Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"Well, my Thurstan, salaam, greetings."

"Muhammed, is it you? But how did you come here? How could you persuade them to open the gates to you?"

"We do not stand at the gates of the Christian, begging for admittance.

Many of those who work in the gardens here are my brothers in Islam. I know them, I know their names, I know the names of their wives and children. Their homes are outside. Do you think they use the main gates when they come and go?"

He had come to a stop some three or four paces away. His face showed no particular expression but the tone was one he had never used with me before, cold and disdainful. His followers had gathered round him in close formation, one on either flank, one on the rear. All three wore scimitars at their belts.

"The good news first," Muhammed said. "I am here to tell you that the lady will not come. You can wait for her till you take root and grow leaves, but she will not come."

"Why do you speak in this way to me?" But I knew, even as I asked. "How have you come by this?" I said. "Why should I believe you?"

"I have come to tell you that you have been fooled and duped from the beginning, you have been led along like a little pig with a ring through its nose. It is a great pleasure to tell you this, my Thurstan. A greater pleasure even than killing you would be."

Some passion had entered his voice with this, and he paused briefly, as if to recover the impassive manner of earlier. "This Yusuf Ibn Mansur, who was arrested on your word, I have known him since we were children.

Our fathers were friends and fellow-tribesmen, he and I went to the same mosque-school, he gave the name and the blessing to my eldest son. Let me tell you how this strumpet fooled you and led you by the nose and the words of your love were to her ears but the squealing of the little pig."

"You are very brave and free with your insults when you are four to one," I said. "Send your men further off and we will see who squeals."

"What a fool you are. A traitor and a fool. You think this is a time for trial by combat, the rules read out beforehand, like good knights in the tilting field? You have published base lies about a man a hundred times your better and you prate of insults and issue challenges and put on airs of chivalry. How can you be insulted now? Mario it was who set us on, though he was far from wishing it. You remember Mario?"

"Yes, he deserted me at Cosenza, when I was buying herons for the royal falconry."

"No, he did not desert you. Yusuf was troubled by this disappearance of Mario, as he was troubled by anything that lacked explanation. He spoke of it to me. We lived in different worlds but we sometimes worked together. I had ways open to me that were closed to him."

"I did not know of this."

"Why should you know of it? It did not concern you. For a long time we found no trace of Mario. In the end we were helped by merest chance. The other who accompanied you, Sigismond, saw him in a street in Palermo. He was well-dressed and he had grown a beard, but Sigismond recognised him and followed him to a house."

" Why was I not told of it?"

"By this time Yusuf no longer trusted you completely. You had kept too much from him. He had been obliged to set a watch on you. Sigismond was commanded to say nothing of it, on pain of the severest punishment. Once we knew where Mario lived, the rest was easy. We brought him from there and asked him some questions to which he was not able to withhold answers, not for long at least. Mario was in the pay of Bertrand of Bonneval, the nephew of the Count of Conversano, a powerful knight and very rich, already known to Yusuf as the leader of a faction of the Norman nobility set on destroying the Saracen influence at the palace and replacing it with a Council of Peers on the feudal model of the Franks."

I made no reply to this but into my mind there came a recollection of Yusuf's face and manner when he had told me of the invitation to Favara.

Hardly surprising he was suspicious of me, knowing what he knew. I wondered if he had also known by this time of my meetings with Alicia.

Alboino was associated with Bertrand, and Alboino was her uncle. Could she have been part of this Norman faction? Perhaps she was vowed to secrecy and for that reason had not confided in me. Was it this Muhammed meant when he said she had duped me? Was it only this?

"Mario did not desert you at Cosenza. On the contrary, he stayed with you like a shadow. He followed you to Bari. And there he and a man named Caspar Loritello, who was posing as a groom, tracked you through the streets."

He smiled for the first time, saying this. "Caspar had been seen visiting your house with some message. It was a man of Yusuf's who saw this. A watch had been set on your house by then. So when we had Mario in our hands we tested him with this name and it all came tumbling out."

He smiled again. "As things will," he said. "Mario had no more to tell us but we made diligent enquiries and in time we discovered that Loritello was the name of Guy of Morcone's chamberlain, by whom the boy was brought up. He is a bastard son of Alboino, Alicia's cousin and one of her lovers in Jerusalem, one of several… She is a lady who gives careful study to her pleasure and her safety, and finds ways of serving the one and guarding the other."

As we had been speaking the first thickening of darkness had come into the air. The light on the lake was paler now, but Muhammed's turban and robe still held that luminous whiteness, making his face seem darker by contrast. Those with him remained silent and motionless.

"I do not believe it," I said. "You are lying. I will maintain her honour upon any that questions it."

"Sword in hand, eh? Before it was the pig squealing, now it is the donkey braying. Forget about the lady's honour, it was never in your keeping. Use your brain. But it is good you do not believe me at first, I like it better that you should resist, you will feel the hurt all the more. You have betrayed a man who was like a father to you and you will get nothing for it, nothing. Those two fine fellows tracked your movements in Bari until they could bring you to a meeting with the lady, who waited very patiently for the right moment."

I had never doubted her. Her faith was beyond question, she had proved it for ever in childhood. Why was it then that doubt sprang so instantly now? I have thought since that Muhammed's words served only to confirm a loss already suffered, that it was Favara itself that took away my belief, the lonely waiting, the cheating mirrors, the act of treachery that had gone before, the shame of it, destroying the sense of my worth, making of me a miscreant to whom no good could ever come. She was to have redeemed me… I thought back again to the moment of the meeting, the ruined house with its broken pavement, the fragments of mosaic, the peace that had descended on me in that place, broken by the clatter of hooves and the company approaching. Alicia straight-backed in the saddle, looking neither to right or left – it was indeed as if she had been given a cue, prompted in the moment, in that particular moment.

Like a player coming on to the stage – players do not look at those watching. If I had not spoken, would they have passed by in silence? Or would she at the last moment have glanced at me, reined in her horse, assumed that same look of pleased recognition? But I had spoken, I had played my part. How was it that I, Thurstan, the Purveyor of Spectacles, had failed to see that this was a spectacle too?

My resistance was draining away, seeping from me, I could not hold to it, the vessel of my being was not stout enough. Would Muhammed have come here to lie to me, would he have taken such pleasure in lying? His pleasure was to inflict the truth. Nevertheless, I strove to keep him there, to prolong the talk between us, hoping still, when hope had all but gone, to find some falsity in him, provoke some unguarded words that might discredit what he had told me. With enmity for me in his heart, he was for these moments my only hope. My dread now was that he would leave me alone, with no company but the knowledge of Alicia's perfidy.