I and my mothers.
Send the Dove west! O, send him west!
Orm was unaccountably afraid of this naked, helpless woman. ‘What peacock, what dove? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Find him,’ Eadgyth said, and her voice was a hiss now.
‘Who?’
‘Sihtric.’
It was the name of Godgifu’s brother, the priest. He had not told Eadgyth of him. The name shocked Orm to his core. ‘But Sihtric is in Spain,’ he said weakly.
‘Find him. And stop him.’
Roger lost his nerve. He let go of the woman’s hair and she crumpled into a heap. ‘Screw her, kill her, or marry her, she’s all yours, Dane. I’m having no more of this.’ He turned and stomped off, massive in his armour, obsessively crossing himself.
The woman was huddled over on herself, her back bright with blood. Orm lifted her face with a gloved hand. Spittle flecked her lips, and he saw blood on her tongue. She had bitten it while speaking. He said, ‘Who are you? By whose authority shall I command Sihtric?’
She looked at him. ‘Orm?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Eadgyth. Only Eadgyth.’ She frowned. ‘I - have I fallen?’
‘Do you remember what you said to me?’
‘What I said... What’s happened to me, Orm Egilsson?’
He stood up. The bright February day became insubstantial around him, and a harsher light shone through its sparse threads. He remembered all Sihtric’s talk in the days before Hastings, the mystical babbling of a possibly heretical priest - talk about the tapestry of time, and how its weave might be picked undone and remade by a god, or a man with sufficient power. The Weaver, Sihtric had called him. And now Sihtric and his mysteries had returned to Orm’s life.
But on the ground before him was a woman, helpless, naked, shivering, bleeding. That was the reality. He reached up to his horse, pulled a blanket from the saddle, and draped it over her shoulders. The Norman soldiers, drunk on blood and rape, drawn by Roger’s gabbled account, gathered around curiously.
I
MUSTA’RIB AD 1085
I
The north Spanish country did not interest Robert, son of Orm.
Why should it? Green, damp, mild even in July, it was too like England. And besides, Robert, fourteen years old, believed that his soul yearned for spiritual nourishment, not for spectacle. So he was glad when he and his father reached Santiago de Compostela, the city of Saint James of the Field of Stars, where he would be able to prostrate himself among the flocking pilgrims before the tomb of the Apostle, Santiago Matamoros, James the Moorslayer.
As it turned out, it was not his soul he would give up in this city, but his heart, and not to the dusty bones of a saint, but to the sweet face of a half-Moorish girl.
The three of them, Robert, Orm and Ali Ibn Hafsun, their guide, sat on little stone benches in the shade of an apple tree, resting bodies weary from the day’s ride from the coast, and sipping a vendor’s sharp-flavoured tea. Saint James’s city was small, shabby, somewhat decayed, as if nobody had repaired a wall or fixed a broken roof tile since the departure of the Romans. But this little square bustled, as pilgrims in travel-stained dress queued to pay homage, children chased chickens, women shopped for food, and men in loose white clothes conducted business in various tongues.
And in the shadow of the squat church, camels groaned and jostled. The camels were extraordinary. Robert thought they looked wrong, somehow, as if put together from bits of other creatures.
Orm laughed at the camels. ‘I always heard that Africa starts on the other side of the Pyrenees. Now I know.’
Ibn Hafsun was studying Robert. About Orm’s age, somewhere in his forties, Ibn Hafsun dressed like a Moor, and yet he had greying blond hair and blue eyes. He seemed to sense Robert’s restlessness. ‘You are distracted, boy. I can see it in the way you gulp down that hot tea, the way your gaze roams over every surface, looking at all and seeing nothing.’
Orm had always said Robert had the spiritual soul of his long-dead mother, Eadgyth, who had once been a hermit. But Robert had the build and temper of his father, who was a soldier. ‘What’s it to you?’ he snapped back, fourteen years old, bristling.
Ibn Hafsun raised his hands. ‘I mean no offence. I am your guide in this strange country. That’s what I’m paid to do. And though I have delivered your body to this place, I’m doing a poor job if I allow your spirit to wander around like a chick that has lost its nest.’ He spoke an accented Latin dialect. Robert had expected everybody to speak Arabic, but there were two tongues in Spain, Arabic and this diverged version of Latin, which the people called aljami or latinia.
‘I’m not a lost chick.’
Ibn Hafsun smiled. ‘Then how do you think of yourself?’
‘I am a pilgrim. And I’m here in this city of Saint James to visit the tomb of the brother of Christ, who came here to die.’
Orm murmured, ‘You must forgive him, Ibn Hafsun. It’s the fashion these days to be pious. A generation after the Conquest, the English kings are forgotten and every boy in England wants to be a warrior of God like King William.’
‘But this is only a way station,’ Ibn Hafsun said innocently to Robert. ‘Your first stop in Spain. Your destination is Cordoba. And as I understand it you are here in Santiago to meet not a long-dead apostle, but a living priest.’
Robert snorted. ‘If it isn’t all some elaborate hoax, devised by some trickster to empty my father’s purse.’ They had quarrelled over the purpose of the journey many times in England.
Orm shifted on the bench. He was still a big man, but his body, battered and scarred from too many campaigns, was stiff, sore, uncomfortable even in rest. He said firmly, ‘I wrote to Sihtric, and he wrote back, 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 modestly.
Ibn Hafsun stood, and the others followed his lead. ‘Sihtric. The peace of Allah be on you. And your daughter.’
‘And God go with you too.’ The priest was a skinny man, Robert saw, but with a pot-belly that spoke of indulgence. He studied Orm, who towered over him. ‘Well, Viking. When did we last meet?’
‘William’s coronation. Nineteen years gone, or the best part of it.’
‘I wish I could say I was glad to see you. But life is more complicated than that, isn’t it? And this is your son.’ He turned to Robert, grinning. ‘The ardent pagan spawned a devout Christian. How amusing.’ He laughed out loud.
Robert was irritated to be spoken of in this dismissive way.
But then Sihtric’s daughter lifted her head and looked directly at Robert, and he forgot his irritation. Surely she was only a little older than he was. Her face was a perfect oval, the colour of honey, her lips full and red, her nose fine, and her eyes bright blue.
‘Her name,’ Sihtric said drily, ‘is Moraima.’
Robert barely heard him. He was already lost.
II
They stayed a single night in Santiago de Compostela, and then formed up into a party to ride south. They planned to travel all the way to Cordoba, no longer the capital of a western caliphate, but still the beating heart of Muslim civilisation in Spain.
And, Robert learned, ‘ride’ was the correct word.
They would all be on horseback, their goods carried on the backs of two imperious-looking camels. When they set off, Ibn Hafsun led the way. Robert was expected to bring up the rear, with his eye on these camels. He quickly found it was no joy to plod along immersed in camel farts and hot dust, with nobody to speak to.
What was worse was that the girl, Moraima, rode at the front alongside Ibn Hafsun, never closer than two or three horse-lengths from Robert.
‘For such an advanced civilisation,’ Sihtric observed, ‘the Moors are oddly reluctant to employ the wheel.’
Ibn Hafsun just grinned. ‘Who needs wheels when Allah gave us camels?’
‘So, a daughter,’ Orm said to Sihtric. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. She’s a beauty, priest.’
‘Ah, yes. There is beauty in my family, of a sturdy sort - as you know all too well, Viking, God rest my sister’s soul.’
‘And the mother is a Moor?’
‘Was. Moraima has grown up a Muslim.’
‘I thought the bishops discourage you priests from ploughing your parishioners.’
‘Well, she wasn’t my parishioner. And a man gets lonely, so far from home. You have to live with the people around you; you have to live like them. The Moors call me a Mozarab - Musta’rib, a nearly-Arab... The bishops are a rather long way from Cordoba, Orm.’
As the day wore away and the sun sailed over the dome of sky, the country changed gradually. They passed through the foothills of a sharp mountain range and crossed into drier land, dustier, where the grass was sparse or non-existent, and the hills were like lumps of rock sticking out of the dirt. The towns were tight little clusters of blocky houses the colour of the dust. In the land between the towns olive trees grew in swathes that washed to the horizon, and herds of bony sheep fled as they passed. The people here were different too, their skin darker, their teeth and eyes bright white. On the road they occasionally passed muleteers, hardy, wizened men driving little caravans of laden animals; the bells around the mules’ necks rang moumfully This was not like England, Robert thought.
As the afternoon darkened towards evening, they stopped at an inn. Ibn Hafsun handed over some coins, and they sat on upturned barrels in the shade of olive trees while a woman cooked for them over an open fire. She threw garlic, aubergines, peppers and flour-dipped anchovies into olive oil that spat in a hot pan. As the anchovies fried, a smell of the sea spread through the air.
Ibn Hafsun came to squat on a blanket beside Robert. He dipped bread into a bowl of something foul-smelling; it turned out to be sheep’s-milk cheese laced with crushed fruit. He offered some to Robert, but Robert refused.
Even here, Robert couldn’t get close to Moraima, who sat modestly with her father.
Not far from the road a party of boys worked through a grove of olive trees. They collected the fruit by throwing sticks up into the branches. They were skilful, each throw dislodging many fruit. It looked a good game, and Robert wished he were a couple of years younger so he could join in without embarrassment.
Sihtric and Orm began at last to speak of the business that had brought Orm here.
‘I told you of the Testimony,’ Orm said.
‘Your wife’s prophecy, before she was your wife. Who spoke my name to you, long before she could have known of my existence.’ Sihtric shivered. ‘It feels uncomfortable to be under such supernatural scrutiny But why did it take you fifteen years to get around to doing something about it?’
Orm shrugged. ‘I had a living to make. Funds to raise. A family.’ He glanced at Robert. ‘I considered forgetting about it, giving it up without ever coming here.’
‘So what changed?’
‘I met a traveller - a mercenary who had fought with King Alfonso in al-Andalus. And he told me a fragment of a Moorish legend. There was a line of Eadgyth’s prophecy I had never understood, amid much talk of doves and oceans.’
‘What line?’
‘“The tail of the peacock.” That was what she said. And that was what my traveller finally explained to me.’
Moraima smiled. ‘I understand. I have heard the story...’
According to an old Arab myth, she said, after the Flood the habitable lands of the world were shaped like a bird, with its head in the east and its arse in the west.
‘So much for what the Arabs think of western Europe,’ Orm remarked.
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