Orm eyed the guards. ‘I assume our guardians do not speak any English. But I wouldn’t be prepared to bet my life on it. Think about your words, Robert.’

‘Lovers?’ Sihtric sighed. ‘If only it were that simple . . .’

He said it all began with his own loneliness.

‘You must remember I came here as a scholar. My sketches of war machines intrigued the vizier, as I had hoped, and he gave me a small stipend. As I told you I had ways to make more bits of money independently, from selling Arabic translations of the Bible to Mozarabs, and from administering to their spiritual needs. And as I began to gain access to the libraries of the emir I developed my own interests, outside the narrow scope of Aethelmaer’s designs. Interests in the career of the Moors in Spain, for instance. And the secret history I discovered - well. That’s for another day, Orm, but we must speak of it, for it forms my whole purpose.

‘What I did not anticipate was that these small signs of independence on my part were troubling to a man like the vizier. These are fractured times in al-Andalus, a time of turmoil and threat. With enemies both within the taifa court and outside, the vizier needs to know whom he can trust. No, more than that: he can trust only those whose souls he owns entirely.’

‘And so,’ Orm said, ‘he set out to own you.’

‘Yes.’ Sihtric sighed again. ‘For he sees my weaknesses more clearly than I see them myself - you can ask my confessor, it’s true. I was alone, Orm. Nobody even cares about England here. To the Moors the civilised world stretches from Damascus to Cordoba, and Europe is a cold, dark place full of squabbling little statelets, far away and of no importance save as a source of slaves. And I am a man,’ he whispered, as if this were the worst confession of all. ‘A man alone, in an atmosphere of remarkable sensuality . . .’

The rulers of Seville, like some of the caliphs that went before them, were extravagant, indulgent, given to gesture and spectacle and pleasure. Their hedonism was spoken of throughout al-Andalus - indeed throughout the Muslim world. ‘Let me give you one example. There was a prince whose wife, a Christian from the north, wept because she missed the snows of winter, which she would never see again. So he ordered a legion of gardeners to transplant a whole forest of almond trees, in blossom, and move them to the square beneath her bedroom window. They did this at night, and in silence. And when she woke up, her husband was able to say, “There, my beloved, I have brought you your snow!” I can’t imagine William the Bastard making such a gesture, can you?’

Orm didn’t smile. ‘And so, in this atmosphere of indulgence, your soul softened.’