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She called out clearly, "'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." Aren't those the words of Christ, recorded in the gospel of John? What, are you surprised that a Muslim knows the words of your holy books? I dare say I know your own creed better than most of you, and those tatty crosses sewn to your shoulders make no difference to that. Which of you fine Christians has condemned this snivelling boy?'

'I did, Subh.' It was the fat, finely dressed man who stood with the priest. His purple-dyed silk cloak must have been extraordinarily expensive.

'Alfonso,' Subh said with disgust. 'I might have known it was you. What do you accuse him of, muhtasib – mocking the size of your fat arse? If so you'll have to have half of Cordoba stoned.'

That actually won her a laugh.

Alfonso preened, plump fingers plucking at his leather belt. 'The crime is rather more serious than that, lady. This sand rat of a nephew of yours has fornicated with my granddaughter. My granddaughter, my Beatrice. Come here, child.' A girl, mousy, plain, stumbled forward from the crowd. 'Fornicated!' Alfonso thundered. 'What do you have to say to that?'

There was an angry murmur from the crowd.

Peter murmured to Ibrahim, 'In Toledo it's no stoning offence for a Muslim to sleep with a Christian.'

'In this town it is. And Alfonso is the muhtasib, who supervises the market. He is a man of influence in Cordoba.'

Subh was undaunted. 'And you have proof of this, do you, Alfonso the Fat? Oh, I'm prepared to believe that this wretched whelp of yours is no longer a virgin. But what else, beyond her word against his?'

'It was him,' Beatrice said, and she raised an unsteady finger to point at Zawi. 'He forced me!'

The crowd murmured again. But the priest looked down at his shoes, uncomfortable.

Subh, sharp, in control, noticed this. 'Forced you? Ah, but that isn't the story you told earlier, I would wager. Is it, child?'

'Yes – no – but it was Zawi, it was!'

Subh snorted, but Peter noticed she did not call on the boy to deny it for himself. She stalked about, regal, sneering at the stone-wielding crowd. 'And if so, what did you think of his scars?' Beatrice said nothing, and Subh went on, 'Come, child. If you lay together you must have noticed those.'

Beatrice glanced at her grandfather, uncertain.

Subh turned to the boy. 'Show them what I mean.'

Zawi's embarrassment apparently overcame his fear. 'But, aunt-'

'Show them. Drop your trousers.'

The boy complied, to reveal bare legs and a grimy sash around his waist. The crowd hooted, mocking his skinny legs and his shrivelled cock, and the boy was mortified. But Subh plucked aside the sash, and the crowd gasped at a mesh of scars on his belly.

'The result of a pious mule-whipping,' Subh said. 'A childhood gift from one of your sons, I'm told, Alfonso. Child, how could you not notice that?'

The girl, confused, stammered out, 'But I did sleep with him. All right, he didn't force me. But I did. It was in the orange grove behind the-'

Subh drowned her out. 'Your word against his! That's all we have. Who are you protecting, Beatrice? Who? Somebody known to your father – one of his business associates?' She spat that out with utter contempt. 'And for that will you take the blood of a boy on your hands? Will you go to meet your Maker with that unforgiven sin on your conscience?' She turned on the crowd. 'Will you? And you?'

As Zawi pulled up his trousers, Alfonso made one last try. He cried, 'You will not contradict me, woman! The facts of the case are clear! This girl has been violated. This girl, of a line tainted by no Moorish blood or Jewish, a Christian line that has survived since the days of the Gothic kings…'

But nobody was listening. One cobble was actually hurled, bouncing off the mosque wall harmlessly. But the mood for blood was gone, washed away by the sheer power of Subh's personality. Even the priest walked away.

Subh approached Alfonso. 'Gothic kings, eh? Well, I,' she said, 'am descended from Ahmed Ibn Tufayl, vizier to the emir of Seville, and that is no lie. I know the truth about you and your family, muhtasib. For centuries you called yourself al-Hafsun. My family worked with yours, in those days. You were muwallad. But when the Christian kings returned, you conveniently called yourselves Christian once more. Your blood is no more pure than your slut of a granddaughter.'

And she turned her back on a fuming Alfonso. 'One of you,' she called to her hapless relatives, 'take Zawi home and clean him up. And tell him that if he gets up to this kind of mischief again, especially with a Christian, and especially with a granddaughter of that slug Alfonso, I'll cut off his cock myself.' She rubbed her hands as if to clean them of dust. 'Well, that's that sorted out. Now, what's next?'She smiled brightly at Peter. 'What are you waiting for? Come with me.'

He dared do nothing else but follow.

IV

In the patio of her home, Subh served Peter tea flavoured with the zest of an orange, and dried olives and apricots in thick cream.

It was May, and the garden was fresh, the leaves on the trees brilliant green, the roses flowering, the blossom on the pomegranates bright red. Somewhere a nightingale sang. This was a typically Moorish setting, Peter thought, an oasis-garden made by folk who cherished life where they found it.

But Ibrahim stalked about, restless. He seemed very angry that his mother had saved the life of his distant cousin. 'You lied shamelessly,' Ibrahim accused her. 'You knew very well that Zawi slept with that wretched girl. It was written all over him.'

Peter said, 'But the scars – the girl didn't recognise them.'

'He keeps the scars covered up with his sash,' Ibrahim snapped. 'Even while making love. Wouldn't you?'

'Oh, of course I knew he slept with the whelp,' Subh said. 'Why do you think I didn't question him? For fear he would blurt out the truth, or still worse profess some undying passion for the spread-legged little she-goat, and get himself put down.'

'And you made an unnecessary enemy of Alfonso in the process.'

'But he is already my enemy. You see, my son, I believe that to lie is wrong, but to allow a foolish boy to be stoned for a bit of careless lust is more wrong still.'

Ibrahim snapped, 'Our family has lived in this den of decadence for too long. It has poisoned our blood, which must be cleansed!' And he stalked off, unsatisfied.

So Peter was left alone with this woman, her languid form draped on a divan. Impossible fantasies ran through his head.

Subh sighed. 'It is a trial to have a son whose soul is so much purer than mine. A reminder of the time when the holy Almohads ran all our lives, and the Almoravids before them.'

After the fall of Toledo a century and a half earlier, a bruised al-Andalus had fallen under the sway of cultists from across the strait, Almoravids and later Almohads, men of the desert with veiled faces who dressed in skins and stank of their camels, devout, disciplined and cruel. Attitudes hardened on both sides. The popes granted crusading indulgences to knights who fought in Spain, challenging the fundamentalism of the desert warriors.

'The boy means well, of course. But he simply isn't pragmatic. Are you pragmatic, scholar? Or are you religious?'

'Not especially, though I do plenty of work for the religious houses, mostly the Franciscans. My ambition is to be a philosopher, for which I need to find patrons – like yourself, to whom I am eternally grateful.' Peter's career was a new sort, unimagined not so long before. Thanks to the injection of scholarship from the conquered regions of al-Andalus there had been an explosion of learning across Christendom, and all over Europe itinerant scholars like Peter were trying to make a living. 'Of course,' he went on, 'the task of the scholar is to reconcile all our philosophy with the revealed truth of God.' That was the official truth, but actually, it seemed to Peter, thanks to the Aristotelian studies of the Moorish scholars, across Christendom the close ties of devotion and scholarship were loosening.