Joan pulled back, her face twisted with fury. ‘Don’t touch me, you witch. You talk to me of blood? Your kind forced me from my home, from Jerusalem. Do you imagine I will forgive that? Do you imagine I will rest until I see the land of Christ restored to Christian hands? Take her out of here,’ Joan said to Michael. ‘Hand her over to your sergeant, or—’

Without warning Subh let out an extraordinary animal howl. She leapt at Joan and dug fingers arched like claws into her face. Joan screamed and fell backward.

Saladin and Michael rushed forward. They grabbed Subh and hauled her off Joan, but with difficulty, for she was a heavy woman animated by utter rage. At last Michael got his arms clasped around her, pinning her hands to her body.

Joan would have attacked Subh in turn, had not Saladin held her back. Her face was streaming with blood from gouges under her eyes. ‘Look at me. Look at me! I’m lucky she didn’t take out an eye.’

Michael called, ‘What do you want me to do with her, lady?’

Saladin said quickly, ‘Mother, she is our cousin.’

‘She’s a boil that needs to be lanced. Take her,’ she said to Michael. ‘Do what you want with her, you and your lads. Then throw her out of the city, naked.’

Subh struggled, but Michael grinned and hauled her away to the squad of soldiers playing dice. They laid their hands on her, and pushed her down on the floor of the mosque.

Thomas was ashen. But his eyes were alive with anticipation. ‘The Codex. Come. We may not have much time.’ He led the way back to the bonfire.

Joan dabbed her torn face with a bit of cloth.

Saladin said, ‘You need to find a doctor.’

‘Oh, stop your fussing, boy.’

‘Did you mean what you said? About the designs - the weapons, and using them to take the Holy Land?’

‘Of course I did. It is the most sacred place in the world, Saladin. And our home. We will use the engines for the purpose for which they were intended.’

As a boy in Jerusalem, a ‘warrior cub’ as Thomas had once called him, Saladin would have applauded such an ambition. But he had grown since those days, grown into a man of twenty-one who had seen much more of the world - and had seen much suffering. ‘Mother, are you sure that was the intention? And are you sure that’s what we should do?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Remember the Dove.’ He meant his family’s other prophecy, the Testament of Eadgyth, handed down since the days of Robert and his father Orm, a commandment that seemed to warn against the use of Sihtric’s Engines of God.