Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

  ***

  She went out to meet Stephen. He would not tell her Richard’s message to Ismael, but by the things he said, she gathered that Ismael was staying close by Castelmaria. They rode across the wood to the mill. She raced Stephen three times and beat him twice. In the deep oak wood the still air smelled of leaves and mold. Here and there patches of sumac glowed dark red in the sun. She jumped her mare over a windfall and turned to watch Stephen. His horse refused it, and grimly he turned and drove the brown mare at it again, and at the last step, when it was going to jump, his courage failed and he let the horse stop. He struck the mare spitefully with his reins.

  “Don’t,” Maria called. “Come around it.”

  He rode through the brush around the barrier. They galloped on into the narrow trench of the valley where the mill stood. She saw how Stephen brooded on the jump he had not made. They reached the mill, at the end of the brush-choked valley, surrounded by a stand of cedars.

  Around the mill there was a cleared meadow inside a split rail fence. When Maria and Stephen rode up to it, a cart and three of the villagers blocked the way through the gate. Maria waved to them, dismounted, and tied her horse to the fence. Eight of the dogs from the castle were sitting under the big tree at the gate, their eyes steady on the upper branches, where the miller’s cats sat elaborately licking their paws.

  “Piers,” she said. She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Where is my husband, drowning the miller?”

  The serfs all laughed, and Alys’s son said, “We just took the stones inside, Madonna, nothing has happened yet.”

  Maria climbed through the fence and with Stephen walked across the meadow to the mill. She pushed the door open.

  Inside, the round room resounded with the howling of the grindstones. The floor, the wooden gears, even the walls and the roof beams were caked with moldy flour. Maria circled around the trap door in the middle of the room, its lid cocked open.

  The scales were at the far end of the room. “My father had the weights made,” the miller was shouting. His voice carried over the roar of the grindstones. Richard was pacing up and down in front of the scales. The miller stood beside him, his face slack with apprehension. His boys were piling weights onto the scale platforms.

  Maria went past the stacked bags of grain and stood where she could watch the scale. The miller’s eyes never left Richard’s face. The boys heaved the castle weight up onto the platform. Richard kicked out the chock.

  The scale rocked and swayed and finally balanced evenly. Maria shook her head, frowning; she knew the miller cheated on his weights. The miller’s face was dripping with sweat. Richard waved to the boys, who removed all the stones from the scale, and brought another set of weights.

  “My lord,” the miller shouted. “I never used those weights—I never even knew they were down there—I only used my good weights. You saw, you saw my weights balanced yours—”

  The miller’s boys swung the second set of stones up onto the left side of the scale. Stooping, they hoisted the castle weight and dropped it onto the right side. The scale crashed heavily down on the side of the castle stone.

  “As I breathe, my lord,” the miller was roaring. “As I love God—”

  Richard seemed not to hear him. He gestured to the boys, who gathered up the false weights from the scale. Maria stayed to watch. She remembered how often this miller’s father had cheated her. But Richard only led them all outside.

  The boys carried the weights across the yard and threw them into the millpond. The three villagers jeered and shouted and made figs at the miller. Maria called to them to come load up the castle weights again.

  The miller, by habit still bellowing, cried, “I’ve never cheated anyone—I never knew they were there. I never used those weights—”

  Richard said, “Henceforth you will give me tenpence every quarterday. You can start Christmas. Tenpence. This next Christmas.”

  The miller’s voice gave out. His face the color of flour, he stared into the empty air. Maria suspected that tenpence every quarter would beggar him, if he could not steal. Christmas was less than a full quarter away.

  She turned around. Richard’s horse grazed along the side of the mill. The water streamed over the mill dam, silver as fish. The serfs loaded the castle weights carefully into the cart and backed the ox through the gate into the road. Richard went around the mill to get his horse.

  The miller wheeled toward Maria, his hands out. “Madonna, have some Christian mercy on me.”

  Maria smiled at him. “If I judged it, you’d be in the pond with your weights around your neck.”

  Richard led his horse over to her. “Did you see Ismael?”

  “No. What are you—”

  He turned his back on her and mounted his horse. The miller caught hold of the big iron stirrup.

  “My lord—”

  “If you stay honest, I will consider a remission.”

  He rode away. Maria ran across the yard to her mare. The oxcart was already halfway down the road through the valley, hidden in the trees and brush. Richard and Stephen rode up beside her. She mounted. Stephen whistled and called to the dogs.

  “And people say only God can make something out of nothing,” Richard said. “Didn’t I just make forty pence a year out of twenty pounds that wasn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Maria said. “Which is nothing.”

  Stephen said, “What’s a remission?”

  “If he turns honest I’ll lower the fine.” Richard reined his horse around, his eyes on her. “Justice is profitable.”

  Maria laughed. They rode three abreast along the dirt path. The dogs snuffed busily around them. Stephen said, “Will he be honest now?”

  “Do snakes fly? This one’s father gave false weights when I was living in the Knights’ Tower and your mother was still skipping rope.”

  “When did you live in the Knights’ Tower?”

  “I never skipped rope,” Maria said.

  “I remember you and a carrot-headed girl jumping rope and singing an indecent song about a bell.”

  “A bell,” Maria said. An old tune sounded in her mind. “Oh.”

  Good girls wait for blessing

  Bad girls ring the bell.

  Good girls go to Heaven

  Bad girls go to hey-nonny-nonny-o.

  Richard laughed. They rode down the valley along the riverbank. Ahead of them the oxcart had nearly reached the bridge.

  “What does that mean?” Stephen asked.

  “It was a clapping game,” Maria said. “Not skip-rope.” She had not thought of the song in years. Richard was smiling broad as a sailor at her. She said, “You have an evil mind.”

  He held one hand up against his chest. “You were this high to me then. And flat as the top of a table. We bet on when you’d bud.”

  “You bet on anything.”

  The boy was looking from her face to his father’s and back. Richard said, “We had nothing else to do. Except fight.”

  “Why were you living in the Knights’ Tower?” Stephen asked.

  “I was waiting for your mother to get old enough to marry.”

  Maria glanced at him. They came to the bridge. The cart rattled across and on down the road. Richard took his horse to drink. Maria dismounted and sat on a rock beside the river, kicked her shoes off, and stuck her feet in the cold water. Stephen waded along the bank hunting for crayfish.

  Richard pulled her hair. “I remember once I caught you and that redheaded girl in the stable, cramming your faces with raspberry tarts you stole from the oven.”

  “Oh. Don’t remind me. I was sick for days. I still can’t eat raspberries.” She leaned back against him. “Was that you?”

  “You don’t remember,” he said.

  “All I remember is running away from a very mean knight.” She rubbed her cheek against him. Stephen was scrambling through the stalky brush along the riverbank. “Poor Elena. The Saracens killed her. She was my best friend.”

  “You
weren’t alone.” He took hold of her hand and manipulated the fingers. “God’s death. Half the tower got into Elena. She’d kick up her heels for a penny. Or a raspberry tart.”

  “You didn’t. Did you?”

  “She didn’t like me.”

  “Poor Elena.”

  He kissed her. Stephen shouted in the distance, out of sight in the reeds along the riverbank. Most of the dogs had gone with him. Richard crooked his arm around her neck, her head fast in his grip. His free hand groped between her thighs.

  She said, “Sooner or later Father Yvet is going to find out what a spider you really are.”

  He rubbed his face against her throat. “Oh, Maria. Haven’t I been good to you?”

  “Ever since Father Yvet started courting me.”

  He pulled her down onto the grass. The sun was warm on her face. She put her hand under his shirt. He lay on top of her, his knee between her legs.

  The dogs barked close by. Stephen shouted. Maria pushed Richard away; he was trying to kiss her, and for an instant he went on trying, pinning her down. She could not budge him. The dogs rushed up around them. Maria thrust at him hard, and he let her go. She sat up, her heart pounding.

  Stephen bounded toward them. He was soaking wet to the hair. They got on their horses and went home.

  Forty-two

  Maria took Henry down to the village in the early afternoon. Richard and William the German had each given the fair a tun of wine, and the villagers were just tapping the second when she arrived.

  Everybody for leagues had come: shepherders and woodcutters, even the people who left the hills otherwise only for Easter and Christmas. The meadow swarmed with them. They spilled over across the river and into the village itself. She took the baby over to see the woodcutters’ trained bears dance.

  Calling greetings to the people she knew, she stood watching the swarm of serfs. The shepherds’ wives spread their finest blankets and shawls on the grass to show off their patterns. Maria admired them. She got a sweet cake fresh from the oven and strolled around the meadow, enjoying the sudden variety of faces and sights.

  Behind the wine wagon, the village boys and half a dozen knights from the castle had gathered to box. She stood trying to get Henry to watch them. Robert shouted to her. She went around the wagon and crossed a stretch of beaten grass toward him. Under an oak tree, he and several other men were standing around a double ox yoke, wound around and around with chains. Maria walked up.

  “All right,’’Robert called. “Here goes.” He bent, took hold of the yoke, and struggled to lift it. The yoke would not budge.

  The other men laughed. Among them, William the German’s broad face was scarlet with good humor. Robert stopped again and heaved. This time he hauled one end of the yoke a hand’s breadth off the ground.

  The men roared and beat their hands together. A cannikin of wine went quickly among them. Maria laughed; she pulled Robert toward her by the arm.

  “Ah,” she said, “your talents lie elsewhere.” She hugged him.

  “Papa,” Robert cried, over her shoulder. “Come lift this thing.”

  Richard came up beside her. “What thing?”

  The men around them shouted at him, challenging him to it. Maria settled the baby more comfortably on her hip. Richard put his foot on the yoke and pushed, without moving it at all.

  A little crowd was gathering. The knights among them began to make bets. More cans of wine appeared and circulated from hand to hand. Richard peeled off his shirt. On his forearm dull purple ridges of scars rose under the dark hair. Maria took Henry’s chin and tried to make him look. The baby pulled impatiently away from her. Richard bent over the yoke. He heaved; nothing happened.

  “Go on, Dragon,” someone yelled from the back of the crowd. “Breathe on it.” The men all whooped.

  “King Jesus Christ,” Richard said. He grasped it again. The muscles of his back coiled. The chains clinked reluctantly. Maria murmured. All around her people yelled, their voices rising as the yoke rose slowly off the ground. Richard got it waist-high and dropped it.

  A round cheer went up. “Try it again,” Robert called, but Maria whacked him in the ribs with her fist, and Richard was already standing back, reaching for his shirt. He slapped William the German across his enormous belly.

  “You do it.”

  The fat man smiled. He went up before the yoke, reached down, and raised the yoke up to his knee, brought it smoothly to his chest, and straightened his arms over his head. The crowd screeched. Even Henry crowed and pointed. William turned around once under the yoke and set it down again. Instantly other men rushed to try.

  Richard started toward her. His eyes went beyond her, and he turned in the opposite direction. Maria looked over her shoulder. She heard her name called. Father Yvet sauntered up to her.

  His habit was fine and soft as a prince’s clothes. His brushed hair gave off a metallic sheen. “You should have come with us yesterday. It was a most pleasant journey.”

  Maria looked for Richard; he had gone. A serf woman, brown as the dirt, was kneeling before Father Yvet. Talking about the shrine, he did not notice her until she tugged on his habit. He blessed her. Maria boosted the baby up on her hip. They went together across the meadow.

  “The cave is a holy place, don’t you think?” she asked. “I have a feeling there. Like something listening.”

  “It was charming. Beautiful.” They walked on together. She steered him toward the brown grass along the river, and he told her of the trip. “Your friend the abbot thanks you for the cheeses,” he said.

  “Brother Nicholas? How is he?”

  “Well. Well-ripened,” Father Yvet said. “I wonder at such people, sometimes—why they think offense to others redounds to their own piety.”

  “I think he was once a great sinner,” she said. “Now he is humiliating himself as much as he glorified himself when he sinned. Did you talk to him very much?”

  “No. Our interests are separate, aside from the dubious value of the penance he imposes on the folk around him. He is unworldly.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked, astonished.

  “He is very fond of you, Maria.”

  The stream of people before them burst apart, and a giant pink sow, shining with grease, hurtled straight at Maria. She leaped sideways. Stephen clung with his arms around the sow’s neck and his legs around her barrel. Snorting in blasts the beast bolted away, hotly followed by a dozen screaming boys.

  “That is your son,” Father Yvet said, surprised.

  “Yes—they try to ride everything.” She put Henry on her other hip and crooked her free arm through the churchman’s. “There,” she said. “The jugglers are starting.” She towed him in that direction.

  Beyond the little knot of people at the jugglers’ wagon, Eleanor stood scowling, her arms folded across her breast. “Father Yvet,” she called. Her voice carried like a hunting horn. “Are you going to sanctify this sinfulness by your presence?”

  “Lady, if my presence could sanctify sin, you would not find me wandering through the world.”

  “Oh, Father Yvet.” Eleanor simpered at him. Maria went around them. Already in their red and yellow costumes, the jugglers were setting up their stage.

  “I wonder where Jilly is,” Eleanor said.

  Maria turned. “Eleanor, will you do me a friend’s favor? Can you take—”

  “Henry to his cradle.” Eleanor lifted the baby in her arms. “I will. Keep watch for Jilly, she is so easily frightened in crowds.” Bent over the baby, she walked up the hill toward the castle.

  Maria stood staring after her. The woman’s dark green bodice showed vividly against the golden brown of the hillside. While she walked she hugged the baby.

  “Your friend has no children of her own,” Father Yvet said. “It seems a shame, she is so devoted to little ones.”

  To a burst of pipe music, the two jugglers tossed their knives and colored balls into the air. The children gasped. They pressed up clos
e to the stage. Maria clapped her hands together. The jugglers’ craft delighted her. She watched them spin up two of the children’s hats into the stream of juggles.

  Father Yvet was staring at her, a smile on his face. He said, “You are still a little girl, aren’t you?”

  Maria laughed, turning away. It rubbed her that he should take her for a child. They started off together around the edge of the meadow. The churchman paid her an assortment of flatteries. The knights were racing their horses up and down the road through the village. A roar went up from the mob around the oak tree and another man held the chained yoke up over his head. On the far bank of the river, a boy and girl sat dipping their bare feet in the water and holding hands. Maria looked for Richard. He disliked crowds; she thought he had gone up to the castle.

  Two fiddles and a drum began to play in the middle of the meadow. “Oh,” she said. “Come watch them dance.” She lifted her skirts in her hands. “You don’t think it’s a sin to dance, do you?”

  “No. I am not one of these people like your friend, who find sin in everything.” He strolled along next to her. “These country folk have so few pleasures, I cannot grudge them their dancing.”

  Maria led him across the meadow. A bank of serfs and knights stood before her, clapping their hands in time. She slid through the packed crowd to see.

  Shepherds and villagers kicked and bounced in a circle before her, alternating men and women. In the middle of their ring, Richard and Jilly whirled in their own strenuous dance. Her long hair flying, her hands in her father’s raised over her head, the child flung herself from foot to foot. Richard threw one arm around her and spun around, lifting her against him off the ground. Her legs sailed out.

  “Papa!”

  Maria glanced at Father Yvet, but the churchman had gone. She shook her head, impatient with him, and joined the people clapping out the rhythm to the dance.

  ***

  Father Yvet said, “You told me you did not murder the priest, yet he is dead—despite, I am told, the intervention on his behalf of your gentle wife.”

  Maria had brought a cushion into the hall passage to sit on. She lit another candle, curious who had told him: Eleanor or Brother Nicholas.