Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"How is that?"

"Do you mean to say you have no memory of it? I hired a group of acrobats of phenomenal skill and brought them here at my own expense, thinking they might give entertainment to the court. I was greatly out of pocket in that business."

"Excuse me, you were not out of pocket. Your expenses were repaid in reasonable measure. In the end, as I remember, you professed yourself satisfied."

"Well, one doesn't want to haggle, a man of my standing. After all, one is not a putter-on-of-shows."

I had not been greatly sympathetic to his cause before, but it was these last words that set me against him. So ill-natured was he that he would belittle even the one he asked for favours. I said, "Was it you or another that haggled till we were all out of patience?"

"It is the pains I went to," he said. "I did not mind the losses to my purse."

"You suffered no losses to your purse."

"It was not the money that was important to me, it was the desire to be of service. That is all I ask in return, a gesture of good will. Of course, I would be ready to show my gratitude. Should we say one twentieth part of the debt?" He tried his smile again. "Depending, naturally, on the outcome of the hearing."

I now began to be heartily sick of this conversation. Why was I endlessly taken up with venal persons and malodorous concerns? How had it come about? The image of Alicia came to my mind. I thought of that moment of recognition, the moment she had looked at me and pronounced my name. If she could see me now, involved in this squalid talk of debts and favours, would she still think me so splendid?

"Malfetta," I said, "our diwan cannot be of practical help to you but I can offer you some advice. It would be most unwise of you to let this matter come before a court. The judge will find it difficult to understand why you did not obtain the documents of release from the creditor. He may well find it puzzling that you went accompanied by a number of friends when you repaid the debt. It is not common practice, is it?"

"I asked them to accompany me for fear of being robbed on the way. I was carrying a large sum of money."

"He may also think it strange that, if you were so accompanied, none of those with you thought to ask Waziri to render up the contract, they were all in the same state of distraction as yourself."

Malfetta was looking at me narrowly. "I do not like your tone," he said.

"You appear to be doubting my word."

"No, what I am saying is that the judge is likely to doubt it. If he finds against you, you will have to pay the cost of the hearing as well as the debt, and any you call as witness will cut an extremely bad figure. You made a mistake in not making sure the contract was annulled.

A man must pay for his mistakes."

Malfetta got to his feet. He was looking at me now with scowling displeasure, an expression much better suited than smiling to the general cast of his countenance. "Who is this judge that finds everything strange?" he said. "Is he a Berber? He does not exist, he is an invention of your own, you hide behind him to avoid doing me a service."

This was too much. I rose in my turn and stood looking across the table at him from my greater height. I said, "You think unwillingness to offend derives from fear? It is so with you because that is all the manners you have. But it is not so with me. Do you doubt it?"

He was silent, he would not go so far; perhaps he was surprised by the fierceness of my looks and words. But I was ashamed now at having borne with him so long, it was shame that kept me angry. I wanted to provoke him to a quarrel. "I have listened with patience to this tale of yours,"

I said, "but I will not tolerate your insults."

But he would not take me up on it, even under this imputation of falsehood, though there was murder in his eyes as he looked at me. "You will pay dearly for this," he said, and with that he went from the room, leaving me, after that rush of anger had abated, far from satisfied with myself. Once again I had failed to bear myself with the restraint that is proper in a servant of the state. I had made an enemy of Malfetta, and a bad enemy he might well prove to be. In fact, all I had succeeded in doing was to make the world more dangerous for me.

I felt the need to be alone for a while, in a place where no one would look for me. I went quickly down the stairs and out into the narrow, uncovered passageway that follows the line of the outer wall and leads to a gate on the south side of the palace not much used and guarded by one man only, who raised the grid for me. I followed the bank of the rivulet that flows alongside the street of the Benedettini. The current ran fast still, though May was all but over, and there were martins flying low over the water. I came soon within sight of the church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti and I entered by the western door. It was cool inside and the light was muted. There was a scattering of people in the nave, some sitting, some kneeling. I went into the presbytery and from there entered the little courtyard which also belongs to the mosque that adjoins the church, and which was a favourite place of mine. It is the only church in Palermo, and perhaps in all Sicily, which is joined in this way to a mosque. Our King had ordered it to be built alongside the mosque and ordained it so that Christian and Moslem could pass freely and without hindrance each to his own place of worship, and in this he had showed the wisdom and spirit of tolerance that made me proud to serve him. It was for this reason that I loved this church best of all those in Palermo. On the other side of it, that farthest from the mosque, there was an abbey of the Benedictines.

There was no one in the courtyard at this hour, and I sat in the shade of the portico for a little while till the peace of the place had worked on my spirits and Malfetta's baseness had receded to that region where such qualities had their dwelling, a region I always tried to feel was far distant, though knowing full well that it lay round any corner.

With recovered calm I began again to think of Alicia, of our meeting and our talk together. Thoughts of her came always in the same way, from a misty surface, the mist rent asunder by little shocks of memory, and always with a sense in me of pleasurable helplessness, of being subjugated by the detail of it, her eyes, her smile, a gesture she had that I had known in the girl and found again in the woman, a way of touching her hair at the temple above the right ear, very lightly, as if she were herself, for that moment, distracted by some thought from the past. To these memories of her that were real, I added others that could not be so, the shape of her foot, the texture of the skin at the nape of her neck, invented memories, but they did not come accompanied by desire, they were elements of her wondrous existence, they seemed like the proof of it. The more fully I could create her in my mind, the more of substance I could give her, the more I could believe that we would meet again.

Did she wait for this with an eagerness equal to mine? I wanted to believe this but how could I know? I knew she had loved me once, I could not be wrong in that. At fourteen she had loved me, she had lived for the stolen times of our meetings, as I had, the clasped hands, the kisses that stayed warm on our lips, the longing to touch more closely, always denied. I would have braved any danger for her, gone forth to confront dragons or seek a new Grail.

That was a fever we shared. But it was long years ago, and much had changed. Then we were equals, children of noble families sent away to learn what we needed to learn for the maintaining of our station. She was born to wider estates than I, so much I already knew. But as a knight I could have hoped to become rich; for one who was bold and skilled in the lists there were prizes to be won; an opponent unhorsed in single combat would forfeit to the victor charger and trappings and armour. There were merchants who dealt only in these and would pay well for them. Some years of travelling from tourney to tourney and I could have amassed enough wealth, taken service with a great lord, been granted a fief to add to the dowry lands of my bride, my Alicia…