That the matter was serious there could be no doubt. We were facing the most formidable military alliance anyone could conceive. Apart from the danger to our realm, we both had much to lose personally. Yusuf held great power in his hands, but the rise of the Vice-Chancellor's Office was calling some of his prerogative into question. And now the King was to create a new post, that of Royal Chamberlain, with powers of supervision and control that extended over both Offices in all matters of finance, renewal of privilege and grants of land. He who gained this post would be second in power and influence only to the King's First Minister, the Emir of Emirs, who at that time was George of Antioch.

Yusuf wanted this post and on all hands he was spoken of as likely to obtain it. If he did, there was a good possibility that he would put my name forward to succeed him in his present position as Lord of the Diwan of Control. Then I would become rich like him, and have concubines, and white horses with gilded trappings, and Saracen attendants in uniform to make way for me in the streets, and a mansion of my own with gardens. I would inherit the marble frieze and the fretted ceiling and the breath that came through the moulded casement of the window. I would send others on missions to meet people like Lazar. Yusuf had never made promises to me, but I was close to him, though different in most respects. He was not a man to demonstrate great warmth of feeling, but I knew he had some tenderness for me.

In a few words now he told me what he had in mind for me. We were then near the end of April and the great pilgrimage to Bari in Apulia was already under way. From all over Europe, from Scandinavia and the Baltic, from Russia and the lands of the Slavs, bands of pilgrims were making slow convergence on the town of Bari for the Feastday of Saint Nicholas, to visit the church where his holy relics were kept and wet their lips with the miraculous oil which was exuded from his uncorrupted body and had power to heal the sick and the lame. I would join this throng, I would travel to Bari in the guise of a pilgrim and there I would meet Lazar and deny him the gold.

First, to lend natural colour to my setting out, I would go in my own person, and openly, to Calabria, and there I would purchase the small white herons that are trapped at this time of the year in the marshes that lie between the town of Cosenza and the sea. I would have them shipped back to Palermo to restock the Royal Falconry – the King liked to use these swift-flighted birds for his goshawks. This accomplished, I would cross the peninsula on horseback. At a distance from Bari I judged suitable I would leave the horse and proceed on foot with hood and staff and satchel and mingle with the crowds of the pilgrims.

"For the herons you must not exceed eight folles per bird," he said.

"And that includes the price of the cage."

I could not help smiling at this. No detail was too small for him; he must have been to the falconers to get this figure. "Supplying birds for the King's sport has never been among my duties as purveyor," I said.

"Why does the usual person not go?"

"I have enquired into it. The usual person was Filippo Maiella and he decamped with the money last year and has not been seen since. A highly respected man in the Diwan of the Protonotary, he went to Calabria year after year to buy these birds. Twelve years at least. Then last year, only Allah the All-Merciful knows why, who knows all things, he disappeared with the purchase money."

There was wonder in Yusuf's voice at a wildness so foreign to him, so much at odds with his own ordered life. "He walked away, he left everything," he said, and while the amazement still lingered in his voice I was assailed without warning by a demon, struck with sudden envy for this thievish Filippo. I knew it must be a demon who stabbed me thus: such a feeling could not dwell within me, who was always so careful, who counted every follaris of the King's money. "He must have taken leave of his senses," I said, thinking of him there, with the money in his purse, setting his face towards the mountains and the sea.

"It was thought at first that his guards had murdered him and hidden the dinars," Yusuf said. "They were watched, but such people do not wait long if they have money to spend, and it was soon clear that these had not."

"Where will the meeting with Lazar take place?"

"In the Basilica, beside the steps that lead down to the crypt."

"That will be his idea. The area round the steps will be crowded, the people will be jostling to get down to the crypt, to the tomb of the saint."

"No doubt that is his reason, In such a throng you will be the more likely to escape notice."

I looked at him in silence for some moments. His face wore its usual look of patient shrewdness. He was sending me. He did not want me to come to harm; he may not have had much faith in the results, may even have felt, with me, that standing still in a moving throng of people is not the best way to escape notice. But such missions formed part of the powers and prerogatives of his Diwan; they had to be exercised or they would be lost or expropriated, and that would leave him the weaker.

"Lord," I said, "I am ready to do anything you ask of me, no matter what, but it is a long way to go, just to show empty hands."

"We work by signs and gestures. Do you not know this yet? The money has the same importance whether it is absent or present. There is a verse in the Koran which speaks of this: "But that mankind would become one people we would have given those who denied merciful God silver roofs for their houses and stairways to mount to them."

I nodded as if I fully understood this, which was far from being the case. In fact, I was often at a loss to understand quotations from the Holy Book of the Moslems. I thought this one might mean that God did not set store by gold or silver, but I did not see the relevance of this, as we were talking about Lazar, who set great store by both.

"The pains we take are part of the message," Yusuf said. "He will have to take great care in making this clear to his own people, who will be angry with him, not with us, and who may be inclined to regard him as a spent force and seek to replace him. You see, Thurstan Beauchamp?"

He used my name always, my full name, when he knew I was opposed and he wished to create an understanding between us, as if I were a child, unwilling to see reason. And this annoyed me and touched me in equal measure, which I think he knew. When he had finished speaking he stood silent for a while. Tall and frail-seeming, with his slight, scholarly stoop of the shoulders, he more resembled one of the Arab artists and men of letters with whom our King loved to surround himself than what he was, mission-master, controller of the royal revenues, with a power that made him envied and feared, ruthless and devoted in serving this kingdom – a kingdom that his forbears had ruled for two centuries, ruled now by a Norman king, whose father and uncle had landed in Sicily as penniless adventurers and taken the island by conquest.

He started slightly now, as if he had forgotten something, or allowed himself too much pause, too much silence. Then he inclined his head, said a brief word of farewell to me and turned away. Thus dismissed, I left at once, this time not passing through the antechamber but stepping directly out into the passage, which followed the line of the wall facing towards the city. At the far end of this there were steps that led down in a spiral to the courtyard on this side. There was a narrow landing at the first curve of the staircase and in the recess of the wall an open casement with, at this hour of the day, sunlight slanting through it onto the steps and making a spill of light there. As I approached this I heard the wavering cries of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer from the balconies of minarets throughout the city. I understood now why Yusuf had been so abrupt in his farewell: it was the noon call, he had heard the first notes.