Great Maria (21 page)

He dismounted. She flung herself into his arms. He was soaking wet. The beard grazed her cheek and her lip. He held her so tight she could hardly breathe.

“Upstairs,” he said in her ear.

“Duke Henry and Fitz-Michael are in the hall.”

“They are still here?” He looked her over, his arm around her waist. The other knight went away. The rain was streaming down their faces. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“You look thinner,” he said. “What did you do to your hair? You look different.”

She laughed; she leaned on him, his mail solid under her hand. The door above them slammed. Robert came down the steps, her cloak piled in his arms. He slowed.

“Papa—”

He flung the cloak aside and ran down the steps to Richard. Maria picked up her cloak. Robert wept in his father’s arms. She climbed the stairs to the hall door. When she opened it, Fitz-Michael came toward her. She stepped into the half-lit warmth of the hall.

“Maria,” he said. “You are soaking wet, girl. You should have waited for your cloak.”

Richard barged in roughly between them. He gave Fitz-Michael a jagged look. Maria went over toward the table. She stood with her hands on the back of her chair.

“By Saint Charity,” Fitz-Michael said, “it’s Richard d’Alene, with a beard like a Saracen!”

Among the children sitting at the table, the young Duke leaped up onto his feet, and Stephen dropped his cup. Robert hurried into the hall after Richard, who tramped to the hearth, threw his cloak off, and put his back to the fíre.

“Still here, my lord?” he said to Fitz-Michael. “Maria, I’m cold, bring me some wine.”

“I’ll do it.” Robert raced toward the table.

Fitz-Michael stood in the middle of the hall, facing Richard; the young Duke had come up around the table. Before his uncle could speak, he said, “My lord, I must thank you for your kindness which we have so much insulted.” His voice rang childishly high; he gave Fitz-Michael a harsh look. “I would treat no vassal so, especially one who has been loyal to me.”

Richard took the cup of wine from Robert. “I’m sure you would not,” he said to the Duke, “for all I remember being neither your vassal nor loyal.”

Fitz-Michael said, “My nephew’s manner is sometimes coarse and unworthy of his rank.” He set his hands on his belt. “He says only the truth. Your wife has been very gracious to us indeed.”

“She has a weakness for strays. I don’t. I understand your army’s already left Birnia. You follow them.” Richard drank; his eyes never left Fitz-Michael. “Tomorrow.”

The other man bristled up. In his magnificent dark coat he looked easily Richard’s size even though Richard wore mail. He said, “You left Birnia unprotected, Master Dragon. Theobald was heavily oppressing your wife. We came here to defend her against him.”

Richard threw the empty cup down. “From what I’m told, you certainly didn’t help her much against Theobald.”

“I’m not going to indulge you in an unseemly—”

“In fact, if you really were after Theobald, you’d have attacked Occel while he was gone,” Richard said. “You didn’t come here after Theobald, Master Cheek, you came here to take advantage of a woman.”

Fitz-Michael’s face was blazing red; he turned on his heel and strode out of the hall. Maria got a ewer from the table. No one in the hall spoke. The children were staring owlishly at Richard. She crossed the hall, picked up his cup, and filled it from the ewer. He took it from her, his eyes still on the door.

Stephen came up beside her, shy, his eyes on his father. Richard put the cup on the mantelpiece and grabbed hold of him. “Ah.” He boosted the little boy up in his arms, laughing. “Look at this. The last time I saw this—”

Stephen glowed. He threw his arms around Richard’s neck and hugged him. Robert hurried up to lean against his father. Maria stood to one side watching them. It was a shock to see him here, when he had been away so long. “Come upstairs,” she said. “You can get out of your mail.” She put her hand on his arm.

He put Stephen down. His hand closed over hers, and her skin went to gooseflesh. She went with him to the door.

“Papa,” Robert cried. He and Stephen crowded after them. “Come see my horse.”

Richard opened the door. “Later. In a while.”

Robert’s expression drooped. Maria went out onto the stair landing. He shut the hall door. They were alone on the staircase. She lifted her face and kissed him. His arms went hard around her. The soft crisp beard brushed her chin. He pulled her surcoat open in front and cupped her breast in his hand. Through the cloth of her dress her nipple grew taut and hard against his palm. Her thighs trembled. She slid her arms around his waist and drew him hip to hip with her.

The door opened loudly. They split apart. The young Duke, his head down, raced past them and up the stairs. Halfway to the next landing, he threw them a strange look. He bolted up toward his room.

“God’s wounds,” Richard said. They climbed the stairs after him. They came to the landing, and he would have gone up another flight, but she held back.

“No, I sleep here, now, so that Fitz-Michael and the Duke could have the best room.”

“Did you want them to stay?” He pushed open the door and went through it into the room. Maria stood in the doorway, watching him. He shed his mail coat. The beard, trimmed to a point and darker brown than his hair, made him exotic, like a strange beast. He dumped the shirt over the foot rail on the bed, and she went hotly forward into his arms.

Twenty-one

The bed smelled of sex. They had drawn the heavy draperies around it the night before, when Eleanor brought the boys in to bed. The dawn was coming. The confined space around her was twilit. She raised herself cautiously on her outstretched arm. Her husband lay asleep on his stomach next to her.

She put her head down. He had thrown off the blanket. His face and arms were suntanned dark as a barrel but on his back the skin was soft and pale. Outside the curtains, Eleanor spoke, and the boys answered in sleepy voices. The man beside her moved, coming awake; his head turned toward her.

“Maria,” Eleanor whispered, just outside the curtain. The cloth shook and her face appeared in the middle. Her eyes widened when she saw Richard was naked and she withdrew her head and snapped the curtains shut.

Richard stirred. All night long they had gone at each other like plunderers, waking and sleeping and waking again. He opened his eyes on her.

“That was a good ride, little girl,” he said. He pulled her over against him. “That was worth coming all the way down here in the rain for.”

Outside the curtain, Robert shouted, “Papa is home!”

“Sssh—you’ll wake them up,” Eleanor said. “Go down and get your breakfast.”

Feet trampled away. Maria shut her eyes. She lay with Richard’s arms around her, wishing she could go back to sleep. She kissed his shoulder. Across his chest there was a long scar. She drew her fingertip along it.

“What happened to you?”

“It looks worse than it was.”

“Did they hurt you—the Saracens? When they took you prisoner.”

He propped himself up on his elbow. “They dragged me around a little. I broke my hand, but that wasn’t their fault.”

“I prayed for you.”

“Oh,” he said, a fine sarcastic edge in his voice. “That must have been what saved me.”

She turned her back on him and scrambled out of the bed. She went to the cupboard for her clothes. The room was full of drafts, and the floor chilled her feet. Shivering, she pulled on her shift and a gown and reached up behind her to free her hair. Richard shouted down the stairs for their breakfast. Half-dressed, he tramped around the room. She brought him a clean shirt.

“I’ve been making you shirts and coats all since Michaelmas.”

“Good. That’s one reason I’m here: all my clothes are falling apart.” He pulled the shirt on over his head.

“You promised me you’d come,” she said, “but I suppose that’s a small thing in your mind.”

“I could not come before. I said I would come when I could.”

The door slammed open. Robert raced in, laughing, Stephen behind him, and they leaped on Richard. He scooped them up, one under each arm. Maria opened the curtains on the bed and threw the covers back to air.

“Go on,” Richard said to the boys. “Pester me after I have eaten. Go play with Bunny.”

“Who is Bunny?” Robert asked blankly.

Richard chased him out. Maria went around the room picking up her sons’ litter of clothes and stones and dirt. Richard put his coat on. She could not stay away from him. In spite of herself, she drifted over and stood with her hand on his arm. He kissed her forehead. The kitchen boy came in with their breakfast; they sat down to eat.

***

“I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe,” the cook said. He wheezed a little, to prove he was sick. “I thought the end had surely come. I have not slept the sleep of grace these past three nights, for fear of dying.”

“Lobelia for that,” Eleanor cried, without looking up from the pot she was stirring. “A good lobelia pack, and something after to get the phlegm up.”

The cook sniffed. “God sent me this for my sins. I welcome it for my sins’ sake.”

Maria poured a measure of chopped nuts into the fruit boiling over the fire and took a wooden spoon to mix them in. Eleanor said, “All the same, a good pack of lobelia would do you no harm.” She straightened, brushing her hair back with her forearm. Now that the rain had stopped, the kitchen was perceptibly brighter.

“Do you need help, Maria?”

“No—it has to cook a while.” Maria hung up the spoon on the hearth. Sticky walnut syrup clung to her fingers. She yawned.

“My, you are sleepy, aren’t you,” Eleanor said sweetly. “I shouldn’t wonder, I heard you tossing and turning all last night.”

Maria gave her a black look, and Eleanor simpered. Stiff, Maria went across the kitchen to the door. Richard had brought his horse out into the ward. While he curried it and brushed it, a cluster of boys gathered to watch. Even the young Duke was there.

“Don’t let the conserves burn,” Eleanor called.

There was a pile of little cakes on the bench beside the door. Maria stuffed a dozen of them into her apron pockets and went out to the ward. The air was sweet from the rain. Puddles still shone clear on the ground around the gate. Eleanor called to her again. She shut the door between them with her heel.

Richard had the gray stallion’s forehoof up on his thigh and was scraping caked mud and dung out of it with a hoofpick. The boys stood around him watching. The young Duke strained his neck to see. He leaned up against the wall near the horse’s head, the wolfhound bitch sprawled comfortably in the sun a few feet away.

Maria gave out the sweet cakes. The children’s hands thrust at her, dirty and grasping. The last grubby brown hand was Richard’s. She went up to the gray stallion’s head and patted its face.

Robert had the hoofpick. He was wrestling the horse’s off-hind foot up into his lap. Richard came up beside her.

“What are you making? It smells good.”

She said, “Conserves. This is a beautiful horse.”

Robert stooped over the stallion’s raised hoof. The horse turned its beautiful head to look and carefully straightened out its leg. Robert tumbled headlong. Richard laughed; the other boys laughed too. The horse snorted. Maria thought it looked pleased with itself.

“I can do it,” the young Duke said. He pushed himself away from the wall and went around behind the horse. Taking the hoofpick from Robert, he bent over the horse’s hind leg.

“Here,” Richard said. “It’s easier like this.” While he showed the boy how to hold the stallion’s hoof between his knees, Maria watched him closely. It was strange to find herself suddenly equipped with a husband. She had forgotten him; he was a stranger to her, more a stranger even than Fitz-Michael. The stallion turned its head to look back. She took hold of its halter.

The horse snorted softly and lipped her hand, and she fed it half a sweet cake. Its face was wide between the large intelligent eyes. Its kindness amazed her, that it let the green boys handle it.

“The Saracens gave him to me,” Richard said. He came up beside her again, patting the horse’s shoulder. ‘‘He’s too light to fight on, but he’s a hell of a riding horse.”

“The men who took you prisoner? Will they give you another?”

He rested his arm on the wall and let his weight slack against it. She put her hand flat on his chest. The young Duke set the stallion’s hoof down and moved around to the other side.

“Maria,” Eleanor cried, from the kitchen, “the conserves are burning.”

Maria called, “Take the pot off the fire.”

“What are you doing?” Fitz-Michael shouted, and she jumped, but he was yelling at the young Duke. He strode into the midst of the children, took the boy by the ear, and dragged him off. “You stupid lout, are you a groom now? Will you not learn who you are?”

The young Duke tore free. The wolfhound had come to her feet. She loped after him across the ward. Fitz-Michael marched stiff-necked toward the Tower. His servants were upstairs packing his baggage. As soon as his back was turned, the other boys knocked each other in the ribs and laughed and made faces at him. Richard spat.

“Tuppence all his horses have thrush, he’s too highborn to pick their feet out.”

Maria turned back to the gray stallion. “Will you get me a horse like this?”

“After I take Mana’a.”

“When will that be?”

He shook his head. He leaned his back against the wall, his eyes on the door where Fitz-Michael had gone in. “Maybe never.”

From the kitchen, Eleanor shrieked, “Maria!”

“I thought when I had the mountains I could cut off Mana’a and starve them out,” he said. “But they are bringing their supplies in through the harbor, and I can’t stop them; I have no ships.”

Maria scratched the stallion’s forehead. She knew nothing about ships. She tried to imagine Mana’a’s famous bay. “Blue as the bay of Marna,” a song had said once. She thought of her own seacoast, the green water dancing with whitecaps, the breakers striped with foam; it seemed distant as another life, gone forever. Her mood darkened. Heavily she went down to the kitchen to help Eleanor.

***

Fitz-Michael’s escort waited on the road outside the gate. Pages led two saddled horses to the foot of the steps. Maria picked up Stephen to get him out of the way. Robert and the other children were upstairs, saying good-bye to the Duke. At the foot of the stair, Fitz-Michael and Richard stood side by side, ignoring each other.

Maria went up between them. “It’s a fair day, my lord,” she said to Fitz-Michael. “God willing, you’ll have an easy journey.”

“Away from you, my dear, is no easy journey.” He smiled at her, standing over close to her. Across her shoulder he and Richard exchanged needled looks. Maria murmured something. She enjoyed the friction between them; while she smiled at Fitz-Michael she leaned against Richard. Her husband growled in his throat and stepped away from her.

Fitz-Michael turned to his crop-eared bay horse. “If you will summon my nephew—”

Maria put Stephen on the steps and sent him up to fetch the young Duke. Richard walked around Fitz-Michael’s horse, one hand on its black mane. “Remember what I told you touching the Archbishop.”

Fitz-Michael’s long upper lip drew back from his teeth. “I am not your emissary. Treat with him through your own means.” Lifting his reins, he backed the horse rapidly away from Richard, who spat precisely between its forehoofs and stalked off. Maria followed him. While she crossed Fitz-Michael’s path, she caught his eye, and he smiled at her.

The young Duke ran down the steps, half a dozen other boys yelling at his heels. Richard boosted him up into his saddle. The wolfhound bitch had followed the boy up to his horse. She whined, and the Duke slapped his thigh and leaned down. Standing on her hind legs, she laid her forepaws and her head against his knee. He scratched behind her ears.

“Good-bye, Lupa,” he said softly. “Good-bye.”

Richard spoke to the dog, which sat down beside him. He moved the Duke’s leg forward in the stirrup and yanked his girths tight.

“Take her with you,” he said. He slapped the Duke’s gelding on the rump and walked off. His eyes went to Fitz-Michael. “You need all the friends you can make.”

Fitz-Michael’s face darkened, but he said nothing. The young Duke twisted in his saddle to watch Richard go off across the courtyard. Fitz-Michael shouted at him, and he lifted his reins. The wolfhound lay down next to Maria. Her ears drooped. The Duke whistled to her. Fitz-Michael rode out the gate, and the boy followed, but in the gateway he stopped and called, “Lupa! Come!”

The wolfhound bolted after him. Richard had disappeared. Maria went to the gate and stood watching the train of Fitz-Michael’s servants and horses go on down the road, the wolfhound loping after them. She called to the porter to shut the gate and went up into the Tower.

Eleanor was sitting before the loom, threading bobbins. Maria moved her stool closer. Picking up the basket onto her lap, she sorted through it for the color she needed. “Thank God they are finally gone,” Eleanor said. “That dreadful man and that sullen little boy. The cook told me he does not know how we will live through Christmas, we have so little store.”

Maria leaned forward to do the next row of Charlemagne’s crown. They had used up most of the wheat she had begged from her home castle. They had no meat left but salted pork. “We shall fast. I’ve always wanted to make a good fast.” She changed the thread to weave a jewel.

“There is nothing to be had in the town. No one in the whole of Birnia has any grain. I foresee a hard winter for us all.” Eleanor crossed herself.

“Telling the future is a sin, Eleanor. Shame. Have you decided yet about the trees?”

Eleanor had spoken of making the leaves of the trees silver and gold. She canted her head to squint at the tapestry. “I don’t know. We have such a scarcity of gold thread.”

Richard came into the hall. Maria watched him cross the room. She remembered lying with him and quickly turned her eyes back to the tapestry. “I doubt if it would add enough to justify using it.”

Richard came up behind them. “I want to meet this friend of yours,” he said. “This ostler.”

Maria stood up. “Now? Do you want to go to the town? Eleanor, bring me my cloak.”

Eleanor climbed around the loom, the spinning wheel, and the baskets of mending. Planting his foot on her stool, Richard stared at the tapestry.

“You are getting better at it—which is your work?”

“I do the people, and Eleanor does the animals and the trees. See Roland?” She had made Roland full-face, in the space below Charlemagne, his milk-white cheeks framed in symmetrical golden curls. “And there is Oliver.”