Great Maria (13 page)

“Here. Put this where it belongs.” He touched her breast. She cradled the baby in her arms. She leaned against him.

“Show me your God-gift,” Richard said. “Is it done?”

Maria sat down to finish nursing Stephen. “Why are you here? It isn’t winter yet. Have you taken Mana’a already?”

He shook his head. The reins trailing from his hands, he sank down on his heels before her. His horse cropped the grass below the tree. “Why, are you unhappy to see me?”

She leaned forward and kissed him. He had come all the way down from the mountains just for her sake. She felt guilty she had not missed him more.

“Where have you been fighting?”

He gestured offhand. “Up there with the lizards and the rocks and the arrows.”

“Papa,” Robert screamed. He ran up the road toward them. Reaching his father he turned him by the arm away from the baby and Maria. “Papa!” He flung himself into Richard’s arms.

Maria closed her dress. Eleanor, smiling, was walking up the road toward them. Richard wrapped his son up in his arms. “Jesus, you’re big. Here, give me a kiss.” Robert screwed his face up and pursed his lips, and Richard kissed him. The little boy laughed and hugged him.

“Here,” Maria said. She tucked Stephen into his blanket and stood up. Eleanor was standing under the trees watching them, her face wearing her blandest, sweetest smile. Robert preferred her to Maria, and now he was laughing and hanging on Richard. She gave the baby to Eleanor.

“Don’t you want to see the chapel? Eleanor, take the children down to the village.” She got up, shaking the grass seeds from her skirt.

Richard lifted Robert up by the arms and settled him on his shoulder. Crowing, the little boy fastened his hands in his father’s thick hair. Maria started off ahead of them, but Richard got her by the hand and held her beside him. His fingers were ridged with callus from the summer’s fighting. While they walked across the yard to the chapel, she marked that he still stepped short in his right leg. Robert was bouncing up and down on his shoulders. Maria said, “Don’t let him pound you like that.”

“I would liefer pound you.”

Her face grew hot. She squeezed his hand, and he put his arm around her shoulders.

The outside of the chapel was finished, save for the roof and the door. The brick rectangle had three windows on each long side, a wooden porch, and a space for a double door in front. Most of the workmen were inside laying down the planks for the floor. Maria took Richard all the way around the outside, to show him the windows Brother Nicholas had carved. He looked closer at the walls themselves, how the bricks and stone were fit together, and the building laid out and leveled on the hillside.

“Your workmen made all this?”

Maria nodded, proud. They were coming around to the front door again. “The master mason taught them, that monk I told you of—he even showed a boy from the village here how to make the drawings and measurements. Arnalto.”

“Good.” Richard lifted Robert down from his shoulders and set him on the ground. “I am taking all these men up to the mountains to build me a new castle.”

For a moment, she stood still, to collect her jumbled thoughts. Robert ran shouting into the chapel, calling to everyone that his father had come.

Maria said, “When they are finished here.”

“No. It will snow up there soon. If I can’t shelter my men up in the pass, I’ll lose it. You can have the workmen again when I’m done with them.”

Maria walked several steps away from him, through the dry grass of the hillside. The chapel was nearly finished. She had talked with the monks of consecrating it on Epiphany. It was hers, her God-gift. He had not come to see her; he had just come to steal away her workmen. Richard stood in front of the chapel, one hand braced on the wall, his eyes on her. She knew she could not stop him from taking every workman away.

Before her the steep slope fell off down toward the village. Eleanor was walking along the path, Stephen in her arms. Maria picked up her skirt in her hands. “Wait,” she cried. “Eleanor, wait for me.” She ran down the stony slope, through the thorny wildflowers. Out of breath, her legs stinging with scratches, she stumbled out onto the path a few steps ahead of Eleanor.

“What’s wrong?” Eleanor said. “Oh, Maria, you’ve torn your skirt.”

“I hate him,” Maria said. She looked back at the chapel, but Richard was gone. She sat down on the path to take the thorns from her feet and began to cry.

***

With the summer over, and the tide of pilgrims dammed, the monks’ guesthouse was empty except for Maria, Eleanor, and the two children, whose beds took up one corner of the long room. Maria changed Stephen’s clothes and put him to sleep in his cradle. Eleanor was mending Maria’s torn skirt, the needle whipping back and forth through the heavy blue cloth.

“Have you seen Robert?” Maria asked. She went to the window.

“You must bow to him, Maria,” Eleanor said. “He is your husband.”

“Let him bow to me for once. He’s a dog to use me like this.”

She reached out the window to close the shutters. In the evening a cool wind blew up from the sea, across the harvested fields and the sweep of brown pasture that lay between the village and the hillside where the cave was. She had chosen this bed because of its view of the chapel. She banged the shutters closed.

“This is more important than his work—this is for God.”

“So is the Crusade.” Eleanor shook out the skirt. “It’s too great a tear to mend well, but you can use it for everyday. I don’t understand you, Maria. What will people think? You should love Richard, no matter how he treats you.”

“I hate Richard. You take him, he wouldn’t care, Robert already loves you better than me, and Stephen could learn to. You be their mother, and when you lose them, you can suffer.”

“You are overwrought.” Eleanor sat down beside her and hugged her. “It is this sickly wind of late. They will ring for Vespers soon. Put yourself in a better mood for prayer.”

Maria wiped her eyes. She sat staring at the floor, morose. The bell rang for Vespers, and Eleanor brought her cloak. They went out of the guesthouse toward the monks’ little church, built by pilgrims’ offerings.

In the clear autumn air the tolling of the bell rang like drops of water on a gold dish. From the village, spread along the narrow valley, people came walking up toward the little church. Maria with Stephen in her arms stood in front of the church, waiting for Robert. The last person went by her, and she had not found her son.

The voice of the English monk reached her, chanting the first phrase of the prayer, and the chorus of the villagers took it up. Usually with the workmen from the chapel, the congregation overflowed into the dooryard and stood looking in through the windows, but now the church was half-empty. Maria stood outside, in the deepening blue twilight, waiting for Richard to come. The night-singing birds began to call in the fields around her. From the chapel the voices of the villagers measured out their prayers. Stephen slept against her shoulder, smelling of sour milk.

Through the village came a train of mounted men and men on foot—her workmen, Arnalto leading them, their belongings in bundles on their shoulders. Richard spurred his bay horse over to her and reined in. Robert sat before him on his saddle.

“Come home,” he said. “I will put these people to work and be back for Christmas.”

“No,” she said. She did not look at Robert.

Richard made a sound in his throat. He shifted in his saddle, creaking the leather. He met her eyes.

“I am sorry to do this. I know why you are angry. But it must be done. Can’t you understand me?”

Maria said nothing. Robert was looking down from his perch in front of his father’s saddle. “Stephen is little.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “As little as his mother.” He wheeled his horse and rode away toward his parade of knights and workmen. Maria went up the hill to pray in the deserted chapel.

At moonrise, she came back to go to bed. She dreamed of riding a horse bareback over a wide yellow meadow. Noises broke into the dream. She woke with a start. In the darkness, men were rushing into the guesthouse.

Eleanor shrieked. Maria rolled out of her bed, lunging toward the cradle where her baby lay, and Stephen started his thin-voiced shrilling cry. Someone caught her from behind, his arms wrapped around her pinning down her elbows. She thrashed in his grip, grunted with effort, and kicked back, but her bare feet could not hurt him. Vast and dark, a cloth fell over her head and shoulders.

“Stephen,” she screamed. “Don’t hurt my baby—don’t hurt—”

They were dragging her out of doors, wrapped in a thick cloak. She twisted, struggling to free her arms, to kick, and screamed again. Stephen was crying. Someone would hear, someone would help her. Horizontal, she was borne swiftly along, and the folds of the cloak lay against her mouth and nose. For an instant she could not breathe. She turned her head frantically until she found air. She landed on her side on something hard. An instant later, another body rolled up against hers.

“Eleanor,” Maria called. “Eleanor.”

“Yes—I’m here,” Eleanor wailed. “Don’t fight, don’t give them reason to hurt us.”

Whatever they were lying on began to jounce and squeal along. A wagon. The baby had stopped his wails. Panicking, Maria flung herself from side to side until she lay exhausted and half-smothered against the wagon’s wall. She started to cry.

Eleanor was crying too. Maria ran out of tears and lay still, trying to hear what was going on around them. It must be Theobald, stealing them to use against Richard. But the longer she thought about that, the less likely it seemed. She lifted her head, straining to hear.

She could make out the sounds of the wagon and the team, the two men in the wagon seat, and three other horses. No one thieving her away would send only five men to do it. She lay back, brimming with anger, and squirmed over toward Eleanor.

“Eleanor,” she said softly. “These are Richard’s men.”

Eleanor fell silent in mid-sob. Maria lay still, patiently listening; at last, Eleanor murmured, “Do you really think so?”

“Yes.” Maria strained her arms against the ropes. They had bound the cloak around her above her elbows, like a wrapped cheese. She worked her arms back and forth to slide the blanket up.

Eleanor began to pray in a voice still choked from crying.

Maria rested a little. The edge of the cloth around her was free of the ropes, and a trickle of cold air dribbled in. She took hold of the material in her teeth and tugged it loose.

The ropes fell slack over her elbows. Still half-buried in the heavy cloth, she lay on her side thinking that perhaps she ought to let them take her to Richard, to apologize to him and to accept his apology, before something happened that could not be mended. She yanked her arms free, sat up, flung aside the cloak, and stood in the wagon bed.

They were rolling down the moonlit road, over the bare hills; three knights ranged alongside the wagon. One cried, “Wait!” and jigged his horse toward her. She braced herself to keep her balance when the wagon stopped.

“Don’t touch me,” she cried. She pulled the cloak up over her nightdress and struggled with the unfamiliar shoulder clasp. “If you touch me, my husband will kill you.”

The three knights reined in their horses. Maria scrambled across Eleanor’s prone body to the wagon seat and snatched Stephen from the arms of the man beside the driver.

“Hold her, damn it,” a knight called, but his voice wavered. The two men in the wagon sat motionless—they were serfs. “Stop her. Grab her, pick her up, are you afraid of her?”

Maria stepped over Eleanor and jumped down from the back of the wagon to the road. A big blond knight wheeled his horse across her path. She did not recognize him. Richard would have chosen men she did not know.

“If you stop me,” she said softly, “I will tell him that you handled me.” Ducking under his horse’s neck, she started down the road, back toward the shrine.

“Maria!” Eleanor screamed.

The knights galloped up around her, hemming her in with their horses. She cradled Stephen tightly in her arms. The moonlight shone on their mail and their shining, sweating faces.

“God’s wounds, are you all afraid of a woman?”

Maria slid between two horses and went on along the road. The ground was rough under her bare feet. The talkative knight swore, and the other knights laughed.

“You go put your hands on Gripe’s wife.”

Eleanor was still calling to her, but she ignored that; it was not Eleanor’s fight. Hoofs clattered behind her and a lone knight rode up around her.

“Now, come along,” he said. He reached for her with both hands.

“If you touch me,” she said, “you’ll have to hurt me. Get out of my way.”

“Now, listen—”

“Get out of my way.”

The knight sat up straight. He reined his horse aside, and she walked off along the road toward the shrine.

Fourteen

In the morning, with the monks, she went around the chapel to see what work they could do alone. The carpenter had hewn and shaped the planks for the rest of the floor, and the pegs were all cut. Brother Anthony had helped the workmen set down that part they had finished. He showed Maria and the other monk how to slide the grooved and tongued boards together and how to bore the holes. Twice they cut the holes through and missed the stud underneath, and when Brother Anthony finally pounded in the first peg, it broke off halfway down and they had to drill it out. At noon they were still working on the first plank.

She had left the baby with a woman in the village, who brought him up the hill to be fed at noon. Another woman had come with the monks’ dinner. They talked on the porch while Maria nursed Stephen. The baby did not like the blustering cold wind, and Maria took him under the shelter of the trees. Brother Anthony had gone into the cave to pray. He came out again through the slot in the rock and put one hand up to shield his face from the sun.

Other women were climbing the road from the village. Stephen was asleep. Maria fastened her dress and went back to the chapel porch. The monks shared their dinner with her, while the village women and half a dozen of their grown children gathered. When they had all eaten, the women and their children fell to work beside them in the chapel. Brother Anthony rushed about trying to show them all what to do. Mostly they got in each other’s way.

“Maria,” a woman called, from the front of the chapel. “Here comes someone on a big horse.”

She straightened up. She was helping to slide a plank into the floor, and the woman beside her inched toward her to take up the weight. Maria scrambled across the frame to the finished floor and went out onto the porch.

Richard was riding his bay horse up the road. Maria stood in the sunlight, watching him. Behind her the women hushed, and the children fell silent. Richard reined up in front of the porch.

“I’ve come to take you home.”

“I’m not going home. Not until my chapel is finished.”

He twisted sideways in his saddle to face her; he slung one leg around the pommel of his saddle. “Who is going to finish it? You? Do you know what you look like? You’re grubby as a serf.” He jumped down from his saddle in front of her. “Leave it. In the spring the men can come back to work on it. If you try to finish it whatever you do will carry away in the first high wind.”

Maria bit her lips. Under the trees, Stephen gave a cranky cry. “Probably,” she said. She crossed the yard to the trees, where a villager’s half-grown daughter was trying to quiet the baby. Richard followed her, leading his horse after her through the beech trees.

“Are you coming home?”

“Not until my chapel is finished.” She lifted Stephen in her arms. His blanket, his swaddlings, and his clothes were sodden. The girl held out her arms.

“I can do it, mistress. Let me do it.”

The girl took the baby away. Maria stood in the middle of the winter-naked beech trees, facing Richard. He stared at her, unfriendly. Her hands were sticky from handling the lumber and she rubbed them on her skirt.

“One more time,” he said. “Come home.”

“No.”

He turned to his horse and threw the stirrup up across the saddle. Yanking the girth loose, he reached across his horse’s withers to unhook the breastplate from the far side of the saddle.

“I thought you were going up to the mountains,” she said.

“Welf can do that. I would much rather stay here and watch you make a fool out of yourself.” He dragged the saddle off the horse’s back.

Maria clenched her teeth. She marched out of the trees toward the chapel. All the work had stopped. When she went inside, the women were standing in groups. Their eyes turned bright on her. She crossed to the edge of the floor and stooped to help lift another plank.

Every day she went up to the chapel to work. Sometimes the local women and their children helped her. Sometimes even the few men left in the village joined them, but the serfs had their own tasks, and usually she and the monks were the only workmen. Once Brother Anthony fell sick, and since Brother Paul had to care for him Maria worked alone for three days in a row. Richard lived with her in the guesthouse. They slept in two beds tied together by the legs. When he was not going around the countryside on his own business, he came up to the chapel and watched Stephen for her, but he never helped her, even when no one else was there.

Christmas came. The villagers brought them a roast goose, which they shared with the monks. Afterward Brother Anthony and Brother Paul went up to pray in the shrine. Richard gave Maria tenpence to gamble with and taught her how to play dice. They were the only people staying in the guesthouse, and no one else came by all day long. Hardly speaking, they sat on the lumpy bed and threw the dice back and forth. At sundown she paid him back the original tenpence and arranged the rest of her winnings in twenty little stacks. While she took off her clothes and put her nightgown on, he counted them.

“You’ve won half my money.”

Maria lit two more candles and put the holders on the window sill above the bed. While she nursed the baby they threw the dice a few more times. Richard counted her money again. He swore. She changed the baby’s clothes.

“Come to bed,” she said. “I’m tired and I have to get up early tomorrow again.”

“All or nothing,” Richard said. “One more throw.” He shook the dice in his fist.

Maria laid the baby down in the cradle. The candlelight filled this part of the guesthouse with a murky yellow glow. They threw the dice again; she won again. Pleased, she piled up her money.

“One more throw,” Richard said. He picked up the dice. “All or nothing.”

“You don’t have any more money.”

“I’ll owe it to you. One more throw.”

She won again.

“Once more,” Richard said.

“No.”

“All or nothing.”

“No.”

“I gave you the money to start with.”

Maria stared at him. “You must think I’m a fool.”

“One more throw.” He held out the dice to her. “Are you afraid?”

This time he won. Maria watched him sweep all the money over to his side, across the ridge in the middle where the two beds joined.

“If you were a Saracen,” he said, “I’d have Mana’a.”

He dropped the money into his wallet. She glanced down at the baby in his cradle beside the bed. Richard pinched out the candles. The darkness fell around her. She sat on her side of the bed, her head turned away from him, saying her prayers in her mind. He was right; she was a fool. His hand grazed the back of her neck.

“Stay down here tomorrow,” he said.

Maria laughed. She lay down on the bed. The air was stuffy from the smoke of the snuffed candles.

“Just for the morning then.” He pulled on her nightgown. She moved closer so that he could reach her easily. “Care about me for once,” he said.

She laughed again. Arching her back, she helped him pull the nightgown up and off over her head. She lifted her face to his kiss. The guesthouse stretched vast and open around them in the dark. His hand pressed up hard between her legs. “Just until noon.” She wrapped her arms around his waist; she laughed.

***

The winter storms broke. Half the roof blew away. She went all over the area begging straw for a new thatch, and in the constant drilling rain the two monks bound it on again. Every time the wind blew she expected to see it sail away. They built the altar. The work was hard; worse, it was dull, and several times she would have given up, but the rain had driven Richard inside and he was always at the far end of the chapel, staring at her. Brother Anthony fell sick again. Maria and Brother Paul hung the doors up three times before they opened and closed.

On Ladymas, they sanctified the church. The next sunny morning she and Richard started south toward their home. Stephen slept in a basket on Maria’s saddle. They kept their horses to a walk for the baby’s sake. Around them the low hills were bleak and patched with snow. The road was gutted; beds of pebbles showed where the rains had washed the dirt away. In the mid-morning they stopped beside the road. The sea flashed in the distance through a gap in the hills.

The baby fed hungrily. Maria shifted his weight in her arms. Richard sat down beside her on the grass. Their horses grazed behind them, crunching the twigs of the brush. Maria laid the baby down on her lap and wiped his mouth on the edge of her sleeve. Richard put his arm around her shoulders. The baby was asleep; they mounted their horses and rode on into the morning.