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a beautiful
French lady.”
    “French-Canadian,” corrected Abigail,
grinning and colouring at the same time. Walid was a star.
    “I suppose you need a little help with your
research?” Every line of his face showed an intense eagerness to
put his substantial knowledge to service.
    “I’m afraid so,” Abigail admitted.
    “Come in, come in.”
    It wasn’t a time of prayer, so they passed
through the echoing main hall and under the dome, with its curved
web of struts trapping a mysterious globe of gloom, then to a small
side-room. The mosque could hold 400 at prayer, with a separate
room for 200 women.
    “It’s about the fragment,” Abigail said once
they were seated. “I think it may be Ismaili, or at least
influenced by the Ismailis. But I’m not too familiar with Ismailism
and I need to know more, urgently. What it’s really about, why
death overflows, the eagle reference?”
    “Ah, the famous fragment.” He frowned.
“Ismaili, eh? That puts a different light on things.” A mischievous
smile leaked out of him. “When is something not urgent for
you?”
    “Oh, but…”
    Walid held up his hand to halt her. “Now, I’m
no expert on Ismaili poetry…”
    “But?”
    Abigail knew his pause was for dramatic
effect. Walid always said he wasn’t an expert, yet she had
never yet seen him stumped.
    “But I do know their works are usually
devotional in nature. Take Ibn Hani for instance.” And he quoted in
English a couple of verses about salvation, burdens removed,
tomorrow bringing forth the day of Resurrection.
    “Not an expert, huh? But you can quote the
stuff! Presumably that’s Ibn Hani al-Andalusi?”
    “Yes. He had to flee anti-Ismaili persecution
in Andalusia and was mysteriously murdered, around 970 AD I
believe. A great loss.”
    She sensed a touch of bitterness in Walid’s
voice, as though the poet had died just last month and not a
thousand years ago.
    “Because of the Spanish connection, I came
across Ibn Hani myself,” said Abigail. “Given that Safiyya lived in
Granada and it now appears had Ismaili sympathies herself, she
probably knew his works backwards. Yet she doesn’t seem to write in
the same style.” She passed Walid a copy of her translation from
the Provençal, to jog his memory. He searched in vain for his
glasses.
    “Your poetisa would have cloaked her
sympathies, in order to avoid Ibn Hani’s fate! Four centuries
separate him and her, but righteous anger at fringe beliefs hadn’t
diminished. Andalusia was a stronghold of orthodoxy until the
end.”
    “Hmmm… I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Perhaps her poem is deliberately obscure for
that very reason.”
    Glasses discovered, under a mass of draft
leaflets, Walid perused the fragment. Abigail had to consciously
stop holding her breath. She desperately needed some clues to fend
off the ridiculous attention of Jack Turner.
    The wrinkles around Walid’s eyes tightened in
concern or distaste, or maybe like her he was just puzzled.
    “I’m afraid I didn’t pay enough attention
before,” he muttered. “Even so I should have realised… Senility
setting in, I expect.”
    “Realised what?” ventured Abigail.
    “About the Ismaili connection.” He took his
glasses off and waved them in vague circles. “The Ismailis were
rather militantly organised you know, in medieval times.”
    The unsavoury association she hadn’t been
able to recall burst forth like vinegar of the mind. Of course!
Extremists at the mountain fortress of Alamut, just south of the
Caspian sea, had once led the Ismaili community. An embarrassing
period in the history of the sect.
    “The Assassins of Alamut,” she gasped.
    “Quite. Though I think Alamut had been in
ruins for quite a while when your poetisa was writing…
mid-fourteenth you said?”
    Abigail nodded.
    “Nevertheless, that’s where you’ll find your
eagle connection. The place was even called the Eagle’s Nest, ages
before a certain deplorable German Führer used that same name