Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

Indeed, he had never spoken to me in such a way before, and this in spite of the fact – but I was not to learn this till later – that he knew of my talk with Béroul in the tavern, knew I had kept it from him.

I wonder now if he had some presentiment of evil that came masked as good: the Devil is well able to play such tricks. As he spoke he reached forward to take my hand, and I was moved by this, which I think he saw.

If we had stopped there, I would have carried the warmth of it away with me. But even as our hands were still clasped together he said, "That is why I chose you, that is why I brought you here."

As I returned to my office, these words echoed in my mind. That was why he had picked me out, to be a representative Christian in the spectacle he was putting on – his douana, a model of races and creeds living in harmony. He was the lord of the douana, it was he who was the Purveyor, not I. It had not been my knowledge of Arabic or the good reports of my teachers; it had been my looks, my Norman ancestry, my Roman religion – attributes of the rulers…

No doubt I did him an injustice; he had appealed for my help in good faith; he had made me the hearer of dangerous words – a signal mark of trust in such a man. But I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was no more than an instrument to him, that I lived and breathed and was Thurstan Beauchamp to serve his advancement. And I forgot, in the injury to my pride, that his advancement meant also my own. The truth was – and this I knew even then – that the need for dignity was more present to me now that I had felt Alicia's hand on my head and heard her murmured words above me.

Stefanos was not there when I returned and I supposed he was still engaged with the tailor. I sat at my table and began to busy myself with the papers there. These were royal renewals of privilege, originally written in Greek with a version in Arabic attached to them. It was my task to ensure that the translation reflected the meaning accurately.

This was not so difficult as it might seem, since I had read a good number of such orders for renewal in my time at the Diwan of Control, and the form of words was always the same. Nevertheless it required some concentration, as the scribes occasionally made errors. And concentration, this morning, was lacking. I stared down at the first one, following the arenga, with which they always began: Since it is beholden on us zealously to guard the rights of the holy churches and keep them in peaceful state, we therefore order that the rights and privileges of the Abbey of San Filippo in the district of Corleone be renewed and tended for scrutiny so they may be confirmed by the power of our sublime Majesty…

My eyes lost sharpness, the words swam together; out of them, like a reflection of cloud on water, gathering and thinning and gathering again, came Alicia's face as I had seen it on the morning of our parting, the clear look of her eyes, their readiness to meet mine, as they seemed to do now from the page, the long fair hair falling loose about her face. Hair made even fairer, she had said, by the sun of Outremer, though she had allowed no touch of that sun on her skin, where the pure lily mingled with the flushed rose, no, that was wrong, a single flower, a pure white rose with a flush at the tips of the petals.

Perhaps I could set this into verse, find an air to sing it by…

I was interrupted in this train of thought by the return of Stefanos, who told me that the tailor was waiting in an anteroom across the passage. We went together to see him, since he had more space there for the showing of his fabrics.

He had a boy with him to carry the pieces he had brought us to see – he would not have dreamed of carrying anything himself. Tailors in the palace employ were highly skilled in their trade and much favoured. The King had a corpulent and imposing figure, and he spent freely on his dress and on those who fashioned it, and in this he was followed by the people of the court. All this had given the tailors an exaggerated idea of their own importance. They dressed in the height of fashion themselves, as if they were perambulating advertisements for their own handiwork, and put on all manner of airs and graces. This one was dressed in green velvet with an embroidered shirt that came high and was stiff in the collar, so that it forced his chin up, giving him a look more condescending than ever. Seeing him thus, I surmised that this high neck would be soon the general fashion and I resolved to have two such shirts made for me. The tailor was inclined to be sulky, having learned from Stefanos who his clients were; it was clear that he felt it beneath him to make clothes for a band of ragged nomads.

Naturally, I paid no attention to this nonsense of his. I had clear ideas by now of what I wanted them to wear. I looked at the quality of the pieces he had brought, and their colours, and found both good. I explained to him the combination of black and red and silver I had in mind. I went into detail with him, particularly in regard to the women.

They were to wear a close-fitting bodice of black sarsenet and a fine crimson damask for the long skirts and these must be very low at the hips and cut in a curve, so as to expose the abdomen when they whirled to unwind the silver sashes. They would not be wearing undergarments and the lights would be set in the wall behind them, so that the lower parts of their bodies would be easily glimpsed through the thin stuff of the skirts. Then if they went backwards on to their hands, as the Greek trader had seen them do, Holy Mother! I felt a loosening in my nether parts. My unruly imagination had brought about in my own loins the very stage of exaltation I was hoping to elicit in those in my royal master.

And this so soon after my pure and worshipful musing on the Lady Alicia!

The shame of this did something to restore me to order, but I was glad when the interview with the tailor came to an end. He went to return his pieces to the storeroom, promising to take the measures that same afternoon, and I returned to my desk.

However, I was not destined to go further with the royal renewals that morning. I had hardly returned when the doorkeeper came to announce a visitor, a man by the name of Leonardo Malfetta, who came on urgent business, or so he said. The doorkeeper was that same Sigismond who had caused trouble on the ship, but he smiled on me now, and inclined his head. I asked after his family and told him to come to me if he heard anything about Mario and he said he would do so.

This Malfetta was a merchant, a Genoese, and he was already known to me slightly, because he had once done, or attempted to do, a favour to us, by introducing some acrobats and rope-walkers that he had brought from Naples. He had even parted with a sum in payment of their passage and their maintenance in Sicily. His idea had been to gain a favour in return from our diwan; he was seeking a concession to export the cotton and hemp that are cultivated at Giattini. He had failed in this, as the trade was in the hands of a company of merchants from Amalfi and there was a charter already in existence. His Neapolitan acrobats never appeared at court and this had been by my decision. They were accomplished, certainly, but the time was not opportune, because Negro acrobats from Africa had performed for the King not very much before, and they had made a human pyramid of twelve persons and had also been ropewalkers, so Malfetta's people had nothing new to offer. If they had been allowed to perform, even though he had met with refusal in the matter of the concession, Malfetta would probably have said nothing about the money he had spent, regarding it in the light of an investment for favours in the future. But in the circumstances he had felt justified in making a claim on us for reimbursement. This had been met, but in part only, because the claim had been greatly exaggerated – one would have thought he had lavished a fortune on these poor acrobats from the streets of Naples. There had been dispute at the time and at first I thought he had come to renew this, and my heart sank.