‘And,’ Ibn Hafsun said, faintly mocking as always, ‘there was a menagerie stocked with exotic animals from Africa and Asia, and an aviary, and fishponds like lakes.’

Orm said, ‘So if it was all so magnificent, what happened?’

Ibn Hafsun said, ‘The Berbers smashed it up. Those black-eyed savages of the desert.’

‘I blame al-Mansur, who brought the Berbers here from Africa in the first place,’ said Sihtric.

‘He who stole the bell of Saint James,’ Robert said.

‘Yes. A vizier who, under a negligent caliph, built a private army, gorged on wealth, and attacked the Christians. And in doing so he fatally undermined the caliphate itself. Al-Mansur! What greed! What arrogance! What folly! What suffering he caused!’

‘The people loved him, of course,’ Ibn Hafsun said drily.

Moraima said to Robert, ‘It is said that the fish in the ponds needed twelve thousand loaves of bread every day to feed them. Maybe they should have employed your Jesus as a baker, just as when He fed the five thousand!’ She laughed gaily.

Robert grew hot. ‘That’s blasphemy.’

Sihtric said, ‘Yes, well, the Pope’s a long way away. Come now, we’re keeping the vizier waiting.’

They rode on.

One part of the ruined palace compound had been roughly walled off. They left their horses here and were met by a servant, a shaven-headed man of perhaps forty, who led them further on foot. The servant said nothing, but treated the Christians to withering looks of contempt. Robert grew angry, but Orm whispered, ‘Smooth as snot, isn’t he?’ That made Robert laugh.

Some effort had been made to restore the buildings in this part of the compound. The paths and patios had been cleared, and the ponds scraped clean of rubble. But there was no water, save that brought in pots by servants from the river. The Berbers, in their gleeful orgy of destruction, had wrecked the aqueducts that had once fed the clogged fountains.

They were brought through a series of rooms which were more or less intact. They were box-shaped, almost cubes, with open archways connecting one to the other, so that for Robert it was like wandering through a puzzle. The walls were covered with fine tiles up to about shoulder height, and above that the surface was rich with filigree and intricate plaster mouldings. The arches especially, some of them double or triple, were very finely made. All the rooms gave onto a patio or a garden, and the bright light reflected through the arches, filling the rooms with a golden glow. It struck Robert that there was not one human image to be seen in the decoration, not one face or figure. But the Prophet’s words were etched in long stripes around the walls and over the curves of the arches, so each room was like a page from a vast book. It was a written building.