Richard lay in bed for three days, staring at the ceiling, his eyes filmed and his mouth cracked with fever. Maria and Adela fed him, gave him wine and milk mixed with herbs, put cushions under him, brought the chamberpot for him, and tried to talk cheerfully to him, although he did not seem to hear. Adela, who loved anything helpless, spent most of the day nursing him, and Maria had to do all her chores as well. At last Roger took most of the knights away on a raid, and she could rest.
On the fourth day, at last, she convinced the cook that Richard should be bled. They got some leeches from the village and the cook drew blood from Richard’s left arm.
“I set a broken leg for your father once,” the cook said. “He was up in two days.” He salted the last leech and it fell off into the jar.
She slept on the floor, since her back throbbed with pain if she slept in the bed. That night, she woke a dozen times when he gasped or whined in a dream. But in the morning, he was wide awake, and he ate everything she gave him for breakfast and sent her for more. On her way back with the second breakfast, she stopped in the hall. She was sitting there talking nonsense to Ceci when Adela rushed down the stairs, flung the hall door closed, and burst into tears.
Flora gave a piercing scream of sympathy. Maria set her daughter down and went upstairs. Richard was sitting up in bed. When she came in, he shouted, “Where is Roger?”
The shout whispered at the end. He was still indifferently strong, but she hung back, not caring to go within his reach. “I don’t know. What did you do to Adela?”
“That fat psalm-singing whore.” He weaved, unsteady. He flung back the covers and started to drag himself out of bed. “Where is my brother?”
“He took some of the knights and rode away,” she said. She had been relieved at the time. She went up beside the bed and pushed him down again and pulled the blanket up over him. “He said he knew what you meant to do. I didn’t think—”
“Think!”
“You were so sick—I couldn’t do everything.” Her throat filled uncomfortably tight. After all her tender ministrations he was shouting at her. He sat up again. She brought him the dish of meat.
“God-damned stupid silly sheep-hearted cow,” he said. “Get out of here.” With both hands he picked over the food on the dish, hunting for tidbits.
Maria stood still. She would not go downstairs like a servant, like Adela. In her womb the baby stirred and seemed to turn over. She hauled the pillows out from under him and stacked them between his back and the headboard of the bed.
“Where did he go?” Richard said, without looking up from the plate.
“Across the wilderness, toward Iste.” The town of Iste lay in the southeastern hills, several days’ ride away. Saracens ruled it.
He let out another string of bad names. Maria could not tell if he meant her or Roger. “Why did you let him? You’ll do anything for him—”
“What was I supposed to do? He’s your brother. Who would listen to me?”
“He’s trying to steal my war.” He chewed steadily. “Who is left here—Ponce? Welf?”
“Ponce,” Maria said. “I’ll get him.” She ran down the stairs, glad to be away from him.
He and Ponce talked, and Ponce went down into the ward and sent a messenger to Roger. Maria took Ceci up to Richard, who played with her until they both fell asleep in the rumpled bed. Maria sat in front of her window and leaned her arms on the sill. If she went downstairs again, Adela would complain to her about Richard. Down in the village, two men were putting a new thatch on their church. Beyond, the milk cows were coming along the road; she could even hear the ringing of their bells. The air was hazy and yellow with sunlight: August sky. The sense in it all comforted her, that they were doing things that they had done before and would again, in a time that would come again, turning circles like the stars. She went downstairs and swept the hall and got the wood in.
In the afternoon she went upstairs to feed Ceci. Richard lay on his side, throwing hazelnuts into a cup on the mantelpiece. Adela and Flora came in and out with questions about supper. Whenever he talked to Ceci, Richard’s voice was tender as a dove’s, but the second time Adela came in and glared at him, he said, “You sow, if you look at me like that again, I’ll pop your eyes out.”
Adela stalked out of the room, all her fat jouncing, and banged the door shut. Maria laughed. She shouldered her bodice up and fastened it across her breast. On the floor, Ceci pulled herself up onto her feet.
“Keep your teeth together,” Richard said to Maria.
“Dada,” Ceci said, and chuckled. She sat down with a thump.
“There. Did you hear her?” Maria asked. “I told you she was learning to talk.”
Ceci said, “Dadadadadada.” She thrust her arm out and opened and closed her hand. Richard waved back to her.
“Bring her here.”
Maria scooped the child up by the arms and dropped her on the bed. Ceci climbed on him, laughing. He kissed the baby’s face. Maria sat down on the bed beside him, her hands folded over her swollen body. She stroked his hair back.
“You should have told me Roger was going,” he said.
“I did.”
He glanced at her, surprised. Ceci took hold of his hand and put his thumb in her mouth. “I don’t remember,” he said.
“Do you remember how long you were sick?”
He tugged gently against the baby’s grip on his hand. Ceci braced herself, her face frantic. At last, he said, “How long?”
Maria combed his hair through her fingers. “Four days.”
“Dada,” Ceci said.
***
In the morning there was still no word from Roger. It was Michaelmas, the feast day of the Archangel, the fall quarterday. A stream of local people came up the road to pay their dues to Richard. Most of them owed service as well, and Maria arranged for them to wait in the ward for their tasks. Toward noon, the cook took her place with the tallies and she went up the stairs to give Ceci her dinner.
Richard stood in front of the window, his splinted leg propped elaborately against a chair. He had gotten soap and water and was shaving himself in her looking glass by the light through the window. Maria sat down on the floor with Ceci. Richard straightened, stropping his razor.
“Nothing from Roger?”
“No. Not yet.”
He said, “God gave dogs fleas and me brothers.” Cocking his head before the looking glass, he scraped at his soaped face. Maria gave Ceci her cup. The baby turned it over carefully. Maria sopped up the spilled milk with the edge of her skirt.
“You should stay in bed, Richard. You won’t get well.”
He swore at her. She gave the little girl a piece of bread and honey. Going up beside him, she leaned against the wall next to the window.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “I can outrun you now.”
He swiped at her with the razor.
“It’s the quarterday,” she said. “Is there anything you want them to do—the villagers?”
He washed off the razor. His eyes turned on her. “What did you have in mind?”
“The cook says we need new bread ovens. He has said it for years, my father never remembered. If we built them outside, the villagers could use them too.”
He twisted his neck to present a different angle to the looking glass. The razor scratched against his beard. Maria glanced at Ceci, who was licking the palms of her hands, sticky with honey. Richard cut himself; he swore at the razor a while, inspected the damage, and washed his face off. Maria gave him a towel. “Now will you go back to bed?”
“Bed,” he said. He hobbled across the room toward the door, shouting for Ponce. When Maria went down again to the ward, he was out beyond the wall on the hillside with the serfs, explaining where he wanted the ovens built.
It took them three days to gather stones enough. Richard got his knights down to help, and when one refused because the task was base, Richard cursed him and threatened him until the young man, speechless, staggered back to work. As Richard got stronger, his temper got worse. Maria was glad that the constant steady stream of shepherds and outliving people with their goods and dues kept her busy. He struck at everyone. His leg in its coffin of splints immobilized him, but great with child she was slower than the other people, and once he managed to hit her. In front of everybody else she screamed at him, and he shouted back, calling her filthy names until she ran upstairs and buried herself in bed and sobbed with rage. All night long, lying beside him in the dark, she plotted to kill him. Just before dawn, Ceci woke, and she got up to quiet her. When she went back to bed, she began to cry. At once he touched her face. She turned and went clumsily into his arms, and they kissed.
Still Roger did not come back. Everybody went around the castle in terror of Richard. The moon had come into its full face, when Adela liked to find dyestuffs, and Maria leaped at the chance to leave the castle. With Ceci, she went down the road, Adela beside her, toward the village. In the fields on either side, the serfs harvested their wheat and barley. Their high-sided carts leaned in the ditch beside the road. Maria hitched Ceci up on her hip.
“Not in the next new moon, but the one after,” Adela said, and laid her hand on Maria’s bulging body. “It will be cool then. Not like the last time.”
Maria snorted at her. She was in good spirits at getting away from Richard. “It wasn’t so bad, the last time.” They walked through the thorn hedge.
The village was a circle of two-room huts, with the church the biggest building. Alys had planted herbs in the garden beside her house, in the shade of an oak tree. There the village women often sat spinning and weaving and gossiping. They were all cousins of Adela and her sister Alys. Cooing, they clustered around Maria and Ceci.
“Ah, Maria,” Alys said. “She blooms when she carries her babies, doesn’t she?”
“I sprout too,” Maria said. She gave each of the women a kiss, and they all made the Cross over her. They were great-breasted women, brown from their lives in the sun, wearing clothes of the same cut, the same cloth, as if they were one woman seen in half a dozen looking glasses. They rubbed their faces together with Adela’s and sat down.
“And Master Richard?” Alys said. “Is he mending?”
Maria shot a warning look at Adela. “He is very well, God be good.”
“God be good.” Everybody crossed herself.
“But no word yet from Master Roger?”
Maria shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Master Richard is none too glad of young Roger, I’ll tell you that,” Adela said. “He’s been cursing him since the day the red knave left.”
“Adela,” Maria said.
Alys gripped her knee. “We had it they were fighting. They are bad spawn, those two, mark.” She squeezed hard. “You have your burden there, young woman. The Saracens are right, he is a dragon.”
Maria braced her hands on her back. The women were passing Ceci from lap to lap and feeding her honey cakes. Adela and Alys carried on a long esoteric conversation about the virtues of two different dyestuffs. When they had agreed, Maria said, “What about a dragon?”
“The Saracens call Master Richard that, says the miller.”
Maria made a face. “There is truth in it,” she said.
The women tittered. Alys picked up her wool cards and began to comb a mat of fleece. Her right elbow pumped vigorously. “He is a good lord, he does not rob us, and now he is building ovens for us. We are pleased enough with him, although God have mercy on us poor Christians there’s little we could do if we were not.” She and the other village women crossed themselves. She rolled the wool from the left-hand card and folded it carefully. “He is not a dragon to us.”
The villagers had no dyewoods to spare. Maria and Adela went off to the wood. The village dogs leaped and barked around them until they were halfway across the common to the river. Adela led the way, cutting across a fallow strip of ground and down into a meadow waist-high in uncut hay. They waded the river where it ran shallowest, and walked down the waste between two stands of wheat.
Maria shifted Ceci to the other hip. The child had fallen asleep, comfortably slouched against her mother’s body. Adela was three or four steps ahead of her. Suddenly they walked into a hollow in the ground and nearly trod on two people coupling in the grass.
Adela shrieked. The boy scrambled to his feet, yanked his hose up, and raced off into the wheat. The girl followed him, leaving one of her wooden-heeled shoes behind. In tandem, the two ran off through the wheat, the boy clutching his hose up around his thighs, and the girl limping and calling to him to wait.
Maria laughed so hard her sides hurt. Adela gave shriek after shriek of outrage, whirled, and snatched Ceci from her. Jarred awake, the little girl let out a scream. “Poor baby,” Adela cried, pressing Ceci’s face down against her enormous breast. “Poor innocent lamb.”
“Oh, God,” Maria gasped, and sat down, still laughing. She remembered the girl’s white legs waving in the air and the boy riding between them, and she grew lecherous. She had not lain with Richard since he broke his leg. Restless, she got to her feet.
“Are you coming?”
They went on toward the wood. In the margin between the meadow and the trees, where the strawberries grew, midges hung in clouds. Maria took Ceci in her arms and covered her head with her apron. Her eyes shut, she plunged through the mist of insects into the deep fragrant shade of the trees. Adela was still muttering about lechery and sin. Apparently the freckled boy was one of Alys’s children. They walked through a stand of pines and birches and down a little rocky slope to the boggy ground. Bright green swamp cabbage sprouted in the black mud. Maria stepped from rock to rock. Adela reached the far side of the swamp much ahead of her.
She set the baby down on dry ground. Ceci crawled to a sapling nearby, took hold of a little branch, and tried to draw herself to her feet, but the branch bent, and as hard as she pulled she could not get her backside off the ground. Maria, picking berries, burst out laughing. The baby let the branch go and stared suspiciously at the sapling.
Maria kept close by. Adela was hunting for mushrooms, crashing around in the underbrush, her voice continually raised. A woodpecker hammered on a tree above her head. Maria sat down to rest her legs and tied the berries into a square of cloth. Ceci squatted on her hams, picking with her forefinger at something on the ground. Her mouth was smeared with dirt and sap. She went down on all fours with a thump and crawled toward Maria. Her napkin, black with dirt, dragged around her knees, and Maria made her lie down and took her breeches off entirely.
In the late afternoon they started back toward the village. Adela chattered on about the girl and boy in the meadow and how she would tell Alys so they would be punished. The sun was turning red and fat, down by the horizon. When they stepped out of the woods a trickle of an evening breeze cooled their faces. Maria lifted her cheek to it.
“Maria!” Adela caught her arm. “Look!”
For a moment, when she saw the white-robed riders galloping up the valley, she could not even draw breath. A faint ululation of voices reached her, like the howling of dogs.
“Saracens,” Adela cried. “Saracens!” She ran toward the village, all her fat quaking, and her bags of dyes dropping from her apron into the grass. “Saracens! Help—Help—”
Fixed in her place, Maria clutched her daughter tight in her arms. The Saracens were galloping up between the village and the river. They had seen Adela. They veered toward her, toward Maria. Adela staggered toward the river. Her cap flew off and her lank hair hung down her back. She would not reach the village before the Saracens reached her. Already the white riders were splashing across the river. Maria dashed back into the wood.
The setting sun turned the Saracens’ robes pink, like bloody water. Shrill-voiced, they raced down through the fields toward Adela. From the thorn hedge around the village a screech went up. Maria stopped in the gloom of the wood and caught her breath.
From here she could not see the castle. She scrambled into a thorny thicket, burrowing into the shelter of the entangled branches. Ceci began to cry. Maria whispered to her, put her fingers in the baby’s mouth, bounced her frantically, and finally quieted her.
Adela had seen the Saracens coming, she had realized she would not reach the village, and she wheeled. Her skirts sailed around her. Stumbling in weariness she ran back toward the woods.
“Maria,” she cried. “Maria—”
Maria put her hand over the baby’s face. Adela was leading the Saracens straight toward her. They loomed behind her, their white teeth like jewels in their beards. Panting, the fat woman labored three more strides to the edge of the wood, and the leading Saracen dived from his horse and brought her down.
Their horses swept through the edge of the trees. Maria sat rigid while they crashed into the underbrush around her. Her face stung from thorn scratches. She prayed for rescue or for the horses to trample her and Ceci before they could be taken alive. Adela was screaming. The Saracens carried her out into the meadow and threw her down, star-shaped, a man at each of her wrists and ankles. Pulling back his robes, the leader dropped full length on her and began to rape her.
Maria bit her lips. Adela screeched and the baby started to cry. Frantic, Maria clamped her hand tight over the baby’s mouth. Ceci clawed at her fingers. The first Saracen stood up, and another climbed onto Adela, his hands working in her breasts. She had stopped screaming. One Saracen drew his dagger and jabbed her in the ribs to make her jump.
Against Maria’s hand, Ceci was howling. Maria crawled back into the deep brush. The thorns snagged her clothes and needled her arms and face. A tall Saracen turned and looked straight at her. He had heard her. He was wheeling toward her. Another man let out a yell.
The raiders scrambled into their saddles and spun their horses around. The leader straddled Adela, who lay slack on the ground, and cut her throat in a sheet of blood. Maria lunged back into the safety and darkness of the wood. When she looked around again, the Saracens were racing away, and a stream of knights was galloping up between the village and the river.
Ceci was shrieking. Maria carried her out of the wood into the last of the sunlight, to Adela. The knights charged past her, unheeding. Adela lay spreadeagled in the grass, blood pooled under her shoulders and her head. Maria began to cry.
The Saracens were already far down the valley. They were outrunning the knights; they would escape. From the thorn hedge, peasants raced toward her. Maria knelt and pulled Adela’s clothes over her bleeding breasts and poor bruised cleft. Sinking down beside the body, the child in her lap, she covered her face with her hands.
***
Carefully she set the smith’s punch at the top of the coin, struck it hard with the mallet, and worried the tool out of the hole. Richard was letting her make ornaments for his new clothes out of twenty Saracen coins. Another clap of thunder rattled the shutters of the window behind her. The rain had forced most of the knights indoors. Now that Roger had come back, the castle was packed with people. She put another coin before her on the table and picked up the punch.
His hair soaked from the rain, Richard came in, Roger a step behind him, and limped on his crutch up to her end of the hall. Roger thrust his head forward belligerently at his brother.
“Why is it my fault? I followed your plans, I did exactly what you would have done—”
Richard made an unpleasant noise. He lowered himself carefully down onto a stool and propped his crutch against the table. “What about her?” He nodded toward Maria, down the table from him. “Ceci was with her—what if they’d been caught?” But he did not seem particularly angry.
“I want to go after them,” Roger said. He sat down across the table from Richard. “I’ll ride them down if I must give up my life to it.”
“Don’t bother. We’ll come on them again, sometime, in the course of things.”
Maria bent over the coat, arranging the Saracen coins down the front. When she remembered the man rooting over Adela, sticking his knife in her to make her jump, she tasted gall in her throat. Richard hated Adela, and when the villagers asked if they could bury her in their own churchyard, he had let them take her body away without a word. Flora was upstairs crying. Maria lifted the mallet and struck a hole in another Saracen coin.