Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  Stiff as paper, his cheeks folded into wrinkles when he smiled. “Thank you, my dear.” He went away. The young Duke rushed toward the hearth, but Maria hooked her hand under his arm and whirled him around to face her.

  “In my castle,” she said softly, “I will fight my own fights.”

  His face went expressionless. With his other hand he pried her fingers from his arm and walked away. The wolfhound whined in her throat; straightening, Maria let her go after him.

  ***

  Word came the next morning that Theobald was moving north. The rain had stopped. Leaving the young Duke behind for punishment, Fitz-Michael rode off to chase the Count home. The Duke wandered listlessly around the castle, driving Robert away whenever he came up, until Jean saw it and took all the boys out to shoot their bows.

  After they had cleaned the Tower, Maria and Eleanor went to the hall to work on the new tapestry. It was of Charlemagne riding to the hunt, and they had finished nearly half. Sitting down, Maria looked it over and said, “You have a better eye for the horses than I do.”

  Eleanor sniffed. She had not ceased sermonizing about Maria and Fitz-Michael. Maria struck her on the shoulder. “Why do you treat me like this? I will not lie with him—do you think I am a complete whore? Besides, he beats the Duke and probably he would beat me.”

  “He who has lain with her in his heart—” Eleanor could not remember what followed. Lamely, she said, “You encouraged him. I saw you at supper, how you fawned on him.”

  “If he comes near me, I’ll stab him,” Maria said. She picked up a bobbin and threaded it with the pale thread for Charlemagne’s face. She did faces better than Eleanor.

  Eleanor sniffed again. Leaning forward to weave in the next row, Maria said, “Perhaps you should go to a convent. You would be happier there, with the other saints.”

  “You are wicked to me.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  Out the window, a voice called. Someone was coming in the gate. Maria stood up and went to the hall door to see who it was. Several of the boys were in the ward below, with Jean, cleaning saddles in front of the stable. She went out onto the stair landing. Fitz-Michael himself came riding through the open gate.

  Maria could hardly believe he was back. Furious, she went down the stairs to meet him in the ward. “My lord,” she said, “have you beaten Count Theobald so soon?”

  Fitz-Michael put his hand casually on her arm and led her toward the stairs. “He is well north of us, my lady, and my guess is that he will not stop until he is safe in his own country. I have no wish to ride around in the rain.”

  Maria shook off his hand. The rain clouds were crowding into the sky from the north. He took her arm again, and she pushed at him. “Please do not hold me, my lord, I mislike it. I should think you would want to stay with your men if they are going to have to be uncomfortable.”

  He gave her a look as if she were witless. They went up the stairs toward the hall. The young Duke and Robert were there. When she came in the door with Fitz-Michael after her, the Duke’s face stiffened and he wheeled away from them.

  At supper, Fitz-Michael was full of good humor and conversation. Jean as usual stuffed himself, and Eleanor seemed to have taken a vow of silence; even the children were quiet. Maria had to speak to Fitz-Michael, although she was in a cold rage that he had come back when she had thought him gone for good, with his clammy hands. He sighed over the rain, lashing at the shutters again, and she claimed to love it. He sent a roast dove back to the kitchen because it was overdone, and she ordered it brought back up again and carved a leg for herself. While she was scraping the char off it, a servant came into the hall and around the table to her.

  “My lady, there are messengers in the ward.”

  “Send them up,” Fitz-Michael said.

  “No, I’ll go.” Maria slid off the bench. “Robert, will you fetch me my cloak?” Whatever the messengers had to say, she did not want Fitz-Michael overhearing.

  “Let me attend you,” he said, rising in his place.

  “My lord, please, stay at your supper—there will be no one to keep order over the children.” She went between Jean’s back and the wall and walked swiftly out onto the open landing at the top of the stonework stair.

  The streaming rain turned the whole ward gray. Near the foot of the stair, two messengers waited, still in their saddles, side by side talking. In their cloaks, with the hoods up, they looked like two monks. She went down to the foot of the stair. The rain fell in her face. One knight was Ponce Rachet’s messenger; the bearded man behind him she did not know.

  “Joscelyn,” she said. “My greeting to Ponce Rachet.” She looked back at the bearded man, startled. “Richard?”

  He dismounted. She flung herself into his arms. He was soaking wet. The beard grazed her cheek and her lip. He held her so tight she could hardly breathe.

  “Upstairs,” he said in her ear.

  “Duke Henry and Fitz-Michael are in the hall.”

  “They are still here?” He looked her over, his arm around her waist. The other knight went away. The rain was streaming down their faces. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

  “You look thinner,” he said. “What did you do to your hair? You look different.”

  She laughed; she leaned on him, his mail solid under her hand. The door above them slammed. Robert came down the steps, her cloak piled in his arms. He slowed.

  “Papa—”

  He flung the cloak aside and ran down the steps to Richard. Maria picked up her cloak. Robert wept in his father’s arms. She climbed the stairs to the hall door. When she opened it, Fitz-Michael came toward her. She stepped into the half-lit warmth of the hall.

  “Maria,” he said. “You are soaking wet, girl. You should have waited for your cloak.”

  Richard barged in roughly between them. He gave Fitz-Michael a jagged look. Maria went over toward the table. She stood with her hands on the back of her chair.

  “By Saint Charity,” Fitz-Michael said, “it’s Richard d’Alene, with a beard like a Saracen!”

  Among the children sitting at the table, the young Duke leaped up onto his feet, and Stephen dropped his cup. Robert hurried into the hall after Richard, who tramped to the hearth, threw his cloak off, and put his back to the fíre.

  “Still here, my lord?” he said to Fitz-Michael. “Maria, I’m cold, bring me some wine.”

  “I’ll do it.” Robert raced toward the table.

  Fitz-Michael stood in the middle of the hall, facing Richard; the young Duke had come up around the table. Before his uncle could speak, he said, “My lord, I must thank you for your kindness which we have so much insulted.” His voice rang childishly high; he gave Fitz-Michael a harsh look. “I would treat no vassal so, especially one who has been loyal to me.”

  Richard took the cup of wine from Robert. “I’m sure you would not,” he said to the Duke, “for all I remember being neither your vassal nor loyal.”

  Fitz-Michael said, “My nephew’s manner is sometimes coarse and unworthy of his rank.” He set his hands on his belt. “He says only the truth. Your wife has been very gracious to us indeed.”

  “She has a weakness for strays. I don’t. I understand your army’s already left Birnia. You follow them.” Richard drank; his eyes never left Fitz-Michael. “Tomorrow.”

  The other man bristled up. In his magnificent dark coat he looked easily Richard’s size even though Richard wore mail. He said, “You left Birnia unprotected, Master Dragon. Theobald was heavily oppressing your wife. We came here to defend her against him.”

  Richard threw the empty cup down. “From what I’m told, you certainly didn’t help her much against Theobald.”

  “I’m not going to indulge you in an unseemly—”

  “In fact, if you really were after Theobald, you’d have attacked Occel while he was gone,” Richard said. “You didn’t come here after Theobald, Master Cheek, you came here to take advantage of a woman.”

  Fitz-Michael’s face w
as blazing red; he turned on his heel and strode out of the hall. Maria got a ewer from the table. No one in the hall spoke. The children were staring owlishly at Richard. She crossed the hall, picked up his cup, and filled it from the ewer. He took it from her, his eyes still on the door.

  Stephen came up beside her, shy, his eyes on his father. Richard put the cup on the mantelpiece and grabbed hold of him. “Ah.” He boosted the little boy up in his arms, laughing. “Look at this. The last time I saw this—”

  Stephen glowed. He threw his arms around Richard’s neck and hugged him. Robert hurried up to lean against his father. Maria stood to one side watching them. It was a shock to see him here, when he had been away so long. “Come upstairs,” she said. “You can get out of your mail.” She put her hand on his arm.

  He put Stephen down. His hand closed over hers, and her skin went to gooseflesh. She went with him to the door.

  “Papa,” Robert cried. He and Stephen crowded after them. “Come see my horse.”

  Richard opened the door. “Later. In a while.”

  Robert’s expression drooped. Maria went out onto the stair landing. He shut the hall door. They were alone on the staircase. She lifted her face and kissed him. His arms went hard around her. The soft crisp beard brushed her chin. He pulled her surcoat open in front and cupped her breast in his hand. Through the cloth of her dress her nipple grew taut and hard against his palm. Her thighs trembled. She slid her arms around his waist and drew him hip to hip with her.

  The door opened loudly. They split apart. The young Duke, his head down, raced past them and up the stairs. Halfway to the next landing, he threw them a strange look. He bolted up toward his room.

  “God’s wounds,” Richard said. They climbed the stairs after him. They came to the landing, and he would have gone up another flight, but she held back.

  “No, I sleep here, now, so that Fitz-Michael and the Duke could have the best room.”

  “Did you want them to stay?” He pushed open the door and went through it into the room. Maria stood in the doorway, watching him. He shed his mail coat. The beard, trimmed to a point and darker brown than his hair, made him exotic, like a strange beast. He dumped the shirt over the foot rail on the bed, and she went hotly forward into his arms.

  Twenty-one

  The bed smelled of sex. They had drawn the heavy draperies around it the night before, when Eleanor brought the boys in to bed. The dawn was coming. The confined space around her was twilit. She raised herself cautiously on her outstretched arm. Her husband lay asleep on his stomach next to her.

  She put her head down. He had thrown off the blanket. His face and arms were suntanned dark as a barrel but on his back the skin was soft and pale. Outside the curtains, Eleanor spoke, and the boys answered in sleepy voices. The man beside her moved, coming awake; his head turned toward her.

  “Maria,” Eleanor whispered, just outside the curtain. The cloth shook and her face appeared in the middle. Her eyes widened when she saw Richard was naked and she withdrew her head and snapped the curtains shut.

  Richard stirred. All night long they had gone at each other like plunderers, waking and sleeping and waking again. He opened his eyes on her.

  “That was a good ride, little girl,” he said. He pulled her over against him. “That was worth coming all the way down here in the rain for.”

  Outside the curtain, Robert shouted, “Papa is home!”

  “Sssh—you’ll wake them up,” Eleanor said. “Go down and get your breakfast.”

  Feet trampled away. Maria shut her eyes. She lay with Richard’s arms around her, wishing she could go back to sleep. She kissed his shoulder. Across his chest there was a long scar. She drew her fingertip along it.

  “What happened to you?”

  “It looks worse than it was.”

  “Did they hurt you—the Saracens? When they took you prisoner.”

  He propped himself up on his elbow. “They dragged me around a little. I broke my hand, but that wasn’t their fault.”

  “I prayed for you.”

  “Oh,” he said, a fine sarcastic edge in his voice. “That must have been what saved me.”

  She turned her back on him and scrambled out of the bed. She went to the cupboard for her clothes. The room was full of drafts, and the floor chilled her feet. Shivering, she pulled on her shift and a gown and reached up behind her to free her hair. Richard shouted down the stairs for their breakfast. Half-dressed, he tramped around the room. She brought him a clean shirt.

  “I’ve been making you shirts and coats all since Michaelmas.”

  “Good. That’s one reason I’m here: all my clothes are falling apart.” He pulled the shirt on over his head.

  “You promised me you’d come,” she said, “but I suppose that’s a small thing in your mind.”

  “I could not come before. I said I would come when I could.”

  The door slammed open. Robert raced in, laughing, Stephen behind him, and they leaped on Richard. He scooped them up, one under each arm. Maria opened the curtains on the bed and threw the covers back to air.

  “Go on,” Richard said to the boys. “Pester me after I have eaten. Go play with Bunny.”

  “Who is Bunny?” Robert asked blankly.

  Richard chased him out. Maria went around the room picking up her sons’ litter of clothes and stones and dirt. Richard put his coat on. She could not stay away from him. In spite of herself, she drifted over and stood with her hand on his arm. He kissed her forehead. The kitchen boy came in with their breakfast; they sat down to eat.

  ***

  “I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe,” the cook said. He wheezed a little, to prove he was sick. “I thought the end had surely come. I have not slept the sleep of grace these past three nights, for fear of dying.”

  “Lobelia for that,” Eleanor cried, without looking up from the pot she was stirring. “A good lobelia pack, and something after to get the phlegm up.”

  The cook sniffed. “God sent me this for my sins. I welcome it for my sins’ sake.”

  Maria poured a measure of chopped nuts into the fruit boiling over the fire and took a wooden spoon to mix them in. Eleanor said, “All the same, a good pack of lobelia would do you no harm.” She straightened, brushing her hair back with her forearm. Now that the rain had stopped, the kitchen was perceptibly brighter.

  “Do you need help, Maria?”

  “No—it has to cook a while.” Maria hung up the spoon on the hearth. Sticky walnut syrup clung to her fingers. She yawned.

  “My, you are sleepy, aren’t you,” Eleanor said sweetly. “I shouldn’t wonder, I heard you tossing and turning all last night.”

  Maria gave her a black look, and Eleanor simpered. Stiff, Maria went across the kitchen to the door. Richard had brought his horse out into the ward. While he curried it and brushed it, a cluster of boys gathered to watch. Even the young Duke was there.

  “Don’t let the conserves burn,” Eleanor called.

  There was a pile of little cakes on the bench beside the door. Maria stuffed a dozen of them into her apron pockets and went out to the ward. The air was sweet from the rain. Puddles still shone clear on the ground around the gate. Eleanor called to her again. She shut the door between them with her heel.

  Richard had the gray stallion’s forehoof up on his thigh and was scraping caked mud and dung out of it with a hoofpick. The boys stood around him watching. The young Duke strained his neck to see. He leaned up against the wall near the horse’s head, the wolfhound bitch sprawled comfortably in the sun a few feet away.

  Maria gave out the sweet cakes. The children’s hands thrust at her, dirty and grasping. The last grubby brown hand was Richard’s. She went up to the gray stallion’s head and patted its face.

  Robert had the hoofpick. He was wrestling the horse’s off-hind foot up into his lap. Richard came up beside her.

  “What are you making? It smells good.”

  She said, “Conserves. This
is a beautiful horse.”

  Robert stooped over the stallion’s raised hoof. The horse turned its beautiful head to look and carefully straightened out its leg. Robert tumbled headlong. Richard laughed; the other boys laughed too. The horse snorted. Maria thought it looked pleased with itself.

  “I can do it,” the young Duke said. He pushed himself away from the wall and went around behind the horse. Taking the hoofpick from Robert, he bent over the horse’s hind leg.

  “Here,” Richard said. “It’s easier like this.” While he showed the boy how to hold the stallion’s hoof between his knees, Maria watched him closely. It was strange to find herself suddenly equipped with a husband. She had forgotten him; he was a stranger to her, more a stranger even than Fitz-Michael. The stallion turned its head to look back. She took hold of its halter.

  The horse snorted softly and lipped her hand, and she fed it half a sweet cake. Its face was wide between the large intelligent eyes. Its kindness amazed her, that it let the green boys handle it.

  “The Saracens gave him to me,” Richard said. He came up beside her again, patting the horse’s shoulder. ‘‘He’s too light to fight on, but he’s a hell of a riding horse.”

  “The men who took you prisoner? Will they give you another?”

  He rested his arm on the wall and let his weight slack against it. She put her hand flat on his chest. The young Duke set the stallion’s hoof down and moved around to the other side.

  “Maria,” Eleanor cried, from the kitchen, “the conserves are burning.”

  Maria called, “Take the pot off the fire.”

  “What are you doing?” Fitz-Michael shouted, and she jumped, but he was yelling at the young Duke. He strode into the midst of the children, took the boy by the ear, and dragged him off. “You stupid lout, are you a groom now? Will you not learn who you are?”

  The young Duke tore free. The wolfhound had come to her feet. She loped after him across the ward. Fitz-Michael marched stiff-necked toward the Tower. His servants were upstairs packing his baggage. As soon as his back was turned, the other boys knocked each other in the ribs and laughed and made faces at him. Richard spat.