Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"And Yusuf knew of this?", I said. "He knew that the meeting had been contrived?"

"We told him what we had learnt from Mario."

"He knew it and he said nothing. All through those weeks, all through the times we talked together."

"He did not know enough. He was waiting to know more. Some conspiracy there was, so much was evident. But what use they intended to make of you, that he could not be sure of. He did not think you would sell him to his enemies, he trusted to your loyalty in spite of everything. He was always a man to watch and wait. This time he waited too long."

He paused and glanced aside as if to assure himself that his silent followers were still in place. "I will not stay longer," he said. " I will not dignify you with more words from my mouth. You have been her dupe and so you will always be, as long as you live."

There was no other way of keeping him there but by inviting more hurt, offering more entertainment. "But why should she do it?"

"She belongs in the Norman party, which is also supported by her uncle Alboino and by some in the Roman Curia, as a means of extending the powers of the Pope in Sicily. Also her brothers are active in this. They will not return to Outremer, they know that the days of Frankish power there are numbered. Your Kingdom of Jerusalem will return to the possession of those to whom it truly belongs, my fellow Moslems. The future for families like that of the lady Alicia lies here, in Sicily, in the grants and favours they can exact for services rendered to their king."

"But this will be no service to the King. He holds Yusuf dear, Yusuf was his first choice for the post of Royal Chamberlain, everybody knew this."

Muhammed made no reply, merely looked steadily at me, and this silence of his was more terrible than any words could have been. We sacrifice what we hold dear when there is a purpose we hold dearer. Had I myself not done so?

"You have played a vile part," he said, breaking the silence at last.

"To have betrayed him with a truth would have been base enough. But to betray him with a lie, knowing it for a lie… you knew he respected the religion of others. Your presence there, in the Diwan of Control, was a proof of it. There were Arabs and Greeks and Normans in his diwan, as there are in the King's domain. That is why they hated him. He saw that this mixing was the only way to keep the balance of the state. You are the champion of balance, my Thurstan, are you not? It is a word often on your lips. Well, as you have helped to destroy it in the Diwan, so you have helped to destroy it in the land as a whole. And for what? What stupid vanity made you so ready to believe in this Norman whore's love?

You hoped she would bring you advancement, is it not so? You hoped to take his place at the Diwan."

In the first moments the remnants of my pride held me back from answering this. Then I realised that he had no knowledge of the earlier love there had been between Alicia and me. Bertrand knew of it, and Alboino, but that was because she had told them – it must have provided the first idea of the way to ensnare me. But she would not have told anyone else, why should she? And if Muhammed did not know this, if he believed I had been led only by ambition, it was almost certain that he would not know of the conspiracy in which Guy of Morcone had been involved, would not know that I had signed to save her life.

He would never know it. Only this instant resolve enabled me to raise my head now and meet his eyes. "I will return to Palermo tonight, I will recant, I will retract my signature. Without that the case against Yusuf will collaps."

He was silent for a long moment. The dusk was gathering now, his face was indistinct, he and his men were no more than shapes of whiteness.

But I saw him shake his head, as if in wonder. "Of course," he said, "you do not know, you have been kept apart here. He was executed yesterday at noon, though I did not know your part in it until today.

The killing they gave him was a public one. On the orders of the King's Justiciars, among whom there are no Moslems, Yusuf Ibn Mansur was tied at the feet and dragged by a wild horse to a lime pit outside the city walls and what was left of him was burned there."

At this a giddiness came to me and I clenched my fists and made my body tense to help me keep my footing. His further words were made indistinct by this struggle of mine, and seemed to come from a greater distance.

"They would not have allowed you to recant, they would have killed you if you had attempted it. They kept you out of the way for the time necessary – it is why you were sent here."

"Three days," I said, and my own voice too sounded distant.

"As you say, three days. Time enough when the result is preordained. The speed of the judgement is the one thing that lightens your guilt, though only a very little. His death was decided well before you put your name to the document. Tell me, Thurstan, devoted servant of your royal master, by whose will was this trial conducted in such haste, why was no appeal heard, why was the execution of a Moslem of high birth and high position made into such a very public spectacle?"

"I do not know," I said.

"Yes, you know. I leave you now. Keep from crossing my path. You would be well advised to leave Palermo. There is no danger now. The names of the witnesses have not been published. Later, when you have grown accustomed to your baseness, when you have started to forgive yourself, then will be the moment for a visitor with a silk cord to give you the death we give to traitors."

He stayed a moment or two longer looking at me, then turned, and with his followers once more at his heels moved away from me, back towards the trees that bordered the lake. For some moments, as they retreated, I made out the glimmering of their white robes. Then they were gone, lost in the darkness.

Hardly had they disappeared from sight when the nausea I had been fighting back rose into my throat and I leaned forward where I was and vomited.

Desolation followed on this. I could no longer bear to be in the open, now that the dark had come. I felt the need for the four walls of the room they had given me, where I could be alone, enclosed, in the light.

I stumbled back to my room, lit the lamps, barred the door against the night and Muhammed's words and the gardens and the lake of this palace of Favara, which had delivered me a blow more grievous than any in my life before.

But there was no rest or relief here from the questions that pursued me.

Over and over again I summoned to mind her words and looks, every smallest detail of her behaviour since that meeting at Bari, until what was remembered and what was imagined mingled together in confusion. I still hoped to find something, even now, that would show this monstrous story of deception to be false, I still hoped to wake from it, from the white-robed nemesis that had come to me beside the lake. Accompanying this tormented quest, though bringing no sense of contradiction to my mind, was a sick amazement at my own incredulity. How could I have believed that one such as I would be invited to this palace of Favara, to hunt on ground that formed part of the royal preserve, only on the word of a woman lately arrived from long years in the Holy Land, a woman with no consort and no great power? Bertrand it was who had the royal favour, not Alicia. And the courtesy he had shown me, the special place he had given me, how could I have imagined it consorted with my deserts, an obscure servant of the palace, pursebearer and purveyor?

All this was sickness and confusion. But what brought horror to my soul was the cruelty she had shown me, the long-sustained, unfaltering cruelty to one she had loved – for she had loved me in those early days, of that I continued to be sure. She had used this love to fool me and betray me; she had watched me floundering. But of course… I saw it now, any but a fool would have seen it sooner: she had not changed, they were hers still, those things in her I had so much admired, the promptness to seize an occasion, the resourcefulness, the readiness to take risks to gain her ends.