Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"Why should they wish to do that?" We were standing in the embrasure of the window, our usual place when we talked privately together. As he spoke he reached a thin arm to my shoulder, but in no friendly fashion – there was a surprising strength in the tightness of his grip. "Why should they wish to do that?" he said again, and I felt the danger in him, as I had sometimes felt it before, inspiring not fear exactly, but a sense of what it might mean to become the enemy of such a man.

"Lord, I do not know," I said. "How should I know? You can refuse to send me."

He took his hand from my shoulder and smiled and shook his head. "This request comes under the seal of the third power in the land. It may well have the blessing of the King himself. It would not be politic to refuse outright. Moreover, it would not be fruitful. Refusing, I would not learn the reasons. This is a question of money and money reaches into many corners and has many uses. It was money that took us out riding today, for our wealth to be seen, by our display to reflect the glory of the King, who is unseen."

I nodded at this but could not feel in full accord. The Franks who were coming in ever increasing numbers, and in particular the Norman knighthood, whose ranks I aspired to join, did not understand this Arab notion of kingship, indeed were hostile to it. Roger was a Norman, one of them, their feudal lord. They detested the Saracens for keeping him from them, for hedging him about with divinity. I said, "When Moslem and Christian go riding in company to honour the King, that will be the time of greatness."

"You are right, we should work for that. I had hoped you and I would work together for it, now I am less sure. In any case, it will not be soon. There is hatred on both sides. Those I ride with are men who have come to riches by their merits, by their service, not by accident of birth. Many were brought here as eunuch slaves. They have no family, no land, no power outside the palace. They know that only the King can protect them from the hatred of the Christians and so they do everything they can to keep him apart from them. Only with God's help can hearts be changed." He took me by the arm, but gently now, and began to lead me away from the window. "There is no God but God," he said, "and on Him do we rely. They will send for you soon, those who have picked you out for this mission. You will go to the place of meeting, you will listen to them carefully. You will require to know the name of the person for whom the money is intended, and the reason why it is being paid. If they refuse to tell you this, you will refuse to go and I will support you in this refusal. Five hundred tari is too great a sum to be consigned without knowing who or why."

I promised to do as he ordered me. "And if indeed I go to Potenza," I said, "everything that happens there and everything that is said to me will be faithfully carried back to you."

"Yes, I will expect your report." The words were uttered indifferently, without great conviction, and it came to me that he would not now be relying on my report alone. I was no longer trusted; someone else would be there at Potenza, someone whose duty it was, not only to watch the proceedings, but to watch me.

He kept his arm through mine as he went with me to the door. "Ah, Thurstan, Thurstan," he said at parting, no more than that, but I felt the regret in his tone and it echoed my own feelings of loss.

The summons came four days later. The attendant they sent from the Chancellor's Office led me to a stone-flagged chamber closely adjoining the shelves of the chancery archives. The archivist was waiting for me here, a monk named Wilfred of Aachen, very pale of face and peering, with lips that seemed almost bloodless and hair of a reddish colour.

After a while we were joined by the Lombard Atenulf, whom I had last seen in close conversation with Abbot Gerbert in the courtyard of San Giovanni degli Eremiti. All men with German for their native tongue…

There was a recess with a low doorway leading directly to the archives, where Wilfred did his work of collating and annotating and copying. Also kept there were notes on the people of the palace administration, a fact well-known to all. Somewhere among these shelves, recently dusted and referred to, there would be details of my own life, origins, parents, all my history since arriving in Sicily at the age of six.

A table and chairs had been set in the recess, and the three of us seated ourselves. Atenulf was a thick-necked man, full of face, with small eyes the colour of raisins, a quick voice and a frequent habit of showing his teeth in a half-smile of superiority. I knew something more of him now – I had taken some pains to know more. He had come from Austria a dozen years before, a younger son of Arnulf of Tostheim. He enjoyed the protection of the Vice-Chancellor, Maio of Bari, though I had not been able to discover why this was so. He had made his fortune by the founding of a new chancery, which he had named the Office of the King's Fame, and which concerned itself with the way King Roger was seen by the people under his rule and by states abroad. He sent men noted for their gift of speech among the people to explain the King's actions and set them in a favourable light; he had a say in the appointment of ambassadors, speaking for those who would be most skilful in justifying the King's policies; he also advised the King on the manner of his public appearances – it was said to be on his advice that Roger had taken to wearing a canopy of red silk over his head, to veil the light on him, in the manner of the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. By these various means Atenulf had gained much favour at court.

He greeted me cordially enough, as cordially as his looks and manners allowed. These were disdainful even when he wished, as now, to be friendly, and I thought it strangely incongruous that one who had made his name by setting our King in a favourable light should present himself in one so little attractive.

He began by telling me what Yusuf had told me already. I was to go in advance to Potenza, where the meeting between the two monarchs would take place. My reason for going – the reason that would be given out – was to assist in preparing the entertainments.

"It is reasonable," he said. "It carries belief. After all, you are the King's purveyor and have good fame as such. My congratulations, by the way, on the success of the Anatolian dancers – I was there and I saw them. Also you are trained in arms, and so would strengthen the guard on the King's person."

"Our Diwan has no duty in the protection of the King's person, we deal only with the dues from his demesne."

"But were you not trained for knighthood till the age of sixteen? Were you not soon to be admitted to the Household Guard when Yusuf Ibn Mansur took you into his douana and had you sent to Bologna to study Roman Law and the keeping of account-books?"

It was as I had surmised; they had studied the course of my life. I had sensed some intention of belittlement in his last words, something almost involuntary, as it seemed to me, habitual to him when addressing those he thought inferior.

"You know so much," I said, "yet you do not know that there are no courses in the keeping of account-books at the School of Law of Bologna."

An ugly expression flickered over his face but he sought to disguise it with a smile. "No man can know everything," he said.

"It is enough that a man should know where to look," Wilfred said, a view natural enough in a keeper of archives. He got up from the table as he spoke and went to the door and opened it and gave a quick glance this way and that, down the passages between the shelves.

"You will be expected," Atenulf said. "You will be received and shown to your quarters. You will wait until a certain person makes himself known to you. He will tell you that he comes from Avellino, so you will know he is the one. You will answer that you have a cousin there. To that he will say it makes you a neighbour. Not much more is required of you. You will hand over the money, the sum has been agreed. He will give you something from his person, a badge with a bird on it, in token that he has received the money. You will bear this back to me. You need know nothing more about it. It will be in your usual line of duty after all, nothing out of the ordinary, that is why you are sent. You are the pursebearer, is it not so? When you are not the purveyor of spectacles and shows."