As he turned away and prepared to leave the temple, he heard what sounded like a gentle clearing of a throat behind him. He froze. It must be his imagination. He turned around and walked back to the statue. This time he looked closely at the smaller statues. There could be no mistake. He could actually hear the high priestess breathing. He went close and felt her face. Tears poured down her cheeks. He was dumbfounded and ecstatic. His hands felt the rest of her body. She was human.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered in the Siqilliyan Greek he had learnt at court.
‘I am Eleni, the high priestess of this temple, and these are my priestesses.’
He was surrounded by seven women.
‘Do you live here? Is this island inhabited?’
‘Yes,’ replied Eleni. ‘Our families live behind the rocks where they are not visible from the sea. You are the first visitor for two years. The seafarers who came before you were not interested in the island. They just wanted some water, which as you can see is plentiful. Then they left. Will you leave soon?’
He nodded. ‘But who are you?’
‘We belong to families who started worshipping our old gods during the time of the Great Emperor. After he died the Nazarenes began to capture and kill us, so some families boarded a ship and sailed away from Byzantium, which the Nazarenes call Constantinople.’
Idrisi was bewitched. ‘Which Great Emperor?’
‘Julian. We named this island after him. This is Julian’s island and Aphrodite is our goddess.’
He told them who he was and from where he came. They had heard of Palermo and knew the Arabs ruled there. As far as they were concerned the Nazarenes were the worst but the followers of Moses and Muhammad were no better. He was not in the mood for a philosophical debate on the virtues of one Allah against the stone gods of the ancients.
They told him of the rites they performed each spring, of the food they grew on the island, of how their numbers continued to decline. The men tended to leave and that is why they wished to entertain him and his men to a feast that night. They made no secret of their desires or intentions.
When the men returned, he told them of everything except the precious stones mounted on Aphrodite’s breasts. But they were eager to participate in a feast and none showed an interest in even entering the temple. This surprised him and in other circumstances he would have questioned and reprimanded them on their lack of curiosity.
After they had bathed in the freshwater lake and dried themselves in the sun and were lying unclothed enjoying the sea breeze, they were interrupted. The priestesses, who had been watching from the temple, emerged in the sunlight. The men were thunderstruck, just as he had been. They watched the women as a trapped animal sees a hunter. They felt in the presence of a fate they were powerless to avert and they covered their nakedness with their shirts and hurriedly put on their clothes. Once they were dressed, the women beckoned and, like men in a trance, they followed. They were in such a state, and this included Idrisi, that they did not notice the maze of winding paths through which they were led to the village. Here they were greeted by other women and of every age. Afterwards they were not sure whether a single male villager had been present. First, they were given love-pipes to smoke and then jugs of red wine were placed on the table underneath the tree. When the freshly roasted goat’s meat, marinated in lemon juice and covered with thyme, was served, they ate like men who had been starved for months. They had, but not for the lack of food. It was the women serving them that they wanted. The food was simply a substitute.
It was not the wine but the dried leaves in the love-pipes that intoxicated them. They were ready to be led anywhere. They were. Idrisi remembered being taken by the high priestess. Later, they would boast that it was a night of uncontrolled passion, but when they woke next morning they were all lying on the shore. The only memory of the occasion was the earthenware love-pipe. None of the men were prepared to go back and search for the village where they had been treated so well. Idrisi sent them back to the ship and asked them to wait a few hours. They were frightened and believed they had been possessed by demons. It had been a test of their faith and they had failed. Allah and God would punish them. They pleaded with him not to go alone, but none offered to accompany him.
Idrisi thought he had found the track leading to the lake and the temple, but it was as if they had been led from the very beginning. There was no trace of the path. After several attempts he gave up, but all the time he was there he felt he was being watched. It was a challenge. He would have liked to stay and record the events, but the men were anxious to move on and, reluctantly, he agreed. The memory of the high priestess never left him. Balkis, the Amir’s wife, had reminded him of her. He had made detailed notes on the location of Julian’s island. It was a twenty-four-hour journey from… He mapped it from every direction, but he never could re-discover the island. When he described the incident to the Sultan he found Rujari at his most sceptical. Who could blame him? And as the years passed, Idrisi himself wondered whether any of this had really happened.
‘My lord, we are stopping to rest and eat.’
He looked up and saw they were outside a large house. Two dogs barked furiously until a man emerged and walked towards them. He was thin and finely built, with brown hair and a fresh, if somewhat sallow, skin. What marked him was the fierce determination of his face as he warmly greeted Abu Khalid and bowed politely to Idrisi.
‘Welcome to this humble house and treat it as your own, Abu Walid ibn Muhammad al-Idrisi. Who has not heard of your renown?’
‘Too many people, I fear,’ muttered the scholar as they were ushered into the cool of a darkened room.
‘Baths have been prepared for you, but I hope you will forgive me. This is not Siracusa and we have no space for a hammam. But fresh water has been brought from the well and if you will accompany these men to the courtyard they will ensure you are well refreshed.’
‘Who is your friend?’ Idrisi asked Abu Khalid as they followed retainers to the courtyard.
‘He is Tarik, my older brother. I think you must have seen him briefly at my wedding. You don’t remember? He has had an interesting life. Now all that interests him are fruits and vegetables. He does not eat meat, even in the winter.’
‘Does he have a family?’
‘Not here. They live in Salerno.’
From Abu Khalid’s tone it was clear that this was not a happy subject, but it provoked Idrisi’s curiosity.
‘Why?’
‘Abu Walid, what can I say? When he was eighteen my brother wanted to be a physician, a healer. He would read al-Kindi’s Aqrabadhin and Ibn Sina’s Kanun from morning till night. My father, as you know well, was interested only in his estates and their well-being. He was not inclined to humour my brother. He wanted his oldest son to stay at home and help him run the estate and concentrate his mind on devising methods to accumulate yet more land. My brother refused. He ran off to the maristan in Salerno where the best physicians are to be found. It’s a long story, Abu Walid.’
Water was being poured on their heads and both men shivered with delight.
‘Where did he find the book of al-Kindi? I was not aware there was a copy in any library here.’
‘You must ask him.’
Lunch was served in another darkened room. Root vegetables of different sorts cooked with the most exquisite herbs and spices were served with freshly baked wheat-bread moistened with olive oil. To drink there was cooled buttermilk, flavoured with mint leaves. And to sweeten their mouths, slices of melons and dates laid on a large platter.