Great Maria (29 page)

Richard was staring at her. Their horses carried them up the meadow toward the stable. Ahmed was holding the parasol over them both. She looked into the cage. The bird flattened itself against the bars. Its eye slowly shut. She held the cage out to Richard.

“You do it.”

He took the cage and broke the door off with his fingers. Leaning down from his saddle, he dropped it into the grass. Maria twisted around and tossed Ahmed his book. She nodded to him to go. Richard straightened up again; Ahmed left them and they rode on across the meadow.

Maria turned to look behind them in the grass for the bird. “Are you sure it can get out?”

Richard laughed. “If it recovers from being shaken half to pieces.” He put his hand on his hip, still staring at her. “You shouldn’t go around alone in the city, you know.”

“I had the boys with me. Are you telling me not to go there again?”

“Do what you want. You will anyway.”

***

For the next few days, she and the Saracen women went about the palace, changing all the furniture around. Maria got several of the magnificent carpets out of the treasure-house and had them hung on the walls. She took the lattice screens down from the windows to let the sunlight in. The wide, airy rooms were bright as the garden, so she had fresh flowers put around the whole palace every day. For the first time, she felt as if she belonged in Mana’a.

She played with Jilly in the garden. She brought the little girl up the stairs to the room of the star ceiling and found Richard there, lying on his side across the bed, talking to Rahman.

Maria carried the baby over and dumped her on the bed. She scrambled on all fours into her father’s arms. Rahman was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Maria stood beside the bed, her eyes on the Saracen, who feigned interest in the far wall.

“Richard,” she said, “this is my bedroom. I don’t want him in my bedroom.”

Rahman gave a gratifying start. Richard said, “King Jesus Christ. Stop, will you?” He held Jilly at arm’s length above him; she kicked her fat legs and screeched.

“I don’t want him in my bedroom.” Maria stared at Rahman. Grim, the Emir turned his head to meet her gaze.

Richard muttered something under his breath. Rahman got carefully up onto his feet. He shook out his immaculate robes.

“I should not have lowered myself to entering a woman’s quarters, lord, save you wished it of me. I will go to my castle.” Richard had given one of the three towers over to the Saracens.

Richard said, “Stay here.”

Maria clenched her fist against her skirt. “If he can come here, then I won’t.”

“Lord.” Rahman bowed his head. “I wish you a good day.” He looked at Maria down his Mohammedan nose and went out of the room. The door shut with a thud behind him.

“Your mother’s a shrew,” Richard told Jilly.

Maria sat down on the bed. Although it was still morning, the heat was already uncomfortable. The Saracen women had told her of the blazing summers in Mana’a, when everyone with somewhere else to go went. She took her hair down and brushed it.

“Aren’t you supposed to forgive your enemies?” Richard said.

“Not Rahman.”

“You’re such a good Christian.”

Jilly climbed on him, pulling on his beard and chewing his fingers. Her voice rose in a babble of excited talk. Richard tossed her up in the air, caught her, and rolling suddenly to his feet set her on the floor.

“I have some work in Iste.” He walked off around the room. Jilly on her hands and knees pursued him at top speed. He turned to face Maria again. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Maria shook her hair back. She brushed it down thick and black, so long now she could sit on it. “What should I say? I want to go with you.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said. He came up beside her and took a tress of her hair between his fingers. “I’m sure Roger does, too.”

“You get a lot of righteous indignation out of one kiss, Richard.”

He sat down behind her on the bed. In the middle of the floor, Jilly got carefully up onto her feet. The sunlight gilded the ends of her light brown hair. Maria laid the brush down. Richard buried his hands in her hair. He put his arms around her. She closed her eyes.

Twenty-seven

There may be beggars and thieves living here,” Robert said. Maria jumped down from the top of the wall and landed next to him in the deep drift of leaves. “So we have to stay together. Ismael!”

Ismael appeared on the top of the wall. He bounded to the ground a few feet away. Maria followed the two boys across the paved ward. Grass and weeds sprouted up through the cracks in the stones. The dark building before her was an empty hulk, its roof gone, sunshine streaming out through its top windows, and the main door hanging on one hinge. Maria stopped to look around.

“This is the citadel you stormed.”

Ismael caught her arm. “I come here—me many many brothers—” His free hand swooped through the air. “The Emir like a—like a”—he raised his hands—“great wind! We crash in, we”—his arms described their charge; in his search for words he panted—“bury everything. Floods and oceans. We—”

Robert dragged her on toward the citadel. “Mother, come on, we can’t stay very long or we’ll get into trouble with the watch. Don’t listen to him, he was in the rearguard with me.”

They went through the broken door into a hall. Their footsteps resounded hollow from the walls. Leaves had blown through the door and collected in long trails across the tiled floor. Maria blinked in the gloomy light. The hall smelled of dust.

Ismael ran across the hall before them. “We rush on. Many many brothers after the Emir.”

“Rahman?” Maria asked uncertainly.

“Papa,” Robert said.

She went to a side door. Beyond it was a little room whose walls were covered with pictures. There was no furniture. Even the walls were cracked, as if someone had tried to loot them too, but she could still make out scenes of hunting, gardens, and fountains, all peopled with little Saracens no taller than her thumb.

“What is this?”

Robert came up beside her. “What? Come upstairs—wait until you see up there.”

Maria drew one finger across the figured wall, striping the dust. She stood back to see the painting higher on the wall. Ismael said coldly, “Bad work here. Pah.”

She looked around, intrigued, and the boys pulled her toward the stairs. Ismael hurried on ahead of her. Maria said, “Why is it bad work? The pictures are beautiful.”

They climbed a long staircase. The bare metal struts of the railing hung from the wall. Most of the stone steps were broken and two were gone entirely. Ismael said, “Bad Mana’an work.” When they reached the head of the stairs, he turned earnestly to her. His hands threshed the air.

“These people Mana’an folk. I is Majlas al-Kerak. I is brother, Emir is brother, Robert brother.” He took hold of her hand. “Maria brother as well. We no—” He veiled the lower half of her face with his hand. “No wine, no sell brother to slave.” He nodded profoundly. “All such Mana’an by course.”

Maria stared at him. His beautiful eyes searched her face anxiously. Abruptly he smiled. “Maria brother?”

“Yes,” she said. “If you wish. Not if I must give up drinking wine. What about the pictures?”

“Pictures.” He tasted the word. “Pictures. We no pictures.” He shook his head. His long forefinger pointed to the sky. “God make—” His hands shaped the space before him. “Men only thank God. No make. Man no God.”

Robert said, “Mother, come on, we can’t stay very long.”

Maria went after him, Ismael beside her. That was why the walls of the palace were decorated with prayers instead of pictures; the Saracens thought pictures were sinful. She shrugged. Little they did made sense to her. She went after Robert up the stairs.

The upper stories of the citadel were full of debris and broken furniture and trash. Thieves and beggars had built fires there to warm themselves. Mice lived in the dust and owls in the rafters. The boys hunted busily for treasure. From their talk, she gathered that Robert had found a knife buried in the rubble the last time they came here.

She sat in a window and looked out. The hill dropped away sheer below her. She could see out over the cathedral’s busy market place and its awnings, across the bay to the headlands in the distance, where the sea dashed white over the rocks. The red-tiled roofs of Mana’a swept in an ample curve off down the beach. The palace was behind her. Richard had gone out early that morning to another of his incessant councils and would be away all day.

What Ismael had said clung to her thoughts. It had never occurred to her that Saracens had heretics, too. She wondered which were orthodox: Ismael’s mountain folk or the Mana’ans. But of course it made no difference, if they were not Christian. Ismael’s people sounded strict; she wondered how they could accept Richard, a Norman.

“Mama.” Robert slid his arm around her and leaned his head on her shoulder. “Aren’t you glad we came?”

She stroked his hair with her fingers. He was turning handsome. She smiled at him, trying to imagine him a young man. “Robert,” she said, “will you stay true to me?”

“I will.” He hugged her. “You are my lady. I want to wear your favor, you must give me something fine.”

Maria laughed at him. “Ah, you will break every woman’s heart in Marna.”

“Oh, Mama.”

She kissed his forehead. “We have to go back home—see how low the sun has fallen.”

They had left their horses with the black slave. When they climbed over the wall again, he was gone, and the horses were gone. Maria drew back against the wall, her eyes worried on the sky. The sun was setting. Jilly would be hungry. Ismael and Robert conferred in Saracen. Robert licked his lips, his face sharp with concern. Ismael ran off down the street to look around the corner. In the distance, the Saracen priests began the sundown call to prayer.

“Mama,” Robert said. “I think we are in trouble.”

Maria’s arms were cold. She moved into the last of the sunlight. “What happened? Do you think the watch came by and chased him away? Ahmed wouldn’t have run away.”

Ismael was hurrying on down the steep narrow street. The high walls on either side of him made his footsteps boom. Robert walked up and down in front of her.

“Don’t be afraid, Mother. I’ll take care of you. I’ll tell Papa it was my fault.”

“Jilly always gets hungry at sundown.” She had been trying to feed the child with a cup, but the little girl still loved her breast. She would cry. “Where could he have gone to?”

Ismael was racing back toward them. She started down the street toward the cathedral. The evening breeze swept out toward the bay. Overhead, the first stars began to show. Robert strode along beside her. The street was cut into wide shallow steps down the steep pitch of the slope. A man passed them, riding on a little donkey, his wife walking behind him with a sack over her shoulder.

“Mama, maybe we ought to go home.”

“On foot?” The palace was miles away. “Besides, we have to get our horses back. And we can’t leave Ahmed—maybe he’s gotten lost.”

“If he has, it’s his fault.”

Ismael jogged up beside him. He shook his head sadly. “Ahmed go. Ay ay.” He leaned forward, saw that Robert held her by the right arm, and threaded her left arm through his. “Cry not. The Emir much no see us.”

“What?”

Ismael fluttered his fingers. “No fear.”

They went to the end of the street and turned left into the wide cobbled thoroughfare. A woman passed them, a Christian, unveiled. Between the buildings, in the distance, the bay rolled its dark water.

Maria could not decide what to do. The watch was sent out from a tower in another quarter entirely—the meanest area of Mana’a, she had been told; the two hundred men-at-arms who patrolled the city were based there to help keep order. She wondered if the black servant had run away.

Twilight deepened around them. The swarm of people in the streets thinned to nothing. When they came at last to the cathedral, the great square was empty. Night had fallen. Dogs fought and snuffled through the heaps of garbage behind the deserted bazaar. A filthy one-armed beggar bustled up to them.

“Alms, alms—”

Maria dug a coin from her wallet and threw it to him. The stump of his right arm thrust horribly through his ragged coat, and she stepped away from him, repulsed. She started up the steps to the cathedral porch. Robert lingered, talking to the beggar in Saracen.

The cripple answered him, his hair flopping in his eyes, and put his hand out for money. Maria started down the steps again. Ismael thrust Robert aside. He held up a coin and clasped the beggar by the hand, the money between their palms. The beggar smirked at him. Throwing back his rags and the grotesque stump, he produced a perfectly sound right arm and pointed across the market place.

Ismael whirled and ran across the square, his djellaba flapping; he lost his headcloth and did not stop to pick it up. Robert ran out onto the cobblestones to get it. The beggar adjusted his stump. Darkness covered them. In the bay, lights bobbed up and down: anchored ships. The cold wind from the mountains chased leaves across the porch of the cathedral. Maria stood on the steps, gnawing on her knuckle. Her breasts were tight with milk. Jilly would be crying for her. Robert raced up the steps toward her, Ismael’s headcloth in his hand.

The beggar whined something at him. Robert drove the man impatiently away. He strode along the steps, his eyes on the city where Ismael had gone. The beggar scurried up the steps toward Maria.

“Mah-eee-ya,” he said; he grinned at her. His tongue lapped at his lips. He dug in his rags and pulled out a little wooden cross. “Mah-eee-ya.”

Robert charged up the steps after him. “Stay away from my mother!”

He shoved the beggar roughly away from her. The man wheeled. Maria reached nervously for the dagger in her belt, but the beggar only pushed Robert backwards. The boy fell sprawling across the stairs. Hoofbeats sounded in the dark market place. A shuttered lamp bounced toward them. The beggar scuttled like a crab up the steps and vanished onto the cathedral porch.

“Come,” Ismael was crying. His voice hurried toward them with the hoofbeats across the square. “Come—Lord Maria lost! Lost!”

“I can’t understand one word he says,” a voice said, in French. Maria stumbled down the steps, spent with relief. “By God’s eyes, it’s a Christian woman.”

“Lord Maria,” Ismael said with emphasis. Their lantern raised, the two watchmen rode behind him toward her.

“You, there, woman, you can’t stay here after sundown, do you have a place to go?’’

Maria began to laugh. Her legs quivered, and she sat down hard on the step. She could not stop laughing; she buried her face in her hands.

***

The watch knew nothing of the black slave Ahmed and the four horses. Borrowing mounts from a nearby hostel, they took Maria and the boys back to the palace. Robert and Ismael argued in Saracen the whole while. Robert explained to her that he thought Ahmed had run off to be a robber, but Ismael believed the servant had taken their horses to sell for passage back to Africa.

Jilly was fast asleep. The Saracen woman had fed her from a cup. She said that the child had gorged herself and never missed her mother. Maria paced across the darkened room. Her taut breasts were leaking into her clothes. Richard had not yet come back. There was no way to tell him that she had lost four horses and a servant without making him angry.

“Mama?”

Robert peered in the door. When she waved he slipped into the room.

“Ahmed isn’t here. I told you he wouldn’t come back.”

Maria shook her head. “Maybe the watch will catch him.” It would be hard to smuggle four horses and a feather parasol out of Mana’a, even at night. She picked up an orange from the bowl of fruit on the table and bit into the skin so that she could peel it. Restless, she moved around the room, leaving bits of peel on top of the furniture. “It is all so very strange.”

A pebble rattled on the floor below the nearest window. Robert said, “Ismael.” He leaned across the window sill into the night.

“Mama! Come look!”

His voice startled her; she jumped, and her skin went to gooseflesh. “God’s blood, Robert, be easy with me.” She went up behind him and looked out the window.

His teeth bright as the moon, Ismael stood in the garden three stories below the window. On his shoulder he had the feather parasol.

Maria gasped. She leaned out the window. “Stay there,” she called to Ismael. She had not eaten, and her stomach was knotted with hunger. She stuck the orange into her sleeve. The Saracen women, tittering, watched her and Robert rush away. Maria went down the staircase two steps at a time. Two servants coming upstairs flattened themselves against the wall to let her go by.

All the doors but one on the other side of the palace were locked at sundown. They pried open the shutter in the boys’ room and climbed out through the window into the ward. Ismael trotted toward them, spinning the parasol at arm’s length over his head.

“Horses too,” he said; his face was sleek with pride. “All crook in Emir fort.”

Maria looked where he was pointing. He meant the half-built gatehouse on the new wall.

“What were they doing in there?” Robert cried.

“Ssssh.” A pellucid calm took her over. She met Ismael’s eyes. He spread his toothy smile across his face. “Rahman,” Maria said.