Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

How long I lay like this I do not know. Darkness gathered round me and the light of another day. Someone gave me to drink and he had the face and voice of Stefanos. Then the room was dark again and I woke in this darkness because of the smell of sweetness that was pervading the room, which I thought at first was caused by the lilies that lay on the floor, but it came from some sugary thing that is dissolved in the mouth and breathed out and I knew the King was breathing in this room though I could see nothing, he was beckoning me to rise, to mount towards him, the water was gathering here below, lapping round me, but I could not see the way to the steps, the water rose around me, I was struggling in it, others too, I saw their dim forms twisting in the water and I looked up and saw the silver of the barge far above me and rose to it but when my head broke the surface there was nothing there, only reflections of light that stretched and shrank and a fire burning in the distance. Then all was quiet and I was walking among fields that I knew and they were lying under a thick cover of snow, fresh and shining and unmarked, such as I remembered seeing in my boyhood in the north of England.

This snow was cool, I felt it on my forehead and chest. I opened my eyes a very little, to see sunlight in the room and Nesrin's face above me, and it was her real face, it did not slide away. She held a bowl and a cloth and just for a moment my eyes were able to dwell on her face without her knowing it, because she was looking down at my chest where she was about to lay the cloth. And this, her not knowing, gave a look of calm to her face, in its ministering purpose, that was new to me, making her seem, in my weakened state, still feverish as I was, a person at once closely familiar and entirely strange. It will be with me always, this presence of hers when I awoke, her care as she held the bowl, her mouth that could sometimes seem bitter softened with this care. Then she saw my look was on her and her expression changed, the eyes narrowed a little, something of a smile came to her face.

"If you open your eyes wide, you think I fly away? All the night you talked to ghosts but I am not one."

But I closed my eyes instead, perhaps indeed not quite believing, wanting to keep this face of hers locked safe. "How did you come here?"

I said.

"I come up the stairs, like any person."

"No, I mean…" What I meant I did not know. Her presence there was like a miracle to me.

"He tried to stop me, he below who keeps the door."

"Pietro."

"He said you are sick, you want to see no one. I tell him I know better what you want. I tell him stand aside."

This made a sort of laughter within me, or perhaps only a prospect of laughter, remembering the night we had first met and the jesting of the others and her serious face in the firelight. I was naked under the sheet, I realised now. "You took off my shirt," I said.

"I take off everything. You are burning hot, like a fire inside you. You are sweating all over, you are talking to spirits. I need to bathe you, to make the fever less. How can I do that if you have the shirt? You fight with me, you think I try to rob you."

She had found me ugly and disordered, among tumbled bedclothes, the sweat of sickness lying on me. "You will stay?" I said. "You will not go?" If she promised this I knew I could sleep.

"How strange man you are. You think Nesrin leaves you when you are sick?"

"The water feels good. It has a good smell also. It scents the room.

What is in it?"

She was saying something in reply but I was asleep before I could catch the words. I lay in slumber all through the afternoon, without a dream that could wake me. When I opened my eyes the lamp was lit and she was sitting on cushions on the floor near the bed and I thought she must have got these cushions from Caterina, as they had not been in the room before. Her head was lowered over her work – she was joining strands of wool together, over and under, with a hooked piece of wood, and the movements of her hands were very rapid and sure.

I felt weak but my head was clear and there was no impediment to my sight. I looked at Nesrin as she sat there intent on her work, her long hair tied back with a single ribbon to keep it from her eyes. She was wearing loose pantaloons of a kind Arab women sometimes wore, and she sat cross-legged. I would have liked to linger in this watching her, her quiet presence gave me such heart, but I was afraid she might surprise me in it and think me one who spied, so I spoke a greeting to her, and she glanced towards me and smiled, but in a way that seemed half-startled, as if my words had interrupted some secret thought.

"So, you are awake," she said. "I go down to get some soup for you. I make it, I made it, while you were sleeping. It is broth of mutton with lentils."

"It will be very welcome." In fact I felt hungry for the first time in many days. I was to learn later, from a Caterina divided between resentment and admiration, that Nesrin had taken command of the kitchen during my illness and would brook no opposition to her plans for the feeding of me.

And very good the soup was, but my strength was depleted, I could not manage my bowl and spoon without spilling, she came and sat by me and fed me as if I were a child and made a joke of it so that I felt no loss of dignity. Afterwards we talked for a while, then I slept again, but more fitfully now, with some slighter spells of fever still returning.

She was there when I opened my eyes – she kept a low lamp burning. I felt the touch of her hands and heard sometimes the murmur of her voice – she spoke in her own language to me as she bathed my brow. What was in the water to make it smell so good? Again I asked her. There was nothing, she said. It was fresh water from the well in the street.

Next day I felt much recovered and able to talk for longer. Nesrin had not known of my illness till she came to the house, but she had known of my absence from the Diwan; Stefanos had told her of it during her Greek lesson. She had known of Yusuf's end – this too from Stefanos – and been afraid for my safety. There was an irony in this that I lacked the courage to explain to her. It had occurred to me only now, in these calmer hours of my recovery, that my falsehoods against Yusuf had been kept secret because this was the best way of ensuring silence on my part. Of course, silence could be ensured by killing me and they would do this if they felt it necessary. But in Calabria I would be far enough away. If no other denounced me I would be unlikely to denounce myself, unlikely therefore to relate the circumstances of the betrayal, my part in Yusuf's murder. Why had it taken me so long to understand this very simple thing? My years at the Diwan had taught me nothing. I had spent my spirit in shame, in fear of recognition, fear of being known. Now the appearance of justice would be preserved and the knowledge of my lies would remain with those who had coerced me and so provide them with the means to coerce me again if ever they saw a need for it. These were among the first clear thoughts of my recovery and they were among the most desolate, because I knew that if by some chance I was ever in the King's mind again they would be his thoughts too.

As I say, I had not courage to speak of this with Nesrin, I was too afraid of her judgement. How could she not think ill of me when I thought so ill of myself? But we spoke of other things during this time that I was gaining strength again though still keeping to my bed. I asked her what I had intended to ask that night after the dancing when we had been alone together for the first time and I had wanted to keep her with me, about the Yazidis and they things they believed in. Her Greek was now so much improved that she was able to explain it to me without much faltering. There were many Yazidis, she said, among the people who lived far to the east, close to the lands of the Syrians and the Armenians and around the big lake they call Van. The people of Mount Ararat too? I asked her, being still much intrigued by the fact – or fable – that she had her origins in this place where the human race found firm ground again. Yes, she said, many of those who lived on the slopes of Ararat were Yazidis. But she herself did not believe in that story of the boat.