Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

Within the hour I had found a horse, a brown mare. Her teeth were good, her back was straight enough, she was well-shod; she had no disability that I could see and the price was fair – for horse and trappings, ten dinars. My better clothes, and the pilgrim's hooded robe, went into a saddlebag, together with a loaf of bread and a flask of water. I was dressed now for the second stage of my journey, in the rough style of the country, in clothes I had brought with me, the surcoat and leggings and wooden-soled shoes that are common among the people. I had not cut my hair, of which I am proud, but I had tied it back and it was concealed under a snood cap, which fitted closely round my head. My purse was inside my shirt, strapped against the skin. My knife I wore openly at my belt and I had another weapon, a thin-bladed dagger with a weighted handle for throwing, in a sheath in my saddlebag. I also had a heavy cudgel tied to the saddle. Bands of robbers were not common in these parts, they worked more usually in pairs. The horse alone made me worth robbing but I hoped that I would be taken for a peasant and so have the advantage of surprise if it came to fighting. This was my hope, as I say, but I was not altogether confident in it.

I reached Cosenza in two days, travelling from sunrise to dusk, but never in the dark, making my way through the valley of the River Crati.

The first night I found no lodging but slept by the river, and soon after dawn I was lucky to meet a man on his way to market with baskets of the small white fish that live in the river shallows and are netted in great numbers by the local people. He was ready enough to sell me some and I made a low fire and cooked the fish on a cane spit and very good they were.

After Cosenza I continued northward, always following the line of the valley, taking what lodging I could find, all of it mean and dirty. I let the hair grow on my face, and when I could I used the river water for washing. I was fortunate in the mare; she was patient and willing. I came to the sea at Sibari and started on the road that follows the coast to Taranto. Here I fell in with a mounted party travelling to Bari for the day of the saint, and in their company my fear of robbers was much less. They were Italians from Crotone; in order to avoid questions I affected to speak only Norman French, and in this pretence my tallness and fairness helped me.

With this, the worst part of the journey was over. We came through the hilly, thickly wooded country in the south part of Apulia, and reached the sea again two days' journey from Bari. And so I arrived at the town in good time; next day was the second Sunday of May, the day of the miracle, when the uncorrupted body of the saint exudes the holy oil. The town was packed to bursting with pilgrims from every corner of Europe, many with the hood and staff and satchel of those who had travelled weary leagues on foot; some had come from as far away as Scandinavia and the lands of the Slavs, and had been months on the road. All degrees jostled together in the narrow streets and along the wider way that ran by the sea.

First I saw to the mare, which had served me so faithfully and well. To cope with this great annual swelling of the town, and with all the travellers from the east that arrived during the year at the port of Bari, there were wooden lodging houses of three stories, built round a courtyard with stables. I had to pay for the stabling at least three times what it should normally have cost. This was the King's money, but there was no help for it, it was not my fault but the fault of those who had agreed on this crowded place for my meeting with Lazar. Naturally, here I could not use the King's authority or his seal to impress or browbeat; here I was a pilgrim among pilgrims, I could do nothing that might draw attention to myself. I took a bed-space that was screened with boards on either side, and this cost me more than a place in the dormitory, where there were no beds, only straw from wall to wall, but I reasoned I would be of better service to the King if I had good rest and refreshment.

I was dirty and verminous after these days on the road; I had slept in my clothes, a thing I greatly disliked doing. Keeping my body clean has become always more important to me over the years, as has fresh linen next my skin and clothes as good as I can afford. It is only dress, but I have come to feel it is the truth of me. I was not familiar with Bari, but I knew that it was for long an Arab town and that many Arabs lived here still, though naturally there was little sign of them in the streets at this time of Christian pilgrimage. Where there were Arabs there would be clean water, hot and cold; with great intensity of desire I was looking forward to an Arab bathhouse.

I found one in a street that lay at right angles to the line of the shore, saw at a distance and with joy the domed roof pierced with apertures like an inverted colander so as to catch the light, always so important to Moslems, as anyone who enters a mosque will see. Unlike everything else in the town, the price of admission had suffered no swelling. I left clothes and purse in one of the metal coffers set in the wall, and got the key to this, and towels and slippers, from the keeper. Now began a blissful time. To say truth, in that steam I lost all reckoning of time, going from the hot room to the cooler one, where the basins are and the attendants wait with their bowls to throw water over you, warmer or colder according to desire, then back to the heat again, feeling the start of the sweat on face and chest.

I found a bench in one of the recesses set round the room, where it was a little cooler, and lay here in a trance, watching the trails of steam rise slowly up towards the perforations in the dome high above me, break into shreds and glow briefly as they were transfused with light, then quiver and curl very delicately as the air of outside touched them. Some words of a song came into my mind, a song of the troubadours, popular at that time in Palermo. Your hair will be tied with silk for the dance, you will grace the dance with the beauty of your hair… These were words for gentle ladies, ladies of the court. She shook out her hair like a savage, fiercely. That glass in her navel perhaps not smooth as I thought then, but cut into facets to make it glitter the more. The art of mosaic is the art of catching the light. Light is splendour, light has no boundaries…

These, or something like them, were my thoughts as I lay there between sleep and waking, watching that climbing and curling of the steam. In my languid state I felt a stirring of excitement at the memory of that ornament nestling at the centre of Nesrin's being, flashing its message.

It must be kept in place, I thought, kept resting in the dimple, by those thin chains of beads that lay across her hips. Mirabile dictu, no swirl or ripple of the belly disturbed that glittering eye of glass.

This, which should have been a matter for wonder, not lust, nevertheless made that stirring more definite. I was glad for the towel that lay athwart my loins. If there had been women there to do the massage, as in some of the bathhouses of Palermo, I might have taken one and paid her to do the things they know how to do, taking care, of course, to use my own money for this. But this was a place of strict Moslem observance, the sexes were kept apart. A man's hand on me I did not want, except only those of a barber.

I made for the outer room again, had cold water thrown over me, dried my subdued flesh with the towels that they bring in from Egypt, very thick – nowhere in Italy can they make them like this. Then I dressed and drank a juice made from apricots, very delicious, and afterwards went to the room where the barbers had their tables and found one to wash my hair, which he did with yolk of egg, rinsing it out and scenting it with attar of roses. Then he took the hair off my face, applying first some yellow-coloured paste that must have been an invention of his own, spreading it with a wooden spoon and taking it off again, and the hair with it, using the edge of a mussel-shell. And all this without breaking the skin anywhere! I do not know why we Christians have not adopted this use of the mussel-shell for shaving; it has a keen edge and is light and easy to manage. But no, we go on scraping with knife and pumice-stone.