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.

XVI

'I was lonely,' Sihtric whispered. 'In the end, it comes down to that, and my own weakness. And the result was a new life.'

'Moraima,' Robert said.

'Yes.' Sihtric smiled wistfully. 'And now I will never be lonely again.'

'I think,' Orm said sternly, 'that you had better tell us the whole truth, Sihtric. About you, Moraima, and the vizier.'

Robert, Sihtric and Orm had been escorted to a battered, fire-damaged room. Here the three of them sat, on worn floor coverings and baggy cushions. Bright daylight filtered through more of the charming archways that had so entranced Robert. But now massive soldiers stood in those arches, silhouetted.

Orm had growled at being put under armed guard. The nervous attendant who had brought them here assured them it wasn't like that, they had been brought here for their own safety at a time of disturbance.

Sihtric had advised them just to put up with it. 'They've done this before. I've seen it. Just freeze the situation for a few hours, while they get him sobered up. And I've seen some of the potions they use. Even tried some myself. Sometimes they will bleed you, or rub ground-up elephant tusk onto your teeth. So decadent were some of the caliphs that the task of making them sober enough to be seen in public inspired a whole library full of medicinal wisdom.'

Now Orm said, 'Just tell us the truth, Sihtric.'

Sihtric eyed him. 'What do you imagine that truth is?'

Robert blurted, 'That they are lovers. Ibn Tufayl and Moraima. Or perhaps it's worse than that. Perhaps that old goat of a vizier took her by force.'

Orm eyed the guards. 'I assume our guardians do not speak any English. But I wouldn't be prepared to bet my life on it. Think about your words, Robert.'

'Lovers?' Sihtric sighed. 'If only it were that simple…'

He said it all began with his own loneliness.

'You must remember I came here as a scholar. My sketches of war machines intrigued the vizier, as I had hoped, and he gave me a small stipend. As I told you I had ways to make more bits of money independently, from selling Arabic translations of the Bible to Mozarabs, and from administering to their spiritual needs. And as I began to gain access to the libraries of the emir I developed my own interests, outside the narrow scope of Aethelmaer's designs. Interests in the career of the Moors in Spain, for instance. And the secret history I discovered – well. That's for another day, Orm, but we must speak of it, for it forms my whole purpose.

'What I did not anticipate was that these small signs of independence on my part were troubling to a man like the vizier. These are fractured times in al-Andalus, a time of turmoil and threat. With enemies both within the taifa court and outside, the vizier needs to know whom he can trust. No, more than that: he can trust only those whose souls he owns entirely.'

'And so,' Orm said, 'he set out to own you.'

'Yes.' Sihtric sighed again. 'For he sees my weaknesses more clearly than I see them myself – you can ask my confessor, it's true. I was alone, Orm. Nobody even cares about England here. To the Moors the civilised world stretches from Damascus to Cordoba, and Europe is a cold, dark place full of squabbling little statelets, far away and of no importance save as a source of slaves. And I am a man,' he whispered, as if this were the worst confession of all. 'A man alone, in an atmosphere of remarkable sensuality…'

The rulers of Seville, like some of the caliphs that went before them, were extravagant, indulgent, given to gesture and spectacle and pleasure. Their hedonism was spoken of throughout al-Andalus – indeed throughout the Muslim world. 'Let me give you one example. There was a prince whose wife, a Christian from the north, wept because she missed the snows of winter, which she would never see again. So he ordered a legion of gardeners to transplant a whole forest of almond trees, in blossom, and move them to the square beneath her bedroom window. They did this at night, and in silence. And when she woke up, her husband was able to say, "There, my beloved, I have brought you your snow!" I can't imagine William the Bastard making such a gesture, can you?'