The Ruby In Her Navel Page 30
"The Lady Alicia sends you her greetings," Alboino said at last.
"She is well then? I was hoping to find her here. Her man gave me to understand -"
"Unfortunately she cannot be here." He paused and hesitated, as if about to say something more in explanation, then glanced towards Bertrand, who said, "We would be happy indeed to have her here with us."
"Has some ill befallen her?"
"Not exactly that. Not yet at least." Alboino sighed, a strangely heavy sound in that silent room. "I find myself in a position of great difficulty," he said. "Perhaps more so than ever in my life before. How much easier it would be if our temporal rulers followed the example of this great man depicted here." He made a gesture almost of benediction towards the fresco on the wall to his right, where a man richly attired and wearing a gold coronet was presenting a scroll to another, who was dressed in episcopal robe and mitre. "That is Constantinus, donating the Roman Empire, in perpetuity, to the Vicar of Rome, subordinating the temporal power to the spiritual. If only that legacy had been honoured!
There would now be one supreme and unquestioned authority, the Holy Father, heir to St. Peter. Instead Christendom is divided, princes professing the same faith war among themselves, this our well-loved King Roger disputes the Pope's right to appoint bishops and surrounds himself with Saracens, people of a false and corrupt religion."
"Not only that," Bertrand said. "He gives them positions of influence and power in the land, to the detriment and loss of his Norman peers."
It seemed to me that there was some quality, not of reproof exactly, but at least of admonition, in the glance Alboino gave him. But I was too concerned for Alicia to think much about this. "I beg you to give me news of your niece," I said. "You must have remarked the closeness of the attachment between us."
"Certainly, yes, but others have remarked it as well as I. Alicia is so guileless, so open and frank in her nature, it is not in her to practise deception or concealment. Reports of this feeling between you have come to the ears of the Roman Curia. Even your childhood love is known to them."
"How can that be? I have spoken of it to no one, and I am sure that Alicia would not. Why should she? It concerns no one else."
"I cannot say how they came by this knowledge. Perhaps someone there at the time, someone who watched you and remembered."
Hugo, he of the honey cakes: perhaps before illness compelled him to leave he had boasted of his knowledge…
"There is always someone," Alboino said, as if reading my thoughts. "You were watched at the hospice, it was seen that you talked together alone through the hours of the night. This was made known to them by one of the hospitallers, as was the manner of your parting in the morning. The time you spent alone together at Favara was noted, your meeting in the pavilion, and then later, in your boat on the lake. All this was observed and word sent to Rome."
"Who it was that played the spy I do not know," Bertrand said. "Someone among the guests or perhaps a gardener or a servant of the house. I wish I had the dog between my hands, he would rue the day."
"She is being held," Alboino said.
"Against her will? On my account? But that is absurd. I knew of course there would be opposition. I am not rich, I have no title. But my birth is good, I am loyal and I have a strong arm. With her help at the beginning I could become someone to reckon with. Besides, the lady is free, she disposes of her own life and fortune."
"There is more yet to tell you. What a vale of tears is this world! How difficult it is sometimes to understand God's purposes and try to fulfil His will! Three separate pieces of information are in the hands of my brothers in the Curia, each of them useless without the others. There is your love for Alicia, there is your position of trust in a douana headed by a powerful and ambitious Saracen who seeks still higher office, and there is the fact, remoter in time but no less important, that Alicia's father, Guy of Morcone, was a close associate of Rainulf of Alife, Duke of Apulia, and played a part in the latter's uprising against King Roger in 1137. You will remember that Rainulf died before the King's vengeance could reach him, but several close to him were put to death when the rebellion failed."
"Yes, I remember learning of it. I was sixteen at the time, still in the household of Hubert of Venosa." The King's wrath had been terrible. Some details, recounted then, had lived in my mind ever since. After subduing Troia, where Rainulf was buried, he had forced the townspeople to break open the tomb and remove the putrefying body. A rope had been fastened round the corpse's neck and it had been dragged through the streets for all to see, then taken to a foul stagnant ditch outside the town and weighted and sunk there. Certain knights that had been his followers were forced to do these things on pain of blinding and maiming… "It was in that year that Alicia left for the Kingdom of Jerusalem to be married," I said.
"Not by chance, though Alicia did not know this. Her brothers, Adhemar and Arnulf, went at the same time. It was judged safer to put them beyond reach of the King's wrath, or at least the consequences of his suspicion. The father stayed where he was, living in retirement on his estates. The evidence of his involvement was kept and it ended in the archives of the Curia, where many such things end. It was kept in the hope that it might some day prove useful."
He paused and the sorrow of his face deepened into grimness. "Those were troubled times," he said.
"Better to have rooted the traitors out like a nest of vipers," Bertrand said. "That was my opinion at the time and it is my opinion now. Not the young ones of course, they had nothing to do with it."
Alboino looked at him for a long moment. "We are speaking of the husband of my dear sister, who has been dead these many years," he said. "Our zeal must take account of family affections."
Bertrand maintained his open, staring look, not seeming at all affected by the rebuke. However, he remained silent. There was an alliance between them; it was strained, congenial to neither, I saw that; nevertheless, alliance it was. Why else was Bertrand there? What purpose did his presence serve? Nightmare has no moment of beginning, we are launched on it before we know. Perhaps it was now that it came to me, not doubt exactly, but a growing sense of anguish: the things I was hearing and seeing did not match together, did not correspond among themselves; some element was lacking and there was horror in this lack.
"Where is she being held and by whom?"
Nothing changed in either of the faces that were regarding me. "The whereabouts we have not been told," Bertrand said. "Would I be sitting here if we knew?"
"It is not needful for us to know," Alboino said. "We are intermediaries only. We are promised that no harm will come to her if you comply with their wishes."
My feeling of anguish deepened. "What wishes are those?"
"We will come to it, have patience. As to those who are holding her, they are not the King's people, but they are his friends, did he but know it. As I say, the evidence was kept for a time when it might be needed. Now that time has come. My brothers at the Curia are worthy men, true servants of Holy Church. God has placed a sword in their hands for the furtherance of the faith. I am asked to be their spokesman though playing no direct part. As uncle of Alicia, and friend, as I hope, to you. It is of first importance in the eyes of the Curia to prevent Yusuf Ibn Mansur's further rise to power, it is necessary to… stop him. In order to do this they have brought to danger of death for treason Guy of Morcone and any of his family who are taken with him, and that includes my niece and the one brother who is here, Adhemar."
"But they are guiltless."
Alboino nodded. "That is so, in the strictest sense of the word. But in the eyes of those who rule us to be in a certain place at a certain time can constitute guilt enough. Would King Roger visit his wrath on the father and leave the children to thoughts of vengeance? No, with the father would go the children, consumed in the same fire."
"Her father is in the twilight of his life, his mind is gone, the head that he laid on the block could have no treason in it."
"The King is just, his justice is known to all." The words came from me without conviction, born only from a need to delay the words of theirs, already heard, already sounding within my anguished heart, the words that would tell me what was expected of me. "He does not revive old hatreds," I said. "Past and present, races and creeds, he keeps the balance on which our state depends."
"It is here that the King has erred, and we thank God he is coming now to a better state of mind." For the first time there was harshness in Alboino's voice. "We have no need of balance," he said. "Balance is anathema. There can be no counter-weights, no scales. This Sicily is a Christian kingdom, it belongs in the universal congregation which we call Christendom. Do you know what Christendom is? Do you know what it means?"
My mind went back to the darkness at the foot of the steps below the Chapel, the hooded figure that waited me there. "That same question was asked me by Maurice Béroul when he was sent to bribe me."
"Was it so? And who is this Maurice Béroul?"
It seemed to me that the second question came a fraction too late after the first. I looked at the two as they sat there before me. They had seemed so different in my first impression, one from another. But it was a difference of the surface only. The Roman prelate and the Norman noble. One serving his Church, one serving his class, both bent on ousting the Saracen, both eager for the power and privilege that emanated from the throne. Perhaps something showed on my face – it was always a weakness of mine to show feeling too openly. I saw Alboino's nostrils draw down a little and his mouth tighten with arrogance or disdain. It was only a moment, like the briefest twitch of a mask. But in that moment I knew he felt himself above any judgement that one such as I might make of him. "Alicia's life is in your hands," he said. "It is only you that can save her." He drew from the folds of his habit a scroll tied with a thin cord. "They have appointed me to be the bearer of this."
Bertrand cleared his throat, a sound of startling loudness. He said, "My part is to guarantee your safety and the protection of your peers, as they will be – I will myself confer knighthood on you, and you will take your place in the rank you were born to. I know this has been your dearest wish. It is also within my power to grant you a fief, which you will hold in vassalage to me. Naturally also there will be a sum in gold, sufficient for the furnishings you will need. If you want to try your fortunes in the Holy Land, I will see that you are recommended. The Lord of Tripoli is my half-cousin. Once we have your signature on the document we can obtain the lady Alicia's release. You will wait for her at the palace of Favara. You will have my seal for your admittance. She will join you there. I give you my knightly word that no harm will come to her or to you. Now you will need time alone to consider."
They came with me, one on either side, in a ceremony of escort that belonged also to nightmare, back down the passage to the room where I had first waited. Someone had been busy: there were quills and an inkstand on the small table against the window. Here I seated myself, while they withdrew. Here I unfurled and read the document they had given me. It was a declaration that Yusuf Ibn Mansur, Lord of the Douana of Control, taking advantage of his position of authority, had on various occasions and over a course of several months, dates and times being specified, sought by bribes and promises of advancement to convert me to Islam, assuring me that this my conversion would be kept secret until the day that accounts were settled and the wrongs of the Moslems avenged in blood.
XXIII
The silence I experienced in that room was the most terrible of my life.
At first my mind was muffled by it, as by some soft wadding, keeping me from clear consideration of the words before me. But as the moments passed and the starkness of the choice became clearer, the oppression of the silence grew upon me, the wadding was stretched into strands of a web, and I was caught in it, a traitor already: for remaining there, for considering.
Every moment made the wrong more grievous. And yet I could not rise from the table. To do so was to abandon her to the jailor and the executioner. Perhaps it was not true that her life was in danger, or her father's life either, perhaps it was merely a subterfuge, to dupe me into betraying my benefactor. But if so, why had she not come to Potenza, why had she sent me no word since? No, she was being kept confined somewhere. Perhaps they had lied, perhaps Alboino knew where she was. As her uncle, he would have been able to use her trust in him, to lure her away to where she could be kept under guard, at least long enough for me to be persuaded to sign the document. In that case, she was in no danger, there was no treason, it was all a tissue of invention designed to frighten and coerce me. But how could I tell, how could I be sure? My mind crawled around like a fly inside a jar, seeking an exit. I had no one to turn to. And there was no time, I had to emerge from this place with the document signed or not, I had to abide by the consequences. How could I take the chance of it? How could I play at hazard with Alicia's life, when she had given me her love, promised to share that life with mine?
Her image came before my eyes, memories of our childhood meetings, snatched with such joy from the supervision of our elders and all the duties that beset us. I remembered her steadfastness and her trust in me and her loyalty – she had risked disgrace for my sake. The mind in travail will select one single image among many to cling to. There was a gown she wore that I remembered, very simple, a linen gown, pale blue in colour, gathered at the waist, with a high neck and a collar of white lace. The colour brought out the blue of her eyes… Then came the face and form of the woman she was now, who had returned to my life and filled it with promise, the marvellous moments of our meeting at Bari, her look of delighted recognition on that charmed ground, as she came riding towards me, as it seemed from the spaces of the sea that lay beyond. Had that encounter too been observed, reported back to the Roman Curia, as had her voice and laughter in the dimness of the courtyard, the touch of her hand on my head as I knelt before her, the kisses we had exchanged in the pavilion of Favara? If by signing I would save her, by signing I would also stand before her on equal terms: did I not have Bertrand's promise of knighthood, and a grant of land, and gold for my horses and my armour? It struck me now, with a bitterness that twisted my mouth like a physical taste, that all the honour I had striven for and despaired of, the fidelity I would have vowed my life to, could be purchased now by the slightest movement of my right hand in an act of betrayal. I know this has been your dearest wish. By what means had he discovered this? They must have found out and questioned the companions of my boyhood; one talked freely then of hopes and dreams.
As I look back on it now, the matter was foregone. It is true that I suffered. But the arguments I conducted with myself were not real arguments, they were only the motions of the fly in the jar, which cannot accept that there is no escape and will not keep still and die, but dies while still searching. One attempt I made to save myself, at least from falsehood. I left the room, went back along the passage, tapped at the door and entered. I found Alboino and Bertrand sitting silently together in the same positions in which I had left them, as if only by my consent could they be set again in life and motion.
"I have heard Yusuf complaining of the treatment given to Moslems," I said. "I have heard him denounce the increasing influence of the Latin clergy and the Norman nobility. I have heard him say that civil war will be the result if the Arabs are denied ownership of land. To save Alicia and her family I am ready to sign to that effect, if the document could be written in a new form."
Thus basely did I try to save an appearance of virtue, even as I offered to play the part of traitor. I knew it for ignominy even as I spoke, knew at the same time that it would not suffice for them. Whether they possessed the power to change the document I had no means of knowing.
But even if so the
y would never have agreed to such terms. Yusuf had been incautious – he had trusted me – but there was no real disloyalty to the crown in his words, and the words themselves were too common among Arabs, and too general, to make a strong case against him.
"No, no," Alboino said. "What are you thinking of?"
"It would be enough to remove him from office."
"No, you are wrong, it would not be enough for that. Yusuf is quick-witted and agile of tongue, he would find a way of twisting the words and cheating the King's justice. No, it must stay as it is worded in the document."
"Cheating the King's justice? There is no question of justice here, the document contains nothing but lies."
Neither made any reply and in this silence of theirs a terrible suspicion came to my mind, one which I immediately struggled to suppress. "It is a capital charge," I said. "The new law that has been introduced by the Council of Justiciars defines attempts at conversion to Islam as tantamount to high treason."
They were the words I had used with Béroul as he sat opposite me in the reeking tavern. But Stefanos had added his own to them since then. They will deliver the judgement that their royal master desires.
Bertrand was smiling. "Is it only this that gives you pause? Do you think that the King, whom Yusuf has served so long, would exact the extreme penalty? Come, come, use your knowledge of the world, use your knowledge of our great King and his gratitude and his gracious favour.