The Ruby In Her Navel

by Barry Unsworth

  It was Atenulf who had planned my going, and Atenulf was in no way connected with these two, or in any plot against Yusuf, whose words I remembered now as I stood motionless there. There is the form of a triangle.

  Half-mechanically, still with my mind on this, I began again to gather together my belongings. The line joining Wilfred and Gerbert was plain enough: they had been in the same community of monks. And that joining Gerbert and Atenulf? Could he have been associated with Atenulf in arranging my mission to Potenza? What had a prelate such as he to do with the King's fame? But supposing the reason for the mission had been other? The afternoon we had met in the chapel, he had come with his companions from the south side of the crossing, the side where the light was obstructed higher up, the side where the shadows came from. Next day the King was planning to attend the liturgy. It was the Day of Christ's Ascension…

  A feeling of wondering surprise came to me. Why had Gerbert come there at that time? Certainly not to tell me of the change in the King's plans, and not to tell Demetrius – he already knew it. Somebody else then, somebody waiting there? But I had scanned the wall, I had noticed nothing. Some scaffolding, a curtain? I could not remember. It was possible, work was being carried out here and there inside the chapel, such a thing might well go unnoticed. Easy enough to leave a narrow platform there, screened from view so as not to offend the King's sight when he came next day to hear the liturgy.

  Atenulf had sent me to Spaventa. Why should they wish to conceal the source of his payment if his mission were only to kill a traitor to the King? There could be no risk to paymaster or pursebearer in this. It was a question that had always puzzled me. Yusuf too had been suspicious of it, sufficiently to take pains to disguise the provenance of the money.

  But if Atenulf were serving some other master, if the quarry were another, if the consequences of failure were perilous to the sender…

  It came to me now that I still had Spaventa's token – there had been no time to deliver it to Atenulf, and he had not sent for it, I suppose not expecting me to return so soon, and afterwards not finding me at the Diwan. It was where I had put it when Spaventa gave it to me, in the cloth pouch I wore at my waist; it had been reposing there disregarded, through all the time since. I took it out now and peered at it, but the light was not enough inside the room, I could not make it out. A sense of urgency was growing in me, I was unwilling to pause and fumble to light the lamp. I went out of the room and down the staircase and passed outside on to a narrow terrace that looked towards the lake. Here in the daylight I held the token up to my eyes and looked closely at it. The bird was a hawk, just as Atenulf had described to me. The head only was shown, in profile; it was very small, but there was no mistaking the rapacious curve of the beak, the fierce eye, the flat head: it was the imperial eagle of the Roman standards, symbol of dominion. What had Speventa said? Render unto Caesar. Who was Caesar now? Spaventa had thought I knew. He would have not lingered and boasted otherwise, not a man like that. Some message regarding my role had gone astray or been garbled.

  The day darkened suddenly and I looked up to see banks of cloud, silver at the edges, drawing over the face of the sun. A rustling wind stirred the trees by the lake and there was a coolness in the air, a breath of relief, presage of rain. This long trance of summer was ending at last.

  What else had Spaventa said? Something about trying again. He had laughed at my reply, as if I had made a joke, he had not been suspicious then. What had been the first attempt? Once more I thought of those flitting, evanescent shadows, some movement unaccounted for, my vague sense that the light was broken higher up. There could only be one reason why a man should wait there, on the eve of the day of Christ's apotheosis and the King's, in the one place in all the chapel which afforded a clear view of the royal person.

  I had not made the right response to the toast; he had understood his mistake, in circumstances more favourable he might have killed me for it. He had said something before this, before his suspicions were roused, something I had not understood. We will meet him on Mount Tabor, no, not meet, serve. We will serve him well on Mount Tabor. Stefanos too had said something that puzzled me, the evening we had supped together.

  But it had not been the meaning of his words, it was something else, something contained in them. He had been speaking of the Day of Christ's Transfiguration.

  The knowledge that came was pure, it had been there always, waiting for the right touch, the touch of harm, the finger laid on my lips, to bring it forth. After six days he leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transformed before them. Typical of Spaventa, once a novice priest, to cloak his secrecy in religion. That high mountain to which the disciples were led was Tabor, so it was believed.

  The King was intending to be present for the liturgy on the Day of the Transfiguration. Was that to be the second attempt? Sitting in his loge on the north wall he would be inviolable, wrapped in majesty, invisible to all below. But not to someone high up on the opposite wall, someone positioned there would have a view across, would see the upper part of the King's body, above the marble of the balustrade. Twenty-five paces, perhaps less… A bolt from above to strike the King down. An iron bolt, from a crossbow. At that close range, it would transfix him. The perfect symbol, Atenulf's masterwork. Who could use symbols to build could use them also to demolish… A bolt from heaven, a judgement on the King's misrule, to blast him while he sat in state with the words of prayer on his lips.

  The Sunday after next, Stefanos had said: by my hasty reckoning that was three days hence.

  XXVI

  The sense of surprise persisted as I returned to Palermo but now it was directed at my own obtuseness. If I were right in the suspicions that had only now come to me, all this while I had been confusing parties that were quite different in their aims, the one seeking to use me against Yusuf and so come closer to the King, the other seeking to use me for the King's harm. I tried to find excuses. Alboino and Gerbert were both churchmen of high rank; it was natural therefore to assume they had the same interest to serve, the same desire to expel the Saracens, increase the power of the Latin Church. And I had thought Alicia loved me and was working secretly to make our meetings easier and so had somehow contrived that I should carry the purse to Potenza. But she had used her knowledge that I was going there only to ensnare me further, only to build up my hope and dash it down again.

  My misery was if anything deepened by these attempts at self-excusing; within them lay the proof – if more proof were needed – that I was a failure, unfit for the world I lived in. Returning by the Admiral's Bridge I remembered my joyful expectations on the day I rode out to Favara for the first time and how, crossing the Oreto here, a song of love and promise had come to my lips. I was very far from singing now.

  Once in the city all other feeling was swallowed up in the dread of being recognised. Muhammed had said that the names of those making depositions against Yusuf had not been published, but he might have lied to me for reasons of his own, or the names might have been made known only now, only this morning. It seemed to me that I could read accusation in every eye that met my own, as if there were a mark on my brow, a brand, plain for all to see. And all would think as Muhammed had thought, that I had betrayed Yusuf for my own advancement, on the promise of taking his place. I could not go to the Diwan: the idea of encountering Stefanos, meeting his gaze, was unbearable. I could not go to anyone with my suspicions. How could I go to the King's Constable with a story of shadows and reflections and stray words? I had been the pursebearer, it might be thought I was one of the conspirators, seeking to betray my companions so as to gain favour. No, all I could do was wait for Sunday.

  I made my way directly to my house and shut myself in there with orders that on no account should any visitor be admitted. They would disobey me if it was someone of rank or wealth, but it was all I could do. All that day my door was opened only twice and that was to Caterina, when she brought me first soup and bread an
d later some pastries of a kind I recognised. Stefanos had been, she told me, thinking I might be ill, and he had brought them with him. It occurred to me only now that Stefanos himself might be in some danger, through his long employment in Yusuf's Diwan. My doing…

  Something there might be among Yusuf's records, if I could come at them, something to give substance to my suspicions. I decided to make the attempt. I waited till after the supper hour, in the hope I would find no one still working there. If I saw signs of any presence I was resolved to retire immediately. I took a dagger with me, one with a short and broad blade, which I thought might be useful if I had to force a door.

  The guards were at the gate by which I usually entered and they greeted me with no apparent difference of bearing, and opened to me readily enough, supposing I had forgotten something or intended to work late into the night, a thing I did sometimes after an absence. All was quiet as I crossed the courtyard and mounted the stairway. I lit the lamp on the wall at the beginning of the passage and went down to my door. This was locked but I had the key to it. All was in order in my room, the documents on the table as I had left them. I went some steps farther down the passage, tried Yusuf's door and found it also locked. The room that the scribes and notaries used, which gave access to Yusuf's, had a door that was flimsier, and it was this that I had resolved to force, if I could do it with the dagger. But the door was unlocked, it swung open to my touch. While still on the threshold, I saw the reason: those who had been here had seen no need to secure the door, they had left little to guard. The room had been ransacked, drawers and shelves emptied out, a litter of parchment lay everywhere.

  I crossed the room, my feet kicking against account books that had fallen to the floor and been disregarded. Yusuf's door on this side was closed with a latch only, easily lifted. There was a similar scene of desolation here. Everything had been turned out and scattered in some close search, for incriminating evidence against him, as I supposed – or against themselves. This, if they had found it, they had borne away.

  They had left behind them a scene of ruin, with documents spilled out of their covers and shed over table and floor. I walked over to the room beyond, his sanctum, where he kept his state when there were visitors, or private talks to be held. The heavy oak door swung widely open and there was a similar devastation within, the same litter of documents, the cabinets gaping empty.

  It was here, as I stood at the threshold of his inner room, his private self, that I truly felt his loss for the first time and knew that the grief and the blame would be with me always. His death was here, in this room. Before they had torn and mutilated his body they had violated the principle of order by which he had lived. Here was the tall casement where we had stood and talked together and which I had envied for the light and air it gave him; standing here he had given me the mission to carry an empty purse to Lazar – the mission that had been the beginning of his death. I remembered the delicate bones of his face and his hook of a nose and his eyes, always intolerant of dissent, always ready to show kindness for me. The sound of his voice came to me, the exaggerated accents of his French. Is that a new sorcot that I see this morning?

  Always the same form of words because he was fashioned so, never fully at ease when he was too close.

  That I would not hear this voice again, no more seek to find some answer to his words about my clothes and my singing, only now came fully home to me. So far I had felt nothing but horror – at the violence done to him, at my part in it. Horror like a morass, a quagmire, leaving no ground to stand, no ground for grief. Now I felt the sobs rise in my throat and I choked and wept for Yusuf, whom I had blamed unjustly for my unhappiness when the reason was in myself. I had blamed my father also for this unhappiness of mine and I wondered now, through my tears, what ruin of his world there had been that had taken him that day to the monastery gate.

  It was here that I had known Yusuf and it was here that I mourned him, in the midst of this desolate litter that was all he would leave for memorial. I stood there until my storm of weeping was over and I was a little soothed and could see again. I was turning to leave when the memory came to me, like a message from him, of a day when I had come earlier than expected to his summons and found him in his finery, having just returned from a cavalcade with his fellow-Saracens. I remembered the sumptuous silks he was wearing, the blue and scarlet and gold. He had spoken of this display of power and wealth as causing greater hatred for the Saracens and yet as being caused by this very hatred, in a circle that could only be broken by God's teaching. But by then he was back behind his desk. He had been close to the wall when I entered, bending down as if to gather something he had let fall below the wooden panelling. But there had been nothing on the floor and nothing in his hand as he moved away…

  As if in obedience to some whispered command from him, I crossed to the place where he had been and crouched down to look. But there was nothing to see there, only the smooth face of the walnut they had used for the inlay. Still crouching there, I felt along the lower edge of the panelling, along the narrow line where the wood was inset. After some moments my fingers found an irregularity, a smooth boss of wood, smaller than a thumbnail. Pressing on this I heard the faintest of sounds and the panel swung open along the line of the join. Inside the opening thus made were loose sheets of parchment held between covers of stiffened cloth and secured with thin cord. They were numbered on the backs though without other distinction among them.

  I took out the first and opened it and found details of sums paid and received with entries in Arabic against them. These would be irregular or unlawful payments of some kind, monies that had to be kept in a separate record, not passing through the official accounts of the Diwan.

  The next one I opened was concerned with the providing of Moslem serfs in grant to Christian religious foundations in the region of Palermo.

  Such grants of labour, usually renewable after a certain term of years, were greatly sought after by monasteries, especially the richer ones with more land than the monks were able or willing to work themselves, and they had to be paid for in one way or another. There were no records of payments here, which I supposed was the reason why the documents were kept secret.

  I might have stopped here, concluding that there was nothing of great interest, but I took up one more and opened it at random. These were not accounts but reports from various sources in Greek and Arabic and some few in Italian. A name sprang out: Wilfred of Aachen; after it another, marked off in parenthesis: Rinaldo Gallicanus. So Wilfred the archivist had more than one name. I remembered his pale face and reddish hair and pedantic use of Latin. It had seemed to me that he kept a watch for eavesdroppers while Atenulf was explaining my mission to Potenza… I closed the door of the panel, heard that faint scraping sound as it fitted into place. I took the documents, still in their cloth cover, and bore them back with me along the passage to my room.

  Wilfred's was the name that had caught my eye and I began with him. It seemed he was not German, as all had believed, and as he himself had given out: he was the son of one Stephen Gallicanus, who had been a knight in the following of Rainulf of Alife and one of his closest supporters in the rebellion against King Roger twelve years before.

  Alboino had said that Guy of Morcone, Alicia's father, had also taken part in this rebellion, but there was no mention of his name here. It was this Stephen Gallicanus who had been singled out by the King and ordered to remove with his own hands his lord's putrefying body from the tomb where it was laid and to tie the rope round the neck of the corpse so that it could be dragged through the streets.

  The feeling of horror returned to me, together with the nausea that always accompanied it. This desecration had been at the command of the King. And what of that done to Yusuf? It could not be more than a few weeks since he had compiled the information contained here. His own death had been designed already, by Bertrand and his fellow-Normans, by Alboino and those in the Curia who had sent him, by Alicia and probably her br
others. This dragging of Rainulf in his grave shroud was a fearsome prefiguring of the end that was so shortly to be his.

  Rinaldo Gallicanus was not much older than myself. He would have been barely twenty at the time of Rainulf's rebellion. Yusuf had inserted a question: Did he witness the public outrage done to his father? It was not known, but there was likelihood of it in the light of the young man's subsequent course of life. He had left his home in Apulia and travelled to Germany, where after some passage of time he had entered the monastery of Groze on the Mosel, taking the name of Wilfred. Among this community was Gerbert, who subsequently served at the Papal Court and was soon to be appointed Rector of the Enclave of Benevento. These two had travelled to Sicily at an interval of some months, Gerbert to work for an extension of the Pope's prerogatives in the appointment of bishops, Wilfred to take employment as keeper of the palace archives.

  The report on Wilfred ended here but there was a note in another hand stating that the post of archivist had been obtained on the recommendation of Atenulf the Lombard, Lord of the Office of the King's Fame, who considered the compiling and preserving of archives to fall within the province of this Office. Yusuf had appended a comment here: As also no doubt the altering or destroying of them.

  Further notes followed, also written by Yusuf, based on the material in the report, speculating in particular on the fact that all three of these men had come from Germany. There was the sketch of an equilateral triangle, with the three names at the angles and words of connection written very small and lines drawn outwards from the sides of the triangle, these lines also with writing on them.