When Peter crossed the city on the day of her departure, the air was already hot, the sun intense, even so early in the morning. It had been late spring when Peter had arrived in Cordoba, with his mixture of hope and devastating bad news for Subh. Now it was midsummer and the fresh greenness had burned away, leaving the city parched and dusty, the blossom fallen, the patio gardens weary.

At the house Subh had already flung open the gates. Goods were heaped up in the narrow road: bags and packs and rolled-up carpets and wall hangings, even pot plants from the patio. Subh’s household, with the usual gaggle of relatives, milled around. It was a day of defeat for Subh, of course. But she seemed as serene as always as she glided through the crowd, resolving disputes, solving problems, managing this last project in Cordoba as efficiently as she had handled all the other details of her life.

And as Subh supervised the abandonment of her home, Alfonso ‘the Fat’ and his ratty little granddaughter stood and watched. Alfonso didn’t try to hide the look of triumph on his face.

The fleecing of departing Moorish refugees had become something of an industry in the conquered city. There seemed to be endless tithes to pay before you could get one mule-load of goods outside the walls. And Christians, never Muslims, were encouraged to buy up abandoned businesses and properties, usually at prices ruinous to the Muslim owners.

Even so Peter had been surprised when Subh sold her property to Alfonso, her rival.

But she had told Peter she was glad to do it. ‘Alfonso was so determined to push my face into the dirt that he outbid everybody else and paid too much. Not as much as I’d have made if I’d sold up ten or fifteen years ago, before the siege, but far more than I expected. So let him have his victory; let him watch me walk away, no doubt fiddling with himself under that ugly cloak in his excitement. I’ll take the fat fool’s money.’

Muleteers drove their animals into the street to join the chaos, and gradually the backs of the patient beasts were loaded up. Peter, in his travelling clothes and carrying his pack, tried to master the mule he had to ride. It was a surly, truculent slab of muscle with sharp bristly fur and a stink of dried dung, and it was resolutely uninterested in Peter’s plans for it.

Subh said to him, ‘You don’t have to come, you know. After all we are travelling out of the Christian territories. You could return to Toledo, and burrow back into your libraries like a worm into a book. If you decide to come with us you will leave behind everything you know, everything that is familiar.’