But it had come too late. The bodies bundled into doorways or heaped in alleyways told him that: the night’s dead, dumped by those too weak or apathetic to dispose of them properly. Ibrahim made a mental note of where the corpses lay, so he could brief the day’s working parties. But he supposed that in a few more days such problems would be the concern of some Christian soldier, and he, at last, could rest.

He walked down to the river, where no ships sailed this morning, and the waterwheels stood idle. It struck him how very quiet the city was now. There were few animals around; in a starving city the dogs and cats had gone into the pot before the rats. Even the songbirds had been netted, plucked and consumed. Few children too, and fewer old people. Ibn Shaprut the doctor had told him how hunger and disease and drought always took away the very old and the very young, always the most vulnerable.

He tired quickly as he walked, and his burned back still ached sometimes, and the cold of the rain cut into his flesh. After months of rationing there were times he felt so light and flimsy, so detached from reality, that it was as if he had become a ghost, haunting the streets of the city he had tried to help save.

He had wandered far enough. He turned back.

Inside the emir’s palace Christian troopers gawped at the tiles and the frescoes, and leered at the Muslim women. The Christians wore chain-mail and steel helmets, and had bright red crosses emblazoned on their shoulders. These were crucesignati, crusaders, holy warriors, infused by piety and blessed by the Pope. But they were nearly as ragged and half-starved as the surviving population of the city itself.

Ibrahim walked across the patio outside the turayya, the hall at the centre of the suite of rooms called the Pleiades, and the grandest in the palace complex. The patio was a lovely rectangular space encompassed by a gallery of delicate trefoil arches. One Christian soldier had taken his boots off and was soothing his filthy, blistered feet in the rainwater trapped in the fish pond. His mate saw Ibrahim pass by and kicked the bather, speaking in rough Latin.

‘Get up, Michael, you arse, you’re showing us up.’

‘Oh, leave me be, Saladin. Arse yourself. This isn’t so bad, is it? Not so bad for soldiering . . .’

Ibrahim was surprised by that famous Saracen name, Saladin, given to a Christian soldier. But Fernando’s army was international, drawn from all across Christendom. ‘Saladin’ could have come from anywhere.