Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

My throat had tightened. I could not have spoken to them, even if they could have heard. I felt the touch of a swirling skirt, like a breath. I turned to see Nesrin swaying close behind me. The music grew louder.

There was nothing for it now but to leave in the best order I could and let things take their course. I would no longer have my place as purveyor after this gross breach, so much was certain. I would be lucky to escape prison.

I turned and took two paces towards the door we had entered by. But I was not able to get farther. Nesrin took some dancing steps across my path and seized my hand in her own much smaller one and held it tightly – so tightly that without unseemly violence I could not free myself. I thought for a terrible moment she wanted to bring me into the dance, but it was not this because as soon as she had my hand in her own she stopped dancing; she stood still and looked at me and I saw that she wanted me, for some reason of her own, to stay there, to be present while they danced.

A great swell of laughter came from the assembled company to see my escape cut off, to see us standing hand-in-hand there, while the music sounded and Yildiz and Havva turned slowly in the first steps of the dance. At the laughter – and this seemed almost the strangest thing of all – I saw Ozgur and Temel, who were sitting back against the wall with their instruments, nodding and laughing together as if sharing a joke.

After a moment I realised that they were not laughing at me but at the spectators, and I felt that they were my friends and never afterwards lost this feeling.

But still I could not move. Nothing like this had ever happened before, through all the succession of jugglers, buffoons, strongmen and acrobats that I had at different times introduced into the royal presence.

Nesrin's eyes were on me, bright and unwavering, neither timid nor bold but with something that seemed like trustfulness in them. Quite suddenly I knew what I should do. I did not know why she wanted me there but I knew what I should do – or better, I knew what I should not do: Thurstan of Mescoli was not a man to slink away with laughter in his ears. I smiled at Nesrin and nodded, and she released my hand and turned away from me, back into the dance. I raised my head and walked with a pace neither fast nor slow to the nearer wall, and I stood against this to watch the dancing. And in doing this I turned my face from the King.

For a while it was little more than strolling, as the women snapped their fingers and Ozgur began a crooning song. Then Temel struck the drum sharply with the heel of his hand, exclaiming loudly as he did so, and the women echoed this exclamation, and then they were dancing.

Yildiz was first to quicken pace, turning her back on the people in the hall and facing towards Temel, who seemed both to lead and follow the rhythm of her steps with quick finger-tapping at both ends of the drum.

She raised her arms to shoulder height and shivered them and the loose copper bangles run along her arms and glittered. Then the others quickened too, and they too faced away from those watching, dancing for one another, or so it seemed, making their arms shiver in the same way, a shivering that seemed to come from the arms themselves and not from any effort of the shoulders. Then all three began turning upon themselves and the scarves fell away, leaving their middle parts bare.

When that shuddering of the body came that precedes the dance of the belly, there was complete silence among the people there, though they were flushed with wine and had been loud enough before. And then, with the shudders ceasing and the ripples of the belly beginning, every eye was on the shining pebbles of glass set in the dancers' navels, and the rolling movement that caused the dimple of the navel to close on the glass and dim it then open again to reveal its shine. Nesrin raised her arms to the nape of her neck as if to make some change in the ribbon that tied her hair behind, but she kept them there motionless and looked down at her own movements, watching herself with a pride that excluded the spectators only to involve them more.

Watching, I forgot my disgrace. I was moved by the beauty and wildness of the dancing, and I saw, I think for the first time, that the beauty of it lay in this wildness. It was the dancing of outcast people, rebels. They obeyed nothing and no one. They made no attempt to match their movements one with another. They made no smiles, they did not seek the eyes of those watching. None gave a glance towards the high table where the King sat. And yet, on that night of moonlight and firelight when I had seen them first, Nesrin had danced before me and looked me in the face. And even now, as she turned this way and that, setting her feet with that grace and care I remembered, even now sometimes our eyes met.

Unexpectedly, in the midst of my trouble, I was attacked by self-reproach. How could I have expected these lawless wanderers to bow and count? When I thought of all the bowing and counting I had done in my life I could not feel satisfied with what it had brought me. I forgave the Anatolians in my heart for all the trouble they had caused me in the past and all that they were likely now to bring upon my head.

And in the particular case of Nesrin I extended this forgiveness to include the disturbance of my senses and the distraction of my thoughts that she had caused me from the first moment of seeing her.

The dulcimer fell silent now and the beating of the drum came in alternate rhythms. The dancers went back, back, arching over until their heads came close to the floor behind. Bodies arched thus, legs slightly spread, faces looking upward, they repeated that raising and shivering of the arms. It was an astonishing thing to see. I remembered now the words of the Greek trader, made poetic by his desire of coin. As if inviting the love of a god… I had eyes only for Nesrin, who was between the others, for the slightly parted knees, for the toenails reddened with henna. Failing a god, why not Thurstan of Mescoli? So whispered the slumberless demon of my lust.

There was dead silence in the hall as they came slowly upright again.

Then the King's voice sounded, a single shout of bravo, the supreme mark of royal approval. It released a great storm of applause that seemed to rebound from walls and ceiling. Coins began to clatter on the floor but not one of these people, who had bargained with me so stubbornly for two ducats at the inn, made a move to pick them up, and I was pleased at this because I was in their midst and felt for that moment that I belonged with them, pleased that these homeless strangers, born to poverty as I supposed, did not give any there the satisfaction of power, to see them scramble for the coins and thus feel the restoring of a supremacy that might have been put in doubt by the talents of the humble.

The plaudits were continuing. The Anatolians were standing gravely there, a dew of sweat on the brows of the women. Some words passed among them and all looked at me as I stood against the wall. Then Ozgur gestured towards me, a movement strange to my eyes as often the gestures of these people were, bringing the palm of his hand towards his chest with fingers splayed, in a manner that seemed fierce almost, as if he would strike himself. I understood then that he wanted me to come forward and join them. But I still had not moved when Nesrin came to me and again took my hand and brought me to stand among them, she on one side and Havva on the other, and the applause continued, with shouts and even some stamping of the feet – indeed it seemed to me that the sound grew louder as I came forward. And after some moments of confusion I found myself gratified by this tide of applause, more than gratified: I felt warmly immersed in it, as if it were my natural element. And this was in a way strange, as I had never before heard approval of me shouted by numbers of people at the same time – the nearest I had come to it was at the age of fifteen, with shield and lance, on occasions when the lord brought his guests to watch us practise at the lists.