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and I recognised his writing. Oh, Sihtric lives. I’m sure of that.’
    And he shared a look with Robert, for the central truth went unsaid: what had drawn them here was Orm’s story of the ‘Testament’ spoken by Eadgyth, Robert’s mother, when Orm had first found her hiding from Normans in a hole in the ground. Now, after years of saving and preparation, Orm was ready to fulfil her command to seek out Sihtric.
    Robert only half believed all this. But when he had been very young his mother had drifted away to the old church of Saint Agnes near York, now rebuilt by the Normans, and had crawled back into that hole in the ground, ignoring her distracted husband and distressed young son. And Robert had been only six years old when she died, her lungs ruined by her years of flight from the Normans.
    Ibn Hafsun watched the silent exchange between them, and Robert saw a calculating curiosity in those pale eyes. ‘Well, you’re here, Robert, whatever the motivation. So what do you think of the country?’
    ‘Not much. It’s like England.’
    Ibn Hafsun laughed. ‘I won’t deny that. Yes, this comer is like England or Ireland. Wet, windy, dominated by ocean weather from the west. But very little of the peninsula is like this. You’ll see.’
    ‘I think he’s not quite sure what a “peninsula” is, Ibn Hafsun,’ Orm said.
    ‘At least tell me this: what do you call the land to which you have come?’
    ‘Spain,’ Robert snapped back.
    ‘Ah. Well, it’s had many names. The Romans called it Iberia, named for a river, the Ebro, which drains into the Mediterranean. Later they called it Betica, after another river that drains to the west into the Ocean Sea - the river that runs through Cordoba, in fact. Later still it became known as Hispania, or Spain, after a man called Hispan who once ruled here - or perhaps it was named for Hesperus, the evening star. Many of these names were invented by even older people, of course, the folk who lived here before the Caesars came. And the Moors call it al-Andalus.’
    ‘The Moors are in the south,’ Robert said. ‘They never came here.’
    ‘Didn’t they?’ Ibn Hafsun grinned. ‘Once there was but a tiny salt crystal of Christianity in a cupful of Islam, here in the north, after the Moors overran the peninsula in just a few years. And once, oh, this is only a century ago, a great Moorish vizier called AI-Mansur sacked this very city and carried off the bells of Saint James’s church to Cordoba where they rest to this day.’
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ Robert said.
    ‘About what?’
    ‘That the Moors took only a few years to overrun the whole of Spain. The Romans would have pushed them back.’
    ‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ Ibn Hafsun said. ‘It was only a hundred years after the death of the Prophet. The kings then were not Roman, for the empire had lost the west, but Gothic. We ruled as the Romans did, or better, for centuries. But we could not stand before the Moors.’
    Orm asked, ‘Why do you say “we”?’
    Ibn Hafsun said proudly, ‘My family were Gothic counts. Our family name was Alfonso.’
    ‘Like the King,’ Robert said.
    ‘In my great-grandfather’s time we converted to Islam, and took an Arabic name. The Moors call the likes of us muwallad, which means “adopted children”. And now I find myself a left-behind Muslim in what is once again a Christian kingdom. You see, history is complicated.’ He smiled, a Muslim with blue eyes and blond hair.
    Robert said rudely, ‘If your family were once counts, why are you reduced to escorting travellers for pennies?’
    Behind him a new voice said, ‘Because in al-Andalus, it’s hard for anyone but a Moor to get rich.’
    Robert turned. A man approached them, short, not strong-looking, with a pinched face worn with age. He wore a modest priest’s black habit, and his tonsure was cut raggedly into a scalp that was losing its hair. A girl followed him, in a simple flowing gown. She had her face downcast