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unreal. ‘You know, you aren’t much like your father,’ he said.
    ‘How so?’
    ‘You seem full of ...’ He sought the right word. ‘Joy. Your father doesn’t seem joyful at all.’
    Moraima shrugged. ‘He admires the city, the Moors’ accomplishments. He relishes the learning. But he despises it at the same time. I think he has to despise it, for it is not Christian.’
    ‘And yet he stays here,’ said Robert. ‘Why? For you?’
    ‘Yes, for me.’ But she said this without emotion. ‘And he has his projects. Something to do with the library, the books. History.’
    ‘All for the vizier?’
    ‘Paid for by the vizier, yes, but not all for him.’
    ‘What projects, then?’
    ‘He doesn’t tell me.’ That seemed to embarrass her, and she said, ‘What about your father? Why is he here?’
    Robert sighed. ‘Something to do with your father, and what he’s up to. Though how a bit of book-reading in faraway Spain can affect him I don’t know.’ He looked at her. ‘Moraima - we keep talking about them.’
    She said coyly, ‘So what do you want to talk about?’
    He dared to say, ‘We could start with the way your eyes match the blue of the sky.’
    She gasped, and he saw he’d pleased her. ‘You’d like our poetry,’ she said, recovering quickly. ‘It’s full of lines like that. Eyes like stars and breasts like billowing clouds—’
    ‘Maybe I should read you some,’ he said.
    But she wasn’t to be snared so easily. ‘Well, how about the colour of the vizier’s eyes when we turn up at his palace late? Come on!’ And she turned and ran through the market crowds.
    Utterly lost in the heart of the city, he had no choice but to follow.

VII
    Robert and Moraima found their fathers at the gate in the city walls. Ibn Hafsun the muwallad stood by with horses.
    Sihtric was impatient, fretting. ‘Where have you been? You do not keep the vizier of an emir waiting.’
    ‘Ibn Tufayl will understand,’ Moraima said, unconcerned.
    Sihtric fumed, but his anxiety to be away got the better of him. They mounted their horses and rode out into the dust of the country.
    They headed west, following a road that climbed away from the city by its river. Buildings trailed along this road, some grand residences; evidently it was a road often travelled by the wealthy. But many of the houses looked abandoned, their pretty patios overgrown.
    They came to what Robert thought was another town, smaller than Cordoba but still extensive. They paused on a ridge, looking out over this place. Surrounded by a complicated double-wall system, it was largely ruined, buildings burned out, ponds and canals choked with weeds, the wild greenery taking back the gardens.
    ‘This was no town,’ Sihtric said. ‘It was a palace. Its name is Madinat az-Zahra. Built a hundred and fifty years ago by the caliph, so that he could rule the most prosperous and best-governed land in the west in a manner befitting its grandeur. The whole civil service was moved out here. There were mosques, baths, workshops, stables, gardens, houses.’
    ‘And,’ Ibn Hafsun said, faintly mocking as always, ‘there was a menagerie stocked with exotic animals from Africa and Asia, and an aviary, and fishponds like lakes.’
    Orm said, ‘So if it was all so magnificent, what happened?’
    Ibn Hafsun said, ‘The Berbers smashed the palace up. Those black-eyed savages of the desert.’
    ‘I blame al-Mansur, who brought the Berbers here from Africa in the first place,’ said Sihtric.
    ‘He who stole the bell of Saint James,’ Robert said.
    ‘Yes. A vizier who, under a negligent caliph, built a private army, gorged on wealth, and attacked the Christians. And in doing so he fatally undermined the caliphate itself. Al-Mansur! What greed! What arrogance! What folly! What suffering he caused!’
    ‘The people loved him, of course,’ Ibn Hafsun said drily.
    Moraima said to Robert, ‘It is said that the fish in the ponds needed twelve thousand loaves of bread