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XI

As they rode steadily south-west and closed on Seville, the caravan entered Muslim lands.

Before the city they came upon an extensive Moorish army camp. It was a town of tents, men, horses, mules and camels, planted near the river bank; flags bearing the crescent hung limply in the heavy air. Weapons were piled up in huge mounds, shields and crossbows and spears supplied by the factories of Seville. Peter could hear the pounding of war drums, not coordinated but still a chilling sound, like distant thunder.

A party of troops rode out to meet the caravan, an officer and a small escort of hard-eyed desert horsemen. The officer wore a coat of quilted felt over mail armour, while the horsemen wore white robes and turbans; they carried spears and shields shaped like hearts. Subh had a letter, a conduct of safe-keeping from the emir in Seville. After an exchange of gifts – a bag of gold from Subh, some water carriers from the soldiers – the troops rode off back to their camp.

The muleteers made a wide detour away from the river to avoid the soldiers, and Peter was relieved, for everybody knew that the best-controlled soldiers were always liable to a little plunder, robbery and rapine. But he studied the camp, fascinated at the sight of a genuine Moorish army. It was odd that there were no wheeled vehicles to be seen, but along with mules the horses were gathered in great herds – imported from the Balearic islands, said Ibrahim, only the best for the army. And out of the ranks of the horses and mules rose the necks of haughty camels, brought over from Africa.

The core of the army was made up of levies raised on the provinces of al-Andalus, or what was left of it – cavalry from Granada, for instance. Ibrahim pointed to groups of soldiers with dark faces, 'the silent soldiers' he called them dismissively, many of them Berbers who spoke no Arabic. But the most ardent fighters of all, said Ibrahim, were the volunteers who came here from across the Islamic world to 'the land of the jihad', as many Muslims called Spain. It was just as the crusading armies were made up of volunteers from across Christendom. Peter was awed to imagine the energies of two continent-spanning civilisations focused here on this place, this point in space and time.

The caravan was allowed to enter Seville without incident.

The city was more of a sprawl than Cordoba, and had long eclipsed its illustrious rival, becoming the capital of the Almohad rulers of al-Andalus. And, though Cordoba had fallen, this remained a Muslim city, not a Christian one; the crescent flew high over the domes and minarets, not the cross, and there was nothing plaintive about the muezzins' calls to prayer.

But there was evidence of the Christian Reconquest even here. Where Cordoba had seemed depopulated Seville struck Peter as very crowded. The towns and cities of the south had had to absorb the floods of refugees from the grinding advance of the Christian armies, and Subh said that she believed the population of the city might have doubled since the fall of Cordoba.

And it was a city under threat. Seville had the natural advantage that the Guadalquivir was navigable from the sea as far as this point, but that brought a certain vulnerability. So, near the heart of the city, two squat towers faced each other across the river. A massive chain stretched between them, that could be winched up to span the river to block the passage of threatening ships. Peter was taken by the brutal simplicity of the device.

As they threaded through the city Peter glimpsed the courtyard of the great mosque, crowded with fakirs and imams, and with the faithful who performed their ritual ablutions in the many fountains. It scarcely seemed conceivable that beneath the feet of those swarming faithful could be ancient plans for deadly weapons, plans lost and buried for more than a century, while this shining mosque had mushroomed over them.

Despite the overcrowding Subh had been able to secure a house, smaller than the one she had had to abandon in Cordoba but with a decent patio and fair-sized rooms, and not far from the great mosque. Here, once she had paid off her muleteers, she lodged herself, with Ibrahim and a few of her many family members.

And she gave a room to Peter. He peeled off his travel clothes with relief. He imagined he had sweated away half his body's weight into the fur of his wretched, patient mule. That night, in an airy room and on a soft pallet, out of the iron stink of the desert, he slept more deeply than he had since he was a child.