The Ruby In Her Navel

by Barry Unsworth

  "Yes," he said now, "in all the time to come, while this church stands, they will see where our work ended and their coarser work began. That is a consolation to me, that it will be seen and known through all the ages."

  "Demetrius," I said, "please believe me when I say how unhappy this news has made me. I will try to discover more about it. There must be reasons, urgent reasons, that we know nothing of."

  I had spoken these words with eyes cast down, as is the custom among us when we share the sadness of others or commiserate with them in loss or misfortune. When I looked again at Demetrius' face I saw that its expression had changed, a smile had come to it but not a pleasant one.

  "The urgent reason we know nothing of is that your King wishes to please the Bishop of Rome by filling all offices with Latin Christians. He hopes that this, if continued long enough, will gain him the recognition of Rome, which so far he has failed to obtain."

  There was almost a sneer in this, something unusual in him. I was offended by the slight on our good King Roger, especially as there was some small part of truth in it, not as regarded his motives – of these what could either of us know, who were so far beneath him? – but in the fact that Pope Eugenius still continued to address him as Signore, unjustly withholding recognition of his royal title.

  "I believe the King has been deceived," I said. "He has been advised wrongly."

  "What does it matter how he was advised? He has set his seal on it. You will have the decoration of the nave arcade, on both sides. You will be obliged to keep to the book of Genesis – that was agreed on all hands when we started our work here. But you will turn it into stories."

  His face was close to mine as he spoke and I saw his mouth twist with contempt. "It is all that you of the west know how to do. You go from left to right, from one scene to the next, in a line. You have no understanding. God's grace is not different from his power, they fall from above to below, one face of splendour, like the light. And this grace and power, what do you do with it? You make stories. God creating light, a little figure in the corner, making a gesture, then we move on to the next scene. God lives in the light he creates, but you do not know this, you make stories."

  The contempt was in his voice and it was for me also. I had never heard him speak in such a way and it made me think I did not really know him, though for years I had counted him as a friend. His pride had been hurt, yes, he had suffered a heavy blow. But the contempt had been there already, some lesser blow would have brought it out. When there is a flaw, any tremor will break the rock asunder. I think it is St. Paul who says this, in his Epistle to the Thessalians, exhorting unity of faith and practice among his brethren in Christ. But it was only later that the words of St, Paul – if indeed it was he – came to my mind. What should have made me sad, had I been wiser, only made me angry now. I said, "It is usual in those who lack a thing to be jealous of those who possess it. God's revelation is made known to us by unfolding, like turning pages. We have the gift of narrative, you have not. So you make it a fault in us."

  After this not much more was said between us. He accompanied me some way down the aisle but we parted coldly. I stood alone at the door for a little while, looking back down the nave towards the sanctuary and apse.

  Where the light fell I could see the coloured marble inlays on the balustrades and lower walls, set like gems on the lid of a casket, work of Italian craftsmen. Beyond this was the radiance of the mosaics. In the dimness above me, hardly visible now but closely familiar from previous visits, was the Arab stalactite ceiling in carved wood, with its painted scenes and Kufic inscriptions. Latin, Byzantine and Saracen had worked together here to make a single harmony, to make this, though still unfinished, the most beautiful church ever before seen in Palermo.

  There had been times when the interior had sounded to their separate languages and the chipping and hammering and scraping of their work.

  But it was not a question only of the edifice itself. This blending of all that was best in the separate traditions was to my mind a figure for the unity in diversity of our realm, a harmony which our King had known how to protect and preserve. It was my obscure service to aid him in this great task. It was why I struggled to curtail the abuses of the street sweepers. It was why I was going to meet Lazar Pilic.

  III

  I cannot say that I found much comfort in these thoughts after the news I had heard and the manner of my parting with Demetrius. I felt heavy-hearted and needful of solace, and as I made the sign of the cross in the shadows before leaving, I thought again about the women of the Tiraz and more particularly about Sara and the gift I had for her in my purse, which would make her welcome the warmer – or so I hoped, feeling the need for her arms about me and the yield of her body.

  As I reached the foot of the steps and began to make my way across the courtyard, a man came towards me from the shadows close to the wall. He came on my left side and he was silent and his step was light. The courtyard was deserted and I thought for a moment that he meant to attack me. I swung round to face him and my hand went to the dagger at my belt, that being quicker than a sword to draw and use in the short space there was between us.

  "No," he said, "I am a friend, I am Béroul. I was crossing the square and saw you in the light from the doorway as you began to descend the steps."

  "Light from the doorway?" I glanced back up the stairway. "You have good eyes."

  I saw him smile, as if he knew my thoughts. "I have been wanting to speak with you for some time," he said. "I took the opportunity thus presented."

  We were still standing in the shadow of the wall. He was wearing a hooded cloak and I could make out little of his face, except that the smile gave the set of his jaws a famished look.

  "I am on my way to a visit of some importance," I said. "Can this not wait until another time?"

  "It is something that concerns you closely. You would do well to hear me."

  There was a colouring of threat in this, or so it seemed to me. I did not fear Béroul, but if he was prepared to use such a tone, he must deem the matter serious. "Very well," I said, infusing my voice with weariness. "I am listening."

  "No, not here," he said. "What are you thinking of? A poor light will not make us less likely to be noticed, ill-wishers can more easily draw near."

  "As you drew near to me."

  "I am your friend and you will know it soon. If we talk here we will seem like conspirators. If we talk in a tavern I know of, not far away, we are Thurstan Beauchamp and Maurice Béroul, two servants of the Douana Regia, having a cup of wine together and not caring who sees us."

  He had used the Latin title of the Royal Diwan with a certain deliberate emphasis, and this, when afterwards I looked back on our talk, seemed the first pointer to his intent. He began to move across the courtyard as he finished speaking and I fell into step beside him without more words.

  The tavern was a poor enough place, no more than a cellar, ill-lit and almost deserted – there was a man asleep or befuddled sitting at a table with his head hanging low, and three others playing dice in a corner and disputing among themselves at every throw. The man who served us wore an evil-smelling leather apron and the wine was sour. I was surprised that Béroul should chose such a place. There were taverns in Palermo frequented by the people of the Palace but this was not one of them. We were conspicuous here, I with my plumed hat and loose-sleeved pellice, he with his dark mantle and the fringe and dome of his tonsure – he had thrown the hood back now to reveal this.

  He drank a little from his cup, set it down carefully. After a moment he smiled his lean-jawed smile and said, "We have always taken a great interest in you, Thurstan."

  "Indeed?" I said. "Is this the plural of majesty we are using?"

  "We in the Vice-Chancery, the Magistri Camerarii Palatii. We have been watching over you when little you knew of it."

  This I could well believe. "We do our watching too," I said, "we in the diwan al-taqiq al-mamur." I had used the Arab title del
iberately and it seemed to me that his face hardened, but there was no change in his tone when he spoke again.

  "We have seen your diligence and your devotion to the King's service. It is our opinion that your talents are being wasted."

  He seemed to wait for a reply but I made none. After a moment he said, "In spite of your high abilities you will not go far in a douana conducted by Saracens, with a Saracen at its head."

  "There are Christians in my diwan, besides myself."

  Now, for the second time that evening, I saw a face made ugly by contempt. "Christians? You put yourself on a level with them, you who are of Christian birth? You call them Christians, these filthy palace Saracens that claim to be converted to our faith and secretly continue to practise their own?"

  "I have seen no evidence of this," I said, but he did not hear me or showed no sign of doing so.

  "Once a Saracen, always a Saracen, it is in their blood," he said. His eyes had a staring look now, that famished smile had gone, and with it all pretence of benevolent interest in me. He leaned forward across the table, bringing his face close to mine. "It is in their corrupted blood," he said, "and they will corrupt our blood with it if we allow them. The terrible warning is there for us in the words of Ezekiel: 'And when I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee: In thy blood live!' The Christian life as lived in Sicily can be summed up as a struggle against contamination, a struggle to keep our blood clean. It is a long struggle, one that has no ending. The threat is always there, no conquest can ever be more than provisional. Tell me, Thurstan, what does Christendom mean to you?"

  "It is the term we use for those regions where our Roman faith is predominant."

  "That is all it signifies to you? This great spread of our faith no more than a matter of geography? I will tell you what Christendom is.

  Christendom is the universal Christian Church, the universal Christian society. Christendom is a mighty host that is destined to bring the world under its sway."

  Rarely had I seen such exaltation on a human face. The constraint he was under to keep his voice low intensified the vehemence of his speech. It was quieter now inside the room. The dice game was over, one of the three had left; the head of the solitary sleeper had declined on to the table.

  "This Christendom of ours is young," Béroul said, more calmly. "Bear with me, travel back with me in time a little. A hundred years ago almost to the day, you might have seen a company of men making their way from Worms to Rome. If you had been fortunate enough to be of that company, you would have known one of them for Bruno of Egisheim, newly elected Pope Leo IX, another for Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, and the third for Hildebrand, who would later become Pope Gregory VII. Think of it, Thurstan. When, before or since, have three such men travelled in a single company? Three future saints, three men of genius, each dedicated to extending the power and influence of Holy Church. They saw more clearly than ever before that the danger lay in diverse practices, in their different ways they worked to transcend the local, to make our Church one single body. These were the founders of Christendom. Theirs was the spirit that inspired the first crusade and took the Holy Land for Christ."

  He said nothing of the second crusade, which had ended in disastrous failure only the year before, and I understood the reason for this and it brought me, if only for that moment, closer to Béroul than I was ever to come again: we were briefly united in the sorrow all Christians felt for our loss of Edessa, for our humiliation before the walls of Damascus, for the disorderly and ignominious retreat of the greatest army that the Franks had ever put into the field.

  "We see further than they did," Béroul said after a moment of repose.

  "Not because we have sharper eyes but because of the foundation they laid for us. They were giants, we are dwarfs. We see further because we are sitting on their shoulders. This is a figure of my own invention that I sometimes use when I want to explain these matters."

  "It bears a resemblance to some words of Bernard of Chartres, written at a time before I was born."

  "Well done, Thurstan! I made a little test for you. They have not exaggerated who praise your accomplishments. But I was intending to say that while the danger still lies in local practices, we see now today, here in Sicily, that the great threat to our Church is the existence among us of a militant faith hostile to our own. These Moslems are allowed to live and breed among us, their blood is corrupted, they will corrupt the blood of Holy Church, our blood." The calmer mood that had come to him when he spoke of those great men of the past was broken now, that fixed and staring look had returned to his face. "We will be condemned to live in our polluted blood and the words Ezekiel will come to pass."

  "Is it to tell me this that you brought me here?" I said.

  His eyes fell away from mine. He reached out a hand and moved his cup a little to one side, no more than a fraction, as if to find an ideal place for it. "You can help us in this sacred task. Your douana is a source of corruption. Will you say you have not noticed how year by year the language of the Saracens has supplanted all others in the documents produced by your douana? It was formerly Greek. Then Latin, the language of our religion, began to be used. But this was suppressed through their cunning. Now all is in their Saracen language. Will you say you have not noticed this?"

  "It is not true that all is in Arabic. Greek also is used – my clerk is a Greek. Arabic is more usual now and the reason for that is not difficult to see. We use Saracen scribes because they have better instruction and write a better hand. We are occupied with land holdings and the grants and fees belonging to them. Clarity is essential. Those set to write in Latin could not make themselves clear in that or in any other language."

  "Do you not see that this rise of their language is part of a conspiracy that goes far beyond the shores of this island? The Saracens ruled here once – not long ago. They are working to undermine the King's realm and to regain the power they had. They are assisted from abroad. Have you followed the rise of the Almohads in North Africa? One after another our colonies are falling to them, they are taking our ports and our trade, they are recovering the land for Islam. They send their spies across the water to stir up rebellion and acts of violence among their fellow-Moslems here."

  He spoke as if no one else knew of these Almohads, the Berbers of Morocco who were taking all by storm, whereas most of Palermo knew of them, and all those in the palace service. I myself knew more about it than he did, as I had carried the King's money over the water to stiffen the resistance of the Emir of Bougie, who was favourable to our trade interests there, but all to no avail, every day our Arab friends were losing ground, these Almohads were already west of the Zurid Kingdom.

  "They make use of the alamat to make secret signals among them," he said now.

  "That cannot be true."

  The alamat were a form of signature in the Kufic script used by Arab scribes in documents that circulated through the chanceries. "They are extremely difficult to read," I said. "Almost impossible."

  "That is the cunning of it. They make the writing intricate not for the sake of ornament but so as to deceive. We have used trained scribes to decipher them. They are quotations from the Koran. Let me give you an example. 'On the Day of Judgement to whom will the Kingdom belong? To God, the One, the Victorious.'" He paused, staring across at me in a manner of one who has made a point impossible to refute. "It could hardly be clearer," he said. "That is an incitement to rebellion. Have you seen them pray? Hundreds of men moving together like a single beast."

  I watched him in silence as he again paused to make a small adjustment to the position of his cup. His fingers were very white and the nails well cared-for.

  "The Beast that waits to devour us," he said. "Who is it that gives your Saracen scribes their employment and oversees their work? Is it not the lord of your douana?"

  "You know it is."

  "Yusuf Ibn Mansur. He is close to the throne and seeks to come even closer. But he will not leave hi
s place to you, Thurstan, he will leave it to a creature of his own. We know already the successor he has in mind."

  If he was hoping I would question him on this, he was disappointed. In any case, I did not believe it. By spying we can find the nest of the lark, the lair of the fox, the place where a man hides his treasure. But the spy was not born that could see into the purposes of a man like Yusuf. Nevertheless, though confident of this, I felt stricken by Béroul's words as if they took some shelter from me. "I do not seek his place," I said, and this I felt to be true in the sense of actively seeking.

  "We know certain other things about him. We know that he and certain others, Saracens subordinate to him, are engaged in perverting our faith by offering bribes to any that will convert to Islam."

  This was so insensate a thing that for some moments I could not find words to answer him. By a law newly introduced by the Council of Justiciars – a council appointed by the King – such attempts at conversion, whether by bribes or coercion, were defined as a crime tantamount to treason. "But you are mad," I said at last.

  "No, believe me, we have been watching him for a long time now. He has not made any such attempt on you?"

  "No, of course not, never."

  Béroul remained silent for some time, glancing away from me across the room. Then, still without looking at me, he said, "Think carefully, my fine young man. It is a capital offence. You would not want to be associated with him in guilt. It may be that you remember something, some form of words."

  "What do you mean?"