how handsome you are.”

  Stephen squirmed over to lean against her shoulder. “Did Robert look like that?”

  “Yes. And Ceci, too.”

  Eleanor came in with a stack of clean swaddlings. She sailed around the room straightening up the mess. “Stephen, you are a big boy now, you must not sit on Mama’s bed.”

  “Stay,” Maria said.

  “You are babying him,” Eleanor said, in a nerve-jangling singsong. “His father will not like that. Come, Stephen. Leave Mama alone with the new baby.”

  Stephen stuck out his tongue at her. Eleanor grunted and carried a pail of dirty napkins down the stairs.

  “Who was that?” Stephen said. “Who you said before. Ceci.”

  Maria gave the baby her breast. Inexpert, the little girl fumbled away the nipple and let out a squall. “Ceci was your first sister, whom God took to Heaven before you were born.” She held her breast in the baby’s mouth. Soft as air, the baby’s lips sucked, and deep in her body something tightened pleasantly.

  “Why?” Stephen asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were you sad?” He lay down with his back across her legs, his arms stretched out, and played with Jilly’s foot.

  “Yes. I’m still sad, in fact.”

  “God won’t take me, will he?”

  The baby was sucking hard now. Maria smoothed down the tendrils of waxy hair clinging to her skull. Patches of fur grew almost invisibly on the baby’s back and shoulders. She said, “I hope he doesn’t, because I would miss you so much, but if God should take you, it would be to Heaven, where God rules, which is better than any place in the world.”

  “Even Mana’a?”

  Maria laughed. “Even Mana’a.” Her laughter had startled the baby; she cried. The tiny piping made Maria laugh again, fascinated. Stephen said, “Do you love Jilly as well as you love Robert?”

  Maria nodded. There was a long pause.

  “Do you love her as well as you love me?”

  “I love you all.”

  “Exactly the same?”

  “Not in the same way.” She touched his hair. “I love Robert because he is Robert, and you because you are you, Stephen Fitz-Richard. And Jilly because she is Judith.”

  “Judith,” Stephen said. He rolled onto his stomach and smiled up at her. “I love the baby too. When I grow up I’m going to marry her.”

  “I thought you were going to marry me.”

  “You already have a knight.” He took the baby’s foot in his hand. “Jilly. Judith. Jilly. Jilly.”

  Twenty-three

  After the next quarterday, which was Michaelmas, she put Eleanor and her children in the cart and started off to Mana’a. First she went to Castelmaria, her home, where she met William on his way back to Birnia. For two days she lingered there, talking to him about Birnia. To be back in the place where she had been born and grown up made her content.

  “Tell me about Richard,” she said to William. “Was he angry with me for robbing the merchants of Iste?”

  William’s face altered subtly. His eyes buried themselves in wrinkles. “I will leave him to tell you that. I think you did right—I know those people, especially Fulbert, and of course you had only a few knights.”

  “Then he was angry.”

  “Oh, he said a lot of remarkable things. You know how Richard talks. Did you do something about Fulbert?”

  “He is dead.”

  William smiled a slow, wide smile. “I told him you would.”

  At dawn, after Eleanor swaddled herself and the baby in acres of coats and Maria put Stephen twice into the cart, William himself led her black mare from the stable. He was taking 120 knights back with him to Birnia and did not grudge her the six men of her escort, now lined up in a column on the road. He helped her into the saddle. With one hand on her mare’s withers, he looked up at her, his jowly face earnest.

  “Maria, my darling, whatever happens to you in Mana’a, you can always depend on me—I was like Roger, I never believed you would hold Birnia, but you did.” He took her hand, turned her palm up, and kissed it. Standing back, he lifted his arm in a salute and walked away. Maria with a surge of affection watched him go to the gate. She folded her fingers over his awkward tender kiss. When they rode out the gate, he waved to her.

  Their way led across the rounded, pine-covered foothills to the south. Stephen made Maria let him ride in front of her on her horse. The steaming heat of the early autumn raised a putrid, insect-ridden miasma from the marshes that lay in the pockets between the hills. Eleanor covered the baby’s face with her blanket. Once, halfway to the high road, they passed a train of serfs and their donkeys, carrying earth in baskets to the swamp. Maria could not guess why they chose to settle here. She slapped at the insects that hung whirring around her ears and eyes. Half-wild with bites, her mare lunged and bucked and pawed at her underside.

  They reached the high road. Now, massed shoulder to shoulder, the mountains heaved up before them, their lower slopes still summer-green. Eagles floated in the air above the naked black crags. On the third day after they had left Castelmaria, they reached the Black Tower, built on a peak above a narrow pass, where the German knight Welf Blackjacket had already taken command.

  From a window on the staircase, Maria looked out across the heartland of the mountains. Vast and cold, the toothed ridges rolled off one beyond another into the opaline horizon.

  “Do you like our mountains?” Welf Blackjacket said, behind her.

  Maria turned toward him. She had not heard him come up the stairs. “Yes. I have never been here before.” She followed him up to the hall of the castle. “Did Richard build this place?”

  The German knight looked over his shoulder at her. “Part of it. I built some. Saracens built some. Come here.” He went to the window opposite them. The hall was bleak as a cave; she wondered why he kept it here, on the top story of the castle, until she came up to the window.

  He made room for her so that she could see. The sun was dropping down behind the mountains. The sky streamed with oblique light. Before them, the peak rose into a spur of rock and fell away in a sweeping curve across the distance, sheltering the pass below. The sundown light began to blaze on the peaks. The lower slopes darkened and disappeared into the night. While the dark crept upward, the light on the rock spur passed from gold to fading red to purple, until at last the black night swallowed it all.

  “The Saracens call the mountains The Stepmother,” Welf Blackjacket said. “Because they are so beautiful and so cruel.”

  Behind him, a knight was lighting the torches on the walls. Welf stood staring out the window, a slight dark man in a black leather coat studded with silver. Maria hugged her arms against the sudden icy temper in the air. The tone of his voice piqued her. She said, “Were there mountains where you came from?”

  “Not like these.” He faced her, smiling. “Everyone thinks I am mad because I love these mountains—he wanted me to stay in Mana’a, but I could not.” A man brought him a long pole with a hook on the end, and the German knight reached out the window and drew the shutter closed. “Come sit down, girl.”

  Maria went after him toward the hearth. Her muscles ached; all day long they had chased Stephen up and down the slopes of the highway. She said, “Even William says how wonderful Mana’a is.”

  “Yes, as I told you, everybody thinks I am mad.”

  She laughed. They sat down at the table, their backs to the fire. Eleanor’s complaining voice reached them from the stairs, where she had stopped to rest her legs. Welf leaned his forearms on the table.

  “This is the castle he was trying to repair when you were building that church.” He clasped his hands together before him; his eyes poked at her. �
�That was very interesting—I had never seen Richard d’Alene successfully withstood before.”

  “He knew I was right,” she said.

  “Gripe doesn’t care very much about right and wrong.”

  “Gripe?”

  Welf smiled at her. “That’s what we used to call him—before he got the other name. Gripe. Because he never lets go.”

  Eleanor sank down beside Maria. “God keep me, my legs are broken.” She settled herself on the uncushioned wooden bench.

  “You knew him when he first came here, didn’t you?” Maria said to Welf.

  “I came south with him. Ponce Rachet and his brother and I and Richard d’Alene, we came all together to join your father, back the year the village burned down.” He fingered his chin. Around his neck on a chain hung a black wooden cross. “No one would have chosen Gripe out of us. He is not the bravest of us or the most highborn, and God knows his piety is very lean.”

  “No,” Maria said. “Richard will not go to Heaven.”

  His men brought their supper in on wooden platters: a fat roast, bread, an apple pudding studded with raisins. Maria kept, her eyes on the slight dark man beside her. She said, “My lord, why did you come back here?”

  The German knight took his dagger from his belt to cut his meat. The men who had served them sat down at the table, side by side with him. Many bowed their heads to pray before they ate.

  “I have no wish to dance in an orbit around anybody,” Welf said at last. “I want an epicycle of my own, however small.” He started to eat; his knife clattered on the plate. Outside, a high wind had sprung up. Maria ate greedily, her appetite whetted by the cold. The German knight said nothing more. After supper, she went to bed.

  ***

  The next morning, the road bore them steadily higher, running along the spine of the mountains. Here it was already winter. The raw wind snapped at them and chilled their faces, and snow covered the slopes. Maria began to mark how hard Richard and his knights had fought here. Twice in one day, she rode under the ruins of strongholds raised on peaks of rock so barren only eagles nested there now. Beneath one of them lay a valley charred black from end to end, like a burned-out Hell.