Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

It is not many hours away, we have talked long. Good night, Thurstan Beauchamp."

"Good night, my lady, and a sweet repose to you." I watched her move to the stairs that led to the gallery, saw her mount them and pass briefly under the lamp that lay over the door of her chamber. The door was opened and closed, she passed from my sight. I stayed there some time longer, gazing up, as if by not moving I could somehow prolong a sense of her presence. The words of a song came to my mind, one from Provence, which I had sung sometimes: To console me for her loss, I think of the place where she is… I heard no voices from within and thought that perhaps Alicia had not wanted to wake the woman who attended her, who would be sleeping now. She would undress and prepare for bed unaided, and this consorted with what I felt to be the kindness of her nature.

I will confess here, since I am resolved to confess everything, that for a little while, as I stood there, I put to use that faculty of speculation I have spoken of before, encouraged in me by Yusuf, but I think already there in strong enough measure, and I began to picture this undressing of hers, but did not go far with it. She was all marvel to me, not flesh. She was my lady found again. And I was her splendid Thurstan, not a spy, not a lecher.

I was there at my post at daybreak, having slept very little for fear of sleeping too much. But our time together was brief. She sent her people to wait beyond the gate, except for one of the serjeants, who held the horse for her while we walked about the yard. The bleak light, the presence of others, the imminence of our farewells, all this constrained us.

"Take good care on the road," she said. "You are returning to difficult times."

"How can I see you again? But perhaps you do not want to?"

"Yes, I want to. I will come soon to Palermo, very soon."

She glanced up at me as she spoke and my heart lifted at the promise in her glance and in her words. "Angels guided my steps in Bari," I said.

"And mine. Now I must be on my way, and so must you."

There was still no touch between us. She looked once more at me, then turned towards the man who held her horse. He would have dismounted to assist her, but I went forward and took the bridle from him and brought the horse to her. I knelt in the dust of the yard and made a stirrup for her with my hands and lifted her thus into the saddle and wished her God speed. I felt the touch of her hand on my head and the murmur of her voice above me, "Thurstan, my knight," or so it sounded – her voice was very soft. Then they were gone with a clatter, and one of the hospitallers was already closing the gate.

Her face of the evening and the morning, her voice and her smile and the touch of her hand on my head, stayed with me all through the journey to Taranto. I went over the circumstances of our meeting again and again, how I had blundered by purest chance into that deserted place, with its weed-grown terrace and broken walls and vestiges of mosaic. I remembered the sense of relief that had come to me there, with only the cat and the lizards for company, the peace and self-pardoning after the ugliness of my talk with Lazar. It had been like a stage, a place prepared, swept clean for our meeting by kindly spirits…

But on boarding the ship I had news that put her image out of my mind, at least for a while. It came from a man I fell into talk with, a bailiff, as he told me, on the royal lands at Castel Buono. "Well," he said, "the times were not easy before, but they will be worse now."

"Why is that," I asked him.

"There is only William left and the King has no wife." He glanced now more closely at my face. "You have not heard?"

"I have been long on the road. Has some ill befallen Duke Roger?"

"He died eight days ago."

"But there was no illness or weakness in him when I left." I was staggered by the suddenness of it, so much so that I could scarcely credit the man's words. "How could such a thing have come about?"

"He died of a fever – or so it was given out."

"What do you mean?"

"It cannot be natural," he said. "I have been in the King's service for near on twenty years now. When Queen Elvira died, he had five sons born in wedlock, all in good health. Then Tancred died, then Alfonso, then Henry, and now Roger, the eldest, the heir to the throne, the one he pinned his hopes on. Four strong sons, with the blood of the Hautevilles in their veins, gone to their maker in a space of ten years. And not one of them died of wounds. It cannot be natural."

I was deeply distressed by the news of this death, and needed time to ponder it in private. But Yusuf's teaching was always strongly present to me. Let the one you talk to think he knows more, so you will find out what he thinks, and so you will find out what he knows.

"You don't believe someone had a hand in it?" I said.

"It is the Germans," he said, "and I am not alone in thinking this. They should not have been allowed to come so close to the throne – our King's Confessor is a German now. I don't speak of him, but there are those who work for Conrad among them, those who would like to see the Hohenstaufen get his hands on Sicily and bring it into his empire of the Romans, as it is termed, though there is little of Rome in it that I can see. He is Emperor of the Germans. And let us not forget, the Pope has not consented to crown Conrad."

"That is true."

"What has Conrad promised him in return for the imperial coronation?

That is what a good many of us would like to know."

"Well," I said, "you will not know it, nobody will, not for certain. You can be sure it was not set down in writing." I thought again of Hugo the pageboy. What honey cake had Conrad offered Pope Eugenius? A Sicily with a different ruler, one more submissive to the demands of the Church?

It was not until some time after this conversation, when I had retired to consider the news on my own, that I realised that Alicia must have known of this death. She had been with her parents near Troina; they would have had word of it soon after. She had said nothing, and my heart gave full approval to her for it; she had done, I thought, as I myself would have done, she had allowed no intrusion into that charmed talk of ours, nothing to mar the brief time we had for ourselves. Perhaps only then, at our parting, it had been in her voice, when she spoke of difficult times ahead…

I half-expected that some difference in me might be remarked upon when I was back in Palermo, so much did I feel myself changed by my meeting with Alicia, as if there were a light about me. But if this was noticed, nothing was said. And as the days passed and my usual tasks were resumed and I heard nothing from her, this light began to fade into that of common day.

The King was said to be unconsolable in his grief for his eldest-born, and he kept to his apartments and saw no one. I could not make my report to Yusuf immediately, because he was closeted with others of the Curia Regis in matters arising from Duke Roger's death, speculation as to who might take command in Salerno, interminable discussion of the merits and defects of various possible brides for the King – it was obvious to all that he must marry again, and soon.

While waiting for Yusuf's return to the Diwan I asked Stefanos to fetch one of the palace tailors. "Red and silver and black are the colours I want," I said. "Both for the dancers and the two who play the instruments. I want him to bring the stuffs with him so we can choose."

As Purveyor it fell to me to see to the appearance they made who came by my arrangement to perform before the King. I had decided that the men would wear red tunics and black pantaloons and black turbans with silver stitching, and that the women would repeat these colours but in a different order – black bodices and red skirts and silver girdles. This I thought would be tasteful and sumptuous at the same time. "These palace tailors think they are princes," I said. "He is to make careful note of the time he spends and the cost of the materials. He is not to exaggerate in anything, because we will infallibly find him out."