Great Maria (v5)

by Cecelia Holland

Michael looked uncomfortable. His eyes strayed away. “Madonna,” he said, “I have forgotten.”

  “Oh. Then I can guess. Leave me.”

  Michael went out of the room. Maria turned the ring over in her hand. There were figures worked in the heavy gold around the beryl: probably some symbol of Fitz-Michael’s had helped them recognize it. She remembered the look on Michael’s face when she asked him what Richard had said, and she laughed.

  “Jordan.”

  He came in, Roger-headed. She brushed off his velvet coat and kissed him. “Here.” She put the ring in his hand. “Take this to my lady Anne. Tell her—”

  “I don’t like her,” Jordan said. “I don’t want to go there.”

  “Go anyway. God, you’re getting spoiled, I’ll spank you regularly henceforth. Tell Anne that I apologize and I seem to have made a mistake.”

  Jordan trotted sullenly off with the ring. Maria went to find Jilly and Henry. She missed Stephen. There was no one to talk to. In the corridor, passing Rahman, she gave him so hard a look that he laughed.

  Forty-eight

  All down the Ridge Highway from Iste, Richard’s army was scattering home. The castle of Iste had fallen ten days before. Most of the men whom Maria passed were hauling sacks of plunder on their shoulders. One shouted rudely to her in Saracen. The three knights with her wheeled to chase him down the road.

  Here the highway slithered along the spine of a sloping ridge; now and then, behind her, she could see between the brown flanks of the mountains to the plain of Mana’a and even the distant glitter where the sun struck the bay. Before her the road climbed into the heart of the mountains. She held her mare down to a walk, so that her escort could catch up with her.

  Above her a pass notched the sheer blank face of the mountains. Riders and men on foot were swarming through it down toward her. The three knights took their places around her. They climbed up toward the pass. The air turned colder. In the shade, patches of snow lingered from the storm of the night before. A band of some dozen knights passed her. They yelled greetings back and forth to her men.

  “Hey,” one knight called. “Is that Dragon’s wife? He is coming—he’s just up beyond the pass, lady.” He waved to her. With his friends he trotted away down the road, looking back over their shoulders at her.

  Maria strained to see into the pass. She felt dizzy; she was fat with child and the height of the road unnerved her. In a few moments she would see Richard again. The mare broke into a canter. On her left the ground pitched off sheer down to the leafless trees below. All around her was only the blue sky. She leveled her eyes. The road snaked up the ridge into the pass. Groups of knights trotted by her.

  A yoke of oxen lumbered down from the pass, pulling a flatbed cart. She had to rein her mare over to the side of the road to let it by. Her breath stopped in her throat. The cart rattled past her, almost within reach. Three men sat on it, back to back to back. They were half-naked in the cold, their bodies looped around with chains. The man facing her was Roger.

  He saw her, he raised his head. She gave a low cry of pity. His face was discolored with bruises, one eye swollen shut, his hair matted with blood and dirt. Watching her, he broke into a smile, and he kissed at her. The cart bore him away. Anne’s two brothers, gray with cold, slumped spiritless against him.

  Maria gathered up her reins. The mare raced up into the pass. The road narrowed. The sun disappeared behind the shoulder of the mountain. Her mare fell to a trot. Three knights rode up over the crest of the pass. Just behind them was Richard.

  He sat loose and graceless in his saddle, a white silk djellaba open over his mail. Robert and Stephen flanked him, and a long double column of knights followed after him.

  “Mother!” The two boys galloped past him and whirled around her. She did not take her eyes from her husband. She freed herself from the boys’ embraces before they could pull her apart. Richard’s horse came up head to tail with her mare.

  “What are you doing up here?” A great yellowing bruise marked the side of his face. “You shouldn’t ride when you are so great with child. You never listen to me. Rahman is right, I should put you in seclusion.”

  “You could try,” she said. “I listen to you, didn’t I keep Anne in Mana’a?” She reined her mare around to ride beside him. Their sons cantered up around them.

  “Papa,” Stephen said. “Tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Her eyes flew up to Richard’s face. His eyes were smoky with pain. He shifted in his saddle, easing his bad hip. “Tell me what?”

  “Maria,” he said. “Ismael is dead.”

  “Ismael!”

  He turned to the boys. “Go do something.”

  They rode away. Richard started off again down the road, and Maria’s horse followed of its own accord, shoulder to shoulder with him. Maria crossed herself. Ismael.

  “What happened?”

  “He took an arrow in the lung. He was all night dying. I held him all night.”

  Her throat lumped painfully. They rode down from the pass. In the distance the cart rolled along the mountain highway. She said, “O Ismael.” She put her hand to her face.

  When she turned toward Richard again, presently, he was watching her. She said, “Were you wounded? Stephen said that your leg bothers you.”

  “I fell. My horse fell.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “I just told you. My horse fell under me.” He shifted his weight in his saddle, trying to find some way to sit that did not hurt. His voice rose in a whine. “Why did you plot with Anne? You’d have sent her back to Santerois, where she’d have been like a knife aimed at me.”

  “What is she now?” She looked down at his hands, gashed and swollen, the knuckles split. “Did you fight with Roger?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  The baby rolled in her belly. She longed to lie down. Her eyes were raw and burning with tears. He twisted his body again, one hand on his hip. His head came around, striking toward her. “Why didn’t you come to Iste to see me? You go all over Mana’a, Stephen says, for all you’re as big as a cow—why did you let those people burn half the Christian quarter?”

  “Aren’t you glad to see me, Richard?” She reached one hand out to him.

  His horse veered toward her. He dragged her up off her mare and pulled her in front of him on his saddle. She closed her arms around his neck. His horse sidestepped nervously across the highway. His knights rode up all around them, laughing at them. There was a chorus of shrill lewd whistles. Richard’s beard grazed her cheek. She turned her face into his shoulder and wept.

  ***

  The White Dragon streamed out above the Emir’s Gate in the hard wind off the bay. Richard’s men were riding their horses into a semicircle across the street. Maria reined her mare away from them. Behind her someone shouted an order. She trotted around the thick shifting press of horsemen. She wedged her mare up beside Stephen’s horse; a knight made room for her. She looked past Stephen at Robert.

  “Go to the palace and make sure everything is ready for us. I don’t want any trouble when we come there.”

  Robert chewed on his fingers. He was thin; she had marked the night before that he hardly ate. “Go on,” she said gently. “Stephen, you too.”

  Robert laid his rein against his horse’s neck and circled it away. Stephen sat motionless, his eyes on the cart in front of the gate. “I want to watch this.”

  Maria looked. Still wearing the fluttering white djellaba, Richard waited on his bay horse beside the cart, out before the crescent moon of knights. Every few seconds he glanced down at Roger an arm’s length away from him. Anne’s brothers huddled under the chains. Only Roger sat upright.

  Two men walked toward them from the open gate. One swung a knotted cord in his hand. Maria wheeled toward Stephen.

  “Do as I ask.”

  Robert’s black horse was crabwalking toward the city. Stephen lowered his eyes. He turned and galloped around behind the knig
hts, past Robert, and in through the gate. The people shouted and cheered him by name. Robert followed him.

  Mana’ans fringed the top of the wall. They shrieked and waved handkerchiefs. Richard pointed to one of Anne’s brothers. The executioner and his boy went to the cart, opened a lock, and dragged the man off into the dirt. Beside the cart Richard was looking steadily at Roger. Anne’s brother gave a single half-choked cry. The executioner lowered the body to the ground and stuffed the mouth with dust. They hung the dead man up by the feet against the arch over the gate, his face to the painted stone.

  “Turn him around,” Richard shouted. “Why should he see Mana’a?”

  On the top of the gate, a man reached down with a staff to swing the body outward. Richard nodded to the other brother. He screamed and begged for life, but they strangled him in the same way and hung him up beside the first.

  Roger stared straight ahead, his face serene, as if he did not care. Probably he did not. Maria crossed herself.

  “God save him. He is the bravest man in Marna.”

  The knight beside her grunted in agreement. His eyes on Richard, the executioner walked back toward the cart. The garrotte dangled from his hand. Even the folk on the wall were quiet. The executioner asked some question. Richard jerked his horse around.

  “Take him up to the palace.”

  Breaking into talk, the knights rode up out of their formation, past Maria. She did not move. Suddenly she wished he had done it, that it was over. Lifting her reins, she started forward after the cart.

  Richard loomed across her path. “Where are you going?” His horse shouldered into the mare, forcing it aside. Blood stained the stallion’s mouth. Its ears were flattened against its head. Richard was riding it into a frenzy. Maria backed away. He pressed the horse after her, its cupped nostrils red as blood. “I didn’t tell you to go.”

  The knights formed three columns before them, and they rode under the gate into the city. Beggar children and vendors selling cakes and dukkah and sherbet raced agilely in among the knights. From the windows on either side of the street, people cheered and waved their hands. Richard’s horse tossed its head, trying to break his grip on its mouth. Maria edged her mare away.

  Up ahead, there was the sudden swelling yowl of a crowd. The front of the column was coming into a wide square. Maria glanced at Richard. He was staring at his horse’s withers.

  “Al-Nasrani!” the crowd screamed. “Al-Nasrani!”

  She lifted her reins and galloped up through the ranks of the knights, weaving the mare between them. A stallion kicked at her. Behind her a man called, “Hold—hold—” She broke through to the front of the column. The oxcart rolled along before them all, naked to the howling mob. Rocks showered it. She trotted her mare up into the barrage.

  Something struck her knee. The mare shied toward the cart, snorting. The screams and the rocks stopped abruptly. Maria pressed her heel to the bay mare’s side and swung her over, as close to Roger as she could ride. The crowd drew back like a wave. Many of them even dropped the stones in their hands.

  Roger knelt in the loops of chains, his head bent to protect his face. His shoulders were covered with bleeding cuts. Blood dribbled from his red hair. He straightened up, the chains in his hands.

  “Sweetheart, you are spoiling the lesson. He won’t like that.”

  Flies swarmed around him. The chains had rubbed his skin raw. The cart rolled from the crowded market place into an archway. The sound boomed in the narrow space. The drover called to his oxen.

  “Where is my son?” Roger said.

  “Here. And your wife. They’re both well.”

  The cart turned a slow corner. Roger moved his cramped legs underneath him, until he was sitting under the chains, his arms across his knees.

  “Maria,” he said. “I would never have hurt you.”

  Astonished, she could not answer. She knew he meant it for an apology. Behind them in the market place, the crowd gave up a bellow, a trumpeting blast of voices.

  “Rik! Rik! Rik!”

  Roger jerked his head up. “Listen to them—they would cheer Judas if he won a battle; they would cheer a dog who gave them money—”

  “If you want me here,” she said, “say nothing against Richard.”

  He twisted toward her. “Go. I don’t need you. I would rather they stone me to death than a woman shield me.”

  The street widened, and a mob surged toward them, all mouths and hands full of stones, fruit, and filth. A rock glanced off the cart. Maria raised her arm, and the knights directly behind her broke out of their rank and charged up past her and the cart. The mob ran away, shouting insults and obscenities at Roger.

  “I have never lost before,” he said. “Richard was always there to tell me what to do. I should have thought of that. Maria, my sister, promise me that I will have the Sacrament before I die.”

  “I swear.” She crossed herself. They were moving up the street toward the palace. The gates stood open, showing the green quiet hillside beyond. The crowd thundered up another cheer for Richard. She made her mare stand still, so that the knights could pass her. Richard came up to her, and she joined him.

  Together they went up the road through the park. All but a dozen of the knights swung off toward the towers on the wall. The cart disappeared. She did not mark where they took it. In the gatehouse, in a bright dress, Jilly was waiting, Henry beside her, and William just behind her.

  Maria reined in on the pavement. The two children ran toward her, calling to her. Richard walked up to her stirrup. He lifted her down from her saddle. He held her a moment, between him and the horse.

  “Thank you,” he muttered. He could not look her in the eyes. Turning his back on her, he picked up Jilly in his arms and carried her in through the gate.

  ***

  “Fox.”

  “Rocks.”

  Jilly gulped. “Locks! Locks.”

  Jordan said, “Ummm—” and the other children counted in a rush of numbers toward fifty. Maria, sitting beside the window in the light, was finishing her tapestry. She wove in the last of the cloud and broke the yarn in her fingers. Three strokes of lightning came from the cloud, to indicate Divine Wisdom. In the corner was the rayed sun she used as her device.

  “Fifty,” Jilly cried.

  Jordan gave a pomegranate seed to each of the other children, even Henry, who was not playing. Henry’s shirt was splattered with pomegranate juice. He headed for Rahman’s chess table again, and the nurse patiently retrieved him.

  “Lord,” Jordan said; it was his favorite beginning.

  “Board.”

  Something moved in the garden below the window. Maria lifted her head. Anne was walking out toward the park. Maria’s hands with the yarn bobbin sank slowly into her lap. A man waited for Anne in the shelter of the wall. When he came forward, she saw that it was Robert.

  She tore her eyes from her son. She picked a bit of fluff from the tapestry. The roller of the loom held the finished cloth up out of the way, exposing just the top of the tower and Saint Augustine with his bishop’s crook. Anne was supposed to be warded in her chamber. Only Robert could have gotten her released.

  The door in the next room opened and shut. She heard Richard’s uneven footsteps. She pulled the screen closed across the window. He came into the hall, talking over his shoulder to Rahman. The two men laughed. The children called to them. Richard answered, but Rahman as usual pretended not to see them. Maria thrust the yarn bobbins into her basket and went over to Richard, so that he would put his back to the window.

  “Tell me what you are laughing at.”

  “Stay solemn.” Richard patted her enormous belly. “You’ll bounce him out.”

  Rahman was staring down his nose at her. Maria made an elaborate bow to him. “I’m sorry you do not sup with women, Master Grand Vizier, we would invite you to our Christmas feast.”

  “How is it a feast, if women be present?”

  Richard laughed. “Depends on what you’
re eating.” Henry rushed over to them, and his father stooped and lifted him up. Maria picked bits of pomegranate from the little boy’s linen shirt front.

  “This is a filthy child. He even gets dirty in bed.”

  “Mama,” Henry said wisely. He pointed at her; he looked up at Richard. “My Mama.”

  “Is he going with us tonight?”

  Maria shook her head. “Next year. He cries at church.” At sundown the first Christmas Mass began.

  “A sign of intelligence.” Richard tickled the little boy into sobbing laughter. Maria glanced quickly out the unscreened window: Anne and Robert were gone.

  “Where is Roger?” she asked.

  Henry had hold of Richard by the beard. Maria went up beside him. He detached the little boy and put him down on the floor. “Rahman,” he called. He gave her a piercing look.

  Rahman came up before them. Richard said, “Show it to her.” He folded his arms across his chest. Henry got to his feet.

  The Saracen took a charter from his robes. Maria opened up the stiff greasy paper. There was Christian writing on it but no seal.

  “That’s Roger’s death warrant,” Richard said. “When my chief men have put their seals on it, he’ll die.”

  Maria folded the stiff wings of the paper and handed it back to Rahman. Henry said, “Mama.” He held up a scrap of pomegranate meat he had picked from his shirt. Richard took the warrant. Stiffly he limped out of the room.

  ***

  Even so late in the year, the tower garden was bright with trumpet flowers. They had told her the Saracen name, but she could not pronounce it. She stood on the sloping lawn admiring the blossoms’ gaping red mouths tongued in yellow. Behind her, one of the knights murmured, and Michael quickly silenced him.

  “Madonna.”

  “I hear them.”

  Two people were coming up from the fir trees at the foot of the garden, hidden by the long swoop of the hedge. Anne’s voice heralded them. Maria went down the green slope. Robert walked first around the corner, saw her, and stopped short. Anne, just behind him, nearly walked into him.

  “Mother,” Robert said. “Give me a chance to explain.”