Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"You were worth any risk, a hundred times over."

"And you were not? There were windows that looked down over the exercise yard. I used to watch you at practice. I saw you hurl the darts at the target. I saw you do the cut and block with the other boys. I saw you dash down the straw men with your lance. I thought you so splendid.

Where you were the sun always seemed to be shining."

Such was my pleasure at this that I was driven to shift the subject for fear that some quiver in my voice would betray me. "Well," I said, "if we shared the risk, now let us share the credit, because it is the fact that we were never found out."

This again brought laughter from her. "No," she said, "but we came near to it sometimes. Do you remember that boy, he who was made the chamberlain for the women's apartments? He was a page still, younger than you. He watched me and followed. He found us sitting together on some stairs, do you remember? We bribed him with the honey cakes my mother used to send me."

"I remember him, yes. His name was Hugo. He fell ill not long after and was sent home and never came back. It was a disorder of the stomach, everything he ate he vomited up. We never learned what became of him."

"It was providential. He would have betrayed us in the end, the supply of honey cakes was not regular enough to prevent it."

"He would have asked for more than cakes from you. They always ask for more. Hugo watched the boys as well as the girls. He was only ten but spying and extortion came naturally to him. He was the first of that kind I ever knew. There have been a good number since."

I had spoken with a bitterness that I at once regretted; it was a note too harsh for this enchanted occasion of our meeting. For a moment or two she was silent, then she said, "I do not know what your life has been, but your face is that of the boy I knew."

This was very gently said and it acted on my soul as if a gate had been opened to let out trapped water, because she who sat there close to me, though half-obscured now in the dimness of the yard, had still the face I had loved when my hopes were high, when everything had seemed possible. I told her of my disappointments, of my father's decision to retreat from the world – she had heard nothing of this, she said, having been away all this time in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I told her – and my voice shook on it a little in spite of myself – how sick I was of carrying the purse and counting the coin, how I longed to live in the light of day. I told her what I had told no one else, I spoke of the figure I kept with me like a talisman for my spirit to touch, the shining silver of the barge, the glory of majesty that made the King so dazzling to the eyes as he rested on the dark water, the creatures below the surface that kept the balance.

She said little, but I could feel the closeness of her listening. And when I had done she attempted no easy words of comfort, but in her turn told me of her fortunes since the time when, soon after her fourteenth birthday, she had left to be married to Tibald of Langre, an acquaintance of her father's, a man of thirty-four whom she hardly knew, who had amassed money in the wars with the infidel and wanted to settle down. He had a fief in the Holy Land, as a vassal of King Baldwin, also estates in Sicily.

"We had no issue," she said. "He blamed me for not giving him an heir and I took the fault for mine, as it is always considered the woman's fault. But Tibald had other loves, and made no secret of it, and none of them bore him a child that I know of. So I do not know if I am barren, I have not put it to the proof except with him." Her face was turned towards me as she spoke; there was not light enough to read her expression, but I felt she had spoken these words for me, and my heart was stirred.

He had died the year before, while taking part in the siege of Ascalon, not of wounds but of a seizure. "He always ate too much and drank too much for the climate there," she said. "He was like many of them, he saw no need to change from his habits in France. He drank wine for his thirst, and he ate fat meat. It was pork that killed Tibald, if I have to find one word for it. One evening, after a day in the saddle, when he tried to rise from his chair, where he was sitting among the others, he fell back and could not move and lost his power of speech. They carried him to bed but he died that same night, without finding his voice again."

There was no trace of sadness in her voice, or even of much regret, except perhaps for Tibald's habits of eating; she might have been talking of any man's death. If she had wept for him the tears were long dry. It surprised me a little that she did not affect sorrow, even if feeling none, because such is the practice of the recently widowed. Then I understood that she was paying me the compliment of frankness, and I remembered suddenly that she had been the same in the days of our courtship, deceiving others but never me, never pretending reluctance, never requiring to be persuaded or cajoled, not disguising her eagerness any more than I disguised mine.

Since Tibald had died without issue, the land had come to her, both that in Jerusalem and that in Sicily. She would return, or such was her purpose at present. She was used to the life there and liked it, but she had wanted to see her parents, who lived in retirement on their lands near Troina, in the Val Demone. She had been accompanied from the Holy Land by her brother Adhemar, a knight in the following of Raymond, Count of Tripoli, who had given him leave. But she had come to Bari without kinsfolk, to partake of the holy oil and give thanks to Saint Nicholas for bringing her safe to Italy. On the morrow she would return to Borsora in Apulia where her cousin, Simon of Evreux, had his lands. She would stay there two days more then return to her parents. Her father wanted her at home. How long she would remain in Sicily she did not know, she had made no plans.

"To say truth I am enjoying the freedom that has come with my widowhood," she said. "I suppose it is wrong to say this, even to you, but I cannot help feeling it. There was always someone's permission to seek. Now it is only a pretence. I defer to my father and my brother, but it is only for the sake of manners. And this is because I have come into possession of Tibald's lands, they are in my grant. I am Alicia of Bethron. Of course I must marry again, and before too long, my estates in Jerusalem will need a man to manage and defend. Ascalon and Jaffa are close and they are still held by the Moslems. But I will never be given away again, I will choose, I have vowed it."

I saw a hand stray to her throat but could not see what lay there. For a short while there was silence between us. When she spoke again it was in a tone much lighter. "There is no doubt of it, more is permitted to a widow than a wife, much more. Otherwise, how could we two have sat here in the dark so long?" With this she rose. "It is late," she said. "You have a weary way to go tomorrow."

"Thoughts of you will make the way seem lighter." I rose and took some paces towards her, following the curve of the muretto. "All these years, and I have never forgotten you," I said.

She moved forward a little and stopped, as if hesitating. I thought she might come close to me, close enough for me to take her in my arms, but she did not. Two paces more, and I could have touched her, laid my hand on her hair or her cheek. Some grace in me conquered this impulse, kept me standing still there.

"Nor I you," she said, "my splendid Thurstan, my valiant boy at the lists."

She was turning away. "And tomorrow?" I said. "Will I not see you tomorrow?"

"We will leave not much after daybreak."

"I will be waiting here, by the fountain, if it be only for the sight of you."

"Well," she said, smiling now, "I hope we can greet each other at least.