‘And we Moors are suddenly disunited. There have been rebellions. Last year Muley was overthrown in favour of his son, Muhammad Abu Abd Allah, whom the Christians call Boabdil. But Muley’s knights still support him. Others back Muley’s brother Abu Abd Allah Muhammad az-Zaghall - El Zagal, the “Valiant One”. And so it goes. There are rumours Boabdil is concluding secret deals with the Christians. Where once we played off one Christian nation against another, now the wily King Fernando plays us for fools.

‘Last winter the long war proper resumed, after a pause for breath that lasted more than two hundred years, when the Christians assaulted a place called Loja. And I came to work in the palace.’

Harry shook his head. ‘I can’t understand such numbers. Two hundred years? How can a single purpose endure over such a huge time?’

Abdul laughed and topped up his drink. ‘Men like you and I, Harry Wooler, traders and sailors, live in the moment, in the business of the world. But popes and caliphs, princes and emirs - those sort of folk like to believe they cast long shadows over history.’

Harry tried to get a sense of this cousin. He seemed intelligent, competent, and with a taste for beautiful things, judging by his clothes, and the wistful glances he cast out of the windows. But he was alone, without a family. Was he a man who preferred men? Whatever his taste he had evidently nothing but failed relationships behind him. And yet he had a place in this city, this ancient civilisation he obviously cherished.

He and Harry could hardly have been less alike, Harry thought. And yet here they were, related, considering working together.

He turned the conversation to the matter of the Testament.

Abdul said, ‘I’ll tell you the truth. In my family - or my branch of it - we have a sort of memory of prophecies. Of terrible weapons of war, of a man called the Dove, all of that. But if this was ever written down, it was long lost, and reduced to a memory of a memory. I don’t think Ibrahim cared much for that sort of stuff. So why have you sought me out? Why come here, to al-Andalus? And why now?’

‘It was Geoffrey’s suggestion . . .’ Harry had told Abdul of his contact with the monk. Now he produced a parchment on which the first twelve lines of the Testament of Eadgyth were written out.

Abdul lodged small spectacles on his thin nose and scanned it quickly. ‘“The tail of the peacock”,’ he read. He looked up. ‘There is an old Arab myth, of the Flood—’

‘I know,’ said Harry. ‘Or rather, Geoffrey knows. That’s what he found out. He believe that al-Andalus must be the peacock’s tail of the Testament.’

‘So that tells me why you’ve come here. But why now?’