Great Maria (3 page)

Maria’s father was dismounting at the door into the New Tower. On foot Richard crossed the ward to him. They spoke. Her father flung up his head, angry. Richard shouldered past him into the stairway. The door crashed against the stone wall.

Maria slid off the window sill back into the hall. Adela with a blanket around her shoulders stood behind her.

“Shall I go wake up Cook?”

“Yes.” The cook would surely be awake already; it was nearly dawn. Maria went out into the stairway and ran up the steps to her room.

Richard was already there, standing in the middle of the room pulling off his mail shirt over his head. She closed the door behind her. His sword and his helmet lay on the bed. She moved them off the clean sheet. Richard turned toward her. His helmet had left black smudges on his nose and cheekbones. His eyes glittered with bad temper.

“What happened to Roger?” she said.

“You stay away from Roger.” He picked up his sword and took it to hang it on the wall. “Go get me something to eat—I’m starving.”

She went down to the hall. The tables had been pulled out into the center of the room, and the knights were crowding around them. Her father roared in their midst. The table was stacked with bread. While she stood cutting a loaf in half, Adela and a kitchen knave came in with a great bubbling pot of stew.

The knights swarmed around it. Maria stood waiting for a chance with the ladle. Her father came up beside her. He draped his arm around her. He seemed the only man in high spirits. To someone beyond her he said, in a sleek voice, “Well, Richard’s not far-famous for courage, you know.” He hugged Maria against him. “Here, puss, give me a kiss. Go get me something to drink.”

Maria drew away from him. He seemed pleased that Richard was upset. He wheeled toward someone else. She got hold of the ladle and piled meat on top of the bread in her hand. Her father looked around for her and called her name. She went upstairs to her room.

Richard was sitting on a stool on the hearth. He still wore the thick quilted shirt that went under his mail. She sank down next to him and put the food on the hearth.

“What happened?”

Richard wheeled on her. “Your father tried to get me killed. He put me and Roger on point and ran us right into the Saracens.”

She cried, “That’s not true—”

“He took the high road both ways, coming and going,” he shouted in her face. “What does it look like to you?”

“You wouldn’t dare say that to him!”

“Do you want me to?” He pushed her hard; she caught herself on her arm. “If I go down there again now, Maria, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.”

Maria put her hand to her face. She got up and went off across the room. Richard put his back to her and ate. She stood watching his back. She could not believe him; she wanted everything to be peace. She said, “I think I’m going to have a baby.”

His head swiveled toward her. Eventually he said, “A baby. When?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She went over to the hearth and sat down beside him, her knees drawn up to her chest. She watched his face, curious. “Would you be glad?”

“Hunh.” He scratched in the beard stubble on his jaw. His eyes veered toward her. “Yes. I suppose so. Yes.”

Maria laid her head down on her knees. She said a prayer in her mind that the baby was there. Richard looked away again. They sat in the warmth of the fire, not talking, until the fire died and they got up and went to bed.

***

The same Saracens who had ambushed them burned a village just north of her valley, and Richard and her father raced off to their revenge. Maria and the other women spent the morning washing and spreading the laundry out on the grass to dry. Sick to her stomach, Maria ate only a piece of dry bread for dinner and went to the hall to spin the last of the flax.

The late autumn day was bright and crisp. She sat before the window, enjoying the faint breeze. She liked to spin. The even rhythm drew her into reveries and helped her think. The bells on her spinning wheel rang busily. She let the spindle draw the flax out between her fingers into a fine even thread. Lifting her eyes from the pale flax, she saw Roger coming through the door, his hair vivid in the late light.

There was no one else in the room. She went back to her spinning, alive to his approach.

“Little sister,” he said, and stood before her. “How do you do, Maria?”

He dandles all the local maids,
Richard had said. Maria stopped the wheel and wound up the tail of the thread. With the spindle in her hand, she faced Roger. “Thank you, very well. Are you in command, now?”

“I and William. But you command us all, I guess, don’t you?” His blue eyes were clear as a child’s. He bore his left side stiffly, favoring his wound. She tightened her fingers around the spindle.

“I wish I did,” she said.

“Do you?” He sat down at her feet. “What would you command of me? Tell me anything you want me to do.”

Maria laughed. She wished Richard were as handsome as Roger, with his fine mouth and brilliant coloring. Richard’s jaw was too wide; he looked as if he were always biting down. Roger took the deep cuff of her sleeve between his fingers.

“I could make you so happy, Maria.” He kissed the hem of her sleeve.

“No,” she said. “I am married now.”

“Maria.” He took her hand, and she yanked it away from him. When he reached for her again, she raised the spindle between them. He got up onto his feet.

“You’re just like Richard. That’s Richard’s kind of excuse:
Because I am married.”
He went off across the hall.

Maria stared after him. She thrust the spindle into her work basket. But he had only gone to the table against the wall, where he poured himself a cup of the wine. He came smiling toward her again, saluted her with the cup, and drank.

“Why did you marry him?”

“Ask him,” she said.

“I know why he married you. That was not my question.” He seemed amused. Even wounded he was full of grace. “Well?”

She shook her head. “Stop asking me that.”

“If you want.” He sat down neatly on the floor beside her.

“Did he have lots of women—Richard? Before.”

“Richard? By the Cross.” He leaned against her knee. “Don’t you know him yet? He has no way with women, Richard.” He drank again. “Or with men either, I guess.” His eyes moved over her; he smiled. “What’s his way with you?”

“Roger.” She got up hastily, moving away from him into the hall. The other women came in, and she helped them drag out the tables so that they could bring the supper.

Roger came up to her. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be free with you.”

She tried to ignore him, her eyes downcast; she was dusting the top of the table. He went off. When she thought he must have gone she looked around at the door. He stood there, watching her. She looked quickly down, her face hot. He laughed and went out the door.

Three

It was winter, when her father seldom raided. The dank, icy days kept most of them indoors. The knights gathered in the hall and drank and talked and cheated each other at games. Maria, her tasks done, sat in the window at the end of the hall sewing new shirts for Richard. She was sure now that she was with child. Her stomach and her temper had become very uneven. The cook seemed to guess: ruthlessly he served them meals she could barely stomach, until finally one day at dinner she took a bite of beef and left the hall, ran down to the ward and was sick.

The cook was shouting in the kitchen across the way. Adela called her from the stairs; Maria answered that she was well. She wiped her mouth on her arm and tramped off across the ward. The cook’s voice drew her down into the kitchen.

He was beating a scullion over the head with his wooden spoon. She stood to one side, hot with anger. The cook let the scullion go.

“Well? What do you want?”

“Why did you even cook that meat?” she cried. “That beef is so sweet I can’t eat it.”

The cook rammed his spoon under the sash of his apron. “That isn’t my fault. I cook what you give me out of that storeroom. If you’d let me have the key—”

“My father is very angry about it,” she said.

“If your mother were alive—”

“Even Richard is complaining.”

The cook’s mouth shut, his lower lip jutting like a ledge. She stared at him; her heart thumped. He turned away from her.

“Well, what should I do—throw it all out?”

“Whatever you want.” She wondered what else he could do with it. Feed it to the dogs. Sell it in the village. “Just don’t serve it to us.” She started toward the door. A scullion came in and the cook set on him with a roar. She went across the ward again to the New Tower. It was cold and she ran up the stairs toward the heat of the hall.

Even out on the stairs, she heard Roger shout. She dashed up to the hall. In the middle of the room, between the two tables, he and another knight stood yelling face to face. Just as she came in, the other knight hit Roger in the mouth.

Roger yelled. He jumped on the other knight and knocked him down and they rolled on the floor, fighting. Richard grabbed his brother and her father grabbed the other knight and they dragged them apart, up onto their feet.

Over Richard’s shoulder, Roger cried, “Odo, I’ll kill you—”

“You can try,” Odo shouted.

His arms around his brother, Richard shoved him back almost to the wall. Her father and another knight held Odo. The rest of the men watched keenly, enjoying it.

“No fights,” her father called. “We are all Christians here—get your hands together like friends.”

Roger and Odo glared at each other. Maria stood in the doorway, just behind Roger; she heard him say softly, “I’ll kill him.”

“Hide it,” Richard whispered.

Her father cuffed Odo in the head. “Accept each other or you both leave.”

Roger’s mouth was bloody. He went sullenly forward. Odo met him in the middle of the room and they clasped their hands in a short limp handshake. The other knights cheered.

Maria went around the room to her place at the table. Her father sat down beside her. “Where did you go? You missed a good fight.”

“I went to talk to the cook about the meat,” she said. Richard climbed over the bench on her right.

“What’s wrong with the meat?” her father asked. He reached with both hands for the beef bone in front of him. Chewing, he swung his head toward her, but his eyes went like daggers beyond her, toward Richard.

Maria looked down at her plate. Her appetite was gone. She sat between the two men, none of them speaking, until they had finished their meal. With the other women, she cleared off the tables. The knights wandered out to their afternoon doings; Richard disappeared. Now that all the food was taken away, Maria was perversely hungry again and she went with Adela to the kitchen for something to eat.

When she came back up the stairs to the hall, her father and Odo were standing at the end of the room, in the middle of her woman’s gear, deep in talk. No one saw her in the doorway. She turned and slid through the narrow crevice between the stairs and the wall, into the passageway.

It was black as a mine, except where the peepholes let in threads of light from the hall, but she knew every foot of the passage and could hurry through it, sliding her fingers over the stone to keep oriented. Halfway down the passage, nearly running, she turned the corner and crashed into somebody else.

Hands clutched her. Panicked, she struggled in silence. Her elbow scraped painfully on the wall. Abruptly she realized whom she fought.

“Richard?”

The grip on her arms eased. He took her by the wrist and twisted slightly, to tell her he would hurt her if she did anything. They stood together in the utter darkness. At first Maria could hear only her blood beating, but then she picked out a heavy voice on the far side of the wall: Odo’s voice. Her father answered him.

“You shouldn’t have hit young Roger. They are like snakes, the d’Alene brothers; when one hates they all hate.”

Odo grunted. “I can handle them.” He sounded confident.

“Oh, you can,” old Robert said. “I’ll nurse my doubts about that. Anyway I don’t allow feuds between my men, especially when one is my daughter’s husband.” His voice smoothed out. “If they give you any more trouble, come to me. There’s ways to scorch snakes. If you know what I mean.”

Maria moved her wrist, testing Richard’s grip, and he squeezed her hard. Her father said pleasantly, “Is there something else you want to say?” and Odo muttered a leave-taking. The man beside her pushed her. She started off ahead of him along the wall passage, back toward the stairs. Groping in the dark, he relaxed his grasp, and she tore loose and bolted away toward the stairwell.

Behind her there was a soft sound like something striking the wall. She squeezed out of the crevice and raced up the stairs two steps at a jump.

There was nobody in her room. Through the window she saw the gloomy sky, the sun lowering. Adela and Flora would be in the kitchen helping the cook. She wheeled to go back down to the safety of the crowded hall. Richard was running up the stairs. She slammed the door and bolted it in his face.

His weight crashed against it; the bolt held. Maria leaned against the inside of the door. In an even voice, Richard said, “Let me in.”

She did not want to, but he would reach her eventually. She opened the door. He came in and shut it behind him.

“What were you doing in there?” he said.

“I go back there, sometimes.”

“Not anymore.”

She stood her ground, saying nothing; she did not trust her voice.

“Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said. “If I want to go in there, I will.”

From the foot of the stairs, Adela called, “Maria? Cook wants you.”

She started toward the door. Richard caught her arm. “Are you going to obey me or not?”

“I have to go to the kitchen.”

He let go of her arm. She ran away down the stairs.

The cook needed onions. She let him into the storeroom and while he stood in the middle complaining, climbed up on a keg to get a net of onions from the ceiling. They went out to the ward and she locked the door.

“If you’d give me the key—”

She went off across the ward to sit in the sun with Adela and Flora. No one seemed to know how the fight had started between Odo and Roger. While Adela’s voice ran aimlessly in her ear Maria sat staring across the ward, cluttered with chickens, dogs, and people. What she had overheard in the passageway unnerved her. Richard and her father hated each other. She was caught between them. Richard came out of the New Tower. He gave her an expressionless stare and walked across the ward to the Knights’ Tower.

She saw nothing more of him until supper. She sat between him and her father and no one said a single word throughout the meal. Her appetite was coming back; she ate to glut. The sun was setting. The kitchen boys went around lighting the torches on the walls. Richard left the hall. Maria stayed a while longer, beside her father. She could not talk to him. She realized, frightened, that she could not trust him. He got up and crossed the hall, toward Odo. Maria went up the stairs.

Richard was already in their room, standing in front of the fire, a poker in his hand. That surprised her. She had been sure he was in the wall passage. She went to the cupboard for his wine and the herbs of the charm. Standing in the lee of the bed, she shook the herbs from the box but finally put them back in again: it seemed unfair to give him a love potion when she was fighting with him. She went back to the hearth and put the wine into a pan to warm.

Richard said pleasantly, “You’re going to do as I say.”

“Only if I want to.”

He jabbed the poker into the fire, throwing the logs back, and put on wood from the heap beside him. On her knees on the hearth next to him, she braced herself against his next shout.

His hand closed on her shoulder and dragged her up onto her feet. She threw one arm up between them to ward off his fist, but he struck her arm aside and hit her on the cheek, caught her when she staggered, and knocked her again in the face.

Her eyes failed. Blindly she thrust her hands out, her fingers clawed, and her nails snagged his cheek. He pushed her away. She sat down hard, sick to her stomach, and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her eyes were still bleary. Richard was coming for her.

“Richard. The baby.”

He hauled himself up short. Maria got her breath back, nausea sweet in her throat, and her eyes cleared. Roughly he lifted her up onto her feet. She clung to him to steady herself. He thrust her hard away from him.

Maria wiped her eyes dry. No one had ever struck her before with a closed hand. Her mouth was bleeding, and the whole side of her face hurt. Tears welled into her eyes.

Richard was poking savagely at the fire. On his cheek three long scratches showed in beads of blood. His head swung toward her. “Are you going to let this wine burn?”

She went up slowly beside him. The wine was bubbling. She poured it into a cup and mixed in more wine from the cupboard. Her mouth was swollen. On the back of her tongue she tasted something bitter.

“I hate you,” she said.

“You’ll do as I tell you.”

She said nothing, exhausted. The warmth of the fire drew her irresistibly.

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

He muttered something in his throat and drank the wine. The red scratches ran down his cheek. She put her hand to her swelling eye. He pulled her arm down. He took her face between his hands, and she winced.

“You’ll have a black eye tomorrow,” he said. “What will you tell your father?”

She shook her head. “Anything. That I fell.”

“Tell him I beat you. I want to see what he’ll do.” Maria backed away from him. In the fire’s warmth, she began to take off her clothes. He went around the room, putting out the candles and the torch. The heat of the fire licked her arms. Richard undressed in the darkness behind her. In her shift, she crouched before the fire, dying in its bed, a heap of throbbing coals and ash. The side of her head ached in the heat. She said her prayers.

“What are you doing over there?”

“I am praying,” she said. She crossed herself. The fire was veiled in a layer of ash. Richard in the bed behind her was muttering discontent. She asked God to help her endure him and rose and got into the bed with him, into his burning embrace.

***

When she sat down to breakfast the next morning, her father swore, wiped his hand on his chest, and turned her face to the light. Maria pulled away from him.

“I fell out of bed.”

“He hit you, did he?”

She said nothing. Her left eye was swollen almost shut. Her father pulled on his chin. “He’s a dog to hit a woman, even his wife. Why did he do it?”

“I told you,” she said. “I fell.”

She went off to her chores. Everybody stared at her. Flora and Adela whispered behind her back. The cook laughed at her. “It’s a long way from your heart.” When she went up to the hall again in the forenoon, Richard was sitting on the hearth playing bones with Roger. The scratches striped his cheek like a flag. She went up to her spinning wheel and got out the shirt she was making for him. She glanced at him once, while she was threading the needle, but he was watching her and she looked quickly away.

A short dark knight came in. When he saw Richard’s face, he crowed derisively. “Who won?” Maria bent over the seam she was sewing. The men all laughed, even Richard. The seam was coming out crooked, and in a fury she ripped it apart.

Her father came in the door. Odo followed on his heels, along with several dogs. Old Robert threw his cloak aside. She could smell the wet wool of the lining. He strode into the middle of the hall.

Maria sat poised over her needlework. Her father put his hands on his hips. He was staring at Richard; the talk died. Richard got to his feet. Her heart began to beat painfully fast. She didn’t care who won, so long as they fought. They faced each other a long moment in silence.