‘Only months ago. The wounds are raw. You have come to the very edge of Christendom, young soldier. We will stay here only one night. The city is a place of narrow streets, winding, many shadows. Watch your back, and your father’s. And tomorrow - al-Andalus! Or what is left of it. Now, come. Have you any coin? I have a feeling those soldiers of the King will extract a toll from us for crossing their bridge . . .’

The next day, beyond Toledo, they pressed on, further south again. With every plodding step of the camels the heat gathered, and Robert Egilsson felt as if he was being walked steadily into some great hearth.

They were deep in the territory of the Moors now. That became apparent the first time they stopped at a small town to replace a lame camel. Marwam, a dark, skinny, rodent-faced man, insisted on replacing both their camels with fresh beasts, and for the price he threw in his own services as an escort.

‘It might be wise,’ said Ibn Hafsun. ‘We’re a long way past the border with the Christians, but relations are tense among the taifas - I mean, the Moorish kingdoms. You never know when you might cross the wrong border, or fail to pay the correct toll.’

But Sihtric snorted his contempt. ‘Waste your money on this weasel-eyed camel-driver if you like. I’ll have nothing to do with it.’

So Marwam joined the party. As they left, a gaggle of little children ran out onto the road to wave them off, shrieking and jumping, all of them as rodent-faced as Marwam.

Marwam was the first authentic Moor Robert had met - not a mixed-blood like Moraima, or a descendant of a Gothic Christian like Ibn Hafsun - and Robert watched him curiously. Dressed in swathes of grubby white cloth, Marwam was a wiry man who looked as at home on a camel as on foot. As they rode along he sang wailing, nasal songs, the songs of a desert people sung in a country that had once been Roman. But Robert thought that sometimes he was singing to Moraima, for he would gaze at her with deep brown eyes, his words sung in an unfamiliar tongue making Moraima blush.

Robert muttered to his father, ‘If I knew the Moorish for “remember your wife and kids” I’d sing that back to him.’

Orm grinned, tolerant. ‘I wouldn’t worry. She’s a city girl. I don’t think she has any interest in camel-drivers. He’s just flirting, and so is she. Besides, shouldn’t you put such things out of your head? Jealousy is a Christian sin, I imagine. As is lust.’

‘Most things are,’ Robert conceded gloomily.