Cathedral of the Sea

Cagalell was a pond that formed at the mouth of the gully by the walls. It was here that all the waste and sewage from the city accumulated. The ground was so rough it could not run off properly across the beach, so the water lay stagnant until a city workman dug a channel through and pushed the waste out into the sea. That was when Cagalell smelled its worst.

They skirted round it until they came to a narrow part they could jump across, then walked on through the fields until they reached the slopes of Montjuic.

“How do we get back across Cagalell?” asked Arnau, pointing to the foul-smelling stream.

“I’ve never yet met anybody who could jump with a block of stone on his back,” laughed Ramon.

As they climbed up to the royal quarry, Arnau peered back down at the city. It looked far, far below. How was he going to walk all that way with a huge stone on his back? He could feel his legs giving way just at the thought of it, but he ran to catch up with the rest of the group, who were still talking and laughing as they climbed ahead of him.

They went round a bend, and there the royal quarry lay in front of them. Arnau could not help gasping in astonishment. It was like Plaza del Blat or any of the other city markets, except that there were no women! On a flat expanse of ground, the king’s officers were dealing with everyone who had come seeking stone. Carts and mule trains were lined up on one side, where the walls of the mountain had not yet been excavated. The rest looked as though it had been sliced through, and was a mass of glistening rock. Countless stonemasons were dangerously levering off huge blocks of stone; down on the flat ground others cut them into smaller stones.

The bastaixos were greeted with great affection by all those waiting for stones. While their leaders talked to the quarry officials, the others embraced or shook hands with the people waiting. They laughed and joked together, and skins of wine or water were raised.

Arnau could not help watching the stonecutters at work. He was equally fascinated by the way the laborers loaded the carts and mules, always supervised by a clerk noting everything down. Just as in the markets, people were talking or waiting their turn impatiently.

“You weren’t expecting anything like this, were you?”

Arnau turned and saw Ramon handing back a wineskin. He shook his head.

“Who is all this stone for?”

“Oh!” said Ramon, then began to reel off the list: “for the cathedral, for Santa Maria del Pi, Santa Anna, for the Pedralbes monastery, for the royal dockyards, for Santa Clara, for the city walls. Everything is being built or changed; and then there are the new houses for the rich and the noblemen. Nobody wants wood or bricks. They all want stone.”

“And the king gives them all this stone?”

Ramon burst out laughing.

“The only stone he gives free is for Santa Maria de la Mar ... and possibly for Pedralbes monastery too, because that is being built at the queen’s behest. He charges a lot for all the rest.”

“Even the stone for the royal dockyards?” asked Arnau. “They are for the king, aren’t they?”

Ramon smiled again.

“They may be royal,” he said, “but the king isn’t the one paying for them.”

“The city?”

“No.”

“The merchants?”

“Not them either.”

“Well, then?” asked Arnau, turning to face him.

“The royal dockyards are being paid for by—”

“The sinners!” the man who had offered him his wineskin took the words out of Ramon’s mouth. He was a mule driver from the cathedral.

Ramon and he laughed out loud at Arnau’s bewildered look.

“The sinners?”

“Yes,” explained Ramon, “the new shipyards are being built thanks to money from sinful merchants. Look, it’s very simple: ever since the Crusades ... You know what the Crusades were, don’t you?” Arnau nodded: of course he knew what they were. “Well, ever since the Holy City was lost forever, the Church has banned all trade with the sultan of Egypt. But as it happens, it’s there that our traders can find their best goods, so none of them is willing to give up trading with the sultan. Which means that whenever they want to do so, they go to the customs office and pay a fine for the sin they are about to commit. They are also absolved beforehand, and therefore they don’t fall into sin. King Alfonso ordered that all the money collected in this way should go to financing Barcelona’s new dockyards.”

Arnau was about to say something, but Ramon raised his hand to cut him short. The guild aldermen were calling them. He signaled to Arnau to follow him.

“Are we going before them?” asked Arnau, pointing to the muleteers they were leaving behind.

“Of course,” said Ramon, still striding ahead. “We don’t need to be checked as thoroughly as they do: our stone is free, and easy to count: one bastaix, one stone.”

“One bastaix, one stone,” Arnau repeated to himself when the first bastaix and the first stone came past him on their way down the mountain. He and Ramon had reached the spot where the stonecutters were cutting the huge blocks. He looked at his companion’s taut, tense face. Arnau smiled, but his fellow bastaix did not respond: the time for jokes and pleasantries was over. Nobody was laughing or talking now; they were all staring at the heap of stones on the ground. They all had the leather thongs fixed tightly round their foreheads; Arnau slipped his over his head. The bastaixos were coming past him now, one by one. They were silent, and did not wait for the next one. The group around the stones was growing smaller all the time. As Arnau stared at the stones, he could feel his stomach wrench. A bastaix bent over, and two laborers lifted a block of stone onto his back. Arnau could see him flinch under the weight. His knees were knocking! The man stood still for a few moments, straightened up, then walked past Arnau on his way down to Santa Maria. My God, he was three times as strong as Arnau, and yet his legs had almost given way! How was he going to...?

“Arnau,” called out the guild aldermen.

There were still a few bastaixos waiting. Ramon pushed him forward.

“You can do it,” he said.

The three aldermen were talking to one of the stonecutters. He kept shaking his head. The four of them were surveying the pile of stones, pointing here and there, and then shaking their heads again. Standing by the pile, Arnau tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. He was shaking: he had to stop! He moved his hands, then extended his arms backward and forward. He could not allow them to see him trembling!

Josep, one of the aldermen, pointed to a stone. The stonecutter shrugged, glanced at Arnau, shook his head once more, and then waved to the masons to pick it up. “They’re all the same,” he had told the bastaixos over and over.

Seeing the two masons approaching with the stone, Arnau went up to them. He bent over and tensed all the muscles in his body. Everyone fell silent. The masons slowly let go of the block and helped him grasp it with his hands. As the weight pressed down on him, he bent still farther over, and his legs started to buckle. He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes. “You can do it!” he thought he heard. In fact, nobody had said a word, but everyone had said it to themselves when they saw the boy’s legs wobble. “You can do it!” Arnau straightened under the load. A lot of the others gave a sigh of relief. But could he walk? Arnau stood there, his eyes still closed. Could he walk?

He put one foot forward. The weight of the block of stone forced him to push out the other foot, then the first one again ... and the other one a second time. If he stopped ... if he stopped, the stone would crush him.

Ramon took a deep breath and covered his face with his hands.

“You can do it, lad!” one of the waiting muleteers shouted.

“Go on, brave heart.”

“You can do it!”

“For Santa Maria!”

The shouting echoed off the walls of the quarry and accompanied Arnau as he set off on his own down the path to the city.

But he was not alone. All the bastaixos who set off after him soon caught up and made sure that they fell in with him for a few minutes, encouraging him and helping him on his way. As soon as another one reached them, the first would continue at his own pace.

Arnau could hardly hear what they said. He could scarcely even think. All his attention was on the foot that had to come from behind, and once he saw it moving forward and touching the ground under him, he concentrated on the other one; one foot after the other, overcoming the pain.

As he crossed the gardens of San Bertran, his feet seemed to take an eternity to appear. By now, all the other bastaixos had overtaken him. He remembered how when Joan and he used to give them water they would rest the block on the edge of a boat while they drank. Now he looked for something similar, and soon came across an olive tree. He rested the stone on one of its lower branches; he knew that if he left it on the ground, he would never be able to raise it again. His legs were stiff as boards.

“If you stop,” Ramon had advised him, “make sure your legs don’t go completely stiff. If they do, you won’t be able to carry on.”

So Arnau, freed from at least part of the weight, continued to move his legs. He took deep breaths. Once, twice, many times. “The Virgin will take part of the weight,” Ramon had told him. My God! If that was true, how much did his stone really weigh? He did not dare move his back. It hurt terribly. He rested for a good while. Would he be able to set off again? Arnau looked all around him. He was completely alone. Not even the mule drivers took this path, because they had to go down to the Trentaclaus gate.

Could he do it? He stared up into the sky. He listened to the silence, then with one pull managed to lift the block of stone again. His feet began to move. First one, then the other, one, then the other ...

At Cagalell he stopped again, this time resting the stone on the ledge of a huge rock. The first bastaix reappeared, on their way back to the quarry. Nobody spoke, merely exchanging glances. Arnau gritted his teeth once more and lifted the stone again. Some of the bastaixos nodded their approval, but none of them halted. “It’s his challenge,” one of them commented later, when Arnau was out of earshot, and he turned to look at the boy’s painful progress. “He has to do it on his own,” another man agreed.

After he had passed the western wall and left Framenors behind, Arnau came across the first inhabitants of Barcelona. All his attention was still on his feet. He was in the city! Sailors, fishermen, women and children, men from the boatyards, and ships’ carpenters all stared in silence at the boy bent double under the stone, his face sweaty and mottled from the effort. They looked at the feet of this youthful bastaix, and he could see nothing else. Everyone was silently willing him on: one foot, then the other, one after the other ...

Some of them fell in behind him, still without saying a word. After more than two hours’ effort, Arnau finally arrived at Santa Maria accompanied by a small, silent crowd. Work on the church came to a halt. The workmen stood at the edge of the scaffolding. Carpenters and stonemasons put down their tools. Father Albert, Pere, and Mariona were there, waiting for him. Angel, the boatman’s son who by now was a craftsman, came up to him.

“Keep going!” he shouted. “You’re there! You’ve made it! Come on, you can do it!”

Shouts of encouragement came from the highest scaffolding. The crowd that had followed Arnau through the city cheered and applauded. All Santa Maria joined in, even Father Albert. Yet Arnau still stared down at his feet: one, then the other, one, the other ... all the way to the area where the stones were stored. As he reached it, apprentices and craftsmen rushed to receive the block the boy had carried.

Only then did Arnau look up. He was still bent double, and his body was shaking all over. But he smiled. People crowded all round to congratulate him. Arnau found it hard to tell who they all were: the only one he recognized was Father Albert. He was staring in the direction of Las Moreres cemetery. Arnau followed his gaze.

“For you, Father,” he whispered.

When the crowd had dispersed and Arnau was preparing to head back toward the quarry as his companions had done—some of them by now had made as many as three journeys—the priest called out to him. Josep, the guild alderman, had given him instructions.

“I’ve got a job for you,” he said. Arnau came to a halt and looked at him, puzzled. “You have to clean the Jesus chapel, to sort out the candles and tidy everything.”

“But ... ,” Arnau protested, pointing to the blocks of stone.

“There are no buts about it.”

19

IT HAD BEEN a hard day. Midsummer had only just passed, and nightfall came late. The bastaixos had to work from dawn to dusk loading and unloading the ships that came into the port, and were always under pressure from merchants and captains, who wanted to stay the shortest time possible in the port of Barcelona.

Arnau entered Pere’s house dragging his feet and carrying his leather strap in his hand. Eight faces turned toward him. Pere and Mariona were seated at the table with another man and woman. Joan, a boy, and two girls were sitting on the floor by the wall. All of them were eating from bowls.

“Arnau,” Pere said to him, “these are our new tenants. Gastó Segura, an artisan tanner.” The man merely nodded his head slightly, still eating. “His wife, Eulàlia.” She did smile at him. “And their three children: ”Simó, Aledis, and Alesta.”

Arnau was exhausted. He waved his hand sketchily in the direction of Joan and the tanner’s three children, and went to take the bowl Mariona was offering him. Yet something made him take a second look at the three newcomers. What was it ... ? Their eyes! The two girls were openly staring at him. Their eyes were ... they were huge, a rich chestnut brown, sparkling with life. They both smiled at him.

“Eat, lad!”

Their smiles vanished. Alesta and Aledis quickly dropped their eyes to their bowls again, while Arnau turned to the tanner, who had stopped eating and was lifting his chin toward Mariona, who was offering Arnau his bowl from the fire.

Mariona gave him her place at the table, and Arnau started to eat. Opposite him, Gastó Segura was chewing his food with his mouth wide open. Every time Arnau looked up, the tanner was staring at him.

After a while, Simó got up and handed his empty bowl and those of his sisters to Mariona.

“To bed with you,” Gastó said, breaking the silence.

The tanner’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated his gaze on Arnau once more; the young bastaix felt so uncomfortable he stared down at his bowl and heard only the sound of the girls getting up and bidding everyone a timid good night. When their steps had faded on the stairs, he looked up again. Gastó’s interest in him seemed to have waned.

“What are they like?” he asked Joan that night, the first they spent on their straw pallets on each side of the hearth.

“Who?” asked Joan.

“The tanner’s daughters.”

“What do you mean? They’re normal enough,” said Joan, gesticulating to show his incomprehension in a way that his brother could not see in the darkness. “They’re normal girls. At least I suppose so.” He hesitated. “In fact, I don’t really know. I haven’t been allowed to speak to them; their brother didn’t even let me shake their hands. When I went to do so, he stepped forward and kept me from them.”

But Arnau was not even listening. How could eyes like theirs be normal? And they had both smiled at him.

AT FIRST LIGHT next morning, Pere and Mariona came down to find that Arnau and Joan had already put away their mattresses. A short time later, the tanner and his son appeared. None of the women were with them: Gastó had forbidden them to appear until the two lads had gone. Arnau left Pere’s house with their huge brown eyes still imprinted on his mind.

“Today you’re at the chapel,” one of the guild aldermen told him when he reached the shore. The previous evening he had noticed Arnau was staggering under his last load.

Arnau nodded. He was no longer upset whenever he was sent to the chapel. Nobody cast any doubt on the fact that he was a bastaix now; the guild aldermen had confirmed it, and even though he still could not carry as much as Ramon or most of the others, he had shown he was as willing to work as any of them. They all appreciated him. Besides, those brown eyes... they would probably distract him from his work. And he felt tired: he had not slept well next to the hearth. He went into Santa Maria through the main door of the old church, which was still standing. Gastó Segura had not even let them glance at his girls. Why shouldn’t he look at two perfectly normal girls? And that morning he had probably forbidden them ... He tripped over a rope and almost fell. He stumbled on a few yards, getting caught up in more ropes, until he felt a pair of strong hands grip his shoulders. He had twisted his ankle, and cried out in pain.

“Hey!” he heard the man who had helped him say. “You should be more careful. Look what you’ve done!”

His ankle was hurting, but he looked down at the floor. He had pulled out the ropes and stakes that Berenguer de Montagut used ... but ... surely this couldn’t be him? He turned slowly round to see who had helped him. It couldn’t be the master builder! He flushed when he saw he was face-to-face with none other than Berenguer de Montagut. Then he looked round and saw that all the craftsmen had halted in their work and were staring at them.

“I ... ,” he stammered. “If you like ... ,” he said, pointing to the mess of ropes entangled round his feet, “if you like I could help you ... I ... I’m sorry, Master.”

All at once, Berenguer de Montagut’s face relaxed. He was still holding Arnau by the arm.

“You’re the bastaix,” he said with a smile. Arnau nodded. “I’ve seen you here often.”

His smile grew broader. The workmen seemed relieved. Arnau looked down again at the ropes round his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Don’t worry.” The master builder waved to the others to sort out the mess. “Come and sit with me. Does it hurt?”

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” said Arnau, grimacing with pain as he bent down to free himself of the ropes.

“Wait.”

Berenguer de Montagut got him to straighten up, and knelt down himself to untangle the ropes. Arnau hardly dared look at him, but glanced instead at the workmen. They were watching in astonishment. The master builder on his knees before a simple bastaix!

“We have to take care of these men,” he shouted to everyone once he had freed Arnau’s feet. “Without them, we would have no stones for the church. Come and sit down by me. Does it hurt?”

Arnau shook his head, but he was limping, trying not to cling to the master. Berenguer de Montagut took him firmly by the arm and led him toward some pillars that were lying flat on the ground, waiting to be hoisted into position. The two of them sat on one. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” he said as soon as they were settled. Arnau turned toward him. Berenguer de Montagut was going to tell him a secret! What more could possibly happen to him that morning?

“The other day I tried to lift the block of stone you brought here. I could hardly manage it.” Berenguer shook his head. “I couldn’t imagine taking even a few steps with it. This church belongs to you,” he said, surveying the building work. Arnau felt a shiver run through him. “Someday, when our grandchildren, or their children, or the children of their children are alive, and people look at this, they won’t mention Berenguer de Montagut: it will be you they talk of, my boy.”

Arnau could scarcely speak. The master! What did he mean? How could a bastaix be more important than the great Berenguer de Montagut, the man who had built Santa Maria and Manresa cathedral? Surely he was the important one.

“Does it hurt?” asked the master builder.

“No ... A little. It’s only a slight twist.”

“I hope so.” Berenguer de Montagut patted him on the back. “We need your stones. There’s still a lot to do.”

Arnau followed his gaze as he surveyed the work going on.

“Do you like it?” Berenguer de Montagut asked him all of a sudden.

Did he like it? It was a question Arnau had never asked himself. He had watched the church growing—its walls, its apses, its magnificent, slender columns, its buttresses—but did he like it?

“They say it will be the best church to Our Virgin in the whole of Christianity,” he said finally.

Berenguer turned to him and smiled. How could he explain to a youth, a bastaix, what the church would be like, when not even bishops or noblemen could envisage his creation?

“What’s your name?”

“Arnau.”

“Well, Arnau, I don’t know if it will be the best....” Arnau forgot his aching foot and turned to face him. “But what I can assure you is that it will be unique, and to be unique does not mean to be better or worse, but simply that: unique.”

Berenguer de Montagut stared intently at the construction work. He went on:

“Have you heard of France or Lombardy, and Genoa, Pisa, Florence?” Arnau nodded—of course he had heard of his country’s enemies. “Well, all those places are building churches as well: magnificent cathedrals, grandiose and lavishly decorated. The princes of those realms want their churches to be the biggest and most beautiful in the world.”

“But isn’t that what we want too?”

“Yes and no.” Arnau shook his head. Berenguer de Montagut turned to him and smiled. “Let’s see if you can understand. We want this to be the finest church ever, but we want to achieve that by different means from those the others use. We want the home of the patron saint of the sea to be a home for all Catalans, to be like the homes in which the faithful themselves live. We want it to be conceived and built in the same spirit that has made us what we are, making use of what is uniquely ours: the sea, the sunlight. Do you understand?”

Arnau thought for a few moments, then shook his head.

“At least you’re sincere,” laughed the master builder. “Those princes create things for their personal glory. We do it for ourselves. I’ve noticed that sometimes, instead of carrying a load on your own, two of you use a pole and carry it between you.”

“Yes, when it’s too big and heavy to carry on our backs.”

“What would happen if we made that pole twice as long?”

“It would snap.”

“Well, that’s exactly what happens with those princes’ churches ... No, I don’t mean they break,” he added, seeing the boy’s surprised look. “What I mean is that they want them to be so big, tall, and long, that they have to make them as narrow as possible. Big, long, and narrow: do you see?” This time, Arnau nodded. “But our church will be the opposite. It won’t be as long or as tall, but it will be very broad, so that every Catalan will be able to find room to be with their Virgin. Once it’s finished, you’ll be able to appreciate it: there will be a shared space for all the faithful, without distinction. And the only decoration will be the light: the light of the Mediterranean. We don’t need anything more than that: space and the light that will pour in from down there.” Berenguer de Montagut pointed to the apse and drew his hand down toward the floor. “This church will be for the common people, not for the greater glory of any prince.”

“Master ...” The ropes and stakes had been sorted out, and one of the craftsmen had appeared next to them.

“Do you understand now?”

It would be for the common people!

“Yes, Master.”

“Remember, your blocks of stone are like gold to this church,” Montagut said, clambering to his feet. “Does it still hurt?”

Arnau had completely forgotten about his ankle. He shook his head.

SINCE HE DID not have to work with the bastaixos that day, Arnau returned home early. He had cleaned the chapel quickly, replaced the spent candles with new ones, said a rapid prayer, and bidden the Virgin farewell. Father Albert saw him running from the church, and Mariona saw him running into the house.

“What’s wrong?” the old woman asked. “What are you doing here so early?”

Arnau glanced quickly round the kitchen: there the three of them were—mother and two daughters, sewing at the table. The three of them stared at him.

“Arnau!” Mariona repeated. “Is something wrong?”

He realized he was blushing.

“No ...” He had not even thought of an excuse! How could he have been so stupid? And they were staring at him: all three of them, peering at him standing in the doorway, panting. “No,” he said, “it’s just that I finished early today.”

Mariona smiled and glanced at the girls. Their mother, Eulàlia, could not help smiling either.

“Well, if you’ve finished early,” said Mariona, disturbing his thoughts, “you can go and fetch me some water.”

She had looked at him again, thought Arnau as he carried the bucket to the angel fountain. Did that mean something? He swung the bucket: of course it did.

He did not have much opportunity to find out. If it was not Eulàlia who got in his way, he came up against Gastó’s few remaining blackened teeth; and if neither of them was in the house, Simó mounted guard over his two sisters. For days, Arnau had to be content with casting glances at them out of the corner of his eye. Occasionally he could get a good look at their faces: they had delicate features, with strong chins and prominent cheekbones. Their noses looked Roman, and both had shining white teeth and those amazing brown eyes. On other occasions, when the sun shone in through the windows, Arnau felt he could almost touch the blue sheen on the silky locks of their jet-black hair. Once or twice, when he felt really safe, he allowed his gaze to travel downward from the elder sister, Aledis’s, face to her chest, where her breasts could be glimpsed even through the coarse cloth of her smock. The sight made his body quiver. And when he was sure no one was watching him, he even dared to look lower still, at the curves of her body and legs.

Gastó Segura had lost everything during the months of hunger. This had made him even more bitter than he already was by nature. His son, Simó, worked with him as an apprentice, but his greatest concern was his two daughters, whom he could not provide with dowries in order to secure good husbands. Yet their beauty was in their favor, and Gastó was sure they would make good matches. If they did, that would be two fewer mouths to feed.

For that reason, he was desperate for them to remain untouched, so that no one in Barcelona could have the slightest doubt about their decency. This was the only way, he told Eulàlia and Simó, that Aledis and Alesta could make good marriages. Father, mother, and eldest brother had all taken this task upon themselves, but whereas Gastó and Eulàlia thought there would be no problem fulfilling it, Simó was more worried about them living any length of time in the same house as Arnau and Joan.

Joan had become the outstanding pupil at the cathedral school. He had mastered Latin in no time at all, and his teachers were delighted at this thoughtful, sensitive pupil who in addition was so deeply devout. He was so gifted that nearly all of them foresaw a great future ahead of him in the Church. Joan gradually won Gastó and Eulàlia’s respect, and the two of them would often sit with Pere and Mariona and listen in rapt attention to the way the young lad explained the holy scriptures. As a rule it was only the priests who could read those books written in Latin, and yet now, in this humble house by the sea, the four of them could enjoy the sacred teachings, the ancient parables, and other messages from the Lord that they had previously heard only from the pulpit.

If Joan had won the respect of all those around him, Arnau could say the same: even Simó regarded him with great admiration: a bastaix! Almost everyone in La Ribera knew of the efforts Arnau made to carry stone for the Virgin. “They say that the great Berenguer de Montagut got on his knees to help him,” another apprentice had told Simó, hands spread wide in astonishment. Simó imagined the great master, respected by noblemen and bishops, kneeling at Arnau’s feet. When the master spoke, everyone, including his father, kept silent, and when he shouted ... when he shouted, everyone trembled. Simó watched Arnau when he came home at night. He was always the last to arrive. He looked tired and sweaty, carrying the leather headpiece in his hand, and yet... he was smiling! When had Simó ever come home from work smiling? On several occasions, he had crossed Arnau’s path as he was carrying stones down to Santa Maria: his legs, arms, and chest seemed made of iron. Simó stared at the block of stone and then at Arnau’s straining face: how could he possibly have seen him smile?

All this explained why, despite being older than them, when Simó had to look after his sisters and Arnau or Joan appeared, he kept in the background and the two girls could enjoy the freedom they were denied when their parents were there.

“Let’s go for a walk on the beach!” Alesta suggested one day.

Simó wanted to refuse. Walking along the beach: what would his father say if he saw them ... ?

“All right,” said Arnau.

“It will do us good,” Joan agreed.

Simó said nothing. So the five of them went out into the sunshine: Aledis with Arnau, Alesta alongside Joan, and Simó bringing up the rear. Both the girls let the sea breeze play with their hair and mold their loose smocks against their bodies so that their breasts, stomachs, and thighs stood out.

They walked along in silence, looking out to sea or kicking at the sand, until they came across a group of bastaixos relaxing on the beach. Arnau waved at them.

“Would you like me to introduce you to them?” he asked Aledis.

She glanced over at the group of men. They were all staring at her. What could they be looking at? The breeze pressed her smock up against her breasts and nipples. Dear God! It seemed as though they were trying to burst out of the material. Aledis blushed and shook her head, although Arnau was already going over to the men. She turned on her heel, and Arnau was left standing there.

“Run and catch her, Arnau,” he heard one of his colleagues shout.

“Don’t let her get away,” another one said.

“She’s a pretty one!” a third man added.

Arnau ran until he had caught up with Aledis.

“What’s wrong?”

She did not answer. She turned her face away and held her arms folded across her chest, but did not insist they return home. So they walked on along the beach, with only the sound of waves for company.

20

THAT SAME NIGHT, as they were eating by the hearth, Aledis rewarded Arnau with an extra second’s attention, a second when she kept those enormous brown eyes of hers fixed on him.

It was a second when Arnau once more heard the waves on the shore, and felt his feet sinking into the sand. He glanced round to see if anyone else had noticed, but Gastó was still talking to Pere, and nobody else seemed to have seen a thing. No one seemed to hear the waves.

When he dared look at her again, Aledis had lowered her gaze and was pushing her food around the bowl.

“Eat, child!” Gastó the tanner ordered, seeing her toying with the food rather than raising it to her mouth. “Food isn’t for playing with.”

Gastó’s words brought Arnau back down to earth. For the rest of the meal, not only did Aledis avoid looking at him again, but she made a deliberate show of ignoring him.

It was several days before she offered him a silent gift similar to the one she had given him that night after their walk along the beach. Until then, on the few occasions they met, Arnau had been longing to see her eyes on him, but Aledis always managed to avoid him, or kept her face turned away.

“Good-bye, Aledis,” he said to her absentmindedly one morning, as he left for the beach.

It so happened that they were alone at the time. Arnau was about to shut the door behind him, but something he could not describe made him turn and look at the girl instead. There she stood, erect and beautiful by the hearth, an invitation in her great brown eyes.

Finally! Finally. Arnau blushed and looked away. Flustered, he made to shut the door, but as he was doing so, he stopped a second time: Aledis was still standing there, calling out to him with those eyes of hers. And she smiled. Aledis had smiled at him!

His hand slipped off the door latch. He stumbled and almost fell. He did not dare look at her again, but rushed off toward the beach, leaving the door wide open.

“HE GETS EMBARRASSED,” Aledis whispered to her sister that same evening, before their parents and brother came upstairs, when the two of them were lying on the pallet they shared.

“Why should he be?” Alesta asked. “He’s a bastaix. He works in the port and carries blocks of stone for the Virgin. You’re only a young girl. He’s a man,” she added, with more than a hint of admiration.

“You’re the silly young girl!” her sister snapped.

“Oh, and you’re a grown woman, are you?” Alesta replied, turning her back on her sister as she spoke the same words their mother used whenever either of them asked for something they were not old enough to have.

“That’s enough,” Aledis said, to calm her.

“A grown woman. I am, aren’t I?” Aledis thought of her mother and her friends, of her father. Perhaps ... perhaps her sister was right. Why would somebody like Arnau, a bastaix who had shown the whole of Barcelona his devotion to the Virgin of the Sea, become embarrassed when a young girl like her looked at him?

“HE GETS EMBARRASSED. I’m sure of it,” Aledis insisted the following night.

“Silly goose! Why would he?”

“I don’t know,” Aledis replied, “but he does. He gets embarrassed when he looks at me. And when I look at him. He gets flustered, he turns red, he runs away ...”

“You’re crazy!”

“Maybe so, but ...” Aledis was sure she was right. Although the previous night her sister had made her doubt it, she would not succeed again. She had proved it. She had watched Arnau, and waited for the right moment, when nobody could catch them by surprise. She went up to him, so close she breathed in his body smell. “Hello, Arnau.” Nothing more than that, a simple greeting accompanied by a gentle smile, so close to him they were almost touching. Arnau blushed, looked away, and tried to get away. When Aledis saw him pull away from her, she smiled again, this time out of pride at discovering a power she did not know she had. “You’ll see tomorrow,” she told her sister.

The fact that her sister was there as a witness led her to take her coquettishness still further; she was sure she would succeed. That morning, as Arnau was about to leave the house, Aledis stood between him and the door, leaning against it. She had planned the move over and over again in her mind while her sister slept.

“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” she said softly to Arnau, staring him straight in the eye.

She was amazed at her own audacity. She had said the sentence so many times to herself she was uncertain whether she would be able to get it out without stumbling over the words. If Arnau answered, she was lost, but to her delight this did not happen. Because he was disturbed by the presence of Alesta, when Arnau turned instinctively toward Aledis, his cheeks reddened as they always did. He could not leave, but he could not look her in the face either.

“I, yes ... I ...”

“You, you, you,” Aledis interrupted him, growing bolder. “You run away from me. We used to talk and laugh together, but now, whenever I try to approach you ...”

Aledis stood as straight as she could in front of him. Her young breasts poked through her smock. Despite the rough cloth, her nipples stood out like darts. Arnau saw them, and not all of the stones in the royal quarry could have made him take his eyes off what Aledis was offering him. His whole body quivered.

“Girls!”

Eulàlia’s voice as she came down the stairs brought them all back to reality. Aledis opened the door and went out before her mother could reach the ground floor. Arnau turned to Alesta, who was still standing watching everything openmouthed, then rushed out of the door as well. Aledis had already vanished.

That night in bed the two girls were whispering to each other again, trying to find answers to the questions raised by this new experience that they could not share with anyone. What Aledis was sure of, although she did not know how to explain it to her sister, was the power her body had over Arnau. This feeling delighted her, filling her entirely. She wondered if all men would react in the same way, but was unable to see herself with anyone other than Arnau; she would never have behaved like this with Joan or any of the tanning apprentices who were friends with her brother, Simó. Just imagining it made her ... And yet, when it came to Arnau, something inside her broke free ...

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH the lad?” Josep the guild alderman asked Ramon.

“I don’t know,” Ramon answered in all sincerity.

The two men looked across at the boats, where Arnau was vigorously demanding they give him one of the heaviest loads. When he succeeded, Josep, Ramon, and the others saw him stagger off under its weight, with clenched jaw and strained face.

“He won’t be able to keep this rhythm up,” Josep asserted.

“He’s young,” Ramon said, trying to defend him.

“He won’t be able to withstand it.”

They had all noticed. Arnau demanded the heaviest loads and stones as if his life depended on it. He almost ran back to get the next job, again calling for them to load him down with more weight than was good for him. At the end of the day, he limped back exhausted to Pere’s house.

“What’s the matter, lad?” Ramon asked him the next day, as they were both carrying heavy bundles to the city storehouses.

Arnau said nothing. Ramon was unsure whether his silence was because he did not want to talk, or because for some reason he could not do so. His face was strained again because of the weight on his back.

“If you have a problem, perhaps I ...”

“No, no ... ,” Arnau managed to stutter. How could he tell Ramon his body was burning with desire for Aledis? How could he tell him he could find peace and quiet only by loading heavier and heavier weights on his back until his mind was fixed only on reaching his destination, and forgot her eyes, her smile, her breasts, her entire body? How could he tell him that whenever Aledis played her little games with him, he lost all control of his thoughts and imagined her naked beside him, caressing his body? It was then that he would recall the priest’s warnings about forbidden relationships: “They’re a sin! A sin!” he would warn the faithful loudly. How could he tell him he wanted to return home so exhausted that he would collapse onto the pallet and fall asleep at once, despite the fact that she was so close by? “No, no,” he repeated. “But thanks, Ramon.”

“He’ll collapse,” Josep insisted at the end of that day.

This time Ramon did not dare contradict him.

“DON’T YOU THINK you’re going too far?” Alesta asked her sister one night.

“Why?”

“If Father found out ...”

“What is he supposed to find out?”

“That you love Arnau.”

“I don’t love Arnau! It’s just that ... I feel good, Alesta. I like him. When he looks at me ...”

“You love him,” her younger sister insisted.

“No! How can I explain it? When I see him looking at me, when he blushes, it’s as though a little caterpillar were crawling through me.”

“You love him.”

“No. Go to sleep! What would you know about it?”

“You love him! You love him! You love him!”

Aledis decided to say nothing; but did she love him? She knew only that she liked being looked at and desired. She was pleased that Arnau could not take his eyes off her body. She was content that he was so obviously upset when she ceased flirting with him; was that loving someone? Aleda tried to find an answer, but before long she lapsed into a state of pleased contentment, and then fell asleep.

ONE MORNING, RAMON left the beach when he saw Joan coming out of Pere’s house.

“What’s wrong with your brother?” he asked straight out.

Joan thought it over.

“I think he’s in love with Aledis, Gastó the tanner’s daughter.”

Ramon burst out laughing.

“Well, that love is driving him mad,” he warned Joan. “If he carries on like this, he’ll collapse. No one can work as hard as he is doing. He can’t take all that effort. He wouldn’t be the first bastaix to drop ... but your brother is very young to be crippled. Do something, Joan.”

That same night, Joan tried to talk to his brother.

“What’s bothering you, Arnau?” he asked, lying on his pallet.

Arnau said nothing.

“You ought to tell me. I’m you’re brother and I want ... I’d like to help. You’ve always shared my worries; let me do the same for you.”

Joan waited while his brother struggled to find the words.

“It’s ... it’s because of Aledis,” he admitted finally. Joan did not want to interrupt. “I don’t know what’s happened to me with her, Joan. Ever since we went for that walk on the beach ... something’s changed between us. She looks at me as though she’d like to ... I don’t know what. And I ...”

“And you what?” Joan prompted him when he fell silent.

“I’m not going to tell him about anything except for the way she looks at me,” Arnau decided, as the image of Aledis’s breasts flashed through his mind.

“Me? Nothing.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“I have bad thoughts. I imagine I can see her naked. Well, that I’d like to see her naked. I’d like ...”

Joan had recently been asking his tutors to tell him more about women, without realizing his interest came from his concern about his brother, and his fears that Arnau could be led astray. His teachers had been only too glad to explain at length all the theories on the character and perverse nature of woman.

“You’re not to blame for that,” Joan told Arnau.

“Why not?”

“Because wickedness,” he told him, whispering across the hearth where they slept, “is one of the four natural illnesses mankind is born with as a result of original sin, and women’s wickedness is greater than any other in the world,” said Joan, repeating word for word what he had heard his masters tell him.

“What are the other three illnesses?”

“Avarice, ignorance, and apathy, or the inability to do good.”

“But what has wickedness got to do with Aledis?”

“Women are wicked by nature, and take pleasure in tempting men onto the paths of evil.”

“Why?”

“Because women are like moving air, like vapor. They shift constantly, like the breeze.” Joan could remember the priest who had made that comparison standing there, his arms outstretched, his hands waving around his head. “Secondly, because women, by nature—because they were made that way—have so little common sense, and therefore have no way of keeping their natural wickedness in check.”

Joan had read all this, and a lot more besides, but was unable to put the ideas into words. The wise men also stated that women were by nature cold and phlegmatic, and it was well-known that when something cold finally caught fire, it burned fiercely. According to authority, women were without doubt the antithesis of men, and were therefore incoherent and absurd. One had only to look at the difference in their bodies: women’s bodies were broad at the base and narrow at the top, whereas a well-formed man’s body should be the opposite, narrow from the chest down, but broad in the chest and back, with a short, vigorous neck and a large head. When a woman was born, the first letter she pronounced was an “e,” which was a letter to complain with; men by contrast first said the letter “a,” the first letter of the alphabet, opposed to “e.”

“It’s not possible. Aledis is not like that,” Arnau objected.

“Don’t be fooled. Apart from the Virgin, who conceived Jesus without sin, all other women are the same. Even your guild’s ordinances say so! Don’t they prohibit adulterous relations? Don’t they insist that any man who has a friendship or lives with a dishonest woman be expelled?”

Arnau had no response to that argument. He had no opinion about the arguments of wise men and philosophers, and however much Joan insisted, he was not really interested; but he could not go against the rules of his guild. He knew what they were, and the aldermen had warned that if he broke them he would be expelled. And the guild could not be wrong!

Arnau was extremely confused.

“So what’s to be done? If all women are evil ...”

“First you must marry,” Joan butted in, “and once you are married, then follow the teachings of the Church.”

To get married ... The thought had never crossed Arnau’s mind, but... if that was the only solution ...

“What does one have to do once one is married?” he asked, his voice trembling at the thought of being with Aledis forever.

Joan returned to the arguments he had learned from his masters: “A good husband should strive to control his wife’s natural wickedness by applying the following principles: firstly, woman should be governed by the man, and should submit to him. ‘Sub potestate viri eris,’ we are told in Genesis. Secondly, as Ecclesiastes says: ‘Mulier si primatum haber ... ”’ Joan hesitated. “‘Mulier si primatum habuerit, contraria est viro suo,’ which means that if it is the woman who rules at home, she will stand against her husband. Another principle is to be found in Proverbs: ‘Qui delicate nutrit servum suum, inveniet contumacem.’ That means that whoever is gentle with people meant to serve them—among whom are included women—will find rebellion where there should be humility, submission, and obedience. If, despite all this, wickedness is still apparent in a man’s wife, he should punish her by putting her to shame and through fear. He should correct her from the start, when she is still young, rather than wait for her to grow old.”

Arnau listened in silence to his brother’s words.

“Joan,” Arnau said once he had finished. “Do you think I could marry Aledis?”

“Of course! But you ought to wait awhile until you have made your way in the guild and can support her. In any case, it would be wise to speak to her father before he promises her to anyone else, because if he does that, you are lost.”

The image of Gastó Segura and his few blackened teeth seemed to Arnau like an unsurmountable obstacle. Joan guessed what his brother was afraid of.

“You have to do it,” he insisted.

“Would you help me?”

“Of course.”

Silence returned to the two straw pallets ranged on either side of the hearth.

“Joan,” said Arnau after a few moments.

“What is it?”

“Thank you.”

“It’s nothing.”

The two brothers tried hard to sleep, but found it impossible. Arnau was too excited at the idea of marrying his beloved Aledis. Joan was lost in memories of his mother. Could Pone the coppersmith have been right? Wickedness was natural in women. A woman should be ruled by man. A man should punish his wife. Could the coppersmith have been right? How could he respect his mother’s memory and give his brother this kind of advice? Joan remembered his mother’s hand poking out of the tiny window of her prison, caressing his head. He remembered how he had hated—and still did—the coppersmith Ponc ... but what if he had been right?

OVER THE NEXT few days, neither of them had enough courage to speak to the bad-tempered Gastó, whose situation as tenant in Pere’s house constantly reminded him of his misfortune at losing his own home. He became increasingly sour whenever he was in the house—which was the one time the two brothers had the opportunity to raise the question with him. His endless growls, protests, and insults continually made them posptone the idea.

Arnau was still bewitched by the atmosphere Aledis generated. He watched her, followed her with his eyes and in his imagination. There was no moment in the day when he did not think of her, except when Gastó made his appearance: the presence of her father made his heart shrink.

This was because, however much the priests and his own guild might forbid him from doing so, he could not take his eyes off Aledis when she, knowing she was alone with her plaything, seemed to take every opportunity to allow her loose, faded smock to press against her body. Arnau was ensnared by the vision: those nipples, breasts—Aledis’s entire body was calling out to him. “You will be my wife. One of these days you will be my wife,” he thought, his mind ablaze. He imagined her naked, his mind wandering along forbidden, unknown paths: the only naked female he had ever seen had been the tortured body of Habiba.

On other occasions, Aledis bent over in front of Arnau. She did not kneel down, but bent from the waist, deliberately showing off her rear and the curves of her hips. She also took advantage of every opportunity she had to raise her smock above her knees and show her thighs. Or she would put her hands on the small of her back, pretending to feel a nonexistent pain, and bend backward so that he could see how flat and smooth her stomach was. Afterward she would smile or, making as if she had suddenly discovered Arnau’s presence, would seem embarrassed. When she went out, Arnau was left struggling to wipe the images from his mind.

Whenever something like this happened, Arnau became even more determined to find the right moment to talk to Gastó.

“What the devil are you two doing just standing there?” Gastó spluttered once, when the two lads came up to him with the ingenuous idea of asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Joan’s tentative smile vanished as soon as the tanner stepped between them, pushing them away from him.

“You ask,” Arnau said to him on another occasion.

Gastó was alone at the table downstairs. Joan sat opposite him, cleared his throat, and was just about to speak when the tanner suddenly looked up from the hide he was busy examining.

“I’ll flay him alive! I’ll tear his balls off!” the tanner exploded, spitting saliva out between the gaps in his blackened teeth. “Simooó!” Joan shrugged in despair toward the figure of Arnau, who was hiding in the corner of the room.

Simó came running. “How could you have stitched this so badly?” Gastó said, pushing the piece of leather under his nose.

Joan got up from his chair and left them to it.

But he and Arnau did not give up.

“Gastó!” Joan shouted after him one evening when the tanner had left the house after supper, apparently in a good mood, and the two boys had followed him down to the beach.

“What do you want?” he said, still striding on.

“At least he’s letting us speak,” the two boys thought.

“I wanted ... to talk to you about Aledis ...”

Hearing his daughter’s name, Gastó came to a sudden halt. He turned and brought his face so close to Joan’s that his rotten breath made the boy reel.

“What’s she done?” Gastó respected Joan; he took him to be a serious young man. To hear him mention Aledis, combined with his naturally suspicious nature, made him think the lad was about to accuse her of something. The tanner could not allow the slightest stain on his precious jewel’s reputation.

“Nothing,” said Joan.

“What do you mean, nothing?” Gastó pressed him, his face still only inches away from Joan. “Why did you mention Aledis then? Tell me the truth. What has she done?”

“Nothing, she’s done nothing, I swear.”

“Nothing? And you, what about you?” he barked, turning to Arnau. Joan was relieved. “What have you got to say for yourself? What do you know about Aledis?”

“Me? ... Nothing ...” Arnau’s hesitation served only to increase the tanner’s obsessive suspicions.

“Tell me!”

“There’s nothing ... no ...”

“Eulàlia!” Gastó did not wait to hear any more. He bawled for his wife, and set off back to Pere’s house to find her.

That night the two boys were overcome with guilt as they heard Eulàlia cry out in pain as Gastó tried to beat an impossible confession out of her.

They tried to broach the subject twice more, but got nowhere. After several weeks, disheartened, they decided to speak to Father Albert. He smiled and promised to talk to Gastó on their behalf.

“I’M SORRY, ARNAU,” Father Albert told him a week later. He had called the two boys to meet him on the beach. “Gastó Segura does not agree to your marrying his daughter.”

“Why?” Joan wanted to know. “Arnau is a good person.”

“Do you want my daughter to marry a slave from La Ribera?” the tanner had told the priest. “A slave who doesn’t earn enough to pay for a room?”

Father Albert tried to convince him: “There are no slaves working in La Ribera. That was in olden times. You know it’s forbidden for slaves to work—”

“It’s work for slaves.”

“That’s in the past too,” the priest insisted. “Besides,” he added, “I’ve found a good dowry for your daughter.” Gastó Segura, who thought the conversation had already finished, suddenly turned back to hear what the priest had to say. “It will allow her to buy a house ...”

Gastó interrupted him once more: “My daughter doesn’t need any rich man’s charity! Keep your wiles for others!”

When he heard Father Albert’s words, Arnau stared out to sea. Moonlight was shimmering across the water from horizon to shore, dying in the foam of the waves breaking on the beach.

Father Albert let the lapping of the waves calm them. What if Arnau asked the reasons behind the tanner’s refusal? What could he tell him?“

“Why?” stammered Arnau, still staring out at the horizon.

“Gastó Segura is ... a very strange man.” Father Albert could not break the boy’s heart still further. “He wants a nobleman to marry his daughter! How can a mere tanner aspire to something like that?”

A nobleman. Had the lad believed him? Nobody should feel belittled by the nobility. Even the waves lapping patiently, endlessly, on the shore seemed to be waiting for Arnau’s reply.

A sob echoed along the beach.

Father Albert put his arm round Arnau’s shoulder. He could feel his body shaking. He put his other arm round Joan, and the three of them stood gazing out to sea.

“You will find a good wife,” said the priest after a while.

“Not like her,” thought Arnau.

PART THREE

Chained to Passion

21

Second Sunday in July 1339

Church of Santa Maria de la Mar

Barcelona

FOUR YEARS HAD passed since Gastó Seguro refused to give his daughter’s hand in marriage to Arnau the bastaix. A few months later, Aledis was married off to an old master tanner, a widower for whom his young bride’s charms more than made up for her lack of dowry. Until the moment she was given away, Aledis never left her mother’s sight.

Arnau himself was now a tall, strong, and good-looking young man of eighteen. During those four years he had lived from and for the guild of bastaixos, the church of Santa Maria, and his brother Joan. He carried more than his share of goods and stone blocks; he gave money to the guild, and attended religious services devoutly. But he had not married, and the guild aldermen were worried that a lusty young man like him might fall into temptation, which would mean they would have to expel him from the brotherhood.

Yet Arnau would not hear of marrying. When the priest told him Gastó wanted nothing to do with him, Arnau stood staring at the sea, thinking of the women who had been part of his life: he had not even known who his mother was; Guiamona had shown him affection, but then turned against him; Habiba had vanished in a welter of blood and pain (at night Arnau often still dreamed of Grau’s whip lashing her naked body); Estranya had treated him like a slave; Margarida had laughed at him at his moment of greatest humiliation; and Aledis—what could he say about her? It was thanks to her that he had discovered the man inside him, but she had soon abandoned him.

“I have to take care of my brother,” he told the aldermen whenever they brought the matter up. “You know he has dedicated his life to the church, to serve God,” he would say while they thought of how to persuade him. “What better aim could there be in life?”

At this the aldermen invariably fell silent.

This was how Arnau lived throughout those four years: calmly, wrapped up in his work, Santa Maria, and above all, Joan.

That second Sunday in July 1339 was a historic day for Barcelona. In January 1336, King Alfonso the Kind had died in the city, and after Easter that same year, his son Pedro was crowned in Zaragoza. He became Pedro the Third of Catalonia, Pedro the Fourth of Aragon, and Pedro the Second of Valencia.

Between 1336 and 1339, the new monarch did not so much as visit Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. Both the nobility and the merchants were concerned at this failure to pay homage to the kingdom’s most important city. They were all well aware of the new king’s dislike of the Catalan nobility: Pedro the Third was the son of Alfonso’s first wife, Teresa de Entenza, countess of Urgel and vice countess of Ager. Teresa had died before her husband became king, and Alfonso remarried, this time to Eleonor of Castille, an ambitious and cruel woman by whom he had two sons.

Despite his conquest of Sardinia, King Alfonso was a weak, easily led man: Queen Eleonor quickly won large tracts of land and honors for her sons. Her next goal was to pursue her stepchildren, the children of Teresa de Entenza who were the heirs to the throne. Throughout the eight years of Alfonso the Kind’s reign, Eleonor never missed an opportunity to attack the Infante Pedro, who was still a young boy, as well as his brother, Jaime, count of Urgel. Only two Catalan nobles, Pedro’s godfather, Ot de Montcada, and Vidal de Vilanova, the knight commander of Montalbán, supported the cause of Teresa’s children. It was they who warned King Alfonso and the two brothers to escape before they were poisoned. Pedro and Jaime followed their advice, and hid in the mountains of Jaca in Aragon before finally securing the protection of the nobles of Aragon and seeking refuge in the city of Zaragoza, where they were protected by Archbishop Pedro de Luna.

This was the reason why Pedro’s coronation broke with a tradition that had been upheld ever since the kingdom of Aragon had been united with the principality of Catalonia. While he ascended the throne of Aragon in Zaragoza, the right to rule Catalonia, which belonged to him as the count of Barcelona, had always been granted in Catalan territory. Until Pedro the Third, new monarchs first took the oath in Barcelona, and were later crowned in Zaragoza. Whereas the king took the crown of Aragon simply because he was the new monarch, as count of Barcelona he had to swear allegiance to the laws and customs of Catalonia, a ceremony that was regarded as essential before he could be crowned king.

As count of Barcelona, prince of Catalonia, the monarch was seen by the Catalan nobility simply as primus inter pares. This was evident from the oath that they swore him: “We, who are as good as you, swear to Your Majesty, who is no better than us, that we will accept you as our king and sovereign liege, for as long as you respect all our freedoms and laws; if not, not.” As a result, when Pedro the Third was to be crowned, the Catalan nobles went to Zaragoza to demand that he come first to Barcelona to swear the oath there as all his predecessors had done. When the king refused, the Catalans walked out of the coronation. However, the king knew he must receive their oaths of loyalty, and so, despite renewed protests by the nobility and authorities in Barcelona, he chose to do so in the city of Lérida. In June 1336, after swearing to respect the Catalan customs and laws, he duly received their expressions of loyalty.

So it was that on the second Sunday of July 1339, King Pedro paid his first visit to Barcelona, the city he had humiliated. Three reasons brought him there: the oath that his brother-in-law Jaime the Third, king of Mallorca, count of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and lord of Montpellier, had to swear as a vassal of the crown of Aragon; the general council of bishops of the province of Tarragona (to which Barcelona belonged); and the transfer of the remains of Saint Eulàlia the martyr from the church of Santa Maria to the cathedral.

The first two events took place out of sight of ordinary people. Jaime the Third expressly asked that his oath of allegiance be given not in front of the populace, but in the palace chapel, before a small group of chosen nobles.

The third event, however, became a public spectacle. Nobles, churchmen, and all the inhabitants of the city came out onto the streets. The most privileged among them accompanied the royal party as they first heard mass in the cathedral, then walked in procession down to Santa Maria, before finally returning to the cathedral with the martyr’s remains.

All along the way, the streets were lined with people anxious to proclaim their king. Santa Maria’s apse was already roofed over; work had begun on the second vault, but a part of the original Romanesque church still survived.

Saint Eulàlia was martyred during Roman rule, in the year 303. Her remains were kept first in the Roman cemetery and then in the church of Santa Maria de las Arenas, which was built on the pagan burial ground once Emperor Constantine had issued his edict authorizing Christian worship. When the Arabs invaded Spain, the men in charge of the tiny church decided to hide the martyr’s remains. In 801, when the French king Louis the Pious liberated the city, Frodoí, the then bishop of Barcelona, decided to search for the saint’s relics. Once found, they were laid to rest in a small coffer in Santa Maria.

In spite of being draped in scaffolding and surrounded by stones and building material, Santa Maria looked splendid for the royal visit. The archdeacon, Bernat Rosell, together with members of the commission of works, noblemen, beneficiaries, and other church dignitaries, all of them dressed in their finest robes, were there to greet the king. The bright colors of their garments were spectacular: the July morning sun poured in through the unfinished roof and windows of the church, glinting on the gold and metal adorning the vestments of those privileged enough to wait for the king inside.

The sun also glinted on the blunt tip of Arnau’s dagger: the humble bastaixos had taken up a place of honor alongside all the important dignitaries. Some of them, Arnau included, stood outside the chapel of the sacraments, the one they looked after. Other bastaixos stood guard at the front doorway to the church, which was still part of the old Romanesque building.

The bastaixos, formerly slaves or macips de ribera, enjoyed many privileges in Santa Maria de la Mar. As well as being responsible for the church’s main chapel and being the guardians of the main entrance, the masses for their celebrations were said at the high altar, the chief alderman of the guild kept the key of the Jesus chapel, and during Corpus Christi they were the ones who carried the statue of the Virgin, and also the lesser ones of saints Tecla, Catherine, and Macia. In addition, whenever a bastaix was close to death, the holy eucharist was carried to him, at whatever time of day or night, through the main doorway under its canopy.

That July morning, Arnau and his companions were allowed through the lines of soldiers protecting the royal party. He knew he was the envy of all the citizens thronging the streets in the hope of seeing the king. A mere laborer in the port, here he was striding into Santa Maria alongside noblemen and merchants, as if he were one of them. As he walked through the church on the way to his chapel, he found himself opposite Grau Puig, Isabel, and his three cousins, all of them decked out in silk, as haughty and condescending as ever.

“Arnau,” he heard someone call just as he was continuing on past Margarida. Was it not enough for them to have ruined his father’s life? Could they possibly be so cruel as to want to humiliate him still further in front of his colleagues, here in the church? “Arnau,” he heard someone call again.

He looked up and saw Berenguer de Montagut standing in front of him, only a yard from the Puig family.

“Your Excellency,” said the master builder, addressing the archdeacon. “May I present Arnau ...”

“Estanyol,” Arnau stammered.

“He is the bastaix I have often told you about. When he was only a boy, he was already carrying stones for the Virgin.”

The prelate nodded and held out his ringed finger, which Arnau leaned forward to kiss. Berenguer de Montagut patted him on the back. Arnau saw Grau and his family bowing to the prelate and the master builder, but neither paid them any attention, moving on to greet other nobles. Arnau straightened and strode away from the Puig family toward the Jesus chapel, where he joined his guild companions to stand guard.

Shouts from the crowd outside announced the arrival of the king and his retinue. King Pedro the Third; King Jaime of Mallorca; Queen Maria, Pedro’s wife; the infantes Pedro, Ramon Berenguer, and Jaime—the first two the king’s uncles, the last his brother; the queen of Mallorca, also a sister of the king; Cardinal Rodés, the papal envoy; the archbishop of Tarragona; other bishops and prelates; nobles and knights—they all headed in procession down Calle de la Mar to Santa Maria. Never before had Barcelona seen such a display of personalities, such wealth and pomp.

Pedro the Third, the Ceremonious, wanted to impress the people of Barcelona whom he had neglected for more than three years. He succeeded. The two kings, the cardinal, and the archbishop were carried on litters by bishops and nobles. At the provisional high altar, they received the chest with the martyr’s remains. The entire congregation looked on closely, and Arnau could scarcely contain his nervousness. The king himself carried the coffer with the holy relics from Santa Maria to the cathedral. He went inside and handed over the remains for burial in the specially constructed chapel beneath the high altar.

22

AFTER THE INTERMENT of Saint Eulàlia’s remains, the king held a banquet in his palace. Together with Pedro at the royal table sat the cardinal; the kings of Mallorca and Aragon and the queen mother; the infantes of the royal house; and several prelates: twenty-five people in total. More noblemen occupied the other tables, as well as a large number of knights—the first time they had been included in a royal celebration. But not only the king and his court celebrated the occasion; the whole of Barcelona was given over to merriment for eight days.

Early each morning, Arnau and Joan attended mass and took part in the solemn processions that wound their way through the city to the tolling of the church bells. Then, like everyone else, they wandered the streets of Barcelona, enjoying the jousts and tournaments in Plaza del Born, where nobles and knights demonstrated their martial skills, either on foot wielding their big broadswords, or on horseback charging one another with lances at the ready. The two young men were also fascinated by the mock sea battles staged in the streets. “Out of the water they look much bigger,” Arnau commented to Joan, pointing out the men-o’-war and galleys mounted on wheels that were hauled round the city while their crews pretended to board and do battle with one another. Joan looked disapprovingly at Arnau whenever he made a small wager on cards or dice, but smiled and joined in the games of bowls, the bòlit and escampella, at which the young seminarian showed remarkable skill in knocking down the pins in the first and hitting the coins in the second.

But what Joan most enjoyed was hearing the songs about the heroic deeds of Catalans in history, from the mouths of the many troubadours who had flocked to the city. “This is the chronicle of King Jaime the First,” he told Arnau when they heard the tale of the conquest of Valencia. “That is the story of Bernat Desclot,” he explained on another occasion when the troubadour had finished his account of the battles of Pedro the Great during his conquest of Sicily, or the French crusade against Catalonia.

“Today we have to go to Pla d’en Llull,” said Joan when another day’s procession was over.

“Why is that?”

“A troubadour from Valencia who knows Ramon Muntaner’s chronicle is going to perform there.” Arnau looked at him quizzically. “Ramon Muntaner is a famous chronicler from Valencia. He was a leader of the Almogavars when they conquered the duchies of Athens and Neopatras. He wrote the history of the wars seven years ago, and I’m sure it will be interesting ... at least it will be true.”

The Pla d’en Llull, an open area situated between Santa Maria and the Santa Clara convent, was filled to overflowing. People were sitting on the ground, talking among themselves but not taking their eyes off the spot where the Valencian troubadour was to appear: so great was his reputation that even noblemen had come to listen, accompanied by slaves carrying seats for their families. “They’re not here,” Joan told Arnau when he saw him looking anxiously among the nobles. Arnau had told him about his meeting with the Grau family in Santa Maria. The two men found a good place to sit alongside a group of bastaixos who had been waiting for some time for the spectacle to begin. Arnau sat on the ground, but not before he had scanned all the noble families who stood out higher than all the rest.

“You should learn to forgive,” Joan whispered. Arnau said nothing, but gave him a hard look. “A good Christian—”

“Joan,” Arnau interrupted him, “never. I’ll never forget what that harpy did to my father.”

At that moment the troubadour appeared, and the crowd broke into applause. Martí de Xàtiva was a tall, thin man with easy, fluent gestures. He raised his hands to call for silence.

“I am about to tell you the story of how and why six thousand Catalans conquered the Orient, how they defeated the Turks, the Byzantines, the Alans, and all the other warlike peoples who tried to stand against them.”

Again, applause rang out all round the square. Arnau and Joan joined in.

“I will also recount how the emperor of Byzantium murdered our admiral Roger de Flor and many other Catalans, after inviting them to a feast ...”

Someone shouted: “Traitor!” and the rest of the public growled more insults.

“I will end by telling you how the Catalans took revenge for the death of their leader, devastating the Orient and sowing death and destruction in their wake. This is the story of the company of Catalan Almogavars, who in the year of 1305 set sail under the command of admiral Roger de Flor ...”

The Valencian troubadour knew how to capture his audience’s attention. He gesticulated and acted out his words, accompanied by two assistants. He also invited members of the public to take part.

“Now I turn again to our Caesar,” he said, as he began the story of the death of Roger de Flor. “Accompanied by three hundred horsemen and a thousand foot soldiers, our admiral went to Andrinopolis, where xor Miqueli, the emperor’s son, had invited him to a feast in his honor.” At this point, the troubadour pointed to one of the most elegantly dressed nobles in the crowd and asked him to come up onto the stage to play the role of Roger de Flor. “If you involve your audience,” the troubadour’s master had explained, “especially if they are nobles, they will give you more money.”

On the platform, the figure of Roger de Flor was received with adulation by the two assistants, acting out the first six days of his stay in Andrinopolis. On the seventh, xor Miqueli summoned Girgan, the leader of the Alans, and Melic, chief of the Turcopoli, and their cavalrymen.

The troubadour strode restlessly round the stage. The crowd started to shout again; some of them got to their feet, and it took all the efforts of the two assistants to prevent them from intervening to defend Roger de Flor. The troubadour himself stabbed the admiral, and the nobleman playing the part fell to the ground. The crowd bayed for revenge for the treachery. Joan looked across at Arnau, who sat there staring at the fallen nobleman. The eight thousand Alans and Turcopoles assassinated all the thirteen hundred Catalans who had followed Roger de Flor—the assistants made stabbing gestures at one another time and again.

“Only three men survived,” the troubadour continued, raising his voice. “Ramon de Arquer, a knight from Castelló d’Empúries, Ramon de Tous ...”

He went on to tell how the Catalans wreaked their revenge, laying waste to Thrace, Calcidia, Macedonia, and Thessaly. The crowd cheered whenever the singer mentioned any of these names. “May the vengeance of the Catalans be upon you!” they cried over and over again. They all knew of the feats of the Almogavars when they reached the duchy of Athens. There they killed twenty thousand men and won another victory, after making Roger des Laur their captain. All this the troubadour sang, and then he went on to relate how they gave the woman who had been married to the lord of la Sola as wife to their new leader. At this point, the troubadour sought out another nobleman, invited him up onstage, and then picked a woman from the audience and brought her up to accompany the new chief of the Almogavars.

“In this way,” sang the troubadour, joining the hands of the nobleman and the woman, “the Almogavars shared the city of Thebes and all the castles and lands of the duchy, and married off all the women to the men of the Almogavar company, according to their merits.”

As he was singing the final verses of his chronicle, the two assistants chose men and women from the audience and formed them into two lines. A lot of people were happy to be chosen: they saw themselves in the duchy of Athens, as Catalans who had avenged the death of Roger de Flor. The group of bastaixos caught the assistants’ attention. The only unmarried man among them was Arnau, so his companions hauled him to his feet and offered him as someone to join in the revelry. To the delight of his colleagues, he was immediately selected. Arnau went up onto the stage.

As soon as Arnau joined the line of Almogavars, a woman stood up from among the public and stared at him with her huge brown eyes. The assistants saw her: she was hard to miss, being so young and beautiful, and so insistent that she be allowed on the stage. When the two men came to lead her away, a surly old man grabbed her by the arm and tried to force her to sit down again. The crowd laughed as she tried to free herself from him. The assistants looked toward the troubadour, but he urged them to carry on: “Don’t worry if you humiliate someone,” he had been told, “if that means you get the rest on your side”—and the rest of the audience was laughing openly at the old fellow, who by now was on his feet struggling with the young woman.

“She’s my wife,” he tried to explain to one of the assistants, pushing him off.

“The vanquished have no wives,” the troubadour cried out from the stage. “All the women of the duchy of Athens now belong to the Catalans.”

At this, the old man hesitated for just long enough to allow the troubadour’s assistants to snatch the young woman from him and place her in the line of women. The crowd cheered.

The troubadour carried on with his chronicle, pairing off the Athenian women with the Almogavars to loud applause. Arnau and Aledis stared at each other. “How long has it been, Arnau?” those huge brown eyes of her were asking him. “Four years?” Arnau glanced back at the group of bastaixos, all of whom were smiling and encouraging him. He could not meet Joan’s gaze. “Look at me, Arnau.” Aledis had not opened her mouth, but Arnau could hear her calling him. Arnau’s eyes sank deep into hers. The Valencian troubadour took her hand and led her across to Arnau. He lifted Arnau’s hand and joined the two together.

Another shout of joy rang out. All the couples were in pairs facing the public, headed by Arnau and Aledis. Aledis could feel her whole body tremble as she gently squeezed Arnau’s hand. He was looking out of the corner of his eye at the old tanner, who was standing in the audience glaring at them.

“And so the Almogavars settled down,” sang the troubadour, pointing to the couples. “They settled in the duchy of Athens and there, in the distant Orient, they still live, to the glory of Catalonia.”

The Pla d’en Llull burst into noisy applause. Aledis squeezed Arnau’s hand again to catch his attention. They stared at each other. “Take me, Arnau,” those brown eyes of hers were begging him. All of a sudden, she was no longer beside him: her husband had grabbed her by the hair and was dragging her off in the direction of Santa Maria, to hoots of derision from everyone in the crowd.

“A few coins for the performance,” the troubadour said, stepping in front of Aledis’s husband.

In reply, the tanner spat and carried on dragging Aledis away.

“WHORE! WHY DID you do it?”

The old man still had strong arms, but Aledis felt nothing when he slapped her.

“I ... I don’t know. It was all the people, the way they were shouting; all at once I felt I was really in the Orient ...”

“In the Orient? Harlot!”

The tanner picked up a leather strap, and Aledis forgot Arnau and how she had been unable to resist the temptation to join him.

“Please, Pau, please. I’ve no idea why I did it. Forgive me. I beg you, forgive me.” Aledis sank to her knees in front of her husband and lowered her head. The leather strap wavered in his hand.

“You are to stay inside the house until I give you permission to leave it,” he said, finally relenting.

Aledis said nothing more. She stayed on her knees until she heard the door to the street close behind him.

Four years earlier, her father had given her away in marriage. Since she had no dowry, this was the best Gastó could arrange for his daughter: an old master tanner who was a childless widower. “One day you will inherit from him,” had been his only commentary. He did not add that when the old man died it would be him, Gastó Segura, who would take his place at the head of the business. In his view, daughters did not need to know such trivial details.

On their wedding day, the old man had not waited for the end of the celebration to haul his young bride off to the bedroom. Aledis allowed herself to be undressed by his unsteady hands, and to have her breasts kissed by his drooling mouth. As he touched her, Aledis shuddered at the contact with his calloused, rough fingers. Pau quickly led her to the bed, then fell on top of her, still in his clothes. He was drooling, quivering, panting. He smothered her in kisses and bit her breasts. He thrust his hand between her legs. Then, still dressed, he started to pant more and more loudly, moved jerkily, and finally sighed, rolled off, and fell fast asleep.

It was the next morning that Aledis lost her virginity beneath a frail, weak body that pressed on her with clumsy desire. She wondered if she would ever feel anything other than disgust with him.

Each time she had to go down to the workshop for some reason or other, Aledis stared intently at her husband’s apprentices. Why did none of them look at her? She could see them: her eyes followed the way their muscles tensed, and rejoiced at the drops of sweat that formed on their brows and then ran across their faces, down their necks, and onto their strong, powerful chests. Aledis’s desire moved to the rhythm of their arms as they tanned the hides, back and forth, back and forth ... but her husband’s orders had been very clear: “Ten lashes of the whip for any of you who looks at my wife once; twenty for the second time; the third, no food.” So night after night Aledis asked herself what had happened to the pleasure she had heard so much about, the pleasure her young body demanded, the pleasure the decrepit husband she had been forced to marry could never offer.

Some nights the old man clawed at her with his rasping hands. On others, he forced her to masturbate, or chivied her to let him penetrate her as quickly as possible before his urge faded. Afterward, he always fell sound asleep. On one such night, being careful not to wake him, Aledis got up silently. Her husband did not even move as she left the bed.

She went down to the workshop. The workbenches stood out in the darkness. She walked between them, caressing the smooth surfaces with the fingers of one hand. “What’s the matter? Don’t you desire me?” Aledis was thinking dreamily of the apprentices as she stepped between the tables, stroking her breasts and thighs, when a dim glow in the corner of a wall caught her eye. A knot had fallen out of one of the planks separating the workshop from the area where the apprentices slept. Aledis went over and peeped through the hole. She immediately took a step back. Her whole body was trembling. She pressed her eye to the hole once more. They were all naked! For a moment she was afraid her breathing might give her away. One of the apprentices was touching himself as he lay on his mattress!

“Who are you thinking of?” asked the lad who lay closest to the wall where Aledis was hiding. “The master’s wife?”

The other apprentice made no reply, but kept on rubbing his penis, back and forth, back and forth ... Aledis began to perspire. Without realizing what she was doing, she slid a hand between her legs and, staring at the boy who was thinking of her, quickly learned how to give herself pleasure. She came even before the young lad did, and slumped to the ground beside the wall.

The next morning, Aledis walked by the apprentices’ bench exuding desire. Without thinking, she came to a halt in front of the apprentice she had seen the night before. Eventually, he could stand it no longer and surreptitiously glanced up. She knew it was true that he had been thinking of her, and smiled to herself.

That afternoon, Aledis was called back down to the workshop. The tanner was waiting for her behind the apprentice.

“My love,” he said when she came up to him, “you know I don’t like anyone disturbing my apprentices.”

Aledis saw the lad’s back. It was crisscrossed by ten thin bloody lines. She said nothing. She did not return to the workshop that night, or the next one, or the one after that, but by mid-July she was there time and again, caressing her body with Arnau’s hands. He was on his own! His eyes had told her so. He had to be hers!

23

BARCELONA WAS STILL in the midst of celebrations.

It was a humble dwelling, like all those the bastaixos lived in, even if this one belonged to Bartolomé, one of the guild aldermen. Like most of their houses, it was situated in one of the narrow side streets that led down from Santa Maria, Plaza del Born, or Pla d’en Llull to the beach. The big kitchen was situated on the ground floor, with walls made of adobe bricks. Above it was another floor, with wooden walls, that had been added later.

Arnau could feel his mouth watering at the meal Bartolomé’s wife had prepared: fresh white wheat bread; beef with vegetables fried with strips of bacon right in front of them in a big pan on the fire, and seasoned with pepper, cinnamon, and saffron! There was also wine with honey; cheese; and sweetmeats.

“What are we celebrating?” asked Arnau. He was seated at the table with Joan opposite him, Bartolomé on his left, and Father Albert to his right.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” said the priest.

Arnau turned to Joan, but he said nothing.

“You’ll soon see,” Bartolomé repeated. “For now, just eat.”

Arnau shrugged and gladly accepted the bowl of meat and half loaf of bread that Bartolomé’s eldest daughter handed him.

“This is my daughter Maria,” said Bartolomé.

Arnau nodded, without lifting his gaze from his bowl. When the four men had been served, and the priest had blessed the meal, they made a start on the food. Bartolomé’s wife, their daughter, and four other young children did the same, sitting on the floor, although they had only the usual stew.

Arnau savored the meat and vegetables. What strange flavors he could taste! Pepper, cinnamon, and saffron—they were what noblemen and rich merchants ate. “When we boatmen unload sacks of spices,” one of them had told him on the beach one day, “we pray that they don’t fall into the sea or get spoiled somehow. If they did, there would be no way we could pay to replace them: it would be prison for sure.” Arnau tore off a chunk of bread and put it in his mouth, then picked up the glass of wine with honey ... Why were they all staring at him like that? Although they tried to hide it, he was convinced the other three were studying him. Joan seemed to be looking steadfastly down at his food. Arnau concentrated on his own food once more; he took one, two, three spoonfuls, and then suddenly looked up: he could see Joan and Father Albert making signs at each other.

“All right, what’s going on?” Arnau insisted, putting his spoon down on the table.

Bartolomé grimaced. “What can we do?” he seemed to be asking the others.

“Your brother has decided to take the habit and join the Franciscan order,” Father Albert said at last.

“So that’s what it is!” Arnau picked up his cup of wine, turned to Joan, and raised it, a smile on his lips. “Congratulations!”

But Joan did not raise his cup. Nor did Bartolomé or the priest. Arnau sat with his cup of wine in midair. What was going on? Apart from the four smaller children, who were still blithely eating their food, all the others were gazing at him intently.

Arnau put his cup down.

“Well?” he asked his brother.

“I can’t do it.”

Arnau twisted his mouth.

“I can’t leave you on your own. I will enter the order only when I see that you are with ... a good woman, the future mother of your children.”

As he spoke, Joan glanced over at Bartolomé’s daughter, who hid her face.

Arnau sighed.

“You ought to get married and have a family,” Father Albert insisted.

“You can’t stay on your own,” Joan repeated.

“I would consider it a great honor if you were to accept my daughter Maria as your wife,” Bartolomé quickly added. The young girl clung to her mother. “You’re a good, hardworking man. You’re healthy, and a devout Christian. I am offering you a good woman, and would give you a large enough dowry for you to buy your own house. Besides, as you know, the guild pays married men more.”

Arnau could not bring himself to look Bartolomé in the eye.

“We have looked around a lot, and we think Maria is the right person for you,” added the priest.

Arnau stared at him.

“Every good Christian has a duty to marry and bring children into this world,” insisted Joan.

Arnau turned to look at his brother, but even before Joan had finished, a voice on Arnau’s left claimed his attention.

“I don’t think it’s a very difficult decision, my boy,” Bartolomé advised him.

“I won’t join the Franciscans if you don’t marry,” Joan repeated.

“You would make us all very happy if you became a married man,” added the priest.

“The guild would not look kindly on the fact that you refused to marry, and as a result your brother could not continue in the Church.”

Nobody said another word. Arnau pursed his lips. The guild! There was no way out.

“Well, Brother?” asked Joan.

Arnau turned to face him, and for the first time saw someone he did not recognize: someone who was asking him a question in deadly earnest. How had the change in his brother escaped him? He still had an image of him as a smiling young boy running everywhere to show him the city, a boy with legs dangling over the side of a crate while his mother stroked his hair. How little the two of them had talked during the past four years! He had always been at work, loading and unloading the ships, arriving home at nightfall too tired to speak, content to have done his duty.

“Would you really not take the habit because of me?”

All at once it was just the two of them.

“Yes.”

Just him and Joan.

“We’ve worked very hard for that.”

“Yes.”

Arnau rested his chin on his hand and thought for a few moments. The guild. Bartolomé was one of the aldermen: what would his colleagues say? He could not let Joan down after all the efforts they had made. Besides, if Joan left, what would become of him? He looked at Maria.

Bartolomé waved for her to come over. The girl shyly left her mother’s side.

Arnau saw a simple young woman, with wavy hair and a generous smile.

“She is fifteen,” he heard Bartolomé say when Maria was next to the table. Feeling the pressure of all their gazes, the girl crossed her hands in front of her and looked down at the floor. “Maria!” her father called out.

She raised her eyes and blushed as she sought out Arnau’s face. She was still squeezing her hands together tightly.

This time it was Arnau who looked away. When he saw how Arnau was avoiding his daughter, Bartolomé became concerned. The girl gave a deep sigh. Could she be crying? Arnau had not meant to offend her.

“Very well,” he said.

Joan raised his cup, closely followed by Bartolomé and the priest. Arnau reached for his own wine.

“You’re making me very happy,” said Joan.

“To the happy couple!” cried Bartolome.

A HUNDRED AND sixty days a year! By order of the Church, Christians were meant to avoid eating meat a hundred and sixty days each year, and each and every one of them saw Aledis, along with all the other housewives of Barcelona, go down to the beach near Santa Maria to buy fish at one of the two stalls in the city.

“Where are you?” As soon as she saw a ship, Aledis peered along the shoreline to where the boatmen were loading or unloading the goods. “Where are you, Arnau?” She had seen him once, his muscles so taut it seemed as though they would burst through the skin of his body. “My God!” Aledis shuddered, and began to count the hours until nightfall, when her husband would fall asleep and she could go down to the workshop to be with Arnau, his image still fresh in her memory. Thanks to the many days of abstinence, Aledis came to understand the bastaixos’ routine: when there were no ships to unload, they carried blocks of stone to Santa Maria, and after their first trip they no longer stayed in line, but worked as each man saw fit.

That morning Arnau was on his way back for another stone. On his own. He was carrying his leather headpiece in one hand, and was barechested. Aledis saw him walk past the fish stall. The sun was glinting off the sweat covering his whole body, and he was smiling at everyone he met. Aledis stepped out of the queue. Arnau! She longed to be able to call out to him, but knew she could not. The women waiting in line were already staring at her, and the old woman who was behind her pointed to the gap she had left. Aledis waved for her to take her place. How could she escape the attention of all these gossips? She pretended to retch. One of the women came to help her, but Aledis pushed her away: the others smiled. Aledis retched again, then ran off, while the other pregnant women gestured knowingly.

Arnau was striding along the beach on his way to the royal quarry at Montjuic. How could she catch him? Aledis ran along Calle de la Mar to Plaza del Blat. From there she turned left beneath the old gateway in the Roman wall, next to the magistrate’s palace, and then ran all the way down Calle de la Boqueria until she reached the gate. Everyone stared at her: what if someone recognized her? What did she care! Arnau was on his own. Aledis left the city by La Boqueria and flew down the track leading to Montjuic. He must be somewhere near ...

“Arnau!” This time she did shout out loud.

Halfway up the path to the quarry, Arnau halted, and turned to see the woman who was running toward him.

“Aledis! What are you doing here?”

Aledis fought for breath. What could she tell him?

“Is something wrong, Aledis?”

What could she say?

She bent double, clutching her stomach, again pretending to be retching. Why not? Arnau came up to her and took her by the arms. Just to feel his touch made her tremble.

“What’s the matter?”

Those hands of his! They gripped her forearm fiercely. Aledis looked up: she was pressed close to Arnau’s chest, still glistening with sweat. She breathed in his smell.

“What’s the matter?” Arnau repeated, trying to get her to straighten up. Aledis seized her chance and flung her arms round him.

“My God!” she whispered. She buried her face in his shoulder and began to kiss him and lick his sweat.

“What are you doing?”

Arnau tried to push her away, but Aledis clung even more tightly to him.

Arnau was startled to hear voices beyond a bend in the path. The other bastaixos! How could he explain ... ? It might be Bartolomé himself. If they found him there, with Aledis clinging to him, kissing him like that... they would throw him out of the guild! Arnau lifted Aledis round the waist and plunged off the path, behind some bushes. He covered her mouth with his hand.

The voices came near and then continued on their way, but Arnau was no longer paying them any heed. He was seated on the ground, with Aledis on top of him: one of his hands was still round her waist; the other was on her mouth. She was staring at him. Those brown eyes of hers! Suddenly Arnau realized he was holding her close. One hand was across her stomach, and her breasts... her breasts were heaving next to his chest. How many nights had he dreamed of holding her like this? How often had he dreamed of her body? Aledis did not struggle in his grasp; she simply stared at him with those huge brown eyes.

He took his hand from her mouth.

“I need you,” he heard her lips whisper.

Then her lips came close to his, and kissed them. They were soft, sweet, filled with desire.

The taste of her! Arnau shuddered.

Aledis was trembling too.

Her taste, her body ... her desire.

Neither of them said anything more.

That night, Aledis did not go down to spy on the apprentices.

24

IT WAS ALMOST two months since Maria and Arnau had been married in Santa Maria de la Mar. The ceremony had been led by Father Albert, and all the members of the guild of bastaixos had been present, as well as Pere and Mariona, and Joan, who already had the tonsure and the white habit of the Franciscan order. With the promise of increased payments after his marriage, Arnau and his wife chose a house down by the beach. Maria’s family and all the many others who wanted to contribute helped them furnish it: Arnau did not have to do a thing. House, furniture, crockery, linen—all appeared thanks to the efforts of Maria and her mother, who insisted he do nothing. On their wedding night, Maria gave herself to him willingly, even though with little passion. When Arnau woke at dawn the next morning, his breakfast was waiting for him: eggs, milk, salt meat, bread. The same scene was repeated at midday, and that evening, and the next day, and the one after that: Maria always had Arnau’s food on the table. She also took his shoes off, washed him, and helped treat any cuts or wounds he might have. She was always willing in bed. Day after day, Arnau found everything a man could want: food, cleanliness, obedience, care and attention, and the body of a young, attractive woman. Yes, Arnau. No, Arnau. Maria never argued with him. If he wanted a candle, Maria dropped whatever she was doing to fetch him one. If he complained, she smothered him in kisses. Whenever he breathed, Maria ran to bring him air.

The rain was pouring down. The sky suddenly darkened, and flashes of lightning pierced the dark clouds, lighting up the stormy sea. Soaked to the skin, Arnau and Bartolomé were standing on the beach. All the ships had left the dangerous open port of Barcelona to seek refuge in Salou. The royal quarry was shut. There would be no work for the bastaixos that day.

“How are things with you, my boy?” Bartolomé asked his son-in-law.

“Good, very good ... except...”

“Is there a problem?”

“It’s just that ... I’m not used to being treated as well as Maria treats me.”

“That was what we brought her up to do,” said Bartolomé proudly.

“But it’s too ...”

“I said you would not regret marrying her.” Bartolomé looked at Arnau. “You’ll get used to it. Enjoy the love of a good woman.”

They were still discussing the matter when they came to Calle de las Dames, a small side street that gave onto the beach. They saw a group of about twenty poor-looking women, young and old, pretty and ugly, healthy and sick, walking up and down in the rain.

“Do you see them?” asked Bartolomé, pointing in their direction. “Do you know what they are waiting for?” Arnau shook his head. “On stormy days like today, when the fishing boat captains who are not married have done all they can to stay afloat, when they have commended their souls to all the saints and virgins in the Church and still cannot ride out the storm, they have only one other choice. Their crews know it and demand they keep the tradition. In his moment of despair, a captain must swear to God in front of his crew that if they reach port safely he will marry the first woman he sets eyes on as soon as he steps on dry land. Do you understand, Arnau?” Arnau looked more closely at the group of women pacing nervously up and down the street, staring out to sea. “That’s what women are born for: to get married, to serve their man. That was how we brought Maria up, and that’s how we gave her to you.”

The days went by, with Maria utterly devoted to Arnau, while he could think only of Aledis.

“Those stones will ruin your back,” said Maria as she massaged him and applied ointment to a wound Arnau had near his shoulder blade.

Arnau said nothing.

“Tonight I’ll check your headpiece. It can’t fit properly if the stones cut into you like that.”

Arnau still said nothing. He had returned home after dark. Maria had helped him off with his footwear, served him a cup of wine, and forced him to sit down while she massaged his back, in the same way she had seen her mother do for her father all through her childhood. As always, Arnau let her get on with it. If he said nothing, it was because the wound had nothing to do with the stones for the Virgin, or with his headpiece. His wife was caring for a wound that shamed him, a wound made by the nails of another woman, a woman Arnau could not renounce.

“Those stones will destroy all your backs,” Maria repeated.

Arnau drank down the wine in one gulp, feeling Maria’s hands gently rubbing his shoulders.

EVER SINCE HER husband had brought her down to the workshop to see the punishment he had meted out to the apprentice who had dared look at her, Aledis did no more than spy on the young men at night. She discovered that they often slipped out into the garden, where they met women who climbed over the wall to be with them. The apprentices had the leather, the tools, and the knowledge to make themselves thin sheaths, which they greased and put on their penises before they penetrated any of the women. The guarantee that they would not become pregnant, added to the youthful vigor of their partners and the darkness of the night, meant that many local women succumbed to the temptation of an anonymous nocturnal adventure. Aledis had no difficulty getting into the apprentices’ sleeping area and stealing some of these ingenious sheaths; the lack of any risk in her relations with Arnau served only to inflame her passion still further.

Aledis told him that with these sheaths they would not have children. Could it be the grease from them that stuck to his penis? Was it a punishment for going against divine law? Maria was still not pregnant. She was a strong, healthy young woman. What other reason apart from Arnau’s sins could there be for her not being with child? Why else would the Lord not reward her with the offspring she so desired? Bartolomé needed a grandson. Father Albert and Joan both wanted to see Arnau a father. The entire guild of bastaixos was waiting for the moment when the young couple would announce the good news: the men joked about it with Arnau; their wives visited Maria to offer their advice and to extol the virtues of family life.

Arnau also wanted a son.

“I don’t want you to put that on me,” he said to Aledis one day when she pounced on him on the way up to the quarry.

Aledis would not listen.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “Before that happens, I would leave the old man and come and find you. Then everyone would know what had gone on between us. It would mean your downfall: they would expel you from the guild, and probably from the city as well. Then you would have only me; I would be the only one willing to follow you. My life makes no sense without you: otherwise I’m condemned to live my days alongside an old, obsessed man who cannot satisfy me in any way.”

“You would see me ruined? Why would you do that?”

“Because I know that deep down you love me,” Aledis said firmly. “In fact, I would only be helping you take a step you’re too frightened to take on your own.”

Hidden among the bushes on the slopes of Montjuic hill, Aledis slid the sheath onto her lover’s penis. Arnau let her do it. Was what she had said true? Was it true that deep down he wanted to live with her, to abandon his wife and all he had in order to run away with her? If only his body were not so pleased to be with her ... What charms did she have that so completely undermined his willpower? Arnau thought of telling her the story of Joan’s mother, and of the possibility that if their relationship became known, her husband could have her walled up for the rest of her days. Instead, he climbed on top of her ... yet again. Aledis panted as he thrust into her, but all he could hear was his own fears: Maria, his work, the guild, Joan, disgrace, Maria, his Virgin, Maria, his Virgin ...

25

SEATED ON THE royal throne, King Pedro raised his hand. To his right stood the infantes Don Pedro and Don Jaime; on his left were the count of Terranova and Father Ot de Montcada. The king waited for the rest of the council to fall silent. They were in the great chamber of the royal palace at Valencia, where they had received Pere Ramon de Codoler, steward and messenger from King Jaime of Mallorca. According to Ramon de Codoler, the king of Mallorca, count of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and lord of Montpellier, had resolved because of the constant affronts the French had committed against him to declare war on the king of France, and as a loyal vassal of King Pedro’s, he called on him to present himself at the head of the Catalan armies at Perpignan on the twenty-first of April of the following year, 1341, to support and defend him in that war.

King Pedro and his council had been studying the request all morning. If they did not respond to the king of Mallorca’s call, he would renounce his vassalage and be free of all obligations. But if they did respond-everyone was agreed on this-they would be falling into a trap; as soon as the Catalan forces entered Perpignan, Jaime would take sides with the king of France against them.

When there was silence in the hall, the king spoke:

“You have all been considering this matter, and trying to find a way to refuse the request the king of Mallorca has made. I think I have found the answer: we shall go to Barcelona and call our parliament. Then we shall require the king of Mallorca to come to Barcelona to attend the sessions on the twenty-fifth of March, as is his duty. What can happen? Either he comes, or he does not. If he comes, he will have fulfilled his obligations, and we will do the same ...” At this, some of the royal councillors stirred uneasily: if the king of Mallorca came to Barcelona, then there would be war against France—at the same time Catalonia was fighting Genoa! One of them even raised his voice to protest, but Pedro lifted his hand again to calm him, and smiled before going on to say: “By asking the advice of our vassals, who will be the ones to make the final decision.” Some of the councillors smiled with the king; others nodded their agreement. The Catalan parliament held authority over decisions such as whether or not to start a war. It would therefore not be the king who was refusing to come to the aid of the king of Mallorca, but the Catalan parliament. “If he does not appear,” Pedro went on, “he will have broken the terms of his vassalage. In that case, we will have no obligation to help him, or to get mixed up in his war against the king of France.”

Barcelona, 1341

NOBLES, CHURCHMEN, AND representatives from the free cities of the principality of Catalonia-the three branches that made up the parliament-had congregated in Barcelona. They filled the city streets with their colorful attire: silks from Almeria, Alexandria, and Damascus; wool from England or Brussels; lace from Flanders, Mechlin, and Orlanda; and the fabulous black linen from Byssus, all of their garments shot through with threads of gold or silver in the most exquisite designs.

Yet Jaime of Mallorca had not arrived. For several days now, boatmen, bastaixos, and all the other port workers had been on standby in case the king of Mallorca appeared. The port of Barcelona was not prepared for the arrival of such great figures: they could hardly be carried from the lowly craft that went out to meet the big ships in the same way the merchants were, in order not to get their clothes wet. Instead, whenever someone important came to Barcelona, the boatmen lined up their craft from the shore to well into the sea, and built a temporary bridge over them to allow kings and princes to disembark with the required dignity.

The bastaixos, including Arnau, had already brought all the necessary planks of wood down to the beach. Like many of the inhabitants of Barcelona and members of the parliament who had congregated on the shore, they scanned the horizon for a glimpse of the lord of Mallorca’s galleys. Everyone was talking about what was going on: the king of Mallorca’s request for aid and King Pedro’s ruse were common knowledge.

“It seems to me,” Arnau said one morning to Father Albert as he was tidying up the candles in the Holy Eucharist chapel, “that if the entire city is aware of what King Pedro is proposing, then King Jaime must know as well: so why would he come?”

“He will not come,” replied the priest, without pausing in his tasks in the chapel.

“What will happen then?” Arnau looked at the priest, who stopped and shrugged nervously.

“I am afraid Catalonia will embark on a war against Mallorca.”

“Another war?”

“Yes. Everybody knows how much King Pedro wishes to reunite the ancient Catalan kingdoms that Jaime the First divided among his heirs. Ever since then, the kings of Mallorca have constantly betrayed the Catalans. It was scarcely fifty years ago that Pedro the Great had to defeat the armies of France and Mallorca at the Col de Panissars. After that victory, he went on to conquer Mallorca, Roussillon, and the Cerdagne, only to be ordered to return them to Jaime the Second by the pope.” The priest turned to face Arnau. “There is going to be war, Arnau. I don’t know when or with what excuse, but there is going to be war.”

Jaime of Mallorca did not appear before the Barcelona parliament. The king allowed him a further three days, but at the end of that time there was still no sight of his galleys in the port of Barcelona.

“There you have the excuse,” Father Albert told Arnau when they met again in the chapel. “I still do not know when, but now there is the excuse.”

When the sessions of parliament had concluded, King Pedro began the legal process to try his vassal for disobedience. He added the accusation that Catalan money was being minted in the territories of Roussillon and the Cerdagne, whereas the royal currency could by right be struck only in Barcelona.

Jaime of Mallorca still did not comply, but the trial, headed by the magistrate of Barcelona, Arnau d’Erill, and assisted by Felip de Montroig and the royal vice chancellor, Arnau Camorera, took place in his absence. Soon, however, the king of Mallorca grew concerned when his envoys informed him of what the outcome could be: the requisition of all his kingdoms and territories. He then turned to the king of France, to whom he paid homage, and to the pope, for them to intercede on his behalf with his brother-in-law King Pedro.

The holy pontiff took his side, and asked King Pedro for a safe conduct for Jaime and his followers to come to Barcelona to present his apologies and to defend himself against the accusations. The king could not go against the pope’s wishes, and so granted Jaime the safe conduct, although he also made sure he sent word to Valencia for them to dispatch four galleys under the command of Mateu Mercer to keep watch on the king of Mallorca’s fleet.

WHEN THE SAILS of the king of Mallorca’s galleys appeared on the horizon, all Barcelona rushed down to the port. The squadron under Mateu Mercer was waiting for them, just as heavily armed. The Barcelona magistrate, Arnau d’Erill, ordered the port workers to start building the pontoon bridge: the boatmen lined up their vessels, and the bastaixos began laying the planks over them.

As soon as the king of Mallorca’s ships had dropped anchor, the remaining boatmen sailed out to the royal galley.

“What’s going on?” asked one of the bastaixos when he saw the royal standard still flying from the ship and only one nobleman disembarking from it.

Arnau and all his companions were already soaked. They all looked across the beach at the magistrate, who in turn was staring at the small boat now approaching the shore.

Just one person made use of the bridge they had constructed: Viscount Èvol, a nobleman from Roussillon. He was richly attired and armed, and instead of stepping down onto the beach, he remained standing at the end of the wooden planks.

The magistrate went to meet him. From the sandy shore, he listened to what Lord Èvol had to say. The others could see Èvol pointing toward Framenors, and then back at the king of Mallorca’s galleys. When the two men had finished talking, the viscount returned to the royal galley, while the magistrate headed up into the city. Soon afterward the magistrate returned, with instructions from King Pedro.

“King Jaime of Mallorca,” he shouted for everyone on the beach to hear, “and his wife, Constanza, queen of Mallorca and sister of our beloved King Pedro, intend to stay in Framenors convent. A fixed wooden bridge, with a roof and covered-in sides, is to be built from where his ships are anchored to the royal apartments.”

At this, a murmur of protest spread along the shore, but the magistrate stifled it with a stern gesture. Most of the workmen turned to look at the convent of Framenors, perched on the edge of the sea.

“This is madness,” Arnau heard one of his companions mutter.

“If a storm blows up,” another one said, “the bridge will never withstand it.”

A bridge with a roof and covered-in sides! Why on earth would the king of Mallorca demand something like that?

Arnau turned back toward the magistrate, and saw Berenguer de Montagut arriving on the beach. Arnau d’Erill pointed to the Framenors convent, then with his right hand drew an imaginary line out into the sea.

All the bastaixos, boatmen, ships’ carpenters, caulkers, oarsmen, smiths, and rope-makers stood silently as the magistrate finished his explanation and the master builder considered the problem.

The king gave orders to suspend all work on Santa Maria and the cathedral : all the laborers were transferred to building the new bridge. Berenguer de Montagut oversaw the dismantling of part of the scaffolding round the church, and that same morning the bastaixos started carrying material over to Framenors.

“This is nonsense,” Arnau complained to Ramon as the two of them were carrying a heavy tree trunk. “We break our backs carrying stones down to Santa Maria, and now here we are undoing our work on the church, and all at the whim—”

“Be quiet!” Ramon urged him. “We’re following the king’s orders; he must know what he is doing.”

The king of Mallorca’s galleys—still closely watched by the ones from Valencia—were rowed across to Framenors, where they anchored at a considerable distance from the shore. Workmen and carpenters began to put up scaffolding round the façade of the convent, then extended it down toward the shore. The bastaixos and anyone without a precise task to fulfill went back and forth carrying tree trunks and planks for the bridge itself.

Work ended at nightfall. Arnau came home exhausted.

“Our king has never demanded anything so crazy; he is happy to come ashore using the traditional bridge we build over the small craft. Why should we allow a traitor to do as he wishes?”

His protests and grumbling gradually ceased as he felt Maria’s hands gently massaging his shoulders.

“Your wounds are getting better,” said his young wife. “Some people use ointment with geranium and raspberry, but in our family we’ve always preferred heartsease. My grandmother treated my grandfather with it. My mother did the same for my father ...”

Arnau closed his eyes. Heartsease? He had not seen Aledis for days. That was the only reason his back was getting better!

“Why are you tensing your muscles?” Maria reproached him, interrupting his thoughts. “Relax: you need to relax so that ...”

He still paid her little attention. Why should he? Relax so that she could treat the wounds another woman had made? If only she would get angry with him ...

But instead of shouting at him, that night Maria gave herself to him again: she sought him out and gently embraced him. Aledis had no idea what it meant to be gentle. They fornicated like animals! Arnau let Maria wrap her arms round him, keeping his eyes tightly shut. How could he look at her? The young girl caressed his body ... and his soul. She brought him pleasure so intense it became a torment.

At dawn the next day, Arnau got up to set off for Framenors. Maria was already downstairs, by the kitchen fire, preparing his breakfast.

Throughout the three days that it took to build the bridge down from the convent, no member of the king of Mallorca’s court left their galleys, nor did anyone from the Valencian fleet. When the construction from the convent reached the water’s edge, the bastaixos formed into groups to transport the material for the rest of the bridge. Arnau worked ceaselessly: if he stopped, he knew he would only feel Maria’s hands caressing him, and that would bring back memories of how a few days earlier Aledis had bitten and scratched the same body.

Now their task was to lower piles into the water from small boats between the shore and the galleys. Berenguer de Montagut again took personal charge of the operation. He stood in the prow of a catboat, peering down over the side to make sure the wooden piles were set firmly in the sea bottom before any weight was put on them.

On the third day, a new wooden bridge more than fifty yards long filled the horizon of the port of Barcelona. The royal galley came alongside it, and a short while later, Arnau and all the others who had built the bridge heard the king and his court walking along the wooden boards; many of them looked up.

When they were safely installed in Framenors, Jaime sent a messenger to King Pedro to tell him that the rigors of the sea crossing had affected both him and Queen Constanza, and that in consequence his sister begged King Pedro to come and visit her in the convent. As King Pedro was preparing to do so, the infante Don Pedro appeared before him, accompanied by a young Franciscan friar.

“What do you have to tell me, Friar?” said the king, visibly annoyed at this delay of the visit to his sister.

Joan bent over until the fact that he was almost a head taller than the monarch lost all importance. “The king is very short,” he had been told, “and he never receives his subjects standing up.” The two men were on their feet now, however, and the king’s gaze was piercing.

Joan was lost for words.

“Tell him,” the infante urged him.

Joan broke into a sweat, and could feel the rough cloth of his habit sticking to his body. What if it were not true? The thought occurred to him for the first time. He had heard it from an old friar who had disembarked with the king of Mallorca, and had not hesitated a moment. He had come running to the royal palace, struggled with the guard because Joan had refused to give the message to anyone but the king himself, had relented when he saw the infante Don Pedro, but now ... What if it were not true? What if it were just another of the king of Mallorca’s ruses?

“Well, come on, out with it!” the king shouted.

“Your Majesty, you should not go and visit your sister Queen Constanza. It’s a trap laid by King Jaime of Mallorca. With the excuse that his wife is so ill and weak, he has instructed the usher at the door to her apartment not to let anyone but you and the infantes Don Pedro and Don Jaime in. Nobody else is to have access to the queen’s chamber; but inside twelve armed men will be waiting to seize you, take you down the covered bridge, and onto the king’s galley. Then you will be taken to the island of Mallorca and the castle of Alaró. The plan is to keep you prisoner until you set King Jaime free from his vassalage and grant him fresh lands in Catalonia.”

He had done it!

The king narrowed his eyes, and asked: “And how does a young friar like you come to know all this?”

“I heard it from Brother Berenguer, a relative of yours.”

“Brother Berenguer?”

Don Pedro nodded; then the king apparently suddenly remembered who this friar was.

“Brother Berenguer,” Joan went on, “was told this in confession by a repentant traitor. He was asked to give you the message, but he is so old and infirm that he entrusted it to me.”

“That was why he wanted the bridge covered on all sides,” infante Don Jaime said. “That way, nobody would see we had been taken prisoner.”

“It would have been easy,” infante Don Pedro agreed.

“You are well aware,” said the king to his sons, “that if my sister the queen is ill, I have to go and see her if she is in my dominions.” Joan listened, not daring to look at any of them. The king fell silent for a while. “I will postpone tonight’s visit, but I need ... Do you hear me, Friar?” Joan gave a start. “I need this repentant sinner to permit us to make this act of treachery public. For as long as it is a secret of the confessional, I will be obliged to go and see the queen. Now be off with you!”

Joan ran back to Framenors and told Brother Berenguer of the king’s demand. King Pedro did not visit his sister that night, and in what he took as a sign that divine providence was protecting him, he suddenly developed a swelling on his face near his eye. This had to be bled, which meant that he spent several days in bed, during which time Brother Berenguer succeeded in obtaining permission for King Pedro to make the plot public.

This time Joan did not doubt for a moment the truth of what he was told.

“Brother Berenguer’s penitent is your own sister,” he told the king as soon he was brought before him, “Queen Constanza, who begs that you bring her to your palace, by force if necessary. Once here, free from her husband’s pressure and placed under your protection, she will reveal all the details of the treachery.”

Accompanied by a battalion of soldiers, infante Don Jaime presented himself at Framenors to carry out Queen Constanza’s wishes. The friars allowed him in, and the infante and his soldiers went directly to see the king. All his protests were in vain: Constanza left for the royal palace soon afterward.

The king of Mallorca had little more success when he appeared before his brother-in-law.

“Since I gave my word to the pope,” King Pedro told him, “I will respect your safe conduct. Your wife will remain here under my protection. Now leave my kingdom.”

As soon as Jaime of Mallorca and his four galleys had departed, King Pedro ordered Arnau d’Erill to make haste with the trial against his brother-in-law. A few days later, the magistrate ruled that all the lands of the unfaithful vassal, who had been tried in his absence, were to pass into the hands of King Pedro. Now the king had the legitimate excuse he had been seeking to declare war on the king of Mallorca.

Overjoyed at the possibility of reuniting the kingdoms that his forebear Jaime the Conqueror had divided, King Pedro sent for the young friar who had revealed the plot to him.

“You have served us well and faithfully,” the king told him. This time, he was seated on his throne. “I shall grant you a favor.”

Joan had already been told by the royal messengers that this was what the king intended to do. He had thought hard about it. He had joined the Franciscan order at his teachers’ suggestion, but as soon as he had entered the Framenors convent, he had been sorely disappointed: Where were the books? Where was the knowledge? Where could he work and study? When he finally spoke to the prior, the old man patiently reminded him of the three principles of the order, as established by Saint Francis of Assisi: “Complete simplicity, complete poverty, and complete humility. That is how we Franciscans must live.”

But Joan wanted to investigate, to study, to read and learn. Hadn’t his masters taught him that this too was the way of the Lord? Whenever he met a Dominican monk, he was filled with envy. The Dominican order was mainly devoted to the study of philosophy and theology, and had created several universities. What Joan most wanted was to join their order and to be able to continue his studies in the prestigious university at Bologna.

“So be it,” the king decreed after hearing Joan’s argument. All the hairs on the young friar’s body stood on end. “We trust that one day you will return to our kingdoms endowed with the moral authority that comes from knowledge and wisdom, and that you will apply that authority for the benefit of your king and his people.”

26

May 1343

Church of Santa Maria de la Mar

Barcelona

ALMOST TWO YEARS had gone by since the Barcelona magistrate had ruled against King Jaime the Third of Mallorca. All the bells in the city were ringing incessantly; inside Santa Maria, still without walls, Arnau listened to them with a shrinking heart. The king had declared war on Mallorca, and the city had filled with nobles and soldiers. On guard outside the Jesus chapel, Arnau could see them among the ordinary people who had flocked to the church and the square outside. Every church in the city was holding a mass for the Catalan army.

Arnau felt weary. The king had assembled his fleet in the port of Barcelona, and for several days now, the bastaixos had been working nonstop. One hundred and seventeen ships! No one had ever seen such an array: twenty-two huge galleys all fitted out for war; seven potbellied transports for carrying horses; and eight big troop ships with two or three decks, for housing soldiers. The rest of the fleet was made up of medium-sized or small boats. The sea was covered in masts as the ships maneuvered in and out of the port.

It must have been in one of those galleys that Joan, in his black habit, had sailed off to Bologna a year earlier. Arnau had accompanied him to the shore. Joan jumped into the boat and sat with his back to the sea, smiling at him. Arnau watched him settle, and as soon as the oarsmen began to row, he felt his stomach wrench and had to fight back his tears. He was on his own.

He felt the same even now. He looked around him. The church bells were still ringing from every bell tower in the city. Nobles, clergymen, soldiers, merchants, artisans, and the ordinary inhabitants of Barcelona were thronging Santa Maria. His fellow guild members stood on guard beside him, and yet how lonely he felt! All his hopes, all his life’s dreams had vanished just like the old church that had given way to the new one. There was nothing left of it. No trace at all of the Romanesque church: all he could see was the huge, wide central nave of the new Santa Maria, bounded by the soaring arches and the roof vaults. Beyond the columns, the exterior walls of the church were still being built, with each stone being patiently placed on top of another.

Arnau looked up. The keystone of the second vault in the central nave was already in position, and now work was going on to place the ones in the side naves. The birth of our Lord: that had been the subject chosen to be sculpted on the boss. The presbytery roof was almost completely finished. The next one, the first over the immense central nave, was still incomplete. It looked like a huge spiderweb: the columns of the four arches were still open to the skies, while the keystone hung in the center like a great spider ready to leap out on the finest threads to devour its prey. Arnau could not help staring up at the slender columns. He knew how it felt to be trapped in a spider’s web! Aledis was pursuing him more and more insistently every day. “I’ll tell your guild aldermen,” she threatened whenever Arnau hesitated, and so he sinned with her, again and again. Arnau turned to observe his fellow bastaixos. If they only knew ... There was Bartolomé, an alderman, and Ramon, his friend and protector. What would they say? And now he did not even have Joan with him.

Santa Maria itself seemed to have turned its back on him. Now that it was partly roofed over, and with the buttresses in place to hold up the side naves of the second vault, the city noblemen and rich merchants had begun work in the side chapels, determined to leave their mark in the shape of coats of arms, images, sarcophagi, and every kind of decoration sculpted in stone.

Whenever Arnau came to the church these days in search of help from his Virgin, there was always some merchant or nobleman busy among the building work. It was as though his church had been stolen from him. The newcomers had appeared all of a sudden, and they often paused proudly at the eleven already built chapels of the thirty-four planned all round the ambulatory. By now the birds of the coat of arms of the Busquets family could be seen in the All Saints chapel; the hand and lion rampant of the Junyent family in the Saint James chapel; Boronet de Pera’s three pears carved in the keystone of the Saint Paul chapel; the horseshoe and stripes of Pau Ferran in the marble of the same chapel; the arms of the Duforts and the Dussays and the font of the Font family in the Saint Margaret chapel. They had even forced their way into the Jesus chapel! There, in his chapel, the chapel of the bastaixos, work had begun on the sarcophagus for Bernat Llull, the archdeacon of the sea who had begun the building work on the new church, next to the coat of arms of the Ferrers.

Arnau passed by nobles and merchants, his gaze lowered. All he did was carry stone and kneel before his Virgin to ask her to free him from the spider pursuing him.

When the religious services were over, the entire city made its way down to the port. King Pedro the Third was there, decked out for war and surrounded by his barons. While infante Don Jaime, count of Urgel, was to stay in Catalonia to defend the frontier of the Ampurdán, Besalú, and Camprodón, which were adjacent to the lands on the mainland ruled by the king of Mallorca, the other nobles were all sailing off with the king to conquer the island. They included infante Don Pedro, the seneschal of Catalonia; Pere de Montcada, admiral of the fleet; Pedro de Eixèrica and Blasco de Alagó; Gonzalo Diez de Arenós and Felipe de Castre; Father Joan de Arborea; Alfonso de Llòria; Galvany de Anglesola; Arcadic de Mur; Arnau d’Erill; Father Gonzalvo García; Joan Ximénez de Urrea; as well as many other noblemen and knights, all of them equipped for battle, with their soldiers and those of their vassals.

Maria, who had met Arnau outside the church, pointed to them, shouting for him to look where she was pointing.

“The king! The king, Arnau. Look at him! Look at the way he bears himself! What about his sword? Can you see it? And that nobleman over there? Who is he, Arnau? Do you know? Look at all those shields, their armor, the pennants fluttering ...”

Maria dragged Arnau all the way along the beach to Framenors. There, some distance from the nobles and soldiers, stood a large group of filthy, poorly dressed men. They had no shields or armor and wore only long, stiff tunics, greaves, and leather caps. They were busily climbing on board small boats to take them out to the warships.

Their only weapons were flat swords and spears!

“Is that the company?” Maria asked her husband.

“Yes. The Almogavars.”

The two of them watched in the same respectful silence as all the others on the beach staring at these mercenaries who had been taken on by King Pedro. The conquerors of Byzantium! Even the children and women who, like Maria, had been impressed by the nobles’ swords and armor, surveyed the Almogavars with pride. They fought on foot and wore no protection, relying entirely on their skill and dexterity. Who could possibly laugh at the way they were dressed or the weapons they carried?

Arnau was told this was what the Sicilians had done: they had laughed at them on the field of battle. How could such a ragged group hope to fight nobles on horseback? And yet the Almogavars defeated them and conquered the island. The French had done the same: the story was told throughout Catalonia to anyone who would listen. Arnau had heard it on several occasions.

“They say,” he told Maria now, “that some French knights captured one of the Almogavars and led him before Prince Carlos of Salerno, who insulted him, calling him a poor wretch and laughing at the Catalan company.” Arnau and his wife were still watching the Almogavars climb on board the boats. “So then the Almogavar, in front of the prince and all his knights, challenged their best captain to single combat. He said he would fight on foot, armed only with his spear. The Frenchman could be on horseback, in full armor.” Arnau fell silent, but Maria turned and urged him to go on. “The French laughed at the Catalan, but accepted the challenge. They all made their way to an open field near the French camp. There, the Almogavar first killed the Frenchman’s horse, then took advantage of how unwieldy he was fighting on the ground and soon defeated him. As he was preparing to cut the knight’s throat, Carlos de Salerno promised the Almogavar his freedom.”

“It’s true,” someone added behind their backs. “They fight like real devils.”

Arnau could feel Maria clinging to him, gripping his arm as hard as she could while she stared at the mercenaries. “What are you looking for, woman? Protection? If you only knew! I’m not even capable of facing my own weaknesses. Do you think any of them could hurt you more than I am doing? They fight like devils.” Arnau stared at them: men who were happy to go off to fight, leaving their families behind. Why ... why could he not do the same?

It took hours for all the men to board the ships. Maria went home, while Arnau wandered among the others gathered on the beach. He met several of his companions on the way.

“What’s all the hurry?” he asked Ramon, pointing to the small craft that were continuously coming to take on more and more soldiers.

“You’ll soon see,” Ramon answered.

At that very moment he heard the first whinny of a horse, soon followed by hundreds more. The army’s horses had been drawn up outside the city walls; now it was their turn to embark. Several of the seven buses were already full of horses, brought from Valencia with the noblemen from that city, or from the ports of Salou, Tarragona, or from the north of Barcelona.

“Let’s get away from here,” Ramon warned Arnau. “This is going to turn into a real battlefield.”

Just as they were leaving the beach, the grooms led the first steeds down to the water. They were huge warhorses, which kicked, snorted, and threatened to bite, while their handlers struggled to control them.

“They know they’re off to war,” Ramon told Arnau, as they sought cover behind the boats drawn up on the beach.

“They know?”

“Of course. Whenever they’re put on ships, it’s to go to war. Look.” Arnau peered out to sea. Four of the flat-bottomed buses drew up as close to the beach as they could and opened their stern doors: they splashed into the water, revealing the gaping hulls inside. “And those who don’t know,” Ramon went on, “are made nervous by the ones who do.”

Soon, the beach was filled with horses. There were hundreds of them, all big, strong, powerful beasts, warhorses trained for combat. The grooms and squires dodged in and out, trying to avoid the rearing, biting animals. Arnau saw several of them fly through the air or flinch as they were caught on the receiving end of a flashing hoof. Everything was bedlam.

“What are they waiting for?” asked Arnau.

Ramon pointed to the ships once more. Some of the grooms were wading out to them, leading their horses.

“They are the most experienced ones. Once they are on board, they will attract the others.”

And so it proved. As soon as the first horses reached the ships’ ramps, the grooms headed back to the shore. The horses immediately started whinnying loudly.

That was the signal.

The rest of the herd plunged into the water, splashing so much that for a few moments they disappeared entirely from view. Behind them and on either side, a few of the most expert horsemen followed, cracking their whips and driving them toward the ships. Most of their grooms had lost the reins by now, and the horses swam or floundered on their own, careering into one another. For a while, there was total chaos: shouts from all sides, the lash of whips, animals neighing and struggling to climb up onto the ramps, roars of encouragement from the beach. Then, gradually, calm returned to the shore. The ramps were raised, and the horse transports were ready to set sail.

The order to depart came from admiral Pere de Montcada’s ship. All 117 vessels began to pull out of the harbor. Arnau and Ramon walked home along the beach.

“Off they go,” said Ramon, “to conquer Mallorca.”

Arnau nodded without a word. Yes, off they went. On their own, leaving behind their problems and their heartbreak. Cheered off as heroes, their minds set on one thing: war. What he wouldn’t have given to be among their number!

ON THE TWENTY-FIRST of June of that same year, Pedro the Third attended mass in the cathedral of Mallorca, in sede majestatis, wearing the traditional robes, attributes, and crown of the king of Mallorca. Jaime the Third had fled to his possessions in Roussillon.

The news reached Barcelona and spread through the mainland; King Pedro had taken the first step toward keeping his word of reuniting the kingdoms split on the death of Jaime the First. Now all that was left was for him to conquer the territory of the Cerdagne and the Catalan lands on the far side of the Pyrenees: Roussillon.

Throughout the long month that the Mallorca campaign had lasted, Arnau could not get the image of the royal fleet leaving the port of Barcelona out of his mind. When the ships were already some way from the shore, everyone on the beach split up and returned home. What reason did he have for following them? To receive care and affection he did not deserve? He sat in the sand until long after the last sail had disappeared beyond the horizon. “Lucky them, to be able to leave their problems behind,” he said to himself over and over again. Throughout that month, whenever Aledis lay in wait for him on the track up to Montjuic, or when afterward he had to face Maria’s loving attention, Arnau could hear the shouts and laughter of the Almogavar company, and see the fleet slipping into the distance. Sooner or later, he would be found out. A short while earlier, while Aledis was still panting on top of him, someone had shouted from the track. Had they heard the two lovers? They lay for a while holding their breath; then Aledis laughed and fell on him again. The day he was found out... it would mean disgrace, expulsion from the guild. What would he do then? How would he manage to live?

When on the twenty-ninth of June, 1343, the whole city of Barcelona came down to meet the royal fleet assembled in the mouth of the River Llobregat, Arnau had made his decision. The king had to fulfill his promise to conquer Roussillon and the Cerdagne, and he, Arnau Estanyol, would be part of his army. He had to get away from Aledis! Perhaps if he did that, she would forget him, and when he got back ... He shuddered: after all, this was war; men would die. But perhaps when he returned he could take up his tranquil life with Maria once more, and Aledis would no longer pursue him.

King Pedro the Third ordered his ships to enter the port of Barcelona in strict order of hierarchy: first the royal galley, then that of infante Don Pedro, then Pere de Montcada’s, followed by the one Lord Eixèrica commanded, and so on.

While the rest of the fleet waited, the royal galley made its way into port and sailed round it, so that everyone who had gathered on the shore could see it and cheer.

Arnau heard how everyone roared their approval as the ship passed in front of them. The bastaixos and boatmen were standing close to the water, ready to build the pontoon for the king. Also waiting next to the bastaixos were Francesc Grony, Bernat Santcliment, and Galcerà Carbó, all of them Barcelona aldermen, and other guild aldermen. The boatmen began to maneuver their craft into place, but the aldermen told them to wait.

What was going on? Arnau looked at the other bastaixos. How was the king to disembark if not across their bridge?

“He should not land,” he heard Francesc Grony tell Lord Santcliment. “The army should go straight on to Roussillon, before King Jaime can reorganize, or make a pact with the French.”

All those around him were of similar mind. Arnau stared out at the royal galley, still triumphantly sailing around the port. If the king did not land, if the fleet continued on to Roussillon without calling in at Barcelona ... His legs almost gave way under him. The king had to disembark!

Even Count de Terranova, the king’s counselor who had been left in charge of the city, seemed to support the idea. Arnau glared at him.

The three city aldermen, Count de Terranova, and several other leading citizens got into a catboat and were taken to the royal galley. Arnau could hear that his own guild companions were also in favor of it: “He mustn’t give the king of Mallorca time to rearm,” they argued.

The discussions went on for several hours. Nobody moved from the beach, awaiting the king’s decision.

In the end, the boatmen did not build their bridge, but not because the fleet had left to conquer Roussillon and the Cerdagne. Instead, King Pedro decided he could not continue the campaign in the present circumstances: they did not have sufficient money; a large number of his cavalry had lost their steeds during the sea crossing and needed to disembark; and above all, he needed fresh arms and provisions to pursue the war. He rejected the city authorities’ suggestion that he give them some days to organize festivities to celebrate the conquest of Mallorca, declaring that there was to be no celebration until he had reunited his kingdoms. So finally, when, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1343, Pedro the Third did disembark in the port of Barcelona, it was done like any other seaman—by leaping into the water from a small boat.

How could Arnau tell Maria he was thinking of joining the army? He did not have to worry about Aledis: what would she gain by making their adultery public? If he went off to war, why would she seek to harm both him and herself? Arnau remembered Joan and his mother: that was the fate awaiting her if their adultery became known, and Aledis was well aware of it. But Maria? How could he possibly tell her?

Arnau tried. He tried to say good-bye to her when she was massaging his back. “I’m off to the wars,” he thought he could say. Just that: “I’m off to the wars.” She would cry: what had she done to deserve it? He tried to tell her when she was serving him his food, but her sweet eyes looking at him prevented him from saying a word. “What’s wrong?” she said. He even tried it after they had made love, but Maria simply went on caressing him.

Meanwhile, Barcelona had become a hive of activity. The common people wanted the king to leave to conquer the Cerdagne and Roussillon, but the king seemed to be in no hurry. The nobles were demanding he pay them for the soldiers they had contributed, and for the loss of their horses and weapons, but the royal coffers were empty, so the king had to allow many of them to return to their own lands. Ramon de Anglesola, Joan de Arborea, Alfonso de Llòria, Gonzalo Díez de Arenós, and many others departed in this way.

So King Pedro was forced to call on the Catalan host: it would be his people who fought for him. The bells rang out all throughout the principality, and on the king’s orders, the priests in their weekly homilies called on all free men to enlist. The nobility had deserted the Catalan army! Father Albert spoke passionately, whirling his arms in the air. How was the king going to defend Catalonia? What if, when he saw the nobles abandoning King Pedro, the king of Mallorca joined with the French to attack them? It had already happened once! Father Albert cried out above the congregation’s heads in Santa Maria: who among them had not heard of the French crusade against Catalonia? On that occasion, the invaders had been defeated. But now? What would happen if King Jaime were allowed to rearm?

Arnau stared at the stone Virgin with the child at her shoulder. If only he and Maria had had a child. If that had happened, he was sure none of this would have taken place. Aledis would not have been that cruel. If only he had been given a son ...

“I’ve made a promise to the Virgin,” Arnau whispered to Maria while the priest was still haranguing the congregation, recruiting soldiers from the high altar. “I’m going to join the royal army so that she will give us the blessing of a child.”

Maria turned toward him before looking at the Virgin; she took his hand and held it tight.

“You CAN’T DO this!” Aledis shouted at him when Arnau announced his decision. Arnau raised his hands to get her to speak more quietly, but she paid him no heed: “You can’t leave me! I’ll tell everyone—”

“What good would that do, Aledis?” he interrupted her. “I’ll be with the army. All you will do is ruin your own life.”

They stared at each other, crouching in the bushes as they always did. Aledis’s bottom lip started to tremble. How pretty she was! Arnau lifted a hand toward her cheek to wipe away her tears, but thought better of it.

“Good-bye, Aledis.”

“You can’t leave me,” she sobbed.

Arnau turned back to her. She had fallen forward on her knees, her head between her hands. When he said nothing, she peered up at him.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she moaned.

Arnau saw the tears roll down her face; her whole body was racked with sobs. Arnau bit his lip and looked up at the top of the hill, where he went to fetch his blocks of stone. Why hurt her any more than necessary? He spread his arms wide.

“I have to do it.”

She crawled over and reached out to clutch his legs.

“I have to do it, Aledis!” he repeated, jumping backward.

Then he ran off down Montjuic hill.

27

SHE COULD TELL by the vivid colors of their clothes that they were prostitutes. Aledis was uncertain whether she should approach them, but the smell from their pot of meat and vegetable stew was irresistible. She was hungry. She was starving. The girls, who looked as young as she was, were moving and talking animatedly around their fire. When they saw her close to the camp, they invited her to join them; but they were prostitutes. Aledis looked down at herself: ragged, evil-smelling, filthy. The whores called out to her again; she was dazzled by the way their silk robes caught the sun. Nobody else had offered her anything to eat. Hadn’t she tried at every tent, hut, or fireside she had come across? Had anyone else taken pity on her? No, they had treated her like a common beggar. She had begged for help: a crust of bread, a piece of meat, a vegetable even. They had spat on her outstretched hand and laughed. These women might be whores, but they had asked her to share their meal with them.

The king had ordered his armies to assemble in the town of Figueres, in the north of the principality. All those nobles who had not abandoned him headed there, together with the hosts of Catalonia, including the citizens of Barcelona. Among these was Arnau Estanyol. He felt free and hopeful, and carried his father’s crossbow and his blunt bastaix dagger.

But if King Pedro succeeded in bringing together an army of twelve hundred men on horseback and four thousand foot soldiers in Figueres, he also managed to attract another army: the relatives of soldiers—mostly of the Almogavars, who lived like Gypsies and took their families with them wherever they went: tradesmen selling all kinds of goods, and hoping to be able to buy whatever booty the soldiers obtained; slave traders; clergymen; cardsharps; thieves; prostitutes; beggars; and all kinds of hangers-on whose only aim was to try to cream off the army’s spoils. Together, they formed an incredible rear guard that moved at the same pace as the army, but obeyed its own rules—often crueler ones than those to be found in the conflicts they lived off like parasites.

Aledis was simply one more in this motley crowd. The farewell from Arnau was still ringing in her ears. She could still feel the way that her husband’s rough, clumsy hands had forced their way between her legs. The old man’s panting mingled with Arnau’s words in her memory. He had pushed at her, but she had not moved. He had grasped her more firmly, hoping for that fake generosity with which she usually rewarded his efforts. But this time, Aledis closed her legs. “Why did you leave me, Arnau?” was all she could think as Pau fell on her, pushing his penis into her with his hands. She gave way and opened her legs. She felt so bitter she had to stifle a desire to retch. The old tanner started to squirm like a snake on top of her. She was sick beside the bed, but he did not even notice. He was still thrusting away feebly, supporting his flaccid manhood with his hands, and nibbling at her breasts, where the nipples lay flat, unaroused. As soon as he had finished, he rolled off and fell fast asleep. The next morning, Aledis made a small bundle of her scant possessions, took a few coins she had managed to steal from her husband, and went out into the street as usual.

That morning, however, she headed for the monastery at Sant Pere de les Puelles, then left Barcelona and started along the old Roman road that led to Figueres. She walked through the city gates, head down, avoiding looking at the soldiers and restraining the urge to break into a run. Once she was beyond the city walls, she looked up at the bright blue sky and set off toward her new future, smiling broadly at all the travelers coming in the opposite direction toward Barcelona. Arnau had also left his wife; she was sure of it. He must have joined the army to get away from Maria! He could not love that woman. When the two of them made love ... she could tell! When he was on top of her, she could feel his passion! He could not fool her—it was her, Aledis, whom he loved. And when he saw her ... Aledis had a picture of him running toward her, arms outstretched. Then they would escape! Yes, they would run away and be together ... forever!

For the first few hours of her journey, she fell in with a group of peasants returning to their farms after selling their produce. She explained she was going in search of her husband because she was pregnant, and wanted him to know before he went into battle. From them she learned that Figueres was a good five or six days’ walk away, following the same road through Girona. She also had the chance to hear the advice of a couple of toothless old women who seemed so frail that they must break under the weight of the empty baskets they were carrying on their backs, but who nevertheless kept going barefoot, and showed an unbelievable strength for such old, weak creatures.

“It’s not good for a woman to be traveling these roads alone,” one of them told her, shaking her head.

“No, it isn’t,” agreed the other.

A few seconds went by, while they both paused for breath.

“Especially if you are young and beautiful,” the second one added.

“That’s true, that’s true,” the first one concurred.

“What can happen to me?” Aledis asked naively. “The road is full of good people such as yourselves.”

Again she had to wait, while the old women struggled to catch up with their group.

“In this part there are plenty of people. There are lots of villagers who live off Barcelona like we do. But a bit farther on,” one old woman added, still staring at the ground, “when the villages are fewer and there is no large city nearby, the paths become lonely and dangerous.”

This time her companion did not add an immediate comment. Instead she walked on another few steps, then turned to Aledis. “If you are alone, make sure you’re not seen. Hide as soon as you hear a noise. Keep away from other people.”

“Even if they are knights?” laughed Aledis.

“Especially if they are!” one of the old women cried.

“As soon as you hear a horse’s hooves, hide and pray!” added the other.

This time they both shouted the warning together, without even needing to pause for breath. They were so insistent that they came to a halt, and allowed the other peasants to get some way ahead. Aledis’s look of disbelief must have been so obvious that, as they set off again, the two old women repeated their warning:

“Listen, my girl,” said one of them, while the other crone nodded agreement even before she knew what her companion was going to say, “if I were you, I’d go back to the city and wait for your man there. The roads in the countryside are very dangerous, especially now that they are full of soldiers and knights off to fight. That means there is no authority, nobody is in charge, nobody is worried about being caught and punished by the king, because he is so busy with other matters.”

Aledis walked thoughtfully alongside the two old women. Hide from knights on horseback? Why on earth should she do that? All the knights who had ever been to her husband’s workshop had always been courteous and shown her respect. Nor from the many traders who supplied the tanner with his materials had she ever heard any stories of robberies or problems on the roads of Catalonia. Instead, they had regaled the old man and her with terrifying stories of what could happen during sea voyages that took them into the lands of the Moors or even farther, to the territory of the sultan of Egypt. Her husband had told her that for more than two hundred years, Catalan roads had been protected by law and by the king’s authority, and that anyone who dared commit a crime anywhere along them would be punished far more severely than for a similar offense committed elsewhere. “Trade depends on peace on the highway!” he would declare, adding: “How could we sell our products all over Catalonia if the king could not guarantee peace?” He would go on to tell her, as though she were a child, how two hundred years earlier it had been the Church that had first started to take measures to defend the roads. First came the Constitutions of Peace and Truce, drawn up at church synods. If anyone broke them, they faced instant excommunication. The bishops established that the inhabitants of their sees were not to attack their enemies from the ninth hour of Saturday to the first hour on Monday, or during any religious festival. This truce also benefited all members of the clergy and churches, and everyone who was headed toward a church or coming back from one. He went on to explain that these constitutions had gradually been broadened to protect a greater number of people and goods, until they included merchants and farm animals, as well as those used for transport, and then farming implements and houses, the inhabitants of villages, women, crops, olive groves, wine ... and finally, King Alfonso the First extended this official peace to all public highways and paths in his kingdom, ruling that anyone who broke these provisions committed a crime of lèse-majesté.

Aledis looked at the old women, who had carried on walking in silence, bowed down under their burdens, dragging their bare feet through the dust. Who would dare commit a crime of lèse-majesté? What Christian would want to run the risk of being excommunicated for attacking someone on a Catalan road? She was still turning all this over in her mind when the group of peasants headed off toward the village of Sant Andreu.

“Good-bye, my girl,” the old women said. “Take heed of what we’ve told you. If you decide to carry on, be careful. Don’t go into any town or city. You could be seen and followed. Only stop at farmhouses, and then only when you see women and children in them.”

Aledis watched the group move off, with the two old women struggling to keep up with the others. A few minutes later, she was all alone. Until now she had been in the company of the peasants, talking with them and allowing her thoughts to fly out as she imagined herself with Arnau again, excited by the adventure she had experienced after her sudden decision to leave everything and follow him. Now, as the voices and sounds of her companions faded into the distance, Aledis suddenly felt lonely. She had a long way ahead of her; she put a hand to her forehead to try to make out where she should go, protecting her eyes from the sun, which was already high in the bright blue sky. Not a single cloud spoiled the magnificent dome joining the horizon to the vast, rich lands of Catalonia.

Perhaps it was not only a feeling of loneliness that Aledis felt when the peasants departed, or the strangeness of finding herself in this unknown landscape. The fact was that Aledis had never seen the earth and sky laid out before her, with nothing to prevent her from looking all round her and seeing everything stretched out in front of her ... whenever she liked! She stared and stared. She stared toward the horizon, beyond which she had been told lay the town of Figueres. Her legs trembled at the thought. She turned and looked back the way she had come. Nothing. She had left Barcelona behind, and could see nothing she recognized. Aledis looked in vain for the rooftops that until now had always come between her and this unknown marvel: the sky. She searched desperately for the smells of the city, the smell of her husband’s leather workshop, the noise of people, the sounds of a living city. She was on her own. All at once, the words of warning the two old women had offered her came flooding into her mind. She tried to catch some last glimpse of Barcelona. Five or six days! Where was she to sleep? How would she eat? She raised her bundle. What if their warning was true? What should she do? What could she do against a mounted knight or an outlaw? The sun was high in the sky. Aledis turned again toward where they had told her she could reach Figueres ... and Arnau.

She tried to be careful. She was constantly on the alert, listening for any sound that might disturb the road’s peace and quiet. As she drew near Montcada, where the castle stood proud on its hill, defending access to the plain of Barcelona, the road filled once more with peasants and traders. It was almost midday, and Aledis joined them as though she were part of one of the groups heading for the town, but when they came to its gates she remembered the old women’s advice, and instead skirted it and continued on her way on the far side.

Aledis was pleased to find that the farther she walked, the more the fears that had assailed her when she found herself alone gradually subsided. To the north of Montcada, she met up with more peasants and traders. Most of them were on foot too, although some rode on carts or on mules and donkeys. They all greeted her cheerfully, and this generosity of spirit also cheered Aledis. As she had done earlier, she joined a group, this time of merchants headed for Ripollet. They helped her ford the River Besós, but as soon as they had crossed it, they veered off left toward Ripollet itself. On her own again, Aledis avoided Val Romanas, but then found herself facing the real River Besós, a river that at that time of year had enough water in it to make it impossible for her to cross on foot.

Aledis looked down at the rushing water and at the boatman waiting unconcernedly on the riverbank. When he smiled a condescending smile at her, he revealed two rows of horribly blackened teeth. If she wanted to continue on her way, Aledis knew she had no choice but to use the services of this grinning fool. She tried to draw the top of her dress tighter over her bosom, but having to carry her bundle made it difficult. She slowed down. She had always been told how gracefully she moved: until now, she had been pleased at the idea. But now: the man was a big black bear! A filthy mess. What if she dropped her bundle? No; he would notice. After all, she had no reason to fear him. His shirt was stiff with dirt. What about his feet? “My God!” His toes were almost invisible under the grime. Slowly. Slowly. “What a dreadful man!” she could not help thinking.

“I’d like to cross the river,” she said in her bravest voice.

The boatman gazed up from her breasts to her big brown eyes.

“Ha,” was all he said, before brazenly staring at her bosom once more.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Ha,” he repeated, without looking up.

The only sound came from the water rushing by. Aledis could feel the boatman’s eyes on her. She breathed more rapidly, which served only to make her breasts stand out even more. The man’s bloodshot gaze seemed to penetrate to the deepest corners of her body.

Aledis was all alone, lost in the Catalan countryside, on the banks of a river she had never heard of and that she’d thought she had already crossed with the traders heading for Ripollet. Alone with a big, strong brute of a fellow who was staring at her in the most disgusting way with bloodshot eyes. Aledis looked all round her. There was not a soul in sight. A few yards to her left, at some distance from the riverbank, stood a rough cabin built of tree trunks thrown together. It looked as vile and filthy as its owner. In among a pile of rubbish near the entrance stood an iron tripod with a pot cooking on it. Aledis could scarcely bear to think what might be inside the pot: the smell it gave off was enough to make her feel nauseous.

“I have to catch up with the king’s army,” she began to say hesitantly.

“Ha,” was all she got from him again.

“My husband is a captain,” she lied, speaking more firmly now, “and I have to tell him I’m pregnant before he goes into combat.”

“Ha,” said the boatman, showing his blackened teeth once more.

A trickle of saliva appeared in one corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with his sleeve.

“Don’t you have anything else to say?”

“Yes,” he replied. His eyes narrowed. “The king’s captains usually die quickly.”

Aledis did not see it coming. The boatman hit her swiftly and powerfully across the side of the face. Aledis spun around and fell at the feet of her aggressor.

The man bent down, grabbed her by the hair, and started dragging her toward his hut. Aledis dug her fingernails into the flesh of his hand, but he kept on dragging her along. She tried to get to her feet, but stumbled and fell again. She struggled, and threw herself against his legs, trying to stop him. The boatman evaded her clutching hands, and kicked her in the pit of the stomach.

Inside the hut, as she tried to get her breath back, Aledis felt earth and mud scraping against her as the ferryman discharged his lust.

WHILE HE WAITED for the hosts and other armies to assemble, and for their supplies to arrive, King Pedro established his headquarters at an inn in Figueres. This was a town that sent representatives to the Catalan parliament, close to the border with Roussillon. Infante Don Pedro and his knights gathered in Pereleda, while infante Don Jaime and the other noblemen—the lord of Eixèrica, Count Luna, Blasco de Alagó, Juan Ximénez de Urrea, Felipe de Castro, and Juan Ferrández de Luna, among others—made camp outside the town walls of Figueres.

Arnau Estanyol was among the royal army. At the age of twenty-two, he had never experienced anything like it. The royal camp, with more than two thousand men still excited by their victory in Mallorca, and keen for more fighting, violence, and booty, had nothing to do but await the order to march on Roussillon. It was the opposite of the quiet routine he knew from the bastaixos in Barcelona. Except for the periods when they were receiving training or practicing with their weapons, life in the camp revolved around gambling, listening to the tales of war that the veterans used to terrify the newcomers with, petty thefts, and quarrels.

Arnau was in the habit of strolling round the camp with three other youths who were from Barcelona and were as unused to the ways of war as he. They stared in admiration at horses and suits of armor, which the squires kept spotless at all times and displayed outside their tents in a kind of competition to show whose arms and equipment could shine the most. But if these steeds and armor impressed them, they could not help but be sickened by the amount of filth, the dreadful smells, and the clouds of insects attracted by the mounds of waste created by the thousands of men and animals. The royal officials had ordered that several long, deep trenches be dug to make latrines, as far as possible from the camp and close to a running stream intended to carry away the soldiers’ waste. But the stream was almost dry, and the refuse piled up every day and rotted, giving off a sickly, unbearable stench.

One morning when Arnau and his new companions were walking among the tents, they saw a knight on horseback returning from training. The horse was anxious to get back to its stable for a well-earned feed and to have the heavy armor removed from its breast and flanks. It snorted, raising its legs and kicking out, while the rider tried to control it and reach his tent without doing any damage to the soldiers or gear strewn about the lanes that had been created between the rows of tents. Held in check by a fierce iron bit, the huge, powerful animal chose instead to perform a spectacular dance, spraying anyone and anything it met with the white foaming sweat lathering its sides.

Arnau and his companions tried to get as far as possible out of the way, but unfortunately just at that moment the horse lunged sideways and knocked over Jaume, the smallest of the group. He was not hurt, and the rider did not even notice, continuing on his way back to his tent. But Jaume had fallen onto another group of soldiers, who were busy gaming with dice. One of them had already lost all he could hope to gain from whatever future campaigns King Pedro undertook, and was looking for a fight. He stood up, more than ready to vent the anger he felt toward his gaming colleagues on poor Jaume. He was a strongly built man with long dirty hair and beard. The desperate, frustrated look on his face, which came from losing steadily hour upon hour, would have deterred even the bravest of foes.

The soldier lifted Jaume clear off the ground until he was level with his face. The poor lad did not even have time to realize what had happened to him. In the space of a few seconds, he had been knocked down by a horse, fallen into a dice game, and now he was being attacked by a great roaring brute who shook him and then all of a sudden punched him so hard in the face that blood started to trickle from his mouth.

Arnau saw Jaume dangling from the man’s grasp.

“Let go of him, you swine!” he shouted, surprising even himself.

The others rapidly moved away from Arnau and the soldier. Jaume, who had been so astounded at Arnau’s words that he had stopped struggling, suddenly found himself on his backside on the ground as the veteran dropped him and turned to face the person who had been foolish enough to insult him. Soon, Arnau found himself at the center of a circle of onlookers curious to see what would happen between him and this enraged soldier. If only he had not insulted him ... Why had he called him a swine?

“It wasn’t his fault... ,” Arnau stammered, pointing to Jaume, who still had little idea of what was going on.

The soldier said nothing, but charged straight at Arnau like a bull. His head struck Arnau in the midriff and sent him flying several yards, right through the ring of spectators. Arnau’s chest ached as if it had exploded. The foul-smelling air he had got used to breathing seemed suddenly to have disappeared. He gasped for breath and tried to get to his feet, but a kick in the face sent him sprawling again. His head throbbed violently as he struggled again to breathe in, but before he could do so, another kick, this time to his kidneys, flattened him once more. After that, the blows rained down on him, and all Arnau could do was roll into a ball on the ground.

When the madman finally paused, Arnau felt as if his body had been smashed to pieces, and yet despite all the pain, he also thought he could hear a voice. Still curled in a ball, he tried to make out what it was saying.

He heard it quite clearly, speaking directly to him.

First once, then over and over again. He opened his eyes and saw the circle of people around him, all of them laughing and pointing at him. It was his father’s words that were resounding in his ears: “I gave up all I had for you to be free.” In his befuddled mind he saw images and had flashes of memory: his father hanging from the end of a rope in Plaza del Blat ... He got to his feet, his face a bloody mess. He remembered the first stone he had carried to the Virgin of the Sea ... The veteran had turned his back on him. Arnau recalled the effort it had taken to lift the stone onto his back ... the pain and suffering, and then his pride when he unloaded it outside the church ...

“Swine!”

The bearded veteran whirled round.

“Stupid peasant!” he roared again, before launching himself full-length at Arnau.

No stone could have weighed as much as that swine did. No stone ... Arnau stood up to the man’s charge, grappled with him, and the two men fell onto the sandy ground. Arnau managed to get to his feet before him, but instead of punching him, he grabbed him by his hair and his leather belt, lifted him above his head like a rag doll, and threw him right above the heads of the watching circle.

The bearded veteran fell in a heap on top of them.

But the soldier was not daunted by this show of Arnau’s strength. He was used to fighting, and in a few seconds he was again in front of Arnau, who was standing with feet spread wide in order to meet his charge. This time, however, instead of flinging himself on his opponent, the soldier tried to punch him, but once more Arnau was too quick for him: he parried the blow by grasping the man’s forearm, then spun round quickly and sent him crashing to the ground again, several yards away. This did not hurt the soldier, and so again and again he returned to the charge.

Finally, just when the soldier was expecting him to throw him off once more, Arnau instead punched him straight in the face, putting all his pent-up rage into the blow. The soldier fell at his feet, knocked cold. Arnau wanted to clutch his own hand to try to stop the stinging pain he could feel in his knuckles, but instead he stood staring defiantly at the small crowd that had gathered, his fist raised as though he might strike again. “Don’t get up,” he said silently to the fallen man, “for God’s sake, don’t get up.”

The veteran tried drunkenly to stagger to his feet. “Don’t do it!” Arnau put his foot in the other man’s face and pushed him to the ground. “Don’t get up, you whoreson.” The soldier lay still, until he was dragged away by his friends.

“You there!” The voice was one of command. Arnau turned and saw himself confronted by the knight who had caused the fight in the first place. He was still in full armor. “Come over here.”

Arnau went over to him, secretly nursing his bruised hand.

“My name is Eiximèn d’Esparca, King Pedro the Third’s shield bearer. I want you to serve under me. Go and see my attendants.”

28

THE THREE YOUNG women fell silent and looked at one another as Aledis threw herself on the stew like a starving animal. She kneeled down and scooped up the meat and vegetables directly from the cooking pot, without even pausing for breath, although she did keep an eye on them over the food. The youngest of the three, who had blond curls that cascaded down over a sky blue robe, twisted her lips at the other two: which of them had not been in the same situation? she seemed to be saying. Her companions exchanged knowing glances with her, and all three moved away from Aledis.

As she did so, the girl with the golden curls turned to look inside the large tent, where, protected from the July sun that beat down on the camp, four other women, slightly older than the first three, were also staring intently at Aledis. So too did their mistress, who sat in the middle of them on a stool. She had nodded when Aledis appeared, and agreed she should be given food. Since then, she had not taken her eyes off her: she was dressed in filthy rags, but she was beautiful... and young. What could she be doing here? She was not a vagabond: she did not seem to want to beg. Nor was she a prostitute: she had instinctively recoiled when she saw who she was with. She was filthy, wearing a torn smock and with a mass of disheveled, greasy hair. But her teeth were gleaming white. She had obviously never known hunger, or the kinds of disease that left teeth blackened. What was she doing there? She must be running away from something, but what?

The mistress gestured toward one of the women inside the tent with her.

“I want her cleaned and tidied up,” she whispered as the other woman leaned over her.

The woman looked at Aledis, smiled, and nodded.

ALEDIS COULD NOT resist. “You need a bath,” said another of the prostitutes, who had come out of the tent. A bath! How many days had it been since she had even washed? They got ready a tub of fresh water for her inside the tent. Aledis sat in it, her knees drawn up, while the three prostitutes who had watched her eat began to wash her. Why not let them fuss over her? She could not appear before Arnau looking the way she did. The army was camped close by, and he must be with them. She had done it! So why not let them look after her? She also allowed them to dress her. They looked for the least garish robe, but even so ... “Streetwalkers must wear brightly colored clothes,” her mother had once told her as a child, when she had mistaken a prostitute for a noble lady and stepped aside to let her by. “So how do we tell the two apart?” Aledis had asked. “The king obliges them to dress that way, but he prohibits them from wearing any cape or cloak, even in wintertime. That’s how you can tell the prostitutes: they always have bare shoulders.”

Aledis looked down at herself now. Women of her social rank, the wives of artisans, were not allowed to wear bright colors, but how lovely this cloth was! But how could she go and find Arnau dressed like this? The soldiers would take her for ... She raised an arm to see how the sides of the robe looked.

“Do you like it?”

Aledis turned and saw the mistress standing in the entrance to the tent. At a sign from her, Antonia, the young girl with blond curls who had helped her dress, vanished outside.

“Yes ... no ...” Aledis looked at herself once more. The robe was bright green. Perhaps these women had something she could wrap round her shoulders? If she covered them, then nobody would think she was a prostitute.

The mistress looked her up and down. She had been right: the girl had a voluptuous body that would delight any of the army captains. And those eyes! They were huge. Chestnut brown. And yet there was a sad look to them. The two women stared at each other.

“What brought you here, my girl?”

“My husband. He’s in the king’s army, and left before he could learn he’s going to be a father. I want to tell him now, before he goes into combat.”

She said this as quickly as she could, just as she had done to the traders who had rescued her at the River Besós when the ferryman, after he had raped her, was trying to get rid of her by drowning her in the river. They had taken him by surprise, and he had run away as fast as his legs could take him. Aledis had not been able to fight him off forever, and in the end let him have his way with her and then drag her by the hair down to the river. The outside world then no longer existed. The sun ceased to shine, and all she could hear was the boatman’s panting, which echoed inside her and mingled with her memories and sense of helplessness. When the traders arrived and saw how badly she had been treated, they took pity on her.

“You have to tell the magistrate about this,” they said.

But what could she tell the king’s official? What if her husband was looking for her? What if she were found out? There would be a trial, and she could not...

“No. I have to reach the royal camp before the armies leave for Roussillon,” she said, after explaining that she was pregnant and that her husband was unaware of it. “I’ll tell him, and he will decide what we should do.”

The traders went with her as far as Girona. Aledis left them at Sant Feliu church, outside the city walls. The oldest among them shook his head sadly when he saw her so lonely and bedraggled by the church walls. Aledis remembered the old women’s warning-don’t go into any town or city—and so she avoided Girona, where some six thousand people lived. From outside the city, she could see the outline of the cathedral Santa Maria, still under construction, and next to it the bishop’s palace and next to that the tall, imposing Gironella Tower, the city’s main defensive point. She gazed at all these fine buildings for a few moments, then continued on her way to Figueres.

The mistress, who was watching as Aledis remembered her journey, saw that the young girl was trembling.

The presence of the royal army in Figueres attracted hundreds of people. Aledis had joined them, already in the grip of hunger. She could no longer recall what they looked like, but she was given bread and water, and somebody offered her some vegetables. They came to a halt for the night north of the River Fluviá, at the foot of Pontons castle, which guarded the river approach to the town of Bàscara, halfway between Girona and Figueres. It was there that two of the travelers took payment for the food they had offered her: both of them raped her brutally in the night. Aledis was past caring. She sought in her memory for the image of Arnau’s face, and took refuge there. The next day, she followed the group like an animal, walking several paces behind them. But this time they did not give her any food, or even talk to her. At long last, they reached the royal camp.

And now ... what was this woman staring at? She did nothing but stare ... at Aledis’s stomach! Aledis could see that the robe fit snugly over her flat, smooth stomach, and she squirmed beneath the other woman’s gaze.

The mistress pursed her lips in satisfaction, but Aledis did not see the gesture. How often had she witnessed silent confessions of this sort? Girls who made up stories, but at the slightest pressure were unable to sustain their lies: they always grew nervous and looked down at the ground, just as this one did. How many pregnancies had she seen? Dozens? Hundreds? Never had a girl with such a flat, smooth stomach like hers really been pregnant. Had she missed a month? Possibly—but that was not enough to lead her to undertake such an arduous journey to see her husband before he went off to fight.

“There is no way you can go to the army camp dressed like that.” Aledis looked up when she heard the other woman speak. She glanced down at the robe again. “We are forbidden to go there. If you wish, I could find your husband for you.”

“You? You would help me? Why would you do that?”

“Haven’t I already helped you? I’ve given you food, had you washed and dressed. Nobody else has done as much in this hellish camp, have they?” Aledis nodded, and shuddered as she recalled the way she had been treated. “Why does it seem so odd to you then?” the woman added. Aledis hesitated. “We may be whores, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. If someone had given me a helping hand some years ago ...” The woman gazed into space, and her words floated up into the roof of the tent. “Well, that doesn’t matter now. If you wish, I can help you. I know many people in the army camp, and it wouldn’t be difficult to locate your husband.”

Aledis thought it over. Why not? The other woman was thinking of her new recruit. It would be easy enough to have the husband disappear ... All it would take was a scuffle in the camp ... Lots of the soldiers owed her favors. And then what would the girl do? Whom could she turn to? She was on her own ... She would be hers. If it was true, the pregnancy was no problem either; she had dealt with many others in the past, for the price of a few coins.

“I thank you,” said Aledis.

That was it. She was hers.

“What’s your husband’s name? Where does he come from?”

“He’s part of the Barcelona host. His name is Arnau, Arnau Estanyol.”

At this, Aledis saw the other woman tremble. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

The woman fumbled for the stool and sat down. Perspiration beaded her brow.

“No,” she said. “It must be this ghastly hot weather. Pass me that fan, will you?”

It was impossible! she told herself, while Aledis carried out her request. The blood was beating at her temples. Arnau Estanyol! Impossible.

“Describe your husband to me,” she said, fanning herself as she sat.

“Oh, it ought to be very easy to find him. He’s a bastaix from the port of Barcelona. He’s young, strong, tall, and good-looking. He has a birthmark right next to his right eye.”

The mistress went on fanning herself in silence. She was gazing far beyond Aledis, to a village called Navarcles, to a wedding feast, a straw mattress, a castle ... to Llorenç de Bellera, her disgrace, hunger, pain ... How many years had gone by since then? Twenty? Yes, at least that many. And now ...

Aledis interrupted her thoughts: “Do you know him?”

“No ... no.”

Had she ever known him? In fact, she remembered little about him. She had been so young!

“Will you help me find him?” Aledis asked, bringing her back to the present once more.

“Yes, I will,” said the other woman, indicating that Aledis should leave the tent.

Once she had gone, Francesca buried her face in her hands. Arnau! She had managed to forget him, and now, twenty years later ... if this girl were telling the truth, the child she was bearing in her belly would be ... her grandchild! And she had been planning to kill it! Twenty years! What could he be like? Aledis had said he was tall, strong, handsome. Francesca had no image of him, even as a newborn baby. She had succeeded in making sure he had the forge to warm him, but soon it had become impossible for her to go and visit him. “Those wretches! I was only a girl, but they queued up to rape me!” A tear coursed down her cheek. How long had it been since she had cried? She had not done so twenty years earlier. “The boy will be better off with Bernat,” she had thought. When she learned what had happened, Doña Caterina had slapped her and sent her off to be the soldiers’ plaything. When they had finished with her, she had lived off the scraps thrown over the castle wall. She wandered among the heaps of rubbish and waste, fighting with other beggars for whatever moldy, worm-ridden remains they could find. That was how she had met another young girl. She was skinny, but still pretty. Nobody seemed to be looking after her. Perhaps if ... Francesca offered her some scraps she had saved for herself. The girl smiled, and her eyes lit up; she had probably known no other life than this. Francesca washed her in a stream, scrubbing her skin with sand until she cried out with pain and cold. Then all she had to do was present her to one of the captains at Lord Bellera’s castle. That was how it had all started. “I grew hard, my son, so hard that my heart turned to stone inside me. What did your father tell you about me? That I left you to die?”

That same night, when the king’s captains and those soldiers who had been fortunate at dice or cards came to her tent, Francesca asked if any of them knew Arnau.

“The bastaix, you mean?” said one of them. “Of course I do; everyone knows who he is.” Francesca’s head tilted to one side as she listened. “They say he defeated a veteran everybody was afraid of,” the man explained, “and then Eiximèn d’Esparca, the king’s shield bearer, took him on as part of his personal guard. He has a birthmark by his right eye. He’s being trained to fight with a dagger. He’s fought on several more occasions, and always won. He’s well worth betting on.” The officer smiled. “Why are you so interested in him?” he said, his smile broadening still further.

“Why not feed his lascivious imagination?” thought Francesca. Explaining anything different would be complicated. So she winked at the captain.

“You’re too old for a man like him,” the soldier laughed.

Francesca did not give way.

“Bring him to me and you won’t regret it.”

“Where? Here?”

What if Aledis had been lying? But Francesca’s first impressions had never let her down.

“No, not here.”

ALEDIS WALKED A few steps away from the tent. It was a beautiful warm and starry night, with a big yellow moon lighting the darkest corners. She looked up at the sky, and then at the men who went into the tent and emerged soon afterward on the arm of one or another of the girls. They would head for some small huts in the distance, and then a short while later reappear, sometimes laughing, sometimes in silence. The same scene was repeated time and again. Each time, the prostitutes headed for the tub where Aledis had bathed, and washed their private parts in the water, staring at her brazenly as they did so. It reminded Aledis of the woman her mother had once told her she should not step aside for.

“Why don’t they arrest her?” Aledis had asked her mother on that occasion.

Eulàlia had looked down at her daughter, calculating whether she was of an age to receive a proper explanation.

“She can’t be arrested,” she told her. “The king and the Church allow them to ply their trade.”

Aledis looked up at her in disbelief.

“Yes, daughter, that’s right. The Church says that fallen women should not be punished by earthly laws, because divine law will do so.” How was she to explain to a child that the real reason for the Church being so lenient was to prevent adultery or unnatural relationships? Eulàlia observed her daughter again. No, she was not old enough to understand about unnatural relationships.

Antonia, the girl with the golden curls, smiled at her from beside the tub. Aledis pursed her lips in response, but went no further.

What else had her mother told her? she wondered, trying to take her mind off what she was seeing. That prostitutes could not live in any village, town, or city where honest citizens lived, under threat of being thrown out of their own homes if their neighbors so demanded. That they were obliged to listen to religious sermons aimed at rehabilitating them. That they could visit public baths only on Mondays and Fridays, the days reserved for Jews and Saracens. And that they could use their money for works of charity, but never for any holy oblation.

Standing next to the tub, Antonia was holding her skirt up with one hand while she washed herself with the other. And she was still smiling! Every time she bent to scoop up water, she looked at Aledis and smiled. Aledis did her best to respond, and tried not to let her gaze wander downward toward Antonia’s groin, clearly visible in the moonlight.

Why was the girl smiling at her? She was no more than a girl, but already she was condemned. A few years earlier, just after her father had refused to allow her to be betrothed to Arnau, her mother had taken Aledis and her sister Alesta to the San Pedro convent in Barcelona. “Let them see it,” had been the tanner’s terse command. The convent atrium was full of doors that had been torn off their hinges and left leaning against the convent arches or thrown on the ground. King Pedro had given the abbess of San Pedro the sole authority to order all the prostitutes out of her parish, and then to tear the doors off their dwellings and bring them all to be displayed at the convent. The abbess had been more than happy to oblige!

“Have all these people been forced out of their homes?” Aledis had asked, flapping her hand at the sight and remembering what had happened to her own family before they had rented a room with Pere and Mariona: their front door had also been torn off because they had been unable to pay their taxes.

“No, daughter,” her mother had replied. “This is what happens to women who abandon chastity.”

Aledis could vividly remember that moment, and the way her mother had narrowed her eyes and peered at her.

Aledis shook her head to rid it of that painful memory. She found herself staring once more at Antonia and her exposed pubis, where the hairs were as blond and curly as the hair on her head. What would the abbess of San Pedro do with someone like Antonia?

Francesca came out of her tent, looking for Antonia. “Come here, girl!” she shouted at her. Aledis watched as Antonia skipped away from the tub, pulling up her hose, and ran into the tent. Then her gaze met that of Francesca, before the older woman turned back into the tent. Why was she looking at her like that?

ElXIMÈN D’ESPARCA, KING Pedro the Third’s shield bearer, was an important person. In fact, his position was more impressive than his physique, because the moment he dismounted from his huge warhorse and took off his armor, he was merely a short, skinny-looking fellow. A weak man, thought Arnau, hoping the nobleman could not read his mind.

Eiximèn d’Esparca commanded a company of Almogavars that he paid for out of his own purse. Whenever he surveyed them, he began to worry. Where did those mercenaries’ loyalty really lie? To whoever paid them, that was all. That was why he liked to surround himself with a praetorian guard, and explained why he had been so impressed by Arnau.

“What weapons are you skilled in?” the noble’s captain had asked Arnau. The bastaix showed him his father’s crossbow. “Yes, I thought as much. All you Catalans are good with crossbows. It’s your duty. Any other weapons?”

Arnau shook his head.

“What about that knife?” The officer pointed to the weapon Arnau was wearing tucked into his belt, but when Arnau took it out, the officer burst into laughter. “That blunt thing wouldn’t even be able to tear a virgin’s hymen. I’ll show you how to use a real dagger, in hand-to-hand combat.”