The Ruby In Her Navel

XVII

All through the hunt, from sunrise when we rode out, her image stayed in my mind. The time passed as in a dream, when the thoughts and feelings belong only partly to what is before our eyes, and there is an attendant life that runs along beside us. While we waited for the finding and unharbouring of the hart, while I held myself in readiness for the chase and listened for the baying of the scent, while we followed the ruses and doublings of the quarry as he ran back on his own tracks to strengthen the scent then bounded sideways to confuse the hounds or entered and left the streamlets that run through the woods so as to break his traces, while I galloped with the others and followed the sound of the horn and shouted with all the power of my lungs and ducked the low branches, amidst all this hullabaloo and headlong career, I still drifted on the dark lake, still heard the words of love and promise she had given me, still felt the ring where it lay threaded against my breastbone. And when this splendid animal was worn down at last and lost its faith in flight and turned to confront the dogs, when Bertrand, as Lord of the Hunt, brought his mount forward and lifted his bulk in the saddle and plunged his lance through the shoulder and pierced the heart, my pity for it and my admiration for the stand it had made were deepened by memories of Alicia's words and glances, her face bright-eyed in the light of the lantern, and the beauty of the hart's slaying was the beauty of her hands as she raised them in the dimness of the trees to take off her ring.

It was late when we regained the palace; there had been much to do – as generally in a hunt that is well conducted – in the flaying and butchering of the hart and the rewarding of the dogs. And here again Bertrand showed me his favour, as he had the day before at the Assembly.

When the hart had been laid on its back and the scrotum and testicles removed and the skin of the throat slit up the length of the neck, and we had sounded the death on our horns and the dogs had bayed the death and been granted a brief time to tear at the throat, so as to remind them that the hart was their true and noble quarry, when the skin had been well and neatly peeled away by the huntsman and his varlets, Bertrand, whose prerogative it was to make the first cuts of the jointing, turned courteously to me and graciously asked me, before all that company – and her brother Adhemar among them – to assist him in it.

Bertrand of Bonneval, whose mother's brother was the Count of Conversano. And he allowed me to use his severing knives from his own scabbard, with handles made of ebony inlaid with gold. With our sleeves rolled up to keep them from the blood, we worked side by side, he very elegantly cutting out the tongue and I slicing the smaller muscles of the shoulder. And glad I was for my time as squire to Hugo of Venosa, when I had learned the unmaking of the hart under his exacting gaze.

So it was with a great sense of well-being and satisfaction that I returned, bearing in my pannier some delicate morsels I was hoping to offer Alicia when we feasted on the venison that night, in particular those tender muscles the Normans call fol l'i laisse, meaning he is mad who would leave them. But I had scarce had time to wash away the stains of blood from forearms and hands, when there was a tapping at my chamber door and it was Caspar, come to tell me that his mistress had left in the morning, being worried for her father, who was ill and needed care.

The surprise of this made my disappointment all the keener. I remembered now that she had spoken once before of her father's ill-health. But she had said nothing to me of her intention to leave so early, on the very day of the hunt. Perhaps it was only this morning she had decided to go.

Otherwise, surely, she would have told me…

Caspar must have read my feelings in my face – it was always Yusuf's reproof that I allowed too much to show there. "He is asking for her," he said. "The messenger came early, soon after you set out. She left me here to inform you of it and to give you her regrets for this sudden departure."

"What is the nature of the illness?"

He paused a moment before replying, then shrugged slightly, a gesture that would have been insolent in a servant but in him, with the special place he appeared to enjoy in Alicia's regard, it seemed natural enough.

"Well, it is no secret. He is losing the powers of his mind. So it has been for some three years now. He does not remember the happenings of his life, he does not recognise faces that once he knew well, and this grows slowly worse, though he is still strong in body. The Lady Alicia was always his favourite, he knows her and he listens for her voice and her step. None can comfort him as well as she."

He fell silent here, as if awaiting some reply, but I could find none to give him. "She is very devoted to her father," he said.

"She left no other word for me?"

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes upon me. Once again I was struck by his handsome looks and the independence of his bearing. "She asked me to assure you that this changes nothing."

On this he bowed slightly and withdrew and I had to be contented with it. Neither Adhemar nor Alboino was present at supper so I supposed they had left at the same time. The venison lacked savour without her, though I had an honoured place at the table and was listened to when I spoke of the events of the chase. With the hours that passed I grew reconciled to her departure and even found good reason in it. She was the only daughter, only she could give her father solace when he felt distressed in his darkness. It seemed to me entirely natural that any man, father or no, would call to her in his need. And I had her ring in my keeping and her promise in my heart.

These were the feelings that remained uppermost in my mind on returning to Palermo, and there now began a period of happiness for me as I waited to have word from her. Whatever in my work might have seemed tedious or distasteful before, now came lightly to me. I looked forward to the time when Alicia and I would be man and wife and I would return to the life I had been intended for. She had not said how long it would be before we exchanged our vows, but I was content to wait on her wishes and her sense of propriety. Indeed, this very waiting was a fulfilment of the vows of service I had made her on our parting, in keeping with the order of chivalry I would soon now be joining. My years at the Diwan of Control, my purveying of pleasures and all that this had masked, all the unworthy acquaintance, in my new life these things would dwindle in memory, almost as if they had never been. No more lies, no more deceivings…

The King returned from Salerno and we were finally able to offer him the spectacle of the Anatolian dancers. This was done in proper form by Stefanos through the Office of the Seneschal. The Dance of the Belly, the first time ever in the King's domain – so we gave it out; we said nothing about their wanderings in southern Italy, letting it be generally inferred that they had been wafted, by means more or less magical, from the Taurus Mountains.

The royal summon came sooner than we had expected. King Roger was to entertain a company of notables from Germany, among them Otto of Zahringen and his son Frederick, whose active help he was eager to obtain in fomenting revolt against Conrad Hohenstaufen. His widowed daughter-in-law, Elisabeth of Blois-Champagne, was to join them – it was her last appearance at court before returning to France.

It was late in the afternoon that he sent notice, either on the spur of the moment or because Sir Stephen Fitzherbert, the chamberlain in charge of the kitchens and all matters concerning the seating at table and the serving and the entertainments, whispered in his ear. This service Stephen had sometimes done before and claimed a fee from our Diwan – or a gift, as it was called, to remove the notion of payment. Naturally he would expect a gift on this occasion too, since whether or not it had been his doing no one could say.

There was very little time; they had to change into their new clothes immediately. The King would dine early, as his habit was: often, after taking leave of his guests, he would go on working far into the night, attended only by his notary, Giovanni dei Segni, one of the very few who enjoyed his whole trust. While he was dining we would wait in an adjoining anteroom. When we were sent for I would lead them into the Great Hall, make my bow to the assembled company, then return to the anteroom and await them – there was no place for me in the hall; I was neither guest nor performer.

It only remained for me to give them instructions as how they were to bear themselves in the King's presence. It was the first time I had seen them since Nesrin had made us laugh with her talk of going into the bushes. I was as aware as ever of her presence there among them, and strangely glad for it. But I took care to address the group as a whole, without letting my eyes rest too long on anyone. They were to follow me in file, the three women then the two men. The dancing space would be lit by torches against the wall, they would see it there before them. I would make my bow and leave. They would form a line facing the King and his guests, and they would all bow together, bending the knee and holding the body low.

Fearing they might not have understood my words, I gave them a demonstration, not thinking, in my eagerness to have everything done properly and in order, that I might look ridiculous, inclining my body in this fashion, all alone there and without an immediate reason. "Keep this bow and hold yourselves still while you count to ten. Count slowly.

One – two – three – four. When you come to ten, straighten up. Try to do it so that you all straighten up together. Ozgur and Temel will then seat themselves with their backs to the wall. They will start playing and so the dancing will begin."

There was a prolonged silence among them after these words. They had not followed their usual practice of averting the gaze while I spoke, but watched my movements closely as I bowed and counted and straightened up.

Now they were regarding me with a certain fixity of expression which I took at first to mean they had not understood. I was supposing with some weariness that I would have to go through it all again, when I realised that the look was not one of failure to understand but of wary curiosity: they were regarding me as one might regard a creature of unusual shape encountered in an unlikely place.

This was disconcerting and made it difficult to know what to say next. I essayed a smile. Of course, they were not civilised people, the practice of bowing would seem strange to them. "Time is short," I said. "Perhaps we could practise it a little?"

A hand went up and it was hers. I was not deceived for a moment by the expression of serious enquiry on her face, not for a moment… She looked beautiful in her new bodice and skirt with the white sash round her middle. Her black hair was untied, it lay loose to her shoulders. I noticed now for the first time that it was not quite straight but had a curl or wave in it which I supposed must be natural. But perhaps not, perhaps she had made it with curling tongs. I had a sudden sense of her life as it might be in private, when she was alone. And for a moment she seemed indeed alone, there was no one else there, we were looking across an empty space at each other. I felt my smile faltering. "What is it?" I asked.

"They hear the counting, they will laugh."

It seemed to me that she spoke the Greek words with a better accent now, and more easily. But it was clear that the spirit of mockery was not changed in her. "You must count inside your heads," I said, tapping my own head with a forefinger to drive the point home.

But this was a mistake on my part because Temel now repeated the gesture, but in a more rapid and violent way and he was followed in this by Ozgur. They were signalling that they thought me mad, and this angered me because they were savages and had no idea of polite behaviour, and made this ignorance into a virtue. "Well, whether you like it or not," I said, "if you want his Royal Majesty's favour, you will have to make your bow and do your count. Otherwise you will disgrace yourselves and me."

At this they fell to talking among themselves, all but Nesrin, who did not join in but stood apart from them. I hoped this might be a sign of sympathy with me but could not be sure – I was not sure of anything about her except that she was beautiful.

There was no time now for any more discussion; we had to set off immediately in order to be in attendance when the call came. We were escorted to the royal apartments by two household guards in their tall black hats and silver braid. As they clattered and jingled along beside us I wondered how I could ever have wanted to become one of them. Higher things awaited me now.

When we were esconced in the antechamber, not much more was said among us and I took this to mean they had agreed among themselves to follow my instructions. The call came from one of Fitzherbert's stewards, who stood at the door and beckoned. I followed him, and the Anatolians followed me in the order I had prescribed. We reached the dancing space and I stepped forward to make my bow. I had a confused sense of the spectators seated close to me, lower down in the hall, and of the King at the high table with his guests. It was the same confusion I always felt in his presence, as if I had come suddenly from some dusky place into a fullness of light that bewildered my eyes and prevented me from seeing him clearly. There was the gleam that lay on the circlet of gold over his brows and on the gold brocade at the shoulders of his robe – more than this radiance I did not see. I bent my knees and inclined my body low and began my count.

The Anatolians were at my back and ready to bow in their turn, or so I thought. But before I was half-way through my counting I heard voices and laughter behind me: they were calling to one another in their own tongue, just as they had on the night when I first saw them, just as if these courtiers before them now were the same gaping boors that had surrounded them then! I heard the clatter of the women's shoes as they shook them off on to the stone floor, then the quick tapping of the drum and the first plaintive strains of the long-necked dulcimer. They had not formed a line, they had not bowed, they had not counted. In the royal presence they had shown no slightest mark of deference or respect!

My throat had tightened. I could not have spoken to them, even if they could have heard. I felt the touch of a swirling skirt, like a breath. I turned to see Nesrin swaying close behind me. The music grew louder.

There was nothing for it now but to leave in the best order I could and let things take their course. I would no longer have my place as purveyor after this gross breach, so much was certain. I would be lucky to escape prison.

I turned and took two paces towards the door we had entered by. But I was not able to get farther. Nesrin took some dancing steps across my path and seized my hand in her own much smaller one and held it tightly – so tightly that without unseemly violence I could not free myself. I thought for a terrible moment she wanted to bring me into the dance, but it was not this because as soon as she had my hand in her own she stopped dancing; she stood still and looked at me and I saw that she wanted me, for some reason of her own, to stay there, to be present while they danced.

A great swell of laughter came from the assembled company to see my escape cut off, to see us standing hand-in-hand there, while the music sounded and Yildiz and Havva turned slowly in the first steps of the dance. At the laughter – and this seemed almost the strangest thing of all – I saw Ozgur and Temel, who were sitting back against the wall with their instruments, nodding and laughing together as if sharing a joke.

After a moment I realised that they were not laughing at me but at the spectators, and I felt that they were my friends and never afterwards lost this feeling.

But still I could not move. Nothing like this had ever happened before, through all the succession of jugglers, buffoons, strongmen and acrobats that I had at different times introduced into the royal presence.

Nesrin's eyes were on me, bright and unwavering, neither timid nor bold but with something that seemed like trustfulness in them. Quite suddenly I knew what I should do. I did not know why she wanted me there but I knew what I should do – or better, I knew what I should not do: Thurstan of Mescoli was not a man to slink away with laughter in his ears. I smiled at Nesrin and nodded, and she released my hand and turned away from me, back into the dance. I raised my head and walked with a pace neither fast nor slow to the nearer wall, and I stood against this to watch the dancing. And in doing this I turned my face from the King.

For a while it was little more than strolling, as the women snapped their fingers and Ozgur began a crooning song. Then Temel struck the drum sharply with the heel of his hand, exclaiming loudly as he did so, and the women echoed this exclamation, and then they were dancing.

Yildiz was first to quicken pace, turning her back on the people in the hall and facing towards Temel, who seemed both to lead and follow the rhythm of her steps with quick finger-tapping at both ends of the drum.

She raised her arms to shoulder height and shivered them and the loose copper bangles run along her arms and glittered. Then the others quickened too, and they too faced away from those watching, dancing for one another, or so it seemed, making their arms shiver in the same way, a shivering that seemed to come from the arms themselves and not from any effort of the shoulders. Then all three began turning upon themselves and the scarves fell away, leaving their middle parts bare.

When that shuddering of the body came that precedes the dance of the belly, there was complete silence among the people there, though they were flushed with wine and had been loud enough before. And then, with the shudders ceasing and the ripples of the belly beginning, every eye was on the shining pebbles of glass set in the dancers' navels, and the rolling movement that caused the dimple of the navel to close on the glass and dim it then open again to reveal its shine. Nesrin raised her arms to the nape of her neck as if to make some change in the ribbon that tied her hair behind, but she kept them there motionless and looked down at her own movements, watching herself with a pride that excluded the spectators only to involve them more.

Watching, I forgot my disgrace. I was moved by the beauty and wildness of the dancing, and I saw, I think for the first time, that the beauty of it lay in this wildness. It was the dancing of outcast people, rebels. They obeyed nothing and no one. They made no attempt to match their movements one with another. They made no smiles, they did not seek the eyes of those watching. None gave a glance towards the high table where the King sat. And yet, on that night of moonlight and firelight when I had seen them first, Nesrin had danced before me and looked me in the face. And even now, as she turned this way and that, setting her feet with that grace and care I remembered, even now sometimes our eyes met.

Unexpectedly, in the midst of my trouble, I was attacked by self-reproach. How could I have expected these lawless wanderers to bow and count? When I thought of all the bowing and counting I had done in my life I could not feel satisfied with what it had brought me. I forgave the Anatolians in my heart for all the trouble they had caused me in the past and all that they were likely now to bring upon my head.

And in the particular case of Nesrin I extended this forgiveness to include the disturbance of my senses and the distraction of my thoughts that she had caused me from the first moment of seeing her.

The dulcimer fell silent now and the beating of the drum came in alternate rhythms. The dancers went back, back, arching over until their heads came close to the floor behind. Bodies arched thus, legs slightly spread, faces looking upward, they repeated that raising and shivering of the arms. It was an astonishing thing to see. I remembered now the words of the Greek trader, made poetic by his desire of coin. As if inviting the love of a god… I had eyes only for Nesrin, who was between the others, for the slightly parted knees, for the toenails reddened with henna. Failing a god, why not Thurstan of Mescoli? So whispered the slumberless demon of my lust.

There was dead silence in the hall as they came slowly upright again.

Then the King's voice sounded, a single shout of bravo, the supreme mark of royal approval. It released a great storm of applause that seemed to rebound from walls and ceiling. Coins began to clatter on the floor but not one of these people, who had bargained with me so stubbornly for two ducats at the inn, made a move to pick them up, and I was pleased at this because I was in their midst and felt for that moment that I belonged with them, pleased that these homeless strangers, born to poverty as I supposed, did not give any there the satisfaction of power, to see them scramble for the coins and thus feel the restoring of a supremacy that might have been put in doubt by the talents of the humble.

The plaudits were continuing. The Anatolians were standing gravely there, a dew of sweat on the brows of the women. Some words passed among them and all looked at me as I stood against the wall. Then Ozgur gestured towards me, a movement strange to my eyes as often the gestures of these people were, bringing the palm of his hand towards his chest with fingers splayed, in a manner that seemed fierce almost, as if he would strike himself. I understood then that he wanted me to come forward and join them. But I still had not moved when Nesrin came to me and again took my hand and brought me to stand among them, she on one side and Havva on the other, and the applause continued, with shouts and even some stamping of the feet – indeed it seemed to me that the sound grew louder as I came forward. And after some moments of confusion I found myself gratified by this tide of applause, more than gratified: I felt warmly immersed in it, as if it were my natural element. And this was in a way strange, as I had never before heard approval of me shouted by numbers of people at the same time – the nearest I had come to it was at the age of fifteen, with shield and lance, on occasions when the lord brought his guests to watch us practise at the lists.

In short, the Anatolian dancers were a great success, and this it was, I believe, that saved me from the King's displeasure at their failures of courtesy. I had done well in the past with some dwarf jugglers and an Armenian who could lift enormous weights and two Italians from Modena, a man and a woman, who could tell stories without words, only by movement and gesture and changes of face, so that one could understand everything. These had been some of my successes, but they all paled by comparison with this one. Besides, I had not been present at those times, not had this experience of being lifted up and borne along on a warm tide.

Before we could leave the hall, Fitzherbert came down to us – in person now. Not to order my immediate arrest for lese-majesty, but to inform me that by immediate command of the King this company should hold itself in readiness to appear again before him on the following evening.

Fitzherbert, who is haughty and cold in his usual manner, smiled upon me and congratulated me on the finding of such dancers. And in this courtier's smile of his I read the King's pleasure. The coins that had been thrown were gathered up for us and this turned out to be a great advantage, as more were added in the process and it was a heavy purse that lay in my palm by the end.

There was more to come. Orders had been sent through to the kitchen. We were escorted to the lodge that forms part of the gatehouse at the entrance to the inner courtyard, and a table was set up on a trestle in a room there, and before long there came servants with trays of food: roast venison in a juice of grapes and garlic, fish cooked in wine and dressed with sage and parsley, the bread they call gastel, made with brown flour and olive oil and honey. These were dishes from the King's own table! And with them came flagons of raisin wine, as they make it in the eastern parts of the island, wine that was clear to the bottom of the cup and delicate in taste and deceiving in this delicacy, as it mounted quickly to the head.

We feasted together like lords, and afterwards with the wine still passing round, I emptied the purse on the table and shared the coin among them. I made the division in five parts, but it was the women who took charge of the money, making bundles with the scarves they had discarded in the dance.

"This is only the beginning," I said. "You have pleased the King greatly, you have also pleased his very important guests. He will not delay in showing the marks of his favour."

I was exhilarated by the wine and by the success of the evening and my rescue from opprobrium, for which rescue I now felt deeply grateful to these people, altogether forgetting, in the exaltation of my spirits, that it was they who had caused the risk of it in the first place. I decided that it would be fitting to make a speech at this point and got to my feet. I said that this had been a very brilliant and unusual occasion with a good many first times in it, the first time there had been such great applause, the first time anyone had been engaged for the succeeding evening, the first time food and drink had been sent, at least in the years I had been purveyor of pleasures at the Diwan of Control. And from the King's own table! Above all, it was the first time that I had stayed to watch and been included in the applause. The idea of including me might have been in all their minds, but it was Nesrin who had come and taken my hand, so it could be said that it was her doing. I looked at her as I spoke. Her hair was tied back with a red ribbon and the upper part of her stomach, below where the bodice ended, was still uncovered – she had tied the scarf, with its knot of money, round her waist. Under that scarf, I thought, there would be the glittering pebble in her abdomen, temporarily eclipsed. Whatever I noted in her looks came always as a surprise to me, even when I had looked at her only shortly before, it was still surprising, even though familiar.

I am well aware that this is a statement lacking in logic. In this my account I labour to serve truth; logic I leave to the schoolmen. She was smiling at me now and there sprang into my mind the unruly notion of yet another first time, and I stumbled in my discourse, saying I was not sure why they, why she, had wanted me to stay but I was glad that I had done so and would remember this evening for a very long time to come. I could think of nothing further to add to this, but only to thank them, which I did, with a full heart, and I raised my cup and drank to them and wished them luck.

Then Ozgur got to his feet and he smiled and looked at me fully, which I could not remember him doing before, and began speaking in his hesitant and strangely accented Greek. They had all wanted me to stay but it was certainly Nesrin who had taken my hand and she had decided this herself, why he could not tell, it would have to be asked from her. He was only a man, what did he know? There was laughter at this and Nesrin looked aside, but not as one displeased. In any case, Ozgur said, it was something only she among them could have done. But they all felt glad I had stayed and they thanked me for bringing them here and making their fortunes and they would never forget me.

Still on his feet, he glanced around him and said some words in a low tone, and the others rose and they all moved from the table and formed a line before me and they bowed all together as I had shown them how to do and they began counting, but aloud and in their own language. They did it exactly, perfectly, the bowing and the counting and the straightening up. And every one of their faces had a smile for me.

I was greatly moved by this because I knew it for an expression of friendship and respect and because by making a joke of the ceremony in that way they were seeking to show me that I had been in the wrong when I tried to compel them. And I had thought them savages. No doubt it was the fault of the wine but I felt some start of tears and thought of making another speech but decided to give them a song instead. I chose one written by a great hero of mine, the troubadour Bernard of Ventadour, born the son of a castle servant, whose talents won him honour in many courts and made his name famous.

When grass grows green and leaves show forth And trees are bright with blossom, And lark lifts up his voice, Such joy it gives me, Joy in my lady, and in myself joy…

As I sang I looked often at Nesrin and I saw by her face she was held by my singing, and this brought more tenderness and joy into my voice.

There was much applause when I finished and they asked for another song and would not be satisfied till I agreed. This time I chose one I had composed myself, very different in mood.

The one I most desire

Is cold towards me.

She does not summon me now.

Why is she so changed?

If she love me not with her body

At least let her show me kindness…

The heartbreak of this and the abjectness of it, and my heightened feelings, and Nesrin's attentive face before me, combined to break my voice a little as I sang – it was sometimes a fault in me when I sang before others that I allowed my feelings to come too close to the words I was singing and so the even tenor of the voice was threatened.

I did not sing more, though they wanted me to and loudly asked it. I could tell from their words and faces that my singing had moved them, the more so perhaps as they had not known of this talent of mine and so had been taken by surprise.

"This night stays in our memory for ever," Temel said, and he raised his cup to me and I touched it with mine and we drank together. I saw how they all enjoyed the wine, though the women drank less. I made some joking remark about the Prophet's forbidding of it, and they said they were not Moslems but Yazidis. This was a religion quite new to me and I was about to enquire into the tenets of its faith when it occurred to me that it was a question I might put to Nesrin, if ever I got the opportunity to engage her in talk when no one else was by.

The opportunity came sooner than expected. It was growing late, the gathering had been a happy one for all of us, and when we began to bid one another good night it was in friendly and affectionate fashion, both the men and the women reaching to take my hand and the men also patting me on the shoulder.

I do not know exactly how it came about, this was a night of blessings.

I waited for the others to pass first, Nesrin hung back a little, and so it happened that we two found ourselves alone together at the door and standing rather close. The time was very short if I wanted to keep her there – a matter of moments. I wished only to delay her, to delay the parting a little, I had no other thought. The Yazidis would not serve as a topic, this proximity had come by chance, it was not a moment for discussing religion. My slow-wittedness makes the blood rise to my face now, as I remember it and confess it. In my dumbness I nearly lost her, nearly let her leave in silence and rejoin the others, who I thought perhaps might be waiting outside. She herself said nothing. She looked at me briefly then looked away. After a moment she made a movement towards the door…

"How did you become such a marvellous dancer?"

She smiled a little and I had the feeling that she was relieved that I had found some words. "My mother… she also was a dancer. She teach me when I am a child, tall like this." She raised her hand to show me the height from the floor. "I start to dance when I start to walk."

"Your dancing is beautiful." Everything about you is beautiful, I wanted to say, your eyes, your throat, your hair. But I did not find the courage. It was the first time she and I had ever been alone together. I had often wished for this and imagined how it might be. But in that wishing I had always been ready of speech, at my ease, masterful – even lordly. I had not been this present Thurstan, tongue-tied, woefully lacking in address, gazing at a dancing girl with a nude stomach as if she were a princess in a courtly fable.

She waited a moment longer then passed through the door out on to the cobbled space before the gatehouse. There were guards at the gate and two lamplighters with their ladders against the inner wall, but there was no sign at all of the other Anatolians. It was a warm night and the moon was nearly at the full. In the gentler light beyond the range of the lanterns at the gate we paused again. Even more strongly than before I wanted to keep her with me.

"There was moonlight when first I saw you," I said. "Moonlight and firelight together. Why did you take my hand tonight? Why did you want me to stay?"

I saw her shake her head a little as if perplexed. "You do not know? It cannot be one of the men because men do not take the hand that way. It cannot be Yildiz or Havva because they have their men with them, it is not a proper thing for them to take your hand. And so it is left to me because I do not… because there is no one…"

I was obscurely disappointed by this explanation. Was it no more than that? I began to move in the direction of the stables where I had left my horse. "You do not tell me all the truth," I said. "You speak as if all of you had decided on it and you were the one chosen. But that is not so. I was there, I was watching. The others were already dancing and playing. You decided without them to come and take my hand. You decided alone."

She stopped at this and turned to me and tossed her head at me like an impatient pony. "I tell you what is true," she said. "I say what is in my mind. Thurstan Bey, you are important man and pass your days in a palace but there is much you not understand. I do not say who decided, I say why the others could not do it." There seemed to me a lack of logic in this, but her eyes had a light of battle in them and I did not feel equal to drawing her attention to this lack. And there was something else now occupying my mind. Absorbed as I had been in the talk between us, I realised only now that Nesrin was going the wrong way: instead of turning to rejoin her companions she had turned with me towards the stables. Did she know this? It was probably a mistake, she did not know the precincts of the palace very well, she might believe I was accompanying her when in fact she was accompanying me. Immediately I was beset with questions – always a weakness with me. What would a man of honour do? What would a man do who aspired to knighthood? What would Alicia expect of her splendid Thurstan? She would expect him to assume it was a mistake and point the mistake out with utmost promptitude. In that case Nesrin and I would part there and then, a thought I found difficult to endure. Or perhaps I could offer to escort her back to her sleeping quarters. But if it was not a mistake, what then? Nesrin would be wounded. Was it an ideal of knighthood to wound the weak and frail?

It was not easy to think of Nesrin as weak and frail, but I tried hard to do so, and this is an example of how we force our thoughts to suit our wishes. In short, I said not one word. And with every step my hope mounted.

"I tell the truth to you," she said, and stopped again. "Yes, I decide alone. I choose you to stay, because I am free to choose. The other ones that watch me, I do not choose them. If they watch me or not, I do not care. I do not dance for them. But you, I care that you watch me. What is so difficult in that?"

We had started walking again and were drawing near to the stables. My heart was beating in my ears and my chest felt constricted. "I care that you listen to my singing," I said. "I was singing for you, that is the truth." We were close to the stable door now. The mare had heard my voice and step and she whinnied softly.

"That is your horse? She knows you."

"She is waiting to go home. I do not live in the palace, I live in the town."

"I know this. Stefanos told me."

"Did he so? I wanted to ask you… I did not know if you came here with me… if you had mistaken the way."

"Mistake the way?" Her eyes had widened with surprise. "How can I mistake the way? How strange man you are. All this time, while we walk together, you ask yourself does she mistake the way? One would only go with you if she mistake the way?"

"But you did not say anything."

"What should I say? I go with you, where is need to say anything? I wait for you to say if you do not want me."

"Not want you?" I said. "Not want you?"

For a moment she looked solemnly at me, then she gave me a smile that threatened to take away what poor breath I had left. "I do not mistake the way, I know the way," she said, and her voice was softer than I could have thought possible.

As we entered the stable the mare shifted but there was no other sound.

Light from the lamp that hung outside the door fell across some straw bales piled against the far wall. There was the sharp smell of the mare, the smell of beaten earth and pissy straw. Smells of every day, deeply familiar, transformed into strangeness by the clasp of our hands together, the first kisses. I might have been a man at the dawn of creation, sniffing at a new world.

There was a loft above the stable where they kept feed for the horses. A wooden stairway went up to it. There were sacks of grain here and some loose hay. I made a bed with my riding cloak and surcoat and all the rest of my clothes, careless now of the finery I had donned with such care for this court occasion. My hands were impatient and clumsy and I made some wreckage of buttons and stitches as I tore and tugged at myself in the twilight of the loft – the lamplight did not reach here but there was a barred window in the wall and the moonlight came through it.

"I must not hurt my new dress," I heard her saying. She was standing between me and the window and the moonlight fell on her as she undressed. I heard the rustle of her clothes, saw the movements of her arms as she raised the bodice over her head, saw the skirt fall to her knees, saw her step out and away from it. And all this was done with a deliberate grace, as if she was still dancing for me.

The moonlight lay on her hair and shoulders and flanks as she came towards me. Against these parts touched by the light, her eyes and the nipples of her breasts and the little bush of Venus made zones of darkness. Light was caught in the glass pebble at her abdomen, focus of my dreams, and in the thin chain that held it there, slung round the light bones of her hips. I was to think – not then, I was too stirred for thought, but later – that in these last moments before we were joined, as she showed herself to me, she was offering the beauty and promise of her body, an image on which love could rest, could guard itself through periods of separation in a way that memories of ecstasy, of bodies clutched together, cannot be guarded.

What she and I did I could not exactly say, in the sense of one thing following upon another. And since that night I have known for self-deceivers all those who claim a love was blissful and say first we did this, then we did that, as if there were one single track to the reaching of joy. It was no alleyway Nesrin and I entered together but a wondrous labyrinth, from the moment she came to me and with her nearness shielded the moonlight from me and brought me the feeling of darkness as our bodies touched, as if a band had been laid over my eyes. She came down to me and I remember – then or soon afterwards or later – my sight restored to see her face above me, lit once more by the moon, and her face had a look of sorrowing and she made a long murmuring sound. Then the moonlight was streaked with fire and I closed my eyes against the glare. I must have cried out because the mare was startled and snorted – I heard the sounds she made but not my own. I kept my eyes closed, as if the fiery light and the throes of my body could not be endured together, but I still saw the glimmers of red against the lids. They were like sunstreaks: it was like closing one's eyes against some ravishment of the sun. I swear it: there was cool and burn, moon and fire together, this first time we met with our bodies, as there had been on the night when we met with our eyes only.