Johad served dishes of halva, platters of fresh figs, and a sherbet made from pressed lemons. Renard selected a fig. The halva was delicious, but it caused worm rot in the teeth and the taste of honey was sometimes too over-powering. Like this land, he thought. First it tempted you, then it dissolved into your bones, corroding them. Perhaps that was why he was longing for plain Norman fare and the cold, damp spring of the marches that made a fur cloak a necessity. A shiver of longing ran down his spine as he drank some of the cold, slightly bitter sherbet.

The discussion about women had ended in a decision to do more than merely discuss. ‘Want to come?’ asked de Lorys as he rose from the remains of his meal and brushed stray grains of rice from his silks. ‘One of the men was telling me they’ve got a new dancer at the Scimitar.’

‘Have they?’ Renard’s interest sharpened. The Scimitar was expensive but the girls were usually worth it.

‘A Turcopol girl. Blond in both places.’ De Lorys gestured eloquently and grinned.

Renard arched a sardonic eyebrow. ‘I won’t ask how your informant knows,’ he said.

The Scimitar was bursting at the seams when they arrived, but Renard was well known there, and the proprietor quickly found a place for him to sit and furnished him with a drink.

A youth with kohl-rimmed eyes and a painted mouth propositioned him. Madam FitzUrse, the proprietor’s wife, swatted the boy away in the direction of some Genoese sailors up from St Simeon and apologised. ‘Sometimes we get asked, and it doesn’t do to turn custom away,’ she said.

Renard smiled and raised his cup to her. ‘Business is business,’ he replied gravely.

She regarded him from the corner of a sly, bright eye. ‘Here to see our new dancer are you, my lord?’

Renard affected indifference. ‘I was dragged out by my men who were desperate to get their hands upon some vice after the monk’s life I’ve been making them lead. I am only here to regulate their excesses.’ Then he grinned. ‘But if you have a new dancer, I suppose I might watch.’

‘Hah!’ she nudged him with a meaty elbow. ‘You’ll do more than just watch!’ Forefinger and thumb came up to rub before his face. ‘I’ll warn you now, she’s not cheap. Cost you half a mark.’

‘If she is going to excite me enough to part with half a mark, I doubt I’ll last long enough to justify the expense,’ he said with amusement. ‘Try Ancelin or de Lorys.’

She looked shocked. ‘Would you give your best mare to a novice? Besides, they’ve already found themselves company.’ Patting his arm, she went to help her besieged husband who was refilling pitchers. ‘See me later when you change your mind,’ she called over her shoulder with cheerful confidence.

Renard stared round in search of his knights. Ancelin was in the act of disappearing out of the door with a plump Armenian girl who also sometimes danced. De Lorys was arm-wrestling another customer for the favours of a sultryeyed Syrian woman with a body as lush as the fertile plain of Sharon.

Several times he was approached by one or another of Madam FitzUrse’s girls, but although he knew most of them by name and some by a more intimate acquaintance, he turned them away, his mind dwelling in rank curiosity on the ridiculousness of paying half a mark to spend the night with a whore no matter her beauty or expertise.

Shortly before the dancing was due to start, he finished his drink and went outside to piss, and there, in the star-studded darkness of an eastern night, his present mood of nostalgia was consolidated with such force that for a moment he was totally disorientated.

A man’s voice spoke from the walled shadows, slurred with drink, but unmistakably using the Welsh tongue. A woman answered him in the same language, her voice low, husky and full of anger, and as Renard’s eyesight adjusted, he made out two figures standing close in argument. ‘I will not!’ she hissed. ‘The money is mine. I work for it and you’re not going to swill it down your gutter of a throat!’

‘You little whore, you’ll do as I say!’ The man’s fist wavered up.

‘Go swive yourself!’ Accurately she spat in his face and ducked under his arm. He made a grab for her enveloping dark robe and suddenly a dagger blade flashed in his hand as he wrenched her round to face him.

‘Your face is your fortune, girl!’ he snarled. ‘Don’t tempt me to ruin it.’

Renard set his hand to his own dagger hilt and took a forward pace, but before he could intervene, the girl made a sinuous movement and drew her own blade from within the voluminous folds of her robe. ‘Strike, then,’ she hissed. ‘Let us see who is the faster!’

Small bells tinkled daintily on her ankle bracelets and her feet were bare as she positioned them with feline precision.

Renard’s loins and belly contracted with an instinctive reaction to the dangers of a knife fight. The woman was holding her weapon competently, a gleaming silver crescent, and the man was staring at her in fuddled anxiety. Renard changed his mind about the identity of prey and victim.

‘Listen, lass, there’s no need—’

‘Piss-proud coward!’ she sneered, stepped again and struck. Metal grated on metal and in a circular motion the man’s knife spun like a falling star and puffed in the dust.

Weaponless, the man stared and swallowed. The woman’s feet wove across the ground and Renard caught a glimpse of spangled fabric as she shifted and struck again with the exquisite Saracen blade. Her victim howled and doubled up, clutching at his belly.

Deciding it had gone far enough, Renard shouted and strode towards them.

Startled, the woman looked up and across. Renard received the impression of huge, dark eyes and a chain of coins winking on a smooth, pale brow before she drew the hood of her robe around her face and, knife still in hand, melted into the deep shadows of a stone-arched entry that led into the back of the Scimitar.

‘Whore!’ the man gasped, still doubled over. ‘Conniving, ungrateful whore!’

Renard’s spine prickled. He stared towards the dark mouth of the entry and wondered whether he had really seen it happen or if his imagination was running wine-wild.

The man took one hand from his stomach and looked at the dark smear on his palm. ‘Bitch,’ he moaned. ‘No gratitude.’

‘It was what you deserved.’ Renard glanced round. Behind him he heard the tinkle of bells and the soft patpat of a drum. The dancing had started. ‘Is it bad?’

‘Course it’s bad!’ the man snarled. ‘Look what she’s done, the whore!’

Renard stared. Then he spluttered. The dagger had indeed caught the fool, but only the tip in a thin, red surface inscription. The mortal damage was to the string holding up the grey, stained chausses and whatever shreds of soused dignity the fool was striving to preserve.

Renard gave in to his laughter but was not so overcome that he did not see the man shuffling sideways, eyes to the ground. Reflexes entirely sober, Renard moved rapidly and closed his fingers on the haft of the fallen knife — once a serviceable but now sadly out-worn hunting dagger. The grip was dropping to pieces and the blade had been sharpened so often that it was wafer thin.

Angling his wrist, he struck at the wall, the full force of his right arm behind the blow. A blue spark flashed briefly, illuminating the weapon’s destruction as it shattered. Within the lean strength of his fingers, the grip came apart. He dropped the pieces on the ground, dusted his hands free of fragments and looked steadily at the drunk.

The man swallowed and licked his lips. ‘I was just leaving,’ he said and, clutching a bunched handful of his torn chausses, started hobbling away. He paused once and looked over his shoulder, but Renard still watched him, and with a grunt and a bemused shake of his head, he gave up and shambled off.

The drums pulsed sensuously. A cricket chirred on the wall beside Renard and there was a mark in the stone where the dagger had struck. He gazed at the pieces in the dust and felt uneasy. Nothing that could be pinned down and given form or reason, but he found himself wishing he had chosen not to visit the Scimitar tonight and almost followed the drunkard out into the street.

‘Renard?’ hissed de Lorys from the doorway.

He swung round.

‘Are you going to be out there all night? You’re missing the new dancer!’ He sounded as excited as a child.

The impulse to flee receded. Smiling ruefully at his own misgivings, Renard returned to the crowded interior of the tavern.

Being tall, he could see over the heads of most men. Ancelin was an exception and in his line of vision, but he eased in front of him, elbowing him in the belly when he protested. As he took his first glimpse of the Scimitar’s new dancing girl, he received his second shock of the night.

‘Is she not a beauty?’ muttered de Lorys.

‘Oh definitely,’ Renard responded with more than a hint of dry sarcasm. Beneath the mesh headdress with its head-band of bezants, her kohl-lined eyes were huge and dark, and her garments were of silk fabric, spangled with stars. Her mouth was sultry and as red as blood, and beneath her headdress, the hair that whipped her undulating body was the colour of sun-whitened wheat. Her skin was not the fair or rosy kind that typically accompanied such hair, but was as golden as spilt honey.

The dance she performed for Madam FitzUrse’s gawping customers was of the usual erotic order, guaranteed to send any newcomer to Outremer out of his mind with lust and fill with delight those who had only a passing acquaintance with the land. Men more experienced, who might usually have walked yawning, were riveted by her striking looks and by the way she cast her eyes around the throng like a lioness backed into a corner, one paw raised to strike.