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When the first spectre of doubt appeared I do not know. It did not come as a shaft or sudden visitation, but like a companion that had been walking by my side, u
Perhaps it was the tranced, arrested nature of the place, the feeling of a void in which I was suspended, that bred the first suspicions. I thought again of Alboino and Bertrand and their different faces, which were the same face. How could they promise she would come, how could they convey the document to her captors, if they had no knowledge of her whereabouts? The document once secured, and no doubt countersigned by them both as witnesses, they would have all that was needed for Yusuf's immediate arrest. Perhaps they were not intermediaries at all, but the principal actors. In that case, why should they honour their promise to release Alicia? Why should they continue to conceal her father's guilt?
Would they not seek to gain the King's favour by informing him of it?
The questions circled in my mind, they accompanied the wavering flight of gnats over the calm water, they leapt with the fish that snapped at flies on the surface, they were repeated and multiplied in the reflections that occasionally assailed me in my wanderings through the grounds. On the evening of the fourth day they were finally answered.
I was about to retire to my chamber, having lost hope she would come that day. The sun was close to setting, too soft to cast shadows. It was that time on a summer evening when with the approach of darkness a certain kind of paleness comes into the light, a blanched quality, when everything for a brief while stands out with peculiar distinctness. I was standing at the lowest terrace of the gardens, there was a bush of white roses close by me and in this spent light the white of the flowers was very full, incandescent, as if lit from within. I remember this luminous whiteness and I remember thinking how strange it was that it should presage the darkness soon to gather. The water of the lake lay beyond this and there was a gleaming tide of light on the surface.
As I stood gazing here I saw the figures of men clothed in white robes and white turbans come suddenly into view from the fringe of trees at the border of the lake. As they approached I remained transfixed, quite without fear, though they were strangers: it was as if they could not be fully believed in, emanations, creatures of the blanched and deceiving light. Then I recognised the lordly, swaying gait and portly figure of the man leading, and the darkly bearded face, and a sudden presentiment of ill came to my heart.
"Well, my Thurstan, salaam, greetings."
"Muhammed, is it you? But how did you come here? How could you persuade them to open the gates to you?"
"We do not stand at the gates of the Christian, begging for admittance.
Many of those who work in the gardens here are my brothers in Islam. I know them, I know their names, I know the names of their wives and children. Their homes are outside. Do you think they use the main gates when they come and go?"
He had come to a stop some three or four paces away. His face showed no particular expression but the tone was one he had never used with me before, cold and disdainful. His followers had gathered round him in close formation, one on either flank, one on the rear. All three wore scimitars at their belts.
"The good news first," Muhammed said. "I am here to tell you that the lady will not come. You can wait for her till you take root and grow leaves, but she will not come."
"Why do you speak in this way to me?" But I knew, even as I asked. "How have you come by this?" I said. "Why should I believe you?"
"I have come to tell you that you have been fooled and duped from the begi
Some passion had entered his voice with this, and he paused briefly, as if to recover the impassive ma
Our fathers were friends and fellow-tribesmen, he and I went to the same mosque-school, he gave the name and the blessing to my eldest son. Let me tell you how this strumpet fooled you and led you by the nose and the words of your love were to her ears but the squealing of the little pig."
"You are very brave and free with your insults when you are four to one," I said. "Send your men further off and we will see who squeals."
"What a fool you are. A traitor and a fool. You think this is a time for trial by combat, the rules read out beforehand, like good knights in the tilting field? You have published base lies about a man a hundred times your better and you prate of insults and issue challenges and put on airs of chivalry. How can you be insulted now? Mario it was who set us on, though he was far from wishing it. You remember Mario?"
"Yes, he deserted me at Cosenza, when I was buying herons for the royal falconry."
"No, he did not desert you. Yusuf was troubled by this disappearance of Mario, as he was troubled by anything that lacked explanation. He spoke of it to me. We lived in different worlds but we sometimes worked together. I had ways open to me that were closed to him."
"I did not know of this."
"Why should you know of it? It did not concern you. For a long time we found no trace of Mario. In the end we were helped by merest chance. The other who accompanied you, Sigismond, saw him in a street in Palermo. He was well-dressed and he had grown a beard, but Sigismond recognised him and followed him to a house."
" Why was I not told of it?"
"By this time Yusuf no longer trusted you completely. You had kept too much from him. He had been obliged to set a watch on you. Sigismond was commanded to say nothing of it, on pain of the severest punishment. Once we knew where Mario lived, the rest was easy. We brought him from there and asked him some questions to which he was not able to withhold answers, not for long at least. Mario was in the pay of Bertrand of Bo
I made no reply to this but into my mind there came a recollection of Yusuf's face and ma
Hardly surprising he was suspicious of me, knowing what he knew. I wondered if he had also known by this time of my meetings with Alicia.
Alboino was associated with Bertrand, and Alboino was her uncle. Could she have been part of this Norman faction? Perhaps she was vowed to secrecy and for that reason had not confided in me. Was it this Muhammed meant when he said she had duped me? Was it only this?
"Mario did not desert you at Cosenza. On the contrary, he stayed with you like a shadow. He followed you to Bari. And there he and a man named Caspar Loritello, who was posing as a groom, tracked you through the streets."
He smiled for the first time, saying this. "Caspar had been seen visiting your house with some message. It was a man of Yusuf's who saw this. A watch had been set on your house by then. So when we had Mario in our hands we tested him with this name and it all came tumbling out."
He smiled again. "As things will," he said. "Mario had no more to tell us but we made diligent enquiries and in time we discovered that Loritello was the name of Guy of Morcone's chamberlain, by whom the boy was brought up. He is a bastard son of Alboino, Alicia's cousin and one of her lovers in Jerusalem, one of several… She is a lady who gives careful study to her pleasure and her safety, and finds ways of serving the one and guarding the other."