As they journeyed along the course of the great river, Robert was distracted by the changing landscape. Al-Andalus might have declined since the end of the great days of the caliphate and the fitnah, but there was prosperity here. Huge ships sailed the length of the river, laden with goods. Near Seville the land was heavily farmed. Plantations of sugar cane sprawled amid ranches and stud farms where tremendous herds of horses flowed.

As they travelled, each morning Moraima was ill.

The two of them spoke little. Moraima was immersed in her loss and the churning of the new life inside her body. And Robert, brooding on Orm’s death, his head full of the stern strength of his new faith, found he had nothing to say to her. In the evenings, in taverns or camped out in the open, Ibn Hafsun watched them sitting apart in silence, and sighed, and rolled over in his blanket to sleep.

Seville itself was bustling, prosperous under the Abbadids, the ruling family. Ibn Hafsun said that the river was navigable from the sea to this point, making Seville a natural port. There was a fortress here, built centuries ago by Cordoban governors. Now it was being extended by the Abbadids into a palace to be called al-Murawak - ‘the Blessed’. If Cordoba’s great days were over, it appeared that Seville’s still lay ahead.

They came to a place a little way to the north and west of the fortress walls, where a small mosque stood. Ibn Hafsun said, ‘You say Sihtric spoke of a great mosque to be built in Seville. If it is to be built anywhere, I judge it will be just here, for the position, close to the palace, is ideal.’ He glanced around at the somewhat shabby mosque, the tangled streets. ‘It’s unprepossessing now. But it would be fascinating to come back in a century or two, and see what time has made of this place.’

Robert glanced at Moraima. ‘We should make plans,’ he said. ‘Ibn Hafsun has brought us this far. Now it’s up to us.’

‘I have family in the city, on my mother’s side,’ Moraima said. ‘The aunt who would have raised me. We could stay with her. She wouldn’t betray us. She never liked grandfather much.’

‘Or—’

‘Yes?’

‘Or we could take a ship for England.’

They eyed each other. Moraima’s face was full of her loss, of her father and grandfather. A loss that, perhaps, she blamed him for, in some indirect way.

And Robert saw her from a distance, as if through a window of stained glass.