Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

These civilities over, I returned to the place allotted to me, guided in this by the lord's steward. Water was brought in silver ewers and poured over the guests' hands, a second servant following behind with towels.

Grace was said by our host, and the first courses were brought in.

I remember the meal as excellent but at the time I scarcely paid attention to what I was eating, nor to the words exchanged with those sitting next to me, so enraptured was I by the knowledge that Alicia had spoken of me to these members of her family and that they, far from thinking me unworthy, had seemed pleased by the acquaintance. She would also had spoken of me to her parents, I thought, on her return to Troina. They too had not been displeased by the connection; otherwise, how could the brother have shown such friendliness towards me? From time to time, more frequently perhaps than was decorous, I glanced down the table at her, eager for anything of her that my sight could register, her hands, the set of her head, the movement of her throat when she drank. Sometimes our eyes met, and then her look lingered on me.

When we rose from the table my first thought was to join her immediately, but she was borne away by those in attendance on her, I did not see the way they went, and spent a time that seemed wearisome to me looking in courtyards that led to vestibules and antechambers that then opened to other courtyards, with no one in sight but servants who bowed to me silently. At last I came out by the lakeside and stood there, gazing down at the water, wondering where to look now for her, and whether there was someone I might ask.

There were reflections of clouds in the water, faint shreds and curls of cloud that I had not known were there in the sky until I saw them thus reflected, and also of foliage, the sharp-leaved foliage of the orange trees and the golden fruit. And now again there came that sense of shifting and displacement that I had felt earlier while crossing the causeway. There was no wind to stir the water, the surface was calm, yet the clouds and the leaves and the bright globes of the oranges stretched and shifted, and it was strangely difficult to see where the borders of the lake ended. I looked up at trees and sky with some vague idea of finding an explanation there, but these too for some moments seemed to stretch away from me and their confines melted into distance. I had a feeling of threatened balance, as if the ground under my feet was not firm. Through the trees, in that part of the island farthest from the palace, I saw a flash of brilliant light that remained for some short while then ceased. I walked toward this, passing beyond the trees into terraced gardens and pergolas of jasmine and honeysuckle, very sweetly scented. The flash of light came again and the pergolas multiplied strangely.

Then, coming once more into the open, I saw the cause of it: raised on brass pillars to a level above my own height, was a disk of polished tin greater in diameter than the span of a man's arms, and it was turning, very slowly, through a wide angle, and catching the sun as it turned. No slightest sound came from this great weight of metal. I saw it stop at the limit of the turn, and pause, and then begin the slow swing round to its former position. As I came closer, I saw that there were two dwarf Saracens of brass, identical in every respect, bearded and dressed in turbans and robes, suspended on chains below the turning mirror at a distance one from the other, and that each held a long-handled ladle with a deep bowl. By means which I could not determine – perhaps by conduits passing under the ground – the lake water was brought here into a pool, and then in some way invisible to me forced upward, compelling each of these brass water-men in turn to dip his ladle and fill his bowl. When one bowl was full the weight was enough to swing the mirror, but even as it did so the water in the bowl poured itself away, the other bowl dipped down and the mirror began its return.

How long I stood watching this I do not know. I could not look long at the gleaming surface of the metal because of the blinding flashes that came from it and because it made the mind dizzy, turning earth and sky and water into a medley of wheeling forms and fleeting colours, that had no bounds, no confines. But the Saracen water-men fascinated me, their movements, continuous, relentless, not smooth as human movements are, but marked by infinitesimal intervals, as if they might cease, rebel against the water that governed them, but they did not, they were condemned to labour for ever. I could not see by what cunning means the water of this calm pool could master them so. Somewhere hidden, I thought, a pump, a pressure that mounted by pipes, but in that case…

"There is another," a voice said behind me. "Another mirror, exactly the same, on the other side of the island."

I turned to find a man regarding me whom after a moment I recognised: it was the groom who had ridden before Alicia in that street in Bari, where we had met. He was not in livery now, but in a long surcoat of undyed linen. I had not thought at the time that he had the air or the glance of a servant, and I did not think so now, from the way he was regarding me.

"You walk softly," I said.

"A careless step can cost a man dear." This was an Arab saying, though he spoke in Italian, and he smiled as he uttered it. He was a handsome man, with a good forehead and a high-bridged nose and eyes of a colour between green and hazel. "Yes," he said, "one catches the reflections of the other, between them they invert the order of earth and heaven. Our good King's Saracen engineers fashioned them in the fifth year of his reign, at the time when the improvements were made here. The Saracens have no match when it comes to the harnessing of water. There is a gardener here whose sole task it is to keep the surfaces polished and remove drowned insects from the pools."

"You have come to tell me this?"

"I have come at the Lady Alicia's bidding to lead you to where she awaits you."

"You are the lady's groom?" I asked, as I went with him.

"Her groom, her bearer, her messenger, her man-at-arms when she has need of one. I came in her following from Jerusalem. My father was in the service of her father, Guy of Morcone."

"So you have known the family long?"

"A good many years, yes."

"And your name?"

"I am called Caspar."

A thought struck me now that made me pause briefly in my walk. "If your father was in that service, you must have known the Lady Alicia as a child?"

He had stopped with me, but did not look at me fully, glancing away as if tolerating these questions rather than welcoming them. "I would not say known," he said. "I was a stable-boy in the castle when she was born."

I had a mind, as we resumed our walking, to question him further; anything concerning Alicia was of absorbing interest to me, and this Caspar must have seen her grow up. Not only that: if he had come with her from Jerusalem, it seemed likely that he had gone with her there when she left to be married to Tibald. But he stopped and pointed and said, "She is there, you will come upon her if you follow the paved way through the gardens. There is a gate and beyond it a walled yard with a fountain and a small pavilion."

With this he inclined his head and withdrew, leaving me with the impression that he quitted me thus abruptly, and while still at some distance from where Alicia waited, so as to curtail this talk of ours and forestall further questioning. But the anticipation of seeing Alicia drove all else from my mind, and I walked on eagerly until I came to the gate he had spoken of, which was low and tinted with silver and surmounted by arabesques.

Passing through this, for a fleeting moment I thought that the enclosure was peopled, then saw that there were shrubs of some dense-growing sort which had been very skilfully cut into the shapes of animals and birds, and these cast shadows on the walls, which had been whitened with lime, so that the figures were repeated there. Among these shapes, and the shadows they cast, there was at first no sign of Alicia, but then I made out her form above me, inside the pavilion, saw the pale colour of her gown first, then her face. She heard my step and turned and saw me but remained in the shade of the pavilion. This had a balustrade with short marble pillars set very close together in it like bars. Now this is strange to relate, but as I began to climb the marble steps towards her, I thought I heard somewhere in the distance that wailing sound of the herons, wulla-wulla-wulla, and a memory came to me, brief as the flicker of an eye, of mounting to the deck of the ship and looking across the white birds in their cages at Nesrin.