The Ruby In Her Navel

X

There was nothing now to keep me in Bari. I did not relish the prospect of that long journey back over land, and there was no need for it now. I decided to ride only as far as Taranto and take ship from there. But before leaving I wanted to see the Madonna Odegitria, which Stefanos had told me of, he being very devout and full of knowledge. He had said she was kept in a chapel behind the church of San Sabino, which was now being rebuilt after damage suffered during the wars with the Saracens. I wanted very much to see her, since it is the truest likeness anywhere to be found, both in face and form, having been made from a drawing of her by the Apostle Luke, which he did in the time before the Crucifixion – she did not allow any more drawings of herself to be done after, because of her great grief.

However, I was destined not to see her likeness that day, and in fact I have never seen it. I asked twice for the way but the streets that led to the church were narrow and meshed closely together and to a stranger's eye they looked all alike. I took a wrong turning and found myself at a market of vegetables and fruit, with roofless stalls that took up most of the short street, and beyond them a sight of the sea. I was about to ask one of the stall keepers for the right way when I was caught up in a throng of pilgrims, who suddenly appeared from I know not where, I think from the direction of the harbour, they were jubilantly singing as if in joy at having landed safely. There was a sound of piping among them and a jingling of bells, and it seemed that all the dogs of Bari had joined them, barking and cavorting in a state of great excitement. Added to this were the angry shouts of the stall keepers, whose trestles were in danger of being overturned.

I was swept some way on the loud tide of these pilgrims and then, to get free of them, turned into a street on my right-hand side that led away from the sea. This brought me after some time to an open space, where there were the ruins of a fort, or perhaps only a fortified house, I could not tell. Not much was left of the walls but there were two low, rounded arches and some fragments of a floor mosaic. In my search for the chapel of the Madonna I had climbed higher than I knew. Beyond the walls and a narrow waste of thistle and wild oats the sea was visible, but it lay well below.

The jingling and the singing and the barking died slowly away and were succeeded by a silence that settled round me. The sea was unmarked, there was no wind, no movement in the grasses of the open ground. This calm, after such turbulence, was strange, rare in a town the size of this one. It seemed like a blessing, a visitation. I went through into the square of ground where the building had stood, stepping over the walls where they were low enough. There was a scutter of lizards on the sunwarmed stone, and a cat the colour of cinnamon walked slowly along the wall on the side farthest from the sea.

How long I stayed alone there I do not know. A sort of dreaming state descended on me, as if I had passed through some narrow gate and found sanctuary here. My mood, which had been sombre since the meeting with Lazar, lightened now and I began to think more kindly of myself and the part I had played. There was the picture that acted on my mind like touching a talisman, and I summoned it now, the shining silver of the King's barge that I was helping to keep afloat on the dark water.

I was standing on the broken pavement, breathing deeply in this peace surrounding me, trying to make out the fragments of mosaic; there was part of a peacock's tail, the curving stem of a plant. I heard the clatter of hoofs and looked up from my scrutiny to see a small company on horseback approaching. They were three, two of them women, the other, who led the way, a groom in livery of green and red, richly turned out from his hose to his plumed hat, and wearing a sword. They were in file, with the younger of the women coming close behind the groom. She was dressed differently from our Norman ladies in Italy, and differently from her companion, though this was a confused impression of mine – all I saw as she drew nearer was the Saracen style of the hat she wore, a white turban, set back on the head, allowing the fairness of her brows to be seen and the pale gold hair that curled round them.

They drew level, the ladies sitting straight-backed and not sparing me a glance, though the groom eyed me carefully and slowed his horse to a walk – I supposed the better to do so. He was a broad-faced, handsome man, in middle life, and he had not the bearing or the glance of a servant. They would have passed thus, in silence, but at the last moment before they did so I thought I knew the younger lady's face and her name, and this broke from my lips almost without my willing it.

"Alicia," I said. "Lady Alicia, is it you?" My throat tightened as I spoke, for fear I might be wrong.

She reined in her horse and looked at me, and this made me think she was who I thought. Her expression was not cold, but there was no recognition on her face. Certainly my clothing did not help her; I was wearing still my rough cloak of a pilgrim, open because of the warm weather, to show nothing beneath but belted tunic and dark leggings. But the cowl was thrown back, my face was uncovered as I looked up at her. The groom turned his horse now to place himself between me and the lady, and I spoke as he came forward. "Do you not know me? You knew me once."

For some moments longer she looked closely at me, then her face broke into a smile of surprise – and of pleasure too, as it seemed to me.

"Thurstan," she said, and my heart expanded because after these many years she still remembered my name. "You have grown tall," she said, still smiling.

She turned to her companion and spoke my name to her, though not my father's name, which I supposed she did not remember, and told me that the lady was Catherine Bolland and related to her by marriage. I made the best bow I could and heard Alicia explaining that she and I had known each other as children, that we had both been sent to the court of Richard of Bernalda to learn manners in our different ways. She did not say that we had been sweethearts, that she had filled my mind for two years, the first one ever to do so, that we had both wept when she had left at fourteen to be married. These were not things to say in the hearing of a groom and an attendant lady – I knew from the tone Alicia used with her that she was this, knew it from the way she was asked now to go forward some distance and wait.

This she did, the groom following her, leaving Alicia there before me, though I knew she could not remain there long. How could she linger, even had she been so inclined? She was accompanied, richly mounted; I was on foot, poorly dressed, alone. To meet like this, and then have no time to talk together! My breath came quickly. I felt like one drowning in a sea of things unsaid. "Is it Bari where you live now?" I asked her.

"No, I am recently arrived in Italy. I have come from Outremer, from Jerusalem. I am staying with my cousin here in Apulia. I am only in Bari for the day of the saint. And you?"

"I am leaving for Palermo later today." I heard the sound of voices and laughter from somewhere further along the street. "We will go our different ways," I said, "and we will never -"

She glanced once over her shoulder, then spoke quickly, in lower tones.

"If you are leaving later today, you might want to stay somewhere close by so as to be early on the road tomorrow. There is a house of the Hospitallers, a hospice for travellers. It is where the road from Bari comes to the first houses of Bitonto. The monks hold the land in grant from a neighbour of my cousin, William of Sens. If you go there, speak his name to them and they will look after you well."

With this she urged her horse forward and moved to join the others, and at that moment the people whose voices I had heard came into view. They were country people, on holiday from their fields for this day of the saint, talking and laughing together. When I looked back to the way the riders had gone, there was no sign of them and no sound of hooves, and for some moments I could hardly believe that this encounter had taken place.

There was no longer room in my thoughts for the Madonna of Odegitria.

Alicia was marvellous likeness enough – to herself, to the girl of fourteen I remembered loving. I had one sole object now: to recover my horse, pay for stabling and fodder and start on my way to the house of the Hospitallers. She had not said she would be there, but she had lowered her voice, she had not wanted the others to overhear, she had wanted it to be something between us. And this caution had been familiar to me, like a secret remembered across the gulf of years, recalling the backward glances and whispered tones of our courtship, when we had schemed to contrive a brief time together in some corner of the castle that was not overlooked, a game of conspiracy, but one that we played for our own pleasure, when so much of our play was striving to please others, our elders.

The sun was setting when I reached the hospice, and the bell of the cloister was sounding for vespers. The monk on duty at the gate came to let me in, and I used the name Alicia had given me and asked for lodging. There were beds in the dormitory, but I offered to pay more for a separate place to sleep, and this was agreed. My reason for it was the rule of curfew for guests in monastic houses, those in the dormitory being required to be in bed with lights out after the office of compline, whereas I wanted to keep my freedom of movement in case Alicia came and we could talk together. I was shown to my place, one of a row of cells on the ground floor, with no furnishing but a narrow bed, a water jug and a chamber-pot. I left my few belongings here and came out again into the courtyard; I wanted to be where I could see the gate, have the first sight of her – if indeed she came.

There was an ancient walnut tree in the courtyard and a fountain with a ram's head carved in stone. When we wait with heightened feelings in a place that is strange to us, this very strangeness can sometimes make a deeper mark on memory than the sights of every day. Even now, after all that has passed, those overarching branches and the shadows they cast, the docile head of the ram with its dripping mouth, will come back to my mind unbidden and carry me back to that time of waiting.

There was some coming and going of travellers in the yard, but not so very much. It seemed likely to me that the hospice would always be more frequented on the eve of the saint's day, when many would arrive after dark and seek a bed here rather than continue to Bari so late. Alicia had made a good choice for me – and for herself, I was hoping.

Dusk was falling, and they lit lamps at the gate and on the walls of the yard, and the white crosses of the hospitallers who carried the lamps stood out on their dark habits. And suddenly my waiting for her and not knowing if she would come was like the many times when we had plotted to be together but could not be sure of succeeding because of some claim that might be made on us, some errand or task that came at the last moment to disappoint our hopes.

I did not notice her at first among the other girls. She was seven when she came and I was eight – I had been there a year. I saw her every day without remarking her at all; we boys spent much of our time in the women's apartment on the third floor; while the girls were learning sewing and embroidery and singing, we were waiting at table, setting up beds, attending the lady wife of our overlord and striving to meet her every wish. Alicia was like the others, anxious to please, homesick – like all of us. But she was not fearful, as I was to learn later, and this made her different; submissive in behaviour, yes, as she had been taught to be; but I never found fear in her, only caution, by no means the same thing – for my sake she was ready to risk disgrace, as I was for hers.

It was only when I could see her no longer that I missed the daily sight of her. And this makes me think there must have been some earlier signs between us that the stronger feelings of later overlaid. When I was twelve my voice began to break, and the strange croaking I sometimes made meant that I was approaching too close to manhood to stay among the women. I was moved down to the second floor under the tutelage of the baron himself, and his seneschal and his constable and his chamberlains.

Here there were different lessons: riding and the care of horses, exercises with the sword, and later, as my strength grew, on horseback with the lance. We saw the girls more rarely now; we slept below on beds that were set up in the great hall of the donjon, they remained with the lady, sleeping in the hall above, which was kept guarded – someone was always on guard at the door which led from the spiral staircase in the donjon wall. We saw each other on court occasions, at dinner when there were guests, at hunting parties, at the lists, when the girls and women together watched the jousting from their balconies. But occasions for speech, for private words, were few. Glances came before words. When was the first time that we exchanged glances and knew?

I was seeking to trace in memory this elusive moment when I heard a mailed fist strike at the gate, saw the gate open, saw them pass through, three men-at-arms with Alicia in the midst of them. A serving-woman came behind, but of groom and lady attendant there was none.

I had thought to go forward and greet her, but I faltered when I saw her so surrounded, and stepped back into the shadow of the tree. She was beautiful as she passed under the light. She wore no turban now, her pale hair was dressed with silver threads and she wore a veil across the lower part of her face, in the fashion of Moslem ladies, but very thin, the red of the paint on her cheeks glowed through it. And perhaps it was this too, this beauty of hers, that made me draw back, the gleaming threads of silver in her hair, the rose-glow of her cheeks through the delicate veil: I had been absorbed in thoughts of her childhood face, the lustrous pallor of her skin, the long hair parted in the middle and gathered behind, without ornament.

I remained where I was while the horses were seen to and the party conducted within. I counted the moments as I waited there. The serjeants would be allotted beds in the dormitory; for the lady Alicia a chamber would be provided, the best they had, with a place close by for the serving woman, so she could be within call. The courtyard was overlooked by a short gallery with a balustrade, roofed but open at the side, and after a while I saw the two women pass along this, led by a monk who bore a lantern, holding it high to give more light. A door was opened for them and they passed from view.

She would come down alone, she would know I was here, she would ask, no doubt idly enough, if a man travelling alone had given the name of William of Sens, she would guess I was waiting here, in the courtyard.

The time passed and it seemed long to me. Then I saw her pass again along the gallery, without her servant now, and descend the steps. She entered the yard and paused there, as if in doubt. I saw she no longer wore the veil. I stepped forward from the refuge I had taken in the shadows, and we regarded each other at a distance of some half-dozen paces, smiling, not speaking in these first moments.

"I thought you might not come after all," she said, drawing nearer to me. "I thought you might decide to ride further on your way, being Thurstan Beauchamp and not afraid of the dark, not afraid of anything, as you would tell me."

"Was I so boastful? I have learned to be fearful since. Did you really think I would not come, when you had counselled it? When I thought that you -" I stumbled here, aware of my clumsiness, afraid of offending.

"That I intended to come myself? Well, so it was. But whether I so intended before our meeting or only after, it is more modest in me not to say. You will understand, we can talk only here, in the open."

"Of course." I glanced up at a sky that seemed throbbing with stars. "It is a good place to talk. Any place would be good."

"So long as the company pleases."

"If there were no limit but that, I would stay in this courtyard for ever. I will ask them to fetch chairs for us."

She laughed at this and her laughter was low and pleasant to the ears, but I could not tell whether this quality of her laughter was a thing remembered or a thing discovered only now.

"I see you are more used to inns than to the houses of Saint John," she said. "Where would they find chairs? They have benches in the refectory, they have benches in the chapel. In no other place do they ever sit. The master will have his chair, quite a grand one, but I cannot believe he would give it up very readily."

"Not to me, certainly."

"In any case, their chairs would be like their beds, made for penance, not comfort."

It was the tone of one who had travelled, one acquainted with luxury.

She came from Outremer, where the beds were said to be soft. Thinking this, I was in sudden thrall to an image of her lying naked in one. The demon of lust is an agile climber, he can make himself thin, he can enter by any chink or cranny. It is Peter Lombard, as I believe, who first spoke of this thinness in the second book of his 'Sentences', that devoted to angels and demons and the fall of man.

"If you will deign," I said, "there is a muretto that goes round the fountain there, broad enough to sit on. And we can rest our backs against the wall, if we so choose, one on either side."

"Yes, let us do that. You were always resourceful. The ram will not mind, he has seen and heard everything by this time."

"The resourceful one was you," I said, as we took our places there.

"Why do you say that?"

"You always found good reasons." I paused here, wanting to say how much I had admired this courage and cleverness of hers, this steadiness in deceiving those set over us, when she knew full well what disgrace the discovery of our trysts would mean for her. In this respect there had been no comparison between us; I would have been punished in some manner, but for her it would have been an immediate return home with reputation tarnished. I could not see her well now, in the dimness of the yard – the lamps had been all extinguished, save only the one above the gate. I could see the gleam of silver in her hair when the thread caught the light, and the oval of her face, and the outline of her form in the long riding-cloak, as she leaned back against the wall. "I will never forget how much you ventured for my sake," I said.

I saw her smile. "Venturing made the kisses sweeter. There was the excitement of it, the time together was short so it was precious."

"As it is now."

"We are not children now. We can have more time, if we want it."

"Tonight? Tomorrow?"

"I was not speaking of tonight and tomorrow," she said. "I hope our future will contain more days than that." As if to forestall any reply I might make to this she said quickly, "You risked for me too."

"You were worth any risk, a hundred times over."

"And you were not? There were windows that looked down over the exercise yard. I used to watch you at practice. I saw you hurl the darts at the target. I saw you do the cut and block with the other boys. I saw you dash down the straw men with your lance. I thought you so splendid.

Where you were the sun always seemed to be shining."

Such was my pleasure at this that I was driven to shift the subject for fear that some quiver in my voice would betray me. "Well," I said, "if we shared the risk, now let us share the credit, because it is the fact that we were never found out."

This again brought laughter from her. "No," she said, "but we came near to it sometimes. Do you remember that boy, he who was made the chamberlain for the women's apartments? He was a page still, younger than you. He watched me and followed. He found us sitting together on some stairs, do you remember? We bribed him with the honey cakes my mother used to send me."

"I remember him, yes. His name was Hugo. He fell ill not long after and was sent home and never came back. It was a disorder of the stomach, everything he ate he vomited up. We never learned what became of him."

"It was providential. He would have betrayed us in the end, the supply of honey cakes was not regular enough to prevent it."

"He would have asked for more than cakes from you. They always ask for more. Hugo watched the boys as well as the girls. He was only ten but spying and extortion came naturally to him. He was the first of that kind I ever knew. There have been a good number since."

I had spoken with a bitterness that I at once regretted; it was a note too harsh for this enchanted occasion of our meeting. For a moment or two she was silent, then she said, "I do not know what your life has been, but your face is that of the boy I knew."

This was very gently said and it acted on my soul as if a gate had been opened to let out trapped water, because she who sat there close to me, though half-obscured now in the dimness of the yard, had still the face I had loved when my hopes were high, when everything had seemed possible. I told her of my disappointments, of my father's decision to retreat from the world – she had heard nothing of this, she said, having been away all this time in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I told her – and my voice shook on it a little in spite of myself – how sick I was of carrying the purse and counting the coin, how I longed to live in the light of day. I told her what I had told no one else, I spoke of the figure I kept with me like a talisman for my spirit to touch, the shining silver of the barge, the glory of majesty that made the King so dazzling to the eyes as he rested on the dark water, the creatures below the surface that kept the balance.

She said little, but I could feel the closeness of her listening. And when I had done she attempted no easy words of comfort, but in her turn told me of her fortunes since the time when, soon after her fourteenth birthday, she had left to be married to Tibald of Langre, an acquaintance of her father's, a man of thirty-four whom she hardly knew, who had amassed money in the wars with the infidel and wanted to settle down. He had a fief in the Holy Land, as a vassal of King Baldwin, also estates in Sicily.

"We had no issue," she said. "He blamed me for not giving him an heir and I took the fault for mine, as it is always considered the woman's fault. But Tibald had other loves, and made no secret of it, and none of them bore him a child that I know of. So I do not know if I am barren, I have not put it to the proof except with him." Her face was turned towards me as she spoke; there was not light enough to read her expression, but I felt she had spoken these words for me, and my heart was stirred.

He had died the year before, while taking part in the siege of Ascalon, not of wounds but of a seizure. "He always ate too much and drank too much for the climate there," she said. "He was like many of them, he saw no need to change from his habits in France. He drank wine for his thirst, and he ate fat meat. It was pork that killed Tibald, if I have to find one word for it. One evening, after a day in the saddle, when he tried to rise from his chair, where he was sitting among the others, he fell back and could not move and lost his power of speech. They carried him to bed but he died that same night, without finding his voice again."

There was no trace of sadness in her voice, or even of much regret, except perhaps for Tibald's habits of eating; she might have been talking of any man's death. If she had wept for him the tears were long dry. It surprised me a little that she did not affect sorrow, even if feeling none, because such is the practice of the recently widowed. Then I understood that she was paying me the compliment of frankness, and I remembered suddenly that she had been the same in the days of our courtship, deceiving others but never me, never pretending reluctance, never requiring to be persuaded or cajoled, not disguising her eagerness any more than I disguised mine.

Since Tibald had died without issue, the land had come to her, both that in Jerusalem and that in Sicily. She would return, or such was her purpose at present. She was used to the life there and liked it, but she had wanted to see her parents, who lived in retirement on their lands near Troina, in the Val Demone. She had been accompanied from the Holy Land by her brother Adhemar, a knight in the following of Raymond, Count of Tripoli, who had given him leave. But she had come to Bari without kinsfolk, to partake of the holy oil and give thanks to Saint Nicholas for bringing her safe to Italy. On the morrow she would return to Borsora in Apulia where her cousin, Simon of Evreux, had his lands. She would stay there two days more then return to her parents. Her father wanted her at home. How long she would remain in Sicily she did not know, she had made no plans.

"To say truth I am enjoying the freedom that has come with my widowhood," she said. "I suppose it is wrong to say this, even to you, but I cannot help feeling it. There was always someone's permission to seek. Now it is only a pretence. I defer to my father and my brother, but it is only for the sake of manners. And this is because I have come into possession of Tibald's lands, they are in my grant. I am Alicia of Bethron. Of course I must marry again, and before too long, my estates in Jerusalem will need a man to manage and defend. Ascalon and Jaffa are close and they are still held by the Moslems. But I will never be given away again, I will choose, I have vowed it."

I saw a hand stray to her throat but could not see what lay there. For a short while there was silence between us. When she spoke again it was in a tone much lighter. "There is no doubt of it, more is permitted to a widow than a wife, much more. Otherwise, how could we two have sat here in the dark so long?" With this she rose. "It is late," she said. "You have a weary way to go tomorrow."

"Thoughts of you will make the way seem lighter." I rose and took some paces towards her, following the curve of the muretto. "All these years, and I have never forgotten you," I said.

She moved forward a little and stopped, as if hesitating. I thought she might come close to me, close enough for me to take her in my arms, but she did not. Two paces more, and I could have touched her, laid my hand on her hair or her cheek. Some grace in me conquered this impulse, kept me standing still there.

"Nor I you," she said, "my splendid Thurstan, my valiant boy at the lists."

She was turning away. "And tomorrow?" I said. "Will I not see you tomorrow?"

"We will leave not much after daybreak."

"I will be waiting here, by the fountain, if it be only for the sight of you."

"Well," she said, smiling now, "I hope we can greet each other at least.

It is not many hours away, we have talked long. Good night, Thurstan Beauchamp."

"Good night, my lady, and a sweet repose to you." I watched her move to the stairs that led to the gallery, saw her mount them and pass briefly under the lamp that lay over the door of her chamber. The door was opened and closed, she passed from my sight. I stayed there some time longer, gazing up, as if by not moving I could somehow prolong a sense of her presence. The words of a song came to my mind, one from Provence, which I had sung sometimes: To console me for her loss, I think of the place where she is… I heard no voices from within and thought that perhaps Alicia had not wanted to wake the woman who attended her, who would be sleeping now. She would undress and prepare for bed unaided, and this consorted with what I felt to be the kindness of her nature.

I will confess here, since I am resolved to confess everything, that for a little while, as I stood there, I put to use that faculty of speculation I have spoken of before, encouraged in me by Yusuf, but I think already there in strong enough measure, and I began to picture this undressing of hers, but did not go far with it. She was all marvel to me, not flesh. She was my lady found again. And I was her splendid Thurstan, not a spy, not a lecher.

I was there at my post at daybreak, having slept very little for fear of sleeping too much. But our time together was brief. She sent her people to wait beyond the gate, except for one of the serjeants, who held the horse for her while we walked about the yard. The bleak light, the presence of others, the imminence of our farewells, all this constrained us.

"Take good care on the road," she said. "You are returning to difficult times."

"How can I see you again? But perhaps you do not want to?"

"Yes, I want to. I will come soon to Palermo, very soon."

She glanced up at me as she spoke and my heart lifted at the promise in her glance and in her words. "Angels guided my steps in Bari," I said.

"And mine. Now I must be on my way, and so must you."

There was still no touch between us. She looked once more at me, then turned towards the man who held her horse. He would have dismounted to assist her, but I went forward and took the bridle from him and brought the horse to her. I knelt in the dust of the yard and made a stirrup for her with my hands and lifted her thus into the saddle and wished her God speed. I felt the touch of her hand on my head and the murmur of her voice above me, "Thurstan, my knight," or so it sounded – her voice was very soft. Then they were gone with a clatter, and one of the hospitallers was already closing the gate.