Страница 55 из 85
None of these speculations helped me to a state of grace or made me feel better about myself. I was resolved to keep away from the Anatolians as far as I could, since I was miserably lacking in faith in my fortitude should Nesrin and I by any chance find ourselves alone again; I did not even trust myself not to try and contrive this once I set eyes on her.
But there was no avoiding the farewells. On the afternoon of the day before they were to leave, our King Roger sent them by means of the faithful Fitzherbert a sum of 150 gold tari, a gift of unprecedented proportions. It was brought in a bag of soft leather and left for me to deliver to them. I went with it to their quarters and gave it to Ozgur and watched while it was shared among them. With the coin that had been thrown to them and the eight dinars from the Diwan and now this magnificent gift from the King they would be richer far than they could ever have dreamed.
"What will you do now?"
I spoke the words to Ozgur but the question was for all of them. Nesrin was there with the others, not in her dancing clothes now but in a simple linen gown, and this unaccustomed dress made her seem almost like a stranger, as if she had somehow anticipated the farewell, gone away from me already.
They would go home, Ozgur said, and I took it that he referred to them all. In the village of his birth, his share of the money and that of Yildiz put together would buy them a stone house, land for pasture and for tilling, sheep, two oxen. "Many sheep there," he said. "The land is good in the valleys. My father work for others, for the owner, the mal sahibi. But I work for me and Yildiz."
"And the music?"
"I play for my grandchildren, Yildiz will teach them to dance."
"We will stay in one same place," Havva said, and it was the first time I could remember her speaking directly to me. "No more road. We are tired of road." And she made a sudden grasp at her hip and twisted her face to show aches and pains, and everyone laughed because she was young and supple and graceful in movement.
Nesrin had joined in this laughter, but her face was serious again as she looked at me. And now, as by some unspoken agreement, the others went a little farther off and left us together. She stood there silent in her new dress, her hands by her sides. Would she go without a word to me? On an impulse of anger almost, not wishing, in the distress I felt at parting, that she should be the one to dictate the mood between us in these my final moments of seeing her, I stepped towards her and took her left hand where it lay by her side and I said, "Farewell, go with God."
She allowed her hand to stay in my grasp for a moment and looked me in the face with such a serenity in her regard as made me feel I was looking at her for the first time, instead of the last. That taste of bitterness that lay on the mouth seemed less. Her eyes were darker even than I had thought them, almost black, like water that pools among dark rocks. She freed her hand and said some words of farewell. Once again it seemed she had gone from me already, as if, with her new dress and her newly acquired wealth she had embarked already on a future that held more for her than this scene of farewell. What she saw in my face I do not know. I did not look more at her, but made my last farewells to all of them together, feeling as I did so that I was parting from friends.
Then I turned from them and began to make my way to my place of work in the Diwan, where more renewals of the royal privilege were waiting for me to scan.
Before I could reach my room, while I was still in the passage that led to it, Yusuf's secretary, the eunuch Ibrahim, came quickly towards me from the head of the stairway. "I have been looking everywhere for you," he said, making it sound like an accusation. He was always hostile to me, as many of the palace Saracens were, though they dared not show it openly, because I was not of their race, they saw me as a friend to the Norman interlopers who threatened to usurp their place in the royal favour. "The Lord Yusuf wishes your immediate presence," he said.
"Already he has been made to wait."
I was in the passage that led beyond my door to Yusuf's. Because of the impression of urgency, of being impatiently awaited, that Ibrahim had given me, I hurried past my own door, went quickly through the long room where the scribes were working and entered Yusuf's cabinet without more than a light tap at the door. Entering thus abruptly, I had the sense of being somehow mistaken, of being in the wrong room. The figure before me, in these first moments, seemed like a stranger: no immaculate white robe, but silks of blue and scarlet and gold, a sheathed scimitar thrust through the broad sash. And he was standing close to the wall, and seemed to have been leaning down at the moment of my entrance, or just before that moment, as if to gather something he had let fall at the foot of the wooden panelling. But he had straightened and moved away before I was well into the room, leaving me to doubt the evidence of my senses.
For a moment he stood there, regarding me quite impassively. There was no displeasure in his face but I had the impression that I had interrupted him in something. His eyes had their usual hooded look, and once again I thought how like a hawk's his face was, with the curved beak of the nose, eyes that blinked rarely but could easily hood themselves or widen as if adjusting to stronger or weaker light.
"Lord, please forgive that I entered with so little ceremony," I said, "but I knew from Ibrahim that you had already waited some time for me and I felt to blame because I was not there at my desk to obey your call at once."
"Where were you?"
"I was sharing the King's gift among the Anatolians, those whom I found in Calabria and brought here, as my lord will remember. And I was making my farewells to them."
Yusuf nodded, and the movement brought glints from the diamond he wore where the folds of the turban crossed at the centre of his forehead.
There was a sapphire on a thin band at his throat and the handle of the scimitar was set with sapphires and opals. "One in particular you were sorry to lose," he said, with the slightest of smiles.
I felt a leap of surprise at this. I had never spoken of her to him, never mentioned her name. I know now that he intended me to feel the shock of it, he wanted me to know that he had sources of information other than myself, and this not because he thought Nesrin important – he cared nothing about her – but because he wanted to warn me. This I realised later; at the time I was concerned only to deny him the sight of surprise on a face which he had often told me showed too much, to deny also the suggestion of his smile and defend Nesrin from it. I have not much to be proud of in regard to Yusuf, but I am proud that I succeeded in this small rebellion.
"Yes," I said, "I was sorry indeed to part from her. The man who wins her for his wife may count himself lucky." How had he known? Had he set someone to watch? Had someone followed us that night, stood below, heard the sounds we made? I thought it probable enough. Trust between us was much impaired, both of us knew it. I had kept too much from him, and this mainly because of Alicia. In relating my time at Favara, I had not spoken to him of Bertrand and the favour shown to me, or of my talk with Alboino, or the vows Alicia and I had exchanged. And now, in the considered ma