Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"Your days of killing are over," I said. Even now, in the way his eyes fastened on me and his grip tightened on the knife, there was something in him that daunted me and overbore my spirit, and I turned away from him without speaking more.

What followed is soon told. Others had gathered, as happens strangely quickly when there is accident or injury. I recounted the part I had played, though briefly: my suspicions of the shrouded platform, placed as it was to overlook the King's viewing place, my decision to investigate, my discovery of the assassin. Lupinus bore me out in much of this and I was thankful now that I had spoken to him.

Since it touched on the safety of the King's person, word was sent to the palace guard and four came, with a captain in charge of them. The crossbow, and a single bolt – all Spaventa had deemed necessary – were recovered from the folds of the silk where they had rested. Spaventa himself, white to the lips but completely silent, was lifted on to a litter and we all, including Lupinus and the man who had seen me take the ladder and the three women who had been bringing in the flowers, were escorted, first to the Precentor of the Chapel, then afterwards, and with him also now part of the company, before the Magister Justiciar at the Vice-Chancery, Robert of Cellaro.

Here the story was repeated, once again I was supported in my account by the witnesses. Afterwards I asked for a private audience, and this was accorded me. It was the Magister himself who heard me and my words were taken down by his notary. I told of my earlier suspicions, the request that had come from the Curia Regis to our Diwan to furnish the purse, the false story I had been told by Atenulf and Wilfred, my meeting with Spaventa at Potenza and the delivery of the money, his unguarded words which I had afterwards construed into an intention to murder the King on this Sunday, the day of Transfiguration.

I did not speak of Yusuf Ibn Mansur and our talks together concerning this mission of mine to Potenza. I did not utter his name at all. Nor did I speak of my discovery of the secret compartment and my reading of the documents kept there, with their strong suggestion that Conrad Hohenstaufen was the inspirer of this plot and perhaps also the paymaster. Even if it were true that my betrayal of Yusuf was not common knowledge, it was beyond all doubt that this corpulent and pale-faced man who was the King's Chief Justiciar, who listened so impassively to my words, knew the traitor's part I had played. He would have been there with those who tried Yusuf, if trial it could be called; it would have been he who delivered the judgement, appointed the punishment, saw it carried out. But there was an authority greater than his in the Kingdom of Sicily, one that made use of his voice and his eyes, one who would require to be told that all had gone well…

For the rest, I was as full and frank as I knew how to be, judging it the safer course. Spaventa would be put to the question and he would give names, mine among others. Attempting to conceal that I had carried the purse to him would have been far more dangerous than admitting it. I had acted in good faith, I laid emphasis on that. And it was I, after all, who had frustrated this malignant design.

I was kept under guard for a good while afterwards, though why so long I do not know – perhaps they had found others to question. During the time I was held there King Roger, from his viewing place in the north transept, celebrated the Day of Christ's Transfiguration, and there was no trace on the wall opposite of anything that might offend his sight.

I never saw Spaventa again. He died in the hands of his questioners, but not before yielding names. Atenulf and Wilfred were arrested and racked in their turn, as also was the Lombard mosaic-worker who had set the scaffolding in place. Gerbert succeeded in escaping to Swabia, where he was well-received and later became Father Confessor to Prince Otto.

These things I learned only later. I was still keeping to my rooms. I wanted no company, the feelings of weakness and illness were increasing on me.

Two days later the royal summons came, brought to me in person by Stephen Fitzherbert, Steward of the King's Household, which was already a sign that I was well-viewed, as was also Fitzherbert's extreme affability towards me. He was a weather-vane of a man, always turning in the breeze of the King's favour. Had the occasion been different he would no doubt have sneered at the poverty of my dwelling.

He waited below while I made ready. I had neglected to shave for a good many days now and had a short beard, which I decided to keep as not unbecoming – vanity persisted in me despite my wretchedness. Now it was only a question of choosing clothes that were not presumptuous in finery, but sober and of good quality, not such a difficult choice but one that seemed heavy to me that day. The uncertainty of balance I had felt on learning the manner of Yusuf's death still visited me from time to time, as did the sensation of nausea I had experienced then. I was prey to sudden chills that made me shiver, even in that August weather, and my eyes were giving me trouble, I had a sense of some obtrusion at the outer edges of my vision, there was sometimes a strange distortion, with things stretching or contracting slightly, changing shape.

There was more to my reluctance than this. There were clothes in my chest that I could hardly bear to look at, let alone put on, those I had worn on my first visit to Favara, for example. And anything in which I had once taken pride bore in its folds the sound of Yusuf's voice and the look of his face when he complimented me on my appearance. Finally I chose a suit of dark brown velvet, unadorned with tassels or brocade, one I had possessed for a good while and was gone a little out of fashion, with pads on the shoulders and a waist that was gathered in.

Fitzherbert rode with me, talking all the while in his high voice, interspersing Sicilian phrases with his French – it was the practice now at court to use Sicilian in this way, for a colloquial effect. He was full of compliments for me. It seemed that my disabling of Spaventa had not been the fear-stricken blundering that I remembered, but intrepid and heroic and extraordinarily quick-witted and prompt. "To see the threat that no other saw, to make that leap of mind, it was brilliant, everybody says so," he gushed. "And then to confront him in that manner, single-handed, and wrestle with him and throw him down, such courage and readiness, everybody says so."

By everybody he meant those at court who had learned of it. But I was glad for his talking in this strain, it kept him from reference to Yusuf. I said little in reply, but he did not mind this, being highly content with the sound of his own voice. When we reached the palace I was delivered to the care of the Household Guard, who escorted me to an anteroom in the royal apartments, and here I waited some while. It was Giovanni dei Segni, the King's notary and close adviser, who came for me, and he too smiled upon me and his smile was blurred, as if seen under water, and Yusuf's death was in it. I was led, with the guards still flanking me, through the portals of the audience chamber, and I saw the seated figure in the high chair on the dais at the far end of the long room, saw the gleam of the circlet round his head, the scarlet and gold of his mantle.

I stopped in the doorway and made a reverence that brought my forehead not far above the marble of the floor. And I heard the King's voice, loud, with some hoarseness in it: "Let him come forward alone."

He spoke in French but it was not the language of my fathers, it had the accents of the south. The guards fell back from me, but still for some moments I remained where I was, body inclined and eyes cast down.