Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

Stefanos nodded. "I will see he is told this, but it is time wasted, these warnings make no difference." He smiled saying this, a smile of regret and resignation mixed. Stefanos was a gentle soul, but he was shrewd. He had been many years as book-keeper in the Diwan of Control and he was old now – I thought he must be fifty at least. His hair was scant, and poring over the accounts had given him a stoop, but his brown eyes had the glint of irony and humour in them, and little escaped his notice. "They add the warnings to their costs," he said. "It goes down on the bill."

"All the same, it lends us an advantage to have warned him when the reckoning comes."

Stefanos smiled again. "A moral advantage, you mean? We might feel that, but will he?"

"I will see that he knows it. They are housed well enough, the people?"

"Yes, they are close to the guard house at the west gate, the one near the outer wall, where the stables used to be, until the yard was found too narrow and the horses were moved. There was some trouble at first with one of the dancers."

"That would be the younger one."

"Yes, how did you know? She is difficult, that one, certainly." He paused a moment, shaking his head in mild perplexity. "A beautiful girl," he said, "in her face and in her movements also. But very excitable. She shook her skirts about as if there were rats underfoot.

She said she was not a horse, to sleep in the stable, she had two legs, not four. Shapely legs they are, what I saw of them."

I could see he had been taken by this Nesrin, even in the midst of this flagrant misbehaviour of hers. "She is perverse," I said. "She is one who sleeps by the roadside, but walls and a roof are not good enough."

I had spoken more eagerly perhaps than met the case, and I felt Stefanos' eyes on me. He said, "I explained to her, as well as I could – her Greek is limited – that they are not stables now but chambers, and I pointed out to her the swept floors and the clean straw that had been put down for them, with the cotton quilts to lay over. Then she said she would not share the space, she wanted to sleep alone. We had thought one room for the men, another for the women, but this turned out to be a mistake because the others are in couples, a man and a woman together."

"All this no doubt they discussed among themselves in their own tongue, loudly and at length."

"So they did. Now they are occupying three stables, rooms I mean, and for the present they are content."

"Well," I said, "if she is by herself she will have only herself to quarrel with. Let us bring the tailor and make a start with dressing them. I foresee difficulties at every stage with these people, but time is on our side, though gained through misfortune – the King will not want to see dancing so soon after the death of his son."

I had scarcely finished saying this when one of the eunuch slaves employed as messengers came to tell me that Lord Yusuf had returned and required my presence as soon as possible. I went immediately, bearing with me a written statement containing details of all the monies disbursed in the King's name in the course of my mission. These he would have to approve and sign. Among them was no mention of my stay with the Hospitallers of Saint John.

I recounted the purchase of the birds and the hiring of the dancers.

Naturally, I said nothing about the difficulties and irritations that had been attendant on these transactions. Yusuf listened, with his eyes on my face, but made no comment of any kind; birds and dancers were after all my responsibility and I would have to answer for any shortcomings in either.

"And Mario?" he said suddenly, cutting me short. "What became of Mario?"

"So you were informed of it? I was coming to the mention of him."

"If I had been in your place, and rendering this account, I would have begun with that. It is unusual. The other things are not unusual, neither the herons nor the dancers."

"Not unusual?" I said warmly. "They are amazing. They can move their bellies in a way never seen before."

"Thurstan, Thurstan," he said in a lowered voice, as if in pity for me.

He said nothing more for the moment. The mid-morning light came through the tall window where we were standing together, as generally in these colloquies of ours, and fell on his white turban and robe with a brightness that perplexed my eyes a little, and just for a moment I was reminded of my visit to Muhammed, his form as he rose to greet me and the way he had seemed to become a shadow of himself, a white shadow. But Yusuf's face was clear and familiar, and there was a look of kindness for me in it.

"You should always pay attention to the unusual," he said. "A guard may get drunk and cause trouble, he may wound or kill someone in an affray, or be wounded or killed himself, he may rob someone or rape someone.

These are usual things, unfortunately, the people we employ are of poor quality and not enough provision is made for their wages. But this Mario, he vanishes into thin air, in Calabria, far from home – he is Sicilian, of Palermo, that much we know, though it is all we know, for the moment at least."

I made no mention of that fleeting impression of Mario's face among the crowd of pilgrims at Bari, convinced as I was that I had been mistaken.

"He may have met the woman of his dreams," I said. "Who knows?" This was frivolous, deliberately so, but I was suddenly weary of the lecturing he gave me, a weariness I dared not show openly but which I had felt more often of late.

As I had expected, he did not waste words on a reply. "And Lazar?" he said. "How did he take it?"

"He was far from pleased to go away empty-handed, and he made his displeasure plain. Perhaps he will do more for us, perhaps he will change sides."

Yusuf regarded me with his usual expression, quizzical, slightly sardonic. "If his friendship does not help us, his enmity cannot do us much harm. He is not necessary."

"Yet we have been paying him."

"The money was set aside for that purpose. If we spent only when we were certain of return, our coffers would be always full. With or without Lazar, the Serbs will rise against their Byzantine masters, they make restless subjects."

I knew Yusuf was fond of me in his way and that he spoke with no unkind intention, his aim being always to instruct me in the realities of the palace administration. But it was not he who had made the difficult and dangerous journey he now dismissed as pointless. Adept at concealment when he had ends to serve, he took no pains to conceal from me that I was a means of serving those ends, that money and bearer had the same weight in the balance. A sudden resentment rose in me and I spoke to him on the spur of it. "Restless subjects, yes," I said. "Not like the Saracens of Sicily."

Nothing changed in Yusuf's posture but it was a different face that looked at me now, and before he spoke I felt the chill of his displeasure. "So you make our patience a reproach to us?"

"No, I did not mean that." Already I was regretting my temerity. "The rule of our King Roger is merciful and just, unlike that of Manuel Comnenus, and so there is no cause for his subjects to be restless, whether Moslem or Christian or Jew."

But this came too late. "You talk loosely, Thurstan," he said, "and that is because your mind is loose. My people have been loyal to the Norman King. This shows lack of spirit in your view? We should emulate the Serbs?"

"Lord, I did not think you would make this application of my words."

"A man should always think before speaking. How many times over how many years have I tried to instil this simple precept into you?"

"I meant only that the Serbs -"

"The Serbs are a fractious people. If they had no overlords they would fight among themselves. It is this quality in them that might make them useful to us in turning Manuel's thoughts from the invasion of Sicily.