Maria went down the hillside, through the close-growing fir trees. The Saracens were grouped in an uneasy knot, their head-cloths drawn over their faces like women’s veils. She groped in the basket on her saddle. The baby in his arms, Ismael rode over to her.
“Maria. No must she see us. No, no.”
“Be quiet and stay here.” She took the shirt from the basket. “What could she do to you? She is a Christian witch.” Henry was asleep. She tucked his large wrinkled feet under the blanket and ran up the hill.
The fenwoman had gone to the far side of her house. When Maria reached her again, she was in her garden picking herbs for Ponce Rachet’s wife, who stood at the fence, saying, “And sometimes, around Lenten season, my husband is very hot of temper, days on end—”
The fenwoman gave her a handful of herbs. “Steep these in water, turn around three times, saying what I just told you, and drink it down. Do that three days at sunrise, but do not go to Mass between them. If you confess it to a priest the charm will fail.” She came toward Maria and took the shirt. Before Maria could avoid her, the woman reached out with her scissors and snipped off a lock of Maria’s long black hair.
“Wait.” The hair and the shirt and the fenwoman vanished into her cottage.
Ponce Rachet’s wife rolled the herbs carefully into her shawl. Her little boy threw rocks at the mastiff. Maria fingered the stumped tress of her hair. It frightened her to have some piece of her body in the hands of a woman like that. The door flew open, the fenwoman came out, carrying the shirt.
“Here. Burn this utterly, and keep the ash.” She unfolded the shirt. Within it, tied with red thread, the long hank of hair was coiled into a lover’s knot. “As long as you keep the ash you will hold his heart.” From her apron she took a square leather packet. “Put a pinch of this in his drink, before you lie with him.”
“Ah.”
Maria put the packet into her sleeve. She tucked the folded shirt under her arm and reached into her wallet. The fenwoman shook her head. “No. I take nothing in barter for love charms.” Her wide smile split her face, and her fine huge eyes tilted up at the corners. “So Dragon is your lover. Beware his wife, it was told to me that she is witchwise.”
***
They rode back across the fen toward the East Tower. Once they stopped in a meadow while Maria nursed the baby. Ponce Rachet’s wife gathered an armful of larkspur and primrose. The Saracens let their pretty mares graze. At first the men roamed aimlessly, but one by one they sat down at the far end of the sweep of soft grass, all facing southeast, and Maria knew they prayed.
Ponce Rachet’s wife was winding her flowers by their stems into garlands, one for her and one for Maria. She jiggled a flower in front of the baby’s nose. He fixed his gaze on it. His arms and legs moved witlessly.
“Bunny,” Maria said. She bent and nuzzled his face. “My bunny baby.” When he smiled at her she had to laugh.
“I cannot say he favors either you or my lord.”
“No. He looks like no one. He just looks like himself.”
They went on along the road. The sun was setting, but the East Tower was visible before them, a square gray peak among the rounded summer-dry hilltops. Serf children herded cattle toward them, and the two women and the Saracens moved off into the ditch to let them pass. Giggling, the children hid from the Saracens behind their cows.
Ismael cried, “Robert comes!” His horse catapulted forward down the road.
Maria lifted her head to see. Robert was galloping along down the road toward them. A thrill of panic ran down her spine. Something had happened. But when he drew rein before her, he was laughing.
“Mama! Papa has been looking all over for you. There is a messenger here from Rome.”
“Rome!” Ponce Rachet’s wife said.
Robert called to Ismael. His horse reared up, its hoofs almost over her head. Maria cried, “Wait—where are you going?”
“Papa has sent the Majlas back to the mountains. Don’t worry—I’ll meet you at Castelmaria.” He waved and rode away. The Saracens galloped after him.
Maria jigged her mare on, cradling Henry in her arm. The little band of horsemen shrank away to a flutter of white robes under the trees. They broke the horizon and vanished into the darkening sky. Ponce Rachet’s wife plucked at Maria’s sleeve.
“A messenger from Rome—where will he sleep? I cannot take you out of the top room. I’ll have to give him our bed.”
“You can sleep with us.” The love potion could wait until Castelmaria.
“No—no. We will sleep in the hall, with the servants. What am I going to have for the meat at tomorrow’s dinner? Thank God he did not come for dinner today!” Her eyes widened at the mere thought.
They cantered up the hill to the curtain wall and rode into the ward of the castle. The sun was setting. The servants were gathered at the door down into the kitchen, waiting to take the supper up to the hall. Maria gave Henry to Ponce Rachet’s wife. She jumped down from her saddle and turned to take him back.
Ponce strode up to them. “Where have you been?” He glowered at his wife.
She puffed up angrily. Maria said, “The fault was mine. If there is a fault. Where is Richard?”
“In the hall, girl.”
His wife put out her arms. “You’d better give me that baby.”
Maria went through the door into the stairwell. Her hair, full of wilting primroses, was hanging loose down her back, and her skirt was grass-stained. She would have to change her clothes before she met this messenger. She raced up the stairs. When she was halfway to the hall landing, the door opened and two pages led a strange man out onto the stair above her.
He was dressed so beautifully she needed a moment to realize he was a priest. She froze. Over the heads of the pages, he saw her, and he smiled.
“My lord,” she said. Wreathed in dead wildflowers, a devilish potion in her sleeve, she went up the steps to him and knelt to kiss his ring.
He made the sign of the Cross over her. “God bless you, child.” He lifted her up by the hand, like someone in a song. His fine-boned handsome face was as planned as the fenwoman’s paint. “Were I her master, such a pretty lady would not wander alone after dark.”
Richard had come into the doorway behind him. “Oh, she’s very tidy tonight—sometimes she comes in looking as if she’s been fighting with dogs.” He took her by the arm. “Father Yvet, will you come down again to eat supper with us?”
“I will, my lord.” The priest’s eyes danced with good humor.
Richard pulled her toward the hall. Maria shook him off. “My lord, I must go upstairs and dress.” She bolted up the stairs ahead of the monk.
None of her women was in her room. She splashed water on her face and put on a fresh gown, and she was sitting before the little corner hearth brushing her hair when the door opened and Richard came in.
“Where did you go? How do you talk Ismael into running off anywhere with you?” He sank down behind her stool and lifted her hair in his hands. “You looked like a hayfield tumble, and he loved it. I fear he is a worldly priest, Father Yvet, and I wish I knew why he is here.”
“What does he say?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Maria twisted to look at him. “What do you say?”
“How can I talk to a priest? I know nothing of philosophy. I said we were leaving for Castelmaria—”
The door opened and Ponce Rachet’s wife came in with the baby, crying at the screech. Maria got up to take him in her arms. She poked her little finger into his mouth, and he sucked hard, his eyes in a purposeful frown.
“My lord,” Ponce Rachet’s wife said, “I will not listen to any of this—we are not going to sleep here with you, we will sleep in the hall. That’s what I told my man.”
“Good,” Richard said. “Tell him I agree with you.”
“That’s what I said to him.” Ponce Rachet’s wife left.
“I told her they could stay here,” Maria said.
The room was not large, but the wooden bed was certainly big enough for four people.
Richard walked across the room. A page came in with a ewer and filled the jug of wine she kept in the cupboard. She had put the love potion in her chest. Her imagination began to hurry through its possible effects.
“I told Father Yvet that he could come to Castelmaria with us,” Richard said. He strolled up to the fire, his hands on his hips. Maria laid the baby down in the cradle.
“It must be about the Emperor,” she said. “They have come to make us bow to him.”
“No—why do you say that?”
“Isn’t he from the Pope? And the Pope is the Emperor’s man.”
“Not this Pope.” He came over toward her again. “Where did you go? Whom have you been betraying me with now? You looked like a May Day wench, your hair down like that.”
“Father Yvet didn’t mind.” She put her hair up loosely on her head and dug into her sleeve for the combs and clips to keep it there.
He started away. “You’ve always been hot for churchmen. I’m hungry. Come down when you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.” She raked the combs backwards into her hair and went after him down the stairs.
The evening meal was all laid out before the hearth, untouched, three courses already congealing on the table. The servants, who could not eat until Richard and Maria had done, grumbled loudly at either end of the hall. The pages served the wine. Richard pulled his chair back and sat down.
“You know I’ll find out eventually where you went today,” he said, when Maria had slid onto the bench at his left. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“We rode. We picked the flowers.”
Father Yvet came in the door. She started to rise but Richard held her down. His servants brought the churchman ceremoniously up to his chair and seated him on Richard’s right hand, facing the hearth. His spare, amused face gave her no sense of his age: she suspected he was no older than Richard, in spite of his smooth gray hair.
The priest rinsed his mouth with wine and ate a few bites. He would not let the servants give him more than a morsel or two from each dish, although Maria marked that he ate even of the spiced Saracen eggs that Ponce Rachet’s cook was just learning to make well.
The churchman raised his head and smiled at her. “I have heard much spoken of the Shrine of Saint Mary. I understand it is a local place of pilgrimage.”
Richard put his elbows on the table. “Yes. There’s some old story of a miraculous well. Ask Maria, she goes there nearly every year.”
“Yes.” Father Yvet smiled at her, paternal. “You built the little church there. Tell me about your shrine, child.”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s just a woman’s place. A cave in the hillside. I’ve been told there is a hermit on the mountain, but no one has ever seen him.” It embarrassed her to speak of it to so polished a man. “You must have made many pilgrimages, Father—to the great holy places.”
“Yes—I am just now come from Ephesus, in fact, where Timothy was bishop.” He spoke of Constantinople and Nicaea. Ponce Rachet came in and spoke, low-voiced, into Richard’s ear. The churchman was describing a Byzantine court, and trying to hear both she caught neither.
Father Yvet was full of stories, and clearly he was in no hurry to get to the point of his visit. Maria leaned on the table to listen. Richard stroked his moustaches down with his thumb. Father Yvet mentioned Antioch and several other Bible places.
“Of course no pilgrimage really is worthy of the name, not after one has made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem itself.”
“You’ve gone to Jerusalem,” Maria said. “But that is perilous, in these days, Father—you make too little of your courage.”
“Lady.” He bent his beaming smile on her. “Courage is the virtue of the Crusader, like your lord. The virtue of the pilgrim is humility.”
“Perhaps.” Maria folded her hands in front of her on the tabletop. “The knight at least can fight if he is attacked.”
“Yes. But the pilgrim can run away.”
Maria smiled, pleased with that. Suddenly she liked him, she felt a bond with him.
“No pilgrim can outrun a knight,” Richard said. “The Christians of Jerusalem won’t fare peacefully under this new Emir.”
Father Yvet sat back to let a page serve him from a tray of cheeses. “We have exchanged messengers with the Sultan of Baghdad, to deal with that.”
Richard said, “Which Baghdadi Sultan?”
Father Yvet’s smile stuck forgotten on his face. “You are well informed.”
“Not me. The Venetians. They put into my harbor in Mana’a. Excuse me.” He pulled his chair around to talk again to Ponce Rachet. The churchman’s lean face, no longer humorous, was aimed at him like an ax.
“Constantinople, Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch,” Maria said. “Where else have you traveled, Father Yvet?”
He turned toward her, smiling again. “In truth God made me a wanderer in this world. I’ve been east as far as Mosul and west as far as Aachen.”
“Aachen,” Maria said. That was the Emperor’s castle. She looked quickly at Richard. Ponce had gone away.
Richard put his hand on his beard. “Where is Mosul, Maria?”
She shrugged. It sounded like a Saracen name. “Africa?”
Now the two men were laughing at her. She stood up. “I would stay to entertain you more, since I do it so well, but you must have your own high-minded man’s talk.”
“No,” Father Yvet said. “Stay, child. I did not wish to drive you away.”
“You did not, my lord.” She went out the door.
When her women had helped her take off her clothes and put on a nightgown, she dismissed them for the night. From her chest she got the little packet of the love potion. The women had banked the fire and lit most of the lamps. The room smelled of the fragrant burning oils. She went to the cupboard, between the bed and the wall, and poured out a cup of the wine.
She shook a little of the scaly brown powder from the leather packet into her palm. Probably it would not work until she burned the shirt and the hair. She sprinkled a pinch of the dust onto the surface of the wine. It did not look like very much and she put in another pinch.
“What are you doing?” Richard said, behind her.
She jumped straight in the air. Whirling to face him, she hid both hands behind her back. He reached around her, and she slid away along the wall, toward the cupboard.
“What are you doing? You are poisoning me.” He grabbed her around the waist and snatched for the wine cup.
Maria held the cup away from him at arm’s length. She tried to twist out of his grip, but he pinned her against the wall, leaning on her, and stretched his hand toward the cup. His fingertips brushed the chased surface. Behind his back, she flipped the leather packet onto the floor under the bed. Richard’s full weight pressed on her, hard, and she let him have the cup.
“What is this?” He stood back a step, still holding her around the waist. Suspiciously he sniffed the wine.
“It isn’t poison.” To prove it, she drew the cup and his hand down, her fingers over his, and sipped the wine. “It’s a philtre.” The wine tasted sweet of herbs.
“What?” He pried her hand away and when she reached for the cup again held it up beyond her grasp. “A love potion. To keep me faithful or to make me strong? Neither one’s a compliment.”
“A woman in the fen devised it.” She leaned against him. “Drink it—what harm can it do?”
He lowered the cup and drank. Maria waited, keen with interest. He set the cup to her lips, and she drank three swallows. He finished the rest. They stared at each other. She searched his face.
“Do you feel anything happening?” he asked.
“No.” Whole wine always made her head whirl. “Do you?”
“Well, not real—Yeeeow!” He sprang at her.
Maria shrieked. She dodged around the foot of the bed. Richard began to laugh. He sat down on the bed, his sho
ulders shaking, and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks into his beard.
The baby cried, and Maria went to quiet him. “I don’t think that was funny.”
Richard’s laughter chuckled off. He wiped his face on his sleeve. Maria rocked the baby to sleep. Every few moments Richard laughed again. He lay down on his back across the bed. She sat beside him.
“Now the fenwoman knows my wife feeds me potions.”
Maria shook her head. “I told her you are my lover.”
“Sweet Baby Jesus.”
He touched her. She lay down next to him, facing him. He propped his head up on his crooked arm. “What did you give her of mine?”
She cupped her palm over the crown of his head and brought his face down to be kissed. “Haven’t you noticed something missing? “
The drink had warmed her and made her sleepy. She touched her bare foot to his. Their legs entwined. “Did you send the messenger to Mana’a?”
“Yes, I’ve told you twice, God’s death, you are a nag. They will all be at Castelmaria, Stephen and Jilly and Robert.” He drew her down against his chest. She felt warm and drowsy, as if nothing could ever possibly go wrong. Softly she moved her hands under his clothes to his body.
Forty
Maria?” Ponce Rachet’s wife called, from the foot of the stairs.
“I am here.”
On her hands and knees, she poked her head under the bed. Rushes two fingers deep covered the floor, spotted with mouse-dung. On the far side of the room, Ponce Rachet’s wife’s wooden shoes and heavy brown hose walked into the doorway. Maria straightened up and got to her feet.
“Oh, that Father Yvet is such a charming man,” the chatelaine said. “How sad I am that he must leave so quickly.” She helped Maria pull back the bedcovers to air. Together they put the room in order, and Maria went down to her other chores.
In the afternoon, she burned the shirt and the lock of her hair in an iron pot, collected the ash, and sewed it into a piece of silk. Once again she hunted for the rest of the philtre, but it was gone. A dog had probably taken it. She put the silk into the bottom of her chest.
Great Maria (v5) Page 43