The bed smelled of sex. They had drawn the heavy draperies around it the night before, when Eleanor brought the boys in to bed. The dawn was coming. The confined space around her was twilit. She raised herself cautiously on her outstretched arm. Her husband lay asleep on his stomach next to her.
She put her head down. He had thrown off the blanket. His face and arms were suntanned dark as a barrel but on his back the skin was soft and pale. Outside the curtains, Eleanor spoke, and the boys answered in sleepy voices. The man beside her moved, coming awake; his head turned toward her.
“Maria,” Eleanor whispered, just outside the curtain. The cloth shook and her face appeared in the middle. Her eyes widened when she saw Richard was naked and she withdrew her head and snapped the curtains shut.
Richard stirred. All night long they had gone at each other like plunderers, waking and sleeping and waking again. He opened his eyes on her.
“That was a good ride, little girl,” he said. He pulled her over against him. “That was worth coming all the way down here in the rain for.”
Outside the curtain, Robert shouted, “Papa is home!”
“Sssh—you’ll wake them up,” Eleanor said. “Go down and get your breakfast.”
Feet trampled away. Maria shut her eyes. She lay with Richard’s arms around her, wishing she could go back to sleep. She kissed his shoulder. Across his chest there was a long scar. She drew her fingertip along it.
“What happened to you?”
“It looks worse than it was.”
“Did they hurt you—the Saracens? When they took you prisoner.”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “They dragged me around a little. I broke my hand, but that wasn’t their fault.”
“I prayed for you.”
“Oh,” he said, a fine sarcastic edge in his voice. “That must have been what saved me.”
She turned her back on him and scrambled out of the bed. She went to the cupboard for her clothes. The room was full of drafts, and the floor chilled her feet. Shivering, she pulled on her shift and a gown and reached up behind her to free her hair. Richard shouted down the stairs for their breakfast. Half-dressed, he tramped around the room. She brought him a clean shirt.
“I’ve been making you shirts and coats all since Michaelmas.”
“Good. That’s one reason I’m here: all my clothes are falling apart.” He pulled the shirt on over his head.
“You promised me you’d come,” she said, “but I suppose that’s a small thing in your mind.”
“I could not come before. I said I would come when I could.”
The door slammed open. Robert raced in, laughing, Stephen behind him, and they leaped on Richard. He scooped them up, one under each arm. Maria opened the curtains on the bed and threw the covers back to air.
“Go on,” Richard said to the boys. “Pester me after I have eaten. Go play with Bunny.”
“Who is Bunny?” Robert asked blankly.
Richard chased him out. Maria went around the room picking up her sons’ litter of clothes and stones and dirt. Richard put his coat on. She could not stay away from him. In spite of herself, she drifted over and stood with her hand on his arm. He kissed her forehead. The kitchen boy came in with their breakfast; they sat down to eat.
***
“I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe,” the cook said. He wheezed a little, to prove he was sick. “I thought the end had surely come. I have not slept the sleep of grace these past three nights, for fear of dying.”
“Lobelia for that,” Eleanor cried, without looking up from the pot she was stirring. “A good lobelia pack, and something after to get the phlegm up.”
The cook sniffed. “God sent me this for my sins. I welcome it for my sins’ sake.”
Maria poured a measure of chopped nuts into the fruit boiling over the fire and took a wooden spoon to mix them in. Eleanor said, “All the same, a good pack of lobelia would do you no harm.” She straightened, brushing her hair back with her forearm. Now that the rain had stopped, the kitchen was perceptibly brighter.
“Do you need help, Maria?”
“No—it has to cook a while.” Maria hung up the spoon on the hearth. Sticky walnut syrup clung to her fingers. She yawned.
“My, you are sleepy, aren’t you,” Eleanor said sweetly. “I shouldn’t wonder, I heard you tossing and turning all last night.”
Maria gave her a black look, and Eleanor simpered. Stiff, Maria went across the kitchen to the door. Richard had brought his horse out into the ward. While he curried it and brushed it, a cluster of boys gathered to watch. Even the young Duke was there.
“Don’t let the conserves burn,” Eleanor called.
There was a pile of little cakes on the bench beside the door. Maria stuffed a dozen of them into her apron pockets and went out to the ward. The air was sweet from the rain. Puddles still shone clear on the ground around the gate. Eleanor called to her again. She shut the door between them with her heel.
Richard had the gray stallion’s forehoof up on his thigh and was scraping caked mud and dung out of it with a hoofpick. The boys stood around him watching. The young Duke strained his neck to see. He leaned up against the wall near the horse’s head, the wolfhound bitch sprawled comfortably in the sun a few feet away.
Maria gave out the sweet cakes. The children’s hands thrust at her, dirty and grasping. The last grubby brown hand was Richard’s. She went up to the gray stallion’s head and patted its face.
Robert had the hoofpick. He was wrestling the horse’s off-hind foot up into his lap. Richard came up beside her.
“What are you making? It smells good.”
She said, “Conserves. This is a beautiful horse.”
Robert stooped over the stallion’s raised hoof. The horse turned its beautiful head to look and carefully straightened out its leg. Robert tumbled headlong. Richard laughed; the other boys laughed too. The horse snorted. Maria thought it looked pleased with itself.
“I can do it,” the young Duke said. He pushed himself away from the wall and went around behind the horse. Taking the hoofpick from Robert, he bent over the horse’s hind leg.
“Here,” Richard said. “It’s easier like this.” While he showed the boy how to hold the stallion’s hoof between his knees, Maria watched him closely. It was strange to find herself suddenly equipped with a husband. She had forgotten him; he was a stranger to her, more a stranger even than Fitz-Michael. The stallion turned its head to look back. She took hold of its halter.
The horse snorted softly and lipped her hand, and she fed it half a sweet cake. Its face was wide between the large intelligent eyes. Its kindness amazed her, that it let the green boys handle it.
“The Saracens gave him to me,” Richard said. He came up beside her again, patting the horse’s shoulder. ‘‘He’s too light to fight on, but he’s a hell of a riding horse.”
“The men who took you prisoner? Will they give you another?”
He rested his arm on the wall and let his weight slack against it. She put her hand flat on his chest. The young Duke set the stallion’s hoof down and moved around to the other side.
“Maria,” Eleanor cried, from the kitchen, “the conserves are burning.”
Maria called, “Take the pot off the fire.”
“What are you doing?” Fitz-Michael shouted, and she jumped, but he was yelling at the young Duke. He strode into the midst of the children, took the boy by the ear, and dragged him off. “You stupid lout, are you a groom now? Will you not learn who you are?”
The young Duke tore free. The wolfhound had come to her feet. She loped after him across the ward. Fitz-Michael marched stiff-necked toward the Tower. His servants were upstairs packing his baggage. As soon as his back was turned, the other boys knocked each other in the ribs and laughed and made faces at him. Richard spat.
“Tuppence all his horses have thrush, he’s too highborn to pick their feet out.”
Maria turned back to the gray stallion. “Will you get me a horse like this?”
“After I take Mana’a.”
“When will that be?”
He shook his head. He leaned his back against the wall, his eyes on the door where Fitz-Michael had gone in. “Maybe never.”
From the kitchen, Eleanor shrieked, “Maria!”
“I thought when I had the mountains I could cut off Mana’a and starve them out,” he said. “But they are bringing their supplies in through the harbor, and I can’t stop them; I have no ships.”
Maria scratched the stallion’s forehead. She knew nothing about ships. She tried to imagine Mana’a’s famous bay. “Blue as the bay of Marna,” a song had said once. She thought of her own seacoast, the green water dancing with whitecaps, the breakers striped with foam; it seemed distant as another life, gone forever. Her mood darkened. Heavily she went down to the kitchen to help Eleanor.
***
Fitz-Michael’s escort waited on the road outside the gate. Pages led two saddled horses to the foot of the steps. Maria picked up Stephen to get him out of the way. Robert and the other children were upstairs, saying good-bye to the Duke. At the foot of the stair, Fitz-Michael and Richard stood side by side, ignoring each other.
Maria went up between them. “It’s a fair day, my lord,” she said to Fitz-Michael. “God willing, you’ll have an easy journey.”
“Away from you, my dear, is no easy journey.” He smiled at her, standing over close to her. Across her shoulder he and Richard exchanged needled looks. Maria murmured something. She enjoyed the friction between them; while she smiled at Fitz-Michael she leaned against Richard. Her husband growled in his throat and stepped away from her.
Fitz-Michael turned to his crop-eared bay horse. “If you will summon my nephew—”
Maria put Stephen on the steps and sent him up to fetch the young Duke. Richard walked around Fitz-Michael’s horse, one hand on its black mane. “Remember what I told you touching the Archbishop.”
Fitz-Michael’s long upper lip drew back from his teeth. “I am not your emissary. Treat with him through your own means.” Lifting his reins, he backed the horse rapidly away from Richard, who spat precisely between its forehoofs and stalked off. Maria followed him. While she crossed Fitz-Michael’s path, she caught his eye, and he smiled at her.
The young Duke ran down the steps, half a dozen other boys yelling at his heels. Richard boosted him up into his saddle. The wolfhound bitch had followed the boy up to his horse. She whined, and the Duke slapped his thigh and leaned down. Standing on her hind legs, she laid her forepaws and her head against his knee. He scratched behind her ears.
“Good-bye, Lupa,” he said softly. “Good-bye.”
Richard spoke to the dog, which sat down beside him. He moved the Duke’s leg forward in the stirrup and yanked his girths tight.
“Take her with you,” he said. He slapped the Duke’s gelding on the rump and walked off. His eyes went to Fitz-Michael. “You need all the friends you can make.”
Fitz-Michael’s face darkened, but he said nothing. The young Duke twisted in his saddle to watch Richard go off across the courtyard. Fitz-Michael shouted at him, and he lifted his reins. The wolfhound lay down next to Maria. Her ears drooped. The Duke whistled to her. Fitz-Michael rode out the gate, and the boy followed, but in the gateway he stopped and called, “Lupa! Come!”
The wolfhound bolted after him. Richard had disappeared. Maria went to the gate and stood watching the train of Fitz-Michael’s servants and horses go on down the road, the wolfhound loping after them. She called to the porter to shut the gate and went up into the Tower.
Eleanor was sitting before the loom, threading bobbins. Maria moved her stool closer. Picking up the basket onto her lap, she sorted through it for the color she needed. “Thank God they are finally gone,” Eleanor said. “That dreadful man and that sullen little boy. The cook told me he does not know how we will live through Christmas, we have so little store.”
Maria leaned forward to do the next row of Charlemagne’s crown. They had used up most of the wheat she had begged from her home castle. They had no meat left but salted pork. “We shall fast. I’ve always wanted to make a good fast.” She changed the thread to weave a jewel.
“There is nothing to be had in the town. No one in the whole of Birnia has any grain. I foresee a hard winter for us all.” Eleanor crossed herself.
“Telling the future is a sin, Eleanor. Shame. Have you decided yet about the trees?”
Eleanor had spoken of making the leaves of the trees silver and gold. She canted her head to squint at the tapestry. “I don’t know. We have such a scarcity of gold thread.”
Richard came into the hall. Maria watched him cross the room. She remembered lying with him and quickly turned her eyes back to the tapestry. “I doubt if it would add enough to justify using it.”
Richard came up behind them. “I want to meet this friend of yours,” he said. “This ostler.”
Maria stood up. “Now? Do you want to go to the town? Eleanor, bring me my cloak.”
Eleanor climbed around the loom, the spinning wheel, and the baskets of mending. Planting his foot on her stool, Richard stared at the tapestry.
“You are getting better at it—which is your work?”
“I do the people, and Eleanor does the animals and the trees. See Roland?” She had made Roland full-face, in the space below Charlemagne, his milk-white cheeks framed in symmetrical golden curls. “And there is Oliver.”
“When you were in Iste, did you see the inside of the Jewish temple?”
Maria crossed herself. “Holy Mother. What would I do there?”
“They have pictures on the walls of the meeting room. This is good, Maria, for you, but the people on the walls of the Jews’ place might be alive.”
A flood of hot shame took her. She threw the bobbins down from her lap and stamped out into the middle of the hall. Eleanor came in, and their eyes met; without a word spoken, their feelings passed between them. Maria turned so that Eleanor could put the cloak around her shoulders. She went out the door and down the steps into the ward.
Their horses were already being brought up. Her black mare, a hand shorter than the dark gray stallion, waited in the shade of the wall. The children were building a snow fort in the corner. Robert scrambled over the wall of packed snow and raced toward her.
“Mama—Mama—can I go, too? Let me go, Mama.”
Maria caught his hands and swung him around. “Get your horse.”
He dashed across the ward toward the stable. The other children still scrambled and tumbled over the snow fort. Stephen had a board in his hands and was hacking furiously at the wall. His scarf hung down to his knees, and his coat was ripped.
Richard came up to Maria’s elbow. “What’s the matter with you? I said I liked your work, but if you saw the pictures at Iste you would do better.”
“I don’t want to do better.” She went away from him, toward her horse. “I want to do what I am doing.”
“You certainly do that.”
Maria whirled toward him; he dodged between the two horses, laughing at her. She snatched her reins up and mounted without help, throwing her heavy skirts across the cantle of the saddle. Richard led the gray stallion away from her. He vaulted up onto its back, kicked his feet into the stirrups, and calling for a groom sent him up into the Tower for his sword.
Maria rode to the gate, simmering. She knew she should not be in such a humor simply because he had spoken carelessly of her tapestry—he had even admitted it was good. He had attacked her for the sake of Jews. Her mare danced sideways, mouthing the bit. The groom brought Richard his sword, Robert rode out of the stable, and they trotted out the gate.
For late autumn, the day was warm. The wind from the river blew into their faces. In the distance, the thatched roofs of the town of Birnia rose above its log wall. Lined with oak trees, the road curved across the easiest slope, but Richard led them straight down the hillside and across the fields, his horse at a driving gallop. The hard pace chased away Maria’s anger at him. Chirping to her mare, she raced up beside him, the wind rushing in her face.
When they came again to the road, they drew rein to wait for Robert, whose palfrey could not keep up with his parents’ horses. Maria ran her eyes over the dark gray stallion. It scarcely seemed to breathe hard after the stiff gallop; she was struck again by its kind disposition and its look of intelligence.
“That’s the finest horse I’ve ever seen.”
Richard leaned down and patted the horse’s dappled neck. Robert reached them, breathless from kicking on his gelding, and they started along the road, the boy between them. The gate was open. It was the market day: the street was dusty with the passage of many people. They cut down the main street of the town, going toward the inn. Around them, people turned and stared at Richard. A rustle of excited talk started up. A woman called a greeting to Maria; she waved. They came to the inn gate.
Before she saw Fulbert, she was almost on top of him, and he was grabbing for her bridle. His face was set with fury. She realized he had been boiling since she laughed at him in front of everybody. He seized her mare by the rein and Maria by the skirt and said, “Woman, you owe me money,” and looked past her and saw Richard.
Fulbert’s handsome face turned gray. Richard said, “Butcher, you take your hands off my wife,” and he sprang away from her. Maria laughed. She watched Fulbert race off through the small crowd gathering to gawk at Richard. With her heel she urged the mare into the inn yard.
Richard came hot after her. “What was that about?”
Maria dismounted. The broad inn yard was empty. The ostler’s daughter had come out on the porch. The ostler himself was hurrying out to take their horses. Richard jumped down from his saddle.
“What did he mean, you owe him money?”
“It’s a very long story, Richard, I’ll tell you when we get home.”
She met his gray eyes; his stare was intense with curiosity. The ostler reached them. She turned to him.
“Ermio, my lord husband wants to talk to you.”
The ostler took her reins. “My lord, I am your servant.”
Richard was still staring at her. Abruptly he looked at the ostler, thrust his reins into the man’s hand, and said, “I’ll be inside, when you put them up.” He started across the yard toward the porch. Robert leaped around him, laughing. Maria glanced at the gate. It was packed with townsfolk straining to look over the heads of the people in front of them, to see Richard. She went on toward the inn after him. Thinking of Fulbert, she laughed.
***
Every day, as he had done in Iste, Richard went into Birnia and talked with the ostler and the several elders of the town, having the customs written out and changing them when it pleased him. That made the townspeople angry. Many came and told Maria so at length whenever she went into Birnia. Every few days messengers came from the army laying siege to Mana’a, from Iste, from the East Tower and the Black Tower and her own castle, which now they had taken to calling Castelmaria. He listened to trials of justice and sent men here and there to do his business; Maria had never seen a knight work so hard.
She sat with the ostler’s daughter one day in the kitchen. Richard had said that the ostler was of more use to him than any other man in Birnia. She told his daughter so.
“Oh, well,” the woman said. She ate a morsel of bread and conserves. “You know what men will do—they cannot tend themselves, but they must tend to everybody else’s doings. Spread the sweet thick, dear, we are very short of bread these days.”
Maria dipped the knife into the jar of conserves. The ostler’s daughter was kneading bread. Her arms were white as the dough. “My father talks much of your husband. In fact, no one talks anything else, he has vexed nearly everybody in the town now, and is starting on his second round.” She shrugged. “I like his look well myself. I like a sober look in a man.”
Halfway down, the bread and conserves stuck in Maria’s throat and choked her when she laughed. She gulped it down. “Richard? Sober?”
“I was married to one of the other sort—the saints witness me, no wife was ever more tried than I, and thankful he went young to Hell.”
Maria crossed herself. The ostler’s daughter slugged at the lump of dough with both hands. Maria said, “God save his soul.”
“God save his soul. I prayed to Saint Anne to make me a widow. The day I stood at his graveside was the happiest of my life.”
“God send you a saint for your second husband.”
“A saint! God send me a young husband, and a lively, that’s what I want.” The corners of her mouth tucked under her plump cheeks. “But sober in his looks.”
After the blight and the plundering of Count Theobald’s men, the harvest had been sparse all over Birnia. Advent began. Maria put the cook to mixing bean flour half and half with the wheat flour, which was already half rye. Everyone was starving, and winter hardly upon them. People even went to Richard and complained, and to her surprise he summoned Father Gibertetto and got the old priest to give away all the grain and peas the parish had taken in revenues.
He did not ask her again about Fulbert. She thought he had forgotten, until one day just before Christmas, while they were sitting at the table after dinner, he said, “Give me one reason why I should not kill that damned butcher.”
She looked off down the hall. It was snowing and the children were all out playing in it. Save for a few servants, the hall was empty. She wondered how much he had found out, whom he had asked. She faced him again.
“Are you going back to Mana’a?”
He nodded.
“Then I will keep Fulbert. I may need him.”
He smiled at her. His face was unreadable. “Fulbert doesn’t like you now, Maria. He thinks you cheated him.”
Maria grunted. “He asked to be cheated. When are you going?”
“After Christmas.”
She put her hand to her face. Christmas was only days away. She had gotten used to having him there. Beside her, he drew an open loop with his finger on the tabletop. Slowly he traced a line across its mouth. He said, “I’m taking Robert with me.”
She stared at him. She said, tautly, “Richard.”
He shook his head at her. “Don’t argue with me.”
Maria turned her face away.