Free Great Maria by Cecelia Holland

face.
    The three little knaves were briskly stacking brick on brick, and by the way they worked she guessed the cook was right: they had been loafing, or they would have finished long before. But she did not want to do as the cook said. “Unbrick it. What’s in there? The old pantry, you said. Maybe you could use it.”
    The knaves twisted to watch her. With a glance at the cook they took to unstacking the bricks. Maria moved out of the draft. With the cook behind her she went back up into the daylight and looked to see that the baby was all right. The ostler’s daughter was carrying her around, laughing.
    The cook said bitterly, “As much work as those boys do, they could do on the Sabbath and not make enough of a sin to pray over.”
    “Keep watch on them—make them do it.” She crossed the paving stones to the sunlight, where the women were drinking cups of water and saying how weak they felt, and the fasting hardly begun. Lying on the grass in their midst, the baby rolled onto her back and played with her fingers.
    “My lady,” the cook’s reedy voice called. He was coming toward her at a fast walk. “Lady—”
    Maria stood up; he bustled over to her. “Lady, there is something there. God willed it. God told us to open up the pantry again.”
    Maria headed toward the kitchen. “What do you mean?”
    The cook shook his head. After walking across the ward and halfway back, he was out of breath. His face glowed importantly red. “This fellow Walter Bris,” he said, his voice lowered, “the man who commanded here when my lord Richard came, you know, he was not the true lord of this castle. This used to be a thieves’ nest, here, quite like—” He cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed. She went after him into the kitchen and back toward the pantries.
    They had lit another torch, casting light into every corner of the back of the kitchen, and through the unbricked wall into the old pantry. The light showed a huge old clothes chest, half-buried in dust in the corner.
    Maria caught her breath. She climbed through the rubble of the bricks and knelt beside the chest. She could not move it, not with her whole weight pushing it, and the lid was rusted tight.
    She went out to the kitchen. The three knaves and the cook stood out of the draft, their faces beaming. To the cook, she said, “Stay here. Let no one in. I’ll be right back.” She herded the knaves out of the kitchen and ran across the ward to the Tower.
    Richard was not in the hall. She climbed the stairs toward the top room. Halfway up she heard a stranger’s voice there. She missed the first few words of what he said, but drawing closer, she overheard enough to know what he was talking about. She stopped on the stair, just below the door.
    “My lord,” the stranger said, “what further worth is she to you? You have what you wed her for, Strongarm’s castle and his men. Count Theobald’s daughter will make you a lord.”
    Richard laughed. Maria could make nothing of his laughter. She went in the door, to stop them talking. Both the men spun toward her, their faces taut. The other man she had seen before: one of the castle’s knights. She said, “Richard, there is something down here you must attend to,” and turned away before he could read her expression. The other stood on the hearth. Her hands were shaking. She went out again onto the stair landing.
    “I’m coming,” Richard said. “Good day, Walter.”
    Walter Bris, Maria thought. Richard behind her, she went down the stairs to the hall.
    “What is this, anyway?” Richard asked. “I’ve got important things to do—”
    “This is important,” Maria said. She led him across the hall to the outer staircase and down into the ward. The women were all sitting in a knot, playing with Ceci. She and Richard walked past them to the heaps of garbage before the kitchen door.
    The knaves loitered in the shade, their heads ducked together in some gossip. Maria took Richard down into the