Great Maria (47 page)

“In the harbor. I’ll send you some.”

His head bobbed. Robert opened the door and came the three steps down into the light. “Mother? We are ready.”

Maria fastened down the tops of the baskets. “Now, don’t eat everything. Let other people get enough. Are you taking a page? Then take one. Josse, he has never been.”

“Maria,” Eleanor called, from the doorway. “Have you seen Jilly?”

“No, Eleanor, I thought she was with you.”

Robert lifted the baskets, and Maria followed him up into the ward ahead of her. The sky was full of high blue clouds. In the ward, the horses stamped and snorted in the chilly air. Father Yvet marshaled his little party out into the open. William the German had backed out of the trip the night before, but Flora had suddenly decided to go in his place.

“This will teach Jilly not to go off by herself.” Eleanor lapped the front of her cloak and fastened the brooch. “Still, I’m sorry she must miss it.” She got into the cart with the baskets and the page and Flora. Robert mounted.

“Come join us, Master Stephen,” Father Yvet said. The boy was standing just behind him. “Let me make a friend of you.”

Stephen locked his hands behind his back. “I am my father’s friend.” He walked away toward the New Tower.

“Father,” Maria called, and went up to the churchman. He stood staring after her son, his face pinched with anger. “Give my greeting to the abbot, Brother Nicholas.”

“I will.” Pleasant again, he kissed her forehead. He led the little train out the gate.

Maria went into the New Tower and up to the hall. In spite of the early hour, Richard was awake, standing beside the table eating breakfast, while William the German opposite him explained some business. Stephen waited nearby. Maria went upstairs to tend to the baby.

She nursed Henry and was sitting on the bed changing his clothes when Richard and William the German came into the room. They tramped across the carpets. Richard took his sword down from the wall and pulled the belt over his shoulder.

“We’re going to the village. Something to do with this fair. And I may go to the mill afterward. When Stephen comes back, if I am not here, tell him to meet me at the mill.”

“What are you going to do about Ismael?” She glanced at William the German’s broad, shrewd face. He smiled at her. “He’s probably freezing. You know how cold it gets down there at night.”

“I sent Stephen down there with my fur cloak.”

Richard went out. Maria followed him down the stairs, the baby on her hip. The ward was busy with the people of the castle at their work. Richard stopped in the middle of it, looking around him.

“Hugh! Bring me my horse!” He turned back to her. “Who taught that old onionhead in the kitchen to make chorek?”

“I did.” She put the baby down on the ground at her feet. The geese were scattered across the ward, and she kept watch for them. His bay stallion trotted up from the stable, throwing its head against the groom’s hold on the bridle. Richard mounted. She picked up the baby again and walked beside him toward the gate, one hand on his horse’s shoulder.

“Poor Ismael. He’s probably—”

“Don’t worry about Ismael. If a messenger comes from Roger, tell me.”

They went out the gate onto the hillside. Maria shaded her eyes against the early sun. The air was brilliantly clear; the valley lay brown and placid before them. A haywain was rolling down the road from the village.

“Now teach him to make Saracen eggs,” Richard said, “and I will canonize you.” He took his foot out of the stirrup and nudged her. She stood on her toes to reach him, and he kissed her. With William the German he galloped down the road toward the village.

Carrying the baby, Maria went off across the hillside toward the curtain wall. The early frost had killed the grass; it crackled under her feet and left burrs and hooked seeds all over her skirts. Henry slept with his head on her shoulder. Fifteen feet from the curtain wall, she stopped still.

Between her and the high wall, the hill dropped off steeply in a sandy bank. Naked except for her shoes, Jilly sat in the dirt, digging vigorously with a stick. Two cloth dolls lay beside her. There was no sign of her clothes.

Maria crouched in the tall dead grass. Jilly snatched up one of the dolls, a shapeless thing with black yarn hair. “No, no, Eleanor!” She pounded the doll on the head with her stick. “Eleanor was bad again, Judith,” she told the other doll. “What shall we do?”

Maria backed away up the hillside. Henry sagged against her.

She moved slowly to keep from rustling the dry brush. The doll Eleanor, apparently on counsel of the doll Judith, received a thorough beating. Maria went back toward the castle again. Halfway up the hill, she began to laugh.

***

She went out to meet Stephen. He would not tell her Richard’s message to Ismael, but by the things he said, she gathered that Ismael was staying close by Castelmaria. They rode across the wood to the mill. She raced Stephen three times and beat him twice. In the deep oak wood the still air smelled of leaves and mold. Here and there patches of sumac glowed dark red in the sun. She jumped her mare over a windfall and turned to watch Stephen. His horse refused it, and grimly he turned and drove the brown mare at it again, and at the last step, when it was going to jump, his courage failed and he let the horse stop. He struck the mare spitefully with his reins.

“Don’t,” Maria called. “Come around it.”

He rode through the brush around the barrier. They galloped on into the narrow trench of the valley where the mill stood. She saw how Stephen brooded on the jump he had not made. They reached the mill, at the end of the brush-choked valley, surrounded by a stand of cedars.

Around the mill there was a cleared meadow inside a split rail fence. When Maria and Stephen rode up to it, a cart and three of the villagers blocked the way through the gate. Maria waved to them, dismounted, and tied her horse to the fence. Eight of the dogs from the castle were sitting under the big tree at the gate, their eyes steady on the upper branches, where the miller’s cats sat elaborately licking their paws.

“Piers,” she said. She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Where is my husband, drowning the miller?”

The serfs all laughed, and Alys’s son said, “We just took the stones inside, Madonna, nothing has happened yet.”

Maria climbed through the fence and with Stephen walked across the meadow to the mill. She pushed the door open.

Inside, the round room resounded with the howling of the grindstones. The floor, the wooden gears, even the walls and the roof beams were caked with moldy flour. Maria circled around the trap door in the middle of the room, its lid cocked open.

The scales were at the far end of the room. “My father had the weights made,” the miller was shouting. His voice carried over the roar of the grindstones. Richard was pacing up and down in front of the scales. The miller stood beside him, his face slack with apprehension. His boys were piling weights onto the scale platforms.

Maria went past the stacked bags of grain and stood where she could watch the scale. The miller’s eyes never left Richard’s face. The boys heaved the castle weight up onto the platform. Richard kicked out the chock.

The scale rocked and swayed and finally balanced evenly. Maria shook her head, frowning; she knew the miller cheated on his weights. The miller’s face was dripping with sweat. Richard waved to the boys, who removed all the stones from the scale, and brought another set of weights.

“My lord,” the miller shouted. “I never used those weights—I never even knew they were down there—I only used my good weights. You saw, you saw my weights balanced yours—”

The miller’s boys swung the second set of stones up onto the left side of the scale. Stooping, they hoisted the castle weight and dropped it onto the right side. The scale crashed heavily down on the side of the castle stone.

“As I breathe, my lord,” the miller was roaring. “As I love God—”

Richard seemed not to hear him. He gestured to the boys, who gathered up the false weights from the scale. Maria stayed to watch. She remembered how often this miller’s father had cheated her. But Richard only led them all outside.

The boys carried the weights across the yard and threw them into the millpond. The three villagers jeered and shouted and made figs at the miller. Maria called to them to come load up the castle weights again.

The miller, by habit still bellowing, cried, “I’ve never cheated anyone—I never knew they were there. I never used those weights—”

Richard said, “Henceforth you will give me tenpence every quarterday. You can start Christmas. Tenpence. This next Christmas.”

The miller’s voice gave out. His face the color of flour, he stared into the empty air. Maria suspected that tenpence every quarter would beggar him, if he could not steal. Christmas was less than a full quarter away.

She turned around. Richard’s horse grazed along the side of the mill. The water streamed over the mill dam, silver as fish. The serfs loaded the castle weights carefully into the cart and backed the ox through the gate into the road. Richard went around the mill to get his horse.

The miller wheeled toward Maria, his hands out. “Madonna, have some Christian mercy on me.”

Maria smiled at him. “If I judged it, you’d be in the pond with your weights around your neck.”

Richard led his horse over to her. “Did you see Ismael?”

“No. What are you—”

He turned his back on her and mounted his horse. The miller caught hold of the big iron stirrup.

“My lord—”

“If you stay honest, I will consider a remission.”

He rode away. Maria ran across the yard to her mare. The oxcart was already halfway down the road through the valley, hidden in the trees and brush. Richard and Stephen rode up beside her. She mounted. Stephen whistled and called to the dogs.

“And people say only God can make something out of nothing,” Richard said. “Didn’t I just make forty pence a year out of twenty pounds that wasn’t there?”

“Yes,” Maria said. “Which is nothing.”

Stephen said, “What’s a remission?”

“If he turns honest I’ll lower the fine.” Richard reined his horse around, his eyes on her. “Justice is profitable.”

Maria laughed. They rode three abreast along the dirt path. The dogs snuffed busily around them. Stephen said, “Will he be honest now?”

“Do snakes fly? This one’s father gave false weights when I was living in the Knights’ Tower and your mother was still skipping rope.”

“When did you live in the Knights’ Tower?”

“I never skipped rope,” Maria said.

“I remember you and a carrot-headed girl jumping rope and singing an indecent song about a bell.”

“A bell,” Maria said. An old tune sounded in her mind. “Oh.”

Good girls wait for blessing

Bad girls ring the bell.

Good girls go to Heaven

Bad girls go to hey-nonny-nonny-o.

Richard laughed. They rode down the valley along the riverbank. Ahead of them the oxcart had nearly reached the bridge.

“What does that mean?” Stephen asked.

“It was a clapping game,” Maria said. “Not skip-rope.” She had not thought of the song in years. Richard was smiling broad as a sailor at her. She said, “You have an evil mind.”

He held one hand up against his chest. “You were this high to me then. And flat as the top of a table. We bet on when you’d bud.”

“You bet on anything.”

The boy was looking from her face to his father’s and back. Richard said, “We had nothing else to do. Except fight.”

“Why were you living in the Knights’ Tower?” Stephen asked.

“I was waiting for your mother to
get
old enough to marry.”

Maria glanced at him. They came to the bridge. The cart rattled across and on down the road. Richard took his horse to drink. Maria dismounted and sat on a rock beside the river, kicked her shoes off, and stuck her feet in the cold water. Stephen waded along the bank hunting for crayfish.

Richard pulled her hair. “I remember once I caught you and that redheaded girl in the stable, cramming your faces with raspberry tarts you stole from the oven.”

“Oh. Don’t remind me. I was sick for days. I still can’t eat raspberries.” She leaned back against him. “Was that you?”

“You don’t remember,” he said.

“All I remember is running away from a very mean knight.” She rubbed her cheek against him. Stephen was scrambling through the stalky brush along the riverbank. “Poor Elena. The Saracens killed her. She was my best friend.”

“You weren’t alone.” He took hold of her hand and manipulated the fingers. “God’s death. Half the tower got into Elena. She’d kick up her heels for a penny. Or a raspberry tart.”

“You didn’t. Did you?”

“She didn’t like me.”

“Poor Elena.”

He kissed her. Stephen shouted in the distance, out of sight in the reeds along the riverbank. Most of the dogs had gone with him. Richard crooked his arm around her neck, her head fast in his grip. His free hand groped between her thighs.