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There was also the joke against Yusuf, to add to the pleasure. He had been quite mistaken in seeing such dark motives behind the invitation.
So grave he had been, so ponderous with his suspicious looks and his talk of plots and machinations. He saw conspiracy everywhere. It would never occur to him that it might simply be a lady's contrivance. True, considering my office, it had been in a certain way unwise of Alicia to bring me into this lion's den of the Norman aristocracy. But then, she did not know the nature of this office, I had not spoken of it much, and she was recently from Outremer – how could she know the rivalries and divisions that governed our lives here in Palermo? And then, I thought, there was a lady's caprice in it: she had wanted to see me, she had wanted to find circumstances in which we could be together without hurt to her good name…
Thus the edifice rose glittering before me, founded on no more than wishes and desires. I began from that moment to count the days to my going to Favara. In my chamber at home and in what intervals I could find at my desk, inspired by thoughts of Alicia, I returned to an earlier practice of mine, of late years abandoned, I began again to write verses for singing. My model for these were the Provencal songs that were now popular at Court, but I used the Italian vernacular, not knowing well the language of southern France. I did not try to devise new melodies, for which I had no gift, but sought to fit my lines to melodies that I knew, sometimes the Latin carmina I remembered from my student days, sometimes a folksong, sometimes a dance tune that I had heard in the streets. I tried to emulate the great Bernard of Ventadour, whose song about the rising lark was heard everywhere now, and compose three-line stanzas without repeated phrases.
I was occupied with this on a morning three days after my talk with Yusuf when I was alone in the room, Stefanos having gone to see to the fitting of the dresses for the dancers. I had begun with the subject of my meeting with Alicia and the joy of love remembered and the hope for love renewed, but my imagination was too carnal, the lines that came to mind were not always true of my experience, though I hoped they might be. The memory of her kisses, the fragrant warmth of her mouth, these were true enough, but the dazzling whiteness of her breasts went too far and had to be excluded. I tested the shape of the words by singing them, which was the only way I knew, keeping my voice low so as not to draw attention to the fact that a man was here singing who should be studying the document before him on his desk, which concerned a plea, written in Latin, from the monastery of San Giorgio di Fragalr for a royal grant to extract salt from the mines of Castrogiova
I was still puzzling – and still singing – when Stefanos entered, accompanied by the dressmaker. The Anatolian women would not wear their skirts without an underskirt and since I had said there should be nothing it had been thought best to refer the matter to me.
At a stroke all higher thoughts were driven from my mind. "What is their reason?"
"They will not agree to wear the skirts without an undergarment that reaches to the knees," the dressmaker said. "I ca
"It is for reasons of modesty," Stefanos said. "They say the stuff of the dress is very fine, it is damask, without an underskirt the lower part of their bodies would be too plainly visible." He paused for a moment, looking at me in his usual mild and slightly peering fashion.
"Even as high as the fork, she said".
"Who? No, no need to tell me."
"She is headstrong. She is like my older son, Matteus, who will have about your years, who would be a sailor whatever one said to him, and a sailor he is." Stefanos always spoke of this self-willed son, as if in deprecation, but in truth he was proud of the young man, who was now master of one of the King's ships. That he should have made this comparison at all was a sign that he approved of this girl in spite of everything. "Her name means 'wild rose'," he said now. "She told me that without my asking, perhaps as a way of making it known to you."
"Why should she want to do that?"
"She might think it of interest. It is a beautiful name in the sound."
"Well, the thorns are there, but I do not see the petals." I felt suddenly weary, and in some way discouraged. My words had been a lie.
The petals displayed I could see well enough, those hidden and enfolded I could all too easily imagine. I did not feel able to confront these people again, to find the eyes turned from me, sombre and indifferent-seeming, except only hers, and she looking only to find weakness, and finding it, as if she saw something within me that was beyond my own power to discover, but it was an illusion, it was only her presumption, she knew nothing but dusty roads in summer and muddy roads in winter, and the dance of the abdomen.
"I ca
"She says their bodies are made like the bodies of other women. Millions and millions of women, she says. It is their dancing that makes them different, not what lies between the legs. She is outspoken, that one."
"In any case, it is useless to insist. Tell them we agree to a petticoat. It can be as long as they like, but it must be made of some thin material. Otherwise, all the King will see of their lower parts will be a swaddled-up bundle. He will not be gratified much by that, will he?"
"I will tell them." Stefanos blinked mild brown eyes. "I will go back with the dressmaker and explain it to them. I have found that they misapprehend things and get easily excited, but if one speaks calmly to them they quickly grow quiet again."
"This is the behaviour of children. Nesrin, she grows quiet too?"
Stefanos smiled indulgently, but whether the indulgence was for Nesrin or for me, I could not be sure. "She especially. That is, when she does not feel called upon to do battle. She does not need to fight me, I do not matter."
"And me? Are you saying this little savage is hostile only to me?"
"I did not say she was hostile."
"Stefanos, spare me these subtleties, I am not in the mood for them.
Have there been any complaints from the one that escorts them?"
"No, he says they have behaved well. They go to the markets, they buy little things, trinkets, scarves, belts set with beads. The men have bought knives – they say the knives are good here, so far they have not found much else to praise."
"Did they go to the bathhouse?" This was a question that came with a leap, it was out almost before I knew it. "I think she mentioned that they might do that," I said after a moment.
"I do not know, they did not speak of it." He frowned a little as if perplexed. "I can find out."
"No, it is not important. Just tell them what we have decided about the skirts."
He left on this errand and I was glad to be alone for a while. But I made no further attempts at writing songs that day, why I do not know.