Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

It may seem strange to one who reads this, as it sometimes seems strange to me when I recall it, that I made no mention to Alicia of the tricks my eyes played me. I could have done so, though briefly, as we drew nearer to the fires. Perhaps I was unwilling that such a difference should be declared at a moment when all else united us in joyful thoughts of the future. And then, there was so little time: this riotous breeding of images was short-lived, we were soon again in the world I knew. I would tell her another time, I thought, I would tell when we were next together. Once we had made our vows public we would have more time together and more freedom in our talk.

I did not bring the boat as far as the jetty, but grounded it higher up on the shore and this time it was an easy step from the boat to the land and so I got no second wetting as I helped her out. I would have walked with her and lighted the way but she did not wish it. "There is light enough," she said. "It is not far." She turned to face me, still in the shadow of the trees. She raised her hands and brought them together in a gesture that seemed at first like prayer. "I leave you my ring," she said, "as an earnest of my love, until the time we can be together."

I slipped the ring from the little finger of my left hand and I swore my love and service to her and we exchanged the rings.

"I told you true when I said you are splendid," she said in low tones.

"You will always be so. You will always be my splendid Thurstan."

She came into my arms and kissed me and her body pressed against mine and somewhere in my stomach I felt a movement like a fish leaping. Then she was gone through the trees to where the boats and the lanterns waited.

All through the hunt, from sunrise when we rode out, her image stayed in my mind. The time passed as in a dream, when the thoughts and feelings belong only partly to what is before our eyes, and there is an attendant life that runs along beside us. While we waited for the finding and unharbouring of the hart, while I held myself in readiness for the chase and listened for the baying of the scent, while we followed the ruses and doublings of the quarry as he ran back on his own tracks to strengthen the scent then bounded sideways to confuse the hounds or entered and left the streamlets that run through the woods so as to break his traces, while I galloped with the others and followed the sound of the horn and shouted with all the power of my lungs and ducked the low branches, amidst all this hullabaloo and headlong career, I still drifted on the dark lake, still heard the words of love and promise she had given me, still felt the ring where it lay threaded against my breastbone. And when this splendid animal was worn down at last and lost its faith in flight and turned to confront the dogs, when Bertrand, as Lord of the Hunt, brought his mount forward and lifted his bulk in the saddle and plunged his lance through the shoulder and pierced the heart, my pity for it and my admiration for the stand it had made were deepened by memories of Alicia's words and glances, her face bright-eyed in the light of the lantern, and the beauty of the hart's slaying was the beauty of her hands as she raised them in the dimness of the trees to take off her ring.

It was late when we regained the palace; there had been much to do – as generally in a hunt that is well conducted – in the flaying and butchering of the hart and the rewarding of the dogs. And here again Bertrand showed me his favour, as he had the day before at the Assembly.

When the hart had been laid on its back and the scrotum and testicles removed and the skin of the throat slit up the length of the neck, and we had sounded the death on our horns and the dogs had bayed the death and been granted a brief time to tear at the throat, so as to remind them that the hart was their true and noble quarry, when the skin had been well and neatly peeled away by the huntsman and his varlets, Bertrand, whose prerogative it was to make the first cuts of the jointing, turned courteously to me and graciously asked me, before all that company – and her brother Adhemar among them – to assist him in it.

Bertrand of Bonneval, whose mother's brother was the Count of Conversano. And he allowed me to use his severing knives from his own scabbard, with handles made of ebony inlaid with gold. With our sleeves rolled up to keep them from the blood, we worked side by side, he very elegantly cutting out the tongue and I slicing the smaller muscles of the shoulder. And glad I was for my time as squire to Hugo of Venosa, when I had learned the unmaking of the hart under his exacting gaze.

So it was with a great sense of well-being and satisfaction that I returned, bearing in my pannier some delicate morsels I was hoping to offer Alicia when we feasted on the venison that night, in particular those tender muscles the Normans call fol l'i laisse, meaning he is mad who would leave them. But I had scarce had time to wash away the stains of blood from forearms and hands, when there was a tapping at my chamber door and it was Caspar, come to tell me that his mistress had left in the morning, being worried for her father, who was ill and needed care.

The surprise of this made my disappointment all the keener. I remembered now that she had spoken once before of her father's ill-health. But she had said nothing to me of her intention to leave so early, on the very day of the hunt. Perhaps it was only this morning she had decided to go.

Otherwise, surely, she would have told me…

Caspar must have read my feelings in my face – it was always Yusuf's reproof that I allowed too much to show there. "He is asking for her," he said. "The messenger came early, soon after you set out. She left me here to inform you of it and to give you her regrets for this sudden departure."

"What is the nature of the illness?"

He paused a moment before replying, then shrugged slightly, a gesture that would have been insolent in a servant but in him, with the special place he appeared to enjoy in Alicia's regard, it seemed natural enough.

"Well, it is no secret. He is losing the powers of his mind. So it has been for some three years now. He does not remember the happenings of his life, he does not recognise faces that once he knew well, and this grows slowly worse, though he is still strong in body. The Lady Alicia was always his favourite, he knows her and he listens for her voice and her step. None can comfort him as well as she."

He fell silent here, as if awaiting some reply, but I could find none to give him. "She is very devoted to her father," he said.

"She left no other word for me?"

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes upon me. Once again I was struck by his handsome looks and the independence of his bearing. "She asked me to assure you that this changes nothing."

On this he bowed slightly and withdrew and I had to be contented with it. Neither Adhemar nor Alboino was present at supper so I supposed they had left at the same time. The venison lacked savour without her, though I had an honoured place at the table and was listened to when I spoke of the events of the chase. With the hours that passed I grew reconciled to her departure and even found good reason in it. She was the only daughter, only she could give her father solace when he felt distressed in his darkness. It seemed to me entirely natural that any man, father or no, would call to her in his need. And I had her ring in my keeping and her promise in my heart.

These were the feelings that remained uppermost in my mind on returning to Palermo, and there now began a period of happiness for me as I waited to have word from her. Whatever in my work might have seemed tedious or distasteful before, now came lightly to me. I looked forward to the time when Alicia and I would be man and wife and I would return to the life I had been intended for. She had not said how long it would be before we exchanged our vows, but I was content to wait on her wishes and her sense of propriety. Indeed, this very waiting was a fulfilment of the vows of service I had made her on our parting, in keeping with the order of chivalry I would soon now be joining. My years at the Diwan of Control, my purveying of pleasures and all that this had masked, all the unworthy acquaintance, in my new life these things would dwindle in memory, almost as if they had never been. No more lies, no more deceivings…