The Ruby In Her Navel

VII

As I look back on it now, this choosing to walk abroad, alone and in unfamiliar surroundings, when I was carrying money belonging to the crown, was a sign in me of disaffection, of desire for change. It is true that not many were stirring at such an hour, true also that I had not full trust in my guards when we were in deserted places together.

But the chanceries of the palace, no matter in which you served, schooled you to guard against mishap, however remote the chance of it, and this then became a rooted habit – one which I broke that night on no more than a whim. I knew that if anything went amiss with the purchase of the birds, I would be called to account. It might be that Yusuf would protect me and I would keep my place, but it would count against me in future – in his mind too. I had been a success in the Diwan of Control, baulking at nothing that was given me to do, even things that might be thought base or unworthy if it were not that they were done in the King's service. But one thing botched could outweigh all this and tip the scales against my succeeding to Yusuf's place when he became Grand Chamberlain. And I wanted this, as I have said, wanted the wealth and state of it, the release from bad roads and bad inns and purse-carrying.

Nothing untoward occurred, I saw no one. With daylight I returned to the inn, where I was served by the innkeeper's wife with bread and cheese and thin ale. Then I slept for perhaps an hour, in my chair as I sat there. Waking, I found Mario and sent him back with our mules.

Afterwards, my two men once more at my shoulders, I mounted the steep streets until I was above the town, looking inland to where the marsh people would come from. They would come sometime in the morning, having set off the evening before on news of my arrival, and travelled through the night. They would not arrive much before noon, I thought; they would be on foot, encumbered with the caged birds. I found a place where there was a ruined house, part of the stone terrace still remaining, and sat down here with my back against a broken wall. There was a view of the plain below, and the road they would come by.

I was content to wait quietly here. It was a cloudless morning, there were gulls wheeling above on the seaward side, from somewhere close by there came the sound of goat bells. The dancing of the night before came back to me as I sat there, the firelight and the moonlight, the strains of that wild music, sad and fierce at the same time, the languorous sway of the bodies, the quick-stepping feet, the strange moment of shuddering before the body was stilled again and that rippling of the belly began.

I remembered the gleaming arms of the one I had watched – I had watched only her, it now seemed to me. That posture of the body savage in its pride, that suffering look about the mouth, dissolving in joy when she smiled. Straight shoulders and a deep curve from the waist to the hips.

Then at the inn, loud-voiced and bold-eyed, people used to contempt, careless of it. Outcast people. Ararat, where the ark came to rest for mankind to be saved, and where giants lived in old times. Was she beautiful of face or not? I could remember only the mouth and the smile…

I was still thinking of this girl in a rather sleepy fashion when the sun rose clear of the hills and I saw a flash of white in the distance, where the road descended, like a swift signal one might make with some bright surface of metal held up to the sun. It came again, then again, then there were many, and the first of the men came into view at the point where the road finished its descent and curved round into the open plain.

They had come earlier than I expected. They walked in single file, the caged birds hanging from yokes that went across their shoulders, two on either side, as far as I could make out, and swaying with the motion of their walking, so that the newly risen sun elicited flashes of light as rapid as blinking from their breasts and wings. I counted twelve men, and as they came into the sun they were robed in splendour by the birds.

The splendour was less, however, both in the men and in the birds, on closer view, at the harbour where I went down to wait for them. The cages were made of thin cane and they were tall, to accommodate the long, slender legs, with their black shanks and yellow toes. But they were narrow, the herons could not turn, they were forced to stay in the one position, hunched and dejected. The men were like spectres, pale and hollow-eyed, and I took this to be the result of the marsh-sickness that people speak of, that comes from dwelling constantly in the flooded lands, among the mists that rise there.

At the harbourside the scene was one of great confusion. There were mules tethered there also, for what purpose I knew not – my visit to this town was plagued by mules from beginning to end. Disturbed by the swinging cages and the people milling round, these beasts began to bray and shift about, and one or two of them kicked back in that spirit of indiscipline and revolt that descends on mules at certain accursed moments. The tortured sounds they made and the clatter of their hooves on the stone disturbed the birds and they tried to flap their wings but could not, and first one then another set up a desolate wailing sound, wulla-wulla-wulla, like the loud grief cries that Arab women make when they raise their heads and let the sounds come from far back in the throat. To add to this, the birdcatchers were thronging round me with their feverish faces, clamouring for my attention, telling me how particularly fine these birds were, what pains it had cost to trap them.

They had singing voices, despite the fervour of their pleas, every phrase reaching a high note then sonorously descending, with the last word amazingly drawn out, as if indeed they had decided to end in song.

As I strove to understand them – no easy matter, they sang all at the same time – I caught sight of the Anatolians standing at the stern of the ship, looking down at the spectacle and laughing among themselves.

Fortunately the theme before us was one of extreme simplicity, they asking more for the herons, I offering less. They knew quite well that the price for bird and cage was established beforehand, but there was still a hope in them, which I supposed perennial, quenched one year only to be renewed the next, that they could get more if only the right arguments could be found. They spoke of adverse weather, changed patterns of flight, fewer numbers. One man, more inventive than the others, tried to make me believe that the herons had grown in cunning.

These last had quietened now but looked far from cunning, their yellow eyes staring and fearful, as if knowing their fate, knowing the cruel talons that awaited them, though I thought that when the moment came, when they were struck down by the hawk like a bolt from the sky, their eyes would have a different look, their wings would be outspread, till that moment of death they would be in possession of freedom. Unluckier, as it seemed to me, were those already sickening, those who had spent too much time in the cage. But I knew no way to detect this and refuse payment, so saving my master from wasteful expenditure: drawing near to the town, the men would have cleaned the cages, washed the putrid excrement from the elegant dark legs…

There were forty-eight birds. Payment, when we finally agreed on it and struck hands together, came to sixteen silver ducats, money that would keep these people and their families in oatmeal and salt and oil through the winter to come.

The bargaining, though no more than a pretence, had been a lengthy process, and I was much relieved when all was settled and we had the birds on board and the catchers had set off on their journey homeward.

Soon the ship would be casting off and I would be free to proceed with my mission. I was about to go aboard again to give final instruction to the master, who at that moment was nowhere to be seen – I thought perhaps he had taken refuge somewhere below from all that tumult. He had done this run before, more than once, with my predecessor, Filippo Maiella, a person who had become more real to me in the course of this transaction with the herons, so much so that I found it hard not to see things through his eyes. Eleven years of the wailing birds in their cages – the twelfth had been too much for him. There was the money in his purse, the beckoning distance…

I needed to find the master and talk to him. He had carried herons to Palermo before, but he had not carried dancers and musicians, or so I supposed. He was the best person to trust with the matter as he had touched no coin yet – the reverse of the case with Filippo. He would have to accompany them to the Diwan of Control and deliver them to the care of my clerk Stefanos, who would arrange for their lodgings. Then, and only then, he would receive his payment and give the crew their part of it.

Thinking these thoughts and seeing the master nowhere on land, I was mounting from the quayside to the deck when I heard a sudden outcry, a female voice raised to a pitch like that of the screech owls that live in the hills round Lake Poma. The sound startled the herons, who set up that desolate wailing again, wulla-wulla-wulla, and tried to flap their wings inside the cages. When I reached the top of the ladder, I saw, across the ranks of lamenting herons, the furious face of the younger dancer, who was standing in the stern a little apart from the others. I say standing but she had crouched a little, drawing her shoulders together, as if about to spring. Facing her at some two or three paces distance, foolishly leering in spite of the girl's rage, was one of my guards, the hulking Sigismond. It came to my mind immediately that he had offered her some insult, perhaps laid hands on her, even tried to pull her away; he was a brutish fellow and must have been roused by her dancing of the night before – in my sudden anger at his behaviour I forgot that I too had been roused by it.

She had moved away from the others, perhaps to see better what was going on below, but now I saw the two men come forward, saw how they widened the distance between them as they drew nearer to Sigismond, saw that one had a hand inside his shirt. I moved quickly towards them, overturning cages in my haste. Strangely, the herons bore this in silence, they had all fallen silent now, as had the girl at my approach. Her hair was loose about her face and she had a long pin in one hand, copper, I thought – it shone with a dull light.

Drawing nearer to Sigismond I saw at once, even before I smelled the wine on his breath, that he had been drinking, saw it from the way he had planted his feet and the foolish bravado of his smiling. "What is this?" I said.

He was grinning still, as if seeking to indicate by this that it was some sort of a joke. Perhaps, in his primitive way, he had lost sight of the borders between public and private, thought that a woman who danced before men could be any man's.

I did not intend to make much of the matter. No harm was done, the fellow had been routed, he would know better than to try again. But when I gestured him with the back of my hand, indicating that he should back away and give ground, his grin faded and he did not lower his eyes but stared back at me with what seemed deliberate insolence. Nor did he give room, as ordered.

I felt my anger rise. To reach this state he must have started with the flagon on his own, before any money had been handed over, probably while the marsh people were thronging round me, in other words while he should still have been fulfilling his duties as my guard. "You misbegotten wretch," I said. "How dare you brave me in this way? Step back."

It seemed to me that his hand moved a little, up towards his belt and the knife there. Or perhaps this was only the pretext I gave myself. I knew I would have to be quick. He was thickset and strong, and no doubt an accustomed brawler. Whether he would return a blow from one set in authority over him I could not know; it would earn him a flogging if he returned to Palermo, and cost him his place, but he might think he had lost that already. It could not be left to chance, in any case – the blow would have to be heavy. I could only do what I had been taught in my days of training for the King's Guard. I took a step forward and flicked at his eyes with the fingers of my left hand. He pulled back his head, which is always the first movement when the eyes are threatened.

In so doing he lifted his chin a little and exposed his neck. My right-hand blow came hard upon this, while his hands were still lowered, a hooking blow with as much weight as I could put into it, driving my fist into the neck tendons on his left side. It was strange, but my anger left me as I struck him. I had never struck any man in this way before, only a bag of sand in the exercise yard. He did not fall but he leaned over, fighting for breath. Now indeed I could have struck him a blow, with his head hanging low in that fashion, but I did not, and two men of the crew came forward and took his arms to lead him away. Even then for some moments he set his feet against going, and this roused some respect in me after the grievous blow I had given him.

The girl had been silent all this time. When I looked back towards her I saw that her face was composed, that eye-snapping fury quite departed.

She was regarding me intently, not with the self-absorbed look of her dancing, but openly, in a way that was neither friendly nor hostile, but as if dwelling on my face, as if considering. It seemed to me too that her look had something more gentle in it than I remembered from the night before. I understood then, and it took me by surprise, so enraged had I been by Sigismond's defiance, that she believed I had struck the man in anger at his insolence towards her, whereas in truth it had been his insolence towards me that had driven me to it. But looking at her face now more attentively than I had done before in our short acquaintance, and in this clearer light, at the thick, black hair still in disorder, the dark eyes, not large but full of life, slanting upwards a little towards the temples, the bones of her cheeks that lay so close below the skin, the mouth that had bitterness in it but something tender too, noting all this, I could discover in myself no smallest inclination to set her right in the mistake I thought she had made. I smiled at her and inclined my head a little and laid a hand on my breast. "Thurstan,"

I said. "I am Thurstan."

"Nesrin," she said, without returning the smile, and she touched herself at the base of the throat. Then she turned to her companions, who had gathered close behind, and she pointed and named them, one by one. He who played the drum and sang was Ozgur, the dulcimer-player was Temel, the two women were Yildiz and Havva. Then Ozgur, smiling broadly, pointed at the drum and said, "Davul," and Temel named the Dulcimer for me, "Kemanche". All five of them were smiling now, as people do when they are named. But there was an uncertainty in the pause that followed, as often happens when there is this naming, especially when there is some obstacle of language to overcome, and I think the girl felt this – she was quick in her sensing of things, as I was to learn – because she laughed suddenly and made a gesture to include the captive birds, whose cages occupied most of the deck, raising a hand and slackening the wrist and letting the fingers dangle loosely down. I saw after a moment that this was in imitation of the long crest-plumes of the herons, which in the wretchedness of captivity drooped down along their backs.

After rage there comes some feeling of sorrow, at least so it is with me. I looked at the birds, at these limp crests of theirs, grown for their time of mating, useless now that their courtship had been cut short. God had made them this gift in the dawn of creation, He had endowed them with this plume to wear for their marriage. And now they were penned and could only shuffle their wings and wail, and they would never mount or be mounted.

I could not see cause for laughter in this, and I let none show on my face. Nesrin, as I have said, was quick in her sensing of things. She was equally quick in her defiance, and this too I was to learn. She showed it now, deliberately prolonging both gesture and laughter, looking directly at me all the while, as if to say, you do not govern my laughter, and I looked back steadily at her and my look said, you are no more than a savage, why should I laugh at your bidding? So something was exchanged between us without words, and when we looked away from each other it was like a truce, but not of the kind where pledges are made or weapons laid aside. I was glad I had not yielded, for immediate personal reasons, and then because, as is well known, small things lead to great, and when I returned to Palermo, I would be responsible for their appearance before the King, they would need to give heed to my words, from the very beginning they would have to understand that I was not one of them, to laugh at their jokes, but a person in authority, moving on a higher plane, the provider of rewards and the source of benefits: in short, the King's Purveyor.

In spite of this excellent reasoning, I was already beginning to feel some compunction. I know not why it is, but I can never stay self-contented for very long. I see a settled state of self-content on some faces, see how they can bask in the sunshine of it, but with me some shadow always intrudes. The girl had felt grateful for my defence of her. That she was mistaken in her gratitude was not the point at issue. She had tried to show her good will by jesting, and I had rebuffed her. I would have said something, even now, in an attempt to repair matters, but she turned away from me, raising her hands to her head and gathering it at the nape so as to tie it, and the loose sleeves fell back from her arms, which were beautiful – but indeed it is a beautiful movement in women, whether they be young or old.

I saw now that the master had come on deck and I remembered I had intended to speak to him, before the altercation with Sigismond had put it out of my mind. Only then, as I gave him his instructions and informed him that I would not be returning with the ship, did it occur to me to wonder why Mario had made no appearance, why he had left it to the men of the crew to restrain his fellow and lead him away. Sigismond was standing at the prow, well away from the dancers, but there was no sign of Mario. He was not below either, so the master told me. He was nowhere to be seen on the ship or on the quay. I realised now that I had not seen him since the people had come down with the birds. But I would not have noticed him anyway, probably, distracted as I had been by those singing voices and that pretence of bargaining.

It was disagreeable to me to address Sigismond so soon after what had happened between us, but I had little choice. He answered me with his usual gruffness, but readily enough and without truculence. His hair was wet, as if he had thrown water over it and he had tied a rag of cotton round his neck to cover the bruise. Mario had said he was going for a piss and he had not come back, this while I was purchasing the herons.

He, Sigismond, had said nothing about this absence, supposing Mario would return before the ship sailed.

"Your first loyalty should have been to me, not to him," I said. "Two fine guards they gave me, one is away drinking when he should be at my shoulder, the other disappears at the time he is most needed."

Sigismond surprised me now: I had expected no more than a shrug, but he looked me doggedly in the face and said, "Lord, forgive this ignorant man that I am, no better than a beast. I thought the girl gave me a look. Then I felt a fool. I have a wife and children in Palermo. Have pity for them, let me keep my place."

This might have been the longest speech he had ever made in his life.

Some grace had descended on him and I could not do less than share in it. Besides, whether by accident or design, he had given me my title, acknowledged my birth. "You can keep your place," I said. "I will not make mention of this in my report, but you must take better care in the future." At this he ducked his head and made a shuffling bow, and I again noticed the poor scrap of cloth round his neck and felt sorry for what had happened. I smiled at him and said, "The girl belongs to the King now, no matter which way she glances. It is easy to make mistakes about the look in a girl's eyes. And then, it is always our fault, no?"

He returned my smile with one of his own, as broad as any I have seen on a human face, and the first I had ever seen on his. He turned away without more words, but I felt I had healed the hurt to his pride if not that to his neck, and perhaps gained his goodwill, something which I think I had not had before.

Mario was still nowhere to be seen but we could not delay longer. I waited at the quayside while the ship put off. As she pulled away from the wharf and passed beyond the harbour wall, the sun caught the birds in their cages and for some moments the deck of the ship flashed along all its length.