Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

But it had not been the meaning of his words, it was something else, something contained in them. He had been speaking of the Day of Christ's Transfiguration.

The knowledge that came was pure, it had been there always, waiting for the right touch, the touch of harm, the finger laid on my lips, to bring it forth. After six days he leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transformed before them. Typical of Spaventa, once a novice priest, to cloak his secrecy in religion. That high mountain to which the disciples were led was Tabor, so it was believed.

The King was intending to be present for the liturgy on the Day of the Transfiguration. Was that to be the second attempt? Sitting in his loge on the north wall he would be inviolable, wrapped in majesty, invisible to all below. But not to someone high up on the opposite wall, someone positioned there would have a view across, would see the upper part of the King's body, above the marble of the balustrade. Twenty-five paces, perhaps less… A bolt from above to strike the King down. An iron bolt, from a crossbow. At that close range, it would transfix him. The perfect symbol, Atenulf's masterwork. Who could use symbols to build could use them also to demolish… A bolt from heaven, a judgement on the King's misrule, to blast him while he sat in state with the words of prayer on his lips.

The Sunday after next, Stefanos had said: by my hasty reckoning that was three days hence.

The sense of surprise persisted as I returned to Palermo but now it was directed at my own obtuseness. If I were right in the suspicions that had only now come to me, all this while I had been confusing parties that were quite different in their aims, the one seeking to use me against Yusuf and so come closer to the King, the other seeking to use me for the King's harm. I tried to find excuses. Alboino and Gerbert were both churchmen of high rank; it was natural therefore to assume they had the same interest to serve, the same desire to expel the Saracens, increase the power of the Latin Church. And I had thought Alicia loved me and was working secretly to make our meetings easier and so had somehow contrived that I should carry the purse to Potenza. But she had used her knowledge that I was going there only to ensnare me further, only to build up my hope and dash it down again.

My misery was if anything deepened by these attempts at self-excusing; within them lay the proof – if more proof were needed – that I was a failure, unfit for the world I lived in. Returning by the Admiral's Bridge I remembered my joyful expectations on the day I rode out to Favara for the first time and how, crossing the Oreto here, a song of love and promise had come to my lips. I was very far from singing now.

Once in the city all other feeling was swallowed up in the dread of being recognised. Muhammed had said that the names of those making depositions against Yusuf had not been published, but he might have lied to me for reasons of his own, or the names might have been made known only now, only this morning. It seemed to me that I could read accusation in every eye that met my own, as if there were a mark on my brow, a brand, plain for all to see. And all would think as Muhammed had thought, that I had betrayed Yusuf for my own advancement, on the promise of taking his place. I could not go to the Diwan: the idea of encountering Stefanos, meeting his gaze, was unbearable. I could not go to anyone with my suspicions. How could I go to the King's Constable with a story of shadows and reflections and stray words? I had been the pursebearer, it might be thought I was one of the conspirators, seeking to betray my companions so as to gain favour. No, all I could do was wait for Sunday.

I made my way directly to my house and shut myself in there with orders that on no account should any visitor be admitted. They would disobey me if it was someone of rank or wealth, but it was all I could do. All that day my door was opened only twice and that was to Caterina, when she brought me first soup and bread and later some pastries of a kind I recognised. Stefanos had been, she told me, thinking I might be ill, and he had brought them with him. It occurred to me only now that Stefanos himself might be in some danger, through his long employment in Yusuf's Diwan. My doing…

Something there might be among Yusuf's records, if I could come at them, something to give substance to my suspicions. I decided to make the attempt. I waited till after the supper hour, in the hope I would find no one still working there. If I saw signs of any presence I was resolved to retire immediately. I took a dagger with me, one with a short and broad blade, which I thought might be useful if I had to force a door.

The guards were at the gate by which I usually entered and they greeted me with no apparent difference of bearing, and opened to me readily enough, supposing I had forgotten something or intended to work late into the night, a thing I did sometimes after an absence. All was quiet as I crossed the courtyard and mounted the stairway. I lit the lamp on the wall at the beginning of the passage and went down to my door. This was locked but I had the key to it. All was in order in my room, the documents on the table as I had left them. I went some steps farther down the passage, tried Yusuf's door and found it also locked. The room that the scribes and notaries used, which gave access to Yusuf's, had a door that was flimsier, and it was this that I had resolved to force, if I could do it with the dagger. But the door was unlocked, it swung open to my touch. While still on the threshold, I saw the reason: those who had been here had seen no need to secure the door, they had left little to guard. The room had been ransacked, drawers and shelves emptied out, a litter of parchment lay everywhere.

I crossed the room, my feet kicking against account books that had fallen to the floor and been disregarded. Yusuf's door on this side was closed with a latch only, easily lifted. There was a similar scene of desolation here. Everything had been turned out and scattered in some close search, for incriminating evidence against him, as I supposed – or against themselves. This, if they had found it, they had borne away.

They had left behind them a scene of ruin, with documents spilled out of their covers and shed over table and floor. I walked over to the room beyond, his sanctum, where he kept his state when there were visitors, or private talks to be held. The heavy oak door swung widely open and there was a similar devastation within, the same litter of documents, the cabinets gaping empty.

It was here, as I stood at the threshold of his inner room, his private self, that I truly felt his loss for the first time and knew that the grief and the blame would be with me always. His death was here, in this room. Before they had torn and mutilated his body they had violated the principle of order by which he had lived. Here was the tall casement where we had stood and talked together and which I had envied for the light and air it gave him; standing here he had given me the mission to carry an empty purse to Lazar – the mission that had been the beginning of his death. I remembered the delicate bones of his face and his hook of a nose and his eyes, always intolerant of dissent, always ready to show kindness for me. The sound of his voice came to me, the exaggerated accents of his French. Is that a new sorcot that I see this morning?

Always the same form of words because he was fashioned so, never fully at ease when he was too close.

That I would not hear this voice again, no more seek to find some answer to his words about my clothes and my singing, only now came fully home to me. So far I had felt nothing but horror – at the violence done to him, at my part in it. Horror like a morass, a quagmire, leaving no ground to stand, no ground for grief. Now I felt the sobs rise in my throat and I choked and wept for Yusuf, whom I had blamed unjustly for my unhappiness when the reason was in myself. I had blamed my father also for this unhappiness of mine and I wondered now, through my tears, what ruin of his world there had been that had taken him that day to the monastery gate.