On the ground, at the heart of Santa Fé, Harry Wooler peered up at the hovering bird - if it was a bird. He hadn’t forgotten what he had seen over Derbyshire, on that dramatic day of destruction three years ago. He said to Geoffrey, ‘If he drops any of those eggs of fire this city of wood and cloth will burn like a hundred-year-old timber pile.’

Geoffrey Cotesford peered up, uninterested. ‘One toy machine in the air won’t make much difference. The boy flying that thing is a Franciscan, you know. James of Buxton, a bright lad according to his abbot. Now his head has been turned by these gadgets, by all this talk of war. As I’ve researched these prophecies I’ve discovered they have a peculiarly corrupting effect on scholars and holy men who should know better. A priest called Sihtric, who lived through the Conquest. A scholar from Oxford called Peter, who was burned to death during the siege of Seville. And now this James. A waste of good brains, a steady seducing of souls away from God’s true purpose . . .’

They were walking down a broad street of trampled earth. This was a military camp, and in the low buildings around them the soldiers did what soldiers always did: ate, slept, wrestled, picked their feet, and complained about the food. There was a surprising number of Muslims here, talking to Christian officers in tight, tense groups. Even while the siege of Granada continued, Boabdil’s court was in negotiation with the Christian monarchs about the terms of his almost inevitable capitulation.

And Geoffrey spoke of Cristobal Colon.

‘Since the destruction of the manufactory, that day when Bartolomeo Colon was driven away from England with the stink of smoke in his nostrils, we have been winning the argument. Now we are approaching the culmination of years of work, Harry. Cristobal Colon has a thorough and well-worked-out case for his journey to the west.’

Harry said gloomily, ‘But Colon has plenty of enemies at court, who think he’s an obsessive buffoon, and sometimes it’s hard not to agree with them. And after all these years he’s growing sick of Spain. He thinks he’s being strung along. It’s said he’s planning to approach the King of France next.’