“I didn’t hear you.” Maria went up beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, belligerently loud.
“Why?” She sat down on his bed, her eyes traveling the plain, neat room. All along one wall his weapons hung.
“He said I’m…something about breaking your heart. Something like that.” He sat down beside her.
“Not my heart, Robert.”
“Mama, why can’t he ever admit when he’s wrong? He likes being wicked.” He thrust his hands out in front of him, palms up, the fingers like blades. “He’s just a bad man.”
Maria grunted. She saw how much he was like Roger. Everybody loved him and gave him whatever he wanted: he had no will of his own. She touched him, and he turned into her arms like a child and hugged her.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“I know.” She rubbed her cheek against his hair. He smelled pleasantly of horses and sweat. “Why don’t you go to Iste? There’s work there to be done.”
“I’ve been thinking of taking the Cross.”
She stiffened. One arm around his neck, she held him against her, but she made herself move away from him, her hands falling to her lap. “Well, in the meantime, go to Iste.” Anywhere away from Richard. For some time there had been talk of a new Crusade to free Jerusalem. Perhaps it would never happen. She kissed him and went off through the palace.
***
She and Richard hunted over the dry sand hills east of Mana’a. The winter had driven the deer down from the mountains into the steep cedar-choked gulleys along the coast. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the wind off the sea stung with salt. Maria rode hard, choosing the hard trails, and in the close terrain lost the dogs and Richard. She drew rein under a tall fir tree to let her mare rest. The dogs sounded far off. A dry barren valley stretched away from her, studded with thickets of aloes. Her mare lifted its head and neighed.
Maria rode down the slope in the direction of the dogs’ distant barking. The air smelled acridly of dust. The quiet and the solitude lightened her spirit. Riding along a sandy slope, she came on a deep pit in the ground.
It was tremendous, hundreds of feet across. The gray-brown slopes ran down evenly to a pool of scummy water in the bottom. Nothing grew anywhere around it. The dogs were bugling in the distance. Maria tried to put her mare down the slope of the pit, but the horse refused. She dismounted. The ground crunched under her feet. Stooping, she picked up a bit of pumice stone, light as froth. The pit bewildered her: it was so evenly circular she suspected someone had dug it, but it had no obvious use. She went down the slope. The sunlight lay deep into the far side, but where she was the shadow was cold and dark. Her feet sank into the crumbling soil.
Nearby, there was a piercing whistle. Her mare neighed again, a ringing call. Above her, all around the edge of the pit, deer-hounds appeared against the sky, and Richard rode up.
“What are you doing down there?”
She scrambled up to the rim, kicking the dirt in a cascade down the slope behind her. Richard dismounted and pulled her up by the hand onto the solid edge of the pit.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “There are two more up there.” He gestured to the north. “The Saracens call them the Devil’s pots.”
She threw a stone into the pit; it fell halfway down the slope. “Why?”
“The water is poison.”
“It’s like a dead place,” she said. “Did someone make it? The Saracens?”
He shrugged. He picked up another pumice stone and turned it over in his hand. Gray dust coated his palm. “They don’t know.” He threw the stone down. “It took me awhile to see that in spite of all they have they don’t know any more than I do.”
That made her laugh, and she put her hand on his chest. “Nobody knows as much as you do, Richard.” She leaned on him, to make him put his arm around her.
In the distance a horn called. He swung around and took his horn from his saddle. Maria picked up her mare’s trailing reins. She looked into the pit. It was like a grave, like a dead world. At the blast of Richard’s horn her mare leaped and shied across the sandy ground and the dogs all threw back their heads and howled.
They rode side by side toward the sound of the horn, in the direction of the sea. Birds hopped and crashed in the bush around them. The dogs ranged through the cedar wood.
“What happened to the deer you were running?” she asked.
Richard shrugged one shoulder. “In this country we’ll be all day before we kill.” He raised the horn and sounded again.
They rode out onto a broad open meadow, through brown grass rumpled in the sea wind. Stephen galloped toward them and drew rein.
“Father Yvet is coming, he will reach Mana’a by sundown.”
Maria lifted her head. She saw a coincidence with Roger’s death. Richard said, “I guess even a priest can move fast to get something he wants.”
“Will you come to meet him?” Stephen asked.
The wind off the sea streamed in Maria’s face. She was loath to go back to Mana’a. Richard lifted his reins. “We haven’t made a kill yet. You don’t want to see him, do you?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
He turned back to Stephen. “You meet him. Put him up, feed him, see that he’s comfortable. Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
Stephen’s head rose in alarm. “Mama—”
“Do as I say,” Richard said curtly. “Maria, come.” He galloped up over the hillside, trailing dogs. Maria followed him.
When they reined in, Stephen was riding away toward the distant glitter of the sea. She turned to face her husband.
“The Pope waited until Roger was dead.”
“It looks like that, doesn’t it?”
It was un-Christian; it made her angry. She nudged her mare forward. They were making use of what she had done to Roger. The dogs raced off ahead of them down the slope. They rode on. In the late afternoon they ran down a stag, and Richard gave it to the pack to eat. They went back to Mana’a along the beach. The swollen sun disappeared into the mist along the sea. The surf curled white against the beach in the dark.
“How do you think Stephen does with Father Yvet?”
Maria let her rein lie slack of the mare’s neck. “I’m sure he’s putting him up, feeding him, and making him comfortable.” With a minimum of civility. The last thin edges of the sea rolled up the sand toward her mare’s hoofs. She said, “What are you asking them for, Richard?”
“I’m not asking them for anything,” he said. “I’m making a bargain. I’m getting what I deserve. They want soldiers, to free them from the Emperor. I want to be King of Marna.”
She looked up ahead. At the end of the curve of the beach, Mana’a’s lights sparkled on the plain. Overhead the stars were coming out. She drew the ripe sea wind into her lungs. She thought of the sand pit again, like a grave, like a dead world.
She stared up at him, thinking of Roger. She would never free herself of Roger’s death; the only thing left to do was to justify it. She said, “If you’re to be the King I want to be Queen.”
He shrugged, his eyes elsewhere. “Whatever you want. You can have your own coronation, two or three months after—”
“No. I want to rule equal with you. I want to be crowned together with you.”
He laughed at her. She fought down her temper. There was no use in arguing with him. He would never give up of his own will.
He said, “Forget that idea. The Saracens would never accept it.”
“I’m not arguing with you.” She glanced at him, surprised. “If it weren’t for me, the Christians would never accept you.”
“Lord Jesus! You want too much.”
She said nothing. They went inland three hundred yards to the road and entered the city by the Tower Gate. The streets were nearly empty. Twice on their way up to the palace the watch hailed them. Neither of them spoke all the way home. At the door into the stable, beneath the only torch, he lifted her do
wn out of her saddle.
“You’re my wife.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“It has everything to do with it.” His hands on her arms, he gave her a hard shake. “Don’t act stupid, Maria.” He stepped back. The groom was coming to take their horses. Maria turned and went up to the palace.
***
Father Yvet had brought a train of attendants with him, among them Brother Nicholas, who had come to talk about the monastery he was building in the valley of Iste. Maria went down into the rose garden, the big monk to leeward of her, and the Saracen woman coming after her with the shears and sacks. The monk sat down on the sloping grass. He cupped his paint-splattered hands on his knees. Maria glanced at him and saw him frowning.
“Have you spoken to the Pope’s man?” she asked.
The monk shook his head. He scratched in his armpit, his face grooved. She turned to clipping off the blooms of the winter roses. The Saracen woman went along behind her collecting them in the sack.
“What is it?” she said to Brother Nicholas. “Father Yvet?”
“Not just Father Yvet. The Holy See. They ought not to involve themselves in the world at all, but to go in harness with Dragon—they’re mad. They can’t know what they’re doing.”
“I thought you liked my husband.” She glanced at the Saracen woman, whom she knew spied for Richard. “Go, Lalla.” The woman left.
“I know his methods,” Brother Nicholas said. He threw his hands up in the air. “Besides, mark what they are doing, recognizing him—he has no claim to Marna but naked force. He wasn’t even born here.”
“I was.”
“They are not crowning you King.”
“They can have me crowned Queen.”
The monk’s broad, handsome face rotated toward her. She sat down beside him on the grass and took his hand, callused like Richard’s. “You said yourself the Curia is walking the edge when they deal with Richard.”
“You are talking to the wrong man,” he said stiffly. He tried to free his hand, but she held onto him. He looked across the garden. “You should be talking to Father Yvet.”
“No,” she said. Down the garden, elegantly gowned, Father Yvet was coming toward them. She looked at Brother Nicholas. “Will you help me?”
The marks of strain had left his face. He said, “Can you manage Dragon?”
“Can anyone else? Will you help me?”
“You know I’ll do whatever I can for you.”
Smiling, she rose to greet Father Yvet.
***
Lent had begun. Rain drizzled down on Mana’a. She went to the cathedral to see William. All the statues were covered in mourning cloth. She and the fat knight stood in the doorway looking out at the garden, gray in the steady rain.
“I wish I were in Birnia,” he said. “I hate this place.”
“What a remark.” She put one hand on the chilly stone of the door frame. “Wait until the rain stops.”
A monk came quietly into the vestibule behind them, a load of wood in a sling over his shoulder. Maria said, “William, I want to be Queen of Marna.”
“So I’m told.” William stared out into the garden. His head moved slightly from side to side. “I don’t think he’ll give it to you.”
“I think he will.”
“Maria, God’s eyes, don’t run against him now, over this.” He swung toward her, massive in his bishop’s robes, his cheeks pierced with short needles of beard. “He knows you are plotting something. He’s just waiting for you to step once in the wrong place.”
She leaned against the wall. Her gaze moved toward the monk building the fire in the vestibule hearth. Flames crackled under his hands.
“What are you plotting?” William said.
“Why should I tell you, so you can tell him?” She looked up at him, her hands behind her against the cold wall. She smiled at him. “There’s no plot, William. Father Yvet owes me a favor, but you know he won’t stand against Richard. I’m not plotting anything. Richard will do it all.”
William grunted. He rubbed his nose vigorously with his finger. “There’s more in this than I’m seeing. Tell me nothing else, Maria—I don’t want any part in it.”
“William,” she said, “you are lazy.”
He shook his head. “Just a coward.” He laughed, his red gown shaking, and went off through the door. Two days later he left for Birnia.
***
Richard bent over the enameled basin; with his cupped hands he scooped up water to wash his face. Maria shut the bedroom door. She crossed the room toward him and gave him a towel.
“Father Yvet brought me your message,” he said.
Her stomach tightened; she sat down on the bed. He scrubbed his face with the towel. Maria groped her bare foot over the carpet, hunting for her shoes.
“Didn’t I tell you to forget that?” He tramped away, pulling his clothes off. His belt went in one direction and his shirt in the other. “You have no sense of proportion at all, do you? This is the most important thing I have ever tried and you’d wreck it for a whim.”
She nudged her feet into her shoes and stood up.
“Do as you please, Richard.”
He wheeled toward her. “Where are you going?” When she started toward the door he got in her way.
“To Castelmaria,” she said. “Please move.”
“Stop biting at me.”
“I am not biting,” she cried.
“What do you call it?” He took her by the arm. “Gentle feminine discourse? Be easy and let me talk to you.”
“You’ve had days and days to talk to me, Richard. All I want to hear is the one thing you will not say.”
His hand clenched on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m going to Castelmaria if I have to climb over the wall and walk. Then see if you can do all this without me.”
They stared at each other through a long silence. She braced herself on her wobbling legs and took a step toward the door, and he caught her by both arms and shook her.
“Maria—damn you, why do I have to bully you into everything?” He hugged her so tight she clenched her teeth. “Don’t you trust me—haven’t you any faith at all in me?”
She softened. Her arms went around his neck. She could fight with him in the morning. He kissed her. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself away from him.
“Yes, I trust you. I trust you to do anything to get what you want.”
He knocked her down. She fell on her side; he went off across the room, swearing at her in Saracen. Maria’s head buzzed, and she sat up slowly.
“Go on,” he said. “Get out, leave, if that’s what you want.”
She went out the door. In the antechamber, she woke up Jordan and sent him for her knight Michael. She hurried down through the dark palace. On the stairs, she heard Richard behind her calling for Stephen. She let herself out the door in the Dragon Tower and walked through the rose garden toward the stable.
It was a warm night, and the stable windows were open. By the light that spilled into the barn she found her mare’s bridle and went to take the horse out of her stall. While she was bridling the mare, the stable door opened and several men with torches came in, dazzling her.
“Mama,” Stephen said. “Come with me.”
She put her hand on the mare’s thick mane. “Where?” Her heart began to beat fast.
He came up to the stall door and opened it. Maria went out past him. She hoped Michael would have the sense to stay clear. A groom came in, sleepy, his head covered with a white cloth, and the knight with the torch sent him away.
Stephen took hold of her arm. Maria shook him violently off. She gave him a hard look, and he lowered his eyes. They bustled her out of the stable and around the side of the palace, between the wall and the Tower of the Prophet.
Richard was waiting on the gravel walk to the treasure-house. He said, “You can come out when you’re ready to accommodate me.”
&
nbsp; Maria was too angry to talk. She walked away from him toward the treasure-house. Off to one side, she saw Michael, shy in the dark. Stephen caught up with her. He took her up to the little room in the top of the treasure-house. Maria went over at once to the window. Stephen stood behind her in the doorway, solemn.
“Mother, I have to do this.”
“Then do it, Stephen. I don’t want the commentary.”
He went out. She heard the lock snap shut on the other side of the door. The cool night wind through the window bathed her face. The side of her head began to ache where Richard had hit her. The room was bleak. The bed was narrow as a trench. In the corner the three-legged stool lay on its side. She had meant to be farther away, in the mountains, at least, in the daylight, before he seized her. She had meant to make a great matter of it. Now she would simply have disappeared. She had done it wrong: let it happen late at night, no one watching, no one knowing, a secret thing, Richard’s competence. On the King’s Road pay the King’s toll. She sat down on the bed. Michael had seen. Perhaps it would still work. She would think about it in the morning. She went to bed and slept.
***
In the morning the room was already closing in around her. Sunlight poured in the window, striped by the gridded shadow of the bars. A knight brought her breakfast. She spent most of the day by the window, hoping to catch some glimpse of her children.
Robert was in Iste, and without someone to tell him what to do, he probably would do nothing. William in Birnia would stay out of the issue. Stephen was Richard’s, and Father Yvet would go with whoever seemed to be winning, probably Richard. Brother Nicholas and her other friends seemed of minor consequence now. She had underestimated Richard. She leaned on the sill of the window, her forehead against the iron grate. Below, the green park stretched, rimmed with trees. She could not see the palace at all. She could apologize to him, he would let her out, and she could try again. The thought made her laugh.
In the afternoon the tall knight who had brought her meals carried up a chest of clothes for her. Her basket of mending was thrown in on top of everything else. Woman’s skills. The knight did not look her in the face and said nothing to her and she did not try to talk to him. He shut the door after him, and the lock clicked.
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