Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE - Chained to the Land
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
PART TWO - Chained to the Nobility
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART THREE - Chained to Passion
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
PART FOUR - Chained to Destiny
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Author’s Note
More Praise for the #1 International Bestseller
CATHEDRAL OF THE SEA
"The passion and heartache, as well as the grit and grime, of medieval Spain come alive in ... this epic novel .... The saga is filled with colorful characters .... The backdrop is always dramatic ... a fantastic fourteenth-century fresco.”
—USA Today
“[It’s] soap opera on a grand scale, made believable and enthralling by the inclusion of the commonplace brutalities and small compassions of life in medieval Barcelona. Watching Arnau’s rise from literal rags to riches is frequently like watching a series of train wrecks; you’re horrified but can’t look away ....[The] plot ... is so beautifully structured that the last sixty pages detonate like a string of firecrackers ....[The] prose is powerful .... Falcones has an eye for the singular, telling detail, and ... his characters are ... believable ... a riveting story.”
—The Washington Post
“[An] absorbing epic ... Falcones’s rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A] sprawling medieval family saga.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“With Cathedral of the Sea, Ildefonso Falcones dethrones Eduardo Mendoza and Arturo Pérez-Reverte ... and has become Spain’s new Dan Brown.”
—El Mundo
“A new Ken Follett is born!”
—ADP (Spain)
New American Library
Published by New American Library, a division of
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Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Previously published in a Dutton edition.
First New American Library Printing, April 2009
Copyright © Ildefonso Falcones de Sierra, 2006
Translation copyright © Nick Caistor, 2008
Images on page 1, 2, 51, 52, 217, 218, 453, 454 courtesy of Liesbeth Vries
Map © Sergi Parreño
All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-440-63041-5
Falcones de Sterra, Ildefonao, 1959-
[Catedral de la mar. English]
Cathedral of the sea/by Ildefonso Falcones.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-440-63041-5
I. Title
PQ6656.A375C3813 2008
863.,64—dc22 2007046077
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To Carmen
Barcelona in the 14th Century
PART ONE
Chained to the Land
1
The year 1320
Bernat Estanyol’s farmhouse Navarcles, in the principality of Catalonia
BERNAT REALIZED NOBODY was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky. The weak late September sun played on the faces of his guests. He had put so much time and effort into preparing the feast that only bad weather could have spoiled it. He smiled up at the autumn sky, and when he looked down again, his smile broadened as he listened to the hum of happy voices in the cobbled courtyard that ran alongside the animal pens at the foot of his farmhouse.
His thirty or so guests were in high spirits: the grape harvest that year had been magnificent. All of them—men, women, and children—had worked from dawn to dusk harvesting the grapes, then treading them, without allowing themselves a single day’s rest.
It was only when the wine was ready to ferment in its barrels and the grape skins had been stored to distill their liquor during the slack days of winter that the peasant farmers could celebrate their September feast days. And it was then that Bernat Estanyol had chosen to be married.
Bernat surveyed his guests. Many of them had got up at dawn to walk the often great distances separating their properties from the Estanyol farmhouse. They were all enjoying themselves now, talking about the wedding, the harvest, or perhaps both things at once. Some of them, including a group where his Estanyol cousins and the Puig family were sitting, burst out laughing at a ribald comment directed toward him. Bernat felt himself blushing, and pretended to take no notice; he did not even want to think about what they might be laughing at. Scattered around the courtyard he could make out the Fontany family, the Vilas, the Joaniquets, and of course the bride’s relatives—the Esteve family.
Bernat looked out of the corner of his eye at his father-in-law. Pere Esteve was promenading his immense belly, smiling at some of those invited, saying a few words to others. Then he turned toward Bernat, who found himself forced to wave acknowledgment for the hundredth time that day. He looked for his in-laws and saw them at different tables among the throng. They had always been slightly wary of him, despite all his attempts to win them over.
He raised his eyes to the sky once more. The harvest and the weather seemed to be on his side. He glanced over at the farmhouse, and then again at the wedding party, and pursed his lips. All at once, in spite of the merry hubbub, he felt quite alone. It was barely a year since his father had died; his sister Guiamona, who had gone to live in Barcelona after her marriage, had not bothered to reply to the messages he had sent her, even though he longed to see her again. After his father’s death, she was the only direct family he had left ...
That death had made the Estanyol farmhouse the center of interest for the entire region: matchmakers and parents with unmarried daughters had paid endless visits. Prior to that, no one had paid them much attention, but the demise of the old man—whose rebellious nature had earned him the nickname of “Madcap Estanyol”—had rekindled the hopes of those who were anxious to see their daughter married off to the richest peasant farmer for miles around.
“You’re old enough now to get married,” they said, to encourage him. “Exactly how old are you?”
“Twenty-seven, I think,” he replied.
“That’s almost an age to have grandchildren,” they scolded him. “What are you doing all alone in your farmhouse? You need a wife.”
Bernat listened to them all patiently. He knew their advice would inevitably be followed by the mention of some candidate or other, a girl stronger than an ox and more beautiful than the most incandescent sunset.
None of this was new to him. Madcap Estanyol, whose wife had died giving birth to Guiamona, had tried to find him a wife, but all the suitable parents had fled the farmhouse cursing the demands he made regarding the dowry any future daughter-in-law was supposed to bring. Little by little, interest in Bernat had waned. The older he grew, the more extreme his father became: his rebelliousness bordered on real madness. Bernat concentrated on looking after his lands and his father; now all of a sudden at twenty-seven he found himself alone and besieged on all sides.
Yet the first visit Bernat received, when the old man had still to be properly laid to rest, was of a different nature: it was from the steward of his feudal lord, the lord of Navarcles. “How right you were, Father!” Bernat said to himself when he saw the steward and several soldiers ride up to his farm.
“As soon as I die,” the old man had repeated time and again to him in his brief moments of lucidity, “they’ll be here. You must show them my will.” With that, he pointed to the stone beneath which, carefully wrapped in leather, he had left the document containing the last will and testament of Madcap Estanyol.
“Why is that, Father?” Bernat had asked the first time he heard him.
“As you know,” the old man replied, “we lease these lands from our lord, but I am a widower, and if I had not drawn up my will, he would have the right to claim half of all our goods and livestock. That is known as the intestate right; there are many others that benefit the lords of Catalonia, and you must make sure you are aware of them all. They will be here, Bernat; they will come to take what is rightfully ours. It’s only by showing them my will that you can get rid of them.”
“What if they take it from me?” asked Bernat. “You know what they are like ...”
“Even if they did, it is registered in the official account books.”
The steward and his lord’s anger soon became common knowledge in the region. It served only to make the only son’s position look all the more attractive, as he had inherited all his father’s possessions.
Bernat could clearly recall the visit the man who was now his father-in-law had paid him before the grape harvest. Five shillings, a pallet, and a white linen smock—that was the dowry he was offering for his daughter Francesca.
“Why would I want a white linen smock?” Bernat asked, not even pausing as he forked the hay on the ground floor of his farmhouse.
“Look,” was Pere Esteve’s only reply.
Leaning on his pitchfork, Bernat looked in the direction Pere Esteve was pointing: the doorway of the stable. He let the pitchfork fall from his hands. Francesca was silhouetted against the light, dressed in the white linen smock ... Her whole body shone through, just waiting for him!
A shudder ran down Bernat’s spine. Pere Esteve smiled.
Bernat accepted his offer. There and then, in the stable, without even going up to the young girl, but never once taking his eyes off her. He realized it was a hasty decision, but so far he had not regretted it: there Francesca was in front of him now, young, beautiful, strong. His breathing quickened. That very night ... What might she be thinking? Did she feel as he did? Francesca was not sharing in the other women’s animated chatter: she sat quietly beside her mother, answering their jokes and laughter with forced smiles. Their looks met for a moment. She flushed and looked down, but Bernat could tell from the way her breast heaved that she was nervous too. Her white linen smock thrust itself once more into Bernat’s fantasies and desire.
“I congratulate you!” he heard a voice say behind him, and felt a hand clapping him on the shoulder. It was his father-in-law. “Look after her for me,” he added, following Bernat’s gaze and pointing to the girl, who did not know where to put herself. “If the life you have in store for her is as magnificent as this feast ... This is the most marvelous banquet I have ever seen. Not even the lord of Navarcles could lay on such a treat.”
In order to please his guests, Bernat had prepared forty-seven loaves of wheat bread: the peasants’ usual fare of barley, rye, or spelt was not good enough for him. Only the whitest bread, as white as his bride’s smock, was good enough for him! He had carried all the loaves to be baked at the Navarcles castle, calculating that, as usual, two loaves would be enough to pay for the privilege. When he saw this display of wheaten bread, the baker’s eyes opened wide, then narrowed to inscrutable slits. He demanded seven loaves in payment, and Bernat left the castle cursing the laws that prevented peasants like him from having their own bread ovens at home, or forges, or bridle and harness workshops ...
“You’re right there,” he told his father-in-law, banishing the unpleasant memory from his mind.
They both stared down the courtyard. Some of his bread might have been stolen, but there was still the wine his guests were drinking—the best, stored away by his father and left to age for several years—and the salt-roasted pig, the vegetable stew seasoned with chickens, and above all the four lambs, split down the middle and roasting slowly on the embers on their spits, oozing fat and giving off an irresistible smell.
All of a sudden the women started bustling about. The stew was ready, and the bowls the guests had brought were soon filled. Pere and Bernat sat at the only table laid in the courtyard. The women rushed to serve them, ignoring the four empty seats. The rest stood or sat on wooden benches and began to eat, still casting glances at the lambs roasting under the watchful eye of some of the cooks. Everyone was drinking wine, conversing, shouting, and laughing.
“Yes, a real feast,” Pere Esteve concluded, between mouthfuls.
Somebody proposed a toast to the bride and groom. Everybody joined in.
“Francesca!” shouted her father, raising his cup to her as she stood next to the roasting lambs.
Bernat stared hard at her, but again she hid her face.
“She’s feeling nervous,” Pere said in excuse, winking at him. “Francesca, daughter!” he shouted once more. “Come on, drink with us! Make the most of it now, because soon we’ll be leaving—almost all of us, that is.”
The guffaws following this remark only intimidated Francesca still further. She half raised a cup she had been given, but did not drink from it. Then she turned away from the laughter and went on supervising the cooking.
Pere Esteve clinked his cup against Bernat’s, spilling some of his wine. The other guests followed suit.
“I’m sure you’ll see to it she forgets her bashfulness,” Pere Esteve said out loud, for all to hear.
This led to more guffawing, this time accompanied by sly comments that Bernat preferred to ignore.
In this merry way, they set to work on large amounts of wine, pork, and chicken stew. Just as the women were withdrawing the lambs from the fire, a group of the guests suddenly fell silent and began to look over to the outskirts of the woods on the edge of Bernat’s land, beyond the plowed fields and the dip in the land that the Estanyols had used to plant the vines that provided them with such excellent wine.
Within a few seconds, the whole wedding party had fallen silent.
Three men on horseback had appeared among the trees. A larger number of men in uniform were walking behind them.
“What can he want here?” Pere Esteve muttered to himself.
Bernat followed the newcomers with his gaze as they drew closer across the fields. The guests began to whisper among themselves.
“I don’t understand,” Bernat said eventually, also in a low voice. “He never comes here: it is not on his way to the castle.”
“I don’t like the look of this at all,” said Pere Esteve.
The procession drew slowly closer. As the figures approached, the laughter and the remarks the horsemen were making took over from the merriment that had been in evidence in the courtyard; everyone could hear them. Bernat surveyed his guests: some of them could not bear to look, and stood there staring at the ground. He searched for Francesca, who was in the midst of a group of women. The lord of Navarcles’s powerful voice rang out. Bernat could feel anger rising inside him.
“Bernat! Bernat!” Pere Esteve hissed, clutching his arm. “What are you doing here? Run to greet him.”
Bernat leapt up and ran to receive his lord.
“Welcome to this your house,” he panted when he had reached the men on horseback.
Llorenç de Bellera, lord of Navarcles, pulled on his horse’s reins and came to a halt in front of Bernat.
“Are you Estanyol, son of the madman?” he asked disdainfully.
“Yes, my lord.”
“We were out hunting, and were surprised to hear your feast on the way back to our castle. What are you celebrating?”
Behind the horses, Bernat caught a glimpse of the soldiers, loaded down with their prey: rabbits, hares, some wild cocks. “It’s your visit that demands an explanation,” he would have liked to reply. “Or did the castle baker tell you about the white loaves I had baked?”
Even the horses, with their big round eyes focused on him, seemed to be awaiting his response.
“My marriage, your lordship.”
“And who are you marrying?”
“The daughter of Pere Esteve, my lord.”
Llorenç de Bellera sat silently, looking down at Bernat over his horse’s neck. The other mounts snorted impatiently.
“Well?” barked Llorenç de Bellera.
“My bride and I,” said Bernat, trying to hide his discomfort, “would be very honored if your lordship and his companions would care to join us.”
“We’re thirsty, Estanyol,” was all the lord of Navarcles deigned to reply.
The horses moved on without any need of prodding. Head down, Bernat walked alongside his lord’s horse back to the farmhouse. All the guests had gathered at the entrance to the courtyard to receive him: the women stared down at the ground, and all the men had removed their caps. A low murmur greeted Llorenç de Bellera when he halted before them.
“That’s enough,” he said as he dismounted. “Carry on with your banquet.”
The guests complied, turning round without a word. Several of the soldiers came up and took care of the horses. Bernat went with his new guests to the table where Pere Esteve and he had been seated. Their bowls and cups had disappeared.
The lord of Navarcles and his two companions sat at the table. Bernat withdrew several steps as the newcomers began to talk among themselves. The serving women brought pitchers of wine, loaves of bread, chicken stew, plates of salt pork, and freshly roasted lamb. Bernat looked for Francesca, but she was nowhere to be seen. His gaze met that of his father-in-law, who was standing in a group of the guests. Pere Esteve lifted his chin toward the serving women, shook his head almost imperceptibly, and turned on his heel.
“Go on with your celebration!” Llorenç de Bellera bawled, waving the leg of lamb he was holding. “Come on, enjoy yourselves!”
Silently, the guests began to approach the roasted lambs for their share. Unnoticed by the lord and his friends, one group stood their ground: Pere Esteve and a few others. Bernat caught a glimpse of the white linen smock in the midst of them, and hurried over.
“Get away from here, you idiot,” his father-in-law snapped.
Before Bernat could say a word, Francesca’s mother thrust a platter of lamb in his hands and whispered:
“Wait on the lord, and don’t go anywhere near my daughter.”
The peasants began to devour the lamb, still without saying a word, but from time to time glancing anxiously up at the table where the lord of Navarcles and his two friends were laughing and shouting. The soldiers were resting some way away.
“Before we could hear loud laughter from here,” the lord of Bellera complained. “So loud it drove away all our game. Come on, I want to hear you laugh!”
Nobody obeyed.
“Country bumpkins,” he told his companions, who burst out laughing again.
The three of them sated themselves on lamb and chunks of white bread. The platters of salted pork and chicken stew were pushed to one side of the table. Bernat ate standing up nearby, occasionally glancing anxiously out of the corner of his eye at the gaggle of women surrounding Francesca.
“More wine!” the lord of Bellera demanded, raising his cup. “Estanyol,” he shouted, seeking him out among the guests. “Next time you pay me the taxes on my land, I want you to bring this wine, not the vinegar your father has been fooling me with until now.”
Bernat was facing the other way. Francesca’s mother thrust a pitcher of wine into his hands.
“Estanyol, where are you?” Llorenç de Bellera pounded the table just as a serving woman was about to serve him more wine. A few drops sprinkled his clothes. By now, Bernat was close to him, and his friends were laughing at the accident. Pere Esteve lifted his hands to his face.
“Stupid old crone! How dare you spill the wine?” The woman lowered her head in submission, and when the lord made to buffet her with his hand, she fell to the ground. Llorenç de Bellera turned to his friends, cackling at the way the old woman was crawling away from them. Then he became serious once more, and addressed Bernat. “So there you are, Estanyol. Look what your clumsy old women have done! Are you trying to insult your lord and master? Are you so ignorant you don’t realize that your guests should be served by the lady of the house? Where is the bride?” he asked, looking round at everyone in the courtyard. “Where is the bride?” he repeated, when there was no response.
Pere Esteve took Francesca by the arm and led her to Bernat at the table. She was trembling from head to foot.
“Your lordship,” said Bernat, “I present you my wife, Francesca.”
“That’s better,” said Llorenc, openly staring up and down at her. “Much better. From now on, you are to serve us the wine.”
The lord of Navarcles sat down again, and raised his cup. Searching for a pitcher, Francesca ran to serve him. As she poured out the wine, her hand shook. Llorenç de Bellera grasped her wrist and steadied it. When his cup was full, he pushed her to serve his companions. As she did so, her breasts almost brushed his face.
“That is how wine should be served!” the lord of Navarcles bellowed. Standing next to him, Bernat clenched his fists and teeth.
Llorenç de Bellera and his friends went on drinking: they kept calling out for Francesca to come and refill their cups. The soldiers laughed with their lord and his friends whenever Francesca had to lean over the table to serve them. She tried to choke back her tears, and Bernat could see a trickle of blood on each of her hands where she had been digging in her nails. Each time she had to pour out the wine, the wedding guests fell silent and looked away.
“Estanyol,” Llorenç de Bellera finally shouted, clutching Francesca by the wrist. “In accordance with one of my rights as your lord, I have decided to lie with your wife on her first night of marriage.”
His friends raucously applauded the decision. Bernat leapt toward the table, but before he could do anything, the lord’s two companions, who had seemed hopelessly drunk, sprang up, hands on the pommels of their swords. Bernat stopped in his tracks. Llorenç stared at him, smiled, then laughed out loud. The girl implored Bernat for help with her eyes.
Bernat stepped forward, but felt one of the swords pressed against his stomach. As the lord dragged her to the outside staircase of the farmhouse, Francesca still looked at him beseechingly. When the lord grabbed her round the waist and lifted her over his shoulder, she cried out.
The lord of Navarcles’s friends sat down and took up their drinking again. The soldiers stood guard at the foot of the staircase to prevent Bernat from making any move.
The sky was still a deep, dark blue.
After some minutes that to Bernat seemed endless, Llorenç de Bellera appeared at the top of the staircase. He was sweaty and was trying to fasten his hunting doublet.
“Estanyol,” he shouted in his stentorian tones as he walked past him toward the table, “now it’s your turn. Doña Caterina,” he said, referring to his new young bride for the sake of his companions, “is weary of bastard children of mine turning up all over the place. And I’m weary of her sniveling. So do your duty as a good Christian husband!” he said, turning and addressing Bernat.
Bernat lowered his head, and then walked slowly and reluctantly up the staircase. Everyone was staring at him. He went into the first-floor room, a large area that served as kitchen and dining room, with a big hearth on one wall that was topped by a wrought-iron chimneypiece. As he dragged himself over to the ladder that led to the bedroom and granary on the second floor, he could hear his footsteps echoing on the wooden boards. Unsure what to do, he stuck his head into the gap at the top of the ladder and peered around him.
His chin was level with the boards, and he could see Francesca’s clothing scattered all over the floor. The white linen smock, her family’s pride and joy, was torn to shreds. He climbed to the top of the ladder.
He found Francesca curled up in a ball. She lay completely naked on the new pallet, which was spattered with blood. She was staring blankly into space; covered in sweat, her body was scratched and bruised. She did not move.
“Estanyol!” Bernat heard Llorenç de Bellera shout from down below. “Your lord is waiting.”
Bernat could not stop himself from retching, then vomiting onto the stored grain until he felt as if his whole insides had come up. Francesca still did not move. Bernat ran out of the room. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, his head was filled with the most revolting sensations. He ran blindly into the imposing shape of the lord of Navarcles.
“It would seem that the husband has not consummated his marriage,” Llorenç de Bellera commented to his companions.
Bernat had to raise his head to face him.
“No ... your lordship, I could not do it,” he stammered.
Llorenç de Bellera fell silent.
“Well, if you are not up to the task, I’m sure that one of my friends—or my soldiers—will be more ready for it. I told you, I don’t want any more bastards.”
“You have no right ... !”
The wedding guests looking on shuddered at what the consequences of this outburst might be. With one hand, the lord of Navarcles seized Bernat by the throat. He squeezed, and Bernat was soon gasping for breath.
“How dare you ... ? Are you thinking of using your lord’s legitimate right to lie with the bride to later come and make claims for your bastard child?” Llorenç buffeted Bernat before letting him go. “Is that what you’re after? I’m the one who decides what the rights of vassalage are. And nobody else! Are you forgetting that I can punish you how and when I choose?”
He landed another blow on Bernat’s cheek, sending him crashing to the ground.
“Where’s my whip?” he shouted angrily.
The whip! Bernat had been only a child when, together with a crowd of others, he had been forced to accompany his parents to watch the public flogging that the lord of Navarcles had inflicted on a poor wretch, although nobody knew for certain what he had done wrong. The memory of the sound of the leather whip on that man’s back resounded just as it had on the day and night after night throughout his childhood. No one who had been there that day dared as much as make a move; no one did so now. Bernat got to his knees and looked up at his feudal lord, standing there like a great boulder, his hand held out for someone to pass him his whip. Bernat recalled the raw flesh of the other man’s back: a bleeding mass that not even all the lord’s ferocity had succeeded in tearing any more strips from. Bernat crawled back toward the staircase blindly. He was trembling like a child caught up in a dreadful nightmare. Still no one moved or spoke. Still the sun shone in the clear blue sky.
“I’m so sorry, Francesca,” Bernat whispered after he had struggled back up to the top of the ladder, pushed by one of the soldiers.
He undid his hose and knelt beside her. Glancing down at his limp member, he wondered how on earth he was going to fulfill his lord’s command. With one finger, he began to caress Francesca’s bare ribs.
She did not react.
“I have ... We have to do this,” Bernat urged her, gripping her wrist to turn her toward him.
“Don’t touch me!” Francesca cried, coming out of her stupor.
“He’ll flay me alive!” Bernat protested, staring at her naked body.
“Leave me alone!”
They struggled, until finally Bernat had seized both her wrists and forced her upright. Francesca was still fighting him.
“Someone else will come!” he whispered. “Another man will be the one to force you!”
Her eyes opened wide in an accusing glare.
“He’ll have me flayed!” Bernat repeated.
Francesca still struggled to beat him off, but he flung himself on top of her. Her tears were not enough to dampen the sudden rush of desire he felt as he rubbed against her naked body. As he penetrated her, she gave a shriek that reached the highest heaven.
Her cries satisfied the soldier who had followed Bernat and was witnessing the whole scene shamelessly, head and shoulders thrust into the room.
Before Bernat had finished, Francesca gradually stopped resisting, and her howls turned to sobs. Bernat reached his climax to the sound of his wife’s tears.
Lorenç de Bellera also heard the screams from the second-floor window. Once his spy had confirmed that the marriage had been consummated, he called for the horses and he and his sinister troop left the farmhouse. Desolate and terrified, most of the wedding guests did the same.
Calm returned to the courtyard. Bernat was still sprawled across his wife. He had no idea what to do next. He realized he was still gripping her shoulders, and lifted his hands away. As he did so, he collapsed again on top of her. He pushed himself up and stared into Francesca’s eyes. They seemed to be staring straight through him. Any movement he made would press his body against hers once more, and he could not bear the thought of doing her more harm. He wished he could levitate then and there so that he could separate his body from hers without even touching it.
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, Bernat pushed himself away and kneeled down beside her. He still did not know what to do for the best: to stand up, lie down beside her, get out of the room, or to try to justify himself ... He could not bear to see Francesca’s naked body, cruelly exposed on the pallet. He tried to get her to look at him, but her eyes were blank again. He looked down, and the sight of his own naked sex filled him with shame.
“I’m sorr—”
He was interrupted by a sudden movement from Francesca. Now she was staring straight at him. Bernat looked for some slight glimmer of understanding, but there was none.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. Francesca was still staring at him without the slightest sign of reacting. “I’m so sorry. He ... he was going to flay me alive,” he stammered.
In his mind’s eye, Bernat saw the lord of Navarcles standing with his arm outstretched, calling for the whip. He searched Francesca’s face: nothing. What he saw in her eyes frightened him still further: they were shouting in silence, as loudly as the screams she had uttered when he had flung himself on her.
Unwittingly, as though trying to make her understand he knew what she was going through, as if she were a little girl, he stretched out his hand toward her cheek.
“I ... ,” he started to say.
His hand never reached her. As it approached, the muscles of her whole body stiffened. Bernat lifted his hand to his own face, and burst into tears.
Francesca lay there, staring into space.
After a long while, Bernat stopped crying. He got to his feet, put on his hose, and disappeared down the ladder to the floor beneath. As soon as she could no longer hear his footsteps, Francesca got up and went over to the chest that was the only furniture in the room, to find some clothes. When she was dressed, she gently picked up all the things that had been torn from her, including the precious white linen smock. Folding it carefully so that the rips did not show, she stowed it in the chest.
2
FRANCESCA WANDERED ABOUT the farmhouse like a lost soul. She carried out all the domestic chores, but never said a word. The sad atmosphere she created soon spread to the farthest corners of the Estanyol family home.
Bernat had several times tried to apologize for what had happened. Once the terror of his wedding day had receded, he had tried to explain what he had felt more clearly: his fear of the lord’s cruelty, the consequences for both of them of refusing to obey his orders. Bernat repeated “I’m sorry” over and over again to Francesca, but she simply stared at him in silence, as though waiting for the moment when, without fail, Bernat’s argument led him to the same crux as ever: “If I hadn’t done it, another man would have come ...”At that point, he always fell silent; he knew there was no excuse, and his rape of her rose every time like an insurmountable barrier between them. The apologies, excuses, and silences slowly healed the wound in Bernat, if not in his wife, and his feelings of remorse were tempered by the daily round of work. Eventually, Bernat even resigned himself to Francesca’s stubborn refusal to talk.
At daybreak every morning, when he got up to start a hard day’s grind, he would stare out their bedroom window. He had always done this with his father, even in his last illness, the two of them leaning on the thick stone windowsill and peering up at the heavens to see what the day held in store. They would look out over their lands, which were clearly defined by the different crop growing in each field and extended right across the huge valley beyond the farmhouse. They watched the flight of the birds and listened closely to the noises the animals were making in their pens. These were moments of communion between father and son, and between the two of them and their land: the only occasions when Bernat’s father appeared to recover his sanity. Bernat had dreamed of being able to share similar moments with his wife, to be able to tell her all he had heard from his father, and his father from his own father, and so on back through the generations.
He had dreamed of being able to explain that these fertile lands had in the distant past been free of rent or service, and belonged entirely to the Estanyol family, who had worked there with great care and love. The fruits of their labors were entirely theirs, without their having to pay tithes or taxes or to give homage to any arrogant, unjust lord. He had dreamed of being able to share with her, his wife and the mother of the future inheritors of those lands, the same sadness his father had shared with him when he told the story of how it was that, three hundred years later, the sons she would give birth to would become serfs bound to someone else. Just as his father had told him, he would have liked to have been able to tell her proudly how three hundred years earlier, the Estanyol family, along with many others in the region, had won the right to keep their own weapons as freemen, and how they had used those weapons when they had responded to the call from Count Ramon Borrell and his brother Ermengol d’Urgell and had gone to fight the marauding Saracens. How he would have loved to tell her how, under the command of Count Ramon, several Estanyols had been part of the victorious army that had crushed the Saracens of the Córdoban caliphate at the battle of Albesa, beyond Balaguer, on the plains of Urgel. Whenever he had time to do so, his father would recount to him that story, tears of pride in his eyes; tears that turned to ones of sadness when he spoke of the death of Ramon Borrell in the year 1017. This was when, he said, the peasant farmers had become serfs again. The count’s fifteen-year-old son had succeeded him, and his mother, Ermessenda de Carcassonne, became regent. Now that their external frontiers were secure, the barons of Catalonia—the ones who had fought side by side with the farmers—used the power vacuum to exact fresh demands from the peasants. They killed those who resisted, and took back ownership of the lands, forcing their former owners to farm them as serfs who paid a part of their produce to the local lord. As others had done, the Estanyol family bowed to the pressure; but many families had been savagely put to death for resisting.
“As freemen,” his father would tell Bernat, “we fought alongside the knights against the Moors. But we could not fight the knights themselves, and when the counts of Barcelona tried to wrest back control of the principality of Catalonia, they found themselves facing a rich and powerful aristocracy. They were forced to bargain—always at our expense. First it was our lands, those of old Catalonia. Then it was our freedom, our very lives ... our honor. It was your grandfather’s generation,” Bernat’s father would tell him, his voice quavering as he looked out over the fields, “who lost their freedom. They were forbidden to leave their land. They were made into serfs, people bound to their properties, as were their children, like me, and their grandchildren, like you. Our life ... your life, is in the hands of the lord of the castle. He is the one who imparts justice and has the right to abuse us and offend our honor. We are not even able to defend ourselves! If anybody harms you, you have to go to your lord so that he can seek redress; if he is successful, he keeps half of the sum paid you.”
After this his father would invariably recite all the lord’s rights. These became etched in Bernat’s mind, because he never dared interrupt his father once he had started on the list. The lord could call on a serf’s aid at all times. He had the right to a part of the serf’s possessions if the latter should die without a will, if he had no offspring, if his wife committed adultery, if his farmhouse were destroyed by fire, if he were forced to mortgage it, if he married another lord’s vassal, and of course, if he sought to leave it. The lord had the right to sleep with any bride on her wedding night; he could call on any woman to act as wet nurse for his children, and on their daughters to serve as maids in the castle. The serfs were obliged to work on the lord’s lands without pay; to contribute to the castle’s defense; to pay part of what they earned from the sale of their produce; to provide the lord and any companions he brought with lodging in their homes, and to provide them with food during their stay; to pay to use the woods or grazing land; to pay also to use the forge, the oven, and the windmill that the lord owned; and to send him gifts at Christmas and other religious celebrations.
And what of the Church? Whenever Bernat’s father asked himself that question, his voice would fill with anger.
“Monks, friars, priests, deacons, canons, abbots, bishops,” he would say, “every single one of them is just as bad as the feudal lords oppressing us! They have even forbidden us from joining holy orders to prevent us escaping from the land and our enslavement to it!”
“Bernat,” his father would warn him whenever the Church was the target of his wrath, “never trust anyone who says he is serving God. They will use sweet words on you, and sound so educated you will not understand the half of it. They will try to convince you with arguments that only they know how to spin, until they have seduced your reason and your conscience. They will present themselves as well-meaning people whose only thought is to save you from evil and temptation, but in fact their opinion of us is written in books, and as the soldiers of Christ they say they are, they simply follow what is written there. Their words are excuses, and their reasoning is of the sort you might use with a child.”
“Father,” Bernat remembered he had once asked him, “what do their books say about us peasants?”
His father stared out at the fields, up to the line of the horizon dividing them from the place he did not care to gaze on, the place in whose name all these monks and clergymen spoke.
“They say we’re animals, brutes, people who cannot understand courtly manners. They say we are disgusting, ignoble, and an abomination. They say we have no sense of shame, that we are ignorant. They say we are stubborn and cruel, that we deserve no honorable treatment because we are incapable of appreciating it, that we understand only the use of force. They say—”
“Are we really all that, Father?”
“My son, that is what they wish to make of us.”
“But you pray every day, and when my mother died ...”
“I pray to the Virgin, my son, to the Virgin. Our Lady has nothing to do with friars or priests. We can still believe in her.”
Yes, Bernat Estanyol would have loved to lean on the windowsill in the morning and talk to his young wife; to tell her all his father had told him, and to stare out over the fields with her.
THROUGHOUT THE REST of September and all October, Bernat hitched up his oxen and plowed the fields, turning over the thick crust of earth so that the sun, air, and manure could bring fresh life to the soil. After that, with Francesca’s help, he sowed the grain; she scattered the seed from a basket, while he first plowed and then flattened the ground with a heavy metal bar once the seed was planted. They worked without talking, in a silence disturbed only by his shouts to the oxen, which echoed round the whole valley. Bernat thought that working together might bring them closer, but it did not: Francesca was still cold and indifferent, picking up her basket and sowing the seed without so much as looking at him.
November arrived, with its yearly tasks: fattening the pig for the kill, gathering wood for the fire; to enrich the soil, preparing the vegetable patch and the fields that were to be sown in spring, pruning and grafting the vines. By the time Bernat returned to the farmhouse each day, Francesca had seen to the domestic work, the vegetables, the hens, and the rabbits. Night after night, she served him his meal without a word, then went off to bed. Every morning, she rose before he did, and by the time he came down, breakfast was waiting for him on the table, and his noonday meal was in his satchel. As he ate, he could hear her tending the animals in the stable next door.
Christmas came and went, and then in January they finished harvesting the olives. Bernat had only enough trees to cover the needs of his house and what he had to give his lord.
After that, Bernat had to kill the pig. When his father was alive, the neighbors, who rarely visited, were certain never to miss the day the pig was butchered. Bernat remembered those occasions as real celebrations; the pigs were slaughtered and then everyone had plenty to eat and drink, while the women cut up the carcass.
The Esteve family—father, mother, and two of the brothers—turned up this year. Bernat went out into the courtyard to greet them; his wife hung back.
“How are you, daughter?” her mother asked.
Francesca said nothing, but accepted her embrace. Bernat studied the two women: the mother anxiously hugged her daughter, expecting her to put her arms round her too. But Francesca simply stood there stiffly, without responding. Bernat looked anxiously at his father-in-law.
“Francesca,” was all Pere Esteve said, his eyes still looking beyond her shoulder. Her two brothers raised their hands in greeting.
Francesca went down to the pigsty to fetch the pig; the others stayed in the courtyard. No one said a word; the only sound to break the silence was a stifled sob from Francesca’s mother. Bernat felt an urge to console her, but when he saw that neither her husband nor her sons made any move, he thought better of it.
Francesca appeared with the animal, which was struggling as if it knew the fate awaiting it. She brought it up to her husband in her usual silent way. Bernat and the two brothers upended it and sat on its belly. The pig’s squeals could be heard throughout the Estanyol valley. Pere Esteve slit its throat with a sure hand, and the men sat while the women collected the spouting blood in their bowls, changing them as they filled. Nobody looked at one another.
No one even had a cup of wine while mother and daughter sliced up the meat of the slaughtered animal.
With their work done and the onset of night, the mother again tried to embrace her daughter. Bernat looked on anxiously, to see if this time there was some kind of reaction from Francesca. There was none. Her father and brothers said farewell without raising their eyes from the ground. Her mother came up to Bernat.
“When you think the time for the birth has come,” she said, taking him to one side, “send for me. I don’t think she will.”
The Esteve family set out on the road back to their farm. That night, as Francesca climbed the ladder to bed, Bernat could not help staring at her stomach.
AT THE END of May, on the first day of harvest, Bernat stood looking across his fields, sickle on shoulder. How was he going to harvest the grain all on his own? For a fortnight now, after she had twice fainted, he had forbidden Francesca to do any hard work. She had listened to him without replying, but obeyed. Why had he done that? Bernat surveyed the vast fields waiting for him. After all, he thought, what if the child were not his? Besides, women were accustomed to giving birth in the fields while they worked, but when he had seen her collapse like that not once, but twice, he could not help but feel concerned.
Bernat grasped the sickle and started to reap the grain with a firm hand. The ears of corn flew through the air. The sun was high in the midday sky, but he did not so much as stop to eat. The field seemed endless. He had always harvested it with his father, even when the old man had not been well. Harvesting seemed to revive him. His father would encourage him. “Get on with it, son! We don’t want a storm or hail to flatten it all.” So they reaped row after row. When one of them grew tired, the other took over. They ate in the shade and drank his father’s good wine. They chatted and laughed together. Now all Bernat could hear was the whistle of the blade through the air, the swishing noise as it chopped the stems of corn. Scything, scything, and as it sped through the air, it seemed to be asking: “Just who is the father of the child to be?”
Over the following days, Bernat harvested until sunset; sometimes he even carried on working by moonlight. When he returned to the farmhouse, his meal was on the table waiting for him. He washed in the basin and ate without any great appetite. Until one night, when the wooden cradle he had carved that winter, as soon as Francesca’s pregnancy became obvious, started to rock. Bernat glanced at it out of the corner of his eye, but went on drinking his soup. Francesca was asleep upstairs. He turned to look directly at the cradle. One spoonful, two, three. It moved again. Bernat stared at it, the soup spoon hanging in midair. He looked all round the room to see if he could see any trace of his mother-in-law, but there was none. Francesca had given birth on her own ... and then gone off to bed.
Bernat dropped the spoon and stood up. Halfway to the cradle, he turned around and sat down again. Doubts about whose child it was assailed him more strongly than ever. “Every member of the Estanyol family has a birthmark by the right eye,” he remembered his father telling him. He had one, and so did his father. “Your grandfather was the same,” the old man had assured him, “and so was your grandfather’s father ...”
Bernat was exhausted: he had worked from dawn to dusk for days on end now. He again looked over at the cradle.
He stood up a second time, and walked over to peer at the baby. It was sleeping peacefully, hands outstretched, covered in a sheet made of torn pieces of a white linen smock. Bernat turned the child over to see its face.
3
FRANCESCA NEVER EVEN looked at her baby. She would bring the boy (whom they had called Arnau) up to one of her breasts, then change to the other. But she did not look at him. Bernat had seen peasant women breast-feeding, and all of them, from the well-off to the poorest, either smiled, let their eyelids droop, or caressed their baby’s head as they fed it. But not Francesca. She cleaned the boy and gave him suck, but not once during his two months of life had Bernat heard her speak softly to him, play with him, take his tiny hands, nibble or kiss him, or even stroke him. “None of this is his fault, Francesca,” Bernat thought as he held his son in his arms, before taking him as far away as possible so that he could talk to him and caress him free from her icy glare.
The boy was his! “We Estanyols all have the birthmark,” he reassured himself whenever he kissed the purple stain close by Arnau’s right eyebrow. “We all have it, Father,” he said again, lifting his son high in the air.
But that birthmark soon became something much more than a reassurance to Bernat. Whenever Francesca went to the castle to bake their bread, the women there lifted the blanket covering Arnau so that they could check the mark. Afterward, they smiled at one another, not caring whether they were seen by the baker or the lord’s soldiers. And when Bernat went to work in his lord’s fields, the other peasants slapped him on the back and congratulated him, in full view of the steward overseeing their labors.
Llorenç de Bellera had produced many bastard children, but no one had ever been able to prove their parentage: his word always prevailed over that of some ignorant peasant woman, even if among friends he would often boast of his virility. Yet it was obvious that Arnau Estanyol was not his: the lord of Navarcles began to notice sly smiles on the faces of the women who came to the castle. From his apartments, he could see them whispering together, and even talking to the soldiers, whenever Estanyol’s wife came to the castle. The rumor spread beyond the circle of peasants, so that Llorenç de Bellera soon found himself the butt of his friends’ jokes.
“Come on, eat, Bellera,” a visiting baron said to him with a smile. “I’ve heard you need to build your strength up.”
Everyone at the table that day laughed out loud at the insinuation.
“In my lands,” another guest commented, “I do not allow any peasant to call my manhood into question.”
“Does that mean you ban birthmarks?” responded the first baron, the worse for wear from drink. Again, everyone burst out laughing, while Llorenç de Bellera gave a forced smile.
IT HAPPENED IN the first days of August. Arnau was sleeping in his cradle in the shade of a fig tree at the farmhouse entrance. His mother was going to and fro between the vegetable garden and the animal pens, while his father, keeping one eye all the time on the wooden cot, was busy leading the oxen time and again over the ears of corn to crush the precious grain that would feed them through the year.
They did not hear them arrive. Three horsemen galloped into the yard: Llorenç de Bellera’s steward and two others, all three armed and mounted on powerful warhorses. Bernat noticed that the horses were not wearing battle armor: they had probably not thought this necessary to intimidate a simple peasant. The steward stayed in the background, while the other two men slowed to a walk, spurring their horses on to where Bernat was standing. Trained for battle, the two horses came straight at him. Bernat backed off, then stumbled and fell to the ground, almost underneath their huge hooves. It was only then that the horsemen reined in their mounts.
“Your lord, Llorenç de Bellera,” shouted the steward, “is calling for your wife to come and breast-feed Don Jaume, the son of your lady, Doña Caterina.” Bernat tried to scramble to his feet, but one of the riders urged his horse on again. The steward addressed Francesca in the distance. “Get your son and come with us!” he ordered.
Francesca lifted Arnau from his cradle, and walked, head down, in the direction of the steward’s horse. Bernat shouted and again tried to rise to his feet, but before he could do so, he was knocked flat by one of the horses. Each time he attempted to stand up, the same thing happened: the two horsemen were taking turns to knock him down, laughing as they did so. In the end, Bernat lay on the ground beneath the horses’ hooves, panting and disheveled. The steward rode off, followed by Francesca and the child. When he was no more than a dot in the distance, the two soldiers wheeled away and galloped after him.
Once quiet had returned to the farmhouse, Bernat peered at the cloud of dust trailing off toward the horizon, and then looked over at the two oxen, stolidly chewing on the ears of corn they had been trampling.
From that day on, although Bernat continued working with his animals and on the land, his thoughts returned constantly to his son. At night, he wandered around the farmhouse recalling the childish breathing that spoke of life and the future, the creaking of the wooden slats of the cradle whenever Arnau moved, his shrill cry when he was hungry. He tried to discern his son’s innocent smell in every corner of the house. Where might he be sleeping now? His cradle, the one Bernat had made with his own hands, was here. When finally Bernat succeeded in falling asleep, the silence would wake him with a start. He curled up on his pallet, listening hour after hour to the sounds of the animals down below that now were all the company he had.
Bernat went regularly to Llorenç de Bellera’s castle to have his bread baked. He never saw Francesca: she was shut away to attend to Doña Caterina and her son’s unpredictable appetite. The castle, as his father had explained when the two of them had been obliged to come here together, had started out as little more than a watchtower on the summit of a small hill. Llorenç de Bellera’s forebears had taken advantage of the power vacuum following Count Ramon Borrell’s death to build new fortifications, thanks to the forced labor of the serfs who lived on their ever-expanding territories. Around the keep a hodgepodge of buildings soon grew up, including the bakery, the forge, some new, more spacious stables, kitchens, and sleeping quarters.
The castle was more than a league away from the Estanyol farmhouse. On his first visits, Bernat heard no news of his son. Whenever he inquired, he always received the same reply: his wife and boy were in Doña Caterina’s private apartments. The only difference was that, while some of those he asked laughed cynically, others lowered their gaze as though ashamed to look the child’s father in the eye. Bernat put up with their evasive answers for weeks on end, until one day when he was leaving the bakery with two loaves of bean-flour bread, he ran into one of the scrawny blacksmith apprentices whom he had already questioned several times about his son.
“What do you know about my Arnau?” he asked again.
There was no one else around. The lad tried to avoid him, as if he had not heard, but Bernat seized him by the arm.
“I asked you what you know about my son, Arnau.”
“Your wife and son ...” The apprentice started with the usual formula, not lifting his eyes from the ground.
“I know where he is,” Bernat interrupted him. “I’m asking if my Arnau is well and healthy.”
Still not looking at him, the lad started shuffling his feet in the sand. Bernat shook him roughly.
“Is he well?”
When the apprentice still would not look up, Bernat shook him even harder.
“No!” the lad finally admitted. Bernat loosened his grip so that he could look him in the face. “No,” he said again.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I can’t ... We have orders not to tell you ...” The apprentice’s voice trailed off.
Bernat raised his voice, not caring whether a guard might hear.
“What’s wrong with my boy? What’s wrong? Tell me!”
“I can’t. We cannot ...”
“Would this change your mind?” asked Bernat, offering him one of the loaves.
The lad’s eyes opened wide. Without a word, he snatched the bread from Bernat’s hands and bit into it as if he had not eaten in days. Bernat pulled him to one side, away from any prying eyes.
“What’s happened to my Arnau?” he asked anxiously.
His mouth stuffed with bread, the apprentice glanced at Bernat, then signaled for him to follow. They crept stealthily along the castle walls until they reached the forge. They crossed it and headed for the back, where the lad opened a door leading into a shed where equipment and tools were kept. He went in, and Bernat followed. As soon as he was inside, the boy sat on the floor and started to devour more bread. Bernat peered around the squalid room. It was stiflingly hot, but he could not understand why the apprentice had brought him there: all he could see was piles of tools and old scraps of iron.
Bernat looked inquiringly at the boy. Chewing on the loaf, he pointed to one of the corners of the room and waved Bernat to go and look there.
Abandoned and starved, his son lay on a pile of wooden planks in a broken wicker basket. The strips of white linen bound round him were filthy and in tatters. He was on the verge of death. Bernat could not stop himself uttering a strangled cry that sounded hardly human. He snatched Arnau up and pressed him to his chest. The infant responded only feebly, but he did respond.
“The baron ordered your son be kept here,” Bernat heard the apprentice explain. “At first, your wife came several times a day, and soothed him by breast-feeding him.” Bernat clutched the child to him, as if trying to breathe life into his tiny lungs. “One day, the steward came in after her,” the boy went on. “Your wife fought him off. She shouted as loud as she could ... I saw him. I was in the forge next door.” He pointed to a crack in the wooden planks of the wall. “But the steward is a very strong man ... When he was done with her, the lord and some soldiers came in too. Your wife was lying on the floor; the lord began to laugh at her. All of them did. Since that day, whenever your wife came to feed her child, there would be soldiers waiting at the door. She could not fight them all off. In the past few days, I have hardly seen her here. The soldiers catch her as soon as she leaves Doña Caterina’s apartments. She cannot even reach the forge. Sometimes the lord sees what they are doing, but all he does is laugh.”
Without a moment’s thought, Bernat lifted his shirt and pushed his son’s tiny body inside. He disguised the bulge by holding the other loaf of bread up against his chest. The infant did not even stir. As he made for the door, the apprentice rose to stop him.
“The lord has forbidden it! You cannot—”
“Out of my way, boy!”
The lad stepped in front of Bernat. Once again, he did not hesitate for a second: holding the baby and the loaf of bread in one hand, he snatched an iron bar from the wall and whirled round. Bernat caught the apprentice full on the head. He fell to the ground in the entrance to the storeroom before he had time to utter a sound. Bernat did not even look at him; he went out and shut the door behind him.
He had no problem leaving Llorenç de Bellera’s castle. No one could have suspected that beneath the loaf of bread he was hiding his son’s poor, abused body. It was only after he had emerged through the castle gate that he thought of Francesca and the soldiers. Indignantly, he reproached her for not trying to contact him, to warn him of the danger their son was in, for not fighting for Arnau ... Bernat cradled his son’s body, and thought of his wife being raped by the soldiers while his son was left to die on a pile of rotten planks.
How LONG WOULD it take them to find the lad he had struck? Was he dead? Had he shut the storeroom door properly? As he strode back to his farm, Bernat’s mind was filled with questions. Yes, he dimly remembered he had shut the door.
As soon as he had turned the first bend on the twisting path that rose toward the castle, so that he was now out of sight, Bernat uncovered his son. His eyes were dull and lifeless. He weighed even less than the loaf of bread! His arms and legs were so thin! Bernat’s stomach churned, and a lump came to his throat. Tears began to trickle down his cheeks. He told himself this was no time to cry. He knew they would set out in search of them, that they would set the dogs on them, but ... what was the use of running away if the child did not survive? Bernat left the path and hid in some bushes. He kneeled down, left the loaf of bread on the ground, and lifted Arnau in both hands until he was level with his face. The baby hung there limply, his head lolling to one side. “Arnau!” whispered Bernat. He shook him gently, over and over again. The baby’s eyes seemed finally to be looking straight at him. His face streaked with tears, Bernat realized that the poor thing did not even have the strength to cry. He cradled him in one arm, then tore off a small piece of bread, wet it with his saliva, and brought it close to his son’s mouth. Arnau did not react, but Bernat persisted until he managed to force a tiny piece of bread between his lips. Bernat waited. “Swallow, son, swallow,” he begged him. His lips trembled when he saw Arnau’s throat contract almost imperceptibly. He crumbled some more bread and anxiously repeated the operation. Arnau swallowed seven more fragments.
“We’ll get out of this—you’ll see,” Bernat told him. “I promise you.”
He returned to the path. Everything was still calm. That must mean they had not discovered the apprentice’s body yet. For a while, Bernat thought of Llorenç de Bellera: cruel, evil, implacable. How much pleasure he would get from hunting down an Estanyol!
“We’ll get out of this, Arnau,” he repeated, setting off at a run toward his farmhouse.
Never once did he look back, and when he reached the farm he did not allow himself even a moment’s rest. Leaving Arnau in his cradle, Bernat picked up a sack and stuffed some flour and dried vegetables in it. He put in a wineskin filled with water, and another full of milk, then added salt meat, a bowl, a spoon, and some clothing. Last came some coins he had kept hidden, a hunting knife, and his crossbow. “How proud Father was of this crossbow!” he thought, feeling its weight in his hand. He had always told Bernat when he was teaching him how to use it, how their ancestor had fought with it alongside Count Ramon Borrell in the days when the Estanyols were freemen. Free! Bernat strapped the child to his chest and loaded up all the other things. He would always be a serf, unless ...
“As of now we are fugitives,” he whispered to his son as he headed off toward the woods. “Nobody knows these forests like we Estanyols do,” he told him when he had reached cover. “We have always hunted here.” He pushed through the undergrowth until they came to a stream. He stepped down into the water until it was knee-height, then started walking against the current. Arnau had closed his eyes and was asleep, but Bernat went on talking to him: “The lord’s dogs are not very alert, they’ve been badly handled. We’ll go up to the top, where the woods are denser and no one can hunt us on horseback. That means the lord and his friends have never been up there. They would get their fine clothes torn. As for the soldiers ... why would they go up there to hunt? They get all they need by stealing from us. We can hide there, Arnau. I swear no one will find us.” He stroked his son’s head as he waded upstream.
In midafternoon he came to a halt. The woods had become so thick that their branches overhung the stream and blotted out the sky. He sat on a rock and looked down at his legs: the water had made them white and wrinkled. It was only then that he realized how much they ached, but he did not care. He put down the sack and crossbow and untied Arnau. The boy had opened his eyes once more. Bernat diluted some milk in water, added flour, stirred the mixture, and then brought the bowl up to the infant’s lips. Arnau wrinkled his face in disgust. Bernat wiped one of his fingers clean in the stream, dipped it into the mixture, and tried again. After several attempts, Arnau responded, allowing his father to feed him from his finger. Soon afterward, he closed his eyes and fell fast asleep. All Bernat ate was a chunk of salted meat. He would have liked to rest, but he knew there was still a long way to go.
The Estanyol cave, his father had called it. Night had fallen by the time they reached it, after stopping once more for Arnau to have some food. The cave entrance was a narrow slit in the rocks, which Bernat, his father, and his grandfather used to close up with branches to protect them from storms or animals on the prowl.
Bernat lit a fire just inside the cave, then took a torch to make sure no wild animal had chosen it for a lair. He settled Arnau on a pallet he made from his sack and some dry twigs, and fed him again. This time, the infant took the food gladly, and then fell into a deep sleep. Before he could eat more than a mouthful of meat, Bernat did the same. They would be safe from Llorenç de Bellera here, he thought as he closed his eyes and matched his breathing to that of his sleeping son.
No SOONER HAD the master blacksmith told him of the discovery of his apprentice’s dead body in a pool of blood, than Llorenç de Bellera galloped out of the castle with his men. Arnau’s disappearance and the fact that his father had been seen in the castle pointed directly toward Bernat. Now de Bellera sat astride his horse in the Estanyol farmhouse yard, and smiled when his soldiers informed him that to judge by the disorder inside, it seemed Bernat had fled and taken his son with him.
“You were fortunate when your father died,” he growled, “but now all this will be mine! Go and find him!” he shouted to his men. Then he turned to his steward and commanded: “Draw up a list of all the goods, chattels, and animals on this property. Make sure it’s all there, down to the last grain of corn. Then join the search for Estanyol.”
Several days later, the steward appeared before his lord in the castle keep.
“We’ve searched all the other farmhouses, the woods, and the fields. There is no sign of Estanyol. He must have gone to hide in a town, perhaps in Manresa or—”
With a wave of his hand, Llorenç de Bellera silenced him.
“We will find him. Inform the other barons and our agents in the towns. Tell them one of my serfs has escaped and is to be arrested.” At that moment, Doña Caterina and Francesca appeared. De Bellera’s son Jaume was in Francesca’s arms. When de Bellera saw her, his face fell: she was of no use to him anymore. “My lady,” he said to his wife, “I cannot understand how you permit a strumpet like this to give suck to a son of mine.” Doña Caterina gave a start. “Did you not know that your wet nurse is the whore of all the soldiers in the castle?”
Doña Caterina seized her son from Francesca.
When Francesca learned that Bernat had fled with Arnau, she wondered what could have become of her son. The Estanyol family lands and properties had all passed into the hands of the lord of Navarcles. She had no one to turn to for help, and all the while the soldiers continued to take advantage of her. A crust of dry bread, a rotten vegetable or two—that was the price of her body.
None of the many peasant farmers who visited the castle even deigned to glance at her. If she tried to draw near them, they chased her away. After her mother had publicly disowned her outside the castle bakery, she did not dare return to her family home. She was forced to remain close to the castle, one of the army of beggars fighting over the scraps left by the walls. It seemed her fate was to be passed from one man to the next, and her only nourishment was whatever leftovers the soldier who had chosen her that day cared to give her.
The month of October arrived. Bernat had already seen his son smile, and crawl around the cave and the ground outside. But their provisions had almost run out, and winter was approaching fast. It was time for them to leave.
4
THE CITY LAY spread at his feet. “Look, Arnau,” Bernat said to his son, who was sleeping peacefully strapped to his chest. “There’s Barcelona. We’ll be free there.”
Ever since fleeing with Arnau, Bernat had been unable to get the city out of his mind. It was the one great hope all the serfs had. Bernat had heard them talk about it when they were forced to go and work on their lord’s land, to repair his castle walls or perform any other of the services he demanded. When he heard them whispering carefully so as not to be overheard by the steward or soldiers, Bernat had been merely curious. He was happy working on his farm, and would never have abandoned his father, or fled with him. Yet now, he had lost his lands, and as he’d watched his son asleep inside the Estanyol cave, what the others had said had come back to haunt him.
“If anyone manages to live in Barcelona for a year and a day without being arrested by the lord,” he remembered someone saying, “they can acquire the status of residents, and become freemen.” All the other serfs had fallen silent. Bernat had looked at them: some had closed their eyes and clenched their teeth; others were shaking their heads in disbelief; still others were smiling up at the sky, dreaming of breaking the chains that tied them to the land.
“So all you have to do is live in the city?” asked one of the youngsters who had been staring skyward. “Why can people become freemen by living in Barcelona?”
The eldest serf confirmed what had been said: “Yes, you need only to live in Barcelona for a year and a day.”
Eyes shining, the young lad urged him to explain further.
“Barcelona is a very rich city. For many years now, from the days of Jaime the Conqueror to those of Pedro the Great, all our kings have asked it for money to wage war, or for their courts. The citizens of Barcelona granted them the money, but in return won special privileges. One day when he was at war with Sicily, Pedro the Great himself had them all written down in a charter ...” The old man hesitated. “Recognoverunt procures, I believe it is called. That is where it is laid out how we can become freemen. Barcelona needs workmen, people who are free to work.”
The next day, the youth did not appear on the lord of Navarcles’s lands. Nor the day after. His father was there, but he did not say a word. Then, three months later, the youth was dragged back in chains, with the threat of the whip at his back; even so, all the other serfs thought they could see a gleam of pride in his eyes.
From the summit of the Sierra de Collserola, on the old Roman road between Ampurias and Tarragona, Bernat gazed down at freedom ... and the sea! He had never even imagined, let alone set eyes on, that huge, seemingly endless expanse. He had heard from traders that Catalonia was the master of lands beyond the waves, but ... this was the very first time he had been confronted with something he could not see the far end of. “Beyond that mountain. After you cross that river ...” He had always been able to point to the spot in the distance that a stranger was asking him about. Now he scanned the horizon line, standing silently as he took it all in, gently caressing the unruly curls that had grown on Arnau’s head since they had been in hiding.
Then he turned his attention to the land by the shore. He could see five ships close in, near the island of Maians. This was another novelty: until that day, Bernat had seen only drawings of ships. To his right, he saw the mountain of Montjuic, which also swept down to the sea, and was surrounded by fields and plains; then the city of Barcelona itself. From the low promontory of the Mons Taber in the center, hundreds of buildings spread out in all directions : low houses built one on top of another, but also magnificent palaces, churches, and monasteries ... Bernat wondered how many people lived there, because all of a sudden, the buildings came to an end: the city was like a beehive crammed inside walls, with open fields beyond. There were forty thousand people living there, Bernat recalled someone telling him.
“How is anyone going to find us amongst forty thousand people?” he mused, looking down at Arnau. “You’ll be a freeman, my son.”
Bernat was certain they could hide in the city. He would look for his sister. But first he had to get in through a city gate. What if the lord of Navarcles had sent out a description of him? That birthmark of his ... But during the three nights of his walk down from the hills, he had been devising a plan. He sat on the ground and picked up a hare he had shot with his crossbow. He slit its throat and let the blood drip onto the small pile of sand he had cupped in his hand. He stirred blood and sand together and, as the mixture dried, spread it around his right eye. Then he put the hare back in his sack.
As soon as he could feel that the mixture had dried, and he could no longer see out of his eye, he set off down the hill toward the Santa Anna gateway, on the northernmost side of the western wall. Lots of people were lined up to get into the city. Arnau was awake by now, and Bernat carried on stroking his head as he slipped in among the crowd, dragging his feet as he did so. A barefoot peasant bent double under an enormous sack of turnips turned toward him. Bernat smiled at him.
“A leper!” shouted the peasant, dropping his sack and jumping out of his way.
To his astonishment, Bernat saw the whole line of people in front of the gate rushing to one side or the other, leaving the track littered with sacks, food, a couple of carts, and several mules. Even the blind men clustered around the Santa Anna gateway began to stir.
Arnau started to cry, and Bernat saw some of the soldiers at the gate draw their swords, while others made to close the heavy wooden doors.
“Go to the lazaretto!” someone shouted at him.
“But it’s not leprosy!” Bernat protested. “I simply got a branch in my eye! Look!” He lifted his arms and waved them about. Then, carefully placing Arnau on the ground, he started to take off his clothes. “Look!” he repeated, showing everybody his strong, healthy body, with no signs of disease or wounds. “Look! I’m a peasant farmer, but I need a doctor to cure my eye, or otherwise I won’t be able to work.”
An official pushed one of the soldiers toward him. He came to a halt a few paces from Bernat and surveyed him.
“Turn round,” he said, gesturing with his finger.
Bernat did as he was told. The soldier looked him up and down, then shook his head to the official. Another man at the gateway pointed with his sword toward the bundle at Bernat’s feet.
“What about the boy?”
Bernat bent down to pick Arnau up. He stripped off his clothes with his right side pressed against him, then held him up horizontally, holding him by the side of his head so that no one would spot the birthmark.
Looking back at the gate, the soldier shook his head once more.
“Cover that wound,” he said. “If you don’t, you won’t get anywhere in the city.”
The line re-formed outside the gate, which swung open. The peasant with the turnips picked up his sack again, avoiding looking at Bernat.
Bernat passed through the gateway with one of Arnau’s shirts covering his right eye. The soldiers gazed after him, but made no move to follow him. Leaving Santa Anna church on his left, he followed the rush of people into the city. He turned right into the Plaza Santa Anna, looking down at the ground the whole time. As the peasants spread out through the streets, gradually Bernat saw fewer and fewer bare feet, or rope and leather sandals, until all at once he found himself staring at a pair of legs covered in flame red stockings, with tight-fitting shoes, made entirely of some fine material, that ended in such long points that at the end of each of them was a tiny golden chain that led back to the ankles.
Bernat raised his eyes, and found himself staring at a man wearing an elaborate hat. He was dressed in a black robe shot through with gold and silver threads, a belt also decorated with gold, and leather straps sparkling with pearls and other precious stones. Bernat stood there openmouthed, but the man looked past him as if he did not even exist.
Bernat hesitated, lowered his eyes once more, then gave a sigh of relief. The man had not given him so much as a second look, so he continued on his way down toward the cathedral, which was still under construction. Bit by bit, he plucked up the courage to look around. Nobody seemed to pay him any attention. He stood watching the workmen swarming round the cathedral: some were hewing stone, others were climbing the tall scaffolding that covered the building, still more were hauling on ropes to lift blocks of stone ... Arnau began to whimper, demanding his attention.
“Tell me,” he said to a passing workman, “how can I find the potters’ quarter?” He knew his sister Guiamona was married to one.
“Carry on down this street,” the man said hastily, “until you reach the next square, the Plaza Sant Jaume. There’s a fountain in the middle. There you turn right and continue until you come to the new wall, at the Boqueria gate. Don’t go out into the Raval neighborhood. Instead, walk alongside the wall until you reach the next gateway, Trentaclaus. That’s where you’ll find the potters.”
Bernat struggled to remember all these different names, but just as he was about to ask the man to repeat them, he discovered he had already disappeared.
“Carry on down this street to the Plaza San Jaume,” he whispered to Arnau. “That much I remember. And once we’re in the square, we have to turn right again ... That’s it, isn’t it, son?”
Arnau always stopped crying when he heard his father’s voice. “Now what do we do?” Bernat said out loud. They were in a different square, the Plaza Sant Miquel. “That man only mentioned one square, but we can’t have made a mistake.” Bernat tried to ask a couple of passersby, but none of them stopped. “Everyone is in such a hurry,” he complained to his son. At that moment, he caught sight of a man standing by the entrance to ... a castle? “Ah, there’s someone who doesn’t seem to be rushing anywhere ... Begging your pardon,” he said, touching the man’s black cloak from behind.
Even Arnau, strapped tightly to his father’s chest, seemed to give a start when Bernat jumped back as the man turned round.
The old Jewish man shook his head wearily. He knew that Bernat’s reaction was the result of the Christian priests’ fiery sermons.
“What is it?” he asked.
Bernat could not help staring at the red and yellow badge on the old man’s chest. Then he peered inside what he had at first thought was a fortified castle. Everyone going in and out was a Jew! And they all wore this distinguishing mark. Was it forbidden to talk to them?
“Did you want something?” the old man repeated.
“How ... how do I find the potters’ quarter?”
“Carry on straight down this street,” said the old man, pointing the direction. “That will take you to the Boqueria gate. Follow the wall down toward the sea, and at the next gate you’ll find the neighborhood you’re looking for.”
In fact, the Church had forbidden only carnal relations with the Jews; that was why it forced them to wear the badge, so that nobody could claim not to have realized whom they were consorting with. The priests always railed against them, and yet this old man ...
“Thank you, friend,” said Bernat with a timid smile.
“Thank you,” the old Jewish man replied. “But in the future, take care that no one sees you talking to one of us ... let alone smiling at us.” His lips twisted in a sad grimace.
At the Boqueria gate, Bernat found himself caught up in a crowd of women who were buying offal and goat’s meat. He watched them examining the wares and bargaining with the stallholders. “This is the meat that gives our lord all his problems,” Bernat muttered to his son, and then laughed at the thought of Llorenç de Bellera. How often had he heard him threatening the shepherds and the cattlemen who supplied Barcelona with meat! But he never dared go any further, because anyone taking livestock to the city had the right to graze them wherever they liked in all Catalonia.
Bernat skirted the market and walked down to the Trentaclaus gate. The streets here were wider, and as he drew close to the gate, he saw dozens of pots, bowls, jars, and bricks drying in the sun in front of the houses.
“I’m looking for Grau Puig’s house,” he told one of the soldiers guarding the gate.
THE PUIG FAMILY had been neighbors of the Estanyols. Bernat well remembered Grau, the fourth of eight starving children who could never get enough to eat from their meager landholding. His mother had a special affection for the Puig children, because their mother had helped give birth to Bernat and his sister. Grau was the brightest and hardest-working of them all; that was why, when Josep Puig received a kinsman’s offer for one of them to become a potter’s apprentice in Barcelona, it was Grau he chose. Grau was ten years old at the time.
But if Josep Puig found it hard to feed his family, it was going to be impossible for him to find the two bushels of white flour and the ten shillings his relative was demanding in return for taking on Grau for his five years’ apprenticeship. Added to which were the two additional shillings that Llorenç de Bellera demanded in order to free a serf from his obligations, and the clothes Grau would need for the first two years of his apprenticeship : the master potter had agreed to supply only what was necessary for the last three.
This was what brought Josep Puig to the Estanyol farmhouse with Grau, who was a few years older than Bernat and his sister. Old man Estanyol listened closely to Puig’s proposition: if he endowed his daughter with the list of things Puig outlined and offered them to Grau at once, Puig promised his son would marry Guiamona as soon as Grau reached the age of eighteen and was a qualified craftsman. The old man studied the boy: sometimes, when Grau’s family was in dire need, Grau had come to lend a hand in the Estanyol fields. The boy had never asked for payment, but Estanyol had always made sure he went home with some vegetables or grain. He trusted him. He accepted the offer.
After five years’ hard work as an apprentice, Grau became a qualified craftsman. He was still bound to the master potter, who was sufficiently pleased with him to start paying him a wage. When Grau reached eighteen, Grau kept his promise and married Guiamona.
“My son,” his father said to Bernat, “I’ve decided to give Guiamona a fresh dowry. There are only two of us, and we have the best and most fertile lands in the region. They might need the money.”
“Father,” Bernat interrupted him, “why do you think it’s necessary to give me an explanation?”
“Because your sister has already received her dowry, and you are my heir. The money is yours by right.”
“Do as you see fit.”
Four years later, when he was twenty-two, Grau sat the public examination, which took place in front of four officers of the guild. He made his first pieces for them: a water jug, two plates, and a bowl. The four men looked on closely, and then unanimously granted him the title of master potter. This allowed him to open his own workshop in Barcelona, and of course to use his own stamp, which was to be put on every piece of pottery made in his workshop, in case there were any complaints about his work. To honor the meaning of the word “grau” in Catalan, he chose the outline of a mountain as his stamp.
Grau and Guiamona, who by now was pregnant, moved into a small, one-story house in the potters’ quarter. By royal decree, this was situated on the western edge of the city, in the land between the new wall built by King Jaime I and the ancient Roman fortifications. They used Guiamona’s dowry to buy the property, having saved it for just such an occasion.
It was there, with the pottery workshop and their living quarters sharing the same space as the kiln and the bedrooms, that Grau began his career as a master potter. It was a time when the expansion of Catalan trade was bringing about a revolution among the potters, calling for a specialization that many of them could not accept.
“We’re going to make only jugs and storage jars,” declared Grau. “That’s all.” Guiamona glanced at the four masterful pieces he had made for his examination. “I’ve seen lots of traders,” he went on, “begging for jars to sell their oil, honey, or wine in. And I’ve seen lots of potters turn them away on the spot because their kilns were full of complicated tiles for a new house, bright crockery for a noble, or an apothecary’s pots.”
Guiamona ran her fingers over the masterpieces he had created. How smooth they were to the touch! When Grau had triumphantly presented them to her after passing his examination, she had imagined that she would be surrounded with similar beautiful pieces. Even the guild officers had congratulated Grau, because he had shown he was a true master of his craft: the decorations of zigzag lines, palm leaves, rosettes, and fleur-de-lys on the water jug, the two plates, and the bowl, displayed a wealth of color on a white tin glaze background; the coppery green so typical of Barcelona that every master potter had to use, but also violet manganese, black iron, cobalt blue, and antimony yellow. Each line or design was of a different shade. Guiamona could scarcely wait for the pieces to be fired, in case the clay cracked. As a finishing touch, Grau applied a layer of clear lead glaze, which made them entirely waterproof. Guiamona could still feel how much smoother they were. But now ... all her husband was going to make was storage jars.
Grau went up to her. “Don’t worry,” he said to calm her fears. “I’ll make more pieces like them just for you.”
Grau’s calculation had proved correct. He filled the yard in front of his humble workshop with jugs and storage jars, and soon the traders of the city became aware that in Grau Puig’s workshop they could find everything they wanted. No longer would they have to beg for favors from arrogant master craftsmen.
As a result of this, the building that Bernat and little Arnau came to a halt outside was very different from that first tiny workshop. What Bernat could see out of his left eye was a big house on three floors. Open to the street at ground level was the workshop; the master potter and his family lived on the upper two floors. Along one side of the house ran a garden for vegetables and flowers; on the other were sheds leading to the kilns and a terrace where hundreds of jugs and storage jars of all shapes, sizes, and colors were displayed. Behind the house, as stipulated in the city regulations, there was empty ground where the clay and other materials could be loaded and stored. It was here too that the potters threw the ashes and other waste from the kilns, which they were forbidden to throw into the city streets.
Bernat could see from outside that there were ten people working nonstop in the workshop. None of them looked like Grau. Bernat noticed two men saying good-bye next to an oxcart laden with brand-new storage jars. One of them clambered on board the cart and set off. The other man looked well dressed, so before he could disappear back into the workshop, Bernat called to him.
“Wait!”
The other man watched him approach. “I’m looking for Grau Puig,” said Bernat.
The man stared him up and down.
“If it’s work you’re after, we don’t need anyone. Our master has no time to waste,” he growled, “and nor have I,” he added, turning his back on the newcomer.
“I’m a relative of Grau’s.”
The man stopped in his tracks, then whirled round to face him.
“Hasn’t the master paid you enough? Why do you insist on demanding more?” he snarled, pushing Bernat out into the street. Arnau began to cry. “You’ve already been told that if you come here again, we’ll report you to the authorities. Grau Puig is an important man, you know.”
Although he did not understand any of this, Bernat let the man force him backward.
“Listen ... ,” he protested, “I ...”
By now, Arnau was howling in his arms, but then all of a sudden there was an even louder cry from one of the upper-floor windows.
“Bernat! Bernat!”
Bernat and the man turned round together and saw a woman leaning half out of the window, arms whirling like windmills.
“Guiamona!” shouted Bernat, returning her greeting.
The woman pulled her head in. Bernat turned to the man, his eyes narrowed.
“Does Mistress Guiamona know you?” the man asked.
“She’s my sister,” Bernat answered curtly. “And by the way, nobody in this house has ever paid me a thing.”
The man apologized, hoping he was not in trouble. “I’m sorry. I was referring to the master’s brothers: first one came, then another, and then still another.”
But Bernat saw his sister coming out of the house, so he cut the man off and ran over to embrace her.
“WHERE’S GRAU?” HE asked his sister once he had cleaned off his eye and handed Arnau over to the Moorish slave who looked after Guiamona’s small children. As he watched the boy wolf down a bowl of milk and cereal, he added: “I’d like to greet him too.”
Guiamona looked uncomfortable.
“Is something wrong?”
“Grau has changed a lot. He’s a rich and important man now.” Guiamona pointed to the many chests lining the walls of the room: the sideboard; a piece of furniture Bernat had never seen in his life before, which was filled with books and crockery; the carpets adorning the floor; and the tapestries and curtains hanging from windows and walls. “He barely attends to the workshop and his potter’s trade these days; it’s Jaume, his chief assistant, who sees to everything. He’s the man you met in the street. Grau is busy as a merchant: ships, wine, oil. Now he is a guild official, which in accordance with the laws and usages of the city, means he is an alderman, a gentleman. Soon he expects to be made a member of the Council of a Hundred.” Guiamona looked around the room. “He’s not the same anymore, Bernat.”
“You’ve changed a lot too,” Bernat said, interrupting her. Guiamona looked down at her matronly body and nodded. “That man Jaume,” Bernat continued, “said something about Grau’s relatives. What did he mean?”
Guiamona shook her head, then replied.
“What he meant was that, as soon as they heard that Grau was rich, all of them—brothers, cousins, nephews—suddenly started turning up at the workshop. They had fled their lands to come and seek Grau’s help.” Guiamona could not help noticing her brother’s expression. “So you too ... ?” Bernat nodded. “But you had such a wonderful farm!”
When she heard Bernat’s story, she could not hold back her tears. As he told her what had happened to the lad in the forge, she stood up and came to kneel next to his chair.
“Don’t mention that to anyone here,” she warned him. Then she laid her head on his lap, and went on listening. “Don’t worry,” she sobbed when Bernat had finished. “We will help you.”
“Ah, sister,” said Bernat, stroking her head. “How do you intend to help me when Grau would not even help his own brothers?”
“BECAUSE MY BROTHER is different!” shouted Guiamona so loudly that Grau took a step backward.
It was night by the time her husband returned home. Small, skinny Grau, a bundle of nerves, strode up the staircase, cursing. Guiamona was waiting for him. Jaume had told him what had happened: “Your brother-in-law is sleeping in the hayloft with the apprentices, his boy ... with your children.”
Grau charged up to his wife.
“How dare you!” he shouted at her when she tried to explain. “He’s a fugitive serf! Do you know what it would mean if they found a fugitive in our house? My ruin, that’s what! It would mean my ruin!”
Guiamona let him talk. He whirled round her, flinging his arms theatrically into the air. He was a good head taller than she was.
“You’re mad! I’ve sent my own brothers overseas on ships! I’ve given my sisters dowries so that they would marry outsiders, and all so that nobody could accuse this family of the slightest thing! And now you ... Why should I act any differently for your brother?”
“Because he is different!” she shouted, silencing him.
Grau hesitated. “What? What do you mean?”
“You know very well. I don’t think I need to remind you why.”
Grau avoided meeting her gaze.
“This very day,” he muttered, “I’ve been meeting one of the five city councillors with a view to being elected to the Council of a Hundred as a guild official. I think I’ve won three of the five over: I still need to convince the bailiff and the magistrate. Can you imagine what my enemies would say if they found out I had given shelter to a fugitive serf?”
Guiamona reminded him softly: “We owe him everything.”
“I’m only an artisan, Guiamona. A rich one, but still an artisan. The nobles look down on me, and the merchants despise me, however much they are willing to do business with me. If they found out I had taken in a fugitive ... do you know what the landowning nobles would say?”
“We owe him everything,” Guiamona repeated.
“Well, then, we’ll give him the money and send him on his way.”
“He needs his freedom. A year and a day.”
Grau paced nervously around the room. Then he buried his head in his hands.
“We can’t,” he said. “Guiamona, we can’t do it!” he said, peering through his fingers. “Can you imagine ... ?”
“Can you imagine! Can you imagine!” She butted in, raising her voice at him. “Can you imagine what would happen if we threw him out and he was arrested by Llorenç de Bellera’s men or one of those enemies of yours? What if they found out that you owe everything to him, a fugitive serf who agreed to give you a dowry that was not yours by right?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, Grau, no. But that’s how it is. If you won’t do it out of gratitude, do it out of self-interest. It’s better for you to be able to keep an eye on him. Bernat wants his freedom. He won’t leave Barcelona. If you don’t take him in, there will be a fugitive and a little boy, both of them with the same birthmark by their right eye as I have, wandering the streets of Barcelona. Think how useful they could be to those enemies you’re so frightened of.”
Grau stared hard at his wife. He was about to respond, then thought better of it and merely waved his hand. He left the room, and Guiamona could hear him climbing the stairs to the loft.
5
“YOUR SON WILL stay in the main house; Doña Guiamona will take care of him. As soon as he is old enough, he will become an apprentice in the workshop.”
Bernat paid only scant attention to what Grau’s assistant was saying. Jaume had burst into the dormitory at first light. The slaves and apprentices leapt from their pallets as though he were the Devil himself, and rushed pell-mell out of the door. Bernat was satisfied with what he heard: Arnau would be well looked after, and in time would become an apprentice, a freeman with a trade.
“Did you hear me?” Jaume asked.
When Bernat did not reply, he cursed: “Stupid peasants!”
Bernat almost reacted violently, but the smile on the official’s face made him think twice.
“Go ahead,” Jaume taunted him. “Hit me and your sister will be the one who loses. I’ll repeat the important things, peasant: you are to work from dawn to dusk, like all the others. In return you will have bed, food, and clothing ... and Doña Guiamona will take care of your son. You are forbidden to enter the main house: on no account may you do so. You are also forbidden to leave the workshop until after the year and a day necessary to win your freedom. Whenever anyone comes into the workshop, you are to hide. You are not to tell a soul of your situation, not even the apprentices in here, although with that birthmark of yours ...” Jaume shook his head. “That is the bargain the master has struck with Doña Guiamona. Do you agree?”
“When will I be able to see my son?” asked Bernat.
“That’s none of my business.”
Bernat closed his eyes. When they had first set sight on Barcelona, he had promised Arnau he would be a freeman. He would not be any lord’s vassal.
“What are my tasks?” he said at last.
To carry wood. To carry hundreds, thousands, of the heavy branches needed every day for the kilns. To make sure the fires were always lit. To carry clay, and to clean. To clean away the mud, the clay dust, and the ashes from the kilns. Over and over again, hauling the ashes and dust to the back of the house. By the time Bernat returned, covered in dust and ashes, the workshop would once again be filthy, so that he had to start all over again. He also had to carry the pottery out into the open with the other workmen, under the watchful gaze of Jaume, who supervised the life of the workshop at all times. He strode around, shouting, cuffing the apprentices and cursing the slaves, on whom he did not hesitate to use the whip if anything was not to his liking.
On one occasion when a big pot slipped out of their hands and rolled onto the ground, Jaume brandished his whip at them. The pot had not even broken, but as hard as he could he lashed the three slaves helping Bernat carry the piece out. He was about to turn on Bernat, until the latter calmly warned him: “Do that and I’ll kill you.”
Jaume hesitated, then flushed and cracked the whip in the direction of the others, who by now were safely out of range. Jaume charged after them. Bernat took a deep breath.
Bernat worked so hard he gave the assistant little opportunity to threaten him. He ate whatever was put before him. He would have liked to tell the stout woman who served them that on his farm the dogs had been better fed than this, but when he saw how the apprentices and slaves threw themselves on the food, he preferred to say nothing. He slept in the loft with the rest of them, on a straw pallet, under which he kept his few belongings and what little money he had managed to rescue. The fact that he had stood up to Jaume seemed to have won him the respect of the others, so that he was able to sleep soundly, despite the fleas, the stink of sweat, and all the snores.
He put up with everything just for the two evenings a week when Habiba the Moorish slave girl brought him Arnau, who was generally fast asleep. Bernat would pick him up, sniffing the smell of clean clothes and fragrance that hung about him. Taking care not to wake his son, he would lift his clothing to look at his legs and arms, his full stomach. Arnau was growing and filling out. Bernat rocked the baby in his arms, pleading with his eyes for Habiba, the young Moorish girl, to let him keep the boy a little longer. Sometimes he tried to stroke him, but the rough skin of his hands chafed the boy’s skin, and Habiba snatched him away. As time went by, Bernat came to a tacit agreement with her (she never said a word to him) so that he could stroke the boy’s pink cheeks with the back of his fingers. The mere touch of his son’s skin made him quiver. When the slave gestured for him to hand the baby back, Bernat would give him one final kiss on the forehead.
As the months went by, Jaume realized that Bernat could do more useful work in the pottery. The two men had come to respect each other.
“There’s nothing to be done with the slaves,” Jaume said one day to Grau Puig. “They work only because they fear the whip, and don’t care what they are doing. But your brother-in-law ...”
“Don’t call him that!” Grau protested yet again, as this was a frequent liberty his assistant allowed himself.
“The peasant ...” Jaume corrected himself, pretending to be embarrassed. “The peasant is different. He takes care over even the most menial job. He cleans the kilns in a way I’ve never—”
“So what are you suggesting?” Grau butted in, not raising his eyes from the papers he was studying.
“We could give him more responsible work, and besides, he costs us hardly anything...”
This observation finally made Grau look up.
“Don’t you believe it,” he said. “He may not have cost anything to buy, like the slaves do, and he may not have an apprentice’s contract, or have a wage like the potters, but he’s the most expensive workman I have.”
“I meant...”
“I know what you meant.” Grau buried himself in his papers once more. “Do as you see fit, but let me warn you: that peasant must never forget what his place is in this workshop. If he does, I’ll throw him and you out, and you’ll never become a master potter. Is that clear?”
Jaume nodded, but from that day on, Bernat helped the potters directly in their work. He was even promoted above the heads of the young apprentices, who were unable to handle the heavy fireproof molds used to bake the pots in the kilns. From the molds came big potbellied jars with short necks and small bases that could hold up to 280 liters of grain or wine. Previously, Jaume had needed to employ at least two potters to haul the molds around; with Bernat’s help, only one other person was necessary. They would make the mold, fire it, apply a layer of tin and lead oxides to it, then fire the jar again in a second kiln at a lower temperature so that the tin and the lead would melt together to form a clear waterproof glaze.
Jaume waited anxiously to see whether he had made the right decision. After a few weeks, he was satisfied with the result: production had increased noticeably, and Bernat still took the same trouble over his work. “More than some of the potters themselves!” Jaume was forced to admit when he went to put the workshop’s stamp on the neck of one of the storage jars.
Jaume tried to read the thoughts the peasant concealed behind his placid countenance. There was never any glimpse of hatred in his eyes, or any sign of rancor. Jaume wondered what could have happened for him to end up in this situation. He was not the same as the master’s other kinsmen who had shown up at the workshop: they had all been bought off. But Bernat... The way he fondled his son whenever the Moorish slave girl brought the baby to him! He wanted his freedom, and worked harder than anyone else to make sure he got it.
The understanding between the two men produced other results apart from an increase in production. One day when Jaume came over to imprint the master’s mark on a jar, Bernat narrowed his eyes and stared pointedly at the base of the piece. “You’ll never become a master potter!” Those words of warning came immediately to Jaume’s mind whenever he considered becoming more friendly with Bernat.
Now he pretended he was having a coughing fit. He moved away from the jar without stamping it, and looked at the place the peasant had been pointing out to him. He saw a tiny crack, which meant that the jar would break in the heat of the kiln. Jaume shouted angrily at the potter ... and at Bernat.
So the year and the day that Bernat and his son needed to become freemen passed. Grau Puig achieved his longed-for goal of being elected a member of Barcelona’s Council of a Hundred. And yet Jaume did not see the peasant react in any way. Anyone else would have demanded his citizenship document and gone off into the streets of the city in search of fun and women, but Bernat did nothing. What was wrong with him?
Bernat could not get the memory of the lad in the forge out of his mind. He did not feel guilty about him: the fool had tried to stop him from taking his boy. But if he had died ... Bernat might win freedom from his lord, but even after a year and a day he would not be free of the charge of murder. Guiamona had advised him not to tell his story to anyone, and he had followed her advice. He could not take the risk; Llorenç de Bellera had probably not only ordered his arrest as a fugitive, but as a murderer as well. What would become of Arnau if he were captured? Murder was punishable by death.
His son was growing strong and sturdy. He could not yet talk, but he was crawling everywhere, and gurgled joyfully in a way that made the hair on the back of Bernat’s neck stand on end. Despite the fact that Jaume still did not speak to him, his new position in the workshop (which Grau was too busy with his trading and other commitments to notice) gained him even more respect among the others. With Guiamona’s tacit assent, the Moorish girl brought him Arnau more frequently now. His sister was also much busier as a result of her husband’s new responsibilities.
There was no way that Bernat was going to risk his son’s future by going out into the streets of Barcelona.
PART TWO
Chained to the Nobility
6
Christmas 1329
Barcelona
By NOW, ARNAU was eight years old. He was a quiet, intelligent child with wavy, shoulder-length chestnut locks that framed a face in which his big, clear, honey-colored eyes shone.
Grau Puig’s house was decked out for the Christmas celebrations. The youngster who at the age of ten, thanks to a neighbor’s generosity, had been able to leave his father’s lands had finally triumphed in Barcelona. Now he waited alongside his wife to receive his guests.
“They’re coming to pay me homage,” he told Guiamona. “It’s unheard-of for nobles and merchants to come to a mere artisan’s house like this.”
His wife contented herself with listening.
“The king himself has backed me. The king himself! Our King Alfonso!”
That day no work was done in the pottery. Despite the cold, Bernat and Arnau sat on the ground in the yard and watched the constant comings and goings of slaves, craftsmen, and apprentices in and out of the house. In all those eight years, Bernat had never set foot again in the Grau mansion, but he did not care. He ruffled Arnau’s curls, and thought to himself: “I can put my arms around my son. What more could I ask?” His boy ate and lived with Guiamona, and even studied with Grau’s children. He had learned to read, write, and count at the same time as his cousins. Yet thanks to Guiamona he had never forgotten that Bernat was his father. Grau himself treated the boy with complete indifference.
Bernat insisted time and again that Arnau should be well behaved in the big house. Whenever he came laughing into the workshop, Bernat’s own face lit up. The slaves and all the craftsmen—even Jaume—could not help but smile at the boy when he ran out into the yard to wait for his father to complete one of his tasks, only then running toward him and hugging him tight. Afterward he would go off and sit down again, watching his father and smiling at anyone who spoke to him. On some nights, after the workshop had closed, Habiba let him out of the house, and father and son had time to talk and laugh together uninterrupted.
Things had changed, even though Jaume still adhered strictly to his master’s instructions. Grau paid no attention to the money brought in by the pottery, and had nothing to do with the day-to-day running of it. In spite of this, he could not do without it, because it was the basis of his position as guild official, alderman of Barcelona, and member of the Council of a Hundred. However, once he had achieved all this, Grau Puig dedicated himself to politics and high-level finances, as befitted a city alderman.
From the outset of his reign in 1291, Jaime the Second had tried to impose himself on the old Catalan feudal nobility. To do this, he had turned to the free cities and their citizens, especially Barcelona. Sicily had been part of the crown’s possessions since the days of Pedro the Great. Now, when the pope granted Jaime the Second the right to conquer Sardinia, it was the citizens of Barcelona who financed the enterprise.
The annexation of these two Mediterranean islands was in everyone’s interest: it guaranteed the supply of grain to Catalonia, as well as sealing Catalan domination of the western Mediterranean and, with it, control over the sea trade routes. The monarch kept for himself the silver mines and the salt on the island.
Grau Puig had not lived through these events. His opportunity came on the death of Jaime the Second and the accession of Alfonso the Third. In that same year, 1327, the Corsicans began to cause trouble in the city of Sassari. At the same time, fearing Catalonia’s commercial power, the Genoese declared war, attacking all ships that sailed under the Catalan flag. Neither king nor traders hesitated a moment: the campaign to stifle the revolt in Sardinia and the war against Genoa were to be financed by the burghers of Barcelona. And this was what happened, thanks largely to the efforts of one of the city’s aldermen: Grau Puig. It was he who, in addition to contributing generously to the costs of the war, succeeded by his fiery speeches in convincing even the most doubtful to take part. The king himself publicly thanked him for his efforts.
Today, as Grau peered anxiously out of his windows to see if his guests were arriving, Bernat kissed his son on the cheek and sent him back inside.
“It’s very cold, Arnau. You should go in.” The boy made as though to protest, but his father insisted. “You’ll eat a fine meal tonight, won’t you?”
“Cockerel, nougat, and wafers,” his son said enthusiastically.
Bernat gave him an affectionate tap on the behind. “Run inside. We can talk another day.”
ARNAU ARRIVED JUST in time to sit down to dinner. He and Grau’s two youngest children—Guiamon, who was the same age as him, and Margarida, a year and a half older—were to eat in the kitchen. Josep and Genis, the two older children, were allowed to dine upstairs with their parents.
The arrival of so many guests had made Grau even more nervous than usual.
“I’ll see to everything,” he had told Guiamona as she was preparing the feast. “You look after the women.”
“But how are you going to ... ?” she started to protest, but Grau was already giving instructions to Estranya, the cook, a plump, impudent mulatto slave, who kept one eye on her mistress while appearing to pay attention to what Grau was saying.
“How do you expect me to react?” thought Guiamona. “You’re not talking to your secretary, or in the guild or the Council of a Hundred. So you don’t think I’m capable of looking after your guests? So I’m not good enough for you?”
Behind her husband’s back, Guiamona had tried to restore order among the servants and to make sure that the Christmas feast was a success, but now, as their guests arrived and Grau fussed over everything, including their rich capes, she found she was pushed into the background as her husband had wished, and had to make do with smiling pleasantly at the other women. Grau meanwhile looked like a general in the thick of a battle: he was talking animatedly to his guests, while at the same time showing the slaves what they had to do and whom they were to attend to; the more he shouted and insisted, the more anxious they became. In the end, all of them—except for Estranya, who was in the kitchen preparing the meal—decided that the best thing was to follow Grau wherever he went.
Freed in this way from all supervision—as Estranya and her assistants were all busy laboring over their pots and fires—Margarida, Guiamon, and Arnau mixed the chicken with the nougat, and stuffed food in one another’s mouths, laughing and joking all the while. At one point, Margarida picked up a jug of undiluted wine and swallowed a whole mouthful. She immediately turned bright red and her cheeks flushed, but she succeeded in not spitting any of it out. She encouraged her brother and cousin to do the same. Arnau and Guiamon both drank from the jug, but although they tried to keep their composure like Margarida, they started coughing and spluttering, searching desperately on the table for water, their eyes full of tears. After that the three of them could not stop laughing: just from looking at each other, at the jug of wine, or at Estranya’s huge buttocks.
“Get out of here!” the mulatto shouted, tired of their shouts and laughter.
The three of them ran from the kitchen, still laughing and shouting.
“Shh!” another slave warned them at the foot of the main staircase. “The master does not want any children here.”
Margarida tried to protest. “But ...”
“No buts about it,” insisted the slave.
At that moment Habiba came down in search of more wine. The master had shot her a furious look when one of his guests had tried to pour some out and been rewarded with only a few miserable drops.
“Keep an eye on the children,” Habiba told the slave on the staircase as she passed by. “More wine!” she shouted at Estranya, going into the kitchen.
Worried that Habiba might bring ordinary wine rather than the special vintage reserved for this occasion, Grau came running after her.
The children had stopped laughing, and instead were keenly watching all this commotion. Grau spotted them with the slave.
“What are you children doing here? And you? Why aren’t you doing anything? Go and tell Habiba that the wine is to come from the old jars. Don’t forget; otherwise I’ll flay you alive. And you children, get off to bed.”
The slave bustled off to the kitchen. Their eyes still glistening from the effects of the wine, the three children smiled at one another. As soon as Grau had rushed back upstairs, they burst out laughing. Bed? Margarida stared at the wide-open front door, pursed her lips, and raised her eyebrows.
“Where are the children?” Habiba asked when the slave appeared in the kitchen.
“Wine from the old jars ...,” the slave repeated.
“What about the children?”
“The old ones. The old ones.”
“But what’s happened to the children?” Habiba insisted.
“In your bed. The master say go to bed. They with him. From the old jars, yes? He’ll flay us alive ...”
IT WAS CHRISTMAS. The streets of Barcelona were empty: no one would be outside until midnight mass and the sacrifice of a cock. The moon shone on the sea so brightly it seemed that the street they were walking down stretched on forever. The three children stared in wonder at its silver reflection.
“There’ll be no one on the beach tonight,” Margarida reasoned.
“Nobody puts to sea at Christmas,” Guiamon agreed.
The two of them turned to Arnau. He shook his head.
“No one will notice,” Margarida insisted. “We can go and be back very quickly. It’s close by.”
“Coward,” Guiamon hissed.
They ran down to Framenors, the Franciscan convent built on the shore at the far western end of the city wall. When they reached it, the children stared across the beach to the Santa Clara convent, which marked Barcelona’s eastern limit.
“Look!” Guiamon said excitedly. “The city fleet!”
“I’ve never seen the beach like this before,” said Margarida.
Eyes big as saucers, Arnau nodded in agreement.
All the way from Framenors to Santa Clara, the beach was filled with ships of all sizes. There were no buildings to spoil the children’s view of this magnificent sight. Once, when Grau had taken them and their tutor down to the strand to watch one of the ships he had an interest in being loaded or unloaded, he had explained that almost a hundred years earlier King Jaime the Conqueror had forbidden any building on the beach in order to leave it free for boats to be grounded. None of the children had thought any more of what Grau had said: wasn’t it natural for ships to be beached like that? They had always been there.
Grau had looked over at the tutor.
“In the ports of our enemies and trading rivals,” the tutor explained, “none of the boats are left on the beach.”
At that word “enemy” the four children were suddenly all ears.
“It’s true,” Grau went on, finally sure of their interest. “Our enemy Genoa has a wonderful natural harbor protected from the sea. That means they do not need to beach their ships. Our ally, Venice, has a great lagoon reached by narrow canals: their ships are safe there from any storms. The port of Pisa is connected to the sea by the River Arno; even Marseilles has a natural harbor protected from rough seas.
“The Phocian Greeks are known to have used the harbor at Marseilles,” the tutor added.
“You say our enemies have better ports than us?” asked Josep, the eldest. “And yet we defeat them: we’re the lords of the Mediterranean!” he said, repeating the words so often heard from his father. The other children agreed: how was it possible?
Grau turned to their tutor for the explanation.
“Because Barcelona has always had the best sailors. We don’t have a harbor, and yet ...”
“What do you mean, we don’t have a harbor?” protested Genis. “What’s this then?” he said, pointing to the beach.
“This is not a harbor. A harbor needs to be a sheltered place, protected from the open sea, but this...” The tutor waved his hands toward the waves lapping on the shore. “Listen, Barcelona has always been a city of sailors. Many years ago, there was a harbor here, like all the other cities your father mentioned. In Roman times, ships sheltered behind the Mons Taber, which was over there somewhere ... ,” he said, pointing to inside the city walls, “but gradually the land took over from the sea, and the harbor disappeared. Then there was the Comtal harbor, but that has gone too, and so has Jaime the First’s, which was also sheltered by another small natural outcrop, the Puig de les Falsies. Do you know where that is now?”
The four children stared at one another, then turned to Grau. Laughing, he pointed his finger downward, as if trying to hide his gesture from the tutor.
“Here?” all four of them chimed.
“Yes,” replied the tutor, “we’re standing on it. But that one disappeared too ... so Barcelona was left without a harbor, but by then we were a sea-faring city, with the best sailors, and we still are ... even though we have no harbor.”
“Well, then,” Margarida objected, “why is a harbor so important?”
“Your father can explain that better than me,” said the tutor. Grau nodded.
“It’s very, very important, Margarida. Do you see that ship?” He pointed to a galley surrounded by small craft. “If Barcelona had a harbor, we could unload it at a quay without needing all those people to unload the merchandise. Besides, if a sudden storm blew up now, the ship would be in great danger because it is so close to shore. It would have to leave Barcelona.”
“Why?” Margarida wanted to know.
“Because it couldn’t ride out the storm here: it might sink. Why, it’s even made explicit in the Ordinances of the Barcelona Coast. There it stipulates that in case of any storm, ships must seek refuge in either the harbor at Salou or at Tarragona.”
“So we don’t have a harbor,” said Guiamon sorrowfully, as if he had been robbed of something of the utmost importance.
“No,” said his father, laughing and putting an arm round his shoulder. “But we’re still the best sailors! We’re the lords of the Mediterranean! And we do have the beach. Here is where we ground our boats when they are not on a voyage, and it’s here that we repair and build them. Can you see the shipyards? There at the far end of the beach, where those arches are.”
“Can we go onto the boats?” Guiamon asked.
“No,” said his father, suddenly serious again. “Boats are sacred, my boy.”
Arnau never went out with Grau and his children, still less with Guiamona. He was always left at home with Habiba, but later on, his cousins would tell him all they had seen and heard. They had explained everything about the beach and the boats.
And there the boats were that Christmas night. All of them! The small ones: cockboats, skiffs, and gondolas. The medium-sized vessels: cogs, dromonds, gallivats, pinks, brigantines, galliots, and barques. And even some larger ships: naos, carracks, caravels, and galleys, which despite their size were forced by royal decree not to sail between October and April.
“Look at them all!” Guiamon exclaimed.
On the shore at Regomir they could see some fires burning, with watchmen sitting round them. Scattered along the beach from Regomir to Framenors rose the silent boats, lit only by the moon.
“Follow me, sailors!” commanded Margarida, raising her right arm.
Captain Margarida led her men through storms; they fought pirates, boarded ships, won battles. They leapt from one ship to the next, defeating Genoese and Moors, whooping in triumph as they regained Sardinia for King Alfonso.
“Who goes there?”
The three of them stood paralyzed with fright in the bottom of a skiff.
“Who goes there?”
Margarida poked her head over the side. Three torches were coming toward them.
“Let’s get away from here,” Guiamon whispered, tugging at his sister’s dress.
“We can’t,” she said. “They’re right in front of us.”
“What about over toward the shipyards?” asked Arnau.
Margarida looked over toward Regomir. Another two lighted torches were heading toward them from that direction.
“It’s not safe that way either.”
“The boats are sacred!” Grau’s words echoed in all their minds. Guiamon began to sob, but Margarida silenced him. A cloud covered the moon.
“Into the sea!” ordered the captain.
The three of them jumped overboard into the shallow water. Margarida and Arnau crouched down; Guiamon stretched out at full length. As the torches approached the skiff, the children moved out farther into the sea. Margarida looked up at the moon, praying silently that the clouds would keep it hidden.
The search seemed to go on forever, but none of the men looked out to sea, and if one of them did ... well, it was Christmas, and they were only three frightened children—frightened, and soaked to the skin by now. It was very cold.
By the time they reached home, Guiamon could hardly stand. His teeth were chattering, his knees trembled, and he was shaking uncontrollably. Margarida and Arnau had to lift him under the arms and carry him the last part of the way.
When they arrived, all the guests had already left. Alerted to the children’s disappearance, Grau and the slaves were on the point of setting out to look for them.
“It was Arnau,” Margarida said accusingly, while Guiamona and the Moorish slave girl plunged the little boy into a bath of hot water. “He talked us into going down to the beach. I didn’t want to ...” The little girl made sure she accompanied her lies with the tears that always worked so well with her father.
The hot bath, blankets, and scalding broth were not enough to revive Guiamon. The fever took hold. Grau sent for the doctor, but his efforts were in vain. The fever grew worse: Guiamon began to cough, and his breathing became shallow and wheezing.
“There’s nothing more I can do,” Dr. Sebastia Font said resignedly on the third night he came to visit.
Pale and drawn, Guiamona raised her hands to her head and burst into tears.
“But that’s impossible!” shouted Grau. “There must be some remedy!”
“There may be, but ...” The doctor was well aware of Grau and his dislikes. But the situation called for desperate measures. “You will have to call on Jafuda Bonsenyor.”
Grau said nothing.
“Call for him!” Guiamona said, between sobs.
“A Jew!” thought Grau. If you deal with a Jew, you deal with the Devil, he had been taught as a child. And as a child, Grau had joined the other apprentices to run after Jewish women and smash their water jars when they came to fill them at the public fountains. He went on doing so until the king bowed to a petition from the Jewry of Barcelona and prohibited all such attacks. Grau hated Jews. All his life he had harassed or spat at anyone wearing a badge. They were heretics; they were the ones who had killed Jesus Christ... how could he allow one of them to cross his threshold?
“Call him!” shouted Guiamona.
Her anguished cry was so loud that everyone in the neighborhood heard. Bernat and the apprentices shrank back on their pallets from the sound. Bernat had not been able to see either Arnau or Habiba for three days, but Jaume kept him up-to-date on what was going on.
“Your son is fine,” he told him when no one was looking.
Jafuda Bonsenyor came as soon as he got the message. He was wearing a plain black hooded djellaba, with the badge round his neck. Grau watched him from a distance as he stood in the dining room, hunched over as he listened to Sebastia’s explanations. Guiamona stood next to them. “Make sure you cure him, Jew!” Grau glared silently when their eyes met. Jafuda Bonsenyor nodded respectfully toward him. Jafuda was a learned man who had devoted his life to studying philosophy and the sacred scriptures. King Jaime the Second had commissioned him to write The Book of Sayings of Wise Men and Philosophers, but he was also a doctor, the most prominent in all the Jewish community. When he saw Guiamon, all he did was shake his head slowly from side to side.
Grau heard his wife’s cries. He ran to the stairs. Guiamona came down from the bedroom on Sebastia’s arm. Jafuda appeared behind them.
“Jew!” hissed Grau, spitting as he passed by.
Guiamon died two days later.
No SOONER HAD they all returned to the house, dressed in mourning, after the burial of the boy’s body, than Grau signaled to Jaume to come over to him and Guiamona.
“I want you to go to Arnau at once and make sure he never sets foot inside this house again.” Guiamona did not say a word.
Grau told him what Margarida had said: that it was Arnau who had led them on. Neither his youngest nor a mere girl could have planned such an escapade. Guiamona listened to his accusations, cursing her for taking in her brother and nephew. And although deep in her heart she knew it was only a childish prank that had led to fatal consequences, the death of her youngest son robbed her of the strength to oppose her husband, while Margarida’s blaming of Arnau made it almost impossible for her to bear the sight of him anymore. He was her brother’s son, and she wished him no harm; but she preferred not to have to see him.
“Tie that Moorish girl to a beam in the workshop,” Grau ordered Jaume before he went off in search of Arnau, “and make sure everyone gathers round, including the boy.”
Grau had been thinking it through during the funeral service. The slave girl was the one to blame: she should have been looking after them. As he heard Guiamona start crying again, and the priest droned on, he wondered what punishment he should give her. According to the law, he could not kill or maim her, but no one could object if she simply died as a result of the punishment he meted out to her. Grau had never had to deal with such a grievous problem. He ran through all the different tortures he had heard of: covering her body in boiling animal fat (would Estranya have enough in her kitchen?); putting her in chains or shutting her up in a dungeon (that would not be punishment enough); beating her, putting her feet in shackles ... or flogging her.
“Be careful if you use it,” the captain of one of his ships had told him once as he offered him the gift. “One lash can take all the skin off a person’s back.” Ever since, Grau had kept the whip hidden away. It was a fine Oriental whip made of plaited leather, thick but lightweight and easy to handle. It ended in several thongs, each of them tipped with jagged pieces of metal.
As the priest fell silent and the altar boys waved the censers round the coffin, Guiamona coughed, but Grau took a deep breath of satisfaction.
The slave girl was waiting, hands tied round a beam, her feet just touching the ground.
“I don’t want my son to see this,” Bernat told Jaume.
“This isn’t the moment, Bernat,” Jaume warned him. “Don’t go looking for trouble ...”
Bernat shook his head again.
“You’ve worked hard, Bernat; don’t cause trouble for your boy.”
In strict mourning clothes, Grau joined the circle of slaves, apprentices, and craftsmen surrounding Habiba.
“Take off her clothes,” he ordered Jaume.
When she saw Jaume tearing off her tunic, Habiba tried to raise her legs to cover herself. But her dark, naked body, gleaming with sweat, was soon exposed to the onlookers’ expectant gaze ... and to the whip that Grau had already laid out on the floor. Bernat grasped Arnau’s shoulders tight. The young boy began to cry.
Grau drew his arm back and cracked the whip against her naked upper half: the leather snaked across her back and the metal thongs wrapped themselves round her, digging into her breasts. A thin trickle of blood started to run down her dark skin. Her breasts were open wounds. Habiba lifted her face to the sky and howled as the pain racked her body. Arnau started to tremble uncontrollably, begging Grau to stop.
But he merely drew back his arm again.
“It was your job to look after my children!”
The whip resounded once more, forcing Bernat to turn his son round and press his face against him. The slave girl howled a second time, while Arnau’s shrieks of protest were stifled in his father’s body. Grau went on flogging the Moorish girl until not only her back and shoulders but her breasts, buttocks, and legs were one bleeding mass.
“TELL YOUR MASTER I am leaving.”
Jaume’s mouth drew into a narrow line. For a second, he was tempted to embrace Bernat, but he could see some of the apprentices staring at them.
Bernat watched the official walk toward the big house. He had tried to talk to his sister, but Guiamona had not responded. For several days, Arnau had not moved from the straw pallet he now shared with his father. He sat there without moving, and when his father came up to see him, he always found him staring at the spot where they had tried to cure Habiba’s wounds.
They had cut her down as soon as Grau left the workshop, but did not know where they could safely get hold of her body. Estranya ran in with oil and ointments, but as soon as she saw the bloody mass of flesh, she simply shook her head sadly. Arnau watched all this quietly from the back of the room, tears in his eyes; when Bernat tried to push him outside, he refused to go. Habiba died that same night. The only sign that she had breathed her last was when the low wail, like that of a newborn baby, that she had been making all day suddenly stopped.
Grau heard of his brother-in-law’s decision from Jaume. It was the last thing he needed: the two Estanyols, both of them with the birthmark by their right eye, roaming the streets of Barcelona in search of work, talking about him with everyone who cared to listen ... and a lot of people would be interested, now that he had reached the summit. He felt his stomach churn, and his mouth was dry: Grau Puig, a Barcelona alderman, master of the guild of potters, member of the Council of a Hundred, giving shelter to runaway serfs. The nobles were already against him. The more Barcelona helped King Alfonso, the less the king depended on the feudal lords, and the fewer the rewards they could hope to wring from the monarch. Who had been the chief promoter of this support for the king? He had. And whose interests were harmed when serfs deserted the countryside? The landowning nobility. Grau shook his head and sighed. He cursed the day he had allowed this peasant to stay under his roof!
“Bring him here,” he told Jaume.
When his brother-in-law appeared, Grau said: “Jaume tells me that you want to leave us.”
Bernat nodded.
“What do you intend to do?”
“I’ll look for work to support my son.”
“You have no trade. Barcelona is full of people like you: peasants who could not earn a living from their lands. They never find work, and end up dying of hunger. Besides,” Grau added, “you aren’t even on the citizens’ roll, even though you have lived long enough in the city now.”
“What do you mean by the citizens’ roll?” asked Bernat.
“It’s the document that proves you have lived a year and a day in Barcelona. It means you are a free citizen, not someone’s vassal.”
“Where can I get mine?”
“The city aldermen authorize them.”
“I’ll ask for one.”
Grau looked hard at Bernat. He was dirty, dressed in a shabby tunic and wearing a pair of rope sandals. In his mind’s eye, Grau saw him in front of the city aldermen after having already told his story to dozens of clerks: Grau Puig’s brother-in-law and nephew, hidden in his workshop for years. The news would spread like wildfire. He himself had used similar gossip against his enemies in the past.
“Sit down,” he said. “When Jaume told me what you planned to do, I talked to your sister, Guiamona,” he lied to conceal his change of attitude, “and she begged me to take pity on you.”
“I don’t need pity,” Bernat objected, thinking of Arnau sitting on the pallet, staring into space. “I’ve been working hard for years in return for—”
“That was the offer,” Grau stopped him. “You accepted it. At that moment it suited you.”
“That may well be,” Bernat admitted. “But I did not sell myself as a slave, and it doesn’t interest me now.”
“Let’s leave pity out of it then. I don’t think you will find work anywhere in the city, still less if you can’t prove you are a free citizen. Without your papers, people will only take advantage of you. Have you any idea how many landless serfs there are here, with children to feed, forced to work for nothing just so that they can live for that precious year and a day in Barcelona? You cannot compete with them, and you will die of hunger before you are listed on the citizens’ roll: you ... or your son, and despite what has happened, we cannot allow little Arnau to suffer the same fate as our Guiamon. One death is enough. Your sister wouldn’t be able to bear it.” Bernat remained silent, waiting for his brother-in-law to continue. “If you are interested,” Grau said, stressing the word, “you can go on working here, on the same terms... and receiving the wage of an ordinary workman, less payment for bed and board for you and your son.”
“And Arnau?”
“What about him?”
“You promised to take him on as an apprentice.”
“And I will ... when he is old enough.”
“I want your written promise.”
“You shall have it,” Grau conceded.
“What about the citizens’ roll?”
Grau nodded. It would not be hard for him to get Bernat put on it ... discreetly.
7
“WE DECLARE BERNAT Estanyol and his son, Arnau, to be free citizens of Barcelona ...” At last! Bernat could not prevent a shudder as he heard these hesitant words from the man reading the documents. He had asked where he could find someone who knew how to read, and had met up with him in the shipyard, offering him a small bowl in return for the favor. With the sounds of shipbuilding in the background, the smell of tar, and the sea breeze caressing his face, Bernat listened as the man read out the second document: Grau agreed to take on Arnau as an apprentice when he was ten years old, and promised to teach him the potter’s trade. So his son was free, and one day could earn a living that would help him survive in the city.
Smiling broadly, Bernat handed over the bowl and walked back to the workshop. The fact that they had been listed on the citizens’ roll meant that Llorenç de Bellera had not denounced them to the authorities, and there was no warrant for his arrest. “Could the lad in the forge have survived?” he wondered. Even so ... “You can keep our lands, Lord de Bellera. We’ll keep our freedom,” Bernat muttered defiantly.
When they saw Bernat arrive wreathed in smiles, all Grau’s slaves and even Jaume interrupted their tasks. There were still traces of Habiba’s blood on the ground. Grau had ordered that they should not be cleaned up. Bernat’s face fell as he tried to avoid them.
“ARNAU,” HE WHISPERED to his son that night as they lay on the pallet they shared.
“What is it, Father?”
“We are free citizens of Barcelona.”
Arnau did not reply. Bernat felt for his son’s head and stroked it. He knew how little this meant to a boy who had been robbed of his happiness. Bernat listened to the slaves’ breathing and went on stroking his son’s curls, but a sudden doubt assailed him: would the boy agree to work for Grau one day? That night it took Bernat a long time to get to sleep.
At first light each day when the men began their tasks, Arnau would leave Grau’s workshop. And every morning, Bernat tried to talk to him and encourage him. You ought to make some friends, he tried to tell him once, but before he could do so, Arnau turned his back on him and walked wearily out into the street. “Enjoy your freedom, my son,” he wanted to tell him another time, but the boy just stood there looking at him, and when he opened his mouth to speak he noticed a tear rolling down Arnau’s cheek. Bernat knelt down. All he could do was hug the boy. Then he watched as he crossed the yard, dragging his feet. As he tried to avoid Habiba’s bloodstains, the sound of Grau’s whip echoed in Bernat’s mind. Bernat promised himself he would never back down when threatened by the whip in the future: once was enough.
Bernat ran after his son, who looked round when he heard him. When he reached him, his father began to scrape the beaten earth with his foot where the traces of the Moorish slave girl’s blood still showed. Arnau’s face brightened. Bernat scraped even more determinedly.
“What are you doing?” Jaume shouted from the far end of the yard.
Bernat froze. The sound of the whip echoed even more loudly in his mind.
“Father.”
Arnau used his rope sandal to push away the small pile of earth Bernat had raised.
“What are you doing, Bernat?” Jaume repeated.
Bernat said nothing. Several seconds went by. Jaume turned and saw all the slaves standing there, staring at him.
“Bring some water, son,” said Bernat, seeing Jaume hesitate.
Arnau hurried off. This was the first time in months his father had seen him run. Jaume nodded.
On their knees, father and son silently scraped at the earth until all traces of injustice were removed.
“Go and play now,” Bernat told him once they had finished.
Arnau looked down. He would have liked to ask his father who he was meant to play with. Bernat ruffled his hair before pushing him toward the gate. As he did every day, once he was out in the street Arnau walked round the house and climbed a leafy tree that grew above the garden wall. Hidden among the branches, he waited for his cousins and Guiamona to come out.
“Why don’t you love me anymore?” he muttered to himself. “It wasn’t my fault.”
His cousins looked happy. Over time, Guiamon’s death had faded in their memory; it was only on their mother’s face that the pain was still visible. Josep and Genis were pretending to fight. Margarida watched them, sitting to one side with her mother, who had her arms round her. Concealed in his tree, Arnau felt a stab of nostalgia as he remembered how that felt.
Morning after morning, Arnau would climb the same tree.
“Don’t they love you anymore?” he heard someone ask one day.
Arnau was so startled he lost his balance and nearly fell from his perch. He looked all around to discover who had spoken, but could not see a soul.
“Over here,” he heard.
The voice had come from somewhere inside the tree, but he still saw nothing. Eventually he caught sight of some branches moving, and in among them he could make out the face of a boy waving at him. He was sitting astride one of the forks of the tree, peering at him with a serious look on his face.
“What are you doing here, sitting in my tree?” Arnau asked him sharply.
The filthy-looking boy was unimpressed.
“The same as you,” he said. “Watching.”
“You’re not allowed to,” Arnau asserted.
“Why not? I’ve been doing it a long time now. I used to see you down there before too.” The boy fell silent. “Don’t they love you anymore? Why do you cry so much?”
Arnau realized that a tear was rolling down his cheek, and felt annoyed: he had been caught.
“Get down from there,” he ordered the other boy, climbing down himself.
The stranger jumped lightly to the ground and stood facing him. Arnau was a head taller than him, but the boy did not seem afraid.
“You’ve been spying on me!” Arnau accused him.
“You were spying as well,” the boy retorted.
“Yes, but they’re my cousins, so I’m entitled to.”
“Why don’t you play with them then, like you used to?”
Arnau could not prevent a sob from escaping, and his voice trembled as he tried to find an answer.
“Don’t worry,” the other boy said, trying to reassure him. “I also cry a lot.”
“Why do you cry?” Arnau asked with difficulty.
“I don’t know ... Sometimes I cry when I think of my mother.”
“You have a mother?”
“Yes, but ...”
“What are you doing here if you have a mother? Why aren’t you playing with her?”
“I can’t be with her.”
“Why? Isn’t she at your house?”
“No,” the boy said reluctantly. “Or yes, she is there.”
“So why aren’t you with her?”
The grimy-looking boy did not reply.
“Is she ill?” Arnau asked.
The boy shook his head.
“No, she’s well enough,” he said.
“What then?” Arnau insisted.
The boy looked at him disconsolately. He bit his lower lip several times, then finally made up his mind.
“Come with me,” he said, tugging at Arnau’s sleeve.
The strange little boy ran off at a speed that belied his small size. Arnau followed, trying hard not to let him out of sight. That was easy enough when they were crossing the open yards of the potters’ quarter, but became much more difficult when they reached the narrow alleyways of the city, crammed with people and stalls. It was almost impossible for them to make their way through the crowds, or for him to keep the boy in view.
Arnau had no idea where he was, but did not care: he was too busy trying to spot his companion’s quick, agile figure as he picked his way among all the people and stallholders, some of whom shouted in protest. He was less adept at avoiding the obstacles, and paid the consequences of the anger his fleet-footed companion’s passage aroused. One of the stallholders cuffed him round the ear; another tried to grab him by the shirt. Arnau managed to avoid them both, but by the time he had escaped, the other boy was nowhere to be seen. He found himself all alone, on the edge of a large square full of people.
He recognized the square. He had been there once before, with his father. “This is Plaza del Blat,” Bernat had told him. “It’s the center of Barcelona. Do you see that stone in the middle?” Arnau looked in the direction his father was pointing. “That stone divides the city into quarters: La Mar, Framenors, El Pi, and La Salada or Sant Pere.” Now Arnau reached the end of the silkmakers’ street and stood under the gateway of the Veguer castle. There was such a crowd in the square it was impossible for him to make out the figure of the boy in the square. He looked round: on one side of the gateway was the city’s main slaughterhouse; on the other stood trestle tables full of bread for sale. Arnau looked again, searching for the boy near the stone benches that lined the square. “This is the wheat market,” his father had explained. “On these benches here you can see people who sell it in the city; on those over there are the peasants who have brought their crops for sale.” But Arnau could see no sign of the boy on either side of the market, only tradesmen haggling over prices, or the country people with their sacks of grain.
While he was still trying to make out where the boy might be, Arnau found himself being pushed into the square by the crush of people making their way in. He attempted to stand to one side near the breadmakers’ stalls, but his back brushed against a table, and someone cuffed him painfully round the ear.
“Get out of here, you brat!” shouted the baker.
Arnau was quickly submerged again in the rush of people and the noise of the market. He had no idea which way to turn, but was pushed hither and thither by adults much taller than him; some of them, bent under sacks of grain, did not even see him under their feet.
He was starting to feel giddy, when all of a sudden the cheeky, dirt-streaked face of the boy he had been chasing through half of Barcelona popped up in front of him.
“What are you doing standing there?” said the stranger, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of the crowd.
Arnau did not reply, but this time made sure he had a firm grip on the boy’s shirt as he was pulled across the square and down Calle Boria. At the far end they came into the coppersmiths’ neighborhood. The narrow streets here rang to the sound of hammers beating metal. By now they had stopped running; exhausted, Arnau was still clutching the other boy’s shirtsleeve, forcing his rash, impatient guide to slow to a walk.
“This is my house,” the boy said finally, pointing to a small, one-story building. Outside the door were copper pots of all shapes and sizes. A heavily built man sat there working. He did not even pause to look up at them. “That was my father,” the little boy said, once they had gone beyond the building.
“Why isn’t he ... ?” Arnau started to ask, turning back to look.
“Wait,” was all the other boy replied.
They went on up the alley and skirted the houses until they were behind them, in a series of small gardens. When they reached the one that belonged to the boy’s house, Arnau saw with surprise that the boy climbed the wall, and encouraged him to do the same.
“Why ... ?”
“Come on up!” the boy ordered him, straddling the top of the wall.
Then the two of them jumped down into the tiny garden. There, Arnau’s companion stood staring at a small hut, which had a small window opening on the side facing the garden. Arnau waited, but the boy did not move.
“What now?” Arnau asked finally.
The boy turned to Arnau.
“What ... ?”
But the little urchin paid him no attention. Arnau watched as he took a wooden crate and put it under the window. Then he climbed onto it, staring inside the dark hole.
“Mother,” he whispered.
A woman’s pale arm appeared hesitantly at the window. The elbow rested on the sill, while the hand went straight to the boy’s head and started caressing his hair.
“Joanet,” Arnau heard a soft voice say, “you’ve come earlier today. The sun is not yet high in the sky.”
Joanet merely nodded his head.
“Has something happened?” the voice insisted.
Joanet did not reply for a few moments. He took a deep breath and then said: “I’ve brought a friend.”
“I’m so happy you have friends. What’s his name?”
“Arnau.”
“How does he know my ... ? Of course! He was spying on me,” thought Arnau.
“Is he there with you?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Hello, Arnau.”
Arnau stared up at the window. Joanet turned toward him.
“Hello ... madam,” Arnau said, unsure of how to address a voice coming out of a dark window like this.
“How old are you?”
“I’m eight... madam.”
“That means you are two years older than my Joanet, but I hope you get on well and can stay friends. Always remember: there is nothing better in this world than a true friend.”
That was all the voice said. Joanet’s mother’s hand went on stroking his hair, while the boy sat on the wooden crate, legs dangling.
“Now go and play,” the woman’s voice suddenly said, and she withdrew her hand. “Good-bye, Arnau. Look after my boy: you’re older than he is.” Arnau tried to say farewell, but the words would not come out. “Good-bye, my son,” the voice added. “Promise you’ll come and see me.”
“Of course I will, Mother.”
“Go now, both of you.”
THE TWO BOYS walked aimlessly down the noisy streets of the city center. Arnau waited for Joanet to explain, but when the boy said nothing, he finally plucked up the courage to ask:
“Why doesn’t your mother come out into the garden?”
“She is shut in,” Joanet told him.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She just is.”
“Why don’t you climb in the window then?”
“Ponc has forbidden it.”
“Who is Ponc?”
“Ponc is my father.”
“Why has he forbidden it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you call him Pone instead of ‘Father’?”
“Because he’s forbidden that too.”
Arnau came to a halt and tugged at Joanet until the two were face-to-face.
“I don’t know the reason for that either,” the boy said quickly.
They carried on walking. Arnau was trying to make sense of all this, while Joanet was waiting for his new friend’s next question.
“What is your mother like?” Arnau finally asked.
“She’s always been shut in there,” Joanet said, trying to force a smile. “Once, when Pone was out of the city I tried to climb in, but she would not let me. She said she didn’t want me to see her.”
“Why are you smiling?”
Joanet walked on a few paces before replying.
“She always tells me I should smile.”
The rest of that morning, lost in thought, Arnau followed through the streets of Barcelona the dirty-looking boy who had never seen his mother’s face.
“His MOTHER STROKES his head through a small window in the hut,” Arnau whispered to his father that night, as they lay side by side on their pallet. “He’s never seen her. His father won’t allow him to, and nor will she.”
Bernat stroked his son’s hair exactly as Arnau had told him his new friend’s mother had done. The silence between them was broken only by the snores of the slaves and apprentices who shared the same room. Bernat wondered what offense the woman could have committed to deserve such a punishment.
Pone the coppersmith would have had no hesitation in telling him: “Adultery!” He had told the same story dozens of times to anyone who cared to listen.
“I caught her fornicating with her lover, a young stripling like her. They took advantage of the hours I was at the forge. Of course, I went to see the magistrate to insist on proper compensation according to the law.” The stocky smith obviously took delight in citing the law that had brought him justice. “Our princes are wise men, who know the evil of women. Only noblewomen have the possibility of refuting the charge of adultery under oath; all the others, like Joana, have to undergo a challenge and face the judgment of God.”
All those who had witnessed the challenge remembered how Pone had cut Joana’s young lover to ribbons: God had little possibility to judge between the coppersmith, hardened by his work in the forge, and the delicate, lovelorn young man.
The royal sentence was carried out as stipulated in the Laws and Usages: “If the woman should win the challenge, her husband will keep her honor-ably, and will meet all the expenses she and her friends might have incurred in this case and challenge, and will make good any harm to her champion. But if she is defeated, she and all her goods will become the possession of her husband.”
Pone could not read, but he quoted this passage from memory as he showed anyone who cared to see the legal document he had been given:We rule that if he wishes Joana to be handed over to him, said Pone should offer proper surety and swear to keep her in his house in a place twelve feet long, six feet wide, and two rods high. That he should give her a straw mattress large enough to sleep on, and a cloak to cover herself with. The place of her confinement is to have a hole in which she may discharge her bodily functions, and a window through which food is to be given her. The said Ponc shall provide each day eighteen ounces of fully baked bread and as much water as she requires. He will not give her or cause her to be given anything which might hasten her death, or to do anything which might lead to the death of said Joana. In respect of all of which, Ponc is to provide a proper guarantee and security, before the aforementioned Joana is handed over to him.
Pone supplied the magistrate with the required surety, and Joana was handed over to him. He built the brick hut in his garden, making it two and a half yards long by a yard and a half wide. He made sure there was a hole for her to carry out her bodily functions, and left the window through which Joanet, who was born nine months later and was never recognized by Pone, could have his hair stroked by his mother. In this way, he walled up his young wife for the rest of her days.
“Father,” Arnau whispered to Bernat, “what was my mother like? Why do you never tell me about her?”
“What do you want me to tell you? That she lost her virginity raped by a drunken nobleman? That she was a whore in the lord of Bellera’s castle?” thought Bernat.
“Your mother... ,” he answered finally, “was unlucky. She never had good fortune.”
Bernat could hear how Arnau swallowed hard before asking the next question.
“Did she love me?” the boy asked, his voice choking with emotion.
“She didn’t get the chance. She died giving birth to you.”
“Habiba loved me.”
“And I love you too.”
“But you’re not my mother. Even Joanet has a mother to caress his head.”
“Not all children have ...” Bernat started to say. “The mother of all Christians,” he suddenly thought, as the words of the priests surfaced in his memory.
“What were you saying, Father?”
“That you do have a mother. Of course you do.” Bernat could feel his son relax. “All children who like you have no mother are given another one by God: the Virgin Mary.”
“Where is this Mary?”
“The Virgin Mary,” Bernat corrected him, “is in heaven.”
Arnau lay in silence for a few moments before he spoke again.
“What use is it having a mother in heaven? She can’t stroke me, play with me, kiss me, or—”
“Yes, she can.” Bernat could clearly recall what his father had explained when he asked these very same questions. “She sends birds to caress you. Whenever you see a bird, send your mother a message. You’ll see how it flies straight up to heaven to give it to the Virgin Mary. Then the other birds will get to hear of it, and some of them will come to fly round you and sing for you.”
“But I don’t understand what birds say.”
“You will learn to.”
“But I’ll never be able to see her ...”
“Yes, of course you can see her. You can see her in some churches, and you can even talk to her.”
“In churches?”
“Yes, my son. She is in heaven and in some churches. You can talk to her through the birds or in those churches. She will answer with birds or at night while you are asleep. She will love and cherish you more than any mother you can see.”
“More than Habiba?”
“Much more.”
“What about tonight?” Arnau asked. “I haven’t talked to her tonight.”
“Don’t worry. I did it for you. Now go to sleep, and you’ll find out.”
8
THE TWO NEW friends met every day. They ran down to the beach to see the boats, or roamed the streets of Barcelona. Each time they were playing beyond the Puig garden wall and heard the voices of Josep, Genis, or Margarida, Joanet could see his friend lifting his eyes to the sky as if in search of something floating above the clouds.
“What are you looking at?” he asked him one day.
“Nothing,” said Arnau.
The laughter grew, and Arnau stared up again at the sky.
“Shall we climb the tree?” asked Joanet, thinking that it was its branches that were attracting his friend’s attention.
“No,” said Arnau, trying to spot a bird to which he could give a message for his mother.
“Why don’t you want to climb the tree? Then we could see ...”
What could he say to the Virgin Mary? What did you say to your mother? Joanet said nothing to his, simply listening and agreeing ... or disagreeing, but of course, he could hear her voice and feel her caresses, Arnau thought.
“Shall we climb up?”
“No,” shouted Arnau, so loudly he wiped the smile from Joanet’s lips. “You already have a mother who loves you. You don’t need to spy on anyone else’s.”
“But you don’t have one,” Joanet replied. “If we climb ...”
That they loved her! That was what her children told Guiamona. “Tell her that, little bird,” Arnau told one that flew up toward the sky. “Tell her I love her.”
“So, are we going up?” insisted Joanet, one hand already on the lower branches.
“No, I don’t need to either ...”
Joanet let go of the tree and looked inquisitively at his friend.
“I have a mother too.”
“A new one?”
Arnau was unsure.
“I don’t know. She’s called the Virgin Mary.”
“The Virgin Mary? Who is she?”
“She is in some churches. I know that they,” he went on, pointing to the wall, “used to go to church, but they never took me with them.”
“I know where she is.”
Arnau’s eyes opened wide.
“If you like, I’ll take you. To the biggest church in Barcelona.”
As ever, Joanet ran off without waiting for his friend’s reply, but by now Arnau knew what to expect, and soon caught up with him.
They ran to Calle Boqueria, skirted the Jewish quarter, and ran down Calle del Bisbe until they reached the cathedral.
“Do you think the Virgin Mary is in there?” Arnau asked his friend, pointing to the mass of scaffolding rising round its unfinished walls. He watched as a huge stone was lifted laboriously by several men hauling on a pulley.
“Of course she is,” Joanet said determinedly. “This is a church, isn’t it?”
“No, this isn’t a church!” they both heard a voice behind them say. They turned round and found themselves face-to-face with a rough-looking man who was carrying a hammer and chisel in his hand. “This is the cathedral,” he corrected them, proud of his position as the master sculptor’s assistant. “Don’t ever confuse it with a church.”
Arnau looked daggers at Joanet.
“So where is there a church?” Joanet asked the man as he was about to continue on his way.
“Just over there,” he told the surprised boys, pointing with his chisel back up the street they had just come down. “In Plaza San Jaume.”
They ran back as fast as they could up Calle del Bisbe to Plaza San Jaume. There they saw a small building that looked different from all the others, with a profusion of sculpted images around the doorway, which was raised above street level, at the top of a small set of steps. Neither of them thought twice about it, and they leapt through the doorway. Inside it was dark and cool, but before their eyes even had time to get used to the darkness, they felt a pair of strong hands on their shoulders, and were propelled back down the steps.
“I’m tired of telling you children I’ll not have you running around in the church of San Jaume.”
Ignoring what the priest had said, Arnau and Joanet stared at each other. The church of San Jaume! So this wasn’t the church of the Virgin Mary either.
When the priest disappeared, they got back on their feet, only to find themselves surrounded by a group of six boys who were as barefoot, ragged, and dirty as Joanet himself.
“He’s got a really bad temper,” said one of them, signaling toward the church doors with his chin.
“If you like, we could tell you how to get in without him seeing you,” another one told them. “But once you’re inside, it’s up to you. If he catches you...”
“No, we don’t want to,” Arnau replied. “Do you know where there is another church?”
“They won’t let you into any of them,” a third boy said.
“That’s our business,” Joanet retorted.
“Listen to the little runt!” The eldest boy laughed, stepping toward Joanet. He was a good head taller than him, and Arnau was worried for his friend. “Anything that happens in this square is our business, get it?” the boy said, pushing him in the chest.
Just as Joanet was about to react and fling himself on the other boy, something on the far side of the square caught the attention of the whole group.
“A Jew!” one of them shouted.
They all ran off after a boy who was wearing the yellow badge. As soon as he realized what was about to happen, the little Jewish boy took to his heels. He just managed to reach the entrance to the Jewish quarter before the group caught up with him. They all came to an abrupt halt, unwilling to venture inside. One of them, a boy even smaller than Joanet, had stayed behind. He was wide-eyed with astonishment at the way Joanet had been prepared to stand up to the older boy.
“There’s another church down there, beyond San Jaume,” he told them. “If I were you, I’d get away now,” he said, nodding toward the others in the group, who were already heading back to them. “Pau will be very angry, and he’ll take it out on you. He is always upset when a Jew gets away from him.”
Joanet bristled, waiting for this boy Pau to reappear. Arnau tried to pull him away, and finally, when he saw the whole group racing toward them, Joanet allowed himself to be dragged off.
They ran down in the direction of the sea, but when they saw that Pau and his gang—probably more interested in some more Jews in the square—were not pursuing them, they slowed their pace. They had barely gone a street from Plaza San Jaume when they came across another church. They stood at the foot of the steps and looked at each other. Joanet lifted his chin toward the doors.
“We’ll wait,” said Arnau.
At that moment an old woman came out of the church and clambered down the steps. Arnau did not think twice.
“Good lady,” he asked when she reached them, “what church is this?”
“It’s San Miquel,” the woman replied without stopping.
Arnau sighed. San Miquel.
“Where is there another church?” Joanet asked quickly, when he saw how crestfallen his friend was.
“At the end of this street.”
“Which one is that?” he insisted. For the first time, he seemed to have caught the woman’s attention.
“That is the San Just i Pastor. Why are you so interested?”
The boys said nothing, but walked away from the old woman, who watched them trudging away disheartened.
“All the churches belong to men!” Arnau said in disgust. “We have to find a church for women; that’s where the Virgin Mary must be.”
Joanet carried on walking thoughtfully.
“I know somewhere ...,” he said at length. “It’s full of women. It’s at the end of the city wall, next to the sea. They call it ...” Joanet tried to remember. “They call it Santa Clara.”
“But that’s not the Virgin either.”
“But it is a woman. I’m sure your mother will be with her. She wouldn’t be with a man who wasn’t your father, would she?”
They went down Calle de la Ciutat to the La Mar gateway, which was part of the old Roman wall near Regomir castle. It was from here that a path led to the Santa Clara convent, built in the eastern corner of the new walls close to the shore. They left Regomir castle behind them, turned left, and walked down until they came to Calle de la Mar, which led from Plaza del Blat to the church of Santa Maria de la Mar before splitting into small parallel alleyways that came out onto the beach. From there, crossing Plaza del Born and Pla d’en Llull, they reached the Santa Clara convent by taking the street of the same name.
In spite of their anxiety to find the church, neither of the two boys could resist stopping to look at the silversmiths’ stalls ranged on either side of Calle de la Mar. Barcelona was a prosperous, rich city, as was obvious from the array of valuable objects on display: silverware; jewel-encrusted jugs and cups made of precious metals; necklaces; bracelets and rings; belts—an endless range of fine objects glinting in the summer sun. Arnau and Joanet tried to examine them more closely, but were chased away by the artisans, who shouted at them and threatened them with their fists.
Chased by one of the apprentices, they ran off and eventually came to Plaza de Santa Maria. On their right was a small cemetery, the fossar Mayor, and on their left was the church.
“Santa Clara is down ... ,” Joanet started to say, then suddenly fell silent. What they could see in front of them was truly amazing.
It was a powerful, sturdy church. Sober, stern-looking even, it was windowless and had exceptionally thick walls. The land around the building had been cleared and leveled, and it was surrounded by a huge number of stakes driven into the ground, forming geometrical shapes.
Ten slender columns, sixteen yards high, were placed around the small church’s apse. The white stone shone through the scaffolding rising around them.
The wooden scaffolding that covered the rear of the church rose and rose like an immense set of steps. Even from the distance they were at, Arnau had to raise his eyes to see the top, which was much higher than the columns.
“Let’s go,” Joanet urged him when they had seen their fill of the men laboring on the wooden boards. “This must be another cathedral.”
“No, this isn’t a cathedral,” they heard a voice say behind them. Arnau and Joanet looked at each other and smiled. They turned and looked inquiringly at a strong man who was toiling under the weight of an enormous block of stone. So what is it then? Joanet seemed to be asking as he smiled at him. “The cathedral is paid for by the nobles and the city authorities, but this church, which will be more important and beautiful than the cathedral, is paid for and built by the people.”
The man had not even paused: the weight of the stone seemed to push him forward. Yet he had smiled back at them.
The two boys followed him down the side of the church, which was next to another cemetery, the fossar Menor.
“Would you like us to help you?” asked Arnau.
The man panted, then turned and smiled at them again.
“Thank you, my lad, but you had better not.”
Eventually, he bent down and deposited the stone on the ground. The boys stared at it, and Joanet went over to try to push it, but it did not move. At this, the man burst out laughing. Joanet smiled back at him.
“If it’s not a cathedral,” Arnau said, pointing to the tall octagonal columns, “what is it?”
“This is the new church that the La Ribera neighborhood is building in thanks and devotion to Our Lady the Virgin—”
Arnau gave a start.
“The Virgin Mary?” he interrupted the man, eyes opened wide.
“Of course, my lad,” the man replied, ruffling his hair. “The Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Sea.”
“And ... where is the Virgin Mary?” Arnau asked again, staring at the church.
“In there, in that small building. But when we finish the new one, she will have the best church that the Virgin has ever had.”
In there! Arnau did not even hear the rest of what the man was saying. His Virgin was in there. All at once, a sound made them all look up: a flock of birds had flown out from the topmost scaffolding.
9
BARCELONA’S RIBERA DE Mar neighborhood, where the church in honor of the Virgin Mary was being built, had grown up as an outlying suburb of the Carolingian city, surrounded and protected by the old Roman walls. At the outset it was inhabited by fishermen, stevedores, and other humble workmen. It already had a small church, known as Santa Maria de las Arenas, raised on the spot where Saint Eulàlia was said to have been martyred in the year 303. This church got its name from the fact that it was built on Barcelona’s sandy shoreline, but the same process of sedimentation that had made the city’s ports unusable led to the church becoming separated from the sands of the coast, so that its name gradually lost its meaning. That was when it became known as Santa Maria de la Mar, because although the coast was no longer close by, all the men who made their living from the sea still worshipped there.
The passage of time, which had already robbed the tiny church of its sands, also forced the city to adopt fresh land outside the walls where the emerging middle classes could settle, now that there was no longer enough room for them inside the Roman walls. And of the three boundaries of Barcelona, the middle classes chose the eastern side, where the traffic to and from the port passed by. So it was that Calle de la Mar became home to the silversmiths; other streets got their names from the money changers, the cotton traders, the butchers and bakers, wine merchants and cheese-makers, the hat and sword makers, and the multitude of other artisans who came flocking there. A corn exchange was built, and it was here that foreign traders visiting the city were lodged. Plaza del Born, behind Santa Maria, was also constructed: jousts and tourneys were held there. And it was not merely the rich artisans who were attracted to the new Ribera neighborhood; many nobles chose to live there after the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, granted the seneschal Guillem Ramon de Montcada the lands that later gave rise to the street bearing his name, which began at Plaza del Born close to Santa Maria de la Mar, and was filled with huge, luxurious palaces.
When the Ribera de la Mar neighborhood turned into a rich, prosperous area, the old Romanesque church where the fishermen and others who lived from the sea went to worship their patron saint became too small and poor for the new inhabitants. However, the resources of the Barcelona church authorities and of the nobility were all poured into the rebuilding of the city’s cathedral.
United by their devotion to the Virgin, both rich and poor parishioners of Santa Maria de la Mar refused to be discouraged by this lack of official support. Their newly appointed archdeacon, Bernat Llull, asked permission from the ecclesiastical authorities to build what was intended to be the greatest monument to the Virgin Mary. Permission was granted.
So from the beginning, Santa Maria de la Mar church was built by and for the common people. This was made explicit by the first stone laid for the new building, which was placed exactly where the main altar was to be raised. Unlike other constructions, supported by the authorities, on this stone all that was carved was the coat of arms of the parish. This showed that the construction, and all rights pertaining to it, belonged solely and exclusively to the parishioners who had undertaken the task: the rich, with their money; the poor, with their work. From the moment the first stone had been laid, a group of the faithful and prominent men of the city known as the Twenty-Five met each year with the rector of the parish and an official notary to hand over the keys to the church for that year.
Arnau studied the man carrying the stone. He was still sweating and out of breath, but he smiled as he looked toward the new building.
“Could I see her?” asked Arnau.
“The Virgin?” the man asked, smiling now at Arnau.
“What if children were not allowed into churches on their own?” wondered Arnau. What if they had to go with their parents? What had the priest at San Jaume told them?
“Of course the Virgin will be delighted to receive a visit from boys like you.”
Arnau laughed nervously, and looked round at Joanet.
“Shall we go?”
“Hey, wait a moment,” the man said. “I have to get back to work.” He looked over toward the other busy workmen. “Angel,” he shouted to a youngster who looked about twelve years old. He came running over. “Take these boys into the church. Tell the priest they would like to see the Virgin.”
With that, he gave Arnau’s head a last pat and disappeared back toward the sea. Arnau and Joanet were left with the boy called Angel. When he looked at them, they both stared down at the ground.
“Do you want to see the Virgin?”
He sounded sincere. Arnau nodded and asked: “Do you ... know her?”
“Of course,” laughed Angel. “She’s the Virgin of the Sea, my Virgin. My father’s a boatman,” he added proudly. “Follow me.”
They went with him to the church entrance. Joanet looked all around him, but Arnau was still troubled, and did not raise his eyes from the ground.
“Do you have a mother?” he asked all of a sudden.
“Yes, of course,” Angel said, still striding out in front of them.
Behind his back, Arnau beamed at Joanet. They went through the doors of the church, and Arnau and Joanet paused until their eyes became accustomed to the gloom inside. There was a strong scent of wax and incense. Arnau compared the tall, slender columns being built outside with the squat, heavy ones in the interior. The only light came through a few long, narrow windows cut in the thick walls of the church, casting yellow rectangles on the floor of the nave. Everywhere—on the ceiling, on the walls—there were boats, some of them finely carved, others more rough-and-ready.
“Come on,” Angel urged them.
As they walked toward the altar, Joanet pointed to several figures kneeling on the floor that they had not seen at first. As they walked by them, the boys were surprised to hear them murmuring.
“What are they doing?” Joanet whispered in Arnau’s ear.
“Praying,” he explained.
He knew this because his aunt Guiamona had forced him to pray in front of a cross in his bedroom while she went to church with his cousins.
When they reached the altar, they were confronted by a thin priest. Joanet hid behind Arnau.
“What brings you here, Angel?” the priest asked him quietly, although his gaze was fixed on the two newcomers.
He held out his hand to Angel, who bent over it.
“These two boys, Father. They want to see the Virgin.”
The priest’s eyes gleamed as he spoke directly to Arnau. “There she is,” he said, pointing to the altar.
Arnau looked in the direction the priest was indicating, until he made out a small, simple stone statue of a woman with a baby on her right shoulder and a wooden boat at her feet. He narrowed his eyes; he liked the serenity of the woman’s features. His mother!
“What are your names?” asked the priest.
“Arnau Estanyol,” said Arnau.
“Joan, but they call me Joanet,” said Joanet.
“And your family name?”
Joanet’s smile faded. He did not know what his family name was. His mother had told him he could not use Pone the coppersmith’s name, because he would be extremely angry if he found out, but he could not use hers either. This was the first time he had been asked what his name was. Why did the priest want to know? He was still looking at Joanet expectantly.
“The same as his,” he said at length. “Estanyol.”
Surprised, Arnau turned to him, and saw the look of entreaty in his eyes.
“So you’re brothers then.”
“Ye ... yes,” Joanet stuttered. Arnau backed him up, saying nothing.
“Do you know how to pray?”
“Yes,” Arnau said.
“I don’t ... yet,” Joanet admitted.
“Get your older brother to teach you then,” said the priest. “You can pray to the Virgin. Angel, you come with me. I’ve got a message for your master. There are some stones over there ...”
The priest’s voice died away as the two of them walked off, leaving the two boys by the altar.
“Do we have to get on our knees to pray?” Joanet whispered to Arnau.
Arnau looked back at the shadowy figures that Joanet had pointed out to him. As his friend headed for the red silk prayer cushions in front of the altar, he grabbed him by the arm.
“Those people are kneeling on the floor,” he whispered, pointing toward the others, “but they are praying as well.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to pray. I’m talking to my mother. You don’t kneel down when you’re talking to your mother, do you?”
Joanet looked at him. No, of course not...
“But the priest didn’t say we could talk to her. He said we could pray.”
“Don’t say a word to him then. If you do, I’ll tell him you were lying, and that you aren’t really my brother.”
Joanet stood next to Arnau and enjoyed studying all the boats decorating the inside of the church. How he would have liked to have one! He wondered if they could really float. They must be able to: otherwise, why would anyone have carved them? He could put one of them at the water’s edge, and then ...
Arnau was staring at the stone figure. What could he say to her? Had the birds taken her his message? He had told them that he loved her. He had told them that time and again.
“My father said that even though she was a Moorish slave, Habiba is with you, but said I was not to tell anyone that, because people say Moors cannot go to heaven,” he murmured. “She was very good to me. She was not to blame for anything. It was Margarida.”
Arnau continued to stare intently at the Virgin. Dozens of candles were lit all around her, making the air quiver.
“Is Habiba with you? If you see her, tell her I love her too. You’re not angry that I love her, are you? Even if she is a Moor.”
Through the darkness and the air wavering round the candles, he was sure he saw the lips of the small stone figure curve into a smile.
“Joanet!” he shouted to his friend.
“What?”
Arnau pointed to the Virgin, but now her lips were ... Perhaps she did not want anyone else to see her smile? Perhaps it was their secret.
“What?” Joanet insisted.
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Have you prayed already?”
They were surprised to find that the priest and Angel were back.
“Yes,” said Arnau.
“I haven’t—” Joanet apologized.
“I know, I know ...,” the priest interrupted him in a kindly fashion, stroking his head. “And you, what did you pray?”
“The Ave Maria,” Arnau replied.
“A wonderful prayer. Let’s go then,” the priest said, accompanying them to the church door.
“Father,” said Arnau once they were all outside, “can we come back?”
The priest smiled at them. “Of course, but I hope that by the time you do, you’ll have taught your brother to pray as well.” Joanet looked serious as the priest tapped him on both cheeks. “Come back whenever you like,” the priest added. “You will always be welcome.”
Angel started off toward the pile of large building stones. Arnau and Joanet followed him.
“Where are you going now?” he asked, turning back to them. The two boys looked at each other and shrugged. “You can’t come into our work area. If the overseer ...”
“The man with the stone?” Arnau butted in.
“No,” laughed Angel. “That was Ramon. He’s a bastaix.”
Joanet and Arnau both looked at him inquisitively.
“The bastaixos are the laborers of the sea; they carry goods from the beach to the merchants’ warehouses, or the other way round. They load and unload merchandise after the boatmen have brought it to the beach.”
“So they don’t work in Santa Maria?” asked Arnau.
“Yes, they work the hardest.” Angel laughed at their puzzled expressions. “They are poor people. They have little money, but they are among those who are most devoted to the Virgin of the Sea. They cannot contribute any funds to the new church, so their guild has promised they will transport the stones free from the royal quarry at Montjuic to here. They carry them all on their backs,” Angel said, his face showing no emotion. “They travel miles under the loads. Afterward, it takes two of us just to move them.”
Arnau remembered the huge stone that the bastaix had left on the ground.
“Of course they work for the Virgin!” Angel insisted. “More than anyone else. Now go and play,” he said, before continuing on his way.
10
“WHY DO THEY keep building the scaffolding higher and higher?”
Arnau pointed to the rear of Santa Maria church. Angel looked up and, his mouth full of bread and cheese, muttered an explanation neither of them could understand. Joanet burst out laughing, Arnau joined in, and in the end Angel himself could not avoid chuckling along with them, until he choked and the laughter turned into a coughing fit.
Arnau and Joanet went to Santa Maria every day. They entered the church and kneeled down. Urged on by his mother, Joanet had decided to learn to pray, and he repeated the phrases Arnau had taught him over and over again. Then, when the two of them split up, he would race to his mother’s window and tell her all he had prayed that day. Arnau talked to his mother, except when Father Albert (they had found out that was his name) appeared, in which case he joined Joanet in murmuring his devotions.
Whenever they left the church, they would stand some distance away and survey the carpenters, stonemasons, and masons at work on the new building. Afterward they would sit in the square waiting for Angel to have a break and join them to eat his bread and cheese. Father Albert treated them affectionately; the men working on Santa Maria always smiled at them; even the bastaixos, who came by bent under the weight of their stones, would glance over at the two little boys sitting next to the church.
“Why do they keep building the scaffolding higher?” Arnau asked a second time.
The three of them peered at the rear of the church, where the ten columns stood: eight of them in a semicircle and two more farther back. Beyond them, workmen had started to build the buttresses and walls that would form the new apse. The columns rose higher than the small Romanesque building, but the scaffolding went on up still farther into the sky. It was not surrounding anything, as though the workmen had gone crazy and were trying to make a stairway to heaven.
“I’ve no idea,” Angel admitted.
“None of that scaffolding is supporting anything.”
“No, but it will,” they suddenly heard a man’s firm voice say.
The three of them turned round. They had been so busy laughing and coughing they had not noticed that several men had gathered behind them. Some of them were dressed in fine clothes; others wore priests’ vestments, enriched with bejeweled gold crosses on their chests, big rings, and belts threaded with gold and silver.
Father Albert was watching from the church door. He came hurrying over to greet the newcomers. Angel leapt up, and choked once more on his bread. This was not the first time he had seen the man who had spoken to them, but he had rarely seen him in such splendid company. He was Berenguer de Montagut, the person in charge of the building work on Santa Maria de la Mar.
Arnau and Joanet also stood up. Father Albert joined the group, and bent to kiss the bishops’ rings.
“What will they support?”
Joanet’s question caught Father Albert just as he was stooping to kiss another ring: “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to,” his eyes implored him. One of the provosts made as though to continue on toward the church, but Berenguer de Montagut grasped Joanet by the shoulder and leaned down to talk to him.
“Children are often able to see things we miss,” he said out loud to his companions. “So I would not be surprised if these three have noticed something that has escaped our attention. So you want to know why we’re building this scaffolding, do you?” Glancing toward Father Albert for permission, Joanet nodded. “Do you see the tops of those columns? Well, from the top of each of them we are going to build six arches. The most important one of all will be the one that takes the weight of the new church’s apse.”
“What is an apse?” asked Arnau.
Berenguer smiled and looked round. Some of the group with him seemed as anxious to hear his explanation as the boys were.
“An apse is something like this.” The master builder joined his hands together in an arch. The children were fascinated by his magic hands, and others in the group crowded forward to see. “Well, on top of all the rest,” he said, separating one hand and pointing to the tip of the other first finger, “we put a big stone called the keystone. To do that we first have to raise it to the very highest scaffolding—right up there, can you see?” They all peered up at the sky. “Once that is in place, we’ll build the rib vaults of these arches until they meet the keystone. And that is why we need such tall scaffolding.”
“Why are you doing all that?” Arnau wanted to know. Poor Father Albert gave a start, although by now he was growing used to the boys’ questions and comments. “None of this will be visible from inside the church, because it’s all above the roof.”
Berenguer and a few of the others laughed. Father Albert sighed.
“Of course it will be visible, my boy, because the roof of the present church will gradually disappear as we build the new structure. It will be as though this tiny church were giving birth to another, bigger one.”
Joanet’s obvious disappointment unsettled him. The boy had become accustomed to the small church’s sense of intimacy, to its smell, its darkness, the atmosphere there when he prayed.
“Do you love the Virgin of the Sea?” Berenguer asked him.
Joanet glanced at Arnau. They both nodded.
“Well, when we have finished her new church, the Virgin you love so much will have more light than any other Virgin in the world. She will no longer be in darkness as she is now. She’ll have the most beautiful church you could ever imagine. She won’t be shut in by thick, low walls, but will shine among tall, delicate ones, with slender columns and apses that reach up to the heavens: the perfect place for the Virgin.”
They all looked up at the sky.
“Yes,” Berenguer de Montagut went on, “the Virgin of the Sea’s new church will reach right up there.”
He and his companions set off toward Santa Maria, leaving Father Albert and the boys behind.
“Father,” Arnau asked when the others were out of earshot, “what will happen to the Virgin when they take down the old building, but haven’t finished her new church yet?”
“Do you see those buttresses?” the priest replied, pointing to two of the ones being built as the back part of the ambulatory, behind the main altar. “In between them they are going to construct the first chapel, dedicated to the Lord Jesus. That’s where they will put the Virgin, together with the body of Christ and the sepulcher containing Saint Eulàlia’s remains. That way she will come to no harm.”
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