Free Great Maria by Cecelia Holland Page B

murder. She knew how Richard’s ambitions ran: If Theobald’s daughter would bring him what he wanted, she and Ceci would only be in his way. She tucked the dagger in her sleeve, kissed the baby, and went out, past Ponce Rachet coming up the stairs with a sack of treasure on his shoulder.
    The sun was high in the sky. The hall was empty, save for a few servants and a woman weaving. The dagger hidden in her sleeve, Maria went down into the ward.
    Richard was carrying a sack of money up through the kitchen door. She waited until his back was to her and went around the edge of the ward toward the stables. In the cool subterranean vault, several knights sprawled on the straw, arguing. None of them was Walter Bris. She went through the stables without even nodding when they greeted her and walked up again into the sunlight.
    She looked outside the gate and around the back of the ward but Walter Bris was nowhere. She went back up toward her room. Ponce Rachet stood on the stair landing outside the door. He stepped aside to let her go by. Two huge bags of money sat on the floor midway between the door and the bed. Maria took the baby into a corner to nurse her. Feet pounded on the stairs, and Richard came in, lugging another sack on his shoulder. Ponce Rachet followed him inside.
    “That’s all of it.”
    The two men bent over the sacks. Richard found a chest and dumped the clothes in it out onto the floor. Maria watched him narrowly. When she thought that he might desert her her eyes stung with tears. At last the baby fell asleep. She put her in the bed, between two pillows to keep her from rolling off. Richard and his knight were stacking up the money on the chest. Outside the window, the sky turned softly pink and violet.
    Abruptly she knew where Walter Bris was: in the town with the messenger from Count Theobald. Richard would not have mentioned the marriage proposal to a man he obviously disliked; Walter Bris would have heard it only from Theobald’s messenger. The cook had said Walter Bris had commanded here before Richard came. Maybe he had been the Count’s man even then.
    The evening cool swept in from the river and chilled her face. She went down the stonework outer stair of the Tower and waited in the ward until she could sneak out the postern door unseen. Walter Bris would not stay away from the Tower much past sundown or Richard would begin to suspect him. She walked down under the trees that lined one edge of the road toward the town.
    A crow cawed in the fields. Ahead, the torches on the wall of the town rippled in the wind. The dark settled down over the world. The fragrance of the softening earth rose around her. The moon had not yet risen, and she kept her stride short, for fear of tripping. When she reached the foot of the hill, she sat beneath an oak tree, her eyes on the town half a mile on.
    Ceci might wake up and cry for her. Murder was a terrible sin, but what they were trying to do to her was a sin too. The dagger lay in her lap, cool to her hand, the hilt wrapped in leather, the edges honed white. Down the road, a horse was cantering up from the town.
    She looked around carefully, to make sure she was unseen. The moon appeared over the edge of the hills in the east. The horseman trotted up the road toward her. She stood up and crossed the ditch.
    “Please,” she called. “Help me—please—”
    Walter Bris rode up to her and reined in his horse. “What are you doing out here?” He dismounted.
    Maria pretended to faint, collapsing on her side with the dagger under her. The knight muttered an oath. He knelt beside her.
    “She’s witch-wild. Strongarm’s brat: crazy as he was.”
    He gathered her up, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees. She raised the dagger and stabbed him in the throat.
    The blood splattered across her. He staggered; he shouted wordlessly, and she struck him again, writhing out of his grip. He fell. She leaped on him, her knees on his chest, and drove the