Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"Come forward, Thurstan Beauchamp." The voice was softer now. "Come forward here to me."

I walked forward and rarely have I felt so alone as on that walk, as if I were in some desert place, under a vast and empty sky. I stood at the foot of the steps and still I did not look at him, but glanced beyond to the figures behind him and saw Gilbert of Bolsavo there, Master Constable Designate, whom I had last seen riding behind the King into the castle of Potenza. There were two with him, very splendid in the livery of his retainers, and one of these bore a sheathed sword laid flat in his gloved hands.

"Closer yet," the voice said.

It was not awe that kept my gaze from his face, though he would have taken it for such. I think it was a kind of fear, not of his person or his power, but of finding confirmed the misgivings I harboured in my heart. The plans that had been laid for my entrapment and my coercion into treachery, these he would not know – they were the devices of the spiders. But Yusuf's death, the manner of it and the haste, these things he must surely know, just as he must know the long and faithful service Yusuf had given him. With his full knowledge and consent this thing had been done. For a brief while, as I stood there below him, my soul was placed in peril by the Evil One, I was tempted to set all down to the mystery of the King's power, to restore him, serene in majesty, to his silver barge, gliding over the dark waters below which the creatures feasted and fought. Perhaps it was to save myself from this surrender of reason that I looked up to his face now, saw it for a moment only, sharp-eyed and fleshy below the coronet, a moment only but there was time enough to see the marks that the anguish of fear and pride had made, time enough for me to know, finally and for ever, that there had never been a silver barge to keep afloat, that this my King to whom I had vowed my service, was a man with a face like other faces I had seen, the face of one who lived with us in the dark water, among the other creatures feasting and fighting there. And in that same moment, as this knowledge came to me, my sight failed, the face of Roger of Hauteville slipped and distended and lost its form and I lowered my eyes to the glow of the ruby that hung on his breast.

"My beloved subject, up here to me," he said, and he raised a hand and beckoned.

I mounted the steps until I was immediately below him. Here I knelt – it was too close for standing. How often I had dreamed of kneeling thus before him, to hear at last his praise for my devotion and feel my soul absolved by this praise for all the things I had said and done in his service.

"We thank you from a full heart," the voice said above me. "We have been told of your courage and your quickness of mind. If all his subjects were of your temper, the King would need have no fear of foes." His voice had broken slightly on these last words and when he spoke again it was more quickly and warmly. "Thou hast earned the King's gratitude and he will not forget."

I had not raised my eyes again to his face after that slipping and distortion. I was looking at his hands, which were broad in the palm and had black hair on the knuckles. I saw them make a very quick and sudden movement upwards, saw them go behind his neck to the silver chain that held the ruby. He leaned forward and placed the pendant round my neck and I felt the touch of his hands as he fastened it. His face was close to my own and there was a sweetness to his breath like that which comes from keeping sugared comfits in the mouth.

"You will learn what it means, the King's gratitude," he said, in tones more sonorous and measured now. "This that I place round your neck is but a token."

I would have risen, but he stayed me with a gesture. "We hear that you have long aspired to knighthood, to join the order that belongs to you by birth. By the power invested in me, I name you knight."

A moment later I felt the buffet of the colce on the side of my head, a light blow but it sent a pain through me. "Rise," he said, "Sir Thurstan Beauchamp, be brave and faithful in my service, that God may love thee."

A wave of heat came over me. I felt the blood flush in my face and I heard my voice replying with the words I had uttered so many times within myself in the days when I still thought to be knighted: "So shall I, with God's help."

Gilbert came forward and he was carrying the sword, still sheathed, and a belt. He came to a stop at the foot of the steps. I went down to him and he unsheathed the sword and tendered it to me, holding the hilt towards me. I took it and kissed the hilt and he returned the sword to its sheath and the King left his chair and came down to me, descended to my level, and girded me with the sword. "God go with you, sir knight," he said. "I have bespoken a fief for you in Calabria with forest and ploughland." His face was not steady to my sight, the mouth and jaw contracted strangely and all that was in my mind was a fear of staggering and the anguish of a question: how had he known that knighthood had been my dearest wish? It was the same question that had beset me hearing words almost the same from the mouth of Bertrand of Bonneval. I had buried my disappointment deep. I had spoken of to no one, not for many years. Only she had known, Alicia. That night in the courtyard of the Hospitallers all had come forth from me in the warmth and sympathy – as it seemed – of her presence. In recounting my disappointment I had thought to be resuming my hopes…

This man, who had just blessed me and girded me with the sword, had learned of these hopes of mine. In gratitude he would have enquired. The purveyor of spectacles who had saved his life… They who had trapped me were the same who had answered his questions. It must be so; theirs was the only knowledge of it. He would not know of this entrapment. It was beneath his notice, who was concerned with threats of invasion, with the loss of his colonies in North Africa, the fall of his revenues from the sale of wheat, the continued refusal of the Pope to recognise his kingship. I was too low for his knowledge. But Yusuf's case was otherwise, Yusuf had been chosen. The perfect victim, high-born, wealthy, a distinguished figure among the Moslems. The crime had been devised, the mode of punishment studied…

The certainty of this came to me like an access of sickness – I shivered with it. How and in what order I retired, I do not know. I remember retreating with bows, I remember being again flanked by guards. The return to my house is a page on which memory has left no marks. When I dismounted I could hardly walk in a straight line.

I had strength enough left to tell Pietro to look after my horse, get up the stairs, put the ruby in my strongbox and take off my outer clothes.

The sword I let fall to the floor. My head was throbbing and when I lay down and looked up to the ceiling it seemed to tilt, as if I had drunk too much. Almost at once I fell into a state that was between sleep and waking. Shallow dreams came to me, too shallow for sleep, glimpsed in the air above my head or in the corners of the room, never seen for long and never distinctly, sometimes dissolving in mist, sometimes sliding away. Yusuf came and he was in shining white like Christ on the Day of Transfiguration and he was trying to explain something but when I interrupted him to ask his pardon his face was lost to me and I saw that his robe was dark with blood. Muhammed came, he too in white. He had no face but I knew him by the strangler's cord he held in his hands, gloved hands, he held it like an offering, like a sword. It was Alboino holding out a paper to me, I saw his sorrowing face as he spoke of the daily wrong, and I saw Bertrand's, pleasurable and full of care, as it had been when he cut out the hart's tongue.