The Ruby In Her Navel

IV

I said nothing to Yusuf about this encounter, and this was the first and perhaps the gravest of the mistakes I made with him. Some of the shame I had felt at the time stayed with me. I was afraid he would think, as I had not been able to help thinking even in the midst of my anger, that I had been singled out as a likely traitor because so I was regarded. And if so I was regarded, perhaps so I was. And truth compels me to admit that a thought had come to me, suppressed at once but piercing nonetheless, when Béroul had spoken of those who have power to change a man's life, there had been a moment when I had thought of my disappointed hopes and my failure to become a knight.

I did not think Yusuf could detect such flickerings of my mind, but I feared he would place less trust in me, that I would lose his regard – and his favour, on which depended my advancement. Frankness then would have saved much sorrow later. But secrecy and suspicion were in the air we breathed, both of us, I was his pupil after all. And I thought it unlikely that the meeting with Béroul would come to his knowledge.

I spent the days before leaving in a way not different from usual. The mornings were passed at my desk in the small room I shared with my clerk Stefanos, and we did the work there that we were accustomed to do. There were accounts to look through that were not entered on the account books of the Royal Demesne, though they could be sent for at any time for the King's scrutiny; monies paid out for information, as rewards and inducements of various kinds, monies used to foment revolt in the Balkans and, more recently, in Germany, where we were hoping to unsettle Conrad Hohenstaufen, one of the King's bitterest enemies, by financing a league of German princes headed by Count Welf of Bavaria, who claimed a better title than Conrad's to the imperial throne. Our King Roger would use force of arms if necessary, but he was the first of his warlike line to prefer the undermining of his enemies by diplomatic means, and to me this was one of the marks of his greatness.

I visited Sara and gave her the garnet and benefited from her gratitude.

I made some further enquiries about the birds I was to purchase in Calabria, though without learning a great deal more than Yusuf had told me. Every year they migrated to the marshes that lie between the sea and the town of Cosenza. They came in the spring, grew long crests for their courtship, and in this heedless time of mating were snared easily by the people of the marshes. All I knew beyond this was the price I was to pay – or at least not to exceed.

On the day following my visit to the King's Chapel a man asked to see me and he was brought in, one of the palace attendants accompanying him. My room was no more than an adjunct of Yusuf's much more spacious quarters, but it was on the other side of the passage and had its own entrance. I insisted that anyone who came asking for me should be required to lay down his arms before entering and always accompanied into the room. This was for the dignity of my office, it was not owing to fear; I was aware that I might have enemies whose names and faces I did not know, but I was strong and quick and I had been trained to arms before coming into the palace service. The man was a trader in a small way, an Italian from the colony at Messina who carried salt and our hard Sicilian grain to Salerno and Naples and cities further north, travelling in all weathers by boat and mule-train, a stocky, grizzled man, no longer young, used to hardship and danger in the pursuit of small profits. He had seen, he said, just west of Benevento, a troupe of dancers and musicians of a kind never seen before, the women half-naked or more than half – he said this with a narrowing of the eye and a droop of the mouth.

If that was the great new thing about them, I told him, he was wasting my time. Did he think the King had not seen women in every stage of dress or undress, right down to nothing but a ring on the finger or a ribbon in the hair? Where was the need for a journey to Benevento when there were a dozen places here in Palermo where women danced and took off their clothes while dancing and did all manner of things besides, Saracens, Jews, Greeks, Italians, singly or in groups, according to taste and the preferences of race and religion?

Undeterred, he continued with his praises. Beautiful women. They could touch the earth at heels and head only, the body arched up like a bow, as if inviting the love of a god. They could make their bellies ripple without strain or effort…

"The dancing girls of Tunis can do as much," I said.

"No," he said, "the bellies one moment smooth, the next moment rolling, while the rest of the body remains still, the face composed, a very amazing thing." The dancers were the women, the men made the music. They were from the east, from Anatolia and spoke a language no one could understand.

He himself spoke the language of cupidity. He was eager to interest me in these dancers, knowing me for the King's purveyor, knowing that if they were brought to the court on his information, he would be well paid. He even found occasion to describe the instruments played by the men, of a very unusual kind, he said, drums the shape of hourglasses with a skin across at both ends, a kind of dulcimer with a neck longer than a swan's, played with a bow that was the span of a man's arms…

He was eloquent, thoughts of coin had silvered his tongue, exalted his fancy too – I did not believe his words about the bow, the span of a man's arms is a very variable measure. However, I was interested in what he had said about the body remaining still and only the belly moving.

The dancers of the Mahgreb could sway the hips to simulate the thrusts of love, but I had not seen any with this ability to concentrate all on the muscles of the stomach. On the other hand, if this man could exaggerate about one thing, he could exaggerate about another. I had in the past been deceived sometimes by accounts of dancers, jugglers, acrobats, and paid out good money for performers that proved to be mediocre at best and not fit for the King's attention. On occasion, he who spoke so well of them was discovered to be in their pay, or even to be one of their number. Certainly I did not suspect anything like this in the man before me, but there is a saying among Sicilians that while to give your trust is good, to withhold it is even better.

"Well," I said, "they may be all you say and it is true that we have not had Anatolian dancers in Palermo before, but they are in the neighbourhood of Benevento and I am not going there."

"They are travelling people," he said, sensing my interest. "They move here and there. Just at this time they will be following the pilgrims."

"I will keep it in mind." I did not tell him I was soon to leave for Calabria; even when we have nothing to hide, the less said the better – another of Yusuf's precepts. Perhaps he had got wind of it somehow, or perhaps his coming to me at this time was no more than coincidence.

"Here is for your trouble," I said, and I gave him two tari from the stock of coins I keep in a box on my desk. "If we bring the dancers to Palermo you will have more."

He seemed well enough pleased with this. Paying for information, something in which I was well-versed, is always a matter of difficult judgement, no matter what the nature of it. If you are too ready, you are taken for gullible, one who will believe anything; if you are too grudging no one comes forward, it is not worth the trouble, or the risk.

Like so much else in our lives, it is a question of balance.

It was in the interest of balance that later the same day I went into the Kalsa, the Arab quarter that lies south of the harbour, riding as far as the Church of San Cataldo and leaving my horse in the square behind the church at stables I had used before: it was better to go on foot and make sure of being unnoticed when visiting Muhammed ar-Rahman.

Here the streets were narrow and the walls high, and the houses had few windows and those closely barred. I walked with eyes cast down, watching my shoes as they scuffled the dust; to look upwards was painful to the eyes in this late afternoon sunlight that came in dazzling reflections from the whitewashed walls. In this district of Palermo there is nothing to tell you where you are, the streets have no names. But I knew the way to Muhammed's house, I had been there before more than once. There was a small mosque in an open space, a simple mesjid with undecorated stone portals and a narrow portico. Close behind this ran a blind alley with a single door. A bell-rope hung at the side. This was the entrance used by those who wanted to keep their visits private; there was another entrance, on a different street, one with wide gates and armed guards. I heard footfalls beyond the door, there was a brief pause while I was scanned through the eye-hole, then the door was opened to me by the enormous Hafiz, who had lost an eye, in what circumstances I had never enquired, and who acted as cook, chamberlain, food-taster and bodyshield. He led me into the courtyard and there I found Muhammed in the shade of the colonnade, half-reclining on a low couch padded with cushions. I heard some notes of a lute and a woman's voice singing low, but this ceased at my entrance.

I felt immediately grateful for the cool here, after the close heat of the streets. Now that the singing had ceased there was for these few moments, as I advanced at Hafiz's side, only the slappings and tinklings of the water from the fountain, as it fell from the tiled niche into the stone basin and down into the channel below.

Muhammed had begun the process of rising, which dignity and corpulence rendered slow. His skullcap and robe were of an impeccable, luminous whiteness. Perhaps my eyes had been affected by the dazzle of reflections outside, because this whiteness seemed stronger than any colour could be, it seemed to draw to itself all the light in the courtyard and even the light from Muhammed's face, so that as he rose to his feet he looked, for all his bulk, strangely like a figure in some theatre of effigies, where only the dress and accoutrements indicate the nature of the personage. This lasted a few moments only. As I drew near his features were restored to him, the short beard, the dark eyes slanting slightly downward like a melancholy dog's, the high-bridged prow of the nose.

"Welcome," he said. "Thurstan the Viking, welcome to my house."

He spoke to me in Arabic, though he knew also Greek, and I answered in the same language, with the conventional invoking of God's blessing on his house. It was his joke to call me Viking, because of my first name which I think derives from the god Thor, and because I am tall and have blue eyes and fair hair that I wear long. It was also a kind of compliment, or at least I took it for such because he thought of Vikings, in their history of seafaring and raiding and settlement, as being a people similar to the Arabs. It was a joke, as I say, but there may have been truth in it; I was born in the township of Norton, close by the River Tees, and that is country where the Danes settled in great numbers in times past, so much so that all that eastern part of England is still known as the Danelaw.

Muhammed made a gesture towards a narrow alcove within the colonnade, where there were low benches against the wall, in the angle of the corner. We sat here facing each other, he against one wall and I against the other.

"You have come on foot, the last part of the way, yes?" he said. "It is hot in the streets, this year the hot weather has come early." He leaned forward and clapped his hands together lightly. "You will take a sarba?"

Hafiz appeared as if by magic. I saw now that he had been waiting out of sight but very close, just inside the arch that led from the courtyard into the interior of the house; from here he could keep us both under his eyes.

I took care to show no haste in accepting this: the alacrity thought courteous by the Franks and the Greeks seems lack of dignity to an Arab.

In fact, I was thirsty after my walk and I remembered Hafiz's sherbet as being particularly good, with just the right mixture of pomegranate and lemon. Nothing much was said as we waited; Muhammed was much too polite to enquire into the purpose of my visit, and I wanted to avoid the appearance of haste.

Hafiz served the sherbet in our full view, pouring from a stoneware jug into the metal cups, making it plain we both drank from the same vessel, a notable piece of hospitable reassurance. When he had again retired, and after some compliments on the quality of the sherbet, I began.

"Yahuda Mari came to us with a complaint some days ago."

"Yes?"

"He came in person."

"I see, yes, a serious matter." Nothing had changed in Muhammed's face.

"There is a complaint that some Jewish cemeteries have been broken into during the hours of night and damage done to the graves."

Muhammed made a brief humming sound, perhaps to show interest or perhaps merely to encourage me in my narrative. He was leaning back comfortably against his cushions.

"Following upon this there is the further complaint that members of the Jewish community have had money extorted from them under the threat that their family tombs will be desecrated if they refuse to pay. According to Yahuda this has been going on for some time, but the people were too much afraid of injury to come forward."

Muhammed nodded, with a full appearance of understanding. "That is often the reason for silence."

After a moment's pause, in a tone I took care to keep dispassionate, I said, "It seems that these threats come from Arabs."

"Do they say that? Surely Yahuda himself has not been threatened?"

"Of course not." He was prevaricating now, and he knew that I knew this.

The Mari were an ancient and powerful family with their main strength in Marseilles but with trade connections throughout Italy. Yahuda was the leader of the Palermo Jews, a man of great wealth. "Who threatens Yahuda?" I said. "We do not threaten the strong but the weak."

"My Viking, you speak with the simplicity of youth. When you have fullness of years you will know that the strongest are those that can be threatened most, because they have most to lose."

"He came to speak on behalf of his people. And it came to the attention of our diwan because no taxes or dues are paid on sums deriving from extortion, and so there is a possible loss of revenue to the Crown.

There is also the question of preserving harmony between races and religions. Yusuf ibn Mansur, who sends his warmest greetings and God's blessing upon you, asked me to seek your advice because of the close friendship that is known to exist between us."

I was not sure how close it was, nor whether it could truly be called friendship. The fact was that I had recently been able to do a favour for Muhammed. The porters that loaded the grain for North Africa on the docks of Palermo were all Saracens. The occupation was handed down from father to son and it was profitable – a certain amount of the grain never reached the holds of the ships, never left Palermo in fact, but was sold by private contract. There was also a considerable trade in hashish from the ports of Tunis and Susa. All this being so, these porters were greatly envied by others working on the docks, and from time to time attempts were made to break in, especially by the Sicilians, who lived close by, but also sometimes by the Greeks. This resulted in bloodshed and feuds and all manner of evils. Some months previously, after protracted effort and with the support of Yusuf, I had succeeded in obtaining a charter from the Curia Regis granting exclusive right to the Saracens to engage in the loading of grain to North Africa, thus giving the force of law to what had previously been sanctified by custom only. Muhammed, whose people controlled the porters and extracted from each a monthly contribution, had been grateful.

"You did well to come to me," he said now. "However, it is not my people who have done this."

This might have been true or it might not; I had no means of knowing. If true, it meant that there was a band of Arabs in Palermo acting without his authority, a thing that could not have been pleasing to him. "I fully believe you," I said. "You are a man of honour, I know you would not, simply for the sake of a handful of dinars, so deeply wound the religious feelings of another race."

"Thank you, I am honoured by your trust. This is a very serious matter."

"So it is."

"It is not just a handful. Think of the number of Jews living in this city and the number of the dead in their graveyards."

"True, the number is very great."

I paused on this, not quite sure of the best way to proceed. I was experiencing the usual difficulties in finding common ground with Muhammed. He was old enough to be my father and his power and wealth and force of will and readiness to do wrong made an aura round him. He was devious but at the same time strangely simple. Unlike myself, he had no sense of service or dedication to a higher cause. I could not appeal to his better nature; he had not enough of this for my words to take lodgement. But this was not the reason: in my work I encountered many who were without a better nature, but I could still appeal to it, because they made a pretence, whereas Muhammed made no pretence at all.

He was a good family man, kind to his wives and his numerous children; he would defend his own interests and his own clan to the utmost sanguinary limit; he was faithful and recognisant when he felt himself indebted. These were his guiding principles and it was important to understand them, because Muhammed was of utmost importance to the ordering of life in Palermo. Adding to my difficulty was the fact that I liked him, despite myself, and felt that he liked me.

His lineage was ancient, going back to the tribal group of Yaman. He claimed descent from Hamza al-Basri, the famous philologist and reciter, who came to Sicily in the days before the Norman Conquest. However, Muhammed himself, though possessing a taste for poetry and music, had not followed in these illustrious footsteps. He was the chief of the strongest and most numerous criminal clan among the Arabs of the city, formed mainly from his own family members but reinforced – for the moment at least – by loose alliance with the Ahmad Francu family.

"We knew it could not be your people," I said. "That thought did not so much as enter our minds. I have not come to make accusations. It is in all our interests to keep a proper balance. The Jews have broken silence. If they do not find redress, their young men will start killing Moslems. There will be bloodshed. We have seen this before."

"So we have," he said, "so we have."

"Bloodshed within one community, that is normal, but between communities it is dangerous, it spreads quickly, it undermines the peace of the realm."

"It is bad for trade."

"Very bad indeed," I said, seeing in this the first sign he had given that he might be disposed to help. There was no doubt that he could do this if he would, and easily enough. If he did not know the culprits already, he could soon find out, it would be a small matter to him. He was on close terms with Al-Mawla al-Nasir, the hereditary Sayyid of the Sicilian Moslems, and so at the heart of a network of information extending from the Fatimids of Egypt to all Saracen communities in Sicily and the south of Italy. He enjoyed rhetoric and I sensed that the time for this had come.

"Our great King inherited a land that was inhabited by Jew and Arab and Italian and Greek, races and faiths existing side by side. In his wisdom he understood that this harmony had to be preserved, that the well-being of all depended on it. He has devoted twenty years to this great task, with the loyal support of people like you and me, his servants. We have different ideas of paradise, which is quite natural. For us it is to join the ranks of the blessed. You perhaps lay more emphasis on physical ease and the gratification of -"

"We will have the supreme happiness of seeing God face to face."

I did not think it likely that he would attain to this joy but naturally did not let my doubts show. "However," I said, "there is one aspect of paradise we can all agree on and recognise, and that is the earthly paradise that comes from good governance. Our King is striving to create that paradise and we are his agents."

I was sincere in saying this, while not believing that my words truly applied to Muhammed's activities. At Bologna, where I had studied law, they had set me to read the disputes of the churchmen, and I had seen from these, and absorbed the lesson well, that even for the godly there is always in argument the need for persuasion and this need makes for suppression, or at least dilution, of the truth. My true feeling was that Muhammed, and all those who battled for power and wealth and preyed on one another below the surface, were necessary to the order and harmony of the Kingdom, though not themselves interested in achieving this settled state, but only in winning battles that in the end nobody won. I had formed in my mind a figure which I thought well expressed this feeling of mine. The King was rowed on a silver barge, with silver banners, he was shining in silver and so were the oars that rowed him.

This shining was reflected on the water so that it dazzled the eyes and made the figure of the King difficult to gaze upon. But the silver shone so brilliantly by virtue of the dark water; below the surface were creatures who stalked and feasted and fought and maintained themselves, some by force and some by cunning, and in doing so they maintained that shining world above them and kept the King's barge afloat.

As I waited now for Muhammed to reply, Hafiz must have changed his position, or perhaps there had been some shift in the sun's rays that had gone unnoticed, for I now could see the shadow of his head and turban lying across the pavement. I inferred his presence there only from the fact of this shadow and it seemed strange to me that this should be so. And it brought back my feelings as I entered the courtyard and could not see the face of Muhammed, but only the whiteness of his form, like a white shadow, and with this a feeling of uncertainty came over me and I felt a momentary threat to my balance.

I was brought from this by the sound of Muhammed's voice. "A great responsibility indeed," he said. "The King's agents! But even the King's agents have to accept their limits."

He had been looking away as he spoke but now he turned his face towards me. His air of indolence had disappeared. His eyes were wider and he looked intently at me. "They must accept their limits, whether Christian or Moslem or Jew. We do but they do not".

This had to be answered quickly, before he was launched on the grievances of the Arabs. "You are right, you show the wisdom you are everywhere known for, the secret lies in limits. The extortion of money from the Jews, the threat of insult to their dead, these go beyond the limits, I think we are agreed on that. Let Arab quarrel with Arab and Jew with Jew. That is natural and belongs to the order of things. You are here in La Kalsa, the Greeks are in their district of the Martorana, the Lombards in the Albergheria, and so on. We do not pray together, but we can live together."

"Thurstan the Viking, tell me, is it worse for one Arab to kill another than for an Arab to kill a Jew?"

"It is worse in its results, it is worse in the degree of harm to our realm. I do not make a judgement about the wickedness of it."

"A wise reply. We cannot make such a judgement, do you not agree? No two killings could ever be exactly alike in all particulars, even to the temper of the blade or the knotting of the silk. And how can degrees of provocation be compared? As it has been truly said, though clouds in the sky are constantly changing, two might be the same for the briefest of moments. However, this moment can only be witnessed by God, the All-Seeing."

"True," I said, "true." I did not know whether this was a verse from the Koran, the words of an Arab sage, or merely an invention of Muhammed's own. But I did know that he was seeking to draw me away into one of the discussions he so much enjoyed, interminable, abounding in metaphor, always inconclusive. "Our great King has given us an example to follow,"

I said. "In his Assizes at Ariano he made a code of laws and in this he laid it down that all the subject people within his realm should live under the laws and customs of their fathers."

I heard Muhammed sigh, which was what he intended. "In which court, and by whose custom and tradition would it be tried if those disputing were a Roman Christian, a Norman let us say, and a Moslem? Thurstan, I have a place for you in my heart, but we must speak of things as they are, not as we would wish them to be. This is a lesson you have yet to learn. The balance is changing – this balance you speak of with such eloquence.

Every day brings new numbers of Franks and Lombards, people differing in degree but all of the Latin Rite. The King gives grants of Arab land to Lombard farmers, who turn our people into serfs, he founds monasteries for the Latin clergy, he gives fiefs to the Norman knights, as he did to your father."

"How do you know this?" I had never spoken of my father to him, and it was almost fourteen years now since our estates had been made over to the Church.

"As it has been truly said, a man with many friends is like a fortunate fisherman. He casts his net wide and the catch is always good."

"Yes, I see." I did not want to talk of this with Muhammed; the loss of the land had seen the end of my hopes of knighthood, and it was still bitter to me. "It is true that many have come from the north to make their homes with us," I said. "When the balance is threatened, there is the more need for care."

Muhammed sighed again. "We do not like the Jews," he said. "They do not respect this balance, they lend money at exorbitant rates to our people and send violent men to frighten them if payment is delayed."

"But you also have your moneylenders, is it not so? Their rates must be even higher, if your people go to the Jews."

"Palermo is getting richer," Muhammed said, looking at me very steadily.

"And the sign of this is that everyone wants to borrow money. We do not like the Greeks any better. Greek cripples put on turbans and beg in our streets, using our own language, because they know that our religion enjoins charity on us. Where is the balance in that? It is deceitful and shows a low level of morality. Some of them are not even true cripples.

The Sicilians of Palermo we do not like. They want to take everything into their own hands, they are not interested in sharing. They kill our people and try to take over our trade with our fellow-Moslems. Tell me, Thurstan the Viking, where is the balance in that?"

He was talking now about the trade in drugs, the hashish that came from North Africa and the opium from Anatolia. This last was costly: the caravans from the poppy fields of Mersin passed through Byzantine lands on their journey westward and so were subject to high dues, which greatly increased the price on the streets of Palermo and Messina.

"You cannot answer," he said. "Answer there is none. There are also the Normans."

He paused for a long moment on this. Then he said, "We like the Normans, our King is a Norman, we live under his rule. We call him the Powerful Through God. You yourself have Norman blood. But this is Sicily, the Normans of Sicily have lived in the sun. Thurstan, I will say this to you because we are friends, we speak our minds to each other. They have lived in the sun, their brains are not damaged by ice. This freezing of the brains in cold climates was remarked first by Said al-Andalusi. In his writings on the subject of Europe he says that the cold winters stunt the brains of the Franks, and his words have been proved true before the walls of Damascus."

I knew what was coming now, knew it from the extreme gravity that had appeared like a mask on Muhammed's face. It was impossible during these months to talk to any Moslem about events in the world without becoming aware of the secret joy they felt at the disastrous failure of the Second Crusade, which had ended some months before in the ignominious defeat of the Christian army. It might be cloaked by an air of grave moral reflection, it might be concealed beneath an appearance of regret, but it was always there.

"They sat in counsel together and decided to attack Damascus," Muhammed said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. "O, what a catastrophe! O, what a terrible mistake! The Burids of Damascus were their natural allies against the power of Nur ed -Din. And where did they set up their camp? In the orchards below the walls? No, on the plain before the city, where there was no water, no shade. In this situation the only thing was to attack at once, but no, they sat there for four days, quarrelling among themselves, dying like flies. On the fifth day they abandoned the siege. They set off back to Palestine without even making the assault!

The greatest army the Franks have ever put in the field. O, what a calamity! O, what a humiliation! And just think – before that they were considered invincible."

As on similar occasions before I found that the best response to this was silence. And in fact Muhammed, who understood the need for dignity, clearly did not expect a reply. After a moment, in changed tones, he said, "It is not my people who have desecrated the graves of the Jews and used threats to extort money from them. But you have come to me and we are friends. We will find out who these people are and we will speak sharply to them."

"These words of yours afford me great pleasure," I said. "Yusuf ibn Mansur will also be delighted."

"God's blessings on his head. They will not be able to walk without sticks for a week or two. So we keep our paradise, eh?"

He looked at me with a humorous narrowing of his eyes. I sensed that our conversation was coming to a close and began to rise. I heard Hafiz shift his feet and after a moment saw him come into view. Muhammed rose also; his, as the person of greater consequence, would be the final words on parting.

"No, rest assured, Thurstan the Viking. We cannot repay the money, it will all be spent by now on harlots and evil courses. But we will talk to them. To offend against the natural human respect for the dead! What animals! The fault lies in their upbringing, they are not taught respect. Young men of good instruction, if such an intention had formed in their minds, what would they do? Would they not come to discuss the matter, ask our permission?"