Great Maria (51 page)

This stream rumbled down a hillside into the meadowy floor of a valley. Streaks of mist lay on the dark green grass under the trees. The knights sank down on the ground around the stream and let their horses graze. The water was cold enough to numb her hands. She washed her face, took off the velvet coat, and turning her back on the men nearby, she hiked up her skirts and ripped away the muslin underskirt. She buried the cloth in the water. While it soaked, she slipped the bit from her mare’s galled mouth and knotted up the reins. Her hands were dead with cold. She took the dripping cloth back to Richard.

He was sitting with his back against a tree, taking his shoes off. The feet of his hose were sodden with blood.

“Here,” she said. “Wash your face, you’ll feel better.”

He took the wet cloth and plunged his face into it. “Unh.” He raised his head. “Get me something to drink.” He scrubbed his face vigorously.

Maria ran down again to the stream. Her skirt was soaked through from the dewy grass, and even her sleeves were wet. From one of the knights she got an empty wine skin, flushed it out with water, and went upstream from the others to fill it.

Now the sun had burned away the mist. The sky showed pale blue above the hills. She lifted the heavy wine skin by its thong and started back up the slope. A knight was climbing a tree; she veered to watch him through the lower branches.

Richard was washing his feet off with the wet linen. “Tell me why any sane man walks. Give me that.” He seized the wine skin and drank thirstily. Maria, sitting down beside him, shook out the muslin. Blood stained it.

“Renald,” Richard shouted. “Do you see anything?”

In the tree, branches shook furiously. “No,” the knight called.

Richard made a sound in his throat. He drank again, slopping water down his front. All his clothes were ruined, especially the velvet coat. She took it in her hands and turned it over, looking for anything she could salvage.

“If we’d brought Jilly and Henry, we would never have gotten away,” Richard said. He leaned his back against the tree and stretched his legs out in front of him and sighed.

“Are you going to sleep?” she said.

For a moment he said nothing, his eyes closed, and she thought he was already sleeping, but at last he moved and sat up. “Not yet.” He took the torn and filthy velvet from her. “Poor Maria.” He laughed. “I told you the color was wrong. Make the next one blue.” He wrapped his arm around her neck, pulling her against him. “My talisman. You always bring me luck.”

“It doesn’t seem to work for me.”

His arm tightened around her. After a moment, he got up on his bloody feet and walked stiffly down toward the stream. His men bunched around him to talk. Maria folded the ruined coat. She could use some of the cloth again; she would make a sleeveless coat for Jilly when they got back to Mana’a.

Forty-five

At noon they came out of the hills, striking across plowed fields toward the road, and twenty of Roger’s men attacked them. Richard was on foot. Two more of their horses had gone lame in the dark, so only eight of his men were mounted. Roger’s men charged toward them across the fields from the road. A horn sounded. Maria swung the mare toward Richard. The horn whooped in her ears.

The sword in his right hand, Richard vaulted up behind her, tore the reins out of her hands, and shot the mare straight toward the leading rider of their enemies. “Follow me! Come on!”

At the jab of his spurs the mare stuck her nose out and bolted. The enemy knights spun toward them, spreading out in a quarter moon before her. In the deep, plowed earth their horses strained to lift their feet. Maria clutched the pommel of her saddle with both hands. Richard was breathing hard in her ear. The white mare was already tiring in the heavy ground.

Richard’s men surged up around him. Two or three of them charged in among the enemy knights and at a dead gallop fought hand to hand. “Dragon!” one shouted, and other voices took it up savagely. Abruptly the mare’s hoofs struck solid ground, and she lengthened her stride. Richard steered her down the fallow strip between two fields.

A knight on a black horse charged toward them, head to head. His horse’s nostrils flared red-rimmed, its ears pinned flat to its poll. Maria gripped the mare with her legs. Richard shouted, and she shut her eyes, her teeth clenched. His arm whipped around her waist. The mare’s shoulder struck something hard and bounced off and struck again. Iron clashed over her head. A strange voice whined in pain. The mare wheeled violently on her hocks. Richard’s body twisted from shoulder to hip, stretching her with him. The mare spun again. Maria opened her eyes, saw nothing before them but the empty road, and cried out, exhilarated.

Richard lifted the reins, jerking the mare back on her hocks. The blade of his sword was dappled with blood. Maria relaxed her grip on the wooden saddle pommel. God was protecting them; they were right and their enemies were wrong. That was how God did. The fighting men behind them ranged across the fields, their cries echoing. Richard spurred the mare into a hard canter—used to stallions, he handled the little mare too roughly.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes.”

Flat fields stretched before them, dark brown from the plow, divided by strips of greening trees. “Maybe someone here will have horses.”

“Here come more.” Laying his sword across the mare’s withers, he wiped his face on his sleeve. “I wish to God I had a shield.”

Down the road a band of men was riding, their horses shoulder to shoulder. Maria caught her breath. There were five of them, they wore mail, they carried shields. God would help her. If she lost faith, God would do nothing at all. Richard touched her shoulder.

“Get down—go through the fields, get beyond them. Hurry!”

She jumped down to the road. The knights before them were spreading out to encircle Richard.

“Take him alive—we can throw him—”

Maria pulled off her shoes. She ran out into the dark rank-smelling earth of the field. Fifteen steps from the edge of the road, she looked back. Her heart jumped in her breast. They were afraid of him—outnumbering him so much, yet they held back, wary, and he gathered the mare between his spurs and the bit and launched the little horse straight at them.

“Get the hell out of my way!”

Maria ran on, stumbling over the furrows and sinking to her knees in the loose ground. Her skirts tangled in her legs and she fell headlong, tasted blood in with the dirt in her mouth, heaved herself up, and went on. They were fighting, back there; she could not see Richard. Her lungs burned. She made herself breathe deep with each breath, but her legs grew heavy and hard to move.

Two knights pulled away from the fighting and galloped down toward her. The man leading thrust his sword into its scabbard. She staggered on across the fields. She was beyond the knot of fighting men now, and she cut back toward the road.

The knight reined up before her. Behind the nosepiece of his helmet was a face she knew. He reached down for her. The other knight drew rein behind her.

“Lady, come with me.”

“Judas,” she cried. “Go help your lord!”

The knight’s arm stretched toward her, but he stiffened, and his expression changed. Without a word he straightened into his saddle. Wheeling his horse he galloped back toward the road. The knight behind her swore. She turned, but before she could see his face he was charging after the other man, drawing his sword.

“Dragon—Dragon—”

A black horse bolted along the road away from the fighting. A body bounced and flopped beneath its hind hoofs, one foot locked in a stirrup. The two knights who had come for Maria threw themselves back into the melee. Their swords rose like scythes. Someone shouted in rage.

“Dragon!”

Maria leaped forward toward the road. The black horse kicked the battered body free. Shaking its head, it trotted along the side of the road. When she approached, it shied from her. She stumbled on the edge of the ditch and landed on her hands and knees. The black horse was wandering down the road, jogging a few steps, walking a few steps.

“Ah, boy,” she whispered, holding out her hand. “Good boy.”

Her knees hurt where she had fallen on them, and she could not bend her legs. She shuffled toward the horse. “Whoa, boy.” It blew snorting through its nostrils and stretched its head out, and she took hold of the rein just behind its bit and scratched beneath its jaw.

Somebody screeched. The horse shied, dragging her along across the road, and she grabbed a stirrup and some mane and climbed up into the saddle. The stirrups dangled far below her bare feet. The horse sidled nervously along the edge of the ditch. She gathered the reins and turned it toward the fighting. Her mare, riderless, limped heavily toward her. Behind it a tall bay horse charged clear of the pack, its rider clawing frantically behind him.

The bay horse stumbled and caught its balance. Up behind the knight, Richard hung on with one arm around the man’s throat, a dagger in the other hand stabbing down and down and down into the armpit of the knight’s hauberk. Each time he struck, the bay horse staggered. It bolted past Maria, lengthening stride. Richard flung the knight sideways out of the saddle and grabbed for the reins.

Maria turned her horse after him. A hunting horn blasted behind them, and their enemies galloped after them. Without spurs she could not make the black horse catch up with Richard. She kicked it savagely in the ribs and doubled up the reins for a whip. Reluctantly the horse stretched out.

“Richard,” she shouted. “Richard, wait—”

He held back until she caught up with him and sliced the black horse across the flank with his dagger. It flattened into a dead run, snorting in fear. Maria looked back. Their enemies were coming on—none of them now shouted Richard’s war cry. Her knees hurt, and the palms of her hands were bleeding. She took hold of the reins and drew the black down to save him for the rest of the ride.

***

By midafternoon they had outdistanced the knights behind them. They cut across the hills toward the high wilderness. Following a narrow track through a bog, they came to a village of skin huts like a ring of toadstools below the treeless slopes of a pass, and the shepherds there gave them bread and milk and honey. They rode on across a desolate moor. The sky was turning gray with clouds.

Richard said, “Roger’s men must be all over these hills. I wish I’d held onto that sword. Anyone could come up to me now and hit me over the head with a rock.”

Single file, they rode into the oncoming night. There were no trees, only the bleak windy moor. Maria’s muscles were stiff and cramped. She dozed in her saddle. Richard kept them to the lower ground, so that they would not show up against the sky. Rain began to fall.

Just after the night reached them, they rode into the woods again. She followed him blindly through the dark and the rain. A branch sliced across her cheek. Her horse stumbled, and she clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. Now and then they stopped while Richard studied the way before them. Each time when they went on, her body was stabbed with pain. The rain crashed through the branches and leaves of the wood. Everything smelled of dank earth. They had stopped again. Richard drew her down out of her saddle.

“Marita. Maria.”

He carried her across an open space. Rain splashed in her eyes and mouth. Heavily he sank down on one knee, got up again, and took her into a tight, closed place, shelter from the rain. He put her down on something soft, and even before her head touched the ground she was asleep.

***

The woven brush of the ceiling was pocked with sunlight. She lifted her head. They lay side by side in a low round hut made of branches and thatch, drifted full of old leaves. Out the little door, she saw their horses grazing in the green meadow. Richard slept, a dollop of sunshine in his hair.

She got up, loath to wake him, and crawled out the door. The sun stood halfway up the sky. Washed in the rain, the whole green meadow shone like a jewel. She walked after the horses through the tall grass, looking for water.

Behind the hut, someone had butted stones together to catch rainfall. The mossy brown hollow was full of water. She stripped off her filthy surcoat and gown and washed her face and hands. At first she thought of airing out her clothes, but she was afraid that Roger’s men might see the bright colors through the trees. She folded the cloth, unwilling to put it on again. Peeling off her shift, she sank down naked in the grass and washed her body.

She looked down at herself, at her belly pleated from bearing babies, and her veined, sagging breasts. Suddenly she felt time and age attacking her, all of them, Roger and Richard as well, killing her and them by pieces, as if Roger betraying them had torn out the parts of her that loved him, their common past, and made her suddenly old. She put on her shift again. With her other clothes under her arm, she went back into the hut, back to Richard.

He lay on his side, watching her. She sat down to fix her hair. He put his head down on his arms, his gray eyes following her hands.

“Are you hungry?” she said. “I still have half a loaf in my saddle pouch.” She combed her hair through her fingers.

He shook his head. She fussed a knot out of her hair with her fingers. She wanted to lie with him, and she moved her leg so that as if by chance her thigh brushed his arm.

“What are you doing?” He rolled over; his arms snaked around her waist. “Marita. Tell me where it itches.” He tumbled her over on her back on the ground.

“Richard.” She snatched at his fingers.

“Is it here? Ah. Do you like that?”

She kissed him. They lay down together in the leaves. He took her wrist and put her hand on his crotch. She reached under his clothes. His member stiffened against her palm, harder than flesh, softer than bone. Jacquot, the men called it, Johnny Cock, the Hammer and the Anvil. She stroked him, and his arms tightened around her. She wanted him hot; she wanted him to need her. They pulled off her shift and his clothes, unhurried. A daddy longlegs dashed away into the wall of the hut. Against her bare side the leaves were slippery. Richard’s hand tightened in her hair, drawing her head down. She put her mouth obediently on his erection. He caught his breath. She kissed him and sucked on him; in her mouth the head of his stick was sweet and ripe. She lay down beside him again, and they coupled.

“What if Roger’s men come?”

“They’ll wait.” He rolled onto his back, dragging her with him, her hair wrapped around his wrists. “Do it.”‘ He bucked against her.

She rode him like a man. She put her arms around him and worked, at first for his sake, but the deep, powerful caress made her burn, her breath came short, she twisted and thrust herself against him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He stroked her hips and thighs, talking to her. Sometimes she listened to him and sometimes she didn’t. She pressed her face against his neck. Her body brimmed deliciously full and alive.

“Aaaah.”

“Maria. Do you like that?”

She sighed; she stretched herself along him and lay still. The damp, stall brush around her made her nose itch, and she sneezed.

Richard murmured. Painfully hard, his arms closed around her, and his body moved up under her. They were tangled in her hair. He put her down on her back and doubled her legs up between them. Maria took his face between her hands and kissed him. His body worked smooth as a river back and forth through her. She ran her arms down over his back, greedy for his strength. Something was falling into her eyes.

“We are breaking the hut.”

Richard straightened up onto his knees. They had rocked up against the brush wall. She slid on her back after him into the middle of the hut. He bent over her again, he fumbled between them, trying to reconnect them.

“I know there’s a hole here someplace.”

At the first thrust she cried out. She clung to him, arching her back. He packed her full. She shut her eyes, bursting with him. “Maria,” he whispered. His arms gripped her. “My angel. My baby. My star. Love me. Love me.” Under her hands his back sprang with sweat. Sweat dripped from his beard. They kissed. Her hair around them like a web, she locked her arms around him, and he shuddered and gasped and drove once more into her and lay still.