Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

This thought raised my spirits further, and as I left the river behind me I lifted my head and broke into song: Lady, my heart, the best friend that I have, I leave in your keeping, till we can love with all our bodies I ceased, however, not feeling the words to be fitting, as I passed by the Church of San Giovanni dei Leprosi, which lies not far beyond the river. This church was built by our King's uncle, Robert Guiscard, on the very spot where the Norman army first encamped before Palermo, which was then still in the hands of the Saracens.

The outer gates to the palace were reached by a roadway with forest on either side. I announced my name to the guards and they knew it without needing to look at any list, something of extreme rarity in my life up to then. I was conducted by one of them, who walked alongside, holding my horse, this also being far from common in my experience. I wondered whether I might in future take my father's title and call myself Thurstan of Mescoli.

We came to the lakeside and the arcaded front of the palace rose before me, set amidst groves of orange trees. There was a causeway, built up with stone, that led across the water to the gilded gates of the palace itself – the only way to reach them by land. Passing over this, I saw a ripple and a flash of gold as some great carp turned near the surface.

There was a strange, sudden impression of extended distances and doubled perspectives, as if the lake itself, the sunlit waters and the dark-leaved trees and the interleaving arches of the palace were shifting and receding as I drew nearer.

It was a confusion of the senses very fleeting, ceasing as I came before the gates. Glancing aside before entering, I saw a group of men and women walking together at the borders of the lake, dressed in light-coloured clothes. I wondered if one of the ladies might be Alicia, but it was too far for me to see clearly. In the open courtyard beyond the gate, my guide was replaced by a groom in the same colours of dark red and pale blue, who took my horse's bridle and held her head while I dismounted, keeping close in case I needed help – servants trained to this perfection do not distinguish people by their seeming young or old or fat or thin. He led the horse away, having first handed my saddle-bags to yet another liveried attendant, who went before me across the courtyard and delivered me to a chamberlain waiting in the hall, dressed with sober richness in black velvet. Never before that I could remember had I been greeted on arriving anywhere by so many persons, one after another, before even setting eyes on my host. To live in the open and be known, to bear your own wealth and be careless in the display of it, to have knightly title and a lady of birth at your side, to be surrounded by care and attention. Not just for a day, but every day of your life!

The chamberlain conducted me to my room, which was on the floor above and had a high-vaulted ceiling carved intricately in wood in the Saracen style, and a broad window shuttered against the sun. All this was splendid enough, but it was the bed that caught my eye: it was big enough for four Thurstans, canopied in green silk. In the wall opposite the bed there was a niche tiled in dark blue with a design of red flowers at the base. It seemed to me that this must be one of the finest sleeping-chambers in the palace – certainly I had never slept in one so fine. Outside the door, some few paces along a passageway, there was a privy, which the chamberlain pointed out to me. It was for my use only, he said, I nodded and strove to make it appear a commonplace in my life that I should have a privy to my private use – it was one of the privileges I hoped to inherit if I succeeded to Yusuf's place at the Diwan.

Having waited to assure himself that all was satisfactory to me, the chamberlain bowed and took his leave. I opened the shutters and immediately a low sound of running water came into the room: below my window there lay a courtyard with a marble fountain, and tiny streams carried the water from the basin of the fountain into lower basins, until all the water flowed into a small pond, and there were white lilies floating on the surface of this.

A serving girl came with towels and a ewer of scented water for me to wash and refresh myself after the journey. She was followed shortly afterwards by an armed retainer – he too in the same livery – who bore throwing lance and long dagger and hunting horn, but of these I had no need, having brought my own. At this season it would be the hart that was hunted, not the boar, so it was useless to carry a sword. I had hunted hart as a squire in the service of Hubert of Venosa, and since then sometimes in the woods of the Conca D'Oro with companions from the palace administration. My horse was not notably spirited but she was steady. I was confident of bearing myself with credit, and I had brought with me hunting clothes specially made for the occasion, which I thought suited me admirably well, a high-waisted doublet with slashed sleeves, and leggings that did justice to the shape of my legs, the whole in matching colours of wine-red and pale yellow. It had cost me half a month's wages.

The chamberlain returned to ask me if I would be pleased to descend. In the main hall my host and his lady awaited me, and they responded very affably to my bows. Bertrand of Bonneval was a very tall man – taller than I – broad-faced and fair-bearded, with blue eyes so clear and direct as to seem childlike. The Lady Isabelle seemed low of stature beside this stout lord of hers, though I think she was of middling height; she was delicate of feature and not much given to smiling and very brightly painted.

"I knew your father," Sir Bertrand said. "A very valiant knight, we were companions-in-arms at the siege of Salerno in the summer of '34. Now making his peace with God, as I hear reported. Admirable, very admirable. Even if it were only for the father's sake, we would be glad to welcome the son."

I made some confused reply to this, expressing appreciation on my father's behalf and on my own. The exact words I have forgotten. In fact the confusion was caused by what I felt to be some ambiguity in his remarks. Did he mean that I had been invited for my father's sake?

Surely not – I did not believe he had known my father so well. He must have meant that there were reasons in addition, reasons he was too circumspect to mention, in spite of those guileless eyes, or one reason at any rate: Alicia had found some way of recommending me to him. It had not occurred to me before, not fully, so delighted had I been, how difficult it might have been for her to press my name, to show her interest in a way that was consistent with her honour. Perhaps she had enlisted some third party to act as go-between…

We were joined now by others, introductions were made, we moved all together, not into the main courtyard through which I had come on entering the palace, but across the hall, then across a second, smaller one, and so out into the rose gardens behind, where there was a marble pavilion in the style of a Greek temple, but with an arcade of slender Saracenic columns. Within this, shaded from the sun, there were people already sitting at a long table laid for a meal and decked with vases of roses white and red.

As we drew nearer I saw that Alicia was among those seated and I felt the blood leave my face. I could give no sign of recognition unless she did; I did not know whether she had spoken of our meeting or wished to keep it secret. But she looked up as I came to the table, our eyes met and she smiled. Never had fire warmed me as that smile of hers so openly upon me – a smile for all to see. She spoke in turn to the men on either side of her, one of whom looked of an age with me, the other older, tonsured and wearing the dark gown of a cleric. I knew she must be speaking of me, as both looked towards me and nodded a greeting. On the spur of this I went to where they were sitting and made my bow to them and they stood to return this bow and I heard Alicia say my name and those of the two with her. The younger man was her brother Adhemar, who had accompanied her from the Holy Land, the other her uncle, Abbot Alboino. He was recently from Rome, she had said. Adhemar had his sister's fairness and her level brows. He smiled readily and his manners were easy and pleasing. The abbot, by contrast, smiled hardly at all but he addressed me in friendly fashion and said that his niece had spoken well of me. He was round-faced and well-fleshed, but his eyes seemed to gainsay this air of well-being: sadder eyes than his I could not remember seeing in any man's face.