The Ruby In Her Navel

by Barry Unsworth

  "Well, it is no secret. He is losing the powers of his mind. So it has been for some three years now. He does not remember the happenings of his life, he does not recognise faces that once he knew well, and this grows slowly worse, though he is still strong in body. The Lady Alicia was always his favourite, he knows her and he listens for her voice and her step. None can comfort him as well as she."

  He fell silent here, as if awaiting some reply, but I could find none to give him. "She is very devoted to her father," he said.

  "She left no other word for me?"

  He hesitated for a moment, his eyes upon me. Once again I was struck by his handsome looks and the independence of his bearing. "She asked me to assure you that this changes nothing."

  On this he bowed slightly and withdrew and I had to be contented with it. Neither Adhemar nor Alboino was present at supper so I supposed they had left at the same time. The venison lacked savour without her, though I had an honoured place at the table and was listened to when I spoke of the events of the chase. With the hours that passed I grew reconciled to her departure and even found good reason in it. She was the only daughter, only she could give her father solace when he felt distressed in his darkness. It seemed to me entirely natural that any man, father or no, would call to her in his need. And I had her ring in my keeping and her promise in my heart.

  These were the feelings that remained uppermost in my mind on returning to Palermo, and there now began a period of happiness for me as I waited to have word from her. Whatever in my work might have seemed tedious or distasteful before, now came lightly to me. I looked forward to the time when Alicia and I would be man and wife and I would return to the life I had been intended for. She had not said how long it would be before we exchanged our vows, but I was content to wait on her wishes and her sense of propriety. Indeed, this very waiting was a fulfilment of the vows of service I had made her on our parting, in keeping with the order of chivalry I would soon now be joining. My years at the Diwan of Control, my purveying of pleasures and all that this had masked, all the unworthy acquaintance, in my new life these things would dwindle in memory, almost as if they had never been. No more lies, no more deceivings…

  The King returned from Salerno and we were finally able to offer him the spectacle of the Anatolian dancers. This was done in proper form by Stefanos through the Office of the Seneschal. The Dance of the Belly, the first time ever in the King's domain – so we gave it out; we said nothing about their wanderings in southern Italy, letting it be generally inferred that they had been wafted, by means more or less magical, from the Taurus Mountains.

  The royal summon came sooner than we had expected. King Roger was to entertain a company of notables from Germany, among them Otto of Zahringen and his son Frederick, whose active help he was eager to obtain in fomenting revolt against Conrad Hohenstaufen. His widowed daughter-in-law, Elisabeth of Blois-Champagne, was to join them – it was her last appearance at court before returning to France.

  It was late in the afternoon that he sent notice, either on the spur of the moment or because Sir Stephen Fitzherbert, the chamberlain in charge of the kitchens and all matters concerning the seating at table and the serving and the entertainments, whispered in his ear. This service Stephen had sometimes done before and claimed a fee from our Diwan – or a gift, as it was called, to remove the notion of payment. Naturally he would expect a gift on this occasion too, since whether or not it had been his doing no one could say.

  There was very little time; they had to change into their new clothes immediately. The King would dine early, as his habit was: often, after taking leave of his guests, he would go on working far into the night, attended only by his notary, Giovanni dei Segni, one of the very few who enjoyed his whole trust. While he was dining we would wait in an adjoining anteroom. When we were sent for I would lead them into the Great Hall, make my bow to the assembled company, then return to the anteroom and await them – there was no place for me in the hall; I was neither guest nor performer.

  It only remained for me to give them instructions as how they were to bear themselves in the King's presence. It was the first time I had seen them since Nesrin had made us laugh with her talk of going into the bushes. I was as aware as ever of her presence there among them, and strangely glad for it. But I took care to address the group as a whole, without letting my eyes rest too long on anyone. They were to follow me in file, the three women then the two men. The dancing space would be lit by torches against the wall, they would see it there before them. I would make my bow and leave. They would form a line facing the King and his guests, and they would all bow together, bending the knee and holding the body low.

  Fearing they might not have understood my words, I gave them a demonstration, not thinking, in my eagerness to have everything done properly and in order, that I might look ridiculous, inclining my body in this fashion, all alone there and without an immediate reason. "Keep this bow and hold yourselves still while you count to ten. Count slowly.

  One – two – three – four. When you come to ten, straighten up. Try to do it so that you all straighten up together. Ozgur and Temel will then seat themselves with their backs to the wall. They will start playing and so the dancing will begin."

  There was a prolonged silence among them after these words. They had not followed their usual practice of averting the gaze while I spoke, but watched my movements closely as I bowed and counted and straightened up.

  Now they were regarding me with a certain fixity of expression which I took at first to mean they had not understood. I was supposing with some weariness that I would have to go through it all again, when I realised that the look was not one of failure to understand but of wary curiosity: they were regarding me as one might regard a creature of unusual shape encountered in an unlikely place.

  This was disconcerting and made it difficult to know what to say next. I essayed a smile. Of course, they were not civilised people, the practice of bowing would seem strange to them. "Time is short," I said. "Perhaps we could practise it a little?"

  A hand went up and it was hers. I was not deceived for a moment by the expression of serious enquiry on her face, not for a moment… She looked beautiful in her new bodice and skirt with the white sash round her middle. Her black hair was untied, it lay loose to her shoulders. I noticed now for the first time that it was not quite straight but had a curl or wave in it which I supposed must be natural. But perhaps not, perhaps she had made it with curling tongs. I had a sudden sense of her life as it might be in private, when she was alone. And for a moment she seemed indeed alone, there was no one else there, we were looking across an empty space at each other. I felt my smile faltering. "What is it?" I asked.

  "They hear the counting, they will laugh."

  It seemed to me that she spoke the Greek words with a better accent now, and more easily. But it was clear that the spirit of mockery was not changed in her. "You must count inside your heads," I said, tapping my own head with a forefinger to drive the point home.

  But this was a mistake on my part because Temel now repeated the gesture, but in a more rapid and violent way and he was followed in this by Ozgur. They were signalling that they thought me mad, and this angered me because they were savages and had no idea of polite behaviour, and made this ignorance into a virtue. "Well, whether you like it or not," I said, "if you want his Royal Majesty's favour, you will have to make your bow and do your count. Otherwise you will disgrace yourselves and me."

  At this they fell to talking among themselves, all but Nesrin, who did not join in but stood apart from them. I hoped this might be a sign of sympathy with me but could not be sure – I was not sure of anything about her except that she was beautiful.

  There was no time now for any more discussion; we had to set off immediately in order to be in attendance when the call came. We were escorted to the royal apartments by two household guards in their tall black hats and silver braid. As they clattered and jingled along beside us I wondered
how I could ever have wanted to become one of them. Higher things awaited me now.

  When we were esconced in the antechamber, not much more was said among us and I took this to mean they had agreed among themselves to follow my instructions. The call came from one of Fitzherbert's stewards, who stood at the door and beckoned. I followed him, and the Anatolians followed me in the order I had prescribed. We reached the dancing space and I stepped forward to make my bow. I had a confused sense of the spectators seated close to me, lower down in the hall, and of the King at the high table with his guests. It was the same confusion I always felt in his presence, as if I had come suddenly from some dusky place into a fullness of light that bewildered my eyes and prevented me from seeing him clearly. There was the gleam that lay on the circlet of gold over his brows and on the gold brocade at the shoulders of his robe – more than this radiance I did not see. I bent my knees and inclined my body low and began my count.

  The Anatolians were at my back and ready to bow in their turn, or so I thought. But before I was half-way through my counting I heard voices and laughter behind me: they were calling to one another in their own tongue, just as they had on the night when I first saw them, just as if these courtiers before them now were the same gaping boors that had surrounded them then! I heard the clatter of the women's shoes as they shook them off on to the stone floor, then the quick tapping of the drum and the first plaintive strains of the long-necked dulcimer. They had not formed a line, they had not bowed, they had not counted. In the royal presence they had shown no slightest mark of deference or respect!

  My throat had tightened. I could not have spoken to them, even if they could have heard. I felt the touch of a swirling skirt, like a breath. I turned to see Nesrin swaying close behind me. The music grew louder.

  There was nothing for it now but to leave in the best order I could and let things take their course. I would no longer have my place as purveyor after this gross breach, so much was certain. I would be lucky to escape prison.

  I turned and took two paces towards the door we had entered by. But I was not able to get farther. Nesrin took some dancing steps across my path and seized my hand in her own much smaller one and held it tightly – so tightly that without unseemly violence I could not free myself. I thought for a terrible moment she wanted to bring me into the dance, but it was not this because as soon as she had my hand in her own she stopped dancing; she stood still and looked at me and I saw that she wanted me, for some reason of her own, to stay there, to be present while they danced.

  A great swell of laughter came from the assembled company to see my escape cut off, to see us standing hand-in-hand there, while the music sounded and Yildiz and Havva turned slowly in the first steps of the dance. At the laughter – and this seemed almost the strangest thing of all – I saw Ozgur and Temel, who were sitting back against the wall with their instruments, nodding and laughing together as if sharing a joke.

  After a moment I realised that they were not laughing at me but at the spectators, and I felt that they were my friends and never afterwards lost this feeling.

  But still I could not move. Nothing like this had ever happened before, through all the succession of jugglers, buffoons, strongmen and acrobats that I had at different times introduced into the royal presence.

  Nesrin's eyes were on me, bright and unwavering, neither timid nor bold but with something that seemed like trustfulness in them. Quite suddenly I knew what I should do. I did not know why she wanted me there but I knew what I should do – or better, I knew what I should not do: Thurstan of Mescoli was not a man to slink away with laughter in his ears. I smiled at Nesrin and nodded, and she released my hand and turned away from me, back into the dance. I raised my head and walked with a pace neither fast nor slow to the nearer wall, and I stood against this to watch the dancing. And in doing this I turned my face from the King.

  For a while it was little more than strolling, as the women snapped their fingers and Ozgur began a crooning song. Then Temel struck the drum sharply with the heel of his hand, exclaiming loudly as he did so, and the women echoed this exclamation, and then they were dancing.

  Yildiz was first to quicken pace, turning her back on the people in the hall and facing towards Temel, who seemed both to lead and follow the rhythm of her steps with quick finger-tapping at both ends of the drum.

  She raised her arms to shoulder height and shivered them and the loose copper bangles run along her arms and glittered. Then the others quickened too, and they too faced away from those watching, dancing for one another, or so it seemed, making their arms shiver in the same way, a shivering that seemed to come from the arms themselves and not from any effort of the shoulders. Then all three began turning upon themselves and the scarves fell away, leaving their middle parts bare.

  When that shuddering of the body came that precedes the dance of the belly, there was complete silence among the people there, though they were flushed with wine and had been loud enough before. And then, with the shudders ceasing and the ripples of the belly beginning, every eye was on the shining pebbles of glass set in the dancers' navels, and the rolling movement that caused the dimple of the navel to close on the glass and dim it then open again to reveal its shine. Nesrin raised her arms to the nape of her neck as if to make some change in the ribbon that tied her hair behind, but she kept them there motionless and looked down at her own movements, watching herself with a pride that excluded the spectators only to involve them more.

  Watching, I forgot my disgrace. I was moved by the beauty and wildness of the dancing, and I saw, I think for the first time, that the beauty of it lay in this wildness. It was the dancing of outcast people, rebels. They obeyed nothing and no one. They made no attempt to match their movements one with another. They made no smiles, they did not seek the eyes of those watching. None gave a glance towards the high table where the King sat. And yet, on that night of moonlight and firelight when I had seen them first, Nesrin had danced before me and looked me in the face. And even now, as she turned this way and that, setting her feet with that grace and care I remembered, even now sometimes our eyes met.

  Unexpectedly, in the midst of my trouble, I was attacked by self-reproach. How could I have expected these lawless wanderers to bow and count? When I thought of all the bowing and counting I had done in my life I could not feel satisfied with what it had brought me. I forgave the Anatolians in my heart for all the trouble they had caused me in the past and all that they were likely now to bring upon my head.

  And in the particular case of Nesrin I extended this forgiveness to include the disturbance of my senses and the distraction of my thoughts that she had caused me from the first moment of seeing her.

  The dulcimer fell silent now and the beating of the drum came in alternate rhythms. The dancers went back, back, arching over until their heads came close to the floor behind. Bodies arched thus, legs slightly spread, faces looking upward, they repeated that raising and shivering of the arms. It was an astonishing thing to see. I remembered now the words of the Greek trader, made poetic by his desire of coin. As if inviting the love of a god… I had eyes only for Nesrin, who was between the others, for the slightly parted knees, for the toenails reddened with henna. Failing a god, why not Thurstan of Mescoli? So whispered the slumberless demon of my lust.

  There was dead silence in the hall as they came slowly upright again.

  Then the King's voice sounded, a single shout of bravo, the supreme mark of royal approval. It released a great storm of applause that seemed to rebound from walls and ceiling. Coins began to clatter on the floor but not one of these people, who had bargained with me so stubbornly for two ducats at the inn, made a move to pick them up, and I was pleased at this because I was in their midst and felt for that moment that I belonged with them, pleased that these homeless strangers, born to poverty as I supposed, did not give any there the satisfaction of power, to see them scramble for the coins and thus feel the restoring of a supremacy that might have been put in
doubt by the talents of the humble.

  The plaudits were continuing. The Anatolians were standing gravely there, a dew of sweat on the brows of the women. Some words passed among them and all looked at me as I stood against the wall. Then Ozgur gestured towards me, a movement strange to my eyes as often the gestures of these people were, bringing the palm of his hand towards his chest with fingers splayed, in a manner that seemed fierce almost, as if he would strike himself. I understood then that he wanted me to come forward and join them. But I still had not moved when Nesrin came to me and again took my hand and brought me to stand among them, she on one side and Havva on the other, and the applause continued, with shouts and even some stamping of the feet – indeed it seemed to me that the sound grew louder as I came forward. And after some moments of confusion I found myself gratified by this tide of applause, more than gratified: I felt warmly immersed in it, as if it were my natural element. And this was in a way strange, as I had never before heard approval of me shouted by numbers of people at the same time – the nearest I had come to it was at the age of fifteen, with shield and lance, on occasions when the lord brought his guests to watch us practise at the lists.

  In short, the Anatolian dancers were a great success, and this it was, I believe, that saved me from the King's displeasure at their failures of courtesy. I had done well in the past with some dwarf jugglers and an Armenian who could lift enormous weights and two Italians from Modena, a man and a woman, who could tell stories without words, only by movement and gesture and changes of face, so that one could understand everything. These had been some of my successes, but they all paled by comparison with this one. Besides, I had not been present at those times, not had this experience of being lifted up and borne along on a warm tide.

  Before we could leave the hall, Fitzherbert came down to us – in person now. Not to order my immediate arrest for lese-majesty, but to inform me that by immediate command of the King this company should hold itself in readiness to appear again before him on the following evening.