Great Maria (34 page)

“Maria, aren’t you coming?”

“What?”

“Why—Vespers is beginning, can’t you hear the bell?”

Maria went to the door. “I have to go to Birnia. Keep care of Jilly for me. I will come back in a few days.”

“To Birnia! Maria, are you mad?”

Maria crossed the guesthouse yard. In a double file, the people of the village, the monks, and pilgrims were climbing the hill path to the chapel. Their voices rose in a chanted prayer. The fading light of the sun lay on the chapel’s gray stone, light pink, like blood in water. The evening wind blew down the hillside and cooled her cheeks. She went back for her cloak and walked across the village to the commons to catch her horse.

***

She went alone, keeping the white mare to a comfortable trot. The sun sank. She rode into the east, toward the evening. The road stretched on before her, empty of other travelers, a pale dirt strip through the meadowlands around her. She began to hope that bandits might attack her, so that she would not have to go to Birnia.

The moon rose. The road led her over low hills and into a wood. The mare’s hoofs in their even beat sounded loud as a drum. The trees closed around her. A bat dived before her, squeaking. The mare shied. In the wood, brush crackled.

Weariness dragged at her. In the fringes of her vision, shapes moved and startled her, and she jumped out of a half-sleep. She knew she could go no farther. She dismounted, tied the mare to a tree, and slept wrapped in her cloak, facing east.

She woke up with a foul taste in her mouth, blinded by the early sun through the trees. The mare was eating the green buds off a sapling. Maria mounted and rode on. At a well in the forest, a family of serfs gave her a loaf of bread and a cheese.

She did not know what she would say to Richard when she reached Birnia. If she could not sway him, the Archbishop and the deacon Mauger would think she had broken her promise; they would damn him and probably her too. The road left the wood and followed along the southern bank of the river.

All through the day, travelers passed by. Many were pilgrims. They followed her with their eyes, a woman riding alone. In a newly built village, she begged some milk and smoked meat for her dinner, and ate it sitting beside the road above the river, which curled calmly brown-breasted through the golden hay on either side. The peace in Birnia was Richard’s doing. She wished Mauger appreciated that. A while later it occurred to her that once her father and Richard had terrorized this highway, worse even than the Saracens.

She prayed to God to help her. In a short spurt of resentment, she prayed that Mauger would suffer a suitable plague for getting her into this. She was close to Birnia now, and she put off riding on. Around the curve of the river, three or four boats appeared, netting fish.

She stood to watch. The skeins bellied out behind them, like sails filled with the river. The boatmen rowed a dozen strokes to keep the boats abreast. The current took them slowly on past her, their voices like tones of music in the distance.

The longer she waited, she knew, the harder it would be. Getting on her horse, she rode on at a short lope. The sun lowered in the sky. God would know she had kept her oath. She prayed for help, she prayed to know who was right and who was wrong.

Before her, down the plain, the town of Birnia came into sight, a haze of smoke hanging above it. Even from here, she could make out a banner flying from the peak of the Tower, on the hill above the town. The figure was Richard’s white dragon. She did not want to go there. If he had wished her to come, he would have called for her.

Her temper rose. He was going behind her back, and he deserved whatever he got. But she did not want to go up to the Tower, and eventually she turned the mare and rode into the town itself.

She left her mare at the inn stable and walked back along the street. The sun had set and everyone had gone home for supper. She put up the hood of her cloak, though the day’s heat still lingered in the town. She wanted no one to recognize her.

In the deepening twilight she reached the church and went inside. There was no one there. Two candles burned on the altar. As part of her service to the church, she provided its candles; she would have to rebuke the priest for wasting wax, lighting his candles before it was even dark. She went to the altar rail to pray.

When she had said a Credo and confessed her sins, the side door opened and a young priest came in. He crossed the nave, genuflected before the crucifix, and calmly looked Maria over from the far side of the altar. Taking up a taper, he lit more candles, filling the little church with flickering orange light.

Maria pretended to pray. Between her fingers she inspected the priest. He was her age, perhaps younger. The knobbed bones of his face showed as if the softer flesh were worn away. She sat back and caught his eye.

Instantly he was beside her. “May I help you?”

“Deacon Mauger sent me,” she said. “I am Maria of the Castle.”

“I’m sorry. Mauger is my kinsman, but I don’t know you.”

She said, “Dragon is my husband.”

His smile vanished. He said, “If you came here to argue with me—”

“No. Mauger said I’m supposed to help you.”

“I don’t see how you can help me.” He walked across the church, his hands clasped. “He says if I do not leave of my own will, he will burn my church. They have denied me food, clothes, even sleep some nights, shouting at my window.”

“I can talk to him.”

“No one can talk to him. He is flesh, and corrupt, given over to corruption, his ears are stopped to Christ.”

Maria crossed herself. The young priest’s vehemence made her uneasy. When he spoke he leaned eagerly forward; he would welcome a fight to prove his righteousness.

“He has brought Saracens here, into this very church,” the priest said. “Men who worship the false prophet Mohammet have defiled God’s most holy place.”

Maria walked away from him into the side aisle of the church. On the walls were painted scenes from the Passion. She went along until she found Jesus being lashed, where she knelt to pray that the priest might turn milder. His profligate use of candles fretted her—candles were always scarce.

Hungry, she went to the inn and knocked on the back door. The ostler’s daughter let her in. While she brought her a dish of bread and beans, the widow said nothing beyond greetings, but Maria could see how the woman itched to ask questions.

“Richard is here,” Maria said, eating.

“Oh, yes. Every morning he comes down and threatens the priest.”

“Is the priest holy? Do you like him?”

The ostler’s daughter put her hands under her chin. “I like an older man, more settled.”

“Does he preach well?”

“He makes much talk of corruption and filthiness. I suppose he is a good preacher, he is pious enough, everybody remarks on it, and very learned—he talks of places and people no one has even heard of.” She lowered her voice. “He is adamant against the Saracens.”

“Richard has Saracens with him here?”

“Several of them. But he masters them, at least, no one has been murdered yet, although I know of some who are asking to be first.”

Maria took a crust to wipe up the last of the juice. “I wish I knew what I should do.”

“I think you should come sleep. I take it you are not staying at the Tower? I will give you my bed.”

“No—I’ll wait in the church.”

The ostler’s daughter took hold of her hand. “Don’t get between them, my pet. They are stone against stone, those two.”

“I wish I were back in Mana’a,” Maria said, glumly.

“Stay with me—where will you sleep in the church?”

“On the floor.”

Maria went back to the church and walked around looking at the pictures on the walls. In them all, Christ wore the same expression of thoughtful joy—while the Romans were whipping him, while he carried the Cross. When the priest came in again, she marked the same look on his face.

“I’m told my husband comes here in the morning,” she said.

“Yes—he has said I may not preach another sermon, he comes every morning to bar folk from the church.”

The priest drew himself up proudly. She said, “What do you do, then?”

“I offer the Mass.”

“Alone?”

“With my sacristan.” His face soured. “The people here are un-Godly, anyway—few heeded my words when they could hear them daily.”

“Well,” she said, “tomorrow I will hear you.” She went into the back of the church. The priest lingered awhile. She spread her cloak on the floor and lay down on it. Finally she heard him walk away, and shutting her eyes, she waited uneasily for sleep to come.

Thirty-one

In the half-light before dawn, shouts woke her up. She sat, brushing her hair out of her eyes. Outside in the street a crowd was talking in a dozen excited voices. She heard her name spoken.

She put her clothes in order and pushed her hair back with her hands. The bell overhead in the church tower began to toll.

Dawn was just breaking. The air was fresh and cold. She opened the church door and went out onto the porch. In the square, ranged along the fence around the churchyard, a dozen people stood. They peered at her curiously. The smith Galga was among them, who had been Fulbert’s courier, a hoe over his shoulder.

The sacristan came out to the churchyard, from ringing the bell. Just behind him walked the priest. They opened out the church doors and went inside. But the people did not follow them.

Now those in the back of the crowd were leaned out to see down the street. Maria’s heart stuck in her throat. Ismael and four of his brothers galloped up to the gate, scattering the folk in the square, and dismounted.

“Maria,” Ismael said. He skidded to a stop. “Oh, wrong.”

With four more of the Majlas, Richard rode up to the gate. He put his hand on his horse’s withers, started to dismount, saw her, and settled back into his saddle. The look on his face cooled her temper.

“What are you doing here?” she said, and went up to the gate. She ran her eyes over the townspeople. “Go in. The Mass is beginning.”

No one moved. She swung the gate open. In the church, the priest’s voice began the singsong of the Introit.

A townsman stepped forward. His foot crunched on the gravel of the street. Three others followed him toward the church.

“No,” Richard said. “Ismael, get her out of here.”

“Dirty pagan,” someone called in the crowd.

Ismael’s teeth appeared against his scraggly black beard. “Emir,” he called, and spoke in Saracen.

Richard dismounted. He scanned the crowd once. When he faced Maria again, she could read nothing in his expression. He said, “Let me talk to you.”

“No.”

“Come on.” He took her by the elbow and moved her across the churchyard. The crowd suddenly quieted. Richard pushed her along up the steps and through the church door.

Just within the doors, he pulled her to one side, out of the crowd’s sight. The sacristan and the priest, in the midst of the service, stammered to a silence. Richard swung her around to face him.

“Maria, I could kill you for this,” he said, and hit her.

***

When she woke, she opened her eyes on the soot-encrusted ceiling of the good bedchamber in the Tower of Birnia. By the length of the shadows she knew it was afternoon. There was no one else in the room, and she sat up. Her jaw ached on either hinge. He had hit her once, square on the chin. She had no clothes on, there was no garment within reach to cover her. She sat for a while, listening for sounds on the stairs. At last, convinced there was no sentry outside the door, she got naked out of bed and hunted for her clothes.

The cupboard next to the window was full of William’s clothes, and before she could look elsewhere, footsteps sounded on the stairs. She got back into bed. William came into the room. When he saw her awake, his expression changed.

“Good evening, William.”

“Eh, Maria.” He fingered his ear. “It’s all up now.” He brought a stool over and sat down beside the bed. “Richard packed the priest off to Agato, and the Archbishop is going to excommunicate us.”

“No,” Maria said.

“I met a deacon of his on the road—I and the wagon with the priest. The deacon took the wagon and gave me his oath they will unchurch us next Sabbath.”

“Mauger,” she said.

“That was his name.” He stood up, patting her knee under the covers. “I’ll go tell him you are awake.”

“William. No.” She sat up, alarmed, the covers pulled up to her neck. “Give me my clothes first. William, please.”

He shook his head. He was already on his way to the door. “No, Maria.” He pulled the door shut, but it didn’t latch. A moment later she heard him calling for Richard.

She lay down, pulled the covers over her, and feigned sleep. The door swung idly on its hinges. Far off, a cow mooed. The room stank of dogs. She would always think of Birnia whenever she smelled dogs. The door creaked again, and he came quietly into the room. She breathed evenly, shallowly, as if she were asleep.

“If you want your clothes back, you can sit up and look at me.”

She sat up and looked at him, the bedclothes gathered around her. He was standing at the foot of the bed, his hands on the railing.

“You damned stupid little cunt,” he said. His voice was raw. She stared at the blanket over her knees, unable to look at him; she knew she had betrayed him.

“Your clothes are in that cupboard. I’ll have your horse saddled and in the ward tomorrow morning. I don’t ever want to see you again. I don’t want to hear your voice ever again. Just leave me alone.”

He went out of the room. The door sighed closed and halfway open again. Maria laid her cheek down on her knees. Through the narrow window, the late afternoon streamed soft pink. She prayed that he would come back. Every sound she heard drew her eyes to the door. Once it really opened, but it was only William, bringing her a dish of meat for supper.

He was edgy as a deer, gnawing the inside of his mouth. He said, “He’s calling the priest back, or I’m leaving. It’s that simple.” His voice was louder than necessary. “I’m not staying here under the ban.”

He went away again. She could not eat. She put out most of the candles and lay down to sleep. A dozen times, she dreamed that Richard came in the door. Before dawn, she put on her clothes.While she waited for the light to break, she walked up and down across the room, twisting her Saracen ring. When the sky paled, she pulled the ring off and put it on the table beside the bed.

Her mare was saddled and hitched by the reins in the ward. The cook’s knaves were just bringing the bread out of the ovens. The crusty aroma followed her out the gate. The morning was bright and crisp. She rode back to the shrine as hard as she had ridden in the other direction.

Brother Nicholas, sitting on a ladder, was painting a set of scales into his angel’s hand. He listened to her without speaking, his body smell harsh and smothering, and his brush moving rhythmically to the pot of glistening gold paint and back to the wall. Maria told him everything from the deacon’s first appearance at the shrine to the moment she left the Tower of Birnia.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “Mauger lied to me. If I hadn’t gone, Richard wouldn’t have beaten the priest. Now he is damned because of me.”

Brother Nicholas put the paint down on the ladder step. “You’re accusing Brother Mauger of something grave, but my knowledge of him fits what you say. I’ll have to talk to your lord.”

“He may not let you. But if you can reach William, he will get you a hearing with Richard.”

The monk climbed down the ladder. Maria backed away from him to get clear of his odor. He said, “You stay here. Pray, walk—rest a little.” He smiled down at her. “You seem to think you did something unforgivably wicked. But what you did was right-intended.”

She knelt down, and he made the sign of the Cross over her. The monk went away. Maria prayed a little and walked down to the guesthouse, feeling less as if she had sold Richard to the Devil.

Jilly saw her coming, shrieked, and ran across the room to meet her. A pilgrim was lying on a bed at the far end of the guesthouse. Without raising his head from the pillow, he shouted, “Can no one control that child?”

Maria picked up the little girl and carried her back to their end of the room. Eleanor caught her arm. “I was so worried about you, Jilly cried and cried.”

“I went to Birnia.”

“You said that. Why? Oh, Maria, what you’ve done to your gown.”

“Richard is there.” She sat down, Jilly on her lap. The little girl rubbed affectionately against her. She had Richard’s hair and eyes, like him she was always dark from the sun. Eleanor took the brush from their common chest, sat down, and worked over Maria’s hair, untangling the knots and snarls. Jilly played clap-hands with Maria, singing in a high-pitched scream that got the pilgrim shouting again.

“You should not have gone alone,” Eleanor said. “You might have been murdered. Or worse than murdered.” She gave Maria a significant glance.

“The roads are very safe.”

“Yet I wonder my lord let you come back alone.”

Maria clapped her hands twice on her thighs and twice on Jilly’s. The little girl sang with passion. The pilgrim roared an oath and stamped out of the guesthouse. Eleanor’s hands stroked her hair.

“Is he coming here soon?”

“Who?”

“Richard, of course,” Eleanor said. “He will be pleased with Jilly, she is so big now, and so pretty. I think he loves her best. It’s odd that a man of his nature can be so tender with children.”

Maria clenched her teeth. She felt Eleanor’s voice like a needle; no matter how she turned, it would pierce her through. Jilly sang in a treble parody of the monks’ chanting.

“Perhaps you will be with child again,” Eleanor said.

“I did not lie with him, Eleanor, we fought. He sent me away.”

The brush stopped in her hair. Jilly’s singing wavered. She looked up into Maria’s face, her forehead wrinkling. “Mama?”

“Oh, Maria,” Eleanor said.

“Mama.” Jilly reached up to her. Maria kissed her worried upturned face, murmuring nonsense to her until the child laughed again.

“If you want to know,” Eleanor said, “I think you will be happier without him.” The brush worked in Maria’s hair again. “They are the Devil’s men, those three, even William. Doing the Devil’s work.”

Maria frowned; she had heard the words before. Eleanor said, “We will stay here awhile, won’t we? Or we could go to Castelmaria. The people there love you and will support you.”

Maria rounded on her, Jilly in her arms. “Please. Don’t talk to me like this. I am unhappy, he has exiled me, why do you give me no consolation?”

Eleanor’s narrow face tightened; she had plucked out her eyebrows to thin arcs, so that she always looked surprised. “Well,” she said. “You don’t need consolation, Maria. You need prayer.” Stiffly she walked out of the guesthouse.

***

After the pilgrims, Maria walked up to the chapel for the Sabbath Mass, carrying Jilly on her hip. Eleanor came along behind her—whenever Maria saw her, Eleanor pinched her face to a blade and stared pointedly elsewhere. The sun was just rising. The dew on the grass drenched the hem of her skirts up to her knees.

Brother Martin and Brother Paul were standing in front of the chapel, talking in soft Latin. Paul was holding a piece of vellum in his hand, but Brother Martin, seeing Maria come, tapped the other monk on the arm and drew him away. Maria stopped short, so that Eleanor ran into her.

“I beg your pardon,” Eleanor said coldly.

Maria went into the chapel. Eleanor insisted she had not talked to Mauger, the deacon, but Maria knew she was lying. She went up to the front of the chapel, where the pilgrims were gathered to admire the painting.

She had begun to be angry at Richard. When she thought over the incident at Birnia, she saw how she might have stood against him, instead of cringing under his temper like a beaten dog. The pilgrims crowded around her, and Brother Paul came up before the altar to begin the Mass.

“Dominus vobiscum.

“Et cum spiritu tuo.”

“Oremus.”

Maria set Jilly down on the ground before her and gave her a piece of bread to eat. The people around her prayed in loud boisterous voices. They said a Credo and a Paternoster. Brother Martin read from the Gospels.

Paul came up to the pulpit. “My children,” he said, and coughed. He had a reedy voice and sometimes went up into the hills to exercise it with shouts. He took a charter from his sleeve.

Maria straightened up. It was the same charter he had been reading when she had come up the hill. He spread it out on the lectern and held it down with both hands.

“The Archbishop of Agato requires that this be read in all the churches of the diocese, and in the churches of the demesne of Richard d’Alene, the lord of Marna, and of his brother William, the lord of Birnia—”

Maria got Jilly by the hand. She heard the whole congregation turn to look at her. She fixed her eyes on the door and walked straight for it. Behind her, Paul read, “That this same Richard d’Alene and this same William d’Alene shall henceforth be cut off from the community of Christian men—”

She stumbled over something and went on. Brother Paul’s voice pursued her. At the door, the bright sunlight washed over her. If Brother Nicholas had been here, Paul would not have read that before her. Behind her the hum of voices broke into an excited roar. She led Jilly swiftly down the path toward the village.

Halfway down the hillside, she heard Eleanor calling to her. Maria paused in mid-stride, but she set off again at the same speed. Jilly rushed on ahead of her. Still calling, Eleanor ran after her nearly all the way to the village before she caught up.