Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

I could not long remain where I was, in any case; my presence among them was the chief impediment to my hopes; while I was in Adhemar's company I certainly would not succeed in seeing Alicia alone. So after some further talk I made as if I was retiring, bade them good night and walked a little way off towards the place where I had left my boat.

I did not go far, only into the darkness of the trees. From here I could watch without being seen, as they were still in the light of the fires.

Servants with lighted lanterns were waiting at the little jetty where the boats were moored, which made me fear that people might be returning to the palace before long, and Alicia with them, constrained by her brother and uncle. I waited there and watched and hoped – it was all I could do. For some time they stood talking together. Then – miracle of miracles! – the two men withdrew together, though they did not speak any farewells, or take definite leave, as far as I could tell; it was as if they were intending shortly to return. I thought perhaps they had gone to relieve themselves. Alicia remained alone and took some steps towards the moored boats and some steps back towards the fires.

It was my chance, the only one I might have. I went through the trees towards her. I came into the open and Alicia saw me and paused a moment then walked towards me. I took a lantern from one of the men waiting there, and holding this in one hand I held out the other to her. When I would have led her into the cover of the trees she held back, but I told her that the boat was there, not far away, and I begged her to give me her company, if only for a little time, to let me be with her when no one else was by, and at these words she resisted no longer but followed behind me as I held the lantern up to show the way.

The place where I had left the boat had not been well chosen: there was no secure stepping place on to it from the shore. I had to bring it close and help her on to it while holding up the lantern so she could see where she was setting her feet. In order successfully to achieve this I was obliged to go over my knees in the water and she was concerned and said that now I would be wet and uncomfortable and it would be her fault. But her hand was on my shoulder and mine rested a moment against the small of her back as she got on the boat, and I felt heat not chill and this I told her and she laughed and said my name in a tone that lay between remonstrance and tenderness and my heart expanded to hear her say it thus. Nevertheless, I was thankful that it had not befallen at a time when I was wearing my new hunting clothes.

The boat had two narrow benches. She took one and sat facing me while I seated myself on the other and took up the paddle, which had only one blade and so had to be used from side to side. The lantern we set between us. There was no breath of wind; the surface of the water was still and dark, no faintest tremor on it as it stretched away across the lake. The ripples and rings of earlier, when there had still been light, insects skating on the surface, fish rising, were gone now. The light from the lantern was cast upward over her bosom and face, and white moths came out of the shadows of the bank to flutter against the flame.

I paddled out into the open water, taking the moths with us, aware of nothing for the moment but her face before me and the need not to shed a single drop of water on her as I crossed the paddle from one side to the other. As we moved out towards the middle of the lake, I had the feeling that together she and I were entering a territory altogether new, a place from which we would not emerge unchanged. I brought in the paddle and the boat drifted round, following some current of the water imperceptible on the calm surface.

I began now, as my exhilaration subsided, to see some disadvantages in this boat. I could only look at Alicia, I could not touch her. At the most, leaning forward, I could have laid my hand on her knee, but such a gesture could have had no sequel, would moreover seem grotesque, as if I were about to offer some ponderous advice, like a wise elder. Closer than that, without much care on my part and extreme docility on hers – and it was too soon for that – I could not get, without risking to send us both overboard, the boat being too light and shallow, too easily overturned. Always, always, there was some impediment. The time was short, there was a journey to make, Adhemar might be watching. And now this closeness and farness of her…

As the boat moved in its slow arc I saw the turrets and domes of the palace outlined against the sky and the cluster of lanterns at the landing stage. The fires must have been replenished, the light from them lay red across the water, reaching almost to the opposite shore. A boat with a lantern at its prow was crossing the water and it passed through this reflection of the fire and the lantern was not reddened but silvered by it.

"We must not stay long," she said, thus unwittingly adding to my discontent.

"When will we have time for ourselves," I said, "without some one watching, someone waiting?"

"Soon now, my love. We must be patient."

This came in the deeper, surer tone of the woman she had become, but the soft endearment and the ceaseless need for patience before the tyranny of time had all the essence of our early love, and memories of this came flooding back to me now and it was as if nothing had changed: the night that surrounded us, this boat in which we drifted on the dark water, seemed no different from an obscure corner in the castle of Richard of Bernalda, one of the many where we had met and kissed and made our promises. I spoke words of love to her now as I had then, and now, as then, the fullness of my heart made the words stumbling. I vowed my service of patience to her. I was her knight, I said, she had made me so by her touch on my head. I would show my service in patience. Was not patience in devotion the quality of a true knight?

"You will be my true knight before the world," she said. "You will be my husband, if you so desire. When next we meet it will be to exchange our vows and make our betrothal known. Now we must return, I must rejoin my uncle and brother. They will be wondering what has befallen me."

So calmly uttered had these words been that I had obediently taken up the paddle before the promise in them came fully home to me. When it did so I could find no words but those of adoration, and these came in a rush. As I swung the little boat round and headed for the fires that were still blazing at the lakeside, my exultation knew no bounds, I blessed the sky and the water, the very night itself, for my good fortune, and as I did so, at that same moment, we crossed in our boat some invisible line and entered the territory of the mirrors: the leaping fires and the lanterns clustered at the landing stage and those on the boats returning to the palace and the shifting reflections of all these on the water and even the drops from my paddle that were caught in the starlight, all began to wheel and tilt and multiply and stretch away, rank upon rank, into a distance that seemed infinite, the heat haze above the fires shimmered over the water and a multitude of boats trembled in this heat and the ripples of it played like a soundless music on the turrets and towers of the palace and suddenly, between one thrust of the paddle and the next, I saw an exact copy of Alicia sitting behind me, somewhere on the water, her bosom and face illuminated.

An exclamation of wonder rose to my lips at this celebration of my happiness – for so I took it to be. But it was never uttered, because Alicia had made no sound at all and her face had not changed, nor her posture on the seat, and so I knew that she could not have seen this spectacle, only I had seen it, it was I who had my face towards the turning mirrors.