All this I have witnessed
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?'
