An Odor of Sanctity — Frank Yerby

9th century Iberian Peninsula - an age of brutal battles to the death and dungeons equipped with thumbscrews and spiked boots. An age of perfumed harems where acts of love were spiced with the erotic mysteries of the Orient. a time when merchants, princes, thieves and whores, Christians, Islamic Arabs, Berbers, Yemenites, Greeks and Jews were trapped in an inferno of embattled peoples and faiths.

Only such an age could have spawned Spaniard Alaric Teudisson - the mighty Visigoth nobleman whose extraordinary capacity for love was matched only by the violence of his destiny. Young Alaric Teudisson, has a fair, effeminate appearance and even an odor of netity. But beneath this milky exterior beats the heart of a lion. When he sets out to revenge his brother upon some Berbers, Alaric winds up as a page in the Alcazar, which is ruled by Islamites. Eunuchs, slave girls, homosexual princes abound. Named by the Moors Aizun ibn al Qutiyya, is seemingly touched by the hand of God. He was once warrior and scholar, saint and savage.