And there was the great mosque, with the cross of Christ fluttering on banners above its gates. There could not have been a clearer symbol of the Reconquest. Just six years earlier Cordoba itself had at last submitted to the armies of the Castilian king Fernando III, and the most beautiful mosque in al-Andalus had been reconsecrated as a Christian church.

Peter walked out of the centre of the city, looking for the home of Subh, the sponsor of his scholarship.

The house was well appointed in the old style, a remnant of the Moorish past. The gate was open, and he walked through an elaborate archway into a small but neat patio, where vines clung to slim pillars, and pot plants stood like soldiers around a pond where fish swam and a small fountain bubbled. Peter, in his woollen tunic and with his pack on his back, dusty from the road, felt shabby.

A woman came striding out of a doorway. A small crowd of men followed her, perhaps a dozen, mostly younger than her. They were nervous, agitated, and they chattered in dense Arabic. With his bright blond hair and blue eyes, Peter felt even more out of place.

When the woman saw Peter she stopped dead. ‘Who are you?’

She was taller than Peter, and aged perhaps forty, judging from the lines that gathered around her full mouth. But her hair was as dark as her eyes, her cheeks were high and her nose strong, and there was a sway to her ample hips that was almost animal. Peter was twenty-two years old and a virgin. He was overwhelmed by her primitive force.

He bowed hastily, but in the process his pack tumbled over his shoulder and clouted him on the head. Some of the younger men sniggered. ‘I am Peter,’ he said nervously. ‘A scholar from Toledo. We have been corresponding.’

‘We’ve been more than just corresponding, Peter of Toledo,’ she said. ‘I’ve been paying your wages for the last year, and I’ve kept you alive from the look of your scrawny frame. Well, you evidently know who I am.’

‘You are the lady Subh, who—’

‘Oh, straighten up, man, I can’t abide bowing and scraping.’

There was an amused glint in her eye that told him she knew exactly the effect she was having on him. He said, even more confused, ‘I have brought the fruits of my studies into the history of your family—’