Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  “Yes, and all of you with me. If I’m to be miserable, I want company.”

  They shrieked. Maria laughed at them. In their midst, Jordan missed his footing and sat down hard. He pulled himself up onto his feet again.

  “Maria! Why?”

  “Because Roger is getting married,” Maria said, “and I’m going to watch.”

  “Roger,” Louise said. In unison, they all turned to look at a girl in their midst, Catherine, the prettiest of them. Her eyes widened. She looked stricken from one to the next of the women and rushed out of the room.

  The other women broke into excited comment. Maria lowered her eyes. She wished she had been more careful. A looking glass lay on the bed beside her. She picked it up and put her face into the oval frame. Her eyes were darker blue than Roger’s. “Well,” she said. “Come along, there is much to do.”

  ***

  The next morning, she went down to the market place. Louise and the girl Catherine gave her company. On foot, they shopped among the bolts of cloth, the nuts and fruits and candy, and the silversmith’s pieces of jewelry. Catherine was listless and hardly spoke; the rims of her pretty eyes were red. Maria bought her some marzipan in the stall of the sweet vendor. They sat in the sunshine before the big oak tree, where Richard heard his trials of law, and a page went off to bring them wine.

  “Catherine,” Louise said, “you are being silly. To pine over such a man.” She laid her hand on Maria’s thigh. “I beg your pardon, dear Maria, but you know that I always speak frankly.”

  “He loves me,” Catherine said.

  “Bosh.”

  “Of course he loves you,” Maria said. She devoured her blancmange and was instantly hungry again.

  Louise goggled at her. Catherine sniffed and smiled, half-dreaming, her head bent like a swan’s. She was the most tearful girl Maria had ever seen. Louise whispered in Maria’s ear.

  “You must know Roger has had dozens of women.” Her breath blew hot on Maria’s neck.

  “Yes, and he’s loved every one of them.” Maria smiled at Catherine, who sat idly breaking her marzipan into pieces. “I loved him once.”

  Catherine tossed her head up. Her eyes were brilliant green. Louise cried, “Oh, Maria!”

  “I loved him madly. I wanted to marry him, but Richard and my father made me change my mind.” She smiled at Catherine. “You see how things went best against my will. Maybe he’ll still love you—she isn’t as pretty as you are, the Duke says.”

  Catherine shut her eyes and sniffed. Maria ate the girl’s marzipan. The sun was coming out from behind the clouds. The half-frozen, filthy snow heaped under the oak tree was running in a hundred driblets. They would march on Agato when the knights of the Saracen Brotherhood reached Iste. The Duke at first had balked at using Saracens against Christian men, even his enemies, but Richard had insisted. Maria held her hands out to the warmth of the sun.

  The gate stood open, as always during the day, and people came in and out in a steady stream. She watched two old women in shawls carrying an enormous load of live chickens on their shoulders. She wondered where they all came from, who they were, what their lives were like. A balding man, his face caught up in a snarl, rode past her up the street. Richard was losing the hair on the crown of his head. She would have to tease him about it and see if he minded.

  “Roger,” Catherine whispered.

  He was riding down the street, two of his friends on his heels, all three gaudy as pages in their velvet coats. Roger veered his horse toward the oak tree. Drawing rein, he dismounted before them.

  Maria called to him, but he was looking down at Catherine, a calf-look on his face. Maria settled down again. Two Saracen knights rode in the gate. Neither of them was Ismael, but behind them came a young knight she knew.

  “Robert!”

  He wore his black hair long, in the old style. His face was brown as the Saracens’ from the sun. He galloped over to her and leaped down from his saddle.

  “Mother.” He hugged her. “I knew you’d be here when I got back. Oh, Mother.” His voice squeaked in dismay. “Are you going to have another baby? Catherine. See my mother? Isn’t she beautiful?” He lifted Maria up off the ground.

  A few yards away, Catherine was head to head with Roger, talking in a low voice. Robert whirled Maria around and set her down again.

  “Where is Papa? Did the Duke come with him? Roger says there will be a war—”

  “Yes. Walk back to the castle with me.” She hooked her arm through his. “You won’t know Henry, he is grown up.”

  “So am I.” He threw out his chest.

  “I am given to understand that.”

  They walked up the hillside, keeping to the edge of the street. Louise followed after; Robert led their horses. He draped the wide leather reins over his shoulder.

  “I’ve been fighting bandits. Did Uncle Roger tell you?”

  “Did you catch them?”

  “Some. Some of them got away. They are no trouble.”

  Maria laughed. She leaned on him a little, to make him strut. She admired his blazing blue eyes. “So you like to fight.”

  “Oh, yes.” He drew a deep breath.

  “Is it fun?”

  He shook his head. “It’s better than fun. It’s better than anything.” He crossed himself quickly. “But I will never fight save for God. And Papa.”

  Maria hugged him against her. “Ah, you are a splendid son.”

  “Oh, Mama.” He opened the postern door in the citadel gate and hung back to let her go before him. On the wall, a guard shouted his name, and he whooped an answer. “Is Ismael here yet?’’ he asked her.

  Maria shook her head. She smiled at him, delighted with him. On his cheeks and upper lip fine dark hairs were sprouting. “Don’t tell me you are growing a beard?”

  “No.” He fingered his chin. “Do you think I could?”

  Maria laughed. She hugged him again.

  “Robert!” Richard shouted, from across the ward. Robert put her down with a jolt. She turned to watch him charge his father. While the young Duke stood in the tower door, his eyes on them, they shouted and pummeled each other. Maria started across the ward. The sun was brilliant, in spite of the cold; she shaded her eyes with her hand.

  Thirty-four

  Ismail arrived with five hundred of the Majlas al-Kerak.

  The army rode north again toward Agato. At the East Tower, Ponce Rachet had collected one hundred and fifty knights and two hundred men-at-arms. Traveling in three long columns, the army crossed the frontier of the duchy and struck over the high, rolling plain toward the Roman Road.

  They reached the highway in a single day. Maria, riding with the wagons and servants and camp followers of the army, followed the road north into the gray-white distance. The few villages and farms they came upon were deserted: the people had all fled north before the army. Ponce Rachet’s men-at-arms marched along before and behind the eighteen wagons, but for several days Maria saw no sign of the Saracens or the Christian knights, save for Richard and Robert, who came to sleep in her camp.

  The snow was melting. The plain, shelving down toward the river bottomlands ahead, sprang with green life. Under the inch of slush, the road was hard and strong, but a stream ran thick with mud in the ditch. Maria rode at the head of the column of wagons, where the footing was best and she could keep her clothes fairly clean. The mud turned the white mare’s legs black to the hocks and knees. The blank dripping plain and the white sky felt like a void around her.

  One day, toward noon, horsemen appeared all over the plain to the north, west of the road. Hunting horns blasted in the distance. Maria gasped. The head drover bellowed to his oxen to stop. Before them the column of men-at-arms hurried to one side of the road, taking their pikes in their hands, their voices raised.

  Hundreds of riders were galloping across the plain, half a league away, and coming down toward Maria at a dead run. They were fighting hand to hand. The distance blurred their voices and the clash of t
heir weapons. In the wagons behind her the women screamed. Someone yanked on Maria’s skirt.

  “Maria!”

  Her mare snorted and shied. Maria wheeled toward the other side of the road. Speeding up from the east, the Saracens raced toward her. Their wailing off-key war cries turned her arms to gooseflesh. They crossed the road through the train of wagons, scattering the men-at-arms.

  Maria held her breath. A wedge of knights flew toward her across the muddy plain, coming like a club. Her mare was dancing sideways. She put one hand on the sweat-soaked neck. The Saracens darted through the narrowing space between her and the knights. Their lances dropped level, the long slim blades white from honing, and they swerved to meet the knights like a scythe.

  She tasted blood in her mouth. The Saracens engulfed the knights. Two of the Christians broke free and charged toward her. Behind them the Saracens shrieked their ululating yell. The hair on her head stirred and stood on end. Her mare reared up. Before her a Majlas lancer raced across the path of the two oncoming knights. His long blade struck the leading man in the belly and drove him off his horse. The last man galloped up between Maria and the regrouping men-at-arms and escaped away to the east.

  Maria reined the white mare in a tight circle. The Saracens were taking prisoners of the knights they had caught alive. In the beaten, blackened snow, a dozen bodies sprawled or screamed. Ismael on his sock-footed chestnut mare galloped up to Maria and cheerfully displayed his teeth. Clasped in the crook of his arm, his lance jabbed up at the sky. The blade and the next two feet of the wooden haft were wet with blood.

  “No stop,” he called. The chestnut mare wheeled. The tassels on her bridle tossed. “Stop, never never leave much again.” The mare spun and charged away.

  From the wagons behind Maria, people vaulted to the ground. Even the women climbed eagerly down over the wheels to the road. Screaming in exultant voices, they rushed out to the fields. The Saracens were moving off with their prisoners. The camp followers and men-at-arms and Maria’s own servants fell on the half dozen slain and wounded knights and fought over their shreds of clothes and armor.

  Maria clicked to her mare. The head drover still sat with the reins drooping from his hands. He slapped the leathers against the rumps of his oxen and called out, and the team pushed forward again. Along the road behind them, the driverless oxen shouldered into their harness. All the men-at-arms had run off to loot in the bloody meadow. Even their commander was gone. She stood in her stirrups. All across the plain, by twos, in little groups of five or six, men were hacking at each other with swords and lances. Even Ismael, now, was only one of the white robes that fluttered and dashed over the mud and the new grass. The baby quickened, a thread of feeling down her side. She put her hand on her belly over her womb.

  In a straggling mob, the men-at-arms returned to march before her. No longer orderly, they carried sacks of booty on their shoulders. Their mood had changed: as if they and not the Saracens had fought the little battle, they swaggered triumphantly along shouting war cries and singing victory songs.

  The sun was struggling to break through the clouds. High overhead, a flock of cranes flew north, their arrow-shaped flight pointing toward Agato. The fighting came and went like flames along the horizon. Maria rode between the wagon and the ditch. She thought she could smell blood in the air. The broad, featureless plain tricked her eyes; everything seemed much closer than it really was.

  The men-at-arms ahead of her were pointing away. Their calling voices, excited as children, ran along the massed ranks and back into the wagons. Maria’s servants got up to see. They were coming to ground where a battle had been fought, and bodies littered the meadow and clogged the ditch beside the road.

  Maria crossed herself. Already bloated, the dead faces lay against the moist earth or bobbed in the ditch. Their eyes bulged froglike and monstrous. No one broke from the road to rob them. The women made loud disgusted noises. Maria turned her head away. If she attended such things it would mark the baby.

  In a dank humor, she rode listlessly through the overcast afternoon. The fighting and the dead men, even the reactions of the women in the wagons, seemed gross and meaningless: she could not understand why anyone would risk dying like that. She might die like that, if his enemies defeated Richard. The men-at-arms before her were roaring a song whose words she hoped she did not hear right—something foul about women.

  Late in the afternoon, a village appeared down the road, a clutter of thatches and walls in a dimple of the plain. A thin flag of smoke hung in the air above the rooftops, the first sign of local people she had seen in Santerois.

  The men-at-arms beside her were calling to one another, jumping up to see over the heads of the soldiers in front of them. At once they broke into a trot. The white mare snorted, laying her ears back, and Maria reined her almost into the ditch to get out of the way of the column of men. They swarmed away down the road, lifting their voices.

  Maria’s horse leaped sideways. She turned it around. She struggled to think what to do. The road dipped into the hollow. The men-at-arms flooded along it and into the little village. Their voices turned to shouts.

  “Maria,” Louise was calling from the wagon. She waved to Maria to come back. There was a crash in the village. The men-at-arms were attacking it. Maria swung the white mare and galloped down the road after them.

  The mare shortened stride on the little slope. Before her, the men-at-arms packed the road, shoulder to shoulder, their pikes jabbing toward her. In the middle of the village, an enormous old oak tree stood, its branches fuzzed with new green buds. Several people were sheltering in it.

  Maria shouted. No one heard her. A man-at-arms climbed into the tree, and the people taking refuge there screamed.

  On the far side of the village from Maria, a knight on a horse was watching it happen. She kicked the mare forward into the packed men, and reluctantly they shifted and stepped on one another to let her pass. The men-at-arms were climbing into the lower branches of the oak tree. The wretched villagers scrambled higher, screaming. A baby was crying. Maria kicked at the backs of the men in front of her. They parted and she forced the mare in among them.

  The men in the tree were dragging a woman down out of the branches. She shrieked like a torn bellows. Maria whined under her breath. Frantically she wedged the mare through the mob. The knight opposite her was shouting orders no one heeded. The men-at-arms tore the woman out of the tree, and Maria burst up behind them and leaped down from her horse. She charged in between the woman and the three men attacking her.

  “Get back,” she shouted; her heart was thumping, and she clenched her fists.

  They blinked at her. One said, “Where did that come from?” and reached for her.

  A pike struck his arm down. The keg-shaped man who commanded them strode up beside Maria. “That’s enough,” he said to the three. He tilted his pike up between them.

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” he said to her. “Just these pups after a little—” He nodded behind her, at the ground behind her.

  She turned and sank down beside the village woman crouched against the trunk of the oak tree. The woman was shaking, too terrified even to cry. Her dress was torn open in front. Bloody bitemarks showed on her breast. Maria stood up.

  “Borso,” she said to the commander, “get these men out of the village and up where it’s dry enough to camp.” She pointed at the three young men. “Except them.”

  Borso glanced around him, in no hurry to obey her. She went up face to face with him. She was so angry her voice quavered. She said, “Did you hear me, Borso?”

  “Yes, my lady.” He turned briskly and bellowed orders. The thick press of bodies in the village began to ease. Maria stooped again beside the woman.

  “It’s all right now. Don’t be afraid.”

  The woman closed her eyes. Maria touched her; she recoiled against the trunk of the tree. Maria straightened.

  The strange knight was coming toward her, a boy scarcely older than R
obert. His freckled face was dished and soft around the mouth, like a colt’s. He said, “My lady, I was left in command here—”

  “Who is your captain?”

  “My lady, Ponce Rachet—”

  The three young men-at-arms were shifting uneasily and looking around at their companions, slowly moving out of the village toward the high plain. Trailed by two other men, Borso came back. “My lady, it won’t happen again. They didn’t know who you were, they must have thought you were another villager.”

  Maria glared at him. “Put some guards around in here—men you can trust.”

  “Yes, my lady.” He signed to the three young men. “Get back up there and see it doesn’t—”

  “Stop,” Maria said. “I didn’t tell you to dismiss them.”

  “Now, my lady—”

  She peered up into the tree again. The people clinging to the high branches looked down at her like owls. “Come down,” she called. They did not move. She raised her hand toward them. “Come down, I can’t protect you if you stay up there.”

  One by one the eight people climbed out of the tree before her. Her men stared at them. When the young woman rose to go, clutching the remnants of her clothes against her bleeding breast, the men all cried out lewdly.

  Maria spun around, close to tears. “Shut your dirty mouths.” She marched up to Borso, who scrubbed his face with one hand and smiled down at her as if she were a child.

  “Tie them to the tree.” She jerked her chin toward the three bound men. “Let them spend the night there.”

  The men fell into a stunned silence. Borso said, “Hey, now, for the sake of that slut?”

  “Do as I tell you.”

  The young knight dismounted, solemn-faced, and came forward. “My lady, we should really wait for my lord Marna’s judgment on this.”

  A rush of hot words stuck in her throat. She started to stamp her foot but instead hit him in the face with her fist. At the sharp unexpected pain in her knuckles she cried out. The young knight gaped at her, hardly moved. She looked around at the men before her.