Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

My people are different. Our ancestors took this island from the Greeks by conquest and it was by conquest that our fathers lost it to the Normans. My father was still young when the last Arab city surrendered, Noto, the city of his birth. I was born in that same city five years later, forty-six years ago, born subject to the Norman rule. What is the experience of the father is in some sense the experience of the child.

It is in the minds of all of us that we have been dispossessed. How could it be otherwise? But in these sixty years since the taking of Noto, not once have my people risen against the Christian ruler. You are a Norman, half of you at least. Do you think the Normans have more right to rule here than we had, that there is something in the soil or the soul of this island that makes it more suitable for Christians to reside in and govern?"

His eyes had taken on a light I saw in them rarely. "Answer me," he said.

"No," I said, "no," and this was a lie, for in my heart I did think so.

"My lord, do not speak loudly, there are always people ready to listen."

I was alarmed because he had raised his voice, a thing I could not remember him ever doing before, in this place of corners and corridors where listening people could hide, where anyone – domestics, attendants, messengers, guards – could be a spy.

"Not once," he repeated. "The King's Saracen foot soldiers are the most steadfast and loyal troops in the army. He knows it well – it is not for nothing that he forbids them to convert to Christianity. He trusts them more than he trusts his fellow-Normans, he uses them in battle against his Christian vassals – it is they who rise against him, not us. This town you have just come from, who was it that defended the citadel of Bari against the combined forces of Pope and Emperor for four weeks, when all others had deserted the King's cause? Was it the Christians?"

"No, lord. I was young when this happened, not yet twelve, but news of it came to us at Bernalda."

"Four weeks, fewer than five hundred men, all Moslems. Every man of them was hanged when the citadel was taken."

His hand had strayed to the cube of embroidered leather at his breast, where he kept the scroll with the names of God in it. "Not once," he said again, more quietly now. "And what is our reward? The land is given to the Christians."

"Some new allocations of the land there must be, when new rulers come,"

I said. "Our King respects the rights of all his subjects."

"You repeat the words you hear others say. There is something in you that persists, and it is endearing but also foolish, a wish for comfort, a wish to believe. Here in Palermo our people are privileged. The King has grown up among Arabs, he speaks our language, he prefers our company to that of the Frankish nobles whom he finds boorish and ignorant, which, let it be said between us, they are. But who are these Arabs that surround the King?"

I took this for a rhetorical question and so attempted no answer. He was regarding me with less animosity now and I breathed more easily for it; he was formidable in his anger, there was such threat of harm in it.

"They are artists and philosophers and men of science, people of the court. I am not questioning the King's justice. He is just, unjust things are done in his name, is it so difficult for you to bring these things together in your mind? Go to Butera or Randazzo. Go to Noto, where I was born. See the colonies of Lombard emigrants there. Their numbers are swelling from month to month. They build their houses, they take over the land. They are encouraged in this by some who stand close in counsel to the King. The Arabs become serfs on the land they owned."

I did not reply at once to this, knowing that the Arabs kept slaves long before the Normans came, but it was as if Yusuf read this thought in my mind, for he said now, "There was oppression of Christians in the days of Arab rule, I do not deny it, but a Christian could still have title to land, legal title that was respected. Without the right to hold land, a people is reduced to nothing."

He fell silent and looked away from me, and I saw the rise and fall of his breathing. I looked down over the courtyard that lay below the window and saw a man in the royal livery of scarlet and gold with a hunting mastiff on a chain. It was a boar hound and half as high as he was. It was straining at the leash and the man's arm was wrenched with the force of it as he tried to lead it where it should go. Then two palace Saracens in bright green robes and turbans came out from the portico. They spoke with their faces close together and they were laughing and the silk of their robes gleamed in the sunshine. With their fluttering gestures they were like birds of paradise. It was the same courtyard where I had encountered Glycas, not long ago if one counted the days, but it seemed like another life – between that time and now lay my meeting with Alicia.

"It will not be so," I said. "The King has always dealt justly with his Moslem subjects."

"Do not deceive yourself. We are hated here. The failure of this crusade, the humiliation of the Franks in Syria, has made the hatred worse. Before many years there will be no land owned by Moslems in Sicily. I should have not spoken so to you, but your words provoked me, coming at a time when the wrongs suffered by the Moslems were uppermost in my mind. While you were away a cousin of mine by marriage, the son-in-law of my mother's brother, was killed at Vicari, on the land he used to own, by the son of the Lombard who now owns it. The connection with me was not close enough to prevent the expropriation, but it was close enough for them not to throw him off the land altogether – he remained as a bailiff. Seeing a Moslem serf being badly beaten by a son of the new owner, he protested and the young man stabbed him to death. I am applying to the courts but without much hope of success. The father is related to the Lombard clan of Sclavus and so very close to the Lombards in the office of the Vice-Chancellor. They will bring it in as self-defence. He never went armed, but of course they will find the weapon."

He looked directly at me and I thought I saw a suspicion of moistness in his eyes. "Five years ago," he said, "such a crime would have been punished, whoever the culprit. If the courts give us no satisfaction, what can we do? We must find other ways." There was no threat in his voice, only sadness, but it seemed to me that this young Lombard was destined not to survive his victim long. Yusuf was right in any case: five years ago the Lombard faction would not have dared to touch a man related to the Lord of the Diwan of Control, however distant the relation.

"How long can it last?" he said. "If they take the right to ownership of land, all other rights will go with it. Our King is beset with bad counsellors. He rules a land where many races live close together. And with his crown he inherited the knowledge that the peace of his realm depends on the acquiescence of non-Christians to Christian rule. If he fails to keep that rule within bounds that the Moslems can accept, there will be civil war in Sicily. We too will become restless subjects like the Serbs." He was looking at me very closely now. "The Moslems cannot win such a war, it would be the end of us. But it would be an end long in coming – we would be a thorn in the flesh of the Norman kings for many years to come. You can help to prevent this, Thurstan. If the King makes me Lord Chamberlain, I will strive to advise him well, to nurture respect for the claims and the rights of all. You will help me, we will work together. We will take more Christians into the Diwan, Latin and Greek, until no one can say it is one thing or another. Our scribes will copy in Latin and Greek as well as Arabic. You have a good head on your shoulders, when you care to use it, and you have a good heart. You will prosper if you keep by me. It is a mark of trust that I speak my mind to you in this way."