The Ruby In Her Navel

XVIII

She was not there when I woke in the morning. On the floor, for only trace of her, was the red ribbon she had used to tie back her hair. The evening of that day they danced again and according to Stefanos, whom I asked to go in my place, they enjoyed a success no less resounding. He had not been asked into the hall, he said; Stephen Fitzherbert, with his jackal's nose for the whiff of success, had taken the Anatolians into his custody and care, and it was he who had presented them.

I was glad to hear of this second triumph, but glad also that I had not been there to assist at it. I could not feel regret for what had passed between Nesrin and me; I could not cease to dwell on it and marvel at it in my mind. But the morning light had brought guilt with it, memories of the vows I had made to Alicia and our exchange of rings at the lakeside.

She was so delicate and fine, a lady born, of noble family, all the best of my past was in her keeping, and all my hopes of betterment in the future. And in spite of this, within days of our promises, I had been overmastered by passion for a vagrant dancer of no birth or breeding whatever and no knowledge of what it means to aspire to knighthood.

Made gloomy by these thoughts, I fell to thinking how much simpler our life on earth would be, how much more tranquil and dignified, if we could return to the time before the Fall. It is clear that Adam was meant to pour his seed into Eve's womb; we know it from God's commandment in Genesis to go forth and multiply. But at that time there was no disturbance of lust. Saint Augustine explains this to us in his 'De Civitate Dei' – I think it is to be found there. He says that in the state of innocence those parts were moved by the same act of will by which we move our other parts, without the soul being snared by hot desire. Like raising an arm or winking an eye. I tried to imagine this blessed state, tried to imagine Adam's member as being moved in the same way as his fingers or his toes, but I could not. I believed it but I could not imagine it. Many men find their faith strengthened by what is beyond their imagining, but I am so constituted that the reverse is true of me – such failure makes the belief grow less. I began to wonder how Saint Augustine could have formed so definite an idea about these things, since he too had come after the Fall and his parts were moved in the same way as those of all of us – and not infrequently, if we can judge from the 'Confessions'.

None of these speculations helped me to a state of grace or made me feel better about myself. I was resolved to keep away from the Anatolians as far as I could, since I was miserably lacking in faith in my fortitude should Nesrin and I by any chance find ourselves alone again; I did not even trust myself not to try and contrive this once I set eyes on her.

But there was no avoiding the farewells. On the afternoon of the day before they were to leave, our King Roger sent them by means of the faithful Fitzherbert a sum of 150 gold tari, a gift of unprecedented proportions. It was brought in a bag of soft leather and left for me to deliver to them. I went with it to their quarters and gave it to Ozgur and watched while it was shared among them. With the coin that had been thrown to them and the eight dinars from the Diwan and now this magnificent gift from the King they would be richer far than they could ever have dreamed.

"What will you do now?"

I spoke the words to Ozgur but the question was for all of them. Nesrin was there with the others, not in her dancing clothes now but in a simple linen gown, and this unaccustomed dress made her seem almost like a stranger, as if she had somehow anticipated the farewell, gone away from me already.

They would go home, Ozgur said, and I took it that he referred to them all. In the village of his birth, his share of the money and that of Yildiz put together would buy them a stone house, land for pasture and for tilling, sheep, two oxen. "Many sheep there," he said. "The land is good in the valleys. My father work for others, for the owner, the mal sahibi. But I work for me and Yildiz."

"And the music?"

"I play for my grandchildren, Yildiz will teach them to dance."

"We will stay in one same place," Havva said, and it was the first time I could remember her speaking directly to me. "No more road. We are tired of road." And she made a sudden grasp at her hip and twisted her face to show aches and pains, and everyone laughed because she was young and supple and graceful in movement.

Nesrin had joined in this laughter, but her face was serious again as she looked at me. And now, as by some unspoken agreement, the others went a little farther off and left us together. She stood there silent in her new dress, her hands by her sides. Would she go without a word to me? On an impulse of anger almost, not wishing, in the distress I felt at parting, that she should be the one to dictate the mood between us in these my final moments of seeing her, I stepped towards her and took her left hand where it lay by her side and I said, "Farewell, go with God."

She allowed her hand to stay in my grasp for a moment and looked me in the face with such a serenity in her regard as made me feel I was looking at her for the first time, instead of the last. That taste of bitterness that lay on the mouth seemed less. Her eyes were darker even than I had thought them, almost black, like water that pools among dark rocks. She freed her hand and said some words of farewell. Once again it seemed she had gone from me already, as if, with her new dress and her newly acquired wealth she had embarked already on a future that held more for her than this scene of farewell. What she saw in my face I do not know. I did not look more at her, but made my last farewells to all of them together, feeling as I did so that I was parting from friends.

Then I turned from them and began to make my way to my place of work in the Diwan, where more renewals of the royal privilege were waiting for me to scan.

Before I could reach my room, while I was still in the passage that led to it, Yusuf's secretary, the eunuch Ibrahim, came quickly towards me from the head of the stairway. "I have been looking everywhere for you," he said, making it sound like an accusation. He was always hostile to me, as many of the palace Saracens were, though they dared not show it openly, because I was not of their race, they saw me as a friend to the Norman interlopers who threatened to usurp their place in the royal favour. "The Lord Yusuf wishes your immediate presence," he said.

"Already he has been made to wait."

I was in the passage that led beyond my door to Yusuf's. Because of the impression of urgency, of being impatiently awaited, that Ibrahim had given me, I hurried past my own door, went quickly through the long room where the scribes were working and entered Yusuf's cabinet without more than a light tap at the door. Entering thus abruptly, I had the sense of being somehow mistaken, of being in the wrong room. The figure before me, in these first moments, seemed like a stranger: no immaculate white robe, but silks of blue and scarlet and gold, a sheathed scimitar thrust through the broad sash. And he was standing close to the wall, and seemed to have been leaning down at the moment of my entrance, or just before that moment, as if to gather something he had let fall at the foot of the wooden panelling. But he had straightened and moved away before I was well into the room, leaving me to doubt the evidence of my senses.

For a moment he stood there, regarding me quite impassively. There was no displeasure in his face but I had the impression that I had interrupted him in something. His eyes had their usual hooded look, and once again I thought how like a hawk's his face was, with the curved beak of the nose, eyes that blinked rarely but could easily hood themselves or widen as if adjusting to stronger or weaker light.

"Lord, please forgive that I entered with so little ceremony," I said, "but I knew from Ibrahim that you had already waited some time for me and I felt to blame because I was not there at my desk to obey your call at once."

"Where were you?"

"I was sharing the King's gift among the Anatolians, those whom I found in Calabria and brought here, as my lord will remember. And I was making my farewells to them."

Yusuf nodded, and the movement brought glints from the diamond he wore where the folds of the turban crossed at the centre of his forehead.

There was a sapphire on a thin band at his throat and the handle of the scimitar was set with sapphires and opals. "One in particular you were sorry to lose," he said, with the slightest of smiles.

I felt a leap of surprise at this. I had never spoken of her to him, never mentioned her name. I know now that he intended me to feel the shock of it, he wanted me to know that he had sources of information other than myself, and this not because he thought Nesrin important – he cared nothing about her – but because he wanted to warn me. This I realised later; at the time I was concerned only to deny him the sight of surprise on a face which he had often told me showed too much, to deny also the suggestion of his smile and defend Nesrin from it. I have not much to be proud of in regard to Yusuf, but I am proud that I succeeded in this small rebellion.

"Yes," I said, "I was sorry indeed to part from her. The man who wins her for his wife may count himself lucky." How had he known? Had he set someone to watch? Had someone followed us that night, stood below, heard the sounds we made? I thought it probable enough. Trust between us was much impaired, both of us knew it. I had kept too much from him, and this mainly because of Alicia. In relating my time at Favara, I had not spoken to him of Bertrand and the favour shown to me, or of my talk with Alboino, or the vows Alicia and I had exchanged. And now, in the considered manner that was characteristic of him, he had just given me proof that he did not depend on me for his knowledge of my doings, that he had other sources. He was so much more powerful than I, so much richer; the jewels and silks he was wearing I could not have bought for a year's stipend. I knew from them that he had been riding in cavalcade through the city, as he regularly did, in company with his fellow-Saracens of high office, to show through their splendour that greater splendour of the King, a splendour veiled these days – he was rarely seen now in public.

"Well," he said, "you will be wondering why I have sent for you."

"Yes, lord."

He began, as was always the cautious way with him, by telling me what I – and most of Palermo – already knew. After the failure of the crusade and the headlong retreat from Damascus, Louis, the King of the Franks, had stayed on in Palestine, remaining there through the winter and visiting the shrines of the Holy Land.

"Those with him there say he prostrated himself at each shrine," Yusuf said. "He does not touch the ground only with knees and forehead, as do we, but with his whole body. He is very pious, but the god of the Christians did not come to his aid in Syria."

"He does not blame God for the failure, he blames the Byzantines."

This made Yusuf laugh, a thing not at all common with him, though I did not see why, I had not intended it as a joke. "Well," he said, "blame must be laid somewhere. King Louis set off for home last April and after many mishaps he is expected to land on the Calabrian coast in these next days. He will wait there for Queen Eleanor to join him, then the royal pair will make their way to Potenza, where our King Roger will be waiting to greet them. They will be the King's guests there for some days, before resuming their journey to Paris." He paused for a moment, smiling. "A fruitful meeting on both sides, as all are hoping. Every effort will be made to encourage Louis in his belief that it is the Byzantines who are to blame. Rather than God, eh? Byzantium is our enemy too. Those who join us in enmity are our friends. An alliance with the kingdom of the Franks would be of great value to Sicily in these troubled times."

He looked at me for some moments, and the smile faded. "So much is general knowledge. Now we come to a thing that is not. A request has reached us from the Curia Regis, under the seal of the Lord Chancellor's Office, that Thurstan Beauchamp, our purveyor, should be sent to Potenza in advance of the royal party, in order to help in the preparing of entertainments for their majesties. First Favara and now this. You are in great demand, so much is clear. What is less clear is who is demanding you."

"But it is for the lord of Potenza to arrange the entertainments. He must already have done so. How can I be of any help in it, going there so shortly before the royal arrival?"

"You are right, you cannot be of help."

"And so?" I was bewildered. "There must be some mistake."

"No, there is no mistake. Under cover of this you are to carry money to someone there. A sum of five hundred tari. It will not come from the Royal Exchequer even though the request for your services has come through the Curia Regis. The money is to be issued by our Diwan and entered in the usual way, though without any words as to purposes – there will be no declared destination for it. I am being asked to grant permission without knowing for what purpose the money will be spent, without knowing who it is destined for. All this is highly irregular, Thurstan Beauchamp, would you not agree?"

"They are seeking to divide us, they are seeking to destroy the trust between us." In this they were succeeding, I knew it as I spoke, knew it from the look in his eyes, the tones he used, above all from this ironic use of my full name, which once he had used like a father when he wished to cajole or persuade me, but was now a cold reminder of my Norman blood.

"Why should they wish to do that?" We were standing in the embrasure of the window, our usual place when we talked privately together. As he spoke he reached a thin arm to my shoulder, but in no friendly fashion – there was a surprising strength in the tightness of his grip. "Why should they wish to do that?" he said again, and I felt the danger in him, as I had sometimes felt it before, inspiring not fear exactly, but a sense of what it might mean to become the enemy of such a man.

"Lord, I do not know," I said. "How should I know? You can refuse to send me."

He took his hand from my shoulder and smiled and shook his head. "This request comes under the seal of the third power in the land. It may well have the blessing of the King himself. It would not be politic to refuse outright. Moreover, it would not be fruitful. Refusing, I would not learn the reasons. This is a question of money and money reaches into many corners and has many uses. It was money that took us out riding today, for our wealth to be seen, by our display to reflect the glory of the King, who is unseen."

I nodded at this but could not feel in full accord. The Franks who were coming in ever increasing numbers, and in particular the Norman knighthood, whose ranks I aspired to join, did not understand this Arab notion of kingship, indeed were hostile to it. Roger was a Norman, one of them, their feudal lord. They detested the Saracens for keeping him from them, for hedging him about with divinity. I said, "When Moslem and Christian go riding in company to honour the King, that will be the time of greatness."

"You are right, we should work for that. I had hoped you and I would work together for it, now I am less sure. In any case, it will not be soon. There is hatred on both sides. Those I ride with are men who have come to riches by their merits, by their service, not by accident of birth. Many were brought here as eunuch slaves. They have no family, no land, no power outside the palace. They know that only the King can protect them from the hatred of the Christians and so they do everything they can to keep him apart from them. Only with God's help can hearts be changed." He took me by the arm, but gently now, and began to lead me away from the window. "There is no God but God," he said, "and on Him do we rely. They will send for you soon, those who have picked you out for this mission. You will go to the place of meeting, you will listen to them carefully. You will require to know the name of the person for whom the money is intended, and the reason why it is being paid. If they refuse to tell you this, you will refuse to go and I will support you in this refusal. Five hundred tari is too great a sum to be consigned without knowing who or why."

I promised to do as he ordered me. "And if indeed I go to Potenza," I said, "everything that happens there and everything that is said to me will be faithfully carried back to you."

"Yes, I will expect your report." The words were uttered indifferently, without great conviction, and it came to me that he would not now be relying on my report alone. I was no longer trusted; someone else would be there at Potenza, someone whose duty it was, not only to watch the proceedings, but to watch me.

He kept his arm through mine as he went with me to the door. "Ah, Thurstan, Thurstan," he said at parting, no more than that, but I felt the regret in his tone and it echoed my own feelings of loss.

The summons came four days later. The attendant they sent from the Chancellor's Office led me to a stone-flagged chamber closely adjoining the shelves of the chancery archives. The archivist was waiting for me here, a monk named Wilfred of Aachen, very pale of face and peering, with lips that seemed almost bloodless and hair of a reddish colour.

After a while we were joined by the Lombard Atenulf, whom I had last seen in close conversation with Abbot Gerbert in the courtyard of San Giovanni degli Eremiti. All men with German for their native tongue…

There was a recess with a low doorway leading directly to the archives, where Wilfred did his work of collating and annotating and copying. Also kept there were notes on the people of the palace administration, a fact well-known to all. Somewhere among these shelves, recently dusted and referred to, there would be details of my own life, origins, parents, all my history since arriving in Sicily at the age of six.

A table and chairs had been set in the recess, and the three of us seated ourselves. Atenulf was a thick-necked man, full of face, with small eyes the colour of raisins, a quick voice and a frequent habit of showing his teeth in a half-smile of superiority. I knew something more of him now – I had taken some pains to know more. He had come from Austria a dozen years before, a younger son of Arnulf of Tostheim. He enjoyed the protection of the Vice-Chancellor, Maio of Bari, though I had not been able to discover why this was so. He had made his fortune by the founding of a new chancery, which he had named the Office of the King's Fame, and which concerned itself with the way King Roger was seen by the people under his rule and by states abroad. He sent men noted for their gift of speech among the people to explain the King's actions and set them in a favourable light; he had a say in the appointment of ambassadors, speaking for those who would be most skilful in justifying the King's policies; he also advised the King on the manner of his public appearances – it was said to be on his advice that Roger had taken to wearing a canopy of red silk over his head, to veil the light on him, in the manner of the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. By these various means Atenulf had gained much favour at court.

He greeted me cordially enough, as cordially as his looks and manners allowed. These were disdainful even when he wished, as now, to be friendly, and I thought it strangely incongruous that one who had made his name by setting our King in a favourable light should present himself in one so little attractive.

He began by telling me what Yusuf had told me already. I was to go in advance to Potenza, where the meeting between the two monarchs would take place. My reason for going – the reason that would be given out – was to assist in preparing the entertainments.

"It is reasonable," he said. "It carries belief. After all, you are the King's purveyor and have good fame as such. My congratulations, by the way, on the success of the Anatolian dancers – I was there and I saw them. Also you are trained in arms, and so would strengthen the guard on the King's person."

"Our Diwan has no duty in the protection of the King's person, we deal only with the dues from his demesne."

"But were you not trained for knighthood till the age of sixteen? Were you not soon to be admitted to the Household Guard when Yusuf Ibn Mansur took you into his douana and had you sent to Bologna to study Roman Law and the keeping of account-books?"

It was as I had surmised; they had studied the course of my life. I had sensed some intention of belittlement in his last words, something almost involuntary, as it seemed to me, habitual to him when addressing those he thought inferior.

"You know so much," I said, "yet you do not know that there are no courses in the keeping of account-books at the School of Law of Bologna."

An ugly expression flickered over his face but he sought to disguise it with a smile. "No man can know everything," he said.

"It is enough that a man should know where to look," Wilfred said, a view natural enough in a keeper of archives. He got up from the table as he spoke and went to the door and opened it and gave a quick glance this way and that, down the passages between the shelves.

"You will be expected," Atenulf said. "You will be received and shown to your quarters. You will wait until a certain person makes himself known to you. He will tell you that he comes from Avellino, so you will know he is the one. You will answer that you have a cousin there. To that he will say it makes you a neighbour. Not much more is required of you. You will hand over the money, the sum has been agreed. He will give you something from his person, a badge with a bird on it, in token that he has received the money. You will bear this back to me. You need know nothing more about it. It will be in your usual line of duty after all, nothing out of the ordinary, that is why you are sent. You are the pursebearer, is it not so? When you are not the purveyor of spectacles and shows."

The sneer was back in his voice but it was not this that swayed me. Even without Yusuf's orders I was not disposed to be treated thus lightly and kept in ignorance. It was a question of dignity – once again I felt the eye of Alicia on me and remembered my vow to be worthy of her. She would not want me to be ingratiating towards this arrogant interloper. He was of higher rank than I, but he was acting under instructions, I felt sure of that, though why I was so sure I could not have said. Because of this he would not want anything that might appear as a mistake on his part, anything that might make him open to question.

"You speak as if I had no choice but immediate acceptance of this mission," I said. "But that is not so, it is not a mission that comes within the tasks and duties of my Diwan, otherwise we would have had the notice ourselves and arranged the matter in the usual way without this naming of me from outside. I will need to know more before I can agree to go."

"Agree to go?" he said. "Harken to this young cockerel, Wilfred. Your Office has agreed to this interview and that is tantamount to acceptance of the mission."

"Animus promptus consensum valet," Wilfred said.

"That may sound like wisdom but it is not, in Latin or in any other language," I said. "Willingness to consider does not imply readiness to agree, either in law or religion. One need not be versed in logic to understand so much. The greatly revered Peter Abelard, in a letter of reply to Bernard of Clairvaux, draws attention to these quite separate states, the one exemplifying the separateness and even loneliness of each individual soul, the other leading to the unity of all souls in Christ. No doubt you are familiar with this text?" I was by no means certain that the source was to be found in Abelard, and was relieved to find that neither of them knew enough of the matter to dissent. Taking advantage of the silence that followed, I said, "Who is this man that I must meet? What is the money for? How can I return and present a report to the lord of my Diwan with this information lacking, particularly as the money is to be accounted through us? He would never accede to it, he would protest to the Curia. With all respect, Excellency, if it is the case that you are not authorised to answer these questions, you must seek the authority."

"It is permitted to me to say more, at discretion," he said coldly. "But this obduracy of yours will be made known. The man is a Neapolitan, his name is Spaventa. He has a mark in Constantinople."

"A mark? You mean a quarry? He is an assassin then."

"He is presently under our orders."

"I see. I suppose he is one who will be under orders to any, if the pay is enough. And who is marked out for him?"

"I will explain it to you. Corfu has fallen to the Byzantines, as all of us know to our cost. Only by treachery could this have happened. They had provisions for a year and fresh water in plenty. It is a well-known fact that the citadel is impregnable. For the Greeks it was like shooting up to the sky, they could never have taken it. Someone opened the gates to the enemy. In the dead of night, someone lowered the drawbridge, pulled the bolts from the gates, leaned over the battlement above the gateway and sawed through the chains."

I was discovering in Atenulf an accomplished storyteller. His eyes held mine, he had lowered his voice for greater effect. I could begin to see now the reason for his success: building the King's fame was also a kind of storytelling. His recounting of such sustained and deliberate treachery had brought horror to my mind. I saw the Evil One crouched at the side of the traitor while he filed and sawed at the chains. "He must have had accomplices," I said.

"That cannot be known now. But the captain of the garrison, where is he?"

"How should I know?"

"I will tell you. He is in Constantinople, enjoying the protection of Manuel Comnenus, who has granted him the post of Commander of the Imperial Guard. No need to look further, would you not agree?"

"So this Spaventa…"

"He will be the executioner of this foul traitor. It will be known to all that no one betrays our King and lives to profit from it."

"And he can be trusted not to talk?"

"A man who has made killing his trade does not talk, either about his failures or his successes. He would not last long if he did. You must know this yourself – you have carried money to assassins before, have you not? This Spaventa is very experienced and very careful. It is because of this he is so expensive – the money you are taking is only the first half of his hire, the second will come when the work is done.

He is gifted, very gifted. He can make death look like an accident or a suicide, he can make it a public spectacle or a private disgrace. He is an artist, a shaper of circumstance, he is one who understands the importance of the symbol."

His harshness of demeanour had quite gone, melted away in the warmth of his praise. He had spoken as one master commending another, a man after his own heart.

"So," I said, as I rose, "in Constantinople it will be the public spectacle?"

"The precise manner of it will be left to him. He must make it notable, memorable. Such are my instructions to him – I am entrusted with the fame of it, the mark it makes on men's minds. Perhaps this recreant will be found hanging upside down in some public place, with his testicles in his mouth, perhaps he will be wearing women's clothes, or a false nose and jester's cap. Perhaps only his head will be found, mounted on a spike. Something men will remember and be warned by. They will know the power and scope of our King, who can reach a long arm to be revenged on those who have played him false."

"And the name of the man to be killed?"

"Enrico Gravina."

I took my leave on this, satisfied that I had prevailed upon them to give me the information I demanded. I did not myself believe that these orders had come from the King, he was at a level high above. It seemed to me that this Spaventa, and those who had thought of hiring him, and Atenulf who was entrusted with the fame of it, and I who would carry the money, all belonged with my friend Muhammed, creatures feasting and fighting below the surface of the dark water on which the King's silver barge rode serene, enveloped in light. Yusuf's words came back to my mind: He is just, unjust things are done in his name… But this was not unjust, the traitor deserved to die. Would it not be a worthier thing to abduct him, bring him to trial in the King's court before the people he had wronged? This would not be beyond the power of resolute men. But it was not our King Roger who decided, he had no knowledge of it, it was the creatures below the surface. Why did I labour so to keep the knowledge of this death that was planned from the King's mind, to keep him sheathed in brightness? And why, to my faltering spirit, did the labour seem always greater?