Great Maria (23 page)

“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.

Along the road, in the trees, skeletons hung in chains. Once they passed a huge flat mound of dirt beside the road, with a great cross standing at one end and a fence of Norman swords thrust into the ground around it. Stephen, standing in the cart, counted forty-three.

Maria knew it for a grave. It moved her almost to tears; she could not tell why. Eleanor muttered of Devil’s work. After that, the road traveled steadily downward. Often they saw riders in the distance, up on the slopes, watching them. At last they came out of the mountains. They had gone from fall to winter to summer again, all in eleven days; in these low foothills, flowers bloomed, trees were green, and even the air smelled sweet.

In the far distance the sea ran white along the shore. Laughing with excitement, they hurried toward it. On either side of the road, there were orchards full of trees. A delicious fragrance came from them, and the trees were heavy with golden fruit. Even Eleanor murmured at the odor, and Maria made them stop and bring her some of the fruit, but the hard little yellow globes were too sour to eat.

In the late afternoon they reached the sea. The road ran along the foot of a tall dirt cliff, combed and rutted by the weather. Saracen trees cluttered the top: scaly stalks topped with clumps of leaves like huge green feathers.

On their right the bay spread out before them. Stephen bounded out of the wagon and ran through the salt grass toward the beach, ignoring Eleanor’s angry hail. Maria had just finished feeding Jilly. She laid the baby against her shoulder and patted her back. Inland of the road, the cliff rose like a wall. People walked on top of it. She stood on the wagon seat, looking for her son. Birds dipped and sailed over the dark blue water of the bay. Smaller birds ran back and forth along the beach after the waves.

Stephen was only a speck racing along the sand. Beyond him, on the shore, lay a mass of wreckage. Maria put her face to the wind and breathed of the salt-charged air.

“Maria,” Eleanor said. She tugged at Maria’s skirt. “You’ll fall. You’ll drop the baby.”

Maria thrust Jilly into the other woman’s hands. Sitting down, she pulled off her shoes. “Stephen! Stephen, wait for me.” She leaped down from the wagon and ran through the jagged grass onto the beach.

Screaming with pleasure, Stephen was chasing the breakers. Tiny brown birds raced away from him over the wet sand. He had lost one of his shoes in the ruck of seaweed and shells at the high-tide line. Maria stopped to get it.

“Stephen!”

Far out on the bay, there were Saracen boats, their triangular sails full with the wind, pretty as birds. Maria followed her son down the beach. Tendrils of her hair escaped from her coif and stuck to her cheeks. Her lips tasted salt. She strode out, stretching her limbs, her hair flying out behind her.

“Mama,” Stephen shouted. He had reached the heap of wreckage and was climbing on it. “Look at this. It’s some kind of boat.”

Maria ran after him, walked to catch her breath, and broke into a run again. Drawn up on the sand was a rank of wooden barges, crusted with dead weed and scale. When she climbed up onto the first, she saw that there were fifty or more of them, pulled up on the sand, joined by a chain whose links were as wide as her waist.

“What is it?” Stephen leaped toward her along the wrecked barges.

“The chain for the mouth of the harbor.” She bent to put her hands on the link nearest her. Hot from the sun, it would not budge even when she threw her whole strength against it. She stood up, wiping the rust from the palms of her hands.

“Someone is coming,” Stephen said.

Maria straightened. A line of horsemen filed down the cliff. Two of the riders had left the road and were galloping toward her through the stalky grass. Even from here, she could see the leader’s flamboyant hair. She flung up her arm.

“Roger!”

He saluted her, reined his horse in, and jumped down from his saddle. “My sister.” With his hands on her waist, he lifted her down from the barge. His smile flashed; his handsome face was vivid. “Sweetness,” he said, “how pretty you are now.” He hugged her. When she innocently raised her head he kissed her mouth hard. His tongue stabbed into her throat. She stepped back, unnerved, and he turned to Stephen.

Rubbing her mouth, Maria looked at the other rider, who was just reining up. It was Robert. She ran to meet him. He dismounted and stood before his horse, and from the stiff way he stood she knew she should not kiss him. He stood almost to her shoulder. “Robert. You’re so tall.”

In his tanned face his eyes were blue as the bay of Marna. He said formally, “Mother, I am very glad to see you again—and my brother—” He broke, he rushed into her arms, and she hugged him and they both wept. She kissed his hair.

“Richard sent us to meet you,” Roger called. He stood behind Stephen, his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “He has important work to do. Something with the old Emir.” Lifting his arm, he called out in the sharp-edged tongue of the Saracens. “Robert, go get your mother’s horse.”

Robert leaped back into his saddle and galloped away. Roger came up beside Maria. He gave her a long oblique look, smiling. She moved a step off from him.

“Roger. You shouldn’t have done that.” She touched her mouth.

“Maria,” he said, “you have owed me that kiss since Iste.”

“I suppose I should be flattered. You are a hero now, I guess—even in Birnia they talk about you.”

“Oh, as far away as all that? We are great men now, sweetheart. We have already had a spokesman from the Pope to visit.”

Maria’s mouth fell open. “From the Pope? From Rome?”

A Saracen was riding up from the road, leading her mare by the reins. Robert rode to meet him, and they galloped toward her. Roger said, “Yes. From Rome. You cannot tell, these days, but I think we got the honest Pope.”

“What did he say?”

Robert and the Saracen reached her. She took her mare’s reins. Roger lifted her up into the saddle. The Saracen was watching her. Roger said, “Ismael, this is my brother’s wife.”