Great Maria (36 page)

Maria reined her mare away. Heavy as metal, the first few drops of rain struck her shoulders. Richard and William galloped out of the dusk.

“Come up on the high ground,” Richard called. He leaned from his saddle to lift Eleanor up onto her horse’s back. Three gray rabbits hung by their hind legs from his saddle pommel. The hawk rode on William’s fist.

Maria pulled her cloak around Jilly. The child took hold of the saddle’s square pommel.

“Mama? Will it be all right?”

“Oh, yes.”

In the cave of the cloak Jilly leaned back against Maria’s body. Down by the sulphurous horizon, lightning forked out of the sky. The thunder rolled across the fen. Richard came up beside her. They galloped through the rain down the hard-packed road.

Sweeping in from the sea, the storm fell upon them. They had to stop their horses. Maria closed her cloak over Jilly’s head. Richard put his arm around her shoulders. They leaned together, their backs to the hammering rain.

The thunder crashed. Threads of lightning splintered across the sky. Clouds billowed huge as castles over the flat, barren fen, its hollows already flooded, the high cattails streaming doubled over by the wind. Rain ran down Maria’s cheeks and into her eyes. Richard had his cloak over them. Jilly whimpered, and he spoke to her. The thunder broke hurtful in Maria’s ears. She looked up into the battering rain and the clouds hustling like an army across the sky.

The rain was slackening. The lightning flickered, and the thunder grumbled off, banging along the edge of the sky. The rain ceased. They lifted their heads. The thunder rambled away, mild as lamb’s hoofs.

They straightened apart from each other. Richard’s hair and beard were drenched. Drops of water clung to his eyelashes. Jilly called, “Papa,” and Maria lifted her toward him. He took the child in front of him on his horse. Maria rubbed her cheeks dry on her arm.

The sky lightened. They moved off again down the road. Maria turned the sodden fur of her hood out to dry.

“Eleanor wants to marry,” she said. “What did you say his name is, Eleanor?”

“William the German,” she said. She and William d’Alene were riding along side by side behind them. Richard nodded.

“He’s second-command at Castelmaria—he’s something older than she is.” He glanced back at Eleanor. Under his breath, he said, “Old enough to get into bed with anything.” He curled his arm around Jilly.

“Were you frightened, kit?”

Jilly shook her head, solemn. She lounged in the curve of his body. Maria felt a pang of jealousy. Jilly with her gray eyes and soft, curling hair would be pretty someday. She was pretty now. Maria looked away.

***

Maria and Eleanor went into the town of Birnia, to buy some lace for Eleanor’s wedding dress. Richard had arranged for the dowry. They were talking of a Christmas wedding. Eleanor had forgotten their fighting, but Maria could scarcely hide her dislike from the other woman. To disguise it she let Eleanor take Jilly in the cart with her.

They came to the market place, half-empty in the late morning; many of the stalls were unstocked. The ostler’s daughter was walking along the side of the square that fronted on the churchyard. Maria rode over to meet her. The priest came out onto the church porch. She stuck her chin in the air and ignored him.

The ostler’s daughter leaned over the wheel of the cart. She and Eleanor discussed embroideries for the trousseau. Maria dismounted. The priest was coming across the churchyard. She put her back to him.

“I wish he would leave,” the ostler’s daughter said softly. “I have not heard Mass these past three Sundays, he is putting me in the way of sin.”

Maria could not keep from laughing. Her mare snorted. Several other men were approaching her, their eyes fixed on her. She stepped back, alert to them. The priest grasped her upper arm.

Eleanor shrieked. Maria spun away, striking aside his hand. The ostler’s daughter turned a white, startled face toward her. Tall men stood between them, closing around Maria; she scanned their faces. The yellow-haired smith was among them.

“You are making a mistake,” she said, her voice low. “I have been your friend in the past.”

Behind them, Jilly screamed. Maria lunged at the men around her, trying to escape between them. The smith caught her around the waist. She flew into a panic; she drove her fingernails at his eyes, and, when he flinched back, struggled in his arms chest to chest with him and brought her knee up hard between his legs. He grunted and caved in at the waist, but someone had grabbed her by the hair.

“What are they doing?” a woman cried somewhere, and other people called out. The smith and his men bundled Maria down the street. She screamed for Jilly. Her arm was twisted up between her shoulders. No use in fighting. She sobbed for breath, in the grip of many arms. They carried her in under low roof beams and put her down.

The smith gave quick orders in patois. He was a long, ropy-muscled man, his shoulders enormous from his work. His eyes shone in the darkness of the hovel. The five men who had taken her packed the room, stooping under the low roof. The air reeked of their bodies.

In the corner was a straw tick covered with a blanket. She sat down on it, her legs under her. Jilly was not there, nor Eleanor—she wondered if they had been taken elsewhere, or if they had escaped. The smith and the priest stood before her, the smith bent to clear the roof.

“You cannot mistreat her,” the priest said. “She came to my help once—she stood between me and him.” He cast a frightened look at her.

The smith shoved him. “You fool. Who do you think spread those tales about you?” He nodded toward her. “See? She’s listening.” He struck the priest in the chest again. “Go do as I said.”

The priest’s face was haggard. His eyes were buried in black hollows. She thought he looked guilty. The other men were leaving, and the priest followed them out the low door.

Maria looked around the place. In the opposite side of the room there was another tick of straw. Between them was a stone hearth and a bench. The floor was swept and the hearth laid out with a fresh fire. The pot hanging over it was soaped to make it easier to clean; she wondered if the smith had a wife.

The smith pulled the door closed. He sank down on his heels, talking to a stranger. Maria slumped her shoulders, her eyes on the fire, to eavesdrop on them.

“It worked,” the smith said.

“Oh, ay, it worked. For now. Dragon will unwork it.” The stranger spat.

“The priest thinks—”

“Hang the priest.” The other man pulled a scornful face. “He’s a fool. Could you have talked him into this otherwise? We are not here to get back the ancient customs of Birnia; we are here to keep Dragon busy. And maybe make a little for ourselves. Listen to me. Forget holding her here. Theobald will make us rich enough if we can get her to Occel.”

The two men bent together and their voices dropped to whispers. A grunt exploded from the smith. He glanced at Maria. So they were Theobald’s men, part of Theobald’s conspiracy against the Duke.

She looked around the hovel again, searching for some weapon. Richard had still been asleep when she left the castle. He would not miss her for hours. If Eleanor had escaped—she wondered again about Jilly, gnawed with worry.

The two men were staring at her. The stranger tugged on his lower lip. “We have to cross the river. If we can get her out onto the fen he will never find us.” He nudged the smith. “Go bring us some horses.”

“Don’t hurt her, for God’s love,” the smith said. He went out. The stranger came bent-legged toward Maria.

“
Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her
.” He leaned toward her, face to face with her. His breath was rotten. “When we get out on the fen—”

Maria spat into his face. The gout of spittle struck him in the eye. He shrank back. He smacked her across the cheek, and falling sideways she caught the handle of the pot on the fire and turned it over on the stranger’s head.

The man screeched. Boiling yellow soup streamed down over his head and face. Maria lunged for the door. Her skirts entangled her, and she went to her knees. She dived through the door into the street. The screams of the man in the hovel followed her away. The street was thronged with people, wheeling to look at her. She sprinted down an alley. A flock of chickens ran squawking ahead of her. The stench of manure reached her nose. Stopping to take off her shoes, she threw them over a fence. Behind her voices rose in a general chorus. She turned a corner and raced across an expanse of high grass. Dogs barked. She slid through a brush-choked passage between two fences.

Just as she reached the open street again, a pack of men rushed into sight. They screamed and pointed at her. She wheeled. She scrambled back down the overgrown alley and raced through someone’s garden. The men were only a few yards behind her. Her lungs burned painfully. She stepped on something sharp and limped hard across a narrow street. Strange buildings surrounded her. The men were running after her. She circled behind a high fence. At the corner there was a rain barrel half full of water. She climbed into it and crouched down, and the rising water submerged her.

Through the water and the barrel she could hear the men trampling up around her, even their voices although not the words. When she had to breathe again she raised her head slowly up above the surface.

Above the rim of the barrel, the backs and heads of the men showed all around her. She drew a breath and quietly went under water again. Her heart was pounding. She bunched her skirts and sleeves in her hands to keep the cloth from floating. Her lungs began to burn. She looked up through the water. The men were gone.

She put her head up and got her breath. Her coif was gone. She shook the water out of her ears and tried to make out what was going on around her. Distantly she heard shouts. A cock crowed. She peeked over the rim of the barrel; the alley was deserted. She climbed up onto the barrel, hanging onto the high fence. Her clothes were weighted down with rain water. On the other side of the fence was a garden. She lowered herself down into it and crept along through the orderly rows of beans and peas, her clothes squelching, looking for some safe place to hide.

***

Several times she heard people in the alley and the street, even in the garden, looking for her. They never came into the back of the grape arbor, where she was lying in the sun drying her clothes. Her stomach growled with hunger and she ate some of the grapes, so sour her mouth puckered.

In the afternoon she went out to the street again. It was empty. Even the chickens and dogs seemed to have disappeared. Surely if Richard had come looking for her, the town would have been full of noise and people. She went down an alley, keeping to the shadows.

On the far side of the town, a crowd roared. Taking heart, she trotted down an empty street. She was tired to the bone, and her bare feet hurt.

The crowd gave up another roar, ahead of her—in the market place, she realized, and she stretched out her stride, limping. Her foot was cut. She stopped to rest and went on, trotting and walking and trotting again. At the end of the street, she came up behind a wall of people that hid the market place from her.

No one looked at her. They were all too interested in what was happening out in the square. She squeezed past the crowd and suddenly came on William, sitting on his roan stallion beneath a tree. Maria stood by his stirrup, glanced at him, and turned toward the market place.

A solid wall of people surrounded it. Knights studded the crowd. In the middle of the vast, empty square, Richard was riding up and down, dragging the smith Galga along behind him by a rope around his ankles.

“I don’t know,” the smith screamed. “In Jesus’s name—”

The roan horse let its near hip slacken; it snapped at a fly on its breast. William said, “She’s halfway to the border by now, poor thing.”

Richard stopped his horse. On the ground, the smith moaned, curling up into a knot. His arms and legs were skinned to the bleeding meat. His shirt hung around his waist. Richard spurred his horse and dragged him halfway across the square. Here and there in the crowd, people groaned. The smith screamed.

A knight burst out of the crowd. “My lord, we’ve searched every house and hovel in the place—”

“Then start again,” Richard said.

The ostler came forward, his arms out. “My lord, I beg you—”

Richard pointed to him. “You’re next.” He reined his horse around, and the smith gave a hoarse yell.

Maria moved up in front of William’s horse, looking around the ring of people. Across from her, at the edge of the churchyard, the boiled, blistered face of Theobald’s agent showed among his neighbors like a red dot.

“William,” she said, and turned to him.

William blinked at her. The smith gave a shriek behind her.

“Maria,” William said. “What are you doing here?”

She pointed. “That man with the red face is Theobald’s man.”

Grabbing his reins, he spurred his horse into a gallop across the market place. Richard wheeled out of his way. Maria went forward into the open. The boiled man raced away into the crowd, and William charged after him. The people scattered before him, screaming, and the noise spread through the rest of the crowd to an excited roar: they had seen her.