Navigator

'I'm not a lost chick.'

Ibn Hafsun smiled. 'Then how do you think of yourself?'

'I am a pilgrim. And I'm here in this city of Saint James to visit the tomb of the brother of Christ, who came here to die.'

Orm murmured, 'You must forgive him, Ibn Hafsun. It's the fashion these days to be pious. A generation after the Conquest, the English kings are forgotten and every boy in England wants to be a warrior of God like King William.'

'But this is only a way station,' Ibn Hafsun said innocently to Robert. 'Your first stop in Spain. Your destination is Cordoba. And as I understand it you are here in Santiago to meet not a long-dead apostle, but a living priest.'

Robert snorted. 'If it isn't all some elaborate hoax, devised by some trickster to empty my father's purse.' They had quarrelled over the purpose of the journey many times in England.

Orm shifted on the bench. He was still a big man, but his body, battered and scarred from too many campaigns, was stiff, sore, uncomfortable even in rest. He said firmly, 'I wrote to Sihtric, and he wrote back, and I recognised his writing. Oh, Sihtric lives. I'm sure of that.'

And he shared a look with Robert, for the central truth went unsaid: what had drawn them here was Orm's story of the 'Testament' spoken by Eadgyth, Robert's mother, when Orm had first found her hiding from Normans in a hole in the ground. Now, after years of saving and preparation, Orm was ready to fulfil her command to seek out Sihtric.

Robert only half believed all this. But when he had been very young his mother had drifted away to the old church of Saint Agnes near York, now rebuilt by the Normans, and had crawled back into that hole in the ground, ignoring her distracted husband and distressed young son. And Robert had been only six years old when she died, her lungs ruined by her years of flight from the Normans.

Ibn Hafsun watched the silent exchange between them, and Robert saw a calculating curiosity in those pale eyes. 'Well, you're here, Robert, whatever the motivation. So what do you think of the country?'

'Not much. It's like England.'

Ibn Hafsun laughed. 'I won't deny that. Yes, this comer is like England or Ireland. Wet, windy, dominated by ocean weather from the west. But very little of the peninsula is like this. You'll see.'

'I think he's not quite sure what a "peninsula" is, Ibn Hafsun,' Orm said.

'At least tell me this: what do you call the land to which you have come?'

'Spain,' Robert snapped back.

'Ah. Well, it's had many names. The Romans called it Iberia, named for a river, the Ebro, which drains into the Mediterranean. Later they called it Betica, after another river that drains to the west into the Ocean Sea – the river that runs through Cordoba, in fact. Later still it became known as Hispania, or Spain, after a man called Hispan who once ruled here – or perhaps it was named for Hesperus, the evening star. Many of these names were invented by even older people, of course, the folk who lived here before the Caesars came. And the Moors call it al-Andalus.'

'The Moors are in the south,' Robert said. 'They never came here.'

'Didn't they?' Ibn Hafsun grinned. 'Once there was but a tiny salt crystal of Christianity in a cupful of Islam, here in the north, after the Moors overran the peninsula in just a few years. And once, oh, this is only a century ago, a great Moorish vizier called AI-Mansur sacked this very city and carried off the bells of Saint James's church to Cordoba where they rest to this day.'

'I don't believe you,' Robert said.

'About what?'

'That the Moors took only a few years to overrun the whole of Spain. The Romans would have pushed them back.'

'I'm afraid it's true,' Ibn Hafsun said. 'It was only a hundred years after the death of the Prophet. The kings then were not Roman, for the empire had lost the west, but Gothic. We ruled as the Romans did, or better, for centuries. But we could not stand before the Moors.'

Orm asked, 'Why do you say "we"?'

Ibn Hafsun said proudly, 'My family were Gothic counts. Our family name was Alfonso.'

'Like the King,' Robert said.

'In my great-grandfather's time we converted to Islam, and took an Arabic name. The Moors call the likes of us muwallad, which means "adopted children". And now I find myself a left-behind Muslim in what is once again a Christian kingdom. You see, history is complicated.' He smiled, a Muslim with blue eyes and blond hair.

Robert said rudely, 'If your family were once counts, why are you reduced to escorting travellers for pennies?'

Behind him a new voice said, 'Because in al-Andalus, it's hard for anyone but a Moor to get rich.'

Robert turned. A man approached them, short, not strong-looking, with a pinched face worn with age. He wore a modest priest's black habit, and his tonsure was cut raggedly into a scalp that was losing its hair. A girl followed him, in a simple flowing gown. She had her face downcast modestly.

Ibn Hafsun stood, and the others followed his lead. 'Sihtric. The peace of Allah be on you. And your daughter.'

'And God go with you too.' The priest was a skinny man, Robert saw, but with a pot-belly that spoke of indulgence. He studied Orm, who towered over him. 'Well, Viking. When did we last meet?'

'William's coronation. Nineteen years gone, or the best part of it.'

'I wish I could say I was glad to see you. But life is more complicated than that, isn't it? And this is your son.' He turned to Robert, grinning. 'The ardent pagan spawned a devout Christian. How amusing.' He laughed out loud.

Robert was irritated to be spoken of in this dismissive way.

But then Sihtric's daughter lifted her head and looked directly at Robert, and he forgot his irritation. Surely she was only a little older than he was. Her face was a perfect oval, the colour of honey, her lips full and red, her nose fine, and her eyes bright blue.

'Her name,' Sihtric said drily, 'is Moraima.'

Robert barely heard him. He was already lost.

II

They stayed a single night in Santiago de Compostela, and then formed up into a party to ride south. They planned to travel all the way to Cordoba, no longer the capital of a western caliphate, but still the beating heart of Muslim civilisation in Spain.

And, Robert learned, 'ride' was the correct word.

They would all be on horseback, their goods carried on the backs of two imperious-looking camels. When they set off, Ibn Hafsun led the way. Robert was expected to bring up the rear, with his eye on these camels. He quickly found it was no joy to plod along immersed in camel farts and hot dust, with nobody to speak to.

What was worse was that the girl, Moraima, rode at the front alongside Ibn Hafsun, never closer than two or three horse-lengths from Robert.

'For such an advanced civilisation,' Sihtric observed, 'the Moors are oddly reluctant to employ the wheel.'

Ibn Hafsun just grinned. 'Who needs wheels when Allah gave us camels?'

'So, a daughter,' Orm said to Sihtric. 'I wasn't expecting that. She's a beauty, priest.'

'Ah, yes. There is beauty in my family, of a sturdy sort – as you know all too well, Viking, God rest my sister's soul.'

'And the mother is a Moor?'

'Was. Moraima has grown up a Muslim.'

'I thought the bishops discourage you priests from ploughing your parishioners.'

'Well, she wasn't my parishioner. And a man gets lonely, so far from home. You have to live with the people around you; you have to live like them. The Moors call me a Mozarab – Musta'rib, a nearly-Arab… The bishops are a rather long way from Cordoba, Orm.'

As the day wore away and the sun sailed over the dome of sky, the country changed gradually. They passed through the foothills of a sharp mountain range and crossed into drier land, dustier, where the grass was sparse or non-existent, and the hills were like lumps of rock sticking out of the dirt. The towns were tight little clusters of blocky houses the colour of the dust. In the land between the towns olive trees grew in swathes that washed to the horizon, and herds of bony sheep fled as they passed. The people here were different too, their skin darker, their teeth and eyes bright white. On the road they occasionally passed muleteers, hardy, wizened men driving little caravans of laden animals; the bells around the mules' necks rang moumfully This was not like England, Robert thought.