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"Well," he said, "you will be wondering why I have sent for you."
"Yes, lord."
He began, as was always the cautious way with him, by telling me what I – and most of Palermo – already knew. After the failure of the crusade and the headlong retreat from Damascus, Louis, the King of the Franks, had stayed on in Palestine, remaining there through the winter and visiting the shrines of the Holy Land.
"Those with him there say he prostrated himself at each shrine," Yusuf said. "He does not touch the ground only with knees and forehead, as do we, but with his whole body. He is very pious, but the god of the Christians did not come to his aid in Syria."
"He does not blame God for the failure, he blames the Byzantines."
This made Yusuf laugh, a thing not at all common with him, though I did not see why, I had not intended it as a joke. "Well," he said, "blame must be laid somewhere. King Louis set off for home last April and after many mishaps he is expected to land on the Calabrian coast in these next days. He will wait there for Queen Eleanor to join him, then the royal pair will make their way to Potenza, where our King Roger will be waiting to greet them. They will be the King's guests there for some days, before resuming their journey to Paris." He paused for a moment, smiling. "A fruitful meeting on both sides, as all are hoping. Every effort will be made to encourage Louis in his belief that it is the Byzantines who are to blame. Rather than God, eh? Byzantium is our enemy too. Those who join us in enmity are our friends. An alliance with the kingdom of the Franks would be of great value to Sicily in these troubled times."
He looked at me for some moments, and the smile faded. "So much is general knowledge. Now we come to a thing that is not. A request has reached us from the Curia Regis, under the seal of the Lord Chancellor's Office, that Thurstan Beauchamp, our purveyor, should be sent to Potenza in advance of the royal party, in order to help in the preparing of entertainments for their majesties. First Favara and now this. You are in great demand, so much is clear. What is less clear is who is demanding you."
"But it is for the lord of Potenza to arrange the entertainments. He must already have done so. How can I be of any help in it, going there so shortly before the royal arrival?"
"You are right, you ca
"And so?" I was bewildered. "There must be some mistake."
"No, there is no mistake. Under cover of this you are to carry money to someone there. A sum of five hundred tari. It will not come from the Royal Exchequer even though the request for your services has come through the Curia Regis. The money is to be issued by our Diwan and entered in the usual way, though without any words as to purposes – there will be no declared destination for it. I am being asked to grant permission without knowing for what purpose the money will be spent, without knowing who it is destined for. All this is highly irregular, Thurstan Beauchamp, would you not agree?"
"They are seeking to divide us, they are seeking to destroy the trust between us." In this they were succeeding, I knew it as I spoke, knew it from the look in his eyes, the tones he used, above all from this ironic use of my full name, which once he had used like a father when he wished to cajole or persuade me, but was now a cold reminder of my Norman blood.
"Why should they wish to do that?" We were standing in the embrasure of the window, our usual place when we talked privately together. As he spoke he reached a thin arm to my shoulder, but in no friendly fashion – there was a surprising strength in the tightness of his grip. "Why should they wish to do that?" he said again, and I felt the danger in him, as I had sometimes felt it before, inspiring not fear exactly, but a sense of what it might mean to become the enemy of such a man.
"Lord, I do not know," I said. "How should I know? You can refuse to send me."
He took his hand from my shoulder and smiled and shook his head. "This request comes under the seal of the third power in the land. It may well have the blessing of the King himself. It would not be politic to refuse outright. Moreover, it would not be fruitful. Refusing, I would not learn the reasons. This is a question of money and money reaches into many corners and has many uses. It was money that took us out riding today, for our wealth to be seen, by our display to reflect the glory of the King, who is unseen."
I nodded at this but could not feel in full accord. The Franks who were coming in ever increasing numbers, and in particular the Norman knighthood, whose ranks I aspired to join, did not understand this Arab notion of kingship, indeed were hostile to it. Roger was a Norman, one of them, their feudal lord. They detested the Saracens for keeping him from them, for hedging him about with divinity. I said, "When Moslem and Christian go riding in company to honour the King, that will be the time of greatness."
"You are right, we should work for that. I had hoped you and I would work together for it, now I am less sure. In any case, it will not be soon. There is hatred on both sides. Those I ride with are men who have come to riches by their merits, by their service, not by accident of birth. Many were brought here as eunuch slaves. They have no family, no land, no power outside the palace. They know that only the King can protect them from the hatred of the Christians and so they do everything they can to keep him apart from them. Only with God's help can hearts be changed." He took me by the arm, but gently now, and began to lead me away from the window. "There is no God but God," he said, "and on Him do we rely. They will send for you soon, those who have picked you out for this mission. You will go to the place of meeting, you will listen to them carefully. You will require to know the name of the person for whom the money is intended, and the reason why it is being paid. If they refuse to tell you this, you will refuse to go and I will support you in this refusal. Five hundred tari is too great a sum to be consigned without knowing who or why."
I promised to do as he ordered me. "And if indeed I go to Potenza," I said, "everything that happens there and everything that is said to me will be faithfully carried back to you."
"Yes, I will expect your report." The words were uttered indifferently, without great conviction, and it came to me that he would not now be relying on my report alone. I was no longer trusted; someone else would be there at Potenza, someone whose duty it was, not only to watch the proceedings, but to watch me.
He kept his arm through mine as he went with me to the door. "Ah, Thurstan, Thurstan," he said at parting, no more than that, but I felt the regret in his tone and it echoed my own feelings of loss.
The summons came four days later. The attendant they sent from the Chancellor's Office led me to a stone-flagged chamber closely adjoining the shelves of the chancery archives. The archivist was waiting for me here, a monk named Wilfred of Aachen, very pale of face and peering, with lips that seemed almost bloodless and hair of a reddish colour.
After a while we were joined by the Lombard Atenulf, whom I had last seen in close conversation with Abbot Gerbert in the courtyard of San Giova
There was a recess with a low doorway leading directly to the archives, where Wilfred did his work of collating and a
A table and chairs had been set in the recess, and the three of us seated ourselves. Atenulf was a thick-necked man, full of face, with small eyes the colour of raisins, a quick voice and a frequent habit of showing his teeth in a half-smile of superiority. I knew something more of him now – I had taken some pains to know more. He had come from Austria a dozen years before, a younger son of Arnulf of Tostheim. He enjoyed the protection of the Vice-Chancellor, Maio of Bari, though I had not been able to discover why this was so. He had made his fortune by the founding of a new chancery, which he had named the Office of the King's Fame, and which concerned itself with the way King Roger was seen by the people under his rule and by states abroad. He sent men noted for their gift of speech among the people to explain the King's actions and set them in a favourable light; he had a say in the appointment of ambassadors, speaking for those who would be most skilful in justifying the King's policies; he also advised the King on the ma