Great Maria (16 page)

She thought of Pandolfo, and looked curiously around for him. In the excitement of the oath-taking, she had not thought for some time of her revenge. He was not in the hall, and when she thought back she was sure he had not sworn an oath to Richard. Her curiosity pricked her. Robert and Roger were on her left, bent together over a handful of filberts scattered on the tabletop before them.

Roger said to Robert, “Now, watch.” He threw one nut straight up in the air. With the same hand he scooped up two or three of the filberts on the table, one at a time, and caught the falling nut before it hit.

“Let me try,” Robert said,

Roger smiled at her across Robert’s bent head. She said, “Where is your friend Pandolfo, Roger?”

Robert tossed the nut into the air, grabbed one from the table, and knocked over his cup lunging after the first as it fell. A servant came over to clean up after him. Roger’s face was suddenly bland. He said, “Oh—Pandolfo? I don’t know—ask Richard.”

Maria sat back, her eyes on Richard. He was drinking, the carved wooden cup raised into the sunlight. She knew he had overheard them. She brushed a crumb from his sleeve and looked back at Roger.

“You told him.”

Roger shrugged one shoulder, gathering the hazelnuts from Robert. He dropped the nuts with a rattle onto the tabletop, threw one high over his head, and picked up three more. Turning his palm up, he let the falling nut plop into his hand. When he did it, it seemed nothing. “I never promised not to tell him.”

Maria sat back. The tumblers and dancers had gathered in the doorway. She nodded to the servant in charge of the hall, who waved out his men to roll up the carpets and sweep the floors.

The people along the tables let out a cheer. In a burst of music, the tumblers ran out to the middle of the floor and began their nimble leaps and somersaults. Richard’s left hand rested on the table, heavy with rings. Maria wondered what he had done to Pandolfo. She twisted the Saracen ring on his little finger.

“I like this. Will you give it to me?”

Impassive, he studied her face a moment, pulled the ring off, and taking hold of her left hand put it on her forefinger. The tumblers were making a pyramid. He turned back to watch, but he kept hold of her hand. Maria laid her fingers over his, pleased.

Part Two

Arrows of God

Seventeen

William’s long residence had improved the Tower of Birnia very little. His bachelor passions were hawking and dogs, and the whole Tower reeked of beasts. Maria and Eleanor lived two days in the inn in the town while the Tower was cleaned. When that was done, and all the linen washed and dried in the sun, they moved into the top floor.

Richard had sent twenty knights with her to garrison Birnia. All but one were old, and most were sick or halt. The young man was a green knight named Ralf who had lost his place in the army at dice. The others had served her father before she was even born. The oldest, Jean, whose fading hair hung down to his shoulders in the old style, she made the commander of the rest.

Her knights went out on regular patrols, kept watchmen at the crossroads and the bridges, and hunted down an occasional robber. The hot, stormy summer made a good crop. The serfs worked steadily over their fields. Pilgrims came along the road to the Shrine of the Virgin, and in the middle of the summer, Maria herself went there to receive the formal homage of the monks and to attend to her chapel. Now five monks served the shrine, and they had added a wing to the guesthouse. Maria lingered there until the end of the summer.

In the last of August, the young knight Ralf appeared with a message from Jean. Robert ran up to Maria where she sat under the beech trees near the chapel and hauled her out by the hand toward the road. The young knight dismounted and bowed, like a priest.

“My lady, Jean has ordered me to report that Count Theobald, with a mighty band of men, is coming along the road. He has sent to ask a hearing of you, that he might come across our border.”

Maria stood in the sunlight, her eyes squinted. Ralf’s manner set her teeth on edge. “What is
a mighty band of men
?”

“Forty men, my lady.”

“I have never heard forty men reckoned such an enormous number.”

Ralf gave her a patient smile. “May I remind my lady that we number eighteen—”

“Twenty.”

“Eighteen. Two of the hacks in Birnia are ailing, they cannot ride. In view of our circumstances, forty men is a mighty band.”

“Leave if you are frightened.”

“My lady, I did not intend to imply—”

“Then stop.”

He clamped his mouth shut. Maria went down the road a little way. Stephen was scrambling up the hill, Eleanor in pursuit. Maria thought of Theobald and his forty men.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose I will have to do something.”

“My lady.” Ralf came around in front of her again. “Jean suggests, and I agree, that we should make him leave his escort and come to the Tower itself if he wishes a hearing with you. He cannot know how weak we are; he will think himself in danger, that will put him at a disadvantage.”

“You want him to see for himself that he’s in no danger at all?”

“He could hardly lay siege to the Tower of Birnia with forty men, my lady.”

He sounded confident, or perhaps bored. Suddenly she guessed that he was trying to raise his own green courage, not irritate her. Cooler, she thought Jean’s plan over again.

“No,” she said. “He’ll expect something like that. Is he coming by the main road?” If God helped her, it would not matter if Theobald led a thousand men. The thing to do was to stop Theobald at the border and find out what he wanted, before he got any hint of her real strength.

“Yes, my lady. He left Occel yesterday by the King’s Road.”

Maria called to Robert. The King’s Road crossed into Birnia more than ten leagues from the Tower, but only half a day from the shrine: a sign of grace. Eleanor hurried toward her with Stephen.

“I will meet Theobald at the Rood Oak,” she said to Ralf. “There are six knights here with me, I will take them to escort me.”

Ralf’s face fell. “But—my lady—this is—”

“Perhaps you want to come with me?”

She meant it for a threat, but he drew himself up as tall as he could and said, “I shall. You will need a real knight with you.”

Maria held her mouth straight against a smile. Before she could answer, Robert rushed up to her. Eleanor was close behind him, trying to keep hold of Stephen. Maria brushed Robert’s hair back off his forehead.

“Count Theobald is coming and I have to go talk to him. You are going to have to go back to the Tower by yourself. Will you do it?”

“Mama! I want to go with you, to meet Theobald.”

“Do as I ask. You will have to save me if I do anything foolish. Find Waleran and take him with you.”

Robert ran off down the hill toward the village, where Maria’s six aged knights spent the days drinking and trying to seduce the girls. Ralf planted himself in front of Maria, his feet widespread.

“I must insist again that this is the course of folly. You should harken to Jean—he was left to command here. He knows best.”

“Yes,” Maria said. “I know.” She started down after Robert, to make things ready for the journey.

***

At noon, they stopped beside the road in a field, to walk, eat dinner, and water the horses. Eleanor came up to Maria and asked, “Why did you send Robert home but not us?”

“Oh,” Maria said. “Do you think Theobald will take us hostage, when he sees we are defenseless?”

Eleanor’s face sharpened to a point. “Such a thought came to me. Obviously to you as well. Theobald must know that Richard is far away.”

Maria took her coif down from her hair. She had borrowed the fashion from the women in Birnia, but she wound the extra cloth around her head, instead of starching it into stiff little wings. Carefully she stuck the hairpins into her belt. She said, “Theobald knows what Richard would do to him if he hurt me.” If she seemed afraid of him, Theobald would certainly take advantage of her. Perhaps if she acted unafraid, he would think her strong. Shaking out the coif, she hung it on a bush and smoothed back her hair.

Eleanor went off calling for Stephen. Maria took down her braids from the crown of her head. Eleanor in her red shawl stooped in the high yellowing grass to pick up the little boy. Beyond her, Ralf was leading the carthorses up from the river, his hands on their bridles. The other knights lounged along the side of the road.

Probably Ralf was right, and she should have listened to Jean. Maria did not believe it. Anything she did was better than waiting for Theobald to act at his will. She folded the white linen in half and wrapped it around her hair. She tucked the loose ends of the coif in at the back and went up to the road, to help Eleanor get into the cart.

***

They reached the meadows of the Rood Oak in the late afternoon. Early pilgrims had built a well there, beside the road. Travelers often spent the night in the open grass around the big stone cross. Maria had heard that the name remembered an old tree of whose branches the first pilgrims had made crosses to take to the shrine, but now there was no oak tree within leagues of the place.

While her escort and the two servants made a camp in the meadow, she took Stephen for a walk. He darted ahead of her into the fading light of the day, his fat legs milling, and his napkin down around his knees. Between spurts of chatter, he dug up stones and chased a green snake into a hummock of grass. When he tired, she carried him, walking slowly back toward the campfire, and thought over everything she had ever heard about Theobald.

In the twilight, with the fireflies rising and flickering in the meadow around their camp, the knights sat slouched before the flames. Eleanor and the other girl hurried around making supper. The wide meadows around them made them seem tiny and exposed, and Maria cast about for some way to protect them.

“Ralf,” she called, and the young knight strode toward her.

She gestured into the darkness nearby them, where some recent travelers had left a dead firebed and a frame for a cooking pot. “Perhaps we could make that seem to be part of our camp.”

“I beg my lady’s pardon,” he said blankly.

“As if”—she lifted her hand toward the road—“some fifteen or twenty men have just gone off. So that we will not seem so small a band.”

He swallowed; he gave the meadows a distracted glance. “My lady, I don’t really think—”

“I don’t care what you think,” Maria told him between her teeth. She turned her shoulder to him and carried Stephen over to the fire.

Ralf and three other knights built a fire in the meadow, put some gear about, and moved the tethered horses over between the two camps. Maria sat by the fire and toasted bread on a stick. An old knight sank down beside her. He took Stephen into his lap and the little boy fell asleep. The knight rubbed his bald, freckled head.

“This tadpole Ralf is troubling you, isn’t he?” the knight said abruptly.

“What?”

“Well. The others of us will know what to do when the thing comes to it.”

In the meadow, the bonfire blaze crackled and snapped embers up into the night sky. Ralf and the other knights were trudging back to their supper. Maria clasped her arms around her knees. What the old knight said only made her more uneasy. If Theobald took her prisoner here, she would kill herself. She would kill Theobald, too, somehow: seduce him and kill him.

“You know,” the knight said, “in his great days, girl, your father was a mighty man. Richard d’Alene would not have done that to him, not in Strongarm’s prime age.”

“Richard did nothing to him,” Maria said sharply.

The old knight patted her knee. Rising, he went to join his friends.

When the campfires had sunk down to heaps of coals, Theobald and his men appeared on the road. In the darkness the other army seemed to cover the meadows like a flood. Maria reminded herself that in her own demesne, new come from worship at her own shrine, she was right and Theobald was wrong. She called up Ralf again.

“Go over to Count Theobald,” she said, “and tell him I am here and will see him now.”

Ralf squared off his shoulders. “My lady, I must unfortunately once again suggest—”

“No,” Maria said. She stared at him. After a moment, in a show of courtesy, he looked away. “Go get him,” she said. “Now.”

Ralf bowed elaborately to her and went off to do her orders. Maria sat down again. When Eleanor spoke, behind her, she jumped.

“I certainly hope God is remembering us,” Eleanor said. She reached up to undo Maria’s coif, and Maria pushed her hand aside.

“No. Count Theobald is coming, do I meet him half-dressed?”

“Tonight?” Eleanor said. “Here? I would liefer have the Grand Mahound into a convent.”

“God will help me.”

Eleanor said, “You ask too much of God,” and got up and went away.

Maria did not call after her. She asked the other maid to bring her cloak and sat listening to the wind comb through the dry meadow grass. The knight Ralf returned and stood to one side, on her left like an honor guard, his hands folded on the buckle of his sword belt. Maria wished she had some work, to keep busy, but the firelight was too dim for sewing.

A slender man, late in middle age, came up into the light of her fire. “My lady Maria,” he said. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am at this meeting.” A servant came after him, carrying a little stool, and Theobald waved to him. The servant put the stool down behind him.

“Sit, my lord,” Maria said. He was a small man, neatly turned out down to his hair and shoes, his smile fixed as a star. “We were at the Cave of Our Lady when your message came, or I would have invited you to Birnia.”

She met his gaze. Richard had said that Theobald out-talked him, and he did seem serpent-like, slender and quick as the green snake Stephen had chased. He had wanted to marry his daughter to Richard and set her and Ceci aside. She smiled at him, hating him, and he bowed again, the firelight catching on all the little ornaments of his coat.

“I am here, actually, for the sake of your shrine,” Theobald said. “Since God took my Countess from me”—he crossed himself—“I have come now and then to that pleasant place to refresh my soul.” His meaningless smile danced on his face. His quick eyes took in every detail of her camp. “You travel very lightly, my dear, if I may give tongue to my opinions.”

“Our roads are safe,” she said. “We are the only robbers in Birnia.”

Theobald’s smile stuck an instant. Maria gestured to Ralf, where he stood in the background, and said, “Will you serve us some wine? It’s cold, in this wind.”

Theobald nodded. “A crisp wind, this one, very unusual for the season.”

“You are going to the shrine, then,” Maria said.

“Yes. Of course, I may not require so great an escort as I have, since you say your roads are safe.”

Maria tucked her hands in her lap. “Take them, if you wish—it is a Godly place, all men should see it.” She looked guilelessly at him. “My lord and I are happy in the service of God, he in his way, and I in mine.”

A crease appeared across Theobald’s forehead. His fingers played with the gold brooch at the shoulder of his cloak. Ralf brought him a cup, which he took.

“Do you require a hostage of me, perhaps?”

Maria sipped her wine, cool from the night wind. Ralf had mixed it liberally with water; at least he remembered her tastes. She was tempted to accept Theobald’s hostage but when she thought it through, she realized he would spy on her. She put the cup down.