Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

And the kneeling folk made reply in wavering chorus: Lord have mercy!

I became aware of other voices, these too seeming to be everywhere at once. It was the pleading of beggars, who I saw now were stationed against the walls, some blind or seeming so, others with missing limbs.

The priest and the people and the beggars made an antiphon of voices: Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Alms for the love of God!

Lord have mercy!

Pressed back against the column, assailed by the voices, I felt my obdurate soul loosening, I felt the descent of grace, I heard my own voice mingling with the others: Lord have mercy!

The priest raised his hand in blessing and the chanting of the people ceased, though the beggars continued unheeding with their pleas. Then the raised hand turned from blessing to beckoning, the kneeling people began to shuffle forward, and there was a strange sound to replace the singing, the sound of knees dragging across the stone floor. And now I saw there was another priest, who had been hidden from sight behind the tomb, but who now came briefly into view before prostrating himself and entering with almost the whole of his body through the open panels to gather the manna from the imperishable body within. For some moments all that was visible of him were his shoes and the hem of his robe. When he emerged he had in one hand a silver beaker and in the other a little rod of glass, and as the people came up to him they raised their faces, ordered in this by the first priest, and he dipped the glass in the beaker and gave each one a little of the holy oil, by letting a drop fall on to the lips of the face raised to him. After this they moved aside and stood and mounted again to the basilica by a stairway that rose from the far side, beyond the tomb.

When I saw this a great longing came upon me to be joined with these people in common devotion and the hope of heaven, and feel the touch of the miraculous oil on my lips and be forgiven my sins. I lost sight of my mission and fell to my knees and joined the others who were moving forward. I was drawing near, I was raising my face in preparation, when among those who had taken the oil and were retiring, I saw a face I knew, luxuriantly bearded, narrow-eyed, with a high, smooth forehead.

Lazar had not changed one whit since I had seen him last. The sight of him, the disagreeable sense that he was my associate even in this, ruined my moment of receiving the manna, took away all my bliss in it.

The glass was raised, the drop fell and I felt it on my lips, but I could think of nothing but how I might dispel any idea in Lazar's mind – for I was sure he had seen and recognised me – that I had been selfishly concerned with my own salvation when I should have had my royal mission in the forefront of my mind. It was not for my own sake – I did not much care what Lazar thought of me – but for the sake of the King, so that his purposes would not fall into disrespect through the failures of his servants. I decided to tell Lazar that I had joined the kneeling penitents in order not to seem conspicuous.

I followed him at a little distance behind until we were out of the church and in the street again. Here he drew on his hood and I did the same. He led me to a narrow square with a small, dark wineshop at the end of it reached by a steep flight of stairs. We found a table to sit at and ordered red wine.

"Well," Lazar said, "now we are purged of our sins we can speak truth together, like children, like brothers, little brothers in Christ."

I had not been drawn to Lazar from the start and these present words of his recalled the reason for this: it was as though his long habit of subterfuge had ended by making him seem to cast doubt on his own sentiments even as they fell from his lips. Also, at our last meeting, in Tirana, he had told me that he wrote poetry and this had not struck me as a good sign in one who wanted to lead a rebellion.

"It is well that we speak so soon after," he said. "Sins can soon again start infesting the soul."

"The reason I decided to join them -"

"Yes, I know, it was the same with me, I felt it was unwise to stand apart like that, safer to go down on one's knees and -"

"There was no sign of you. I thought you might be down there."

"That was good reasoning. In fact, I was down there."

"Why did you go?"

"I thought you might be down there."

"This wine has been watered," I said. "It looks like horse-piss and tastes like it too." This was not language appropriate to my mission, but I was angered by the way Lazar made us seem so similar in conduct, when I was clearly superior, and so I blamed him for the wine, because it was he who had brought us here.

He compressed his lips and nodded several times. "True," he said, "it is not of the best. Why do we always speak ill of the piss of the horse? It is the same among the Serbs as it is among the Greeks. Is it worse than that of other animals? Is there some intrepid soul who has compared?"

This too I remembered about him, that he would fall easily into digressions, speaking on any matter that came into his head, and I believed that this was to disguise his eagerness for the gold, it was his notion of dignity. "We are more familiar with the horse, that is the reason," I said, a little soothed now by the thought that this time at least no gold would be forthcoming. I would have to choose the right moment to tell him this; it must not seem vindictive or any cause of satisfaction to us, but solely a matter of the King's justice.

"You may be familiar with the horse as a person of good birth and sufficient means. But what of the swineherd, what of the shepherd? For them it would come more naturally to speak of pig-piss or goat-piss."

"We have not come here to talk of piss," I said.

"True." He reached for my hand across the table. "It is good to see you again, Thurstan." He had eyes that could take on a melting look, and they did so now. "More than two years, old friend," he said. "Much has happened in that time, we are on the brink."

"We have seen little sign of this in Sicily," I said, and I asked him to give me an account of the progress that had been made. He embarked on this readily enough, but it soon came to seem as lamentably thin and threadbare as the report he had given me two years before. As on the former occasion, he tried to make up for the lack of substance by slipping back into the past, speaking of twenty years before, when the valiant Serbian rebels under their leader Bolkan had joined forces with Steven II of Hungary in resistance to Byzantine tyranny.

"Our people were encamped beside the Danube," he said, "close to where it joins with the Nera. The Byzantines crossed the river secretly and fell upon us without warning – the cowards would not risk meeting our fighting men face to face. We were pinned against the bank, it was a massacre. Those of us who survived were driven from our homes and forced to settle in Asia Minor, led in chains to a land not our own. We Serbs do not forget these things. We are a proud people and we do not forget."

This at least I knew to be no less than the truth; the grudges of centuries, large and small, are stored in Serbian heads. "Well," I said, "fortunately you yourself were not led away in chains. You are free, and able to work for the freedom of your country. We know you Serbs have good reason to hate the Byzantines and it is the policy of our King Roger to support you in this, to aid you in your lawful desire for independence. But we are interested in the present, not the past.

Hungary has a different king now, the Serbs have different leaders, he who rules in Constantinople is Manuel, not John."

"We are on the brink, on the very brink," Lazar said. "The Hungarian cavalry is massing on the border."