Great Maria (45 page)

The evening meal was all laid out before the hearth, untouched, three courses already congealing on the table. The servants, who could not eat until Richard and Maria had done, grumbled loudly at either end of the hall. The pages served the wine. Richard pulled his chair back and sat down.

“You know I’ll find out eventually where you went today,” he said, when Maria had slid onto the bench at his left. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

“We rode. We picked the flowers.”

Father Yvet came in the door. She started to rise but Richard held her down. His servants brought the churchman ceremoniously up to his chair and seated him on Richard’s right hand, facing the hearth. His spare, amused face gave her no sense of his age: she suspected he was no older than Richard, in spite of his smooth gray hair.

The priest rinsed his mouth with wine and ate a few bites. He would not let the servants give him more than a morsel or two from each dish, although Maria marked that he ate even of the spiced Saracen eggs that Ponce Rachet’s cook was just learning to make well.

The churchman raised his head and smiled at her. “I have heard much spoken of the Shrine of Saint Mary. I understand it is a local place of pilgrimage.”

Richard put his elbows on the table. “Yes. There’s some old story of a miraculous well. Ask Maria, she goes there nearly every year.”

“Yes.” Father Yvet smiled at her, paternal. “You built the little church there. Tell me about your shrine, child.”

“Oh,” she said. “It’s just a woman’s place. A cave in the hillside. I’ve been told there is a hermit on the mountain, but no one has ever seen him.” It embarrassed her to speak of it to so polished a man. “You must have made many pilgrimages, Father—to the great holy places.”

“Yes—I am just now come from Ephesus, in fact, where Timothy was bishop.” He spoke of Constantinople and Nicaea. Ponce Rachet came in and spoke, low-voiced, into Richard’s ear. The churchman was describing a Byzantine court, and trying to hear both she caught neither.

Father Yvet was full of stories, and clearly he was in no hurry to get to the point of his visit. Maria leaned on the table to listen. Richard stroked his moustaches down with his thumb. Father Yvet mentioned Antioch and several other Bible places.

“Of course no pilgrimage really is worthy of the name, not after one has made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem itself.”

“You’ve gone to Jerusalem,” Maria said. “But that is perilous, in these days, Father—you make too little of your courage.”

“Lady.” He bent his beaming smile on her. “Courage is the virtue of the Crusader, like your lord. The virtue of the pilgrim is humility.”

“Perhaps.” Maria folded her hands in front of her on the tabletop. “The knight at least can fight if he is attacked.”

“Yes. But the pilgrim can run away.”

Maria smiled, pleased with that. Suddenly she liked him, she felt a bond with him.

“No pilgrim can outrun a knight,” Richard said. “The Christians of Jerusalem won’t fare peacefully under this new Emir.”

Father Yvet sat back to let a page serve him from a tray of cheeses. “We have exchanged messengers with the Sultan of Baghdad, to deal with that.”

Richard said, “Which Baghdadi Sultan?”

Father Yvet’s smile stuck forgotten on his face. “You are well informed.”

“Not me. The Venetians. They put into my harbor in Mana’a. Excuse me.” He pulled his chair around to talk again to Ponce Rachet. The churchman’s lean face, no longer humorous, was aimed at him like an ax.

“Constantinople, Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch,” Maria said. “Where else have you traveled, Father Yvet?”

He turned toward her, smiling again. “In truth God made me a wanderer in this world. I’ve been east as far as Mosul and west as far as Aachen.”

“Aachen,” Maria said. That was the Emperor’s castle. She looked quickly at Richard. Ponce had gone away.

Richard put his hand on his beard. “Where is Mosul, Maria?”

She shrugged. It sounded like a Saracen name. “Africa?”

Now the two men were laughing at her. She stood up. “I would stay to entertain you more, since I do it so well, but you must have your own high-minded man’s talk.”

“No,” Father Yvet said. “Stay, child. I did not wish to drive you away.”

“You did not, my lord.” She went out the door.

When her women had helped her take off her clothes and put on a nightgown, she dismissed them for the night. From her chest she got the little packet of the love potion. The women had banked the fire and lit most of the lamps. The room smelled of the fragrant burning oils. She went to the cupboard, between the bed and the wall, and poured out a cup of the wine.

She shook a little of the scaly brown powder from the leather packet into her palm. Probably it would not work until she burned the shirt and the hair. She sprinkled a pinch of the dust onto the surface of the wine. It did not look like very much and she put in another pinch.

“What are you doing?” Richard said, behind her.

She jumped straight in the air. Whirling to face him, she hid both hands behind her back. He reached around her, and she slid away along the wall, toward the cupboard.

“What are you doing? You are poisoning me.” He grabbed her around the waist and snatched for the wine cup.

Maria held the cup away from him at arm’s length. She tried to twist out of his grip, but he pinned her against the wall, leaning on her, and stretched his hand toward the cup. His fingertips brushed the chased surface. Behind his back, she flipped the leather packet onto the floor under the bed. Richard’s full weight pressed on her, hard, and she let him have the cup.

“What is this?” He stood back a step, still holding her around the waist. Suspiciously he sniffed the wine.

“It isn’t poison.” To prove it, she drew the cup and his hand down, her fingers over his, and sipped the wine. “It’s a philtre.” The wine tasted sweet of herbs.

“What?” He pried her hand away and when she reached for the cup again held it up beyond her grasp. “A love potion. To keep me faithful or to make me strong? Neither one’s a compliment.”

“A woman in the fen devised it.” She leaned against him. “Drink it—what harm can it do?”

He lowered the cup and drank. Maria waited, keen with interest. He set the cup to her lips, and she drank three swallows. He finished the rest. They stared at each other. She searched his face.

“Do you feel anything happening?” he asked.

“No.” Whole wine always made her head whirl. “Do you?”

“Well, not real—Yeeeow!” He sprang at her.

Maria shrieked. She dodged around the foot of the bed. Richard began to laugh. He sat down on the bed, his shoulders shaking, and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks into his beard.

The baby cried, and Maria went to quiet him. “I don’t think that was funny.”

Richard’s laughter chuckled off. He wiped his face on his sleeve. Maria rocked the baby to sleep. Every few moments Richard laughed again. He lay down on his back across the bed. She sat beside him.

“Now the fenwoman knows my wife feeds me potions.”

Maria shook her head. “I told her you are my lover.”

“Sweet Baby Jesus.”

He touched her. She lay down next to him, facing him. He propped his head up on his crooked arm. “What did you give her of mine?”

She cupped her palm over the crown of his head and brought his face down to be kissed. “Haven’t you noticed something missing? “

The drink had warmed her and made her sleepy. She touched her bare foot to his. Their legs entwined. “Did you send the messenger to Mana’a?”

“Yes, I’ve told you twice, God’s death, you are a nag. They will all be at Castelmaria, Stephen and Jilly and Robert.” He drew her down against his chest. She felt warm and drowsy, as if nothing could ever possibly go wrong. Softly she moved her hands under his clothes to his body.

Forty

Maria?” Ponce Rachet’s wife called, from the foot of the stairs.

“I am here.”

On her hands and knees, she poked her head under the bed. Rushes two fingers deep covered the floor, spotted with mouse-dung. On the far side of the room, Ponce Rachet’s wife’s wooden shoes and heavy brown hose walked into the doorway. Maria straightened up and got to her feet.

“Oh, that Father Yvet is such a charming man,” the chatelaine said. “How sad I am that he must leave so quickly.” She helped Maria pull back the bedcovers to air. Together they put the room in order, and Maria went down to her other chores.

In the afternoon, she burned the shirt and the lock of her hair in an iron pot, collected the ash, and sewed it into a piece of silk. Once again she hunted for the rest of the philtre, but it was gone. A dog had probably taken it. She put the silk into the bottom of her chest.

They left the next day for Castelmaria, riding over the hills and the high meadows where the shepherds grazed their flocks. In the afternoon, Richard went off hawking. Father Yvet rode with Maria in the column before the wagons. She had not seen Stephen or Jilly in almost a year, and she packed his ears with stories of her children. The churchman was gallant enough to pretend interest, but she marked how his gaze drifted away to the barrel hillsides, flecked with rocks and an occasional spotted goat, and she fell silent.

“Your father was master of this region, wasn’t he?” Father Yvet said, at last.

Maria glanced sharply at him. “My father was a robber.”

“A robber!” Startled into laughter, he turned his handsome head toward her. “What do you mean?”

She lifted one shoulder. “He robbed the shepherds and the pilgrims and the Saracens. That’s what Richard meant, last night, that knights could outrun pilgrims. This was all wood, here, and wasteland. There was no other way to live.” It occurred to her that Richard might not want her to tell him that. “But we are honest folk now.”

He said, “My child, you could not be otherwise.”

Maria laughed. “You are very kind. After these mighty people you have met, we must seem very plain. I hope you will come to Mana’a.”

“Perhaps I may.” His face quickened with interest. “A robber. Of what race?”

“We are all Normans. Are you? Where were you born?”

“I am a Lombard by birth. The name of my home village you would not know.”

She did not have to prod him more to get him talking about himself. His graceful speech and his fine, elegant face held her the rest of the afternoon. At nightfall, when they had stopped in a rocky meadow to make a camp, they rode together to the edge of the grass, where the grooms were tethering the horses. Father Yvet dismounted and came to help her from the saddle.

“Then your husband was a robber,” he said, looking up at her, and she took his hand and let him lower her to the ground. “Of course.
Dragon
.” He took her arm in his. The meadow was already full dark, swarming with people bringing wood and taking horses. Fireflies glinted in the trees around them.

To himself, he muttered, “So the Emperor was humiliated by a common thief.”

Maria kept silent. His tone rubbed. Here and there around them, a campfíre crackled up in a burst of flame. Suddenly Richard on his dark stallion blocked their way, a hawk on his fist. He threw the churchman a vicious look, dismounted, and said to her, “Come walk with me a little.”

“I will.” She disengaged her arm from Father Yvet’s, but up ahead, the baby cried. “There, you hear that,” she said. “Go put your horse up.”

He gave Father Yvet another prickly stare and led his horse away. The churchman watched him go, his face lively. “He is jealous of you.”

“No. He’s just taken the hawk’s humor.”

She went up to the fire and got Henry from the maidservant’s arms. Sitting down in the warmth, her back to the crowded meadow, she opened her dress and gave the baby her breast. Her women kept the other people away from her. While the baby tugged heartily on her breast, she thought over what the priest had said.

Richard sat down beside her. “You have a courtier now.”

“I wonder at you sometimes. Even Father Yvet remarked you are jealous of him.”

“Did he? Good. What did he say to you?”

She put her hand against the baby’s fine hair. On the top of his head the pulse thrummed evenly. “I told him my father was a robber. He made much of that.”

“God’s death. Why did you tell him that?”

“Should I not? Perhaps you should tell me all the things I may say, as for example,
Good day,
or—”

“Stop,” he said. “Tell him anything you want. You said he made much of it. How do you mean?”

She repeated what Father Yvet had said about the Emperor. Richard sat scratching his beard under his chin. The fire shining on his eyes turned them clear as light.

“Do you like him?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose so. Yes, I like his voice.”

“Which one?”

Gorged, the baby had fallen asleep. She said, “I like Father Yvet very well. He doesn’t go off hawking and leave me to ride by myself.” She pulled her dress closed.

“Now who is jealous? I think you are right, catkin. Father Yvet is here to make me bow. But not to the Emperor.”

“To whom, then?”

“Father Yvet, to start.”

Maria gave the baby to the maid. Behind her, in the trees, the wind clacked branches together. His hands to the heat, the churchman stood on the far side of the fire, charming the knights there. “His father was a weaver,” she said.

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

Richard rubbed his hands on his thighs. “I will need your help.”

“Oh,” she said. “I have heard that before.”

***

“Let me see him,” Eleanor cried. “Let me see—” She stretched her arms out for the baby. Maria stepped away from her horse. The ward at Castelmaria was dense with people. Everybody was talking and laughing at once. Richard’s horse walked up before her. He shouted to someone on the wall. Maria went through the mob, searching for Jilly and Stephen.

“Maria!”

Flora ran up to her, sobbing, and they embraced. The old woman babbled nonsense, as if Maria were a baby. She reminded Maria of Adela, of her mother, of her childhood; she too began to cry.

Stephen was standing on the step into the New Tower. Beside him, there was a little girl with long brown hair. Maria, entangled in Flora’s arms, called out to them, but if they heard her they made no sign of it, they did not smile or come toward her. Eleanor, behind her, had the baby. Flora’s mouth was already pursed to coo at him. Maria crossed the ward to the New Tower door.

“Stephen,” she said. She tried to put her arms around him, but he pulled sharply away from her.

“My lady, don’t kiss me, I am too old for that now.” He turned. “Jilly, come greet our lady mother.”

The little girl came grudgingly around him, her eyes lowered. Except for her shining brown hair Maria would not have recognized her. When Maria reached out to touch her, the child recoiled from her. Eleanor was coming. Maria drew back from the two strange children before her.

“Jilly,” Eleanor said, the baby in her arms, “have you shown your lady mother what a well-mannered girl you are?”

Wooden, the little girl took hold of her skirt and flexed her knees in a rigid bow. Eleanor shooed them all on through the door and up the stairs.

“I have changed your room,” Eleanor called. “I think you’ll prefer this.”

Maria said nothing. Stephen and Jilly climbed the stairs before her. She felt like a fool. She had longed so much to see them, and now they did not like her. They came to her old door and went in.

“Maria. When I heard that Richard was shot, I prayed all night.” Eleanor stabbed a kiss at her. “Oh, how you must have suffered. I prayed for you, I felt your pain. Oh, you precious, precious thing.” She crowed over the baby. “Jilly, come see your precious baby brother.”

Maria sat down on the bed. The old cupboard was gone—her mother’s cupboard. The bed was turned against a different wall. Strange thick carpets covered the floor. Jilly was looking unwillingly down at the baby, her hands twisting murderously behind her back.

“Jilly,” Maria called. “Come here.”

Stephen hurried into the room. Two porters brought a chest after him. The maids were all clustered around the baby. Maria wondered if Jilly had even heard her. Stephen came by her side.

“Mama.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “There.”

“What are these, Rahman’s manners?” She wrapped one arm around him. He struggled, and she hugged him hard against his will. He squawked, his hands thrusting against her.

“Oh, Mama.”

“What else did Rahman teach you? Jilly, come here.”

Eleanor said, “Judith? Do as you are bid.” She looked over her shoulder at Maria. “She is a most biddable child.”

Jilly dragged herself reluctantly over toward Maria, who turned her around and started to brush her hair. To Stephen, she said, “What else does Rahman teach you?”

“Oh.” His eyes rounded. “About stars, and how to play chess, and geography—”

“I mean about me.” She stroked her daughter’s hair, thick and soft like Richard’s.

“Rahman likes you, Mama,” Stephen said earnestly. “He told me so. But you are just a woman.” He sat on the bed next to her and put one arm around her shoulders. “So Papa and Robert and I must protect you, even when you don’t want us to.”

Maria fingered a tangle out of Jilly’s hair. Under her touch the child was ungiving as a piece of wood. Richard came in, shouting something back down the stairs behind him. His voice boomed across the room. He strode over to Maria.

“Here.” He caught her hand and clapped something into her palm.

Jilly flinched. He reached out to touch her and she slipped between him and Stephen and raced out the door. Richard stared after her.

“What’s wrong?”

Maria looked quickly down at the coin in her hand. Stephen cried, “Mama, I can read it.” He plucked the silver away from her. She lifted her face toward Richard. He was still watching the door, puzzled.

“Why did she run away from me?”

“She has forgotten us, that’s all.”

Stephen held the coin out to her between his thumb and forefinger. “It says
Ricardus Dominus
.”

Maria took the money back. On one side was a mass of Saracen decoration, and on the other a man’s head, wreathed in Christian marks. Richard tramped off across the room, pulling open the cupboard doors. He found the wine in the last place he looked. The cupboard doors stood wide open all around the room. Eleanor went around loudly shutting them. She and Richard paid each other thorny looks. Maria nearly laughed. At least something was the same. She turned to Stephen.

“Did Rahman teach you that, too? To read Latin?”

“Yes. That means
Richard, lord.
And that is Papa, there.”

“It’s very handsome,” she said. “If only your father looked like that.” She hugged Stephen again. The boy rubbed against her affectionately. “Richard, did you hear him? Stephen can read Latin now.”

Richard mumbled something. He charged off down the stairs. Her son followed him. Maria sat on the bed. She had forgotten what a year meant to children. She got up and began to change her clothes.

***

Sitting in the hall with Eleanor, Maria helped her spin the season’s flax. Eleanor seemed much different to her, as if when she became a wife she became another person. She sounded Maria about the Santerois war and Richard’s wounding and Roger’s wedding.

“What is she like, Roger’s wife?” Eleanor asked. “Oh.” She put her hand on Maria’s. Richard and Father Yvet were coming in the door. “What a presence he has. Is he from the Archbishop?”

Maria drew the linen thread out between her fingers, her eyes on the wheel. “He is from the Pope.”

Eleanor straightened and stared avidly toward the men, who were sitting down by the hearth. Two pages hustled over to be sure they were comfortable.

“Roger’s wife is very haughty,” Maria said. “She disapproves of all of us. Except for Roger, naturally.”

“Will they be happy?”

Maria worked the treadle of the wheel. “They were happy when they married. She is fair, the girl. And young enough. You know Roger.”

“He is frivolous,” Eleanor said. Her face was smooth as wax, as if she had never loved Roger at all.

“Richard thinks she will make him give up his little boy.”

“Jordan?” Eleanor pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t wonder. I would.”

“I wouldn’t.” She tried to imagine a bastard of Richard’s living in her household. Someone coming to her:
I have your husband’s child.
Midway down the room, he was trying to catch her eye. He waited until Father Yvet was looking elsewhere and gestured firmly with his head toward the wall.

“What’s the matter with Richard?” Eleanor said.