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But even if so they 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.
Yusuf will be stripped of his powers, his career in the palace service will be over, but that will not be such a tragedy in his case. He is no mere palace Saracen, he has lands in his own right, he comes from an ancient family."
It was my only attempt at bargaining, if such I may call this shameful offer. I returned to my table, to the silence and the knowledge of defeat. Still I delayed. Why now, after twenty years of his rule, should the King cause such a law to be made? Was there greater danger now from the encroachments of Islam in Sicily? How could that be when it was the religion of the conquered and subjected? What Christian could desire, in Sicily now, to abjure a religion that was growing daily in influence and power?
I will not deny the truth, or try to give myself the cloak of good reason. At the time I did so, but I will not do so now. I wanted to believe Bertrand's words, and for the few minutes that were necessary I succeeded in this – at least in holding off the doubt. But I knew in my heart that Yusuf stood to lose his life. And with this knowledge of my own heart there came a sense of what knowledge there might be in the King's, and I trembled at what I might have been serving.
It shames me now to remember how I wronged Yusuf in my thoughts so as to make it more easy to wrong him by my actions. He had betrayed me, he had sent me on missions without full information, he had kept things from me, withheld his trust. Worse still, he had played games with me, appeared to believe while not believing; he had had me watched and followed, even to the stable where Nesrin and I had lain together. He had violated my loyalty. He had abandoned me, like my father…
The grief and rage were difficult to hold to, saner thoughts threatened.
It was fear of these that guided my hand as I signed.
XXIV
On production of Bertrand's words and seal the outer gates of Favara were opened to me without demur. Once again I was met by a groom who accompanied me over the causeway, leading my horse; once again I approached the gate to the palace, saw the gilded bars and the arches and the water of the lake slip and stretch and lurch sideways then settle again as on the previous occasion.
This time there was no chamberlain to meet me in the hall, only one of the palace domestics to take my bag and lead me to my room, which was not the same as the one I had had before but smaller and darker, with one barred window high up towards the ceiling.
I did not much mind this, though noting it; I had reached a state in which such small comparisons and considerations count for little; all my being was concentrated in waiting for Alicia. She will be with you soon, Bertrand had said, as he gave me the pass with his seal. He had it ready to hand, there had been no doubt in his mind of the outcome. I had felt insulted at this, foolishly enough, though I had not been such a fool as to show it.
Soon could mean today or tomorrow. In that case she was not with her father in Apulia, but somewhere closer at hand. Already, within minutes of my arrival, I was listening for her step. Deep within me, not fully acknowledged, was the feeling that I had purchased her life and rescued our love at heavy cost, and that I needed saving in my turn. Only by appearing now in all her graciousness and beauty could she lift the burden of the lies I had told for her sake. She would be, in the splendour of her person, my redemption and my reward. Everything but that would fall away; all the previous structure of my life would fall away, like a rotting platform of wood, leaving me with a future in which there would be no lies, no deceit. When I was knighted and had gained my fief and had Alicia as my consort, I would ride abroad doing good, defending the dispossessed, redressing injustice, protecting the weak against the strong. We would go far away from the mire and miasma of Palermo. We would go to Jerusalem the Golden, the land that was promised, end of heartache, balm for sin. I would look into her eyes and there I would see, not gratitude, but the knowledge of what it had cost me to betray Yusuf, how abhorrent to my nature such treachery had been…
These and similar thoughts occupied my mind as I spent the hours of waiting, walking in the gardens that surrounded the palace or by the shores of the placid lake, where mi
There were no other guests, the palace and gardens were deserted. I would come upon Arab gardeners, who straightened up from their work when they saw me and then bowed low. The guards who kept the gate would sometimes come in their spells from duty to take their ease among the trees by the water, where it was cooler, but other than an exchange of greetings we spoke no words together. The palace and all the wooded lands and the terraces and pavilions seemed held in the grip of a summer already waning but relentless. It was the time of year when decay seems to lie below the skin of things, not sealed away completely. Faint, sweetish odours came from the green scum at the edges of the lake, the split and oozing figs where wasps feasted. There was a feeling of weariness, the fatigue of too much repose, as if the world were longing for release from this thralldom of August. The peaches were falling and the crashes they made were startling in the still air, like presage of change that still did not arrive.
I revisited the places where she and I had spent time together, the landing stage, the little copse of ilexes where we had exchanged rings, the place where the tables had been set up for us, where Alboino had spoken to me of the touch of wrong and how day by day it destroys the soul, and where I had seen Alicia come out from the dark into the firelight, with her red gown and the gold net in her hair, and there had been my boat moored not far away and my plans laid to have her to myself for a while. The world around me was waiting for change, for release from the trance of summer, and I waited with it for my own release. She would come, she would bring new weather, a new quality of light.