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II

They stayed a single night in Santiago de Compostela, and then formed up into a party to ride south. They planned to travel all the way to Cordoba, no longer the capital of a western caliphate, but still the beating heart of Muslim civilisation in Spain.

And, Robert learned, 'ride' was the correct word.

They would all be on horseback, their goods carried on the backs of two imperious-looking camels. When they set off, Ibn Hafsun led the way. Robert was expected to bring up the rear, with his eye on these camels. He quickly found it was no joy to plod along immersed in camel farts and hot dust, with nobody to speak to.

What was worse was that the girl, Moraima, rode at the front alongside Ibn Hafsun, never closer than two or three horse-lengths from Robert.

'For such an advanced civilisation,' Sihtric observed, 'the Moors are oddly reluctant to employ the wheel.'

Ibn Hafsun just grinned. 'Who needs wheels when Allah gave us camels?'

'So, a daughter,' Orm said to Sihtric. 'I wasn't expecting that. She's a beauty, priest.'

'Ah, yes. There is beauty in my family, of a sturdy sort – as you know all too well, Viking, God rest my sister's soul.'

'And the mother is a Moor?'

'Was. Moraima has grown up a Muslim.'

'I thought the bishops discourage you priests from ploughing your parishioners.'

'Well, she wasn't my parishioner. And a man gets lonely, so far from home. You have to live with the people around you; you have to live like them. The Moors call me a Mozarab – Musta'rib, a nearly-Arab… The bishops are a rather long way from Cordoba, Orm.'

As the day wore away and the sun sailed over the dome of sky, the country changed gradually. They passed through the foothills of a sharp mountain range and crossed into drier land, dustier, where the grass was sparse or non-existent, and the hills were like lumps of rock sticking out of the dirt. The towns were tight little clusters of blocky houses the colour of the dust. In the land between the towns olive trees grew in swathes that washed to the horizon, and herds of bony sheep fled as they passed. The people here were different too, their skin darker, their teeth and eyes bright white. On the road they occasionally passed muleteers, hardy, wizened men driving little caravans of laden animals; the bells around the mules' necks rang moumfully This was not like England, Robert thought.

As the afternoon darkened towards evening, they stopped at an inn. Ibn Hafsun handed over some coins, and they sat on upturned barrels in the shade of olive trees while a woman cooked for them over an open fire. She threw garlic, aubergines, peppers and flour-dipped anchovies into olive oil that spat in a hot pan. As the anchovies fried, a smell of the sea spread through the air.

Ibn Hafsun came to squat on a blanket beside Robert. He dipped bread into a bowl of something foul-smelling; it turned out to be sheep's-milk cheese laced with crushed fruit. He offered some to Robert, but Robert refused.

Even here, Robert couldn't get close to Moraima, who sat modestly with her father.

Not far from the road a party of boys worked through a grove of olive trees. They collected the fruit by throwing sticks up into the branches. They were skilful, each throw dislodging many fruit. It looked a good game, and Robert wished he were a couple of years younger so he could join in without embarrassment.

Sihtric and Orm began at last to speak of the business that had brought Orm here.

'I told you of the Testimony,' Orm said.

'Your wife's prophecy, before she was your wife. Who spoke my name to you, long before she could have known of my existence.' Sihtric shivered. 'It feels uncomfortable to be under such supernatural scrutiny But why did it take you fifteen years to get around to doing something about it?'

Orm shrugged. 'I had a living to make. Funds to raise. A family.' He glanced at Robert. 'I considered forgetting about it, giving it up without ever coming here.'

'So what changed?'

'I met a traveller – a mercenary who had fought with King Alfonso in al-Andalus. And he told me a fragment of a Moorish legend. There was a line of Eadgyth's prophecy I had never understood, amid much talk of doves and oceans.'

'What line?'

'"The tail of the peacock." That was what she said. And that was what my traveller finally explained to me.'

Moraima smiled. 'I understand. I have heard the story…'

According to an old Arab myth, she said, after the Flood the habitable lands of the world were shaped like a bird, with its head in the east and its arse in the west.

'So much for what the Arabs think of western Europe,' Orm remarked.

But as al-Andalus became magnificent under the Moors, the land was reimagined as a peacock's tail.

Robert listened to Moraima's voice, entranced. She'd hardly spoken since joining the party with her father – and hadn't said a single word to him.

Orm said to Sihtric, 'You see? I knew you were in Spain, but Eadgyth didn't. She said your name without ever meeting you. And when I came across the business of the peacock's tail – it all seemed to fit together and I felt I had to follow it up.'

Sihtric smiled. 'Typical of the Weaver to be cryptic – if it is the Weaver. Let's refer to the agent who put these words into your wife's head as, let me see, a Witness. He may be the same as the Weaver, or he may not.'

'She.'

'What?'

'When I showed Eadgyth my transcript of the words she spoke – she had no memory of it – she always called, um, her visitor "she".'

'She it is,' Sihtric said. 'And what do you believe the Witness has mandated you to do?'

Orm looked at him. 'Stop you.'

Sihtric gazed back. 'Well, you'll have to find out what I'm doing here first, won't you?'

If Ibn Hafsun was curious about their talk, he didn't show it. He worked his way through his sheep's-milk cheese silently.

Somewhere a wailing voice cried. It was a muezzin, Ibn Hafsun told Robert, calling from his tower in the nearby town, summoning the faithful to prayer. Ibn Hafsun fetched his own blanket from his horse, and knelt and faced east.

In the dusty heat, with the alien song in his ears and the exotic scent of the Arab food in his nostrils, Robert had never felt so far from home. And when Moraima glanced at him, her pale blue eyes were the strangest thing of all in this strange new world, and the most enticing.