Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

Then Alicia came forward and held out both hands to me and I took them in my own and would have kissed her, because this was a different kind of being together now, we were no longer wayfarers amazed at a chance encounter, wanting to talk and remember, we were meeting in private, by assignation, by a summons of the lady. I would have kissed her on the mouth, but she held back, though it was gently that she did so, and she still remained close.

"We have little time," she said.

"All the more reason." My breath came quickly. The nearness of her face, face so much dreamed of, confused my sight. As if seen in a dream now, the level, fair brows, the candid blue of the eyes, the mouth full but well-formed, half smiling. "All the more reason, if the time is short,"

I said, in a voice not quite my own, and I leaned and kissed her and felt the answering warmth of her lips, but then she drew away a little and half-raised a hand as if to stay me. "This evening at supper we will have more time together. We are to sup at the lakeside, they will make fires. Then, with the dark and all the movement and the boats, it will be easier for us to escape notice."

The promise I felt in these words went to my head like a strong drink. I pictured this retiring together, away from the firelight, into the darkness of the woods…

"Do not look so," she said. "I meant that we will be free to talk together and make plans, without attracting any particular attention."

These words too were delightful to me, though in a different way. To make plans was to talk of a future shared. I felt my whole being brim with joy. When I spoke my voice came huskily. "Lady Alicia, let me tell you my gratitude -"

Gratitude, I was going to say, and which I felt from a full heart, for her existence in the world and for the pains and care she had taken to contrive our being together in this way. But she laid a finger on my lips to prevent my continuing, and I kissed it with the passion of my gratitude, but when I looked into her face I saw something of distress there, in the eyes and the mouth, something I was at a loss to understand. "What is it?" I said. "What is it troubles you?"

"No, it is nothing," she said. The look had left her face as I spoke.

She hesitated a moment, as if uncertain, then said, "It is Adhemar, he is always watching me. Even here…"

"Adhemar? But why should he watch?"

"He has his own ideas for my future, and you have no part in them."

"What ideas? He seemed so friendly and full of smiles…"

"Yes, he can smile, but he has a strong will behind the smiling. There is one he favours as a future husband for me, a fellow of his in the service of Count Raymond of Tripoli."

This came as a blow to me all the heavier for the joy of the promise that had gone before. How could her brother behave with such a degree of friendliness when all the time he was regarding me as a possible adversary, an impediment to his plans? There was an element of treachery there that went beyond the necessary, and I felt the chill of it even in that shaded warmth of the pavilion.

"Take care not to show him that you know this," Alicia said. "Do not change in your behaviour towards him, return his smiles. So he may be lulled into thinking that he will have his way, and cease from pestering me with praises of the wealth and prowess of this knight."

"And will he? Will he have his way?"

"Can you ask me that after the way providence has brought us together again, after the words exchanged between us? This friend of my brother's means nothing to me. It does not matter to me if he is wealthy and well-famed. I have had my fill of my family's friends – Tibald was one such. It is as I told you that night at the hospice. I am free to choose and I will choose at the bidding of my heart. This I promise you."

These words, and the look she gave me as she said them, went far to solace me for the double blow of Adhemar's perfidy and the existence of another suitor, but did not altogether heal it. My rival was rich, it seemed. Before I could reply there came the loud sound of a hunting horn from somewhere closer to the palace. "They are calling the Assembly," she said. She raised her face to me and kissed me lightly. "You must go to hear the huntsmen. I will follow more slowly. I will not join you there, I do not take part in the hunt – this one or any other. I do not enjoy the sight of the bleeding stag."

I did as she bade me, leaving her there still in the shade of the pavilion. As I made my way towards the gate, I saw how the shadows cast by the effigies on to the walls crossed and overlaid one another, making strange, deformed shapes. The lion was a jawless crocodile, the tall flamingo had a camel's hump.

The place of Assembly was an antechamber of the palace, adjoining the main hall. Here Bertrand and his Lady – who it seemed would join the hunt – awaited their guests in company with two huntsmen. Adhemar was there already and he smiled at me and I returned the smile, but I knew him now for an enemy. Of Alboino there was no sign.

When all who would take part were gathered, the huntsmen began to advance their separate claims. Each had followed the spoor of a deer with his bloodhounds and discovered the harbour, or resting place, of the beast and marked it for the morrow. They spoke in turn and earnestly: he whose deer was chosen would be paid in coin and receive some share of the meat. It was for this reason that, even though his punishment would be severe if the company were disappointed, a huntsman sometimes overpraised his deer, and so the questioning had to be careful. Neither man had viewed his quarry, but they assured us, from the height of the traces left by the antlers, that each was a hart of ten. On this point they were very definite and for the reason we all knew well: with less than ten tines on the head a hart was not judged ready to be hunted with dogs.

This discussion of the relative merits of the deer was elaborate and protracted as always, and as always it was conducted in French. No matter how long the Normans had lived in Sicily they used the language of their forebears when talking of the hunt. Each man, by courtesy of the host, was allowed a question if he so chose. Bertrand did me the honour of inviting me to ask the third question, after his own and that of the favoured quest, and this was a knight of very high estate, a nephew of Count Theobald of Blois. This courtesy I put down to Alicia's commendation of me – it could hardly be due to my own standing in such a company as this. My question, fortunately, was already prepared. I enquired into the depth of the impressions made by the feet and knees when the beast rose from its bed – an important matter this, as it indicates the weight. After I had thus played my part and showed myself no stranger to the business, I regret to say that I began to lose interest, especially as we now entered upon a long discussion concerning the width of foot, each huntsman eagerly showing, with fingers laid side by side, the flattening of the grass where his beast had trod.

There was a line of pillars along the side of the room opposite the entrance; they were of the kind known as serpentine, very slender, with a rope of marble winding round from pedestal to capital, so that the whole pillar took the form of a twining snake, this too the work of Saracen masons, perhaps made, I thought, in the days of Yusuf's ancestor, he who had been vizir to the Emir Jafar, who built this palace and was the first to make a lake round it. And as I followed these snakes of marble up to the Arabic characters inscribed in the capitals, then down again to the low pediment, in sinuous, unceasing lines, I remembered Yusuf's face as he spoke of his forebears, the pride and sorrow in it, and then I remembered his anger when I had compared his people to the Serbs. He had spoken on a tide of feeling, something very rare in him; he had spoken of rebellion and civil war, dangerous words for any man to speak, however highly placed… I drifted from this to thoughts of the guileful Serpent twining round the Tree, and the honeyed words that had brought our first parents to exile and sorrow, till Christ came to redeem us from that sin and hold out to us the promise of eternal life. The hart was the symbol of this, because God gave to the hart the ability to renew itself. When it has lived for thirty-two years it is driven by its nature to seek out an anthill, which it then destroys by trampling upon it. Below this anthill there is found a white snake, which the hart kills and devours. It then goes to a desert place and throws off its flesh and becomes young again, and this signifies the soul's discarding of the body as it enters into purgatory and so prepares for eternal life.