Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (34 page)

T
HE RED-HEADED BEARDLESS CAPTAIN
had not dismounted. Why is he still on his horse? This question was nagging Ubaydallah. His work over the last fifty years, as a manager of estates and human beings, had equipped him with an all too rare experience and knowledge which books alone can never provide. He had become an acute observer of human psychology. He had noticed that the captain had been cursed by his maker. His height, not an unimportant matter for a soldier, was not at all in keeping with his fierce disposition. He was stout and short. He could not be more than sixteen years of age. The facts, Ubaydallah was sure, could not be compensated for even by the officer’s military skills.

Once he had surmised this, Ubaydallah fell on his knees before the commander of the Christians. This act of self-abasement nauseated the villagers who had accompanied him. ‘Pig’s pizzle,’ one of them muttered under his breath. Ubaydallah was unworried by their reaction. He had made the captain feel tall. Nothing else mattered on that day. Years of service to the lords of the Banu Hudayl had prepared the steward well for the task he now sought to accomplish.

‘What is it you want?’ the captain asked him in a nasal voice.

‘My lord, we have come to inform you that the whole village is prepared to convert this very afternoon. All it requires is for Your Excellency to send us a priest and to honour the village by your presence.’

At first the request was greeted by silence. The captain gave no sign of life. He looked down through heavy-lidded, dark blue eyes at the creature kneeling before him. The captain had just turned sixteen, but he was already a veteran of the Reconquest. He had been commended for his courage during three battles in the al-Pujarras. His fearless savagery had brought him to the notice of his superiors.

‘Why?’ he snapped at Ubaydallah.

‘I do not understand, Excellency.’

‘Why have you decided to join the Holy Roman Church?’

‘It is the only true path to salvation,’ replied Ubaydallah, who was never renowned for discriminating between truth and falsehood.

‘You mean it is the only way to save your skins.’

‘No, no, Excellency,’ the old steward began to whine. ‘We Andalusians take a long time to decide anything. It is the result of being governed for hundreds of years by rulers who determined everything. On everything that mattered, they made our decisions for us. Now we are slowly beginning to make up our own minds, but it is not easy to discard an old habit. We are deciding for ourselves, but we take our time and we split hairs ...’

‘How many of you are there in the village?’

‘At the last count we were just over two thousand.’

‘Very well. I shall think of the most appropriate response to your proposal. You may return to your village and await our decision.’

Just as Ubaydallah was about to rise, the captain hurled another question at him and the steward went back on his knees.

‘Is it true that an old standard depicting a blue key on a silver ground above some gibberish in your language still hangs in the palace of Abenfarid?’

‘It does, Excellency. It was a gift from the King of Ishbiliya to one of the great ancestors of Ibn Farid. The inscription in Arabic reads: “There is no other Conqueror but God.”’

‘The key symbolized the opening of the West, did it not?’

‘Of that I am not sure, Your Excellency.’

‘Are you not? Well, I am,’ said the captain in his most aloof and arrogant tone, indicating that he did not wish this conversation to meander any longer. ‘The Archbishop wishes to inspect it with his own eyes. You may inform the family of Abenfarid that I will call on them to collect the banner. You may go now.’

After Ubaydallah and the others had left, the captain, still on his horse, rode over to the two officers who had been listening from a distance and instructed them to round up all the soldiers. He wished to address them before they went into the village. When the men had gathered, the captain began to address them. His tone was friendly but authoritative.

‘Our objective is simple. You will erase this village and everything that it contains. Those are my instructions. There are no more than six or perhaps seven hundred able-bodied men in the village. They are unlikely to put up even a token resistance. It is not a pleasant task, but soldiers are not trained to be kind and gentle. His Grace’s orders were very clear. Tomorrow morning he wishes to instruct the cartographers to obliterate al-Hudayl from the new maps which they are preparing. Is that clear?’

‘No!’ cried a voice from the middle of the throng.

‘Come forward, man.’

A tall, grey-bearded soldier in his early fifties, whose father had fought behind the banner of Ibn Farid, strode to the front and stood facing the captain.

‘What is it that you want?’

‘I am the grandson of a monk and the son of a soldier. Since when has it become a Christian practice in these lands to kill children and their mothers? I tell you here and now that this arm and this sword will not kill any child or woman. Do with me as you will!’

‘It is obvious, soldier, that you were not with us in the al-Pujarras.’

‘I was at Alhama Captain, and I saw too much. I will not go through that again.’

‘Then you would have seen their women pour pots of boiling oil on our men. You will carry out your orders or suffer the consequences.’

The soldier became obstinate.

‘You have said yourself, Captain, that you do not expect any resistance. Why ask us to kill innocent people? Why?’

‘Old fool!’ replied the captain, his eyes flashing with anger. ‘You are not long for this world. Why be generous with our lives?’

‘I do not comprehend you, Captain.’

‘If you kill their men, the women and children will become filled with a blind hate of everything Christian. To save their lives they will convert, but it will be a poison. Do you hear me? A poison, permanently embedded in our skins. A poison which will become increasingly difficult to remove. Now do you understand?’

The old soldier shook his head in disbelief, but it was clear that he would not obey. The captain curbed his natural instincts. He did not wish to demoralize his soldiers just before they went into battle. He decided not to punish the mutineer.

‘You are spared your duties. You will return to Gharnata and await our return.’

The old soldier could not believe his luck. He walked to where the horses were grazing and untied his mount.

‘I will return,’ he said to himself as he rode away from the encampment, ‘but not to Gharnata. I will go where neither you nor your cursed monks can ever find me.’

The gates which breached the wall surrounding the house were the only point of entry to the ancestral home of the Banu Hudayl. They had been firmly sealed. Constructed of solid wood, four inches thick and reinforced with strips of iron, their function had been largely ceremonial. They were not built to withstand a siege. They had never been shut before, since neither the village nor the house was considered to be of any military significance. Ibn Farid and his ancestors had gathered knights and soldiers under their command from this and surrounding villages. They had assembled outside the gates and marched off to wars in other parts of the kingdom.

When Ubaydallah had conveyed the young captain’s message, Umar had smiled grimly and understood. This was not the time for the flamboyant gestures which had caused the death of so many members of his own family. He had ordered that the banner of the silver key on a sea of blue be removed from the wall in the armoury and hung over the gates.

‘If that is all they want,’ he told his steward, ‘let us make it easy for them.’

Several hundred villagers had sought refuge behind the walls of the house. They were being fed in the gardens, while the outer courtyard was filled with children playing games, blissfully unaware of the evil that was stalking them. Yazid had never known the house so full or so noisy. He had been tempted to join in the fun, but decided instead to retreat to the tower.

Like everyone else, Ubaydallah had been offered the sanctuary of the house, but he preferred to return to the village. Something deep inside told him he would be safer in his own house, independent of the family he had served for so long. In this he was tragically mistaken. Even as he was walking back to the village, a cavalryman, egged on by his friends, unsheathed his weapon and sword-arm raised, charged towards the unsuspecting Ubaydallah. The steward had no time to react. Within seconds, his head, neatly severed from his body, lay rolling in the dust.

Yazid was tugging at his father’s robe. Umar had just given orders for the armoury to be unlocked and arms handed out to all able-bodied men and women. Zubayda had insisted that they would fight. Memories of al-Hama were burned into her consciousness.

‘Why should we wait helplessly for them, first to despoil our bodies and then thrust their swords in our hearts?’

‘Abu! Abu!’ Yazid’s voice was insistent.

Umar picked him up and kissed him. This spontaneous display of affection pleased the boy, but also annoyed him, since he was trying so hard to be a man.

‘What is it, my child?’

‘Come to the tower. Now!’

Zubayda sensed the tragedy. She refused to let Yazid return to the tower with his father.

‘I need your help, Yazid. How do I use this sword?’

The distraction worked. Umar ascended the stairs alone. The higher he climbed, the more quiet it became. And then he saw the carnage. The houses had been set on fire. He could see the litter of bodies, near where the mosque had stood. The soldiers had not completed their task. They were riding up the nearby hills in pursuit of those who had attempted escape. As he strained his ears, Umar thought he heard the sounds of wailing women, punctuated by the howling of dogs, but soon there was complete silence. The fires were blazing. Death was everywhere. He looked at a map of the village on the table through a piece of magnifying glass. It was too much, and he let the glass drop to the floor and shatter. Now Umar bin Abdallah dried his eyes.

‘The broken glass has no saviours,’ he told the two servants who had been keeping watch. They stood in place like statues, observing the grief that had overcome their master. Words of comfort were on their tongues, never to be spoken.

Umar slowly descended the stairs. From the tower he had surveyed everything. There was no longer any room for doubt. He cursed himself for not having permitted Yazid to go with his sister. As he reached the giant forecourt he was greeted by an eerie silence. The children had stopped playing. No more food was being eaten. All was still, except for the occasional noise of the blacksmith sharpening swords. They had all caught sight of the fired village and now sat on the ground, watching the flames melt into the setting sun on the horizon. Their homes, their past, their friends, their future, everything had been destroyed. The vigil was interrupted by a woeful cry from the tower.

‘The Christians are at the gates!’

Everyone was galvanized into action. The older women and children were sent into the outhouses. Umar took the Dwarf to one side.

‘I want you to take Yazid and hide with him in the granary. Whatever else happens, do not let him come out unless you are sure that they have gone. May Allah protect you.’

Yazid refused to be parted from his parents. He argued with his father. He pleaded with his mother.

‘Look,’ he said, waving a blade which the blacksmith had prepared for him. ‘I can use this sword as well as you.’

It was Zubayda’s entreaties which finally moved him to accompany the Dwarf. He had insisted on taking his chess pieces with him. When these had been retrieved, the cook took him by the hand and led him towards the formal garden. Beyond it, just below the wall, there was a cluster of trees and plants of every variety. Close by, carefully camouflaged by a circle of jasmine bushes, was a small wooden bench. As the Dwarf lifted it, the stone on which it was placed rose as well.

‘Down you go, young master.’

Yazid hesitated for a second and looked back at the house, but the Dwarf nudged him and he began to climb down the tiny stair. The cook followed, carefully replacing the cover from below. In these dark vaults there was enough wheat and rice to feed the whole village for a year. These were the emergency stocks of al-Hudayl, to be used if the crops failed or in the case of unforeseen calamities. The Dwarf lit a candle. Tears were pouring down Yazid’s face.

Above the ground, everything was now ready to receive the Christian soldiers who were now using battering rams to break down the gates. When the doors finally gave way, the first soldiers rode into the forecourt, but this was simply an advance party and their captain was not at their head. The rapid destruction of the village, and the fresh corpses which their horses had trampled over in order to reach the house, had engendered in them a false sense of security.

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.