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?'
Orm didn't smile. 'And so, in this atmosphere of indulgence, your soul softened.'
'I was seduced,' Sihtric said. 'The first to come to me was a boy, slim, dark, with eyes like a deer's. He was a student. As we worked he sat close to me, he brought me presents – flowers in glass bowls, that sort of thing. I didn't really notice, to tell the truth; the work was everything. Then one night he slid into my bed. I was half asleep – I thought it was a woman, or a succubus perhaps, sent by the devil to tempt me. Well, I had a devil of a shock when I slid my hand down that oil-smooth belly and found six inches of stiff cock. I nearly yelled the place down.'
Robert laughed.
But Orm said grimly, 'So the vizier, having determined that your inclination was not towards boys, sent you a woman.'
'She was a copyist at the library. She was called Muzna. But she said that was a corruption of Maria. Once her family had been Christians, become muwallad long ago. The combination of that dark beauty, and the chink of Christian light that might still lodge in her soul, compelled me. When she stayed when the others had gone, when she laughed at my foolish jokes and brought me gifts-'
'When she came to your bed,' Orm said. 'You never could get to the point, could you, priest?'
'She was an addiction, a drug. The smoothness of her skin, the scent of her hair – I had known nothing like it. I would have given my immortal soul for her; indeed, perhaps I have done just that. I was happy, Orm. I was as happy as I have ever been – happy with her, happy to be alive and breathing, and my head not addled as usual with dreams of power and gain. You of all people know me well enough to understand that. But then three calamities happened, in quick succession.'
'Go on.'
'First I was called into the vizier's presence. He had Muzna at his side. She was crying. She stood with him.'
Robert saw it. 'She was his daughter – the vizier's.'
'Yes. He had manipulated her; he had had her seduce me; he used his own daughter to unlock my weakness. I protested that love between a Christian and a Muslim was not unknown. Indeed there was some such love in Muzna's mother's ancestry. But times are changing. As the Christian armies roll down the peninsula like a great smothering carpet, in some taifas the seduction of a Muslim woman by a Christian can be punishable by death – an execution by stoning.' He shuddered. 'And besides, as the vizier pointed out, I am a priest. He could ruin my ecclesiastical career with a word. I could even be excommunicated.'
'But this was all kept just between the three of you,' Orm said.
'Yes. For, of course, the vizier's purpose was not to destroy me but to own me. That was why he used his own daughter. And it worked.
'After that he insisted I showed him all my work. He even asked for a tithe, a share of the income I made from my Arabic Bibles!' He grinned. 'I survived. It just made it harder to conceal my other projects from him. But of course I was never allowed to be alone with Muzna again. Our love had served its purpose, for him.'
'So,' Orm said, 'the first of your three calamities was to learn that Muzna was the vizier's daughter. And the second?'
'To learn she was pregnant.'
It was an accident. The Moorish doctors were as expert in contraception as in so many other fields of medicine, but no method was foolproof.
Sihtric's eyes were bright now. 'Of course she could have got rid of it. Her father's doctors could have helped her with that too. But she wouldn't allow it. She hid away, until the baby was born.'
Robert said, 'Why would she do that?'
'I can only guess. We were never allowed to talk. I believe she wanted the baby as something of her own. She was a good woman, and intelligent. She was sickened at being used by her father. It wasn't much of a plan, but at the very least the baby would make her less useful as a pawn in a marital alliance of lineages – or, worse, a whore.'
Robert said, 'She may have loved you. She may have wanted to keep the baby because it was yours.'
Sihtric bowed his head. 'I can never allow myself to believe that.'
Orm said grimly, 'And your third calamity?'
'She died in childbirth. The baby survived. Not my Muzna.' He said bitterly, 'Again we were let down by the glories of Moorish medicine. The doctors can save a fool of a boy who throws himself at a waterwheel, but not my Muzna!'