Great Maria (48 page)

She said, “Sooner or later Father Yvet is going to find out what a spider you really are.”

He rubbed his face against her throat. “Oh, Maria. Haven’t I been good to you?”

“Ever since Father Yvet started courting me.”

He pulled her down onto the grass. The sun was warm on her face. She put her hand under his shirt. He lay on top of her, his knee between her legs.

The dogs barked close by. Stephen shouted. Maria pushed Richard away; he was trying to kiss her, and for an instant he went on trying, pinning her down. She could not budge him. The dogs rushed up around them. Maria thrust at him hard, and he let her go. She sat up, her heart pounding.

Stephen bounded toward them. He was soaking wet to the hair. They got on their horses and went home.

Forty-two

Maria took Henry down to the village in the early afternoon. Richard and William the German had each given the fair a tun of wine, and the villagers were just tapping the second when she arrived.

Everybody for leagues had come: shepherders and woodcutters, even the people who left the hills otherwise only for Easter and Christmas. The meadow swarmed with them. They spilled over across the river and into the village itself. She took the baby over to see the woodcutters’ trained bears dance.

Calling greetings to the people she knew, she stood watching the swarm of serfs. The shepherds’ wives spread their finest blankets and shawls on the grass to show off their patterns. Maria admired them. She got a sweet cake fresh from the oven and strolled around the meadow, enjoying the sudden variety of faces and sights.

Behind the wine wagon, the village boys and half a dozen knights from the castle had gathered to box. She stood trying to get Henry to watch them. Robert shouted to her. She went around the wagon and crossed a stretch of beaten grass toward him. Under an oak tree, he and several other men were standing around a double ox yoke, wound around and around with chains. Maria walked up.

“All right,’’Robert called. “Here goes.” He bent, took hold of the yoke, and struggled to lift it. The yoke would not budge.

The other men laughed. Among them, William the German’s broad face was scarlet with good humor. Robert stopped again and heaved. This time he hauled one end of the yoke a hand’s breadth off the ground.

The men roared and beat their hands together. A cannikin of wine went quickly among them. Maria laughed; she pulled Robert toward her by the arm.

“Ah,” she said, “your talents lie elsewhere.” She hugged him.

“Papa,” Robert cried, over her shoulder. “Come lift this thing.”

Richard came up beside her. “What thing?”

The men around them shouted at him, challenging him to it. Maria settled the baby more comfortably on her hip. Richard put his foot on the yoke and pushed, without moving it at all.

A little crowd was gathering. The knights among them began to make bets. More cans of wine appeared and circulated from hand to hand. Richard peeled off his shirt. On his forearm dull purple ridges of scars rose under the dark hair. Maria took Henry’s chin and tried to make him look. The baby pulled impatiently away from her. Richard bent over the yoke. He heaved; nothing happened.

“Go on, Dragon,” someone yelled from the back of the crowd. “Breathe on it.” The men all whooped.

“King Jesus Christ,” Richard said. He grasped it again. The muscles of his back coiled. The chains clinked reluctantly. Maria murmured. All around her people yelled, their voices rising as the yoke rose slowly off the ground. Richard got it waist-high and dropped it.

A round cheer went up. “Try it again,” Robert called, but Maria whacked him in the ribs with her fist, and Richard was already standing back, reaching for his shirt. He slapped William the German across his enormous belly.

“You do it.”

The fat man smiled. He went up before the yoke, reached down, and raised the yoke up to his knee, brought it smoothly to his chest, and straightened his arms over his head. The crowd screeched. Even Henry crowed and pointed. William turned around once under the yoke and set it down again. Instantly other men rushed to try.

Richard started toward her. His eyes went beyond her, and he turned in the opposite direction. Maria looked over her shoulder. She heard her name called. Father Yvet sauntered up to her.

His habit was fine and soft as a prince’s clothes. His brushed hair gave off a metallic sheen. “You should have come with us yesterday. It was a most pleasant journey.”

Maria looked for Richard; he had gone. A serf woman, brown as the dirt, was kneeling before Father Yvet. Talking about the shrine, he did not notice her until she tugged on his habit. He blessed her. Maria boosted the baby up on her hip. They went together across the meadow.

“The cave is a holy place, don’t you think?” she asked. “I have a feeling there. Like something listening.”

“It was charming. Beautiful.” They walked on together. She steered him toward the brown grass along the river, and he told her of the trip. “Your friend the abbot thanks you for the cheeses,” he said.

“Brother Nicholas? How is he?”

“Well. Well-ripened,” Father Yvet said. “I wonder at such people, sometimes—why they think offense to others redounds to their own piety.”

“I think he was once a great sinner,” she said. “Now he is humiliating himself as much as he glorified himself when he sinned. Did you talk to him very much?”

“No. Our interests are separate, aside from the dubious value of the penance he imposes on the folk around him. He is unworldly.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, astonished.

“He is very fond of you, Maria.”

The stream of people before them burst apart, and a giant pink sow, shining with grease, hurtled straight at Maria. She leaped sideways. Stephen clung with his arms around the sow’s neck and his legs around her barrel. Snorting in blasts the beast bolted away, hotly followed by a dozen screaming boys.

“That is your son,” Father Yvet said, surprised.

“Yes—they try to ride everything.” She put Henry on her other hip and crooked her free arm through the churchman’s. “There,” she said. “The jugglers are starting.” She towed him in that direction.

Beyond the little knot of people at the jugglers’ wagon, Eleanor stood scowling, her arms folded across her breast. “Father Yvet,” she called. Her voice carried like a hunting horn. “Are you going to sanctify this sinfulness by your presence?”

“Lady, if my presence could sanctify sin, you would not find me wandering through the world.”

“Oh, Father Yvet.” Eleanor simpered at him. Maria went around them. Already in their red and yellow costumes, the jugglers were setting up their stage.

“I wonder where Jilly is,” Eleanor said.

Maria turned. “Eleanor, will you do me a friend’s favor? Can you take—”

“Henry to his cradle.” Eleanor lifted the baby in her arms. “I will. Keep watch for Jilly, she is so easily frightened in crowds.” Bent over the baby, she walked up the hill toward the castle.

Maria stood staring after her. The woman’s dark green bodice showed vividly against the golden brown of the hillside. While she walked she hugged the baby.

“Your friend has no children of her own,” Father Yvet said. “It seems a shame, she is so devoted to little ones.”

To a burst of pipe music, the two jugglers tossed their knives and colored balls into the air. The children gasped. They pressed up close to the stage. Maria clapped her hands together. The jugglers’ craft delighted her. She watched them spin up two of the children’s hats into the stream of juggles.

Father Yvet was staring at her, a smile on his face. He said, “You are still a little girl, aren’t you?”

Maria laughed, turning away. It rubbed her that he should take her for a child. They started off together around the edge of the meadow. The churchman paid her an assortment of flatteries. The knights were racing their horses up and down the road through the village. A roar went up from the mob around the oak tree and another man held the chained yoke up over his head. On the far bank of the river, a boy and girl sat dipping their bare feet in the water and holding hands. Maria looked for Richard. He disliked crowds; she thought he had gone up to the castle.

Two fiddles and a drum began to play in the middle of the meadow. “Oh,” she said. “Come watch them dance.” She lifted her skirts in her hands. “You don’t think it’s a sin to dance, do you?”

“No. I am not one of these people like your friend, who find sin in everything.” He strolled along next to her. “These country folk have so few pleasures, I cannot grudge them their dancing.”

Maria led him across the meadow. A bank of serfs and knights stood before her, clapping their hands in time. She slid through the packed crowd to see.

Shepherds and villagers kicked and bounced in a circle before her, alternating men and women. In the middle of their ring, Richard and Jilly whirled in their own strenuous dance. Her long hair flying, her hands in her father’s raised over her head, the child flung herself from foot to foot. Richard threw one arm around her and spun around, lifting her against him off the ground. Her legs sailed out.

“Papa!”

Maria glanced at Father Yvet, but the churchman had gone. She shook her head, impatient with him, and joined the people clapping out the rhythm to the dance.

***

Father Yvet said, “You told me you did not murder the priest, yet he is dead—despite, I am told, the intervention on his behalf of your gentle wife.”

Maria had brought a cushion into the hall passage to sit on. She lit another candle, curious who had told him: Eleanor or Brother Nicholas.

“We shall have a complete explanation of it,” the churchman said. “And assurances—”

“Father Yvet,” Richard said, “stop tilting with me. I will support the Holy Father, provided he agrees to my conditions. One of my conditions is I hear nothing more about that damned priest.”

Maria bent to look through the peephole. Beyond the wall, Father Yvet said, “We shall determine the conditions, not you.”

“Oh, no,” Richard said. He thumbed down his moustaches. “You are wrong there, weaver. I will tell you who gets what and who does what between me and the Holy Father. Do you think I am a lout, weaver? I know what my service would mean to the Emperor. No matter what happened in Santerois. He would give me anything I asked for the use of hundreds of the best knights in Europe, Norman-trained, Norman-led, and already here, south of the Alps.”

Father Yvet, for once, did not speak.

Richard said, “I wonder if you realize what those men would mean to the Holy Father and Rome in the hands of the Emperor.”

Maria could not see Father Yvet’s face, and she straightened away from the peephole, her back creaking. Richard’s voice was greasy with satisfaction. He said, “What’s wrong, weaver? Haven’t I let you mock me, all this time, and court my wife in front of me?”

Furniture rattled on the floor. Angrily the churchman said, “Don’t force me to abandon you to your fate.”

“My fate. If you leave here, weaver, I’ll ruin you. I promise you, unless you do my work, you will never see another embassy.”

“I do your work!”

Maria picked at a broken fingernail. The candle smoke got in her nose, and she waved her hand in front of her face to clear it away. Father Yvet said tautly, “My lord, I am in the service of his Holiness, and—”

“Go back to him then. Someone else will do it if you don’t. Tell him to send me a Norman.”

“My lord!”

“Go on. Get out of my demesne, and don’t stop in Santerois either, or you’ll find out how far I can reach.”

The fine wool rustled. Footsteps padded across the hall. The door shut. The other chair creaked. Richard’s voice came through the peephole.

“Go get in his way—he will come to you next.”

Maria stooped to whisper through the hole. “You were too harsh—he won’t come back now, you ruined it.”

“Do as I say, damn you.”

She pinched out the candles and sidled down the wall passage. Her skirts were filthy and she shook them out. Going down the stairs, she opened up the door into the ward a crack.

Father Yvet was pacing up and down in the sunlight, his face grooved with thought. Maria stayed in the dark stairwell a moment. Richard was right, he was going to submit. Two servants, chattering, rushed in and up the stairs, and she went out to the ward.

The churchman came toward her, smiling. His handsome face was drawn with strain. He took her hand. “Maria, good morning to you.”

“Good day, Father.” She let him ease her over toward the far side of the ward, out of sight of the hall window. Robert and Stephen were sitting on top of the wall. She hoped Father Yvet did not realize they were talking to each other in Saracen.

“Yesterday,” the priest said, “you said something to the lady Eleanor—you asked her for a friend’s favor. Now I must ask such a favor of you.”

They walked toward the gate. Maria edged out into the sunlight, away from the clammy stone wall.

“You know how jealous your husband is of our friendship,” Father Yvet said. “Now he has tried to dismiss me. For his own sake, you must prevail on him to let me stay here.” He swung toward her, his hands on her arms. “If the Holy Father withdraws his support, Marna will surely fall.”

“What must I do?”

“He must let me talk to him again. I can smooth over the breach between us. But I cannot go back to Rome without some agreement.”

That at least was true. Maria turned away from him, amused. She wondered if Richard were watching. “If I help you,” she said, “you must keep faith with me. You will owe me a friend’s favor too.”

He came up close to her side. “I swear it.”

She faced him again, looking him straight in the eyes. “I will do what I can. But he does not heed me overmuch.”

The churchman smiled down at her. “He listens to you, I suspect, more than either of you realizes.” Stooping, he kissed her on the brow.