She had left the baby with a woman in the village, who brought him up the hill to be fed at noon. Another woman had come with the monks’ dinner. They talked on the porch while Maria nursed Stephen. The baby did not like the blustering cold wind, and Maria took him under the shelter of the trees. Brother Anthony had gone into the cave to pray. He came out again through the slot in the rock and put one hand up to shield his face from the sun.
Other women were climbing the road from the village. Stephen was asleep. Maria fastened her dress and went back to the chapel porch. The monks shared their dinner with her, while the village women and half a dozen of their grown children gathered. When they had all eaten, the women and their children fell to work beside them in the chapel. Brother Anthony rushed about trying to show them all what to do. Mostly they got in each other’s way.
“Maria,” a woman called, from the front of the chapel. “Here comes someone on a big horse.”
She straightened up. She was helping to slide a plank into the floor, and the woman beside her inched toward her to take up the weight. Maria scrambled across the frame to the finished floor and went out onto the porch.
Richard was riding his bay horse up the road. Maria stood in the sunlight, watching him. Behind her the women hushed, and the children fell silent. Richard reined up in front of the porch.
“I’ve come to take you home.”
“I’m not going home. Not until my chapel is finished.”
He twisted sideways in his saddle to face her; he slung one leg around the pommel of his saddle. “Who is going to finish it? You? Do you know what you look like? You’re grubby as a serf.” He jumped down from his saddle in front of her. “Leave it. In the spring the men can come back to work on it. If you try to finish it whatever you do will carry away in the first high wind.”
Maria bit her lips. Under the trees, Stephen gave a cranky cry. “Probably,” she said. She crossed the yard to the trees, where a villager’s half-grown daughter was trying to quiet the baby. Richard followed her, leading his horse after her through the beech trees.
“Are you coming home?”
“Not until my chapel is finished.” She lifted Stephen in her arms. His blanket, his swaddlings, and his clothes were sodden. The girl held out her arms.
“I can do it, mistress. Let me do it.”
The girl took the baby away. Maria stood in the middle of the winter-naked beech trees, facing Richard. He stared at her, unfriendly. Her hands were sticky from handling the lumber and she rubbed them on her skirt.
“One more time,” he said. “Come home.”
“No.”
He turned to his horse and threw the stirrup up across the saddle. Yanking the girth loose, he reached across his horse’s withers to unhook the breastplate from the far side of the saddle.
“I thought you were going up to the mountains,” she said.
“Welf can do that. I would much rather stay here and watch you make a fool out of yourself.” He dragged the saddle off the horse’s back.
Maria clenched her teeth. She marched out of the trees toward the chapel. All the work had stopped. When she went inside, the women were standing in groups. Their eyes turned bright on her. She crossed to the edge of the floor and stooped to help lift another plank.
Every day she went up to the chapel to work. Sometimes the local women and their children helped her. Sometimes even the few men left in the village joined them, but the serfs had their own tasks, and usually she and the monks were the only workmen. Once Brother Anthony fell sick, and since Brother Paul had to care for him Maria worked alone for three days in a row. Richard lived with her in the guesthouse. They slept in two beds tied together by the legs. When he was not going around the countryside on his own business, he came up to the chapel and watched Stephen for her, but he never helped her, even when no one else was there.
Christmas came. The villagers brought them a roast goose, which they shared with the monks. Afterward Brother Anthony and Brother Paul went up to pray in the shrine. Richard gave Maria tenpence to gamble with and taught her how to play dice. They were the only people staying in the guesthouse, and no one else came by all day long. Hardly speaking, they sat on the lumpy bed and threw the dice back and forth. At sundown she paid him back the original tenpence and arranged the rest of her winnings in twenty little stacks. While she took off her clothes and put her nightgown on, he counted them.
“You’ve won half my money.”
Maria lit two more candles and put the holders on the window sill above the bed. While she nursed the baby they threw the dice a few more times. Richard counted her money again. He swore. She changed the baby’s clothes.
“Come to bed,” she said. “I’m tired and I have to get up early tomorrow again.”
“All or nothing,” Richard said. “One more throw.” He shook the dice in his fist.
Maria laid the baby down in the cradle. The candlelight filled this part of the guesthouse with a murky yellow glow. They threw the dice again; she won again. Pleased, she piled up her money.
“One more throw,” Richard said. He picked up the dice. “All or nothing.”
“You don’t have any more money.”
“I’ll owe it to you. One more throw.”
She won again.
“Once more,” Richard said.
“No.”
“All or nothing.”
“No.”
“I gave you the money to start with.”
Maria stared at him. “You must think I’m a fool.”
“One more throw.” He held out the dice to her. “Are you afraid?”
This time he won. Maria watched him sweep all the money over to his side, across the ridge in the middle where the two beds joined.
“If you were a Saracen,” he said, “I’d have Mana’a.”
He dropped the money into his wallet. She glanced down at the baby in his cradle beside the bed. Richard pinched out the candles. The darkness fell around her. She sat on her side of the bed, her head turned away from him, saying her prayers in her mind. He was right; she was a fool. His hand grazed the back of her neck.
“Stay down here tomorrow,” he said.
Maria laughed. She lay down on the bed. The air was stuffy from the smoke of the snuffed candles.
“Just for the morning then.” He pulled on her nightgown. She moved closer so that he could reach her easily. “Care about me for once,” he said.
She laughed again. Arching her back, she helped him pull the nightgown up and off over her head. She lifted her face to his kiss. The guesthouse stretched vast and open around them in the dark. His hand pressed up hard between her legs. “Just until noon.” She wrapped her arms around his waist; she laughed.
***
The winter storms broke. Half the roof blew away. She went all over the area begging straw for a new thatch, and in the constant drilling rain the two monks bound it on again. Every time the wind blew she expected to see it sail away. They built the altar. The work was hard; worse, it was dull, and several times she would have given up, but the rain had driven Richard inside and he was always at the far end of the chapel, staring at her. Brother Anthony fell sick again. Maria and Brother Paul hung the doors up three times before they opened and closed.
On Ladymas, they sanctified the church. The next sunny morning she and Richard started south toward their home. Stephen slept in a basket on Maria’s saddle. They kept their horses to a walk for the baby’s sake. Around them the low hills were bleak and patched with snow. The road was gutted; beds of pebbles showed where the rains had washed the dirt away. In the mid-morning they stopped beside the road. The sea flashed in the distance through a gap in the hills.
The baby fed hungrily. Maria shifted his weight in her arms. Richard sat down beside her on the grass. Their horses grazed behind them, crunching the twigs of the brush. Maria laid the baby down on her lap and wiped his mouth on the edge of her sleeve. Richard put his arm around her shoulders. The baby was asleep; they mo
unted their horses and rode on into the morning.
Fifteen
Not in the next spring, but the spring after, Richard went from Maria’s castle to the hill town of Iste. To prove that the roads were safe now for travelers he brought Maria, her sons, and Eleanor after him in wagons, guarded only by the drovers and two knights.
Maria rode her mare. She would not sit in the wagon. The road wound through the rolling hilly countryside. The lower valleys were already planted in the spring crop. Sighting them, the serfs ran out of their fields to greet them. Maria could hardly understand their patois. For the first time, she heard Richard called Dragon.
On the fourth day they climbed into the steeper hills. The forest closed in around the road. Maria jogged her mare along beside the lead wagon, until Stephen began to shriek and she had to go back to the next to last wagon and pull Robert off him.
“Thief,” Robert shouted. He wiggled out of her arms. “Eleanor, make him give it back.”
Eleanor ran up the road from the last wagon, where she had been sewing with another woman. Maria held Robert away from Stephen by the back of his shirt. He turned and struck at her with his fists.
“Eleanor!”
“I’m sorry, Maria,” Eleanor said. She climbed up the moving cartwheel into the wagon. “Robert, what a bad boy. What have you done?”
Maria picked up Stephen, who pushed his face against her shoulder and sobbed. His face and hands were covered with crumbs. He smelled of fruit pudding. Maria quieted him with a kiss and set him down.
“Now, Robert,” she said. “He is only a baby. You can’t hit him.” She picked up a bit of greasy linen from the deck of the wagon. “Did he eat your pudding?”
Robert gulped at her. He glared at Stephen. “I was saving it. Papa says—I was saving it, I didn’t even have any.”
Eleanor soothed him, whispering in his ears. Maria nudged her aside. She picked up Robert’s hands. “There is more pudding in the front wagon. You must not hit your brother.”
Robert yanked his hands free. “Papa says I should guard what’s mine. I didn’t even have any!”
His blue eyes blazed at her from his grimy brown face. She shook her head at him. “You have to guard your brother too. Don’t you want to be a good knight? Like Papa? A good knight never strikes someone who can’t fight back.”
“Mama.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Why does being good have to be hard?”
Maria laughed. “If it were easy, it would be worthless.” Eleanor had run up to the front wagon to fetch him some pudding. Maria stroked his black hair away from his forehead.
“Come ride with me. You can hold the reins.”
He jumped up, his eyes snapping. An instant later he stiffened. “Knights don’t ride palfreys.”
Maria snorted. “Then stay here and ride the wagon.” She pulled her mare by the reins up to the wheel and stepped awkwardly across the gap into the saddle. Eleanor was coming back to them, a chunk of fruit pudding in her hand.
“Mama,” Robert called. He stretched his arms toward her. “Mama, I didn’t mean it—let me ride—I’ll hold the reins—”
Maria rode back to him and lifted him up before her. “Eleanor, watch Stephen.” Giving the reins to Robert she took hold of the saddle pommel with both hands and let him steer the mare in and out of the trees alongside the road.
***
Iste stood at the head of a mountain valley. From the window of the tower where she stayed, Maria could look out over half the green country she had passed in coming here. The sharp dialect the people spoke, heavy with Saracen words, confused her as much as the rapid tempo of their lives and the close quarters they lived in. Richard had given the little city and its valley to Roger. In his hall, musicians played for every meal, and the tumblers and dancers performed half the night. People from all over the area came to dine and be entertained. He even kept a lion in a pit in the courtyard and threw raw meat to it every evening. Maria quickly had the smith build an iron grille to keep the lion in and Robert out.
They went to Mass in Iste’s old cathedral. The priest told stories from the Book of Judges, finding in each detail some ingenious likeness to Richard’s war against the Saracens. Maria admired the cathedral’s painted dome and the tall statues of the saints and prophets, crusted with silverwork and enamels. The sermon dragged on. Her eyes went elsewhere. Two of the men in the row of people across the aisle from her wore coats of the same dark green. Their fat wives were watching her keenly. She straightened her gaze away from them, back toward the pulpit. The priest was still talking. She thought of the green coats: symbols of some secret bond, some conspiracy. She entertained herself a while devising an elaborate plot from which she could save Richard. He stood beside her, his eyes fixed on a point beyond the altar, his hands rammed down under his belt. He was thinking. He was always thinking. She went back to her green-coat conspiracy.
When the Mass ended, they went out onto the open porch. Roger came after them. “What did you think of my priest?” he said.
“Well,” Maria said, “his sermon was very long.”
Roger gave her a quizzical look. Richard laughed. “She didn’t listen to three words of it in a row. I could have told you that.” He stopped in the sun at the foot of the steps. Above him, halfway up the porch, Maria put her crucifix away in her sleeve.
“What did he say?” She looked from Richard to Roger. “Was it a good sermon?”
“You should have listened,” Roger said. Richard went on laughing.
“I heard him. Nothing sings like a greased wheel. Except a well-paid priest.”
“I don’t have to pay him. He knows where the good works come from. Maybe you should offer him something.” Smiling, he nudged his brother with his elbow. “I’d rather be a second Samson than some desiccated judge in a gold cloak.”
“It must have been an interesting sermon,” Maria said. “I’m sorry I missed it.”
“So is Roger,” Richard said. He knocked his brother’s arm.
Roger stood beside him on the step. He was taller than Richard, and he went down another stride to make them the same height. “Come hunting with us. Since you came to Iste I have not talked with you above half an hour at a stretch.”
Richard shook his head. “I don’t have a horse fit to hunt on. You’ve missed the best of it, anyway—it’s nearly noon.”
“You’d better find something fit to fight on. That bay won’t take you another season.” He struck Richard in the chest and went out across the broad paved square before them. A groom came up to meet him, leading his horse.
Richard watched him go. Maria stood on the step above him. She knew she should not grudge Richard his brother’s love. The rest of the congregation was wandering down along the porch, standing in little groups to talk, and waiting for their horses and litters. Many of them were watching her. A servant led up her mare and Richard’s big gray horse. Roger rode off with a group of other men, local people, still in their Sabbath clothes: not Normans. She started to get on her mare, but Richard stopped her.
“Damn you, can’t you wait? Sometimes I think I married a boy in skirts.”
He lifted her up into her saddle. While she gathered her reins, she watched Roger and his friends meet other men and ride out the gate.
“The first time I ever noticed you,” she said to Richard, “was once when you kept me from getting off my own horse by myself.”
Richard mounted his gray stallion. “It would be different if you looked decent doing it.”
She brewed a nasty answer; he turned the back of his head to her. “I’m not going to fight with you.”
Side by side, they rode across the wide, crowded square. Most of the townspeople were going home on foot. The older people all wore sober clothes, but their children were dressed in brilliant colors, their shoes trimmed with gilt. Richard leaned forward, his eyes directed down over his horse’s shoulder.
“There he goes with that damned lumpy chicken leg of his.” He dismounted
. Maria slid down from her saddle.
“I told you not to take this horse.”
On foot, he led the horse by the bridle up the street. She walked beside him. Richard glanced fretfully down at the horse’s bad leg. “I’ve personally soaked that leg for three days.”
They went up the street. Iste was plastered across the side of the mountain, decks of white stone houses rising from the foot of its vast valley, and most of the streets climbed hills. Their horses’ heads bobbed between them, the gray stallion’s long, veined head dipping with each stride. The street narrowed, the walls on either side rising high over their heads. Richard walked ahead of her into a narrow archway. A man on horseback was trying to come through from the other direction, but the way was too narrow.
“Hey, you there, move aside,” the stranger called. “Let us pass here.”
Richard said, “Get the hell out of my way.” Maria followed him into the black resounding arch. Beyond, in the widened street, a man in a feathered hat stood to one side, his face splashed over with a nasty smile.
“My lord, I did not see it was you.”
Richard snarled something at him. He led his horse past the other man. Behind the feathered hat, two litters waited, carrying women in wonderful dresses, their faces tinted rosy as a sunburst. Lounging in their cushions, these women eyed Maria with amusement. She walked up the steep street after Richard.
“A typical drab little Norman,” one woman said.
Richard stopped to look at his horse’s foreleg again. Its knee was puffed up soft as a rising loaf. Maria caught up with him. Here on the edge of the street the slope pitched away sheer to the roofs below. She could see over the whole lower town and out across the green valley, checked in vineyards and pasture. She glanced toward the archway. The elegant man and his women were gone. Drab. She touched her cheeks.
“More of Roger’s people,” she said.
“Yes.”
She smoothed her fingers over her cheekbones. “I could paint my face up like that.”
Great Maria (v5) Page 14