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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 begi