Robert, hugely relieved to be getting away from Sihtric and the vizier and all their murky compromises, followed Moraima to the door.

But as he passed his father, Orm whispered, ‘Just be careful.’

XVIII

XVIII

Outside the light of the low afternoon sun seemed dazzling bright. The guard stood just a pace away, his arms folded, glaring.

Robert faced the girl. ‘Moraima, I—’

‘Hush. Don’t talk. Not here.’

They walked across the palace compound. They soon reached ruins, for only a fraction of Madinat az-Zahra had been restored to habitability by the vizier’s workmen. But Moraima knew the way, and led Robert further. Following rubble-strewn paths they came to a complex of high walls and fallen roofs, where tiles and broken stucco littered a weed-cracked floor. ‘Once a harem,’ Moraima whispered. ‘Complicated place. Easy to get lost. Come on.’ She took his hand, and they ran, turning left then right and doubled back, hurrying between high walls and across empty, broken floors. Robert soon became lost himself, even though the afternoon sun hung as a constant beacon in the sky.

And before long the vizier’s guard had been completely left behind.

She brought him to a ruined patio. Weeds clogged ponds long since stagnant, wiry little bushes pushed through cracks in the paving stones, and palms had outgrown the gardeners’ neat configurations and gone wild. The walls of the rooms here were burned out and open to the sky. But some of the arches still stood, still serving as doorways to this secret garden.

For Robert, walking into this place with Moraima at his side was a fulfilment of the overheated, fragmentary fantasies he had had since he first arrived in Cordoba.

They found a stone bench and sat. A small bird fluttered away, disturbed. Somewhere a guitar played, and a thin voice sang a plaintive song.

‘I like it here,’ Moraima said. ‘Even though nobody has touched it for fifty years. I like the idea that a place can be beautiful even when the people have vanished, that things will go on when all our fussing and fighting is over. If this is all we leave behind when we’ve gone, a pretty place where the birds can nest, perhaps that’s enough.’

He took her hand. In fact it felt like a bird in his palm, the bones thin, fragile, the flesh warm. ‘That’s a melancholy thought.’

She smiled, enigmatic. ‘But you’ve seen how I live. They say they love me, the two of them.’

‘Sihtric and Ibn Tufayl.’

‘Father and grandfather. I sometimes think that all they do is use me to hurt each other. And sometimes, it’s awful, sometimes I think they don’t love me at all. That they blame me for killing my mother, who they both loved more than they love me.’