Great Maria (52 page)

After a moment he said, “Am I too heavy?”

“No.” She did not want him to move.

He did anyway, sliding down beside her, and braced himself upon one elbow. He drew his fingertip in a line from her breastbone to her navel. “We shouldn’t have done that, we have a long way to go, and they’re probably ahead of us again.”

Sunshine flooded in through the broken roof, streaming with dust motes, and Maria sneezed again. Her body felt voluptuous from lying with him.

“Now I’m hungry,” he said. “Where is the bread?”

“In my saddle pouch.”

He got the loaf, found his knife in the litter of leaves and clothes, and cut the bread in half. “You think Anne poisoned Roger.”

“In Agato, mark, when they thought you were dying, they were very keen Roger should have Marna.”

He ate. His eyes were smoky. “You never told me that before.”

She shrugged. She ate some of the bread. Richard said, “I don’t believe it. He has never liked any woman enough to listen to her.”

“He is faithless.”

“But not to me. He was never faithless to me.” He put on his ruined hose. “God damn him, he is my brother.”

She got up and groped around the half-destroyed hut for her shift. The breeze through the broken roof touched her breast like a hand. She put her clothes on. He said, “Rahman is always telling me you are frail. You’re strong as a horse.” His smile broadened with malice. “The strong end of the horse, too.”

Maria snapped her fingers in his face. He snatched for her and she stuffed his shirt into his hands.

“I have never betrayed you,” he said. He pulled the shirt on over his head. “Even when you were gone so long in Birnia. I have never fucked another woman.”

“Who else would let you?”

He grunted. “You’d be surprised.” He found his belt.

Maria gathered up her hair and plaited it in a thick rope. They went out of the hut. Their horses were grazing at the far end of the sweep of grass, near the edge of the wood. Maria and Richard went toward them. Halfway across the meadow, he reached out his hand, and she took it.

“Now I know why I prefer you to Anne,” he said.

***

They rode on across the hills all the rest of the day and half the night, working their way west along the defiles above the green valleys where the shepherds summered their flocks. Clogged with rocks and thickets, the thorny wood resisted their passage like an enemy. The rain started again. They stopped to rest until dawn and went on again.

Twice the next day they saw riders in the distance. Once they heard a horn blasting, far off in the direction they had come. Richard’s horse went lame. When it could no longer keep up with the black horse, he killed it and cut out its heart, and they ate the blood-soaked meat raw. They climbed down a series of steep hillsides into the lowland wood. In the afternoon, while they were leading the black horse to save its strength, an arrow came from nowhere and whapped into the ground between them, but they never saw the bowman. At last, late at night, they came to Castelmaria.

Richard banged on the gate. There was no answer. Maria got down from the horse and tried the postern door, which was latched on the inside. Richard swore. He pounded on the gate with his fist.

“Who’s there?’

“Marna!”

A head popped over the wall, startled. “My lord. I didn’t see you—”

“Well, you do now,” Richard shouted. “Get this gate open before I—”

The head disappeared. Ropes squeaked beyond the gate, and the latch rattled. The gate swung inward. “My lord, I—”

Richard thrust past him. “Get William the German.”

Maria started across the ward toward the kitchen. She heard the porter say, “My lord, they’ve gone to the shrine—”

“Who’s in command here?”

She broke into a trot down the little path into the kitchen. The door was shut fast, and she opened the little window in it, reached through, and undid the latch. Her stomach was knotted up with hunger. Wrenching the door open, she went down into the darkness and warmth of the kitchen.

When Richard came in she was sitting on the pantry floor, eating bread and cheese. He sank down beside her and she handed him the jug of milk. Silent, they finished the rest of the cheese between them.

“My lord?” someone called, in the kitchen. The voice was uncertain.

“In here,” Richard said, around a mouthful. He shoved the milk at her. “Can’t you find me something to drink besides baby food?”

Maria tore a loaf of bread in half. A knight tramped into the pantry door. Richard turned to him.

“I want double sentries on the walls. Rouse out the Knights’ Tower. Forty men to patrol the road and the wilderness back toward Iste and bring in anybody they find.” He swallowed with difficulty and crammed bread into his mouth. “Shut the gate in the curtain wall.”

“My lord.” The knight saluted briskly. He took a step toward the door, his face turned toward them. “My lord, who is our enemy?”

“My brother Roger.”

The knight went out. Maria followed him into the kitchen for a lamp. His voice rose, excited, in the ward. Other voices called out. The kitchen door banged open, and two scullions came in, yawning. She sent one for wine and went back into the pantry.

“Do you think he’ll attack us here?”

He shook his head. “He had only one chance, to catch us in Iste or on the way here. Now he has no chance at all. He’s stupid, you know.” His voice was bitter. “He’s a very stupid man.”

“Mama?” Stephen looked in the door.

Maria got up; he came to her, and she hugged him. He turned so he could see his father. “Why did you come here? I thought you were in Iste. Can I go home now?”

Maria sat down again. She wrapped her arms around her knees. “We were in Iste—we—”

“Roger betrayed me,” Richard said. “Roger tried to kill me.” The scullion brought in a big pitcher of wine, and he drank from the edge. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Stephen stared at him a moment. “Mama?” he said, unsure, and turned to Maria. The scullion hung in the doorway, intent.

Maria took the pitcher of wine. She watched Richard pack another chunk of bread and cheese into his mouth. She said, “He’ll escape, won’t he? To Anne’s country.”

“Maybe. If he does, Bunny will help me hunt him down.”

“What will you do to him then, Gripe?”

His head swiveled toward her. He gulped down the food. “Why, I’ll kill him, Maria. What did you think?” He got up and went out of the pantry.

She got up, shaking the crumbs off her skirts. “Mary Mother, I’m tired.” Her voice trembled.

Stephen caught her arm. “Mama. What happened?”

“What he said. Roger tried to seize us, to take Marna, and we held the baby hostage and they let us go.” She hobbled out into the kitchen. Stephen clung to her like a child. The kitchen was full of people. In the darkness she saw only eyes and wet mouths. She said, “They hounded us here all the way across the wilderness—if they had caught us, they would have killed us.” She went out into the ward.

He took her arm and helped her across to the door. The ward was swarming with knights and servants and horses. The gate banged open. Men rode out in a double column. The noise made her head pound. Her son opened the door for her. Gratefully she went into the cool quiet of the stairwell. Stephen helped her up to the top room.

“Mama, are you all right?”

“I’m just tired.” She sank down on the bed. When she thought of it, the incident in Iste seemed to have taken place in another life. She spread out her arms across the bed, forgetting that Stephen was still there.

“I hate him,” Stephen said, in a choked voice. “I hate him. I hate Roger. I hate him.” He banged out the door; she heard him running down the stairs.

***

In the morning she went to Mass in the village, to thank God for preserving them from Roger. Afterward, with her two maids beside her, she rode up toward the castle again. The fallow meadows on either side of the road were a flood of yellow wild flowers, belly-high to the horses. Clouds of butterflies hovered over them. The sun lay warm on her arms, and she pulled her sleeves up to her elbows.

A pack of horsemen waited before the gate in the curtain wall. They split apart to let her pass through their midst. Most were Christian knights, but in the gateway itself, Ismael stood with his mare’s hoof braced up on his knee. When she dismounted, he turned and flung his arms around her in a flamboyant embrace.

“Maria.” He stood back, his face glowing. “We come much fast.”

“You must have. Is Robert with you?” She pulled her reins over the mare’s head. “Come up to the castle with me.”

“No, no. I go. Robert make horse for me. I go many place of brother.” He flung his arm up to shade his face. “Much more on, I come back.”

The women called to her; they were halfway up the road. She waved to Ismael and walked after them. In the middle of the ward, surrounded by people, Robert was stripping the saddle from an exhausted horse. She came in the gate, and he brushed past the knights and servants around him and hurried over to her.

“Mother.” He kissed her cheek. “How could Uncle Roger do this to us?”

Maria put her arm around his waist. “I don’t know. God must be punishing us. Or him.” She looked up at him; his blue eyes were vivid in his Saracen-dark face.

Over his shoulder, he called, “Joseph, take that horse to Ismael-Malik, at the curtain wall.” He lowered his voice to her. “Mother, what happened? What did you fight over?”

She stepped back. Stephen was walking across the ward toward them. Robert saw him, and she got out of their way.

“Robert,” Stephen said, and stuck out his hand. Robert clasped it. In his mail he looked much the older. Abruptly they embraced each other.

“Ah, Stephen—”

Maria left them alone. She went up into the New Tower. Richard had gone off to ride the road to Iste, to harry back the men who had harried him. She climbed the stairs to the hall, which the servants were just sweeping, and went to the window overlooking the ward.

Robert and Stephen were still standing in the middle of the ward, talking. She sat down in the narrow shaft of sunlight cutting through the window. The serving women brought in fresh rushes and opened them over the floor. The rushes smelled of the rosemary dried with them.

The two young men came into the hall, and the girls all paused. The older women swatted them giggling back to work. Maria laughed. She was glad the girls thought her sons worth looking at. She watched Robert cross the room, wondering if he were still a virgin. Stephen came up beside her, but Robert stopped at the table to pour himself a cup of wine.

“Mother,” he called. “What started them fighting?”

Stephen raised his voice to send the servants out of the hall. Maria glanced at him, intrigued. Robert came up to her, a cup of wine in either hand. He held one out to her.

“There is no water, so Stephen doesn’t get any.”

The wine was whole. Maria put the cup on the floor. “Tell me what the rumor says.”

“That Uncle Roger tried to murder you at the christening.” His voice weakened on the word, and he licked his lips. He coiled himself down on his heels beside her. “Tell me the truth.”

“That’s the truth. It was a plot. They did not quarrel. Roger was kind as a mother to us the night before.”

Robert drank his wine in three long gulps. “Here, Stephen, get me some more, will you?” He handed his brother the cup. Stephen’s shoulders hunched, but he said nothing, and he took Maria’s wine with him. Robert said, “Where is Papa?”

“Halfway to Iste. I hope he comes back tonight, I have no wish to wait up for him.”

“Is he really angry?”

“Now, what do you think?”

Stephen came back with a cup for each of them. He had mixed her wine with water. “Thank you,” she said.

“So there will be a war,” Robert said softly, excited. “We’ll fight Uncle Roger.”

“Papa thinks he will stand at Iste,” Stephen said. “Papa will move up the valley, the Brotherhood will come down from the mountains. Duke Henry blocks him in the east.”

“Oh, tactics. Leave that to Papa.” Robert stood up. “Are you going with us, Stephen?”

Getting up behind him, Stephen held his long hauberk by the sleeves while Robert hauled it off over his head. The mail rang continually like little bells. Robert said, “It’s not like training, you’ll like it. Come with us.”

He and Stephen laid the hauberk down across a chair. They touched it reverently. Robert put his swordbelt down on top of it. Maria had never before noticed him to do anything carefully.

“Well,” Stephen said, “there are other things to do, you know.”

Robert whacked him on the arm. “No. Tell me, hakim.”

Stephen flushed, his gaze pinned to the floor. Maria said nothing, curious to see how long he would let Robert tease him. He said, “Well, someone will have to…take care of Mama. And rule.”

Robert roared with laughter. “Stephen, King of Marna.”

Stephen chewed his lips. Maria got up. They had to let the servants back in. “Robert, come, let me find you a place to sleep. And Stephen has errands.”