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.'