Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  “Once.” She put her hand on his arm. “Roger,” she said, suddenly almost in tears, “I did not mean to insult you.”

  “Oh, Maria.” He held her hard against him, his arm around her neck. “Don’t harken to me, we are all raw. But you shouldn’t be jealous of Anne.” He squeezed her again, her enormous body in their way. “You know I will always love you best. Tell me if anything happens. I want to know the moment anything happens.” He went down the stairs again.

  Maria went back to the bedside. Richard slept deeply, his breathing even. His skin was harsh with fever. She touched him, and he turned his head and opened his eyes.

  “Maria.” Before she could answer, his eyes closed and he slept again.

  The tabib came up to her. His eyes were hooded like a hawk’s. His smile was cherubic. He patted her arm, laid his folded hands against his cheek, and shut his eyes. She crept into the bed next to Richard and fell instantly asleep.

  Thirty-eight

  In velvet, in satin, flecked with jewels, they stood in Agato’s cathedral and heard the new Archbishop turn Roger d’Alene into a married man. Maria, nine months with child, was cooking inside her heavy clothes. She leaned once on Robert, and the boy glanced at her and took her arm.

  A choir of children sang marriage hymns in the background. Candles marched up and down the high altar, shining on the vessels of gold, the gold paint on the statues, the triptych, the crucifix, the six-foot Paschal candlestick opposite the pulpit blazing with light. Richard stood behind Roger at the altar. Anne’s brothers were still sulk-faced from seeing him well, which delighted Maria.

  They knelt to pray in a single thunderous voice. She thought of her wedding in the village church at Castelmaria. Whatever Roger believed, she was not jealous of Anne. She put her hand on Robert’s shoulder, and he helped her rise. Up by the altar, Richard got stiffly to his feet. The sleeve of his black and gold coat was slit to the elbow to accommodate the bandages on his forearm.

  The cathedral bells tolled. Anne and Roger came down the aisle, their attendants like a host behind them. When they passed Maria, she felt guilty at her thoughts; Anne beamed, leaning like a child on her new husband. Maria followed them out of the church.

  On the porch, Robert next to her, she paused in the central archway to get her eyes used to the bright sunlight. A flock of beggars lurked in the shadows. Probably there would be sweets and money thrown to them later. Richard came up to her elbow. Their Saracens waited in the alley beside the cathedral, discreetly out of sight.

  Grooms led up two horses harnessed in red and white leather. Roger helped Anne to mount. Maria pulled away from Richard and crossed the porch to the steps.

  “Lady,” she said, “God’s grace to you on your wedding day.” She stood by Anne’s stirrup, smiling up at her.

  “Thank you. Thank you, good sister.” Anne leaned from her saddle to take Maria’s hand, and Maria kissed her fingers.

  The couple rode off. A dozen children in elaborate costumes raced after them to throw flowers and distribute cakes. Her brothers brought their horses along in their train. The crowd followed them out of the square, and the Saracens rode up in a rank across the front of the cathedral.

  “You’re so forgiving. Why did you kiss her, when she’s spat on us?”

  “She’ll like us better, now that she is Roger’s wife.”

  A groom was leading up their horses. Richard shifted his weight, resting his bad hip. Maria went up one step beside him, into the shade.

  “Do you remember when we married?” he said suddenly.

  “Yes,” she said. She smiled at him.

  “You’re sentimental as a Jew.” He went down the steps toward their horses. Maria followed him. He lifted her up into the saddle. The effort drained him and he nearly dropped her.

  “Don’t fall off.”

  Maria gathered her reins and spun the mare in a circle on her hocks. When he had mounted, the Saracens surrounded them, and they rode toward the Duke’s castle, across the bridge garlanded with flowers, over the brown, slow-moving summery river.

  ***

  Maria sat up in bed. It was still early in the afternoon. Save for her, the room was empty. She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and slid down to the floor. A wooden cup stood on the bench beside the bed, half full of the tabib’s infusion. They had kept her in bed for three days with such drinks. In her nightgown, barefoot, she crossed the room to the new baby’s cradle.

  “Holy Mary.”

  The cradle was empty. Maria gave it an angry swing and went over to the cupboard for some clothes. Footsteps pounded on the stairs. The door burst open.

  “Maria! Wake up!”

  Drunk as an alewife, Richard lurched across the threshold. The new baby was tucked in the crook of his arm. Maria caught him by the sleeve and took the baby, unmindful of the young Duke wobbling along behind him. Richard hooked his arm around her neck. His breath stank of wine.

  “Marita. My catkin. Give me a kiss.” He pressed a loud kiss to the side of her face. Suddenly he swung her up off her feet, the baby against her breast, and spun her in a circle.

  “Richard—”

  “What’s wrong?” He whirled her and the baby around again. Her head swam for a dizzy instant after he stopped. “Have I ever dropped you?”

  “Put me down, or I’ll vomit all over you.”

  He dropped her feet first to the floor and walked away. “My wife has a keen sense of weapons.”

  Maria climbed up to sit on the bed, her legs under her. The baby was asleep. She laid him carefully down on the covers beside her. “Where did you take him? Why are you so drunk in the middle of the day? Bring me something to put on—that robe, in the cupboard.”

  The young Duke was leaning unsteadily on the wall, his face set in a drunken frown. Richard sat down in the chair beside him. “Get it yourself. My leg hurts.”

  The young man pushed himself upright and sauntered across to the cupboard. Taking the robe from the hook, he flung it across the foot of the bed. He tilted himself up against the wall again at Richard’s side.

  “Bunny, don’t do that,” Richard said. “You will ruin my discipline.”

  “Don’t call me Bunny.”

  Maria pulled the robe on over her nightgown. Picking up the girdle, she knotted it around her waist and hitched the sleeves up above her elbows. “I’ll call the baby Bunny, if you name him Henry.”

  The Duke began to speak. Richard slammed his elbow back into the young man’s side. “What do you want to name him?”

  “I told you,” she said. She got clean napkins and changed the baby and swaddled him. “I want to call him Richard.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. But I do.” They had gone all through this before.

  “That’s no reason. Besides, you named the others, but for Stephen.”

  Maria put the baby in the cradle and rocked it a few strokes.

  The young Duke refused to meet her eyes. He sank down unsteadily on his heels, his back to the wall. Suspicious, she said, “Richard, what have you done?”

  “Bring me some wine. Cross of Christ, Maria, you are lazy—sleeping all day—”

  Maria bent over the baby in the cradle. Now on his forehead she saw the faint gleam of christening oil. She put her fingertips against the baby’s face. She did not want to call him Bunny.

  “Richard, you are low.”

  “It was my idea,” the Duke said.

  Maria went past them across the room. “I don’t believe you.” When she opened the door, the page stationed out on the landing sprang to his feet, and she sent him for the wine. She slammed the door and turned back toward Richard.

  “You had him christened behind my back.”

  “You needed your rest.” He smiled at her. Reaching out, he caught hold of her wrist and pulled her over beside him. “The Brotherhood has given you a new name.”

  “Oh,” she said. “What?”

  He said a long Saracen word. “It means—M
other of Many Sons.”

  “Tell them I reject it.”

  She sat down on the floor beside his chair. She rubbed her head against his arm, and he straightened and using both hands uncoiled and unbraided her hair. The page returned, lugging a ewer of wine, cups clustered under one arm. Richard combed her hair out through his fingers. Maria shut her eyes. She enjoyed his touch. She laid her head down on his thigh.

  “I forgive you,” she said.

  “There, Bunny,” Richard said softly. “I told you she was no shrew.”

  The Duke laughed. “You didn’t see her cheat your brother out of Anne’s Morgengab.”

  The baby let out a short, fierce wail. Maria crossed the room to the cradle. She lifted the baby in her arms. “Henry,” she murmured, trying to like the name. Louise and Catherine whisked in the door. “Catherine, bring up the musicians, will you?” Opening her clothes, she sat on the bed and thumbed her nipple erect.

  The Duke turned his eyes away. The two men got to talking. Maria looked down at the baby sucking on her breast. At least now he was a Christian. Louise went around the room picking up after Richard.

  “Are you going to Occel?” the young Duke said.

  Maria lifted her head. The three musicians filed in the door, carrying their lutes and horns. Louise arranged them in one corner, near the window.

  “I don’t know,” Richard said. “My brother there has a better way with those people than I do—my brother William.”

  The musicians, their heads bowed together, tuned their instruments to the leader’s pipe. Maria laid the baby on her knees and shrugged back into her clothes. Fat as a slug, the baby emitted a faint hicket. Maria kissed him, laughing.

  “The christening failed. We shall have to do it again.”

  She carried the baby over to Richard. The door opened, and Robert came in, Ponce Rachet just behind him. Richard cradled the baby along his forearms. It hicketed solemnly into his face.

  “It must be a Christian demon.” He stuck his thumb in the wine and rubbed a cross on the baby’s forehead. “In nomine patris—”

  Maria snatched the baby away from him. “Don’t blaspheme over my son.” She held out the baby to Louise, who took him off to change him. Robert came up beside Maria and put his arm around her waist.

  “Mama, you’re still fat.”

  Maria hugged him. Richard tilted his chair back on its hind-legs. “Fat. Is she ever thin? I run her halfway down again, and she’s off swelling with another one of you.”

  Ponce laughed. Maria stooped to get Richard’s empty cup. He and Ponce talked. Robert said, in horror, “Mama, he is drunk.”

  She thrust the cup into his hand. Her legs were already tiring. She sat down on the warm brick hearth just behind Richard.

  “Go get him more, then, before he gets a headache.”

  Ponce Rachet hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I have some cases for you to try, at the East Tower. Nothing that can’t wait if you must go down to Occel.”

  In the sunlit corner, the musicians burst into a song for dancing. Richard turned his head toward Maria. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t want to go to Occel. It’s too dangerous. Theobald’s cursed us.”

  Robert brought Richard a cup of wine. “Papa, let me go. I can do it. Stay here until you are strong again. My lord Henry—”

  Richard knocked him off his feet. Maria straightened up. She put one hand on Richard’s shoulder as he sat before her in the chair. Robert sprawled across the floor in a shining puddle of wine. The Duke’s cup clattered into a corner. Louise screamed. The musicians played merrily on.

  Ponce Rachet’s long, homely face tightened toward a smile. “Gripe,” he said. “Give me an order.”

  Richard heaved himself upright in his chair. He twitched Maria’s hand off his shoulder. Robert got to his feet.

  “I’ll go to Occel,” Richard said. “Get ready to leave.”

  Ponce made a salute to him and went out the door. Robert stood still, his teeth clenched, his hands clasped behind his back. His fancy blue coat was stained with wine. He and Richard stared at each other. At last Richard said, “Get out.”

  Robert met Maria’s eyes and left the room. The Duke stood up. “I wish you had been my father,” he said to Richard, “but I’m glad you’re not. I’m leaving. My own levies are joining me, so I will need your help only three or four days more.”

  “My lord,” Maria said, “come back and sup with us.”

  “I will.” His black eyes stabbed toward Richard. “Look after my godson. Don’t take him to Occel.” He tramped away, shouldering a path through the men waiting in the doorway. “Robert?” he shouted, on the landing. “Wait for me!”

  Richard reached for the cup on the floor beside him and knocked it over. He let out a burst of incoherent obscenity. Maria took the cup across the room. Two knights came toward him from the doorway.

  “My lord Welf Blackjacket sent—”

  “Go back there and wait.”

  The knights withdrew from the room. Through the open door she could see the many people crowded onto the landing, waiting to talk to him. The musicians were reaching the end of their song. She wondered if they had heard anything else through it all. Richard leaned on the arm of his chair, terrifically drunk.

  “How soon can you travel?” he said.

  “Whenever you decide.” She gave him the wine. “The baby won’t care.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to go to Occel.”

  “I didn’t want my baby named Henry, either.”

  “I have to go,” he said. “They are all watching me now. You must see it’s a test.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Like having sons, and bearing wounds. But it is another kind of test for me.”

  He stared at her a moment. Lifting the cup, he took a long sip of the wine. “Where would you rather go?”

  “To Castelmaria,” she said. “Jilly is there. And Stephen could meet us there.”

  “Then we will go to Castelmaria.”

  Thirty-nine

  First they went to the East Tower, where after the arrogance of Agato, Ponce Rachet and his wife were easy as old clothes. Richard summoned his court and heard pleas from all over the area. Like an oven, the summer heat closed down on them. Maria sat in the shade of a briar hedge and nursed her baby, while Ponce Rachet’s wife talked of children and colic, and how her younger child sneezed whenever he had to do with dogs.

  “He must be bewitched,” Maria said. The boy tumbled in the grass of the meadow. He was robust for his age, fat as his mother. She tickled Henry’s feet and the baby jerked his knees up to his chest. At the far end of the meadow, at the foot of the castle hill, a group of men stood beneath the big tree where Richard was trying his cases of law.

  “I have taken him to the Shrine of Our Lady,” Ponce Rachet’s wife said. “Perhaps if I brought him to Marna, to the cathedral—are there relics there?”

  “Yes, we have some relics,” Maria said, “but what you must do is find a witch who can lift the enchantment. You need not come all the way over the mountains.” She imagined the fat chatelaine, in her peaked white coif and wooden shoes, hunting through Mana’a for relics.

  “God have mercy.” Ponce Rachet’s wife crossed herself. She bent toward the baby. “Lambkin. Little lambkin.” Under her breath, as if the whole world listened, she murmured, “There is an old woman in the fen who is witchwise, they say. Naturally I stay away from such people.” She crossed herself again. “They say she has philtres, and—”

  “Love philtres,” Maria said. She glanced again toward the tall green tree. “In the fen, you said?”

  Ponce Rachet’s wife blinked at her. “Yes, but—It’s leagues from here. I have only heard—”

  “Can we go there and back in a day? We’ll take Ismael and some of the Brotherhood, they will be proof against witches.” Maria lifted the baby up to her shoulder.

  Ponce Rachet’s wife’s mouth opened like a flower. A sudden rush of color darkene
d her cheeks. “We must not tell the men,” she said. She clapped her hands together. “We could go this very afternoon. But we cannot tell the men.”

  “We don’t have to,” Maria said. “Just let me think of something of Richard’s I can take to her.”

  ***

  The woman in the fen was not old. She kept a cottage in a patch of trees on the high ground. Ponce Rachet’s wife explained the enchantment on the child and let the woman look into the little boy’s eyes and breathe once into his mouth. Maria held herself back, wary. Her hair had come down while they rode. She took off the linen coif and tied it around her waist.

  The fenwoman’s face was white as starch. She traced her beautiful oval eyes with black, so that her face had the arranged look of a picture.

  “You must come back in the late summer,” she told Ponce Rachet’s wife. “I have not got the herbs now, they must be gathered under the Dog Star. He should have been to me when you first marked this though, now you will have to be patient.”

  While she talked, Maria wandered along the little picket fence around the hut. The garden grew in a wild unordered profusion of rampion and fennel, blossoming vines, spears of onion and garlic, and patches of mint. A brown mastiff lay in the shade of the hut. When she touched the fence he growled, and she backed away.

  From the top of the hill she could see across the broad fen all the way up to the road: leagues of featureless sun-browned marsh grass. Her Saracens waited at the foot of the hill, with the baby. Ismael would come no nearer for fear of the Evil Eye. Ponce Rachet’s wife was agreeing to give the fenwoman a white hen and a black cock, a featherbed, and some silver money. The fenwoman lifted her eyes to Maria. “You are curious enough, my girl, what are you looking for?”

  Maria dipped a little bow to her. “Lady, by your leave, I hoped you might make me a charm.”

  “A love charm.” The fenwoman smiled. “For your husband or your lover?”

  “My lover,” Maria said.

  The fenwoman stared her in the eyes, and Maria dropped her. gaze. The woman laughed. “I will need something of his. Clothing, perhaps. Some of his hair.”