The Ruby In Her Navel

by Barry Unsworth

  Did she wait for this with an eagerness equal to mine? I wanted to believe this but how could I know? I knew she had loved me once, I could not be wrong in that. At fourteen she had loved me, she had lived for the stolen times of our meetings, as I had, the clasped hands, the kisses that stayed warm on our lips, the longing to touch more closely, always denied. I would have braved any danger for her, gone forth to confront dragons or seek a new Grail.

  That was a fever we shared. But it was long years ago, and much had changed. Then we were equals, children of noble families sent away to learn what we needed to learn for the maintaining of our station. She was born to wider estates than I, so much I already knew. But as a knight I could have hoped to become rich; for one who was bold and skilled in the lists there were prizes to be won; an opponent unhorsed in single combat would forfeit to the victor charger and trappings and armour. There were merchants who dealt only in these and would pay well for them. Some years of travelling from tourney to tourney and I could have amassed enough wealth, taken service with a great lord, been granted a fief to add to the dowry lands of my bride, my Alicia…

  So I sat there, mazed in that eternal contradiction of human kind, regret for the loss of what was never possessed. Tibald had come and carried her off to Jerusalem. When I was still two years from knighthood and the triumphs of the joust, she had lived as his wife in the fabled land of Outremer. Now she was free, but we were not equals now: she was an heiress, her family was among the richest in Apulia – and I, what was I? Thurstan Beauchamp, a man of public spectacles and private bribes, living on a palace stipend. What had I to offer? A man could not go to a lady such as she with for only quality the need to be rescued.

  These things I knew. And yet, perversely, sitting there on my narrow stone bench against the wall in the deserted courtyard, I felt the stirring of hope within me. I was not yet thirty years old. If Yusuf rose in the King's favour, I would rise with him. He wished me well, he would not forget me; there was every chance that I would come into his place at the Diwan of Control. This too was a way of amassing wealth, though not the way I would have chosen.

  But hope is a hound that once unleashed can change its nature even as it leaps. Perhaps there was another way. If Alicia and I could find again the feeling that once we had, perhaps we could recover the selves we once had too and the prospects that had belonged to those selves. We could help each other in this. There was no bar to my knighthood – I was descended from the Norman nobility of England; nor was there any bar to Alicia having the man of her choice. Then I could offer more than my need of rescue: I could be a rescuer in my turn. When she had spoken of Ascalon and the need to defend the land she held against the infidel I had seen myself on a war horse, in full splendour of arms, at the gallop. Of course, Yusuf, on whom I so much depended, was an infidel too…

  At once exhilarated and confused by these thoughts, I rose from my bench with the intention of retracing my steps through the church and returning to the diwan and my scrutiny of the royal renewals. But even as I got to my feet I saw a man in monastic habit come out into the courtyard just as I had done. After a moment I recognised him. It was Gerbert, a Benedictine, who had come recently to Palermo as abbot at the Monastery of San Salvatore. He waited there some short while and was joined by another, who I knew slightly better, having met him on occasion, a Lombard of the minor nobility named Atenulf, a chamberlain in the Royal Diwan, of considerable influence, as it was said. The two men took some paces then stopped and stood together in what seemed close conversation. They glanced across the courtyard from time to time, but I was still in the shadow of the portico, and standing close against the wall, and so I think they did not see me.

  Since I had not come forth from my place at once, I was unwilling to do so now, because of the seeming closeness of their talk. They would think I had been hiding there so as to observe them, and this suspicion would not have been unfounded; the palace service made spies of all who worked within it, and there was something in this colloquy that roused my curiosity. I wondered whether they had met by chance, and what might have brought them here. I thought Gerbert might have come to visit the Benedictine Abbey nearby. Perhaps Atenulf came to this church for his private devotions. But it had not looked like a chance meeting…

  They stayed in talk for some minutes, then withdrew once more into the church, the Benedictine entering a little earlier than his companion. I waited some while longer, then did the same. There was no sign of either man in the body of the church.

  Speculations about this meeting continued in my mind as I made my way back to the diwan, but they did not long survive my arrival there.

  Stefanos was waiting for me, and the tailor, very peevish-looking now, was at his side.

  "They will not have it," he said.

  "Who is it that you are speaking of?"

  "They, the dancers. They will not let themselves be touched. The tailor went there to take the measures. He says that if he had not started back she would have clawed him."

  "Who? No, no need to tell me, I know who. That one has been a source of trouble to me since I first set eyes on her."

  Immediately upon saying this I was conscious of some slight confusion, which I did not myself altogether understand, and it was not lessened by the knowledge that Stefanos had his eyes closely upon me. He is a mild man, as I have said, but there is not much that escapes his notice, and he is fond of me, as also his wife Maria, and that makes him notice all the more.

  "Indeed, yes," was all he said now, but I seemed to detect some extra significance in the inflexion of his words.

  "She was the worst," the tailor said, "but they were all three much the same, ridiculous creatures, I could not get near any of them, they seemed to think I wanted to put my hand up their skirts, what an idea, I have better things to do. The men just laughed."

  "Perhaps they did not want to give the men cause for jealousy," Stefanos said. "They are simple people."

  "But the worst one," I said, "she does not belong to either of the men."

  "Does she not?"

  "You know quite well she does not." I had a sudden memory of the white birds, that strange desolate wailing, Sigismond's face as he fought for breath, Nesrin's eyes on me, attentive, dispassionate. "She wanted a stable for herself, did she not?"

  "I would like to say that I should never have been put to such a task," the tailor said. "I am His Majesty's second wardrobe attendant and the first is old now, his hands shake, it will not be long before I am stepping into his shoes. I tried only at the shoulders and waist, I did not embark on the hips or bosom, and would not do so now for any inducement, even if you promised me an armed guard".

  "We will have to get a woman to come and do it," I said. "We cannot let them appear in the rags they are wearing now."

  It was a practical solution, but it overlaid a vast astonishment on my part. These women had tramped the roads of Asia and Europe, dancing for men who clustered closely round them. Time and again they had revealed their bodies to strangers, either openly or by enticing suggestion. Yet they would not permit a tailor to lay the lightest of touches on them.

  Could this fierceness be called chastity? A challenge it would be for a man to soften it… "This our world is full of marvels," I said to Stefanos. "You find a dressmaker. I will have to go with her, I suppose, to calm things down".

  When I got there with the woman it was to find all five of them grouped together outside their quarters, in what had been the stable yard, talking eagerly together in the sunshine. Nesrin was in the midst. It had been almost a month since I had seen her last, but it seemed a much shorter time, though I did not know why this should be so.

  Before the seamstress started her work I wanted to speak to them, to tell them that they should not be troublesome or difficult, as they had been with the tailor, but should try to help things forward, as this would make everything easier and work to their advantage. They would be performing at the court, before King Roger himself, and th
is would be a great honour, one they would be able to relate to their children in time to come.

  I spoke slowly, in Greek as simple as I could make it, and they listened, or appeared to, though how much they understood I could not tell. Only Nesrin looked at me as I spoke, the others kept their faces turned from me, both the men and the women. They wore the expression I remembered from before in my dealings with them, sombre and brooding, not defiant or even indifferent, simply the look of their faces in repose. She, on the other hand, looked continuously and intently towards me, but not really as listening to my words, more as simply watching me as I talked, and this was strangely unsettling to me and impeded the ordering of my thoughts. Twice she smiled, not broadly but sufficiently to show the edges of her teeth, and I wondered even as I spoke what she did to keep them so white in the wandering conditions of her life, and these thoughts too made me falter a little in my speech, as did the fact that her smiles did not come at points which were intended by me to cause mirth – nothing of what I said was intended to cause mirth – so I had the feeling that it was something in me, in my face or person or manner of speaking, that caused her the smile.

  However, I said the words I had in mind, stressing the need for obedience and good behaviour, adding as further inducement that in addition to the very generous payment they had been promised they would be allowed to keep the fine and costly clothes for which they were about to be measured. Then I gestured to the dressmaker to begin with her measuring rule.

  I had intended to quit the scene immediately after making my speech, but now I decided that it might be better to remain for a while so as to assure myself that everything proceeded in a proper fashion. Nesrin was the first to come forward and present herself – in all my experience of her she was always first or last or loudest or quietest. But I was nor prepared for the way she behaved now.

  As she turned this way or that, or held still, in accordance with the wishes of the dressmaker, she continued to look at me, sometimes full in the face and boldly, sometimes glancing over her shoulder with a stately movement of the neck. Sometimes she presented her back, turning her head from side to side with a luxurious, shrugging movement of the shoulders, as if, though for the moment she could not see me, she was well aware that I was seeing her. This taking of the measurements she turned into a sort of dance, not for my entertainment but for the entertainment of the others, a mockery of my solemn words of earlier: she had smiled, now she danced, and both meant the same thing.

  And the dance was protracted, for she sometimes went contrary to the wishes of the dressmaker, though without once stepping beyond the reach of the woman's arm. Sometimes, as I watched, she performed movements in that stained and tawdry dress of hers that no dressmaker would ever dream of requiring, a subtle sway of the hips, an eel-like wriggling motion, a proud pressing back of the shoulders that brought into prominence the shape of her breasts, other, slighter motions, a slightness almost miraculous in view of the charge of suggestion they carried, at least to the sinful soul of the Thurstan who watched them, who knew full well by this time that he should not be lingering there.

  No, I should not have stayed to give countenance to this insolence of hers, but I was captivated, enthralled. There was defiance and self-love and comedy and provocation in this dancing, and it held the attention of all: even the kneeling dressmaker, though impatient at first, was smiling now. The two men made low-pitched exclamations and laughed together. Some laughter came also from the women, but for all that they were both watching me closely, and under this combined regard of theirs I knew myself suddenly for the victim of a conspiracy. The women were leagued against me and the men enlisted as spectators. I was being mocked for the secret desires of my heart and the pompous words of my mouth. And even as I felt this mockery and saw the way she swayed her body and glanced down at herself, clear as it was that she sought to tease me and ensnare my eyes and make naught of the words I had spoken, even so I could not prevent a heat spreading through me, seeing her suppleness, thinking what it might be like to lie between her thighs. I felt the heat in my face also, and was put in a sudden fear that it might betray me, so without more ado I left, taking care to keep a grave face and avoid all appearance of discomfiture or haste. In spite of this, I thought I heard laughter continuing behind me.

  Yes, to my shame I will confess to this consuming carnality and at such a time – it was the untimeliness that made it shameful. I was young, venery was often in my mind, my member was unruly, I would not have taken myself to task for any casual rearing-up. But this had come so soon after my high resolve to be worthy of Alicia, to be her knight, with the knighthood she had conferred on me through that lingering touch on my head. Twice already that day I had failed her and it was only mid-afternoon. There and then, as I started back to my room, I resolved to visit the Tiraz that evening and spend some time with Sara, thereby achieving peace of the senses, for a while at least. Fornication was a sin but it was also a practical solution, and I was inclined to regard it as true of ethics what Cicero said of mathematics when he praised his fellow-Romans, as opposed to the philosophising Greeks, for confining themselves to the domain of useful application. Though this of course dismisses Greek philosophy almost in its entirety, which could hardly have been Cicero's intention. Besides, though I had found no doctrine to support me, I felt in my heart that, knowing how strong was the element of fire in me, God would be less offended by my sin than by that of one who sins coldly. He would know that I aspired to the good, that my true nature was worshipful. He would not want me to be tormented by unchaste thoughts about a little wildcat from Ararat who did nothing but make game of me.

  XIII

  As it happened, I did not return to my desk that day after all. The afternoon was well advanced, and I felt a certain reluctance to face the questions Stefanos would be likely to ask about the way the measuring had gone. I decided on another visit to the Royal Chapel. The mosaics always drew me, and I had not seen Demetrius since leaving for Calabria; we had parted on strained terms, I wanted to mend the friendship between us. Next day was the fourtieth after Easter, the day of our Lord's Ascension. There had been word that the King himself would be attending the liturgy, which he was accustomed to do on that day, to mark his own ascension to the throne and give thanks for the divine grace and favour by which he had been appointed God's deputy on earth. It would be his first appearance in public since the death of his son and would come after four weeks of mourning, during which no one outside of the royal apartments had looked on his face. He would come early, as was his habit, with the rising of the sun to dress him in splendour, and the chapel would be made ready for him.

  It was an afternoon of bright sunshine, cloudless, with none of the haze yet that would come with summer. The sun was low in the sky and its rays shone directly into my eyes as I approached the chapel; I could hardly make out the guard at the entrance but he knew me and let me pass.

  Inside, at first, I could see nothing. Sight was restored in glimmers and flashes: the glint of gold in the mosaics of the apse, the light that gleamed on the tresses of the Magdalene and made a glory around her head. As I drew nearer to the sanctuary, an errant ray ran down one column of the Virgin's throne and a shaft like a spear pierced the palm of Christ's hand. The Magdalene's head was joined in glory by this radiance to the hand of the Pantocrator, and I took this as a message to me, because she was redeemed from her sinful life by the compassion of Christ and in this I saw a promise that I would be given the grace to transcend such unbridled thoughts as those of earlier that day during the dance of the measurements.

  My sight was fully restored now, and this I felt to be owing as much to my hope of salvation as to the habituation of my eyes. I could feel the gaze on me of other eyes, eyes from the dome where Christ looked down on me, the eyes of the angels and archangels that encircled him, set in their disc of gold with the words of abiding power wreathed among them: The sky is my throne, the earth my footstool.

  I heard a
series of light, tapping sounds from somewhere ahead of me, which I supposed were caused by someone at work there, though they ceased suddenly and were not resumed. There was no sign of Demetrius, but two of his people were working together on the arcade of the nave on the north side; they were on a platform slung from the ceiling, and they had a lamp on either side and mirrors arranged to give them a stronger light. They were working on the lowermost coil of the Serpent and the base of the Tree where it widens. In the lamplight the Fruit glittered red and gold and it was easy to see why God's wrath was risked for it.

  By a trick of reflection from one of the mirrors I saw, in a narrow band of light, the cheated Esau stretching his bow to shoot a white dove.

  Both of the men working there glanced down at me at the same moment, perhaps hearing my steps, or seeing some movement of my shadow, but now I myself heard steps, and as I came into the crossing I saw Abbot Gerbert, whom I had watched earlier that day in talk with Atenulf, emerge from the southern chapel, and with him two others unknown to me, both in monastic habit As they came into the Sanctuary they made shadows which shifted in a way that seemed strange to me, without my knowing why, but this I took for some trick that the light was playing; mirror reflections and shadows were shifting constantly there.

  In any case it was an impression that passed quickly, because Gerbert paused to greet me and I was both surprised and gratified to discover that he knew who I was, a churchman of such rank – there were those who spoke of him as soon to be appointed Rector of the Papal enclave of Benevento, and he must therefore have friends at the Roman Curia. It was the more flattering as he had not been long in Palermo and as far as I knew had had no dealings with the Diwan of Control, though of course there were some who came there without my knowing.