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IX

Heading south-west along the bank of the Guadalquivir, Subh's caravan slowly moved out of the hinterland of Cordoba, with its sprawling farms and market gardens and groves of orange trees. The country broadened to an immense plain, the horizon obscured by a ghostly heat shimmer. It was an arid, open, severe land, littered with ruined forts like the hulks of wrecked ships.

Peter imagined it must be easy enough to get lost out here, on a land as vast and flat and featureless as an ocean. But not long after leaving the city they passed another mule train going the other way. The muleteers greeted each other noisily. In this sea of sand the muleteers were the navigators and the captains, stitching together the country with their endless journeying. And the muleteers sang, wailing muezzin-like melodies with earthy words in a rough Arabic. The songs were not so much long as open-ended, as one driver after another added a verse to an already complicated saga. So compelling were the choruses, so simple the melodies, that it was impossible not to join in, and the steady rhythm of the songs chimed with the pounding of the mules' hooves.

Peter, fanciful, found himself admiring the stoical simplicity of such a life. He envied the muleteers their sinewy strength, their obvious comfort on the rolling backs of their mules. To be bound into such a monkish routine, to learn to be able to do at least one thing exceptionally well, would itself be a kind of devotion. But he knew he could not bear such an elemental existence, not when there were cities full of books waiting to be read, a universe of philosophies to be contemplated.

And he was not so naive as to idealise the muleteers' life. They were all heavily armed, with knives, swords and cudgels, and none of the caravans was small enough to be vulnerable to attack by the pirates of this desert sea. The shifting frontier line between Christendom and Islam made this a dangerous country to travel, and it was well known that refugees from the lost Moorish cities, always streaming south, were easy targets for killers, rapists and thieves. Subh had taken care to plan against such a calamity for her party.

On the second day Subh's son Ibrahim rode alongside Peter for a while. On his handsome charger he looked down on Peter, who thudded along on the back of his reluctant old mule. Ibrahim was provocative from the off. 'You are the only Christian in this caravan of Muslims. Even the muleteers are Muslim. Only you, out of place, and far from home. It is a certain kind of weakness, I believe, that drives a man to seek out the company of strangers. Why are you here, Christian Peter?'

'For the scholarship.'

Ibrahim hawked and spat. 'You could have enjoyed your scholarship without leaving London. Do you have a wife in London? A woman you love?'

'No wife or lover.'

'A boy-'

'I have no interest in boys, Ibrahim.'

'Then what are you fleeing from?'

'I'm fleeing nothing. I'm travelling in hope. I am following a loose thread in a tapestry, letting it lead me where it may. Your mother understands, I think.' Peter grew impatient with his pressing. 'Why should Christian and Muslim not share the adventure of life together? In Toledo, Christian and Muslim scholars meet and work together every day.'

'Under the banners of a Christian king.'

'Perhaps. But in the days of the caliphate Christian scholars similarly flocked to Muslim Cordoba.'

Ibrahim said, 'But there was no assimilation. Five centuries ago the Moorish armies marched north. The whole of Spain became a Muslim country, and Christians lived in a Moorish land. Now the Christians are scouring their way back down from the north, and Muslims will have to survive in a Christian country, as my family survived in Cordoba. No matter how long they cohabit, Muslim and Christian will not mix, any more than water and oil, whether there is more of the oil or more of the water.'

Peter considered arguing against this. But the evidence for it stood all around him, the bristling relics of warfare sticking out of the ground like broken teeth. 'All right. But here we are, Ibrahim, riding side by side. We don't have to fight, do we?'

Ibrahim eyed him, his eyes as bright as the sky. 'Perhaps not. But keep your gaze fixed to the backside of that mule in front of you, and off my mother's.' And he galloped away to rejoin his friends.