And Sihtric jumped up at the wall, grabbed an oil lamp, and hurled himself on the heap of manuscripts in the corner of the room. The lamp broke under him, and fire blossomed around him, licking eagerly over the stacked scrolls and books, and Sihtric’s robe. Ibn Tufayl let out a bellow of drunken despair, and threw himself at the fire. Orm grabbed him, whether to hold him back or to wrestle him Robert couldn’t tell. But in a moment the two of them had toppled into the blaze on top of the squirming priest.

It had only taken a heartbeat. The room filled with smoke. The screams of the three men were high and terrible. Moraima lunged forward, but Robert held her.

The guards ran into the room. Some of them tried to drag the bodies from the pyre, only to be burned themselves and driven back, and others, with more presence of mind, ripped hangings off the walls and hurled them on the fire. The smoke was dense now, and, his lungs seared, Robert began to cough.

‘Robert. Hsst. Robert!’ The voice carried to Robert through the roaring of the blaze, the panicky shouts of the Berber guards. Ibn Hafsun the muwallad stood in an archway, only dimly visible through the billowing smoke. ‘Let’s get out of here. Bring the girl. Move, while you have a chance. Come on!’

Dragging an inert Moraima, Robert hurried that way. The guards were too occupied with the blaze, and the smoke too thick, for them to be seen and stopped.

But as he reached the arch the little serving girl stopped him. ‘Please,’ she said in heavily accented Latin. ‘Please!’

Robert, anxious, tried to get past. But, her face soot-streaked, a burn livid on her right arm, she held up a scorched scroll, wrapped in an animal skin. She pointed at the blaze. ‘Priest, priest!’

Robert grabbed the scroll and ran out, dragging Moraima, following Ibn Hafsun.

XXIV

XXIV

Ibn Hafsun, Robert and Moraima slipped out of Cordoba. They rode down the Guadalquivir towards Seville, a bigger city where, Ibn Hafsun said, it would be easier for them to lose themselves, while the fuss died down.

Ibn Hafsun was vague about why he had saved them. ‘I brought you across Spain, Robert, for a fee. I suppose I’ve always felt responsible for you. I didn’t mean to lead you into such peril - and nor did I mean to play a part in the deaths of Sihtric and Orm.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Robert said.

‘Perhaps not. But I’m a muwallad, Robert. A Muslim, but with a healthy dose of ancestral Christian guilt left in my bloodstream.’