H Hamilton £17.99 pp320
The ruby in question here is given by King Roger of Sicily to Thurstan Beauchamp, a young Norman official, as a reward for services rendered; the navel is that of Nesrin, an Anatolian belly dancer. The jewel and its eventual home serve as rich symbolic furnishings for a labyrinthine narrative of deceit and betrayal, told by Thurstan himself, who is both victim and central player. Unlike Unsworth’s Thurstan and Nesrin, King Roger is, of course, a real figure, a Norman ruler of Sicily in the 12th century.
Behind every historical novel lurks the authorial card index; when the shadow hangs heavy the whole undertaking founders. Barry Unsworth’s extraordinary skill — here and in his other novels — is somehow to kick away that infrastructure so that the story floats free, lavishly equipped, bearing witness to a time and a place, but apparently the product of some uncanny insight. He did it memorably with Sacred Hunger, that extraordinary reconstruction of the mind-set of the 18th century, and then very differently with The Songs of the Kings, in which the Homeric story was given a sardonic twist. And now, here is 12th-century Palermo, conjured up with equal dexterity. Clothes (“a coat of dark blue silk, padded at the shoulders and pinched in the sleeves”), food, furnishings, the secret of constructing mosaics so that they catch the light — there is a wealth of evocative detail, but never so as to obstruct the narrative, for this is, above all, a story — Thurstan’s story. He is not so much the unreliable narrator as the unsuspecting spectator of his own downfall (“led by the nose”, as he is contemptuously told when all is in ruins).
Thurstan’s voice is candid, compelling, and eventually despairing — that of a young Norman working for the royal administration who becomes caught up in a devious plot involving rival factions. And the story has the reader hanging on his words as the scene is set, the characters are brought in (Norman, Saracen, Greek, the disparate populace of that complex society) and the element of mystery thickens. Why does a bodyguard disappear during Thurstan’s mission to Bari? Why does he see shadows in an empty church? “You must cultivate the flower of suspicion, a shade-loving plant,” he is told by his boss and mentor, Yusuf.
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Thurstan is a man of his time, well aware that chicanery, double-dealing and political intrigue are all around, but some obstinate residue of innocence obstructs his view. He would fit equally well into 18th-century London or ancient Rome; but he is in 12th-century Sicily, and thus must abide by the conventions of the day — religious belief, fidelity to an overlord.
Thurstan is entirely recognisable, but he is also a person firmly tethered to his era. The Ruby in Her Navel is steeped in historical detail, but that card index is way out of sight; background is woven into the events themselves, so that we understand why people are behaving as they do, and what their world felt and sounded like. Thurstan himself is the conduit for this — that initially calm and measured voice that becomes increasingly fraught as he plunges into the maze of deception.
As for Nesrin — well, it seems that Anatolian belly dancers are a law unto themselves.
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