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logic to it, but it wasn’t the straight-line logic of a Roman city like London; here the streets branched like the limbs of a tree, leading to endless dead-ends. The people weren’t like English people either. They were a mixed-up sort, the result of generations of intermarriage between the invaders and the old Gothic peoples. Not everybody was Muslim either; there were Christians here, and many Jews.
    The city nestled within the circling safety of its old Roman walls, which ran down to a river where waterwheels turned languidly, and which was still spanned by a stout Roman bridge. The city’s heart was full of grand buildings, finely tiled, intricately adorned with carved stone and moulded plaster. The greatest building of all was a vast mosque that sprawled in its own compound close to the river: a temple to a god who was not God, a firm Islamic statement planted proudly in a Roman city. There was a sense of wealth here, Robert thought, of care, of intensive labour over every detail. And yet it was an architecture born of war. The buildings had stout fortress-like walls and towers and gateways, but these warlike structures were made elegant by their proportions, and the fine embellishment of fretwork and stucco and inscription.
    As the day wore on he learned the cycle of the city. Because of the heat and the light the very rhythm of life here was quite different from any English city. As noon approached the people retreated to the shade of their homes, windows closed and shutters drawn. Even the animals grew quiet, as if the whole city slept beneath a shroud of dense, dusty orange air. But as evening approached and the first whispers of coolness arrived, the city began to stir once more. The street lights were lit, and the city came alive as a firmament of light and movement, of music and laughter.
    Robert was entranced.
    On the second morning they made their way to Sihtric’s small town house. Robert’s heart quickened when Moraima joined them.
    Sihtric served them watered wine, and announced that later in the day he would introduce Orm to his sponsor, one Ahmed Ibn Tufayl, a vizier of the emir of the taifa which now owned Cordoba. ‘When he heard you were coming, Orm, the vizier demanded I bring you to him. The caliphs always saw off the Vikings; this wasn’t Alfred’s England, weak, backward and divided, and there are few Vikings here. So you’re an object of curiosity!’
    ‘I hope I don’t disappoint,’ Orm growled ungraciously. In the bright Spanish sunlight he was massive, heavy, somehow dark, Robert thought. He wasn’t comfortable here. And his head probably hurt from the monkish wine he and Sihtric had consumed the night before. Orm said to Robert, ‘Don’t you notice anything different about me today?’
    ‘By God’s eyes. You cut your hair.’
    He stroked his chin. ‘Look, a good shave too. And I had a bath.’
    Robert was genuinely shocked. ‘You didn’t.’
    ‘I went to one of those bathhouses the Moors have. Quite pleasant it was, if you can put up with smelling like an East Roman whore.’
    Ibn Hafsun smiled. ‘You have to make yourself presentable to meet a Muslim ruler. Clean clothes, a wash. The envoys of the Christian kings, even of the Pope, have always known this. Of course Christians aren’t quite as in awe of the Moors as they were in my father’s day.’
    Moraima, serving more wine, passed Robert. ‘I’m glad you haven’t bathed. I quite like the way Christians smell.’ And with a fleeting, luring smile, she turned away.
    Sihtric lectured them about Cordoba’s magnificence. ‘At its peak, only a generation ago, it was the greatest city in the west. Why, its population even matched Constantinople. Five hundred mosques. Three hundred bathhouses. Fifty hospitals. Do you even know what a “hospital” is, young Robert?
    ‘And the greatest library in all the world, it is said, flourished here in Cordoba, under the caliphs. It all started when the East Roman emperor sent the