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Authors: Cecelia Holland

BOOK: Great Maria
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He pushed her dress open and down over her shoulders. His hands rested a moment flat on her skin. She turned to face him.

“It was Odo who tried to kill him,” he said, eventually. “Not me. He betrayed me, but Odo betrayed him, that’s why it didn’t work.” He smiled at her. “All right. I won’t let him go. But I’ll let him live. For your sake.”

“Thank you,” she said.

***

Beginning in the morning, Richard had the two prisoners whipped in the ward. Their screams woke Maria, asleep late into the day, and she sent Flora down to make him stop, but Flora came back, looking sour, and said that he had only moved the prisoners to the other side of the ward. Although Maria could scarcely hear them, she could not fall asleep. She got out of bed and dressed herself.

When she went down into the ward, in the afternoon, the whipping had stopped. The two prisoners hung by their wrists against the wall near the gate, their heads slack. Richard sat on a stool in the shade nearby, drinking. The blacksmith from the village was pacing up and down flexing his arm, his whip coiled over his shoulder. Maria went into the kitchen.

“I knew it would come to this,” the cook said. “The old man’s been downhill since your mother died. He should never have let the knave in the gate.” For the first time since she had known him, he burst out laughing. “By the knave I mean Odo, of course.”

In the room at the top of the New Tower her father lay on his back, snoring. The whipping had started again. Through the window the screams of the two men reached her faintly. She set down the tray she had brought and poured one of the cups full of the cook’s best posset.

“Papa,” she said. She sat down on the bed next to him, his vast bulk spread out under the blankets like a mountain. The snore broke off and he opened his eyes.

“Here, Papa, drink this.”

He grunted and shut his eyes again. “That bastard Odo.” He put his hand to his face. “Is that him down there?”

“No,” she said. “Richard killed him.”

In a flat grinding voice he called Richard several names. She tried to give him the drink, and he struck it away. She sat on the bed staring at him.

“Papa, did you really—was it really your idea?”

His eyes opened, and the corners of his mouth curled down. “I am a stupid old man,” he said, “out against a clever young one, who I have faith will be a stupid old man himself someday.” He shut his eyes again. “Get out.”

“Papa—”

“Get out.” He turned his face to the wall.

She sat there a while longer. At last she went down the stairs. Six or eight of the knights were sitting around the hearth in the hall. When she came in they looked studiously away from her. She went to the wine ewers on the table and banged on each of them to see which needed filling.

A shriek came up from the ward. The men around her all moved suddenly.

“One thing about Richard,” the small dark knight said. “He spares the sermon. He goes straight to the sacrifice.”

One man laughed, unnecessarily loud. Maria remembered the ambush and the knight who had not struck at her. Probably he was hanging on the wall screaming. She went hunting some place in the castle free of the noise, but she could find none, and until sundown she paced from room to room, praying that they would die and leave her in peace.

Five

The two prisoners died the next afternoon. Their bodies hung from the gate pole on the curtain wall until the summer. Maria’s father, lying in his bed, began to waste. Maria went to the kitchen herself to cook his food and mix his drinks of herbs and wine. When Richard found out, he laughed at her, and she stopped, since she had marked also that her father still sickened a little every day.

“I don’t have to poison him,” Richard said. “He poisons himself. Are you ever going to have this baby?”

She and Flora sewed pads of cloth to use when she was in childbed. The fetid heat of the summer closed down on them. She felt as if she could not breathe. One night Richard’s coast guards came to tell him that Saracen boats were sailing up from Mana’a. He and Roger galloped off with all but a handful of the knights; William kept command of the castle.

Of course as soon as they were gone Maria felt the first undulating tension in her womb. The midwife came, and the overheated room filled with women being important. Through the deep summer night, she lay on her side, her legs drawn up. Once she slept and dreamed of Saracen boats, shining like gold, slipping through the water, and the knights galloping across the dark waves to attack them.

By dawn she could neither sleep nor daydream. The women held her hands and told her meaningless soothing things. She had thought she would bear the pain silently and nobly, but she could not keep from screaming. At last the baby was born. The women fussed over her, feeding her a rank potion of wine, and kneading her belly painfully hard. Suddenly Flora was holding the baby out to her.

“Is that mine?” she said blankly. She felt nothing for it at all; it was just a baby. They put it down next to her. They all expected her to love it. And it was a girl, not a boy.

“You’ll call her Matilde, for your mother,” Adela said. “Won’t you?”

“I hate that name. I’ll name her Cecily.” She touched the baby’s face. It was an awful slate color, but it opened its eyes, its mouth sucked at nothing. Alive. She kissed its forehead. “Cecily.”

***

Maria opened her eyes. She had wakened at the noise the men had made, tramping into her room. Richard took a splinter from the hearth, blew the coal at the end into a full flame, and lit a candle. With his brothers he stood over the baby.

“Why Cecily, in Jesus’s name?”

“After her mother.” Roger stepped back. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted a boy.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Her mother was named Matilde,” William said. “Mark, it’s a name from stories. Where is the fat wench? Nowhere.” He lifted the baby. Maria pushed herself up on her elbows. “I saw you both this little once. Both you knaves.”

Roger made a disbelieving noise. He crossed the room to a leather sack on the hearth: loot from their raid. “They will not bring their goods north again in boats,” he said. The firelight shone on his face. “We shall be great from this night.”

Richard said, “They’ll sail—they’ll just stand out to sea, where we can’t reach them.” He bent over the baby. William crooned to her. Like the piping of a bird, a little wail started up, and William put the tip of his finger into the baby’s mouth; that quieted her immediately.

Richard said, “William, another of your many crafts.”

“Good night,” Roger called, and went out. William laid the baby in the cradle. Richard stood with one hand on his hip, talking to him of their raid on the Saracens, while William stooped to rock the cradle. At last he stood up straight.

“God keep her,” he said, shaking Richard’s hand. “God give her a happy life. She’ll be as pretty as her mother.”

“Oh, prettier,” Richard said lightly, and went with William to the door. Maria lay down again, sinking back toward sleep. When she wakened again, a while later, Richard was still there, standing with a candle in his hand, looking down at his daughter.

***

The baby waved one fist. Maria caught it and kissed it. Cecily’s tiny perfections fascinated her. She sat up on the bed, her legs folded under her, and opened her nightdress and gave the baby her breast. The baby was nothing like she had expected: she woke at odd hours and howled, she was always soaking wet, she demanded everything and gave nothing back but more work. Maria smoothed the baby’s fine brown hair down over her skull. Her color was much better, save that her hands and feet were dark. She cupped the head in her palm. With her thumb she held her breast down so that the baby could breathe while she nursed.

“Cow,” Richard said. He was lying in the bed behind her.

Maria got up. The baby had finished nursing and lay peacefully in her mother’s arms, her dark blue eyes open. Maria changed her napkin and put the baby into the cradle. She stood beside it, rocking it. Richard got out of bed. Down the stairs, Adela called her, but Maria pretended not to hear. At first every woman in the castle had spent the mornings in her room, making her listen to their detailed and contradictory advice, and passing the baby from lap to lap; at last she had driven them away. Richard came up beside her.

“I have something for you,” he said.

She turned, surprised. He had never given her anything before. He was looking down at the baby. He took his left hand from behind his back.

“Oh,” Maria said. “A looking glass.” Her mother had once had a looking glass. She took it out of his hands. It was heavier than she expected, the frame worked in gold, with cameos set in the four corners. She could not bring herself to look at her own face. She turned and kissed Richard.

“We took it in the plunder, the night she was born,” he said. “I told you I’d give you presents. Do you like it?”

Maria said, “It’s beautiful.” She searched his face. “She looks like you. Do you mark it?”

He laughed. His head tilted down toward the cradle. “She is me. Part of me.” He took the looking glass from her and held it to show her own face.

Maria clapped her hands over her eyes. “What is wrong with you now? Here, look.” He grasped her by the wrist. Maria resisted his pull. She was afraid to see herself. She was afraid of being ugly. But between her fingers she saw the image in the glass, and slowly let her hands down, taking the glass away from him.

“Oh, well,” she said, and turned her head a little. Her chin was pointed and her nose too short, and save for her dark blue eyes she had no color at all: white skin and black hair. It was better than being ugly.

“Now you’ll neglect me,” Richard said, “and spend all day long looking at your face.”

She held the glass in front of him, to show him himself. He covered the mirror with his hand. “No, I’m not vain, like you.”

Maria kissed him again, one hand on his forearm. “Thank you. You are very kind to me.” Putting the looking glass down carefully in the cradle, she slid her arms around his neck. “Let me take Cecily up to show my father.”

“Hunh.” His whole face soured; his mouth went tight as a trap. “Go ahead. I suppose you ought to.” He reached behind him, took her wrists, and pulled her arms away from him. He strode toward the door, but first he looked down at the baby.

Maria’s father, dying in his room, saw the baby and wept. For a while he babbled disconsolately of the punishments inflicted on him, who deserved only peace in his old age. He called Richard a variety of names and cursed him for making Cecily a girl. Maria left him almost at once. It frightened her to see him there, his flesh sunken around his bones, and his eyes milky with disease. Six days after her churching, he died in the night.

When they buried him a great crowd of people came from all over the area, men and women Maria had never seen before: shepherds and fishermen, serfs, and hill-dwellers. Few of them were sorrowful. They told wild stories about her father that ran back forty years. With the baby in her arms she walked along the hillside away from the graveyard. Richard came up beside her.

She said, “I wish you had killed him. It would have been better than having him die like that.”

“It was your idea,” Richard said. He held the postern door open for her. They went into the castle.

Six

Maria’s castle stood in the wilderness near the sea. A day’s ride to the south the wood-covered hills rose into mountains, which the Saracens controlled. Beyond the shield of the mountains was the ancient city of Mana’a, now like Jerusalem in the hands of the Saracens.

North and east of the wilderness was Santerois, ruled by a Norman duke. Maria’s father had always kept his reach short in that direction, shy of Duke Louis, but soon after Robert Strongarm died, the Duke of Santerois died also. He left as his heir a baby named Henry. The child’s powerful relatives took care of him and fought for him, but they could not keep the Duke’s tenants from seizing his castles, chasing out his garrisons, and starting wars among themselves.

Between Santerois and the northern edge of the wilderness lay the March of Birnia, a stretch of hills and fen. After the old Duke died, Richard led a dozen raids there. When he had savaged the countryside and burned several villages, the town of Birnia gave up to him, and he took Maria and the baby north to join him while he rebuilt what he had seized.

On the hill above the half-destroyed town, the Tower of Birnia was close as a stable and smelled worse. For the first few days Maria complained steadily, in hopes that Richard would send her home. The baby—they called her Ceci—was awake more during the day, and Richard was very fond of her, playing with her in his lap, while Maria argued with him over the food and the wine and the lack of servants and the smell.

“Make it better,” he said, “and stop your damned mouth,” and she withdrew into a grim silence and wondered if she could escape.

After she had refused to speak to him for three days, he beat her. She realized he would not let her go home. She went to the kitchen and told the cook and his knaves what she wished of them, and finding women in the town to help her, cleaned the hall and swept out the stairs, where mice were living in the filth along the steps. From then on, she worked every day, and Richard spent the day gone, and they did not talk.

The winter blew itself out in a gust of storms. Just before Lent, a messenger came from Theobald, a Count whose holdings bordered on the north of Birnia; Maria took the messenger to the hall, fed him, gave him wine, and set a knight to watch him until Richard came back. During supper, with the messenger on his right hand, Richard made small talk and exchanged bits of general news.

Maria sat on his left, eating without appetite. Richard ignored her. She watched him through the corner of her eyes. The messenger flattered Richard in an unctuous voice. She could not remember that any lord like Theobald had ever paid such heed to her father.

After the two hall servants had helped her take off what was left of the supper, she went up the stairs to the top room of the Tower, where she and Richard slept, and found him sitting there with the messenger. When she came in, their conversation stopped abruptly. She went to the cradle to see the baby. The sun had gone down; the only light in the room came from the fire.

Richard said, “Maria, go downstairs.”

She gave them a curious glance and went out the door onto the stair landing. Richard came after her. She let him see her go on down the stairs. After he had shut the door and bolted it she went back up onto the landing. Their voices reached her, but not the words. She squeezed in the narrow door on the back of the landing and climbed up the ladder onto the catwalk around the top of the Tower.

From here their voices were as clear as if she sat beside them. She could even see a little through a hole where a slate was missing in the roof. She sat down with her arms curled around her knees, shivering from cold.

At first they talked of obvious things: the roads, the necessity of warning one another of raiders. Since Richard had contact with the Saracens, the messenger had many questions about them. She put her cheek down on her knees. She told herself that he could not be blamed that he was not handsome like Roger, or of a kinder disposition. Richard was clever, he had a shrewd understanding, and she should be glad of him as he was and not wish he were otherwise.

The messenger talked about the King’s brother, the Prince Arthur Fairhame, who from what the messenger said lived in Count Theobald’s pockets. Whenever he spoke of the baby Duke Henry, the messenger laughed and slighted him—“Still in a short shirt,” he said once, although Count Theobald was supposed to be the Duke’s vassal. Maria began to wish the messenger would come to his point. Richard said nothing at all.

At last the man said, “To be candid, sir, my master the Count is counseling Prince Arthur to seize the duchy and make himself our Duke. Of course, since he has only a few knights of his own, the Prince will need our help.”

There was a long silence. Maria bent and looked in through the hole in the roof. Richard sat with his chin in his hand, his face expressionless. She could not see the messenger.

Richard said, “Neither Theobald nor I is such a great man in this country that our help could make anybody Duke, even that baby up there in Agato. I understand Count Fitz-Michael is the baby’s champion. If your master wants to bring Fitz-Michael down on him, that is his mistake.”

“There are others—”

“I dislike being one of many.”

Maria trembled all over with the cold; her teeth rattled together. She was almost glad that Richard was getting up, even though he was ending the talk just when the business was coming out. She put her feet under her.

“You would not be one of many,” the messenger said sharply.

“Count Theobald as a mark of his favor will give you the hand of his daughter in marriage.”

“Holy Mother,” Maria whispered.

Richard sat down again. “I am a married man.”

“Yes, but a way out might be found,” the messenger said. “A robber chieftain’s wench, we understand, of no lineage. Your only child is a sickly girl. Possibly you are bound in kinship. You know how easily these things are arranged.”

Maria bit her lips. He spoke of her as slightly as of the baby Duke.
A robber chieftain’s wench,
as if she were a serf.

Richard did not move. Finally he pushed his chair back and got up. “Well, maybe. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow. Good night.”

Maria waited until the messenger had gone and went down to the stair landing. She opened the door to her room. Richard was sitting in front of the fire, a cup in his hand. She crossed the room to her bed and lifted the baby up, whispering to her. Before, she had been forcing herself to see Richard’s virtues. Now the thought of losing him filled her with terror and rage. He would never dare desert her. She changed the baby’s napkin. Richard was watching her; between his eyebrows were two short vertical lines. He was thinking of it, the wretch, thinking of leaving her. She put the baby in the bed. When she went back across the room, he took hold of her arm and pulled her over next to him.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “You’re freezing.”

She sat down in the warmth of the hearth. “It’s very cold tonight—I was in the ward.” She could not meet his eyes. His brothers were back in her castle, two days to the south; the knights here were all strangers. She had no friends here, no one to help her. She turned to put her other side to the fire.

“Here,” he said; he gave her the wine cup. “Get your insides warm.”

She sipped the strong red wine. “What did this man say?”

“Nothing important.” He slouched in his chair, his chin in his hand. “Stop sulking, will you? I know you hate this place, but it’s much better now. I’m very happy with it, I wish everybody worked as hard as you do. I’d be King of Italy.”

Maria gave him back the cup. In spite of what she knew, his voice comforted her. She turned her eyes toward the fire and wished she had not overheard them talking, so that she could trust him.

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