Great Maria (42 page)

Maria threw a piece of bread at him. “I am my own champion. As my lord Henry knows well.”

The young man looked over at Richard. “I will hang Theobald on Sunday,” he said in a low voice.

Richard struck him on the arm. “I’ll keep watch on Maria in the meanwhile. Roger, when do you want to get married?”

They talked about that. Maria glanced behind Richard’s back at the young Duke. He was watching her, unsmiling. She looked away.

Thirty-seven

The market place of Agato, opposite the cathedral, was clamorous with people. In the midst of the square stood the high scaffold where Theobald was to be hanged. Maria rode back to the shade of the cathedral wall. Robert was beside her. In spite of the wind she was sweating and the baby kicked her painfully every few moments. The crowd banged around her mare, their curious eyes on her. People stood in a solid pack on the porch and steps of the cathedral. A cutpurse ran through them so fast she could only sit and watch him go with a dozen purses in his bag.

Surrounded by Saracens, Richard plowed across the mob toward her. The boys of the city screamed and darted around him, and the big white dragon banner floated over his head. The townspeople crossed themselves as they passed. A few angry voices called, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”

Maria wiped her face on her sleeve. Richard pulled up beside her. “You shouldn’t have come. God’s death, you’re red as an apple. A pregnant woman at a hanging.”

She grunted at him; her head hurt. The Duke appeared on the far side of the square. The people gave up one huge cry and rushed toward him. He called to his knights and they closed around him, sealing him off even from these people who loved him. Maria wished she had a cup of water. A drop of sweat trickled down her back.

It would be strange to see Theobald die today. For half her life he had been their enemy. Because of him, she had killed Walter Bris, and Robert had helped kill Haimo. She fell to thinking of Ceci. Her grief for her daughter had been bitter as aloes once. Now it was blunted and worn away, almost sweet. She was another person now, from the girl who had watched Ceci die. Not as good a person, probably. She remembered fighting with Richard over the chapel. Like Theobald, she had never dared match him force against force. Now Theobald was coming through the crowd, his hands tied behind his back, to be hanged. She lifted her head, brought out of her memory.

Theobald came up to the foot of the scaffold and mounted the steps. His face was ghastly white. His eyes like a vulture’s were ringed in black. He walked short-strided, as if his feet were broken.

“Was he tortured?” she said to Richard.

“He wasn’t my prisoner.”

Maria bit her lip. There was no reason to torture him, a man without secrets to tell. The hangman brought the rope up to the scaffold. Theobald stood holding his head back, his fine clothes ripped to rags, his body crooked with pain. Something was whistling in the air, shrilling closer, shrieking in the air, and she screamed.

Her mare reared. Robert cried out. Richard fell off his horse. Maria swung herself awkwardly down from her plunging mare.

“Richard—”

He was conscious. He groaned and tried to sit up. The arrow had taken him through the forearm and into the right hip. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him flat again.

The Saracens had closed around them, stirrup to stirrup, walling them in with their bodies. She heard people screaming, and war cries, and the racket of fighting in the square. Robert dropped down beside her.

“We have to get him out of here,” Robert said.

“Can you cut this arrow? Richard, for Jesus’ sake, lie still.”

Robert stooped, drawing his dagger. The mob screeched beyond the Saracens’ white backs. Maria crept around so that Richard slumped against her. “Ismael,” she said. “What is happening?”

“Many blood,” Ismael said. “All Christian men. Roger kills, kills.”

Robert straightened. He held two feet of bloody arrow in his hand. Richard was trying to sit up again. She put her arms around him.

“I can ride.”

“No.” Maria raised her voice. “Ismael, help me.”

Ismael spoke in Saracen, and two brothers dismounted and helped Robert lift Richard in a chair of their arms. He groaned, and his eyes closed. His body sagged in their grip. Carefully they raised him up onto Robert’s horse, and with his son behind him supporting him they rode in a flock of swirling robes to their tower.

***

Richard did not wake up again. He lay on the bed in the top room of the tower, a bloody sheet across him. The Majlas tabib bandaged the wounds in his forearm and his hip with herbs. A steady stream of the Brotherhood came in and out the door. Maria drew back into the corner. Their urgent voices, saying nothing she understood, stabbed her with fear. The baby weighed her down. The close, hot stench of the room turned her stomach queasy. She put her hands to her face.

Robert came in with Roger just behind him. The Saracens drew back, and the tabib spoke rapidly to Robert, his hands and nods indicating Richard. Another Saracen held up the long notched arrowhead. Roger, listening, shook his head once, and Maria’s breath stopped in her throat.

He saw her; he strode around the bed to her. “Maria. Come out of here. Come sit down.”

“What are they saying?” He had come between her and the bed, and she moved so that she could keep her eyes on Richard. “Is he dying?”

Roger lowered his voice. “The arrow was tainted. They are doing all they can. They are masters of leechcraft, these people. Come down to the hall.”

Maria raised her eyes to his face. “Roger,” she said, “What must I do?”

“There’s nothing you can do, Maria. Except pray. There’s nothing anybody can do.” He looked over his shoulder. “Robert, bring me a cup of wine.”

The tabib came up beside her and pushed a cup into her hand. His round face was framed in kinky graying whiskers. He gave her a cheerful smile and with gestures told her to drink. Robert stood beside her. She sipped the head-spinning potion in the cup.

“Take her away,” Roger murmured.

Maria turned to him again. “Roger.”

“Go on, Maria. There’s nothing you can do.”

She let her son maneuver her out of the room to the stair landing. The updraft of air from the stairs cooled her face and throat. Her head felt enormous and light as a dandelion from the Saracen drink.

“Robert.” Her hand closed on his sleeve, holding him in front of her on the stairs. “What are they saying? Is he going to die?”

One step below her, her son turned toward her again. “They say—if he lives the night—” Like a child he held out his hands to her, and she put her arms around him.

“Robert,” she said. “Wait here a moment.” She went back into the room. The stink of blood and unguents loosened her knees. Sinking down beside the clothes chest, she felt along the wooden bottom. The tabib was talking in a high voice to the other Saracens. Roger, staring out the window, had not marked her coming in. She found the six-inch brass key and went out again to Robert.

“Come along,” she said. “Where is Ismael?”

They went down the stairs to the hall. Beside the hearth, Ponce Rachet stood in a pack of men, their voices pitched in mutters. The women of her household were ranged around the room. When Maria came in, they rushed toward her, and she sent them off.

“Robert,” she said. “Find Ismael.” She went across the room to Ponce Rachet, who faced her, taking off his hat.

“He is still alive.” She rubbed her eyes, wondering how much to tell him. His plain, seamed face softened. He dismissed the other men with a word. Maria said, low, “The arrow was poisoned. I am afraid—I am so frightened—”

Ponce’s hand steadied her arm. She met his eyes. She said, “Swear to me you will support my son if Richard dies.”

“I will,” he said. “There are many who will not, you know—the boy’s very young, and there’s Roger.”

Maria gulped for air. Her head was foggy from the Saracen drink. Her hands were stained with blood. She said, “I will put the Saracens to guarding the tower. Someone might sneak in and try to…finish it.”

Ponce nodded. “What do you wish of me?”

Robert and Ismael burst into the room. They strode over to her. She caught her son’s arm. “Robert, you must go back to Mana’a.”

“Mama!”

Ponce Rachet pursed his lips. Maria held out the key. “Take this, it’s the key to the treasure-house. The charters are all in the big chest under our bed, it isn’t locked. Watch Rahman. Say nothing to anyone but Stephen.”

“Mama, I’m staying here.”

“No,” Ponce said. “Your mother’s right. If he dies, you have to be in Mana’a. Go on.”

Robert stood a moment, poised, his eyes shifting from one to the other. Maria faced Ismael. She said. “No one gets into this tower without my word. No one.”

Ismael saluted her with his hand and rushed off. Robert followed him. She looked at Ponce again. Her mind plodded stupidly. She put her hands to her face.

“What happened?” she said. “Who shot him?”

Ponce cleared his throat. “Theobald’s friends. Trying to rescue him. William in Birnia should know of this.”

“Tomorrow,” she said heavily. She lowered her hands. “When we know more. What about Welf? In the Black Tower. Richard mistrusts him.”

Ponce hooked his thumbs in his belt. “They are just cross-grained. Welf’s sound.”

“Then he should know, too. I—”

His hand on her arm stopped her. They turned around. Roger was coming in the door. She nodded at Ponce, and he left. Roger came up to her.

“Rest a little, Maria. You’ll hurt your baby.”

“Did you kill Theobald?”

“With my own hand. I’m going back to my fortress. I’ll leave one of my men here, in case anything should happen.” He kissed her cheek and went away. Maria climbed on up to the room full of Saracens and blood and the smell of herbs. She felt weak and unready against an enormous threat. Sitting in a corner, she gathered her strength, her eyes on the bloody man in the bed.

***

The assassins had attacked the Duke also. Poisoned arrows had killed his horse and two men nearby him. A torch in one hand and a sword in the other, he rode from house to house, seizing Theobald’s whilom friends. From the window, Maria saw these men led in chains across the bridge. The sun lowered at the end of the deserted street. Not a lamp burned in the whole of the city. No one moved. In the darkness the river droned over its mossy bed. A dog barked insistently in the distance.

At midnight the Duke rode up to the tower. The Saracens, surrounding it, held him until Ismael came, and Ismael, who liked him, brought him up to the candlelit room where Richard lay. The tabib was asleep in a chair in one corner. Maria had just finished cleaning up the room for the third time.

“I have them all,” the Duke said. “If he dies, you may name their death.”

Maria’s lips moved. She did not have breath enough to speak. Heavily she sat down beside the bed. The Duke came over to her. Ismael took a candle and went around to the far side of the bed.

“How did Anne and her brothers fare?” Maria asked.

“Philip’s dead.” The Duke’s face worked. “Richard was right. We waited too long to finish Theobald. It was my fault—”

Maria turned away from him. “You talk like a fool.” She kept still, hoarding her strength. The Duke sat down on the floor beside her. In the darkness beyond the bed, Ismael’s face, painted in candlelight, looked old as the tabib’s.

No one said anything. Louise brought them a tray of food. She did not eat. A candle went out. Ismael sat on the foot of the bed, his fingers knotted together.

Maria walked up and down around the room. She felt anchored by the baby that kicked and turned below her heart, holding fast in her gross mountainous flesh. The heat of the night soaked her with sweat. The young Duke dozed, his head cushioned on his arms. The tabib woke. He lit more candles, felt of Richard’s face and arms and chest, and covered him up again snugly. Ismael spoke to him, but the tabib pushed him off. Above the crescent of gray whiskers the man’s face was meaninglessly cheerful. He went down the stairs. Ismael sat down beside the bed and put his headcloth over his face.

The night dragged along. Maria got fresh candles and as the old ones guttered in their holders replaced them. The tabib came back, a cup in either hand, made her sit, and poured the contents of one cup down her throat. The potion turned her sleepy, but she held herself awake, afraid of sleep. The tabib left and did not return.

She crawled into the bed beside Richard and laid her head down. On his back, his face turned away from her into the darkness, he seemed already lapped in death. She thought of the three men she had hanged. She knew she had no right to beg for Richard’s life. She picked up his hand and held it, too tired even to cry.

Sleep took her. She dreamed that she and Richard walked through a city of burning rubble, beneath a sky foul with smoke. All around her, in the ruins, babies screamed, but when she bent to pick them up, they died in her arms. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t. You can do nothing.” The arch of the Emir’s Gate appeared before them, and she realized that the blasted city was Mana’a.

Clammy with sweat, she woke up and lay still, clinging to his hand. The room was gloomy with dawn light. Beside her, Richard whispered her name.

She pushed herself up on one elbow. He was facing her; she saw the glitter of his eyes. His voice was feeble even in a whisper.

“Maria. I’m thirsty.”

***

Roger met her at the door into the hall. Beyond him, Anne and her brothers waited before the hearth. Roger said, “Sister, you look like a walking ghost. Are you sure we need talk of this now?”