Suddenly they noticed Moorish knights, also on horseback, poised for action on both their left and right flanks. The intruders tried to race through the forecourt into the outer courtyard, but they were not fast enough. Umar and his improvised cavalry unit bore down with blood-curdling cries. The Christians, unprepared for resistance, were slow to react. Each one was unhorsed and killed. A loud cheer and cries of ‘Allah is Great’ greeted this unexpected triumph.
The bodies of the dead soldiers were loaded on to their horses and the animals were whipped out of the forecourt. There was a long wait before the next encounter, and the reason soon became obvious. The army from Gharnata was widening the breach in the wall so that they could charge three abreast through the gate.
Umar knew that it would not be so easy the next time. ‘It is our downfall,’ he told himself. ‘All I can see now is death.’
Barely had this thought crossed his mind when he heard the tones of a voice not yet fully broken: ‘No mercy on the infidels.’ It was the captain himself, at the head of his soldiers. This time they did not wait for the Moorish attack, but charged straight at the defenders. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting was the result, with the courtyard resounding to the noise of clashing steel and the thud of blows, intermingled with screams and alternating cries of ‘Allah is Great’ and ‘For the Holy Virgin, for the Holy Virgin!’ The Moorish archers stationed on the roof could not use their crossbows for fear of hurting their own side. The Moors were outnumbered and their resistance was soon bathed in blood.
Umar’s horse was hamstrung and the fall concussed him. Soldiers dragged him to the captain. As the two men looked at each other, the captain’s eyes gleamed with hatred. Umar dispassionately studied his young conqueror.
‘You see before you the wrath of our Lord,’ said the captain.
‘Yes,’ replied Umar. ‘Our village emptied of its people. Women and children put to the sword. Our mosques given to the flames and our fields desolated. Men like you remind me of the fish in the sea who devour each other. These lands will never be prosperous again. The blood I see in your eyes will one day destroy your own side. There is only one Allah and he is Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.’
The captain did not reply. He looked at the soldiers on either side of his prisoner and nodded. They did not need further urging. Umar bin Abdallah was forced to his knees. Then the archers struck. Two arrows found their targets as Umar’s would-be-executioners were felled. The captain screamed: ‘Burn this place down.’ Then he ordered two other soldiers forward, but by this time Umar had caught up a sword from one of the fallen men and was fighting once again.
It took six men to recapture the chief of the Banu Hudayl. This time he was beheaded at once, and his head skewered on the point of a pike. After being paraded round the forecourt it was taken into the outer courtyard. Screams and wails burst forth, followed by cries of anger and the clash of blades.
An archer who had witnessed Umar’s death ran from the scene and informed Zubayda. Tears poured down her face. She took a sword and joined the defenders in the courtyard outside.
‘Come,’ she shouted at the other women, ‘we must not let them take us alive!’
The women, to the great astonishment of the Christians, displayed a boundless courage. These were not the weak and pampered creatures of the harem about whom they had been told so many fanciful stories. Once again it was the element of surprise which aided the women of al-Hudayl. They were responsible for decreasing the size of the captain’s army by at least a hundred men. Ultimately they succumbed, but with swords and daggers in their hands.
After two hours of fierce fighting, the killing was done. All of the defenders lay dead. Weavers and rhetoricians, true believers and false prophets, men and women, they had fought together and died in view of each other. Juan the carpenter, Ibn Hasd and the old sceptic al-Zindiq had refused Umar’s offer to hide in the granary. They too, for the first time in their lives, had wielded swords and perished in the massacre.
The captain was angry at having lost so many men. He gave the order for the house to be looted and burnt. For another hour the men, drunk on blood, celebrated their victory in an orgy of plunder. The children, who had been hidden in the baths, were decapitated or drowned, depending on the mood of the soldiers involved. Then they set the old house alight and returned to their camp.
Lingering with his two aides, the captain now dismounted and sat down in the garden, watching the house burn. He took off his boots and dangled his feet in the stream which bisected the garden.
‘How they loved the water!’
Beneath the ground, Yazid would wait no longer. It had been silent for a very long time. The Dwarf insisted that the boy must stay, but he was adamant.
‘You stay here, Dwarf,’ he whispered to the old man. ‘I will go and see what has happened and then come back. Please don’t come with me. Only one of us should go. I’ll scream if you disobey me.’
Still the Dwarf would not budge and Yazid, feigning exhaustion, pretended to settle down again. As the grip on his arm relaxed just a little, he broke loose. Before the Dwarf could stop him he had climbed up the ladder and forced up the cover enough to slip through. When he stood up, it was to see a litter of corpses and his house on fire. The sight unhinged him. He lost all his fear and began to run towards the courtyard, screaming the names of his parents.
The captain was startled by the noise. As the boy ran through the garden, the two aides seized him. Yazid kicked and flailed.
‘Let me go! I must see my father and mother.’
‘Go with him,’ the captain told his men. ‘Let him see for himself the power of our Church.’
When he saw his father’s head impaled on a pike, the boy fell on his knees and wept. They could go no further because the flames were overpowering, as was the stench of burning bodies. If they had not held him back, Yazid would have rushed through the flames to find his mother and perished in the fire. Instead they dragged him back to the captain, who was now ready to mount his horse.
‘Well boy?’ he asked in a jovial tone. ‘Now do you see what we do to infidels?’
Yazid stared at him, paralysed by inexpressible grief.
‘Have you lost your tongue, boy?’
‘I wish I had a dagger,’ said Yazid in a strangely distant voice. ‘For I would run it through your heart. I wish now that many centuries ago, we had treated you as you have treated us.’
The captain was impressed despite himself. He smiled at Yazid and looked thoughtfully at his colleagues. They were relieved at his reaction. They did not have the stomach to kill the boy.
‘You see?’ he said to them. ‘Did I not say earlier today that the hatred of the survivors is the poison that could destroy us?’
Yazid was not listening. His father’s head was talking to him.
‘Remember, my son, that we have always prided ourselves on how we treat the vanquished. Your great-grandfather used to invite knights he had defeated to stay in our house and feast with him. Never forget that if we become like them, nothing can save us.’
‘I will remember, Abu,’ said Yazid.
‘What did you say, boy?’ asked the captain.
‘Would you like to stay at our house and be my guest tonight?’
The captain gave his aides the signal they knew only too well. Normally they carried out his orders at once, but it was clear that the boy had lost his mind. It was like cold-blooded murder. They hesitated. The captain, enraged, drew his sword and plunged it into the boy’s heart. Yazid fell to the ground with crossed arms. He expired on the spot. There was a half-smile on his face as the blood, full of bubbles, gurgled out of his mouth.