Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  “Mama, I’ve told them who you are, and about Stephen, and they will obey you now.” He nudged Stephen. “But not you as much as me, because I am Papa’s heir. We sleep here. Mama will sleep upstairs.”

  Stephen swung toward her. “Mama—”

  “Don’t be afraid. Robert will be with you.”

  “And Uncle Roger,” Robert said. “He lives here too. Come on.” He ran up the corridor.

  The three men bowed rapidly three or four times to her and hurried back into the room. One of them said, mimicking him, “Mama,” and they all laughed. Maria and Stephen trotted after the other boy. People—slaves, she knew, like the three fat men—were walking slowly along the walls lighting the lamps set in niches in the stone. The yellow light threw a pattern of curved shadows over the black and white tiles of the floor. Catching up with Robert, Maria laid her hand on his shoulder.

  “You fought, your uncle said.”

  “Oh, Mama. Not really. I was in the back, with Uncle William—we never even got through the gate until the citadel surrendered.” His voice brightened. “But I have a sword now.”

  Stephen looked around her at him. “A real sword?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aaah—not a real sword. You couldn’t even pick up a real sword.”

  “Sssh,” Maria said. She held them apart—she had forgotten they did not like each other. They walked up a wide staircase covered with carpets. Passing a window, she saw to her astonishment that they were in another tower altogether.

  “It is a real sword,” Robert cried. “It even killed somebody.”

  “Ants,” Stephen cried. “You squished some ants with it.”

  Maria grabbed Robert by the upper arm. “Be a good knight—don’t give in to temptation.” She turned Stephen dexterously around backside to her and spanked him hard. “Don’t pick fights.” She swung him face forward again. They went through a double door into a small room, lined with cupboards. Richard’s mail shirt hung on its frame in one corner, and when she came in, a knight got up off the couch in the corner, saluted her, and went to stand guard outside the door. Robert ran off to find Eleanor and the baby.

  “He lies,” Stephen said. “He doesn’t have a real sword.”

  Maria stooped to face him. “Shall I spank you again?”

  He squeezed his lips together; his gray eyes were stony with rage. She turned him and slapped him on the bottom.

  Eleanor hurried in. “Oh, Maria. You have to do something. There are Saracens everywhere here, all the women are Saracens. Half of them don’t even speak French!”

  “Richard said—” Maria opened the door before her. “Holy Mother Mary.”

  She walked into a room as big as a church. Eleanor jabbered behind her. Maria went on into the middle of the room. Pieces of saddle gear cluttered the floor. No one had cleaned the place in weeks, and the furniture was coated with dust. She was halfway across the room before she noticed the bed, curtained in blue silk, against the far wall. Screens of white filigree hung across the three arched windows. The last gray light of the day lingered in the room. She looked up at the ceiling and clapped her hands together. On the deep blue ceiling, stars twinkled, set in the constellations of her own sky.

  Still rattling on, Eleanor came after her, Jilly in her arms. “I wish you would not run off and leave me—when she cries, I can’t feed her, poor child.”

  Maria reached for the baby. Eleanor looked past her, and her expression stretched into a false smile. “Here is Richard,” she said, eluded Maria’s grasp, and took the baby across the room toward the door.

  Richard came into the room. “Let me have her.” He got the baby from Eleanor. Maria sat on the bed, watching him. He took the baby over to the window, into the light; he murmured something too soft for Maria to hear. Eleanor went around the room lighting the lamps in the niches on the walls. Maria pushed off her shoes. She rubbed her bare feet on the carpet. With the lamps on, the stars in the ceiling sparkled like little fires.

  “Give her to me now,” Eleanor said, and got the baby back.

  She went out of the room. Richard watched her go. Slowly he crossed the room toward Maria.

  “Isn’t she awfully little? The baby? Nothing’s wrong with her, is there?”

  “You should have seen her when she was born.”

  “What do you think of Rahman?”

  At the Saracen’s name, she stood, her temper up, and he shook his head at her. “You don’t like him because he slighted you. I mean other than that.”

  “Was he master here?”

  “The Emir of Mana’a. If he’d been a better man, he would rule here still.”

  Eleanor came in again and hurried around the room, picking things up and putting them down again in other places. Maria tilted a pitcher on the chest beside the bed. It was full of water; she poured some into the basin next to it so that she could wash her face and hands.

  “What is he now?” she asked.

  “Croesus of Lydia.”

  “Who?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. Some pagan king in a fable.” He turned his head. “Eleanor, go away.”

  Maria dried her face. The towel was made of some soft cloth she did not know. Eleanor came up beside her, ignoring Richard. “Maria, do you—”

  “Get out of here,” Richard said; his voice rose toward a nasty whine. “How often do I have to tell you?”

  Eleanor turned square toward him. “These Saracens may think you are great now, Cousin, but to me you are still the little boy in the hat.”

  Richard wheeled on her; he thrust his head forward. “Well, to me you are still my brother’s whilom whore.”

  Eleanor gasped. Ten feet separated them. She crossed it in three strides and slapped him across the face with a crack like a rock splitting.

  “Richard,” Maria cried. Before she could get between them, he fastened his hand in the front of Eleanor’s dress and tore her clothes open down to her waist.

  Eleanor screamed. She shrank away from him, her body folding, and her arms crossed over her breasts. Maria with one arm around her shoulders turned away from Richard. Eleanor shook in her embrace. Maria looked over the woman’s bowed head at Richard. He turned and strode out of the room; when he slammed the door a lamp fell off a nearby shelf.

  Maria drew Eleanor over to the bed and made her lie down. The gown was ripped open down to her belly. Her small breasts were pink-tipped and firm, like unpicked apples. She sobbed into the pillow.

  “You shouldn’t have hit him,” Maria said. She removed Eleanor’s clothes and got her between the fine camlet sheets. “Lie still, now, go to sleep a while. You’ll feel better.”

  “You heard”—Eleanor gulped—“what he called me.”

  “He wasn’t really angry until you hit him.”

  Jilly cried outside the door in the anteroom. Maria straightened. She knew by her voice the baby was hungry. Eleanor tried to sit up, but Maria pushed her down again.

  “Go to sleep. Sssh—lie still.” She rose and went across the room. When she reached the door, the baby stopped crying. Her breasts, full of milk, hurt sensuously. She was afraid to open the door. Beyond, in the anteroom, Richard’s voice crooned in a strange endearment. She pushed the door open and went through.

  Richard was sitting on the couch, holding the baby up before him, her face to his face. He turned away from Maria, but the baby began to cry again, and he had to give her up to her mother. Maria sat down and put the baby to her breast.

  He did not look at her; she did not speak to him. After a moment, he went out. She heard him talking to the knight outside the door. She put her hand over the baby’s head. In the morning she would sort everything out. Everything would make sense in the morning. Uncertain, she stared at the wall.

  Twenty-four

  Richard took her to see the ancient Cathedral of Saint Joseph of Marna, which faced the harbor across a huge cobbled square. The Saracens had turned it into a mosque. There was an Archbishop of Marna, but he lived in
Rome. Richard said he was an old man, unfit for travel, and showed no interest in coming to his rescued church.

  The cathedral had been built long before the Saracens came to Mana’a. Its walls were of dark stone. The recessed front porch was set with three pointed archways. Inside, the Saracens had raised dozens of thin columns to chop the area into aisles, and they had plastered the walls over with their flowing, cryptic designs. Richard said it was writing.

  They went out onto the cathedral porch. The bay faced them, bounded by the headlands at its mouth. The market place swarmed with Saracens. A groom brought their horses, and their escort grouped around them. Halfway down the dusty street, Maria turned to look at the cathedral’s flattened dome and the bell tower. She liked it; she had felt safe there.

  “That will be our cathedral,” she said. “When it is Christian again.”

  Richard nodded. “I want William to take charge of it.”

  “William.” He was in Marna now, content with his dogs and hawks. She reined her horse closer to Richard’s. The knights of their escort encased them like a husk. The crowded street led them up a short steep hill. “Why should he do it?”

  “You mean, why not you? No. Women are not bishops. When this bishop in Rome dies, I want someone of us to succeed him. William is the only one, Roger’s not fit, Stephen will probably not be of a decent age.”

  Maria studied him through the tail of her eye. Off to their left, on the far side of a little square, another mosque appeared. Its porch was crowded with Saracens.

  “What will you do with that one?” She pointed to it.

  “That’s one of their important mosques. We’ll have enough churches without taking away their mosques.”

  Maria reined in. Behind her, a knight called out, and the others stopped around her. Richard turned back toward her. The short, trimmed beard made him look like a Saracen himself.

  “Richard,” she said. “These people are heathen. Their mosques are idolatrous.”

  “Come on—I’m not going to argue with you in the middle of the street.”

  He rode away from her; their knights clattered off around him, and she trotted her mare a few steps to catch up. The Mana’ans flooded along the street around her. Surely now they would all have to be Christians. There was no reason in it unless they were all made safe for Christ. Roger had told her that when Mana’a fell, the native Christians ran into the streets killing Saracens and Jews. They would all be Christians now, when God had triumphed here. They rode up a steep hill and through a little gate in the wall that wound around the palace.

  The knights left them. Richard and Maria rode through a desolate part of the green park. Trees hid the three towers on the crown of the hill. A hare raced away from them into the underbrush.

  Maria said, “There will be Christian churches and Saracen churches—will you let the Jews have their own churches too?”

  He held his horse even with hers. “Yes.”

  Maria shook her head. “While they are God’s enemies they are our enemies.”

  “They are not against us anymore—you must think differently now. They are our people now, like the people at Castelmaria—”

  “The people at Castelmaria are like me,” she cried. “They worship God, they know me.”

  “Come on.”

  He lifted his horse into a canter. She followed him around the base of a steep, rocky hill, and he led her up the slope toward the sunlight. The trees grew thick around them. The branches overhead shaded them. At the crest of the hill stood a small round tower made of brick. Richard’s horse clattered across the paving stones around it. He dismounted and let his reins trail. When she caught up with him, he was knocking on the tower door.

  It opened, and a young knight came out, blinking at the sunlight. “My lord.” He threw the door open.

  “Go watch our horses.” Richard brushed past him into the half-lit room beyond.

  The young knight took her reins and led her mare out into the little ward. Maria stood on the threshold, looking into the small square anteroom.

  “Bring that lamp over here.” Richard stood in front of the inner door.

  She picked up the oil lamp on the table at the other end of the room. The smoke smelled of grease. Richard turned so that the light fell on the padlock of the inner door. The lock clicked open. He put his shoulder to the door and thrust it wider, growling on its hinges.

  “What does Roger think about this—to let the Saracens alone?”

  “Roger is going back to Iste.” He leaned against the door frame. “He’s just getting in my way here. The people here hate him, they call him The Christian. He doesn’t care much for them.”

  “They still call you Dragon. That’s an insult too.”

  “Yes, but they like me. And I like them, even Rahman. I like what they have. I like the kind of men they are. Even Rahman.”

  The blank doorway drew her eyes. She wondered what was in there, in the darkness like a lair.

  “Rahman hates me,” she said. “And I see how you are with him, you don’t like him.”

  “He doesn’t know you. They make no use of their women, except to bear children and such things. But then I’ve never met a Saracen woman who wasn’t silly and stupid. Roger loves them. He keeps them, like dogs.”

  She took a step forward toward the door. “What is in there?”

  “Go in and see.”

  The lamplight crept over the threshold and across an unswept stone floor. She stretched her neck, trying to make out the room within. Richard laughed at her; from deep in the darkness, a misshapen echo answered him.

  “Here.”

  He took the lamp from her and walked ahead of her through the doorway. The weak light surrounded him like a little room. She stayed so close behind him that she trod on his heel. The air smelled of must and stone and something alien. They walked across emptiness to a wall of wooden casks stacked higher than her head.

  Richard gave her the lamp again, grasped one of the kegs on the top row, and pulled it down with a crash. The wood split. Gold money flooded over the stone, winking like eyes in the light of the lamp.

  He pulled her by the arm deeper into the vast room. Taking the lamp, he held it so that the light showed her carpets rolled and heaped by the dozen along the wall, the boxes and kegs in piles all around them, chests with locks as big as skulls. He scooped up a handful of black seeds from a tall jar and held it under her nose. “Pepper. There are cloves too. Cinnamon.” Stooping, he groped under a chest, got out a long key, and opened the chest’s fat lock. When he tipped up the lid, the lamplight shimmered on the bolts of golden cloth inside. They went on through the dark, past more chests, more kegs and boxes and jars, everything an inch deep in dust. At the wall, at the foot of a wooden stair, he turned and faced her, the lamp’s flame light between them.

  “This was Rahman’s treasure,” he said.

  Maria stood looking around her. The casks and jars were only shapes in the black room. The lamplight sparkled here and there on a hasp or lock.

  “Rahman had all this,” Richard said. “But he lost Mana’a to five hundred knights. He mistreated his people. He gave no justice, and he punished the Christians and the Jews for not being Saracens. When we came, not even the Saracens would fight for him.”

  Maria said, “We took Mana’a because God willed it.”

  “So all the Saracens tell me.”

  She twisted her hands together. The lamplight winked on the rings on his hands. The treasure around her was like a weight pressing against her. It was Saracen, it was wicked, the goods of the Devil: the Golden Calf. Richard’s face, masked in the short dark beard, was expressionless.

  “Why can we not simply do what we are supposed to do?” she asked. “We are Christian, they are not. Why do you make everything so complicated?”

  “Just think about it,” he said. “Listen to me and turn it over in your mind.” His mouth twisted. “What little you’ve got.”

  “No.”

  “
I will proclaim this in a charter—that we will suffer the Jews and the Saracens to practice their errors.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll witness it. You and Roger.”

  “No.”

  “Will you use another word?” he shouted; his voice roared in the dark. Maria took a step backward. He thrust his head toward her. “You have no choice. You will witness the charter if I must tie you up and carry you there. If you witness it, you can’t act against it later, you know—that’s a sin. You pig-brained little sneaking crooked bitch—what you did to me with the merchants of Iste was a sin, too, and if you make me lose my temper I’ll smack you for that the way I should have when I first saw you!”

  Maria wheeled and plunged into the darkness toward the door. Behind her he swore in a ragged voice. She stumbled past a row of kegs and barked her shin on something metal.

  “Maria!”

  Her breath caught in her throat. She could make out nothing in the darkness; she groped frantically before her in the empty air. At last a thin rectangle of daylight showed her the doorway. She slid through it into the warmth of the anteroom.

  On the threshold of the door into the open, she stopped and tried to master herself. Across the ward, at the edge of the green lawn, the young knight stood with his back to her, holding their horses’ reins while they grazed. She struck the tears from her eyes. She would never find her way out of the city and across the mountains to her home.

  The door to the treasure room grunted closed behind her. She turned and faced him across the anteroom. He locked the padlock and put the key into his wallet. She could not meet his eyes.

  “I will do whatever you say,” she said. She despised herself for a coward. She went out into the sunshine, toward her horse.