Navigator

XVII

They were brought out of their battered cell, and returned to an audience room with the vizier. Ibn Tufayl sat on a couch, and sipped a steaming potion. Orm and his party were offered no refreshment.

Moraima stood beside her father, her slim beauty somehow highlighted by the cool abstraction of the patterns on the tiled wall behind her. Robert couldn't take his eyes off her.

'So,' Orm said. 'Let us speak of revenge.'

The vizier glanced around the room, at attendants and soldiers, a doctor who fussed at his elbow. He dismissed them all with a gesture. The soldiers left reluctantly, and Robert saw they took station just outside the room. Ibn Tufayl said, 'Tell them, Sihtric. It's the story of your cunning, after all. And it worked so well!'

So Sihtric, reluctantly, began. He said that after Muzna's death, the two men were locked together in grief and in blood, through Moraima, daughter of one, granddaughter of the other.

'He sent Moraima off to an aunt in Seville,' Sihtric said. 'He promised me he intended nothing but the best for her, but that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted Moraima in my life – she was my daughter, a child for a man who had never expected such a blessing. She was all I had left of Muzna. And besides I didn't trust him. Moraima inherited her mother's beauty – you can testify to that, Robert! I didn't like the idea that in twelve or fifteen or twenty years Ibn Tufayl might use her as he once used her mother.'

The vizier said languidly, 'Don't pretend it was for Moraima or Muzna. It was all for you. Is revenge-taking a sin in your church? It should be.'

'Tell us what you did,' said Orm.

With Muzna dead and Moraima gone, the two men continued to work on their shared project, Aethelmaer's designs.

'I used the opportunity of my time alone with the vizier,' Sihtric said. 'I interested him in the work. I tried to become his friend. And I began to bring him gifts.'

'What gifts?'

'Wine,' said the vizier bluntly.

Wine, forbidden under Muslim custom and law but manufactured in the Christian monasteries still permitted within al-Andalus, and smuggled into Madinat az-Zahra by Sihtric.

'I was a Muslim savouring communion wine – the blood of your Christ! Ironic, isn't it? But it was more than a taste that Sihtric cultivated in me. You are a good judge of men, priest. If I saw a weakness in you, you saw one in me, one I didn't know I possessed.'

'You became a drunk,' Orm said.

'The priest was the only route through which I could obtain the wine I needed. Thus I gave him power over me.'

'But,' Robert said, 'what did you want, Sihtric?'

'Moraima,' Sihtric said.

The two men struck a deal. Moraima would be brought back to Cordoba and raised as Sihtric's daughter. She would be a good Muslim, though: the vizier would not tolerate his granddaughter being raised a Christian.

'The girl would be known as my daughter,' Sihtric said. 'But her descent from the vizier was to be kept a secret. Ibn Tufayl let my reputation suffer rather than his. The Christian community was scandalised.'

'So,' Orm said. 'You, Sihtric, armed with your control of the vizier through his drunkenness. And the vizier knowing that you fathered a child by a Muslim girl. The two of you locked together in your weakness, mutually dependent, mutually loathing. I should have known I would find you in a situation like this, priest. It's just the sort of mess which always gathers around you.'

'It's almost a work of art, isn't it?' Sihtric said bitterly.

'I don't want to hear any more of this.' Moraima stepped forward, anger bringing colour to her cheeks. 'I don't want to be discussed as if I were just another barrel of wine, a business deal between two weak old men.'

The vizier said, 'Now, Moraima-'

'Oh, let her go,' Sihtric said. 'Why should she hear this painful old rubbish hashed over once again? Go, child; find yourself something more pleasant to do.'

'And me,' Robert said impulsively. 'Let me walk with her.'

Ibn Tufayl studied him. 'You must be even more stupid than you look.'

Robert blurted, thinking as he spoke, 'I can never have Moraima, and she can't have me. How we feel doesn't matter. It's over – indeed, it never was. Just let us walk together for an hour. Let us say goodbye.'

Orm said, 'Vizier, I take it you've no plans to punish the boy over Ghalib.'

'For what? He behaved nobly enough.' Ibn Tufayl's raging temper had vanished with his intoxication. 'Besides, the fault is ours, mine and Sihtric's, for allowing such situations to develop. That is what we must discuss. For as Moraima grows older-'

'Yes,' Sihtric said. 'We need to work out a way to manage her heart.'

'But for now,' Orm said, 'let them go.'

Ibn Tufayl clapped his hands to summon in his guards. 'Very well. Go, you two. Be aware you will be watched, every step of the way.'

Robert, hugely relieved to be getting away from Sihtric and the vizier and all their murky compromises, followed Moraima to the door.

But as he passed his father, Orm whispered, 'Just be careful.'