‘But there are limits. We are not like the Christians. We are civilised people, despite the emergency. And if I find you step beyond those limits again, I will impound whatever stock you have left, and I will punish you as I see fit.’ He leaned forward. ‘Have a care, Ali Gurdu. It will be a different story for men like you when the siege is lifted.’

But Ibrahim thought the worst irony was that if the Christians did take the city, Ali Gurdu might have made himself wealthy enough from the misery of others to be able to buy his way to safety.

‘And,’ Ali Gurdu said, ‘what of her?’

Ibrahim glanced at the wretched girl. ‘How would it help anybody if this child was punished?’

‘She is a thief!’

Ibrahim said to the girl, ‘Well, he’s right. You must pay this man back.’

‘How can I do that?’

‘Catch a rat,’ Ibrahim said. ‘And don’t go to him again, next time you’re hungry. Try these people. They are kinder.’ He took his wooden pen and scribbled an address on a scrap of old paper and gave it to her. ‘Now get out of my sight, both of you.’

He scratched his pen across the case notes and put the parchment aside. Then he stood, stretched, and glanced out of the window at a sky like an oven. He longed for the blessed cool of evening - at least nature lifted its siege, once a day. But Ibrahim’s own long day was not done yet.

‘Right. That’s that. Who’s next?’

XXIV

XXIV

On the parched plain before the walls of Seville, Saladin woke inside his leather tent.

Hanse had died during the night. It had been the fever, of course. Hanse had fallen asleep coughing and puking. Now he was a shapeless, unmoving lump under his sweat-sodden cloak.

And Saladin had slept in a tent with a dead man. With a sudden terror he pushed his way out into the open air, panting.

The sun was still low, but Saladin could already feel its heat on his face. The camp of the Christian army stretched away all around him. Horses wandered apathetically between the rows of tents, and cross-bearing pennants hung limply over a land long stripped of anything edible.

Inside Seville, the muezzins were calling. The pinkish light of day, scattered through the dust rising from the desiccated landscape, reflected from the city walls.

Near the tent, Michael sat cross-legged before the remnants of the night’s fire, resting his back on a heap of weapons and chain-mail coats. He was sipping a cup of water and eating dry rice. ‘This isn’t so bad for soldiering,’ Michael said in his coarse shopkeeper’s Latin. ‘Not so bad.’

Saladin sat heavily beside him. ‘What do you mean, not so bad? Hanse’s dead. Is that his rice?’