The two prisoners died the next afternoon. Their bodies hung from the gate pole on the curtain wall until the summer. Maria’s father, lying in his bed, began to waste. Maria went to the kitchen herself to cook his food and mix his drinks of herbs and wine. When Richard found out, he laughed at her, and she stopped, since she had marked also that her father still sickened a little every day.
“I don’t have to poison him,” Richard said. “He poisons himself. Are you ever going to have this baby?”
She and Flora sewed pads of cloth to use when she was in childbed. The fetid heat of the summer closed down on them. She felt as if she could not breathe. One night Richard’s coast guards came to tell him that Saracen boats were sailing up from Mana’a. He and Roger galloped off with all but a handful of the knights; William kept command of the castle.
Of course as soon as they were gone Maria felt the first undulating tension in her womb. The midwife came, and the overheated room filled with women being important. Through the deep summer night, she lay on her side, her legs drawn up. Once she slept and dreamed of Saracen boats, shining like gold, slipping through the water, and the knights galloping across the dark waves to attack them.
By dawn she could neither sleep nor daydream. The women held her hands and told her meaningless soothing things. She had thought she would bear the pain silently and nobly, but she could not keep from screaming. At last the baby was born. The women fussed over her, feeding her a rank potion of wine, and kneading her belly painfully hard. Suddenly Flora was holding the baby out to her.
“Is that mine?” she said blankly. She felt nothing for it at all; it was just a baby. They put it down next to her. They all expected her to love it. And it was a girl, not a boy.
“You’ll call her Matilde, for your mother,” Adela said. “Won’t you?”
“I hate that name. I’ll name her Cecily.” She touched the baby’s face. It was an awful slate color, but it opened its eyes, its mouth sucked at nothing. Alive. She kissed its forehead. “Cecily.”
***
Maria opened her eyes. She had wakened at the noise the men had made, tramping into her room. Richard took a splinter from the hearth, blew the coal at the end into a full flame, and lit a candle. With his brothers he stood over the baby.
“Why Cecily, in Jesus’s name?”
“After her mother.” Roger stepped back. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted a boy.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Her mother was named Matilde,” William said. “Mark, it’s a name from stories. Where is the fat wench? Nowhere.” He lifted the baby. Maria pushed herself up on her elbows. “I saw you both this little once. Both you knaves.”
Roger made a disbelieving noise. He crossed the room to a leather sack on the hearth: loot from their raid. “They will not bring their goods north again in boats,” he said. The firelight shone on his face. “We shall be great from this night.”
Richard said, “They’ll sail—they’ll just stand out to sea, where we can’t reach them.” He bent over the baby. William crooned to her. Like the piping of a bird, a little wail started up, and William put the tip of his finger into the baby’s mouth; that quieted her immediately.
Richard said, “William, another of your many crafts.”
“Good night,” Roger called, and went out. William laid the baby in the cradle. Richard stood with one hand on his hip, talking to him of their raid on the Saracens, while William stooped to rock the cradle. At last he stood up straight.
“God keep her,” he said, shaking Richard’s hand. “God give her a happy life. She’ll be as pretty as her mother.”
“Oh, prettier,” Richard said lightly, and went with William to the door. Maria lay down again, sinking back toward sleep. When she wakened again, a while later, Richard was still there, standing with a candle in his hand, looking down at his daughter.
***
The baby waved one fist. Maria caught it and kissed it. Cecily’s tiny perfections fascinated her. She sat up on the bed, her legs folded under her, and opened her nightdress and gave the baby her breast. The baby was nothing like she had expected: she woke at odd hours and howled, she was always soaking wet, she demanded everything and gave nothing back but more work. Maria smoothed the baby’s fine brown hair down over her skull. Her color was much better, save that her hands and feet were dark. She cupped the head in her palm. With her thumb she held her breast down so that the baby could breathe while she nursed.
“Cow,” Richard said. He was lying in the bed behind her.
Maria got up. The baby had finished nursing and lay peacefully in her mother’s arms, her dark blue eyes open. Maria changed her napkin and put the baby into the cradle. She stood beside it, rocking it. Richard got out of bed. Down the stairs, Adela called her, but Maria pretended not to hear. At first every woman in the castle had spent the mornings in her room, making her listen to their detailed and contradictory advice, and passing the baby from lap to lap; at last she had driven them away. Richard came up beside her.
“I have something for you,” he said.
She turned, surprised. He had never given her anything before. He was looking down at the baby. He took his left hand from behind his back.
“Oh,” Maria said. “A looking glass.” Her mother had once had a looking glass. She took it out of his hands. It was heavier than she expected, the frame worked in gold, with cameos set in the four corners. She could not bring herself to look at her own face. She turned and kissed Richard.
“We took it in the plunder, the night she was born,” he said. “I told you I’d give you presents. Do you like it?”
Maria said, “It’s beautiful.” She searched his face. “She looks like you. Do you mark it?”
He laughed. His head tilted down toward the cradle. “She is me. Part of me.” He took the looking glass from her and held it to show her own face.
Maria clapped her hands over her eyes. “What is wrong with you now? Here, look.” He grasped her by the wrist. Maria resisted his pull. She was afraid to see herself. She was afraid of being ugly. But between her fingers she saw the image in the glass, and slowly let her hands down, taking the glass away from him.
“Oh, well,” she said, and turned her head a little. Her chin was pointed and her nose too short, and save for her dark blue eyes she had no color at all: white skin and black hair. It was better than being ugly.
“Now you’ll neglect me,” Richard said, “and spend all day long looking at your face.”
She held the glass in front of him, to show him himself. He covered the mirror with his hand. “No, I’m not vain, like you.”
Maria kissed him again, one hand on his forearm. “Thank you. You are very kind to me.” Putting the looking glass down carefully in the cradle, she slid her arms around his neck. “Let me take Cecily up to show my father.”
“Hunh.” His whole face soured; his mouth went tight as a trap. “Go ahead. I suppose you ought to.” He reached behind him, took her wrists, and pulled her arms away from him. He strode toward the door, but first he looked down at the baby.
Maria’s father, dying in his room, saw the baby and wept. For a while he babbled disconsolately of the punishments inflicted on him, who deserved only peace in his old age. He called Richard a variety of names and cursed him for making Cecily a girl. Maria left him almost at once. It frightened her to see him there, his flesh sunken around his bones, and his eyes milky with disease. Six days after her churching, he died in the night.
When they buried him a great crowd of people came from all over the area, men and women Maria had never seen before: shepherds and fishermen, serfs, and hill-dwellers. Few of them were sorrowful. They told wild stories about her father that ran back forty years. With the baby in her arms she walked along the hillside away from the graveyard. Richard came up beside her.
She said, “I wish you had killed him. It would have been better than having him die like that.”
“It was your idea,” Richard said. He held the postern door open for her. They went into the castle.