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XV

Ibn Tufayl had ordered a hospital to be set up for his court in the ruined palace at Madinat az-Zahra. It was just a collection of tents, erected in the shelter of the walls of roofless rooms. Here Robert had to wait with Orm while Sihtric made inquiries about Ghalib.

After the hasty ride back from the arbalest, Robert was hot, dirty, his clothes still stinking of river-bottom mire and soaked through by Ghalib's blood. He tried to think.

How would it be if Ghalib died? Of course it wasn't his fault that Ghalib had fallen – it wasn't his fault that Ghalib had been mucking about on the waterwheel in the first place, and he had risked his own neck by dragging Ghalib out of the water. But the fact was he had been flirting with Moraima, a Muslim girl, and the two boys wouldn't have trailed around after them if not for that. Robert didn't want the death of Ghalib on his conscience. And he didn't want his burgeoning relationship with Moraima, such as it was, to be hauled into the light.

This was going to take some sorting out the next time he was in a confessional box.

Sihtric beckoned, and led them into one of the tents.

Robert was hugely relieved, if astonished, to find Ghalib sitting up in a chair. But his right arm terminated just below the elbow, a stump wrapped in clean white bandages. The boy looked pale, his gaze wandering; perhaps he was drugged. But he was alive, indeed he was conscious, and he didn't seem to be in any pain. And when he saw Robert, Ghalib's eyes filled with shame and anger.

Hisham stood beside Ghalib. Attendants fussed around, orchestrated by a portly man in pristine white robes. When he saw the visitors this man approached them. His face, round and sleek, looked as if it had been dipped in oil. He held his hands before him; small like a child's, they were scrubbed pink-clean, and showed no signs of calluses or scars. He said to Sihtric, 'Father. We have met before.' His accent was strange. 'My name is Abu Yusuf Yunus.'

'Ah, yes. The Egyptian.'

'My grandfather was Egyptian,' Abu Yusuf Yunus said stiffly. 'I am related by marriage to the Banu Zuhr family. I am a close friend of Abd al-Malik, while my father studied general medicine with his father, Muhammad Ibn Marwan Ibn Zuhr. Furthermore my grandfather studied with al-Zahrawi. We followed the prescripts of the al-Tasrif in treating this poor child…'

Orm grunted, impatient, and he pulled Sihtric aside. 'What's he babbling about?'

'Just establishing his credentials. Making sure I know who he is and where he stands. I told you, Orm, it's all family with the Moors. They're all Ibn this or Abu that, the son of him or the father of the other, their lineage carried like a flag. And these scholars are the same, all boasting about their academic lineage, who taught who what.'

Abu Yusuf Yunus, unable to make out their English words, walked towards the injured boy. In stilted Latin he said, 'The arm was almost severed below the elbow by the waterwheel's machinery – muscles, arteries and blood vessels all lacerated, the bone, too, all but cut through. To that extent the injury was like the result of a blow with a sword. But the lower arm was crushed, the flesh pulped and the bone ground up, as if the boy had been trampled, say.' Ghalib looked up at him dimly, and submitted passively as the surgeon began briskly to unravel the bandages on his arm. 'Your young Christian-'

'Robert,' Orm growled. 'My son.'

'Robert didn't save the boy's life merely by dragging him from the water, but by stemming the blood loss from the damaged arm. He tied it off with a bit of rope below the shoulder.'

'I did that,' Hisham said promptly. And he stared at Robert, as if daring him to contradict this naked lie.

'Then you are a hero, as much as Robert – more so, perhaps, for you used your brain rather than your muscles. Well done. Well done indeed.'

Robert looked away. Orm put his hand on his shoulder.

The bandages removed, Abu Yusuf Yunus exposed the wounded arm. Flaps of crudely cut skin were folded over the stump and stitched with gut. The seams leaked blood and a yellowish pus. Abu Yusuf Yunus clapped his hands. Attendants came bustling up with bowls of water and oils, and began to mop the wound. Ghalib twisted, but the attendants held him down.

Abu Yusuf Yunus said, 'I had to amputate the crushed lower arm, of course. Such was the damage, the main challenge was to leave flaps of skin intact enough for the later closure. It took some work, then, to find the severed blood vessels and arteries and stitch them closed. Those arteries have a way of drawing back from a cut, and you have to rummage around in there.' Gruesomely, he wiggled his pink fingers. 'With that done, it was a case of clean out, cauterise and stitch closed. The danger now is infection – that immersion in river water won't have helped – but we do have treatments for gangrene, should it develop.'

'You've done a remarkable job,' Sihtric said effusively.

The surgeon nodded, his eyes half-closed, accepting his due.

Orm growled to Robert, 'Doctors, they're all the same. Never trusted them. Look at this oaf. Cares more about preening and posturing and taking the credit than about his patient.'

'Is that what you think?' The voice was low, silky, but faintly slurred. 'Perhaps you really are a barbarian, Orm the Viking.'

They turned, and Robert found himself facing the vizier.

Ibn Tufayl's eyes were bloodshot and staring. His face was deep red, his hair mussed, his black robe subtly disarrayed. He looked as if he had been woken in a hurry and dressed too quickly. And once again his breath stank of stale wine.

The surgeon and his attendants shrank away, bowing.

'I have just heard of the accident to the eldest son of my friend Ibn Bajjah. How did this happen?' He turned on the surgeon. 'Whose fault was this?'

Abu Yusuf Yunus showed the vizier the repaired wound. 'The boy is in no danger. I, Abu Yusuf Yunus, have saved him.'

The vizier grabbed the surgeon's jaw with his cupped hand, gripping so hard that his fingers made white indentations in the surgeon's flabby cheeks. 'Of course you saved him, doctor,' Ibn Tufayl said harshly. 'That's your job. If you had let him die, you would soon have followed him to paradise, believe me. I didn't ask you how you did your job, Abu Yusuf Yunus. I asked you whose fault it was.'

The surgeon's hands flapped like a bird's wings. 'Lord – I can't say – I wasn't there.'

'It was him.' Ghalib had spoken. In his chair, his face pale, his eyes glazed, he pointed straight at Robert. 'He caused this. He is to blame.'

The vizier pushed the surgeon away, and Abu Yusuf Yunus stumbled back, shaking.

Robert, unable to imagine the consequences of this moment, prepared to defend himself.

Orm stepped between the vizier and his son, with his cloak thrown back so that the hilt of his sword was revealed. 'This is a false accusation. My son saved this foolish boy. He did not harm him. Quite the opposite. Perhaps Ghalib is addled by the pain and the drugs.'

Ibn Tufayl said to Ghalib, 'Tell me what happened. What are you accusing this boy of? Did he push you into the water – hurl you at the waterwheel – what?'

'None of those things,' Ghalib said, his own speech slurred. 'But we would not have been at the river at all if not for him.' Ghalib glared at Robert, and Robert recognised real hatred shining through the fug of the morphia. If he had despised Robert as a Christian and a foreigner before, now he was humiliated that he owed his life to him. Ghalib said, 'We were trying to protect her, from this English animal. That's why we were following him. For her.'

'It's true,' Hisham gabbled now. 'I was there. He was trying to seduce her. Robert the Christian.'

The vizier was having trouble following this. 'Who? Who was he trying to seduce?'

'Moraima,' Ghalib said bluntly.

The vizier howled, and lunged at Robert. Orm blocked his way. The vizier's own attendants ran up, and tried to separate the men.

Amid this shouting and chaos, Ghalib cried out, and slumped forward in a faint.